Modern Wisdom - #108 - Peter Frankopan - The New Silk Roads

Episode Date: October 3, 2019

Peter Frankopan is a Professor of Global History at Oxford University, Director at the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research and an author. In the west we tend to have a view that our own political, economical and cultural situations are the most important on the planet. We tend to believe that we are principally shaping the direction the world heads in. Today Peter offers an alternative view which identifies the rapid rate of change seen in Asia over the last few years which could change not only the financial and commercial but the cultural focus of the globe. Extra Stuff: Buy The New Silk Roads - https://amzn.to/2nXSonD Follow Peter on Twitter - https://twitter.com/peterfrankopan Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, hello beautiful people of podcastland, welcome back to Modern Wisdom. I have some good news. We are rapidly closing in on one million total downloads. That will be pretty soon, I think. So we will be doing a couple of special edition videos and potentially some episodes around that as well. I think video guide Dean is planning on putting a bloopers reel out of all the times that we've messed up. Thanks for that, Dean. But on to today's episode, I'm joined by Peter Franko Pan, who is the best-selling author of The Silk Roads, and his new book, The New Silk Roads is the topic of today's discussion, talking about all things Asia. I have been delving in a lot of politics and history and stuff recently, but it's opening my eyes to how narrow and insulated my world view is, and that of a lot of people who are in the West. We just

believe that what's going on with us is most important and everybody else is equally bothered by it. But as Peter explains today, the fact that Brexit is a little bit of a mess and our parliament's not really too sure about what's going on probably doesn't matter that much if you live in Shanghai or Cape Town. So yeah, hopefully these podcasts will give you a little bit more perspective and maybe allow you to feel less embroiled and less concerned about exactly what's going on. You have a little bit more of a global view of things you realise that were For now, please welcome Peter Frankopan. I am joined by Professor of Global History at Oxford and director at the Oxford Centre for Bison Time Research, Peter Frankoapan. Peter, welcome to the show. Hi there. Very good to have you here. I am holding a copy of the New Silk Roads. Many of the listeners will be familiar

with your first books under Time's best seller. And we've got a new one now, talking to all things China and Asia and stuff in an area of the world that we never really know much about. Well, I write a first book about, I'm interested in all parts of history. I'm interested in looking as far and wide as possible. But when I was a young boy at school, I got fed the same stuff year after year after year. I got told about Henry VIII and his wives, and about the First World War, the awfulness of the trenches, and about how bad Hitler was.

And all of that is important that we learn about. But I never learned about anything else. Apart from that, I never heard the word Ottoman Empire or Byzantines. I heard a little bit about Russia, not a great deal about the Russia Revolution, but I couldn't understand why I'm not older than the new Chris. I couldn't understand why people were trying to point nuclear weapons

at us. We had drills once a month in my school on a Friday at two o'clock to hide under our desks. And you know, I watched the news growing up and I heard about the Cambodian, but you know, about the war in genocide in Cambodia, about China changing and then Chenaman Square when I was 18. And I was very interested about why was it that these parts of the world, like as you just said, we never spent any time talking about. And I guess there are two different questions, two different reasons for the subject I'm interested in.

First, well, what is interesting in these countries? You know, what did happen that was important and interesting, where are the stories that are important, interesting for people my age or younger than me, older than me in other countries? But also, how have we managed to write our own history about current affairs too, where the only thing that matters is ourselves.

And today we're talking on a day where we have lots of dramatic developments about our political system, we're in Britain about pro-rogation, sort of very unusual word about parliament being pushed to one side. And for us, I understand that really matters. What happens in Britain and how we get our relationship with Europe right.

But 99% of the world's population, it really doesn't matter. If you're in downtown Shanghai tonight, or in Mumbai, or in Cape Town, or in Sao Paulo, or Mexico City, or in Lagos, the irrelevance of what a bunch of men and women are doing in Parliament in London, it's important to remind ourselves of that because we are living in a world that's changing very fast. And I sometimes think that we have this very imperial way

of looking at our own importance. And I suppose it's fair to say, any country, you look at yourselves first. You know, of course you study your own heroes, your own history, your own problems about politics and economy and so on. But in that big picture, you know, 100 years ago, it mattered a lot to the rest of the world, you know, according to the world's population, in 1914, owned their allegiance or notional allegiance, I should say, to the King of England. And that world, unless I missed something, you know, really has gone, you know,

we've got a great footballer, so we've got lots of stuff in this country that we should be proud of, our business, our museums, our scholarship and so on, but you know, it's that that age where men, women in London shape the world is over and in a way today having been out on the road and driving or you know, being in the car and listening to the radio, hour after hour after hour, the only thing that's been spoken about has been about Brexit and about Westerns of politics. And I just think that sometimes you can be so worried about what's going on in your own life

that you can forget about the bigger picture. And so my books are tried to put context into how things have happened in the past, what's going on in the future, and trying to signal in this new book about a little bit more what's coming towards us too. Yeah, it's interesting what you say. I wonder how many of the countries, and you will be able to shed some light on this. I'm sure how many countries are living within this filter bubble where they're so primarily concerned with their own concerns because that's the case. And how much is especially a curse bestowed on us

in perhaps the UK and potentially the USA, which has been grandfathered in this archetype of a time gone by where you're totally right. We were ruling a significant portion of the world. So therefore we were important. So is it worse in the UK than is elsewhere, do you think? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no, no, I think it's fair to say that everybody has a rose tinted spectacle so it comes to look at their past. And everybody wants to think that they're important.

That's completely reasonable. You know, that's clearly in case the United States, for example, a real challenge where the mindset is about cold war and about managing a process. And about the belief, and obviously logical reasons too, that America is the world's greatest democracy, the world's most powerful country and so on. And so the way in which you look at people around you, of course, is, it makes a difference. I suppose the easiest way to answer the question is, I thought if you put up a picture of David Beckham or Tom Cruise in any city in the world, everybody who know who that got, that they are, right?

Pick a film star, pick a pop star, pick Taylor Swift, you know, pick whoever you want, you know. They have worldwide renowned because other people spend a lot of time looking at us, right? We have a lot of tourists coming from all over the world to London, Paris, New York, and so on. Really keen to learn and to learn the stuff we do well. And I guess right now to learn the stuff we don't do so well. You know, it's a very interesting moment. Again, with the Brexit stuff going on right now, to be thinking about how does that look to other countries? How does it look where the Prime Minister bypasses Parliament, or looks like he's trying to bypass Parliament to get

his own way? You know, that says something very specific to countries where dictators or authoritarian leaders have very little regard for the political process. So I think that the truth is that most other countries are quite good at looking at, maybe not all other countries, but they're quite good at looking at Britain, quite good at looking at France, quite good at looking at United States, quite good at looking at Russia. So I think if you asked school-aged kids or university of tertiary education kids around the world, what they know about Europe, they'll be generally quite glued up, whereas I'd have thought you could walk into the highest performing, higher number of

A-stars possible in any degree course you want and ask a very basic question about China. You know, who's the most important Chinese emperor? Not a good one, not bad one, not a fat one, not a thin one, just name one. Most people can't, right? Who's the most important, who's the most important African musician? So it's not just history and boring stuff, people like me, like doing in libraries and traveling, right? You know, who are the big film stars in India or in Nigeria in the film,

which is, you know, is growing at huge rates. And if that employs a lot of people in the UK in terms of entertaining in terms of distribution in terms of the rest of it, we are very disengaged because we expect people come to us. And I suppose there are interesting points in history where that is the sort of symptom of imperial decline. When you get lazy, the other people come to you, you know, you need to bother learning other people's languages. You don't need to bother watching anybody else's football league, because it's obviously a soft football league, it's bad about everybody else's. And the reason I was there is that it's bad about everybody else's, by the way, of course, it's because we pay the players more than anybody else. And as a result,

that means that the glory is that much higher. That means that people can afford to buy football clubs are the ultra ultra ultra ultra you know you up a new cost of the time being so got Mike Ashley you know he made his made his mid made his mid to the here with his with his close attribution to UK but my team Chelsea from my sins you know boggstand a team in the 70s and 80s when I grew up up and down between the top two teams you know it's owned by a Russian oligarch who's money comes from minerals and oil from Siberia and elsewhere, you know, and you know, Manchester City, the Champions of England, are owned by essentially the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, Paris, Seljama, the best French team, and they're not great at the French teams, but you know, about to tell Neymar owned by the ruling family of Qatar, you know, so this is a new world where

where rich people are coming from different parts of the world. You're in less the city than on the league, a tie owner, you know, Everton, not the road, you know, from from Manchester, with a Iranian man who made a lot of money with the Nusbeck tie queue, who used to, by the way, own a third of us. So, you know, this world looks to us very unfamiliar because we are asleep, you know, we don't think about how other people are becoming wealthy, we don't think about other other people are becoming wealthy, we don't think about other systems in government, we assume everybody wants to be like us, we assume therefore that well we shouldn't, we shouldn't really have to work too hard, you know, so we'll go away on the holidays in different

countries, but you know, no need to learn any other words, no need to say please, thank you, you know, the Brits are pretty good, you know, I find any part of the world you go to, you know, Southeast Asia, up country, Laos, you could bet your bottom dollar when you hear somebody in the breakfast, they're going to be from England in some way. No, we have got that traveler spirit in us. But by and large education system has shut that down. Our curaucius shut it down. The digital era is a real challenge to draw that because it streamlines choices.

So it's a very long answer, simple question. You know, our people better at it than we are? You know, I don't want to over claim for other countries. You know, I don't want to say that other people are all getting it right. But by and large, other countries are much better to try to work out how to deal with other people who are different. And you know, some of that starts with basic things like language. You know, are bilingualism in this country?

If you don't have a parent from a different country, there's almost zero chance that you'll speak another foreign language. And you know, look at our friends across the North Sea and in Hottin and other lands, you go into Amsterdam, people will answer you in five or six seven different languages. And that would seem to me better preparation doesn't mean you're going to get it right, but better preparation to understand that people don't always look like you do, don't always think like you do, that you've got to work out and negotiate. And I've learned, you know, we're just talking before we started talking about having dinner and who does the cooking and stuff.

And, you know, you learn in successful friendships and successful relationships. Successful relationships with parents, families, loved ones and so on, that compromise and negotiation is the communication is the key to everything. And I think in Britain, for sorts of reasons partly we have a very proud past to think about that that also throws a shadow over us where we just assume that our place in the world is taken for granted. And I think as the world gets more complicated as the world gets a more dynamic in other corners of the world and not in Europe. We have to be thinking very carefully about how to prepare the next generations of that.

Yeah, you're totally right. The fact that other countries have to bend around the incumbent leaders, so to speak globally, which are, I guess, traditionally ourselves and obviously America and those countries, you're totally right. All of the people who are listening that British will know what it feels like to go somewhere on a holiday and just expect the other country to speak. But by large people, people love the Brits. I mean, there are going to be hot spots where we don't do ourselves proud and moments every

year when things go wrong. But the Brits are famous around the world having good sense of humour, we're famous for our sense of justice, we do try and get political decisions right, we have a lot to be really proud of. But in the world that's on the move around us with new technologies, with challenges coming towards us, it's not surprising that other countries will say, look at the composition of the UN Security Council, for example, which in theory is the kind of global government to try to solve big problems. Is it right that you have Russia, France, Britain, China, and not a single African permanent member, not a single other Asian member like India or Pakistan, no one from the Middle East, no one from South America, and reflective of population sizes, the fact that we in Britain, with the population of 60 million, have a seat on

the Security Council that's permanent, it's something which we shouldn't take for granted, we should be able to explain why we have good custodians and why we're good for global governance. But again, those kind of arguments are quite tricky, where we're Brexit, we're trying to say we can do things better than our 27 European neighbors. And I'm not on your podcast to try to lose half of the audience, or 48 or 52% of the audience, but we've got to think quite carefully about, are we sure, empirically, that we make better decisions

than other people, right? Whether they are European union partners or otherwise, and there's a kind of an assumption, I think, amongst a lot of the Brexit tears that I talked to you, is that the Britain makes good decisions on its own. And as a historian, I'm not interested in whether that's right or wrong, whether I feel it's right, I'm interested in measuring it, I'm interested in proving it, I'm interested in trying to assess and look at data to find out whether that's actually the case. And I think you can draw different conclusions from trying to assume that because we're decent people we always do things right because the last century

you know it's a pretty long list of shame as well as the glorious stuff too that we have to put on the on the on the ballot shoes. Yeah you're totally right so relating the new silk roads you must recent book to its predecessor, how do these two relate and why did you write this new one? Well, the first big book I wrote, which is quite a chunky one, and lots of books, explains how I think the history of the world looks from across a couple of thousands of years, or why it is that always the peoples, the commodities, like spices, like silk, eventually, things are oil and gas too, quite recent. But why it is that the spine of Asia and the heart of Asia has

always been where empires have been shaped and formed, including the British Empire, but the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great, the great general. He wasn't interested in conquering Switzerland and Germany and Scotland or getting up to Newcastle. In the Farley zone of a great, it was all about conquering, going Eastwards, right? And so trying to explain why that's been so important in history. And my book was published in 2015 and I spoke to my publishers about a year, about a year and a half ago and I said, look, a lot has happened since then. You know, we've tried the election of Trump. We've got the Brexit debarkler that hasn't been resolved. The rise of new technologies, the greater awareness of climate and climate change that's coming towards us.

Russia has had a very significant process by post-the invasion of Ukraine and annexation and Crimea. A lot of these countries are on the move. India and Pakistan in the last two years, as close to a military confrontation as they have been for the last seven or eight decades. So I said to my publisher, I quite like to write a new last chapter to bring it up to date. And they said great, give us three or four thousand words, which is about 10 pages or something. And I'm a sulca, so I went in the sulca for a little bit, and then I said, look, I'd like to write some a little bit longer

than that. And they said, no, your book is already quite long. So adding an extra 60 or 70 pages doesn't cut the master. So I said, no, I quite like to write a sort of short book about it. And that's what this one really is. It's kind of final chapter that looks at the last three or four years, where all these trends of confrontation of China and the United States through trade wars, pressure on the European Union, whatever's going to happen with it, I suspect Brexit is not going to be the last chapter by any means. And that movements in Iran, with the collapse of the Iran nuclear agreement, that these

parts of the world are all in the move. So it's a kind of, it's a breezier read that tries to explain what it is that's really important today and Brexit and Trump are for sure a part of that story. But again, the more important things as the historian and I guess I commentator, I'm interested in resources, I'm interested in power, I'm interested in economic distribution, demographics, where are people? Where, where, where, if you land from out of space and you say, what really matters, what's in your top 10? And, you know, it's an awful thing to say to people listening to this in the UK, but, you know, Brexit really isn't one of them. Trump is a different story. The direction of US foreign policy and economic policy does shape global

affairs. But, you know, so that, that gets a bit of attention in my book too. But this rises new changing world where we look in the developed world, you know, in Europe and the United States and so on, people decoupling. There's a story of the West, as I guess, there's a broad world, you know, Canada is a part of that, Australia is part of that. The broad world of the West right now is about putting up wars. In some cases, literally, you know, whether it's in Dover or Cal, you know, stopping the and is part of Australia's part of that. The broad world of the West right now is about putting up walls. In some cases, literally, whether it's in Dover or Cal,

stopping the current disconnect from Europe or the United States of Mexico, it's about pulling out of things, about going at a loan, being convinced that we can do things better. And in the past, while I'm interested in, all the story is about greater levels of connection. It's all about building roads, building railways,

collaborating, working together, having free trade agreements, and you know, some of that looks good on paper, and in reality it's complicated. Lots of these countries, lots of these people's internally, and with their neighbours, very complicated relationships, some of them can't stand each other, some of them have real military, military competition and arms races between them. And so sometimes that kind of glossy, the glossy, nice, happy words all sounds one thing and the reality is much more

serious, whereas our pulling out of things, science really serious in some cases doesn't make so much difference. But trying to balance that all together, the narrative about people's across Asia is that, look, their time has come. This is two thirds of the world's population living between Istanbul and more or less in Beijing. And that's where 85% of the world's rice is grown, 65% of the world's wheat, 80% of the world's oil and gas resources. And like I said, about 4 billion, 4.5 billion people.

So it would seem to me if these populations grow richer within a compura or they suffer from climate change or they go to war, that's going to have a very dramatic impact on our lives. And actually, on balance, how trucks can move between Holland and Netherlands and Belgium doesn't really matter. It doesn't move the dial. The places that I look at, the population-wise,

resource-wise, the competition, and the long-term consequences, the population wise, resource wise, the competition, and the long-term consequences, those are the things that are shaping the world. Not of the future, they're shaping the world of us now. We're not looking at it because it's all about Boris, it's all about Jeremy Corbyn, it's all about trying to blood let here at home. So you understand this much better than I do and much better than pretty much anybody that's listening is going to as well. Over the last few years since you wrote your last book, have you got a five favorite incidents or particular situations or areas that you've looked at any that you think I know this might be like trying to ask you to choose your favourite children, but if there's particular incidents that you think that you've found

particularly interesting, it doesn't have to be Trump, it doesn't have to be Brexit. You know, what are the areas that you covered in this book that was surprising or of real interest to you? I tell you, Chris, you know, I'm extremely lucky that I get to travel around a lot. And the first thing you learn to do, if you the third thing you should learn to do when you travel a lot is to listen. I don't mind being stuck in a lift with anybody, whether it's a local farm, whether it's a big wing politician, whether it's someone who's unemployed, whether it's with a student,

I think it's listening to hear what it is that other people, well they think, you know, and to work out why they think it, that's I think what a good analyst does, a good scholar does, is that you try not to prejudge, you try to leave your own biases to one side, but you try to look and listen, and you know, this is a rolling story, very hard as a historian, you know, I suppose, you know, I feel like I'm a clay called, I'm a clay called tennis plane, on clay, I tell them like I'm a clay court tennis player. On clay, I tell them like I'm a really good tennis player which I'm not, but I understand. I understand when you play a clay court tennis,

the ball bounces very slowly. So you know, these very long rallies, right, we're on grass at Wimbledon, it's all quick, grand bam, thank you, man. And I think historians are not always very good. I think I find it difficult to process in real time whether today's announcement, for example, about propagation of parliament, how significant is that in the grand scheme of history,

because I'm trying to look backwards at stuff I know has happened rather than reacting day to day. So I really admire, and I admire hugely journalists who are writing about their opinions in real time time because it's a really tricky skill to have and it's not easy to get right. And it's very easy, worse than that. Not only is it hard to get it right, it's worse because then in three or four years time looking back on it, you could be told that you're wrong. So I've learned not to try to over dramatize and sort of a, that to show individual events.

But I think that the, the, the that the traveling I've done over the last five or six years, I spent a lot of time in all over the world. And it's to recognize that the biggest single shift has been the discrediting of what practical democracy looks like. And some of that is extremely unfair and un-unfounded. But some of that is to do with the language that Trump uses. When

you talk about shit on countries, when you talk about, when you trash talk other leaders, whether it's Trump or talking about Justin Trudeau or anybody else, where you turn on your friends or those enemies, that sends a very powerful signal to people listening around the world that you're not decent, cricket playing playing lot who abide by the rules. You make things up as you go along you know when you bomb countries without the U.N. Security Council approval or when you pull out of agreements that the rest of the global community want. That not only discredits the democratic traditions we have here, it provides grist to the mill or people who want to do things in a different way, who's authoritarian ways, and look very different to us.

So, again, over the last few years, as well as seeing our model, it's very hard to be trying to say, you should be more like us in Britain, where half the parliament went to the other half, while the country went to the other half, and were to think the other half are idiots. Regardless of which side you think, it's very hard to be selling that model. And equally, China is very good at this. It are very good at saying, well, we are for alternative, right, which is you can have economic growth, but you know, we're going to have to cut a few corners and we're going to have to make things difficult for you to be free in the way in which you want to accept. And you know, over the summer, the protests in Hong Kong have shown that how fragile that can be too.

But I think that that process of seeing how resilient authoritarian regimes is, it's something that takes people like me very much by surprise. We always assumed that as people became richer, they'd want to have a greater participation in political process. And the evidence doesn't show that's the case. China's one obvious example, but the Middle East in lots of different countries shows that to Russia-like ones, where the rains of the apparatus were in the hands of the very, very few. And in some cases, some of those authoritarian regimes would be quite good, funnily enough,

reform it, getting rid of corruption, having greater transparency in legal processes. And so I think we are drifting into this kind of bipolar world where there are two wheels spinning in different speeds, you know, and places like Africa that are very much on the move in transition are getting a huge amount of attention from Chinese businesses, or from the Chinese state, not exactly in the way which we think, often people think that the Chinese are trying to extract resources, but actually China has has a much smarter way of engaging with Africa and of giving both aid and private investment into businesses across that continent. This world which is changing is going to be deeply affected

by climate in the future. I think that that is something which is very, very clear to me that are the same to us as we losing our way and fighting each other and trash talking and so on, are the parts of the world that are becoming more confident about saying we're offering something different and not quite taking it or leave it, but we least can provide stability. And I think that that's a real challenge game for.

You're totally right as well, what you say about the growth that is being seen in the East. I remember I think I'm writing, quoting one of the stats from your book is that Starbucks are opening 2000 new stores in China in the next three years, which is the same as one every 15 hours. Like, which is just same as one every 15 hours. Like, which is just, it's insane. So when you think that's, that's, you know, a US company, US company moving out there,

that is what they see as the, um, a hugely growing market. So what are some of the surprising, uh, statistics that you've discovered with regards to this growth over the last few years. Obviously, China is widely touted as this huge booming economy at the moment. Are there any other places that might surprise people? Yeah, I think China is a lot of the story. So not only do we have the growth of face-like Starbucks. This summer, a whole bunch of fashion houses have got into a big trouble for labeling Taiwan as being an independent country. Fashion houses like Versace and Gimalshi and so on have had to do groveling apologies to allow their

stores to stay open in China. There have been huge social media outrage across China. And everything the company that's had that targeting, I've made that so-called mistake in China's eyes, has had to make a decision, which does it want to engage in politics, or does it want to make money? And they've all, they've all apologized to make money.

So you know, that's huge, so for example, in 1990, China's share of the luxury goods market was 0%. You know, the only people who traveled from China 30 years ago, or 40 years ago, 30 years ago, sorry, were state officials who, you know, ideally didn't bring back too many fancy Italian designer goods with them. Now, already, China accounts for a third of all global luxury goods. And the assumption according to analysts and research is that that number is going to rise to nearly 50% in the next 15 years.

So consumption, which of course means that when Prada or Gucci or Burberry or whatever it is, you know, I had to ask the designer kit, what colors they use, what logos they use, what words they chew, all of that is going to be shaped by the chief consumers. And that's the same for tourism, where the outbound numbers of Chinese tourists coming to visit Europe or the United States, they've gone through the roof. So you know, but it's not just a China story. In fact, so last year, Pakistan was the fastest retail growing market in the world. Right? And we were never cross our mind, that might be the case. Pakistan, a population

of almost 200 million people, lots of young, lots of under 30s. Very few of them have got a great deal of confidence in the state, right now, wrongly. Don't believe in the banking system where you leave your cash overnight, who knows what happens to it. So they spend and they spend on having fun, because why bother saving up in a state where you think that your future's uncertain, you're not living for an L, right? Like anybody listening to this between the age

I don't know, 17 and 22, there's a salad I'm talking about. When your parents say to you, why don't you save your cash rather than going on a Friday night, you think they're mad, or worse, you'd say I'll do my best, and maybe a a couple of weeks you'll put a bit of cash away. But most of the time it's I want to live on the nail in the nail. It's only later where you think I am saving up because there's a sequence but doing that enables and opens on the door. So Pakistan is a big part of that. India is an enormous part of that. The penetration of,

you know, like I can clean it and fridges and freezes in India is very, very small and as India becomes wealthier, I significantly so, you know, with the top crickets that are now paid 30, 40 million dollars a year, you know, they're right up there with, with the world's top earners, then the way in which people live and spend and so on shifts right across the board. So one of my favorite steps that I put in my book is about airline pilot salaries. So airline flights, I mean, you know, we all know in Europe, it's cheapest chips to if you book it on the right flights the right time and you'll have it you get five in the morning, it'll be treated like cattle, you know, cost you 10 quid, 10 quid, and then extra 50 quid for your bags, you've got to check in. But the real growth and boom in in Tata-Leia travel

is across Asia. And it's estimated that that number's going to spiral upwards and upwards and upwards by 2030, mainly driven by China, by India, by Indonesia, population 200 million, again, almost, by Turkey with 100 million people in it. There is a huge population, all becoming not just richer, but more curious. Wanting to travel, wanting to taste different food, see how the people live, see their

sights and so on. And those numbers are mind boggling. They're huge. So it's a pan Asian thing. The wealth in South Korea, in Malaysia, in Thailand, you know, it's on, are in almost. And they keep growing because a lot of these states are well run. They are on balance pretty fair. You know, you can fall on the wrong side of people anywhere and you get in trouble. But, you know, they have pretty good legal systems, quite robust.

You know, they all are keen on being democratic. They all recognize the problems or autocracy. They've all got different experiences that. They all recognise the problems or topracy. They've all got different experiences of things going off the rails from time to time. These are all countries that have had a quasi-miraculous last 40-50 years. And it's not surprising in those countries to think, well, this is their time. This is their moment. And why would they jeopardise their relationships with their neighbours? So, you know, Malaysia, for example, they've got a 93-year-old prime minister, you know, there's a long, complicated story behind how he's come back to power. But, you know, when you ask that, when he gets asked about China

and should China be allowed to invest into Malaysia and its infrastructure, he says, look, you know, I know lots of people around the world are worried about China and, you know, its investments and why it's doing it and so on. But remember, the Europeans came to what's now Malaysia, and two years later we'd become a colony, and we became slaves. So the Chinese never did that, and maybe they don't want to do that now. But rather telling us to be more like you,

maybe you should go and study your own history and realize why we have second thoughts about the nice men coming from London telling us what to do. And maybe there are other alternatives. So in fact, this afternoon there's been a big press conference where the Indian Foreign Minister be talking and he was asked by By General Patreas you command the American army in Iraq. He was asked look Are you who side you're gonna come down on you're gonna come down on the United States side and freedom or on China side and Autocracy communism so on and so on, and the four

minutes of India said, not unreasonably, I'll tell you, side we're going to come down on our own side, right? We don't have to choose, in your belief, make believe world, where it's either or, we want to do what's right for us. We're not choosing sides because we don't see it as a choice that we need to be making. And those kind of that kind of attitude, those kind of languages, those kind of choices of words, I think a very interesting for countries that don't feel they need to hedge their bets. They're keen, in fact, the more money gets invested from Japan, China, United States, etc. The better. Why have to pick sides? But we have, I think,

a Cold War mentality where people are either good or they're bad. Putin is either good or Russia are either good or they're bad. Iran good or bad. And then, you can't eat it good or bad. And I think that that normally tells you that there's a lack of thought going into things. We professors, we could spend hours, like I'm doing now talking about, kind of, around circles circles, but you learn that things are never quite so simple, that you need to look at it from every single angle. And if you don't get off your backside and go do that and spend time in those countries or think about them, then there's a disconnect. And here one of our challenges is we've got a first class foreign office diplomats around the world who are fantastic, brilliant, to man and a woman, it's hugely impressive, but they're

under resourced that they need more people working there, and ideally what they are reporting back to London helps shape our policies, but in fact it goes to politicians who are too busy worrying about Brexit and how they should line up behind Boris Johnson. So you've touched on one of the points that I wanted to delve into here. I'm a big fan of the Joe Rogan podcast as are many of the people that will be listening. And Joe has a series of guests on the people who've worked in government X CIA staff and people like that. And one of the constant, consistent narratives that's brought up is you don't need to be worried about Russia You need to be worried about China. China's the real threat. China's the one that are using Aggressive investments. China's the one who have this weird social credit system, which I don't have a clue how it works

China is the one that's got the highest rates of pollution that are coming out at the moment. China's the one that's creating this Huawei surveillance potential plan, which is fitting the ability for them to be able to potentially access networks of security and all this sort of stuff. Did you spend much time looking at these particular points? Yeah, I did. The first question I'd ask next time you get one, either you or Joe get one of these people on, is to say, look, I did, and I thought for the first question I'd ask, next time you get one of these people on, is to say, look, I understand all that, but tell me why they're doing it. All those things you mentioned, I recognize, and they all have better or worse explanations

for them. But you know, what is the aim, right? And if you don't start with that as a question, what does China want, what's it trying to achieve, what's the purpose behind all of this stuff? If it really is trying to compromise all of our networks and so on and so forth, exactly what's the purpose? If you can't answer that, then you're not answering

the right questions when you're badging China as a single state or a single country, overlooking the structures that sit within the elite and underneath the elites and the different regions and the different identities and the different whatever, then I think it's very hard to understand and process all of that right. And I think that with some of these things,

I mean, I'll take a couple of the ones that the list you gave me, you know. Some of those things like the social credit system, I think that with the right audience and you're gonna be very careful how you say these things because people can take them the wrong way, but all of us have been on trains and on buses and stuff where there are people who are who are who behave in a bad way, right, whether it's by littering or whether it's by loud seeing or vandalism sort. So our China does that, it says very simple, if you spit on the train, if you drop

your coffee cup or you you you're litter here or there or you're just respectful, then you know, you're going to lose points and therefore you're going to go have so long you're going to have your first choice the whole of it, right? Well, you won't be able to have a cinematic, it's something like you want to go. And I'd have thought that that to some extent that would that sort of thing would get the right kind of support among politicians. In fact, I'm amazed that we haven't had politicians. I'm not going to say which political party I reckon they'd probably come from, but suggesting that kind of thing.

But how you train citizens to be better citizens, how you make people behave in their role towards the state well seems to be quite a natural thing to be doing. I spend a bit of time in Sweden. In Sweden, if you don't sort your rubbish out into compostables, plastics, metallics, and so on, you know, you become a parent and you get into trouble with a local authority. So, China uses data and it uses AI, it uses the technology to get faster and better, but they're not the only people who do things like this, right? So that's the first and the second one about debt and investment and so on.

What anybody will tell you is that the best way to get good terms for your bank for your mortgage is to go and speak to two or three banks. One of the open doors that China has is that the United States gives less, in fact, the United States contributions into Africa went down under the Obama administration from under Bush and they've gone down under Trump even more. So, in all these states, it's not that people are clamoring to get into bed with Chinese investment and so on, but in many cases they're the only show in term, right? So if we want to be part of that story and we want to invest into it, there are all sorts

of ways which we can do that. We can do trade missions to other parts of the world. But for example, those United States business forum with Africa, this is coming up in a second half of this year, and there's not a single American politician at senior level who's in bothering to turn up, whereas the Chinese Africa forum is led by the Chinese president, right? So it signals very clearly that if you want to have big-scale investments, the Chinese are open for business.

What terms they lend it on, how it's being done, etc, all come further down the line. But I think in some of these cases, if other countries like the United States or Britain wants to be a counterweight, then there are also lots of ways in which we can put our money where our mouth is. And finally enough,

a Japan has very adept at doing that. In fact, Japan's overseas assets and investments are greater than China, but it does it much more quietly off the radar. Many cases is not really seen or talked about a note about, but there are many other people who have skin in the game who are interested in trying to play the same dual role of having a stake in what the new world is going to look like, and already looks like, but also getting a good return in your cash. So where China has made mistakes, of course, has been putting money into projects that

have gone bad. And there have been three or four very high profile examples of all of that. But you know, banking is not straightforward. You know, you make mistakes. I assume that we will expect that China will learn how to lend in a better way, because when you when you mess things up and you borrow billions to build a port or build railways that don't pay back, at some point, you know, the shit it's the phone, excuse me, my like, bitch.

I shot away the shit, it's the phone. And the assumption that a lot of the policy walks in particular, the United States, is that China really wants to be taking over railways in East Africa or taking over power plants in Kyrgyzstan because that's a strategic asset. And I don't see that in many of these cases they are strategic, strategic assets. I don't think they're easy to run. I don't think it's self-evident at all that China wants to control the power supply for Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan because what actual benefit does that give? What's different is if you can lend money and you get paid back in a decent rate

and you make your friends at the same time, right? So that seems like a very different kind of game, but we have a very shrill world where we look at China because of this black and white, that we, we, you know, it's absolutely right to look at the problems and the difficulties, the challenges, the opacity, the way in which the leadership, you know, et cetera, et cetera, and protesting the Hong Kong, you know, the way in which the leadership, etc etc etc and

protesting the Hong Kong, the persecution of Muslims in Xinjiang etc. But that doesn't mean that one discredits the whole thing all in one go. I think one has to look very carefully, like I said, the very first question is always, why exactly are they doing this? Why do you think that is? Is it the particular philosophy within China at the moment? Is this still great leap forward super growth at any cost? Is this sort of where we're at? Or what do you think the current Chinese? I think it's all of that. I think some of it is to do with history and legacy, the know, the idea of China looking westwards is a long part, not just from back to Ming Dynasty, but even under communism, under Zhuen Lian and so on, the kind of the idea that Chinese have better local regional partners seem self-evident. That's part of the kind of narrative.

Part of it is to do with China's own long-term needs. Parts of the world, like Central Asia, are very rich in minerals, particularly oil and gas, but also iron steel and iron zinc and gold and silver and so on and so forth. Some of it is to do with trying to work out what it needs in the future. Some of it is to do with trying to displacing the fact that it's grown a lot internally and is now shifting from a manufacturing base to services industries. So all those workers who built roads and power blocks and train stations, they can all be deployed elsewhere.

And so some of these contracts help fund Chinese state owned businesses and private businesses. So there were opportunities, some of it to do with the fact that markets like Pakistan and India, you know, with combined population of more than one and a half billion people, those are quite attractive markets for the future too. So, and then I think that there's the security angle as well about, you know, trying to share a little particularly big border with Afghanistan, but you know, it shares a paranoia about what fundamentalism will look like. And you know, it's using a heavy hand to crack a crack a nut by by these internal

camps in Xinjiang with with a million maybe more Wego's who are being re so-called reeducated so there's a whole combination of slew in that and then on top of that you have personal ambitions characteristics in the provincial governors for example in Xinjiang extremely ambitious with an eye on a on a promotion coming up the line if you can run his province well and like a pin. And so, you know, I think there's a whole multiplicity of all of this too. But what you always, what China watchers will always do is assume that there's a kind of master plan. And that speaks of our own racial ideas about what we think Chinese people do.

We think China is very good at maths, and therefore they must have a master plan. And sometimes there is a plan, and sometimes it's chaotic. So there's a silk road to do with all hygiene at the moment. There's a silk road to do with polar ice caps. There's a silk road to do with anything you like, with earthquake detection. And that badge has been stuck on the front of everything. And so it's easy to assume that because everything says silk road, with earthquake detection and that badge has been stuck on the front of everything. And so it's easy to assume that because everything says so in code that there is a kind of

a blueprint behind the whole lot, but the core, the spine of it, I think, is preparing China for what its own needs are, preparing China for its next sonabers, preparing China for what it thinks the world of the future will look like both in terms of its challenges threats but also its opportunities. And that doesn't mean that those calculations are right. It doesn't mean that they're gonna get, where projects are right, it doesn't mean that their calculations they're making

are correct. But it's very striking to me that when you start thinking about what the long term needs are, you probably have a better chance of getting some of the bits right than if you don't know what's happening after the 14th September or the 14th October or the 13th October, you know, which is exactly where we are now. We've got no idea whether we've gone up medicine at the end of this year or what medicine we need to be stocking up.

And, you know, you could spin it the other way around and go, well that's because we do things properly. We listen and we try to conciliate and then, you know, it doesn't take a genius to say, well, that doesn't seem to work particularly well. And so, I think that as these different worlds are forming, what's interesting is that everybody else has a long-term plan. Casak Star has its 2030 plan, Vietnam has its long-term plan, Russia has its long-term plan, and the closest we've got to when President Xi announced the Belt and Road Initiative in New Silk Rinse in 2013. Almost exactly the same time we announced the HS2 train line to connect London with Manchester. So far, we spent six billion quid on it, haven't made a single metre track. Sixty grand gone on gym memberships for people who work for HS2.

If you look at it, and if they changed it after my book six months on my book came back, because I think somebody read it. If you look at the Northern Powerhouse portal which used to be those trumpets what's been done for that Northern Power so we read about it in the press. Until recently the most important development was the opening of a south front of Leeds Tray station and then at the end of last year the Pinkfield near Celebrating was a series of poster displays at Manchester Airport celebrating industrial development and the industrial revolution of the North. So in that, in that five or six year period that I'm talking about and in this new book, you know, the rate of change elsewhere has been monumental, monumental.

And, you know, it's, we've fiddle when Rome burns, partly because no one says that we need to do it any other way. You know, we still walk into booksh, partly because no one says that we need to do it any other way. You know, we're still walking to the bookshop and there are endless books about Hitler, still watch the news and it's the same sort of thing. And the truth is, normally people don't want to read about other parts of the world. And so it was a mis-complete mystery to me

when my first book came out and it did so well. Because, you know, I spent years going to drink parts of dinner parties, explaining the parts of the world I work on, and no one gives two hoots. Whereas now suddenly everybody does understand Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Middle East, Pakistan and India, China, Southeast Asia, Russia, Iran, etc. We need to be thinking about that, we need to be thinking about it quickly. That's very hard to do if you've used a talk for a position of their knowledge. You've spoken about the rapid growth that we've seen

over this past five, six year period or so. One of the things that was keen to bring up some of the costs that have come associated with that. Now again, perfect avatar for the layperson of understanding global politics right here. Like if it doesn't appear on a Facebook post that's been shared by one of my friends or on a really high BBC news article, probably haven't seen it. But the stuff that I see about dangerous rates of pollution, about levels of happiness

in these sort of countries. And again, it is this incredibly imperialist view that it's like, well, if they're getting that right, it must be everyone must be hating it or it must be another great leap forward or it must be swimming in smog and stuff like that. But did you look into some of the costs that have been associated with this rapid growth over the last few years? Yes, I think, yes, and I think that the answer to that one really is how long is a piece

of string because when you look at costs, you know, you've got social costs, you know, rising wealth means explicitly, I suppose, rising inequalities, you know, as rich get richer than the poor don't move, then that's a difficult thing for any society to work through, particularly when it's extremely rapid. And you know, there are costs there that has an implication through to provision of health care, through to education where things become uneven, because people in wealthy parts of different countries have different standards than they get. Probably some size, people, right? Probably some crime, places where you get high inequality of wealth are also places where you associate high levels of crime. I'm sure that that sounds to me like that's probably correct. I

thought that that may, I don't know about the data behind all of that because I guess it's quite often things that I think sound about right and sound reasonable to not correct. The environmental cost is obviously enormous. The carbon emissions in China, as you've already said, are amongst the other high in the world. What most developing countries will say, from Brazil, and the huge in the news at the moment, through to countries across Africa and Asia, it's all very rich for Europe to tell us about this when they burn all the coal that went up into the sky from the 1800s onwards, and that you've all had your greatly forward to industrialized

and build your cities, build your railroads, and now you all have to stop us from doing it. So ironically, China and Russia and Turkey are within their limits that were set by the Paris and Croons, whereas the Paris climate agreements, the Donald Trump has pulled out of, here in Britain where we think, you know, we're quite sensitive, we all like that.

Swedish world girl who's like, talks about climate, we all know it's got problem coming towards us. It wasn't a great summer this summer and so on. But as it happens, we're exceeding our own limits that we set ground, but we agreed to accept, right? We assume other people break the rules, but those agreements that were made in Paris, other countries across Asia, including China, are still as far as I'm aware, I think I'm correct, is in that. Please don't hurt me if I'm wrong. I'm sure that Turk,

you've managed to certainly, and I can't. Kavya deployed, it's fine. Back? Yeah, I think that they are within the limits that we're set, and in Europe, most of the country is on. So I think we have that idea that other people bend the rules that we don't,

because we invented the rules of cricket and won the World Cup. So I think those have that idea that other people bend the rules and we don't, because we invented the rules quicker and won the World Cup. So I think those things are hard. I think there's costs in terms of urbanization, the process of people moving to cities in India and China, but also all across Asia. It puts huge strain on ecosystems, on family life, on gender, because it tends to be, well, both women who move to the job move to the city of particular kinds of jobs and men for other kinds of particular jobs, you know, that creates a change in family dynamic. So it's absolutely more new mental, the scale

of these changes and the cost. So I suppose one of the things that one has to outweigh is what's the destination. And again, most states that I visited and most people I talked to across Asia, all say that they are making sacrifices for the good of their children. You know, I've been to places where, you know, I was in, I was in, for example, I went to Abu Dhabi with the Pope earlier this year. The first time that Pope has ever been to the Gulf region. And a matter of woman who was working with the Philippines, she'd been living in Saudi Arabia, she'd come to the UAE to see the Pope, she's Catholic in the Philippines, she'd

been living in Saudi Arabia for 12 years and there'd been home twice and she'd had three kids at home, she's in twice for a total of 10 days and 12 years. And she said, look, I'm doing that because what I earn here, you know, loads of the low, but more than I'm beginning back at home, helps give my kids a better chance. And when you have that kind of idea that your children are going to have a better life than you are, then you make different decisions about education, about health care, about investments,

to if you're sure that they won't. And here in the UK, of course, the financial times, we are in the first generation now under 25, so we're gonna have a worse term than living than the generation that went before them. And that is why you start to see disenfranchised, disaffected, particularly youth,

and it's the same story the United States, by the way, where social mobility, and if you're born in the bottom 20% in the UK or the US, you've got a statistically miles higher, much, much higher charts for staying there, then if you're born in the bottom 20% with Sierra Leone or Gabon or Kazakhstan. And when that social mobility crunch comes, you think, well, what if my life means that there's no option, there's no future, there's no ownership, all that stuff I see on love island, I just see it's a kind of fantasy, then you get radicalized and religious radicalization is part of that environmental radicalization, caromy part of that, all sorts of different ways in

which body radicalization, all those kinds of ways in which unhappiness can come through the system, it changes how states function. So I'm not going to tell you that we in Britain have a bad future coming towards us, but these are questions that our politicians need to be thinking about, need to be listening to researchers and trying to work out how do we try to correct that? How do we make this country a fairer place? How do we make it environmentally safe? How do we look after our natural habitats? How do we become more tolerant? How do we encourage people who are look different, behave differently, want to worship in a different way? How do we get all sides to sit around the table and work out and pull together?

And you know, there is a price that you pay if you start to get that wrong. And I'm concerned about how things look in Europe right now because, you know, you can see an increase during the financial crisis. It was 60% of the under 25 didn't have a job. And those numbers in Portugal, Spain, Italy, and the higher the crisis were, were 50%, 60% plus. And that's one reason why, again, regardless of what listeners views are about the EU, 58% of the French population think that EU's not gonna last

or unsatisfied with it. We're not the only people in Britain who think that the European Union is a problem. My own personal view for what it's worth is that there's a lot of projection. We want a lightning road, so we want something to blame. So we blame the EU, and the EU probably hasn't done a good enough job in explaining why it's been good for everybody. But clearly that dissatisfaction, that anger in our politics, that name calling, that bitterness, that inefficiency,

is a product of the fact that we all recognize the life is becoming harder for us and it's going to become even harder for our kids. I think, and I put it in my book, that regardless what you think about Brexit, this is the worst possible moment with China on the rise, Russia isolated Iran, you know, on a different trajectory, a potential war between India and Pakistan, all these flashpoints, and Trump and the White House, to choose now to leave structure seems to me very, very irresponsible. But I also listen on all sides to try to work out why people are angry. And I think that that anger is based on substance, but I'm not sure that we're necessarily going to, the solution is going to make things better, but my guess is it'll make these worse.

It's a very complicated situation. I was talking to Andrew Doyle, creator of the Tittani McGraph Twitter account the other day about this, and I was saying that as someone who is not politically minded, but everything that I do is apolitical, right? Everything because never voted. I haven't voted and the main reason for that is I haven't educated myself sufficiently for me to feel like my vote is worthwhile. I don't want to vote just off the top of headlines that potentially may be wrong. But increasingly and much more so during the period

that you've been writing this book last five years or so, been finding myself being dragged into political discussions, that things that I do that don't have anything to do with politics are somehow becoming politicized. I'm not the way that I conduct my business, literally my own business that I've run for 13 years, it's not to do with my political stance. And my political stance also isn't something for public consumption. It's just how I'm. But yeah, I think that lightning rod,

someone to blame that isn't us. Everyone likes to gas, a little bit of gaslight in here and there. And it's a little bit like European Union gaslight. And so before we finished up, what I wanted to briefly touch on because it's quite topical at the moment, is this situation in Brazil. I just wanted to get you, you're taken how that's been received globally. Obviously, you've got a much wider perspective

than most people will do. So what do you thought? Oh, well, I don't know quite where I start. I mean, clearly, the preservation of the Amazon is crucial for all of us. I think that Bolsonaro is a populist leader, which, you know, as many countries have where they say and do irresponsible things, and then, you know, while this is all happening, cracks-wise, cracks about the front president's wife, you know, on Facebook. So it doesn't seem to be taking it there seriously. You know, I think that the way in which the global community tries to respond and tell people off probably

isn't enormously helpful. We've announced that $8 package of $20 million, which doesn't pay for an enormous amount. I think we've got to try and think very carefully. I mean, I'm a supporter of an organisation called Survival International, which looked after indigenous peoples' rights. So it's not just about the lungs of the earth as they called it about the greenhouse impact. It's about the people who live in these lands and who are just being booted off for search of cash. But I think we are arch hypocrites here in the West that if you want to stop the Amazon being deforested, then we should stop, let's meet.

We should stop by things that are directly implicated into it. And if you watch Narncos, if you start to think about global supply chains, there's no such thing with all due respect, Chris, I think of being apolitical. Because everything is political. You might not want to admit it. You might not want to think about it when you buy your TV, where is it made, or whether you're a jeans or a bear trade, or whether they're made by something, they cost five quid, and you think,

I'm not gonna ask about how they were made or where, but you're gonna guess that they're made in a different way to be made for 50 quid out of the road, although that doesn't always mean, doesn't always work out either, sometimes you get scouts for your conscience. But I think we all have a responsibility, and in our digital world where information

is not always reliable, not of fake news, but it's not hard to find things out. It's about asking those kind of right questions. I think we're all complicit in that destruction of the Amazon, because we want to have our niceties in life, and that starts with beef, but that's not the only thing too. It's about the global capitalist order, which is much better than the alternative, by the way, as a student of Soviet Union, where persecution, as murder and oppression are the calling cards.

I think that we need to think very hard about what kind of world does we want. And again, it's a good line to end, or I suppose. My view is that the kind of challenge we have in the world at the moment, about digital, about technologies, about climate can only be resolved by multilateral and by organizations where people all have a chair at the table.

And when you leave the room and say you're going to work things out on your own, I'm not sure how effective you can be. We're obviously much more useful in the UK within the EU, within the G7, within the UN, within all these different formats, are being able to have a kind of common policy. And at the moment, we're the ones who are being forced to take sides because when we detach from the EU, which looks to me like it's inevitable, we don't have an enormous amount we can bring to the party in terms of leverage, apart from our reputation. And historians would tell you that reputation accounts for something, but actually it's always to do with cash. And if you want to affect change, then you change the way that you live

and how you spend. It's going to be interesting in another five years time. There might be the, I'm not sure what it would be, the silk roads might be fine and you might be talking about a total collapse of the European Union or God knows what's going to go on over the next five years. Here's one question to actually finish on. Do you think if you're a betting man, do you think that you will have seen more change in the last five years or more change in the next five years? I never, as I was talking, never battle the past. Never, never, never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never Europe, European Union, all Europe, Britain, we're all resilient. Even people like to disagree with, and people who disagree with me, I'm happy to listen to the point of view. Now we're just locked up when we talk.

We have a good civic society here. We do try and get lots of things wrong in this country, but we get lots and lots and lots of things right. We compete ourselves up a lot. Whatever challenges come towards us, we're going to be able to make the best of it. I don't have any doubt about any of that. But, you know, I generally, like I keep saying, generally, the more that you communicate, the more that you study, the more you're willing to listen, the better. And I think that we happen to be

in a period where our politicians here in the United States are much better at talking and not very good at listening. And, you who, most of the people who are talking about, I'm mainly my favourite thing is to hear what other people have to say. I've learnt that sometimes being quite a listening is the mark of a proper scholar rather than someone who pipes up and gives their two cents all the time. It might be a good tip for some of our politicians to take away. So I'll try and I'll tweet it to them. I'll see if someone listens and takes it on board. But Peter tonight's been absolutely fantastic. I really appreciate your time.

The New Silk Roads will be linked in the show notes below. I highly recommend that you go and check it out. If anybody wants to find you online, where should they head, Peter? I, Twitter is always the place at Peter Baker band. And I try to reply, if I can, no one's ever, no one's been rude, please don't be rude, I've got, I'm a meek academic student in the library, so I don't want to start crying in the library, I will follow my students, but no, I love engaging with people and I'm very happy to try to respond to answer and to want it for anybody who wants to treat me. Fantastic, if you have any questions that are nice and well-worded and polite and don't use too many emojis then find them over to Peter.

Twitter will be linked in the show in the comments below as well. Peter, thank you so much for your time. Enjoy your cooking, your off-to-cooker souffle and I hope that you get it right. Fantastic. Thanks a lot Chris. Cheers. Cheers!