The Duran Podcast - Secret Plan to Destroy BRICS and Crash China w/ Ryan Perkins

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

Secret Plan to Destroy BRICS and Crash China w/ Ryan Perkins

All right, Alexander, we are here with Ryan Perkins, joining us on the Duran for the first time. Ryan, you have an excellent substack. Would you like to let people know where they can find that substack? And then we'll get started with our discussion. Yeah, my substack is Ryan Perkins' geopolitics and the Twitter is at China Indicator. All right, that will have those as links in the description box down below and as a pinned comment. Alexander Ryan, we have a lot to discuss, so let's jump right into it. We have a huge amount to discuss and no one better to discuss it with than Ryan.

Now, Ryan and I met during my recent trip to Russia. Ryan is mostly based in Beijing, but he's also a frequent traveler to Russia. He has very much his finger on the pulse of what is taking place in both countries. And of course, he's also very, very familiar with the world of finance and business and economics, which is an area that he writes about consistently and very interestingly. And he's been writing a lot about the crisis in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. And what this actually implies for China and what the United States might actually be up to.

And I think that is absolutely the topic we need to discuss with Ryan, because there's been a lot of discussion about what the situation in the Middle East is. A lot of people assume that the United States is just blundering along, but Ryan thinks that they have a more considered strategy. And I should say that also over the course of this program, There was been a major meeting in Vladivostok, an economic forum that took place there. Putin was there. The Chinese were there.

Ryan was in Vladivostov. And it would be useful at the end of this program, really helpful at the end of this program, if Ryan could fill us in with his impressions. But let's start with the situation in the oil and energy markets and the financial markets. And perhaps you can explain to us what you think the Americans are up to. So I started writing about this shortly after the war started in March because the initial picture didn't, it didn't look right to me. So I started to look into all of the policy papers and the strategic literature that preceded the war. And one of the things that I noticed was that across time and across institutions, there was a general consensus over the last 10, 15, 20 years of policy papers that two things were consistent.

The first was that the success of a regime change operation in Iran was, was consistently considered unlikely with a short-term, with a short-sharp regime change military operation. It was also considered unlikely with a longer protracted air campaign, and absent a major land component, really there wasn't really very much chance of it succeeding. And the second factor was that, again, across all of the institutions and across time, the consensus was that in the event of a military

operation, Iran would close the strait. So the second thing that I was looking at was the effect of the fertilizer crisis on particularly India, because I was able to identify India as probably one of the, as probably the major, exposed, the most exposed major economy. And the fourth thing was the inconsistency in the oil price market, in the market for oil. And so I started to sort of piece it together. And it increasingly looked as though the energy prices were being suppressed through financial means in the financial markets. And again, I wasn't quite sure what I was looking at.

So I started trying to put the pieces together in different ways. So I began to speculate if the closure of the straits was a known outcome, if the failure of the regime change operation was a known outcome, perhaps the closure of the straits was the actual intention of the operation. Perhaps that was the long-term goal. So the next stage is to look at what are the implications of that? And the immediate implications were the fertilizer shortage and energy shortage. Add to that that it looked as though the energy markets were being suppressed. I say that because realistically, when you look at what was occurring, it was long-term energy infrastructure destruction across the region. Add into that, then you have Venezuela, and then add into that you have

the EU sanctions, which are increasingly targeting Russia's ability to export energy outside the region. And it looked like there was a concerted effort to create an energy shortage, but also to hide that energy shortage. So the next question is, how long can that energy shortage be hidden realistically? And if you're trying to weaponize these two things, the optimum time for them to synchronize is in the Northern Hemisphere, the Northern Hemisphere, harvest season because the fertilizer shortage started at the beginning of the Northern Hemisphere's planting season. So if you give a six-month timetable from the fertilizer shortage to when that feeds through into food supplies, that's going to create the maximum economic

impact for those two to synchronize roughly. And I actually put this in the article. I said it should begin to synchronize around about September, October time. And this is one of the last Friday, I woke up and I watched Alex's video. And it opened with Scott Best and saying, we're about to enter an energy shock, which was, which is, you know, I felt that that was a bit of a vindication. So yeah, that, I think, is the primary. I think the primary purpose of the Iran War is to shape the economic landscape in a way that facilitates this trap. So the next stage is then to look at the vulnerabilities. So what are the potential vulnerabilities in this situation if you synchronize a food and fuel shock to occur at roughly the same time?

And that led me to a hypothesis that I called the... the petro-uan hypothesis. And, yeah, I can go into a bit more detail on that. But when I wrote it, which I wrote it, I published it in April. And I published it sort of speculatively because, you know, I didn't, I couldn't prove it was happening. But it just, I had a feeling that it made sense because it made a lot more sense than a lot of the other narratives. that I was reading. And I think it's important,

I always think it's important to understand that the incompetence narrative is often used by the Western media to bridge the gap between what is deemed a policy imperative and public acceptance in a democracy. So if this was the plan,

then they had presumably calculated what the sort of costs and the collateral damage would be and had deemed those costs acceptable. So then it's necessary to create a narrative of incompetence that, you know, the whole thing's gone wrong and, yeah, a lot of unforeseen circumstances. But the key point, one of the key points for me, when I put it all together, was suddenly realizing that at the center of all this sat Scott Besson. And Scott Besson is a man who has, made billions of dollars, doing precisely this kind of thing, manipulating markets in a way to exert financial leverage over different currencies.

So, sorry, do you want me to work through? Yes, yes, I think so. If you could, please. You're doing it very clearly. So if you could please do that. yes. Yeah. So, first of all, the key thing was to calculate roughly what I thought, you know, where

prices were likely to go. And I think at the time I calculated roughly about a 10% increase in global food prices. And then the energy shock should be, I don't mean, you know, I am speculating now. But I mean, by the end of the year, if the situation carries on unchanged, if the supply situation carries on unchanged, which looks possible, which looks likely at the moment, given the sort of periodic escalations, probably looking in the range of about $150 a barrel for oil. I would say that roughly by the end of next week,

by the end of this week, sorry, we'll probably break $100. And by the end of the month, possibly $120, 125, possibly by the end of the month, heading towards 150 towards the end of the year. So when you sort of map out how that feeds through the global economy and you look for the vulnerabilities, it becomes clear that this is a weapon that is aimed, it has three main targets. The first target, the primary target, is China,

and it's clearly an attempt to extend a policy of economic containment around China. an extension of the military and political containment regime that's been going on for a while, to fracture the solidarity of bricks and to act as an object warning to the global south. So as a warning to any nation that's considering bricks alignment, to make them consider whether or not they want to choose solidarity with bricks or the sort of relative short-term safety of the dollar zone. So the vulnerabilities.

In one of the first articles I wrote, which was about India, India is very, very exposed. It's exposed on three fronts because most of it, its fertilizer and fertilizer feedstock comes from the Strait of Hormuz. As does 80% of India imports 80% of its oil, and the vast majority of that comes through the Strait of Hormuz. And then you have the currency vulnerability as well, because as India's import bill begins to climb, so pressure on the rupee is going to intensify.

And that potentially can lead into a kind of import price depreciation spiral. So that's India. Brazil is also very heavily exposed to the fertilizer side of the problem. And Brazil is now experiencing that problem. I think it was three or four weeks ago, or yeah, three or four weeks ago, Reuters actually ran an article saying,

explaining how Brazilian farmers are now, Brazilian soybean farmers are now losing their advantage over U.S. soybean farmers, precisely, precisely because of this. And then the interesting part is looking at the Chinese economy. And when I'm explaining this, you have to understand. I'm explaining what I think the plan is.

I'm explaining what I think the strategy is. I'm not saying it's going to work because there's a lot of variables at play. But I think this is the strategy. So far, I was able to identify two kind of pretty, pretty fairly serious vulnerabilities. And I think they're the kind of vulnerabilities that somebody like Scott Besant would have identified.

So the first one is in China's industrial value added. So the industrial value added is the gap between what goes into the factory and what comes out of the factory. Now, China has a lot of world-beaten brands. It has a lot of very high-tech industries. But it also has a huge, small and medium-sized manufacturing sector. And those companies, those factories, they make everything that everybody in the world uses. And they're very, very price dependent. They're very, very sensitive to

input costs. So for example, during the early period of the pandemic, you see something very, very interesting happen in China's industrial value added. It effectively collapses because due to supply chain constraints, the purchasing price index, yeah, the purchasing price index, so, goes up, but the consumer price index doesn't. So what happens is that huge wave of global inflation that was generated in the early days of the pandemic was literally absorbed by the Chinese manufacturing sector to the extent the industrial value added falls very, very dramatically. And most of those manufacturers or a lot of those manufacturers were able to

to, they were able to effectively subsidize their operations at the start by laying off workers, drawing on savings and cutting costs as much as they could. Immediately afterwards, the Chinese government steps in with an enormous industrial package where it defers utility payments, it defers tax payments, it offers ultra-cheap credit from the state banking sector, in order to keep that sector afloat. But it was able to do that primarily because it understood that it was an inherently short-term problem. So it was able to use this sort of fiscal expansion to bridge to normal, if you like. In the current situation, it will be much, much harder to do that for a number of reasons.

The current situation could potentially last 18 months to two years, perhaps. Who knows? And so in that situation, there isn't really anywhere to bridge two. which, you know, limits the extent to which the government will be able to launch a similar kind of package. The other major vulnerability is in, and it's the vulnerability that most people would have thought was a strength. And that comes to. So most people think that because China, is expanding its international payment system.

That insulates it from the sort of predatory nature of the US dollar system. And that's not, that's true, but only to a very, very limited extent. Because the rest of the global financial architecture is primarily, well, it's almost entirely constructed from dollars. So if you think of these kind of payment systems as perhaps, think of it as a train, and then think of all of the supporting infrastructure for that train is built from dollars, it creates an asymmetry. And that's the asymmetry that I think will be exploited. So just to clarify exactly what that means, China currently purchases around about half of its oil in

R&B, so in Chinese currency. 45% of the oil that it buys from Saudi Arabia it pays for in R&B, I think about 20% from the UAE, but 99% from Russia. Now, if you're Saudi Arabia, or even Russia, actually, if you're one of these countries, there's a limit to how much of that R&B you can recycle. into Chinese goods, Chinese services, and Chinese financial instruments. And that means that the rest, over and above that, you will change on the open market into primarily dollars, but also other currencies.

Saudi Arabia in particular will need to change a lot of that into dollars in order to service its dollar denominated investments. What this does is it creates a pool of R&B that exists outside of China's direct control because it's openly traded in Hong Kong, Singapore and in London. Now, that means that there are, it's one currency. but there's two exchange rates. So you have the exchange rate that operates outside of China and the exchange rate operates inside,

which is set by the People's Bank of China. Now, the pool of R&B that is outside of the Chinese banking systems control is relatively small. So as that price of oil goes up, more and more China will be spending more and more R&B to purchase it and that means that more and more of it will be changed in the open market and that in and of itself will put immediate downward pressure on that on that currency and that creates a problem because China needs to maintain a peg

between those two exchange rates and how do you do that so in the part China has been able to maintain this peg by through limited liquidity interventions in that pool. I think what is about to happen is that I think that the effect of the price rise, well, the effect of the price rise will be too great to be solved by a limited liquid. liquidity intervention. So in that situation, how do you defend that currency? You can intervene by trying to buy back the currency on the open market, or you can raise interest rates. Now, what that does is that puts China in a, it puts China in a, in a dilemma,

because the fiscal policy necessary to support those small and medium-sized enterprises is directly opposed to the kind of policies that will be necessary to support the exchange rate of the offshore Iran. And I think, I think that is the vulnerability that I think Scott Besson is, or, you know, the U.S. administration. is attempting to or will attempt to exploit in the near future. So, yeah, we have a great deal of pressure being exerted on Brazil. Also, Pakistan, Egypt and Kenya will be amongst the most affected by the fertilizer and fuel prices. But of course, the whole of the global south, the whole of the global. South as well. But again, China is a different story because China actually is more or less,

I believe it's actually self-sufficient in fertilizer. To the extent that at the beginning of this crisis in April, yeah, perhaps March, but anyway, at the start of the crisis, India actually asked China to help it with fertilizer, which I think given the sort of broader geopolitical, landscape, that shows a degree of desperation. So I think, yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's the trap. That's, um, what, what I think, uh, what I think the Iran war is ultimately designed to engineer. In effect, an industrial recession in China, um, a situation where the Chinese government cannot support medium and small range manufacturing. And by the way, uh, when I went to, China, which is about a while back, 2017.

The thing that really did strike, struck me, and struck me very immediately was what an enormous sector this is. Every single Chinese, you know, locality that I went to seem to have its, you know, small businesses, small industries producing things. I mean, truly is the workshop of the world, if you like, in that, in that, in that respect. And this is actually on quite a small scale and probably the margins that these people work under are probably extremely tight, which is what tends to happen when you see this. So created in put these people in a situation where they are under enormous economic pressure

because either interest rates go up or other action has to be taken to try to protect the currency and an industrial recession affecting those people in particular would have a major impact within China and on Chinese society, greater perhaps than the tariff wall that the administration experimented with last year would have. So that is that is the trap. Yes. Now, The Chinese, whatever they are, they are extremely intelligent people. They presumably are thinking about all of this. What can they do in preparation for it? So the first thing is that China has been preparing for, China has been preparing for at least 10 years, you know, more like 15, but possibly 20. I think everybody in the same,

senior leadership understood that at some point it was going to come to some kind of economic, some kind of economic war. And one of the things that China's been doing is it's been trying to sort of energy proof its economy. When you see these enormous investments in renewable energy, electric vehicles, these kinds of things. So it's trying to build sort of offers in every stage of its economy. Specifically this year, we've seen a lot of activity in the financial sector where China's trying to rein in. It's trying to get all of its balance sheets in order.

So it's created currency swap agreements. Created. It's stopped. bonds being issued in dollars, there's a lot, there's a lot that's going on in terms of preparation. Whether, I mean, if I've spotted this, then I would imagine that the Chinese have spotted it because if there's one country in the world that does do long-term planning very, very well, it's China. Well, we're reading your articles for one thing. I'm sure they have. But they create buffers in terms of financial currency interventions,

attempts to avoid sharp increases in interest rates. And I think this is, I think, the key point that you're making, we would not be looking at an interest rate, you know, gradual increase in interest rates if you have basically a currency crisis because of this situation with, shall we say, the floating R&B, then you would be looking at a very sharp, dramatic increase in interest rates to stabilize that situation, which is particularly difficult, a particularly difficult shock for the kind of business people that you're talking about,

who, by the way, employ a huge number of people in China. I mean, this would be a massive societal shock if it were to happen. What would the buffers be to avoid doing that? I mean, can I just make one obvious point, which I'm sure some of the people who are watching this program would say, which is why does China need to protect the, if you like, the floating R&B as, relative to its own internal RMB? Why would it need to protect it in that kind of way? What would be the effect if it cut it cut it off?

I mean, I could venture some guesses, which is that it would probably be at the moment where the entire BRIC's financial architecture would start to crumble. But tell us what you think. That's exactly it, yeah. It would be, I mean, that is the unthinkable option. So, realistically, I mean, the problem is, the really big problem is that in this situation,

China has very, very limited options, because as you said, the options are to sharply raise interest rates, essentially attempt to make that R&B more attractive to hold. One of the other things that they've introduced is they've allowed institutions to borrow R&B against the bonds, the R&B bonds that have been issued so they can just borrow straight from the central bank of China. And that's designed to encourage people not to not to sell when the price starts to draw. But yes, that sharp, this is it. This is why it's such a, this is why it's such a devious trap. Because in order to try and make the R&B more attractive to hold,

raising those interest rates, it precludes the kind of financial, fiscal, the sort of stimulus package that was used the last time this happened during the early stages of COVID. So that creates, it is a real dilemma. I mean, just to go back to one of the things you mentioned when you were talking about the tariff trade war, the tariff was, I, in light of this, and we've all throughout the summer, I've been publishing updates on this as kind of more and more pieces that fit into place. And I've always said it was a hypothesis. I don't, you know, I don't have solid proof that this is the, this is the strategy. But as the pieces slowly start to fall into place, I started to think

about the tariff war. And increasingly, I think it wasn't as ramshackle and kind of impulsive as the media portrayed it. I think looking back, it was essentially a way for the US to test for vulnerabilities and to look at the possible avenues of retaliation that China would be able to exert if it came to this. And I think having somebody like trying somebody like, Trump gives you, gives you that ability to make it look like it's just, you know, it's just bluff and bluster and it's just, you know, it's the old, the old, the old, the old, the old, the old, the old,

the old, the old, the old, the old, the old, you know, he doesn't know what he's doing. But I, increasingly, if this was, if this is the plan, then I, I think that those, um, those tariffs were in many ways an opportunity to test what, what is the retaliation pathways if we do this and see if we do that, let's see how that feeds through the system. Yeah, so, right. Yeah. I should just quickly further say that we have been through something not entirely unlike this before. And that affected the United States and the position of the dollar as well, which was back in the 60s.

world where we had fixed exchange rates and very controlled conversion of currencies. One of the things that became increasingly destabilizing to that system was the fact that the United States, there was a pool of dollars, an ever-growing pool of dollars outside the United States beyond the direct control of the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.S. federal authorities. the so-called Euro-dollar, as people were talking about it then. People, the word Euro-dollar constantly shifts meanings. But if you're talking about the late 60s, early 70s, that was a major factor in creating the instabilities within the system that basically caused the whole system of fixed exchange

rates associated with Bretton Woods to collapse in the early 70s, led to the floating of currencies at that time, which was a major shock, much bigger shock than people today remember, but I remember it well because I live through it. I was there when it all happened. So someone like Besson will be familiar with that whole history and will know exactly how to test this. And of course, another attempt to create a system of fixed exchange rates happened in the 90s, in the late 80s, early 90s, with the ERM. So-called exchange rate mechanism, the ERM. And who broke that? Exactly.

And who broke that? Who broke that? Who broke that? 1992. With George Soros. So to say that this is too. complicated an idea for someone like him is it would simply not be correct. Soros was there when, as I said, we had the Eurodollar crisis in the late 60s, early 70s. He was already there

and Besson was not only there, but he was very active in the ERM, the crisis in the European exchange rate system in the early 1990s. Now, you did say he did, he did. He did something very similar, he did something similar in Japan in 19, in 2012. And of course, he did it in Iran in January of this year. Exactly. He has, he has record. He has a record here. So, I think this is not far-fetched, given the person we're talking about at all. However, it does have implications for the Western economies too, in the sense that you now do have an energy shock, a food price shock. It's having an impact within the United States. It is having an impact within Europe. It does seem a very reckless thing to do to play games with the stability of the

Western economies in the hope that you can somehow crash China. And China, whatever is a very big place to crash. I mean, it does seem a very, very reckless thing to do. Is this the kind of thing that the U.S. Treasury Secretary ought to be doing? It's the kind of thing that a fund manager and speculator does, but a Treasury Secretary is supposed to be approaching things in a more conservative way, one would have thought. Yeah. So, okay, I don't, at this point, I don't think the objective is to, like, I don't think the objective is to break China. And as I wrote in April, I think the objective is to try and create enough economic leverage over China that they will be able to foist. When I say Plaza Accord, a Plaza Accord type agreement.

I don't mean, you know, it's not a, it's not a carbon copy. It's something that would be functionally similar. So the Plaza Accord was signed in 1985 by Japan, and it was an agreement under which Japan would allow its currency to revalue. What happened was when the currency began to revalue, suddenly hot money flooded into the economy. Sorry, when it revalued, it did crush Japan's export sector.

And the Japanese government responded by creating an enormous flood of cheap money. And what that did was that just inflated a whole series of asset bubbles across the entire economy. And then the US Treasury increased interest rates, which then defated all of those bubbles and created the lost decade. this sort of long period of deflation. I think that the United States is attempting to engineer something similar to that, essentially to slow down the Chinese economy, potentially contain it for a period of time,

in order for it to buy time to re-industrialize, or revitalize their economy, that's not going to happen. I mean, the idea, you know, there is no blueprint for re-industrializing a country. And the primary reason why the United States deindustrialize is because of the United, because of the US dollars reserve status. Yeah. You know, it's simply, if you operate a global empire of capital, the time horizons and the structure of your capital management is completely incompatible with the needs of industry.

And your exchange rate is wrong. The only way that the United States will reindustrialize is if and when the United States if and when the U.S. dollar ceases to be the global reserve currency. And what's interesting is, and I've written quite a lot about this too, is that Germany, what's happening in Germany is not the deindustrialization that's taking place in Germany is not an exclusively modern thing. It's a process that's been ongoing since reunification and it's accelerated with the creation of the Eurozone. And that's a similar thing. It's Germany taking on a role within the European. Eurozone that's almost analogous to the United States role in the dollar zone. But of course, subordinated to the US dollar.

But as Germany has kind of increasingly financialized its economy, it's transitioning, it's going through a similar kind of deindustrialization that the United States went through and for much the same reasons and the same reason that Britain did in the late 19th century. I was going to make that very important. Can we pivot back to what you were saying about India and Brazil? Because one of the things that we've been talking a bit about on our programs recently, and which is controversial with some people, is that India and Brazil have been in their own ways pivoting back to the US in some respects.

India in particular has been trying to get the Russians to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine. It became very clear that that was the case at the meeting, the recent SEO meeting in Bishkek. Modi spoke about it quite openly and did so directly to Putin. Lula has been doing the same thing for some time. And on top of that, and aside from all of that, we have all of that, we have all of. also been saying, and we've also been getting some pushback from this, that the relations between China and Iran have not been entirely happy over the last few months. And China has been particularly concerned about the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. So all of these things, the Indians,

the Brazilians, tried aligning an effect with American policy at the moment. And China, telling the Iranians, look, please hurry up, open up the straight of Hormuz, this has to happen. I mean, it dovetails very closely with the points that you've just been making over the course of this program. Yeah. So this kind of alternative economic or financial architecture that Bricks has been trying to develop, It was a lot of momentum towards it when Russia was held the presidency of Bricks and then as soon as it moved to Brazil, it just completely stalled. And then once it got to India, again, just absolutely nothing. I strongly suspect this is under pressure from the United States.

I mean, this is exactly the kind of architecture that would have given. given China a lot of options in this situation. Having that kind of supporting infrastructure outside of the Dole-Zang would have created more options for China. And I actually published an article a few earlier today, looking at the Modi intervention in Tashkent and looking at the kind of pressures that are building inside India. So when I wrote the piece about India in March about the fertilizer crisis, I identified India as probably the most exposed of the major economies.

And I strongly suspected that that fertilizer crisis would start feeding through into a food shortage or a food production reduction around about harvest time. Now, I wasn't right actually on that because what happened was India went out and aggressively bought fertilizer and feedstock on the open market at the much higher prices. So it was recently buying urea at twice the price of the pre-crisis price. and it did that. It purchased it at the increased price on the open market and then it provided that to the farmers at a hugely subsidised price. So India has effectively just taken the economic shock

from the Strait of Cornuz and simply just moved it straight onto the government balance sheet. That's creating a big budget, there's creating big budget issues in India. But it's also already starting to put downward pressure on the rupee. And I said in today's article, you know, this is the first visible sign that the trap is, that the trap is working. It doesn't mean India's, India's not going to leave the bricks.

They're not going to make a formal announcement that they're leaving, but they'll just start to behave in ways that make their, participation basically meaningless. And Brazil is coming under a sustained pressure as well because it's entering its planting season now. Shortly after we met in Russia, in Scorff, I went to Moscow and I had some conversations there with some people, including, I'm talking about Russian officials who have been involved in Bricks

and they tell me exactly what you said about how the Russians did an enormous amount of work in 2024, culminating in the meeting in Kazan to set up the payment systems. And then they became incredibly frustrated the following year when Brazil assumed the presidency and shifted everything to a discussion on green issues. And the Russians were furious about this. and there was an enormous amount of acrimony and dissension within bricks over it. And the Brazilians apparently pushed back and told the Russians that they were being rude. And apparently South Africa came out and supported the Brazilians, as did India.

Again, all to Russia's intense irritation and anger. And the conclusion the Russians came away with was that their interlocutors in Brazil and in India as well, but especially in Brazil, were worried, were personally afraid that if they moved forward with the payment systems, the United States would sanction them personally. And that was one of the major breaks that was holding back the entire process. Now, I was actually told that by people who were in the room during some of these meetings. So just to say. Anyway, can we move on a little bit because you've also been at this meeting in Vladivost.

That's really interesting because I met. Yeah. Yeah, I met Radica. I spoke to Radica Desai at the conference in Vladivostok. And she actually said, she said more or less the same thing that you've just said. Yeah. Well, there you go. So you were at Vladivost.

Last stop, Putin was there. The Chinese were also there. Putin met with Xi Jinping in Bishkek just before. He delivered a speech which I have to say, I thought, had less to say on geopolitical questions than I imagine that I partly expected. But a lot of what goes on in these conferences, economic conferences, actually happens away from the plenaries. What was your impression? as you said in the actual speech itself

there was very little international you know international policy in I think in the question and answer session there was really very very little on Ukraine he did

it wasn't until I realised what happened in Bishkek that I started to understand what he was talking about but he made a point of saying that Russia is you know, more than happy to negotiate towards an ending of the Ukraine crisis, but it has to be between Russia and Ukraine, has to be between the two belligerent parties,

which I was kind of surprised at. But then I kind of thought, actually, it's quite a, in some ways, that's quite a neat get-out, it doesn't quite a neat get-out after Bishkek, because, of course, the Ukrainians won't agree to negotiate. So if he just said, well, yeah, we can negotiate an end to this, but it has to be a direct negotiation between Russia and Ukraine, then it sort of kicks the ball down the road a bit. But, yeah, there was very little in the speech itself

on the international situation, although the president of Indonesia was there. And the president of Indonesia was making, making a lot of statements. He was very, very keen to improve relations and improve trade with Russia. Because I think Indonesia's new free trade area is a potential area of cooperation.

because people don't realize how close Russia actually, you know, that part of Russia actually is to Southeast Asia. And that was a big focus of the Eastern Economic Forum relations with Southeast Asia. Yeah. The thing to say about Indonesia is, of course, they had very, very strong economic links up to the mid-1960s. And then, of course, it all went away. but the new president of Indonesia, despite the fact that he historically was associated with the regime that took over, the pro-American regime that took over in the mid-1960s, he seems to be interested in going back to that very strong relationship that the Russians used to have. Can I ask what's happening with Paris Siberia too?

I mean, this is a story that goes on and on and on, and now it's power of Baikal. Some people had been expecting that there would be an announcement for it. In light of what you are saying about the pressure on China that is coming, one might have expected that the Chinese would be key to wrap this thing up. And instead, you know, it seems to be dragging on a bit. what is the situation? So interestingly, okay, it is going ahead and it is,

you know, it is kind of being fast-tracked as much as it can be. But what I heard is that the problem at the moment is the choice of route. So China is very concerned about it going through a third country now because I think that it's not that they, it's not that they, it's not that they don't trust Mongolia it's like they don't trust what might happen to Mongolia

in the near future so what I've heard is that the delay because originally the route was fixed to go through Mongolia and that was that was what I heard that was pretty certain

and then recently when I was at the conference in Vladivostok I was told that the problem had come primarily from the Chinese side because they were concerned about the security issues of going through a third country. And that country is Mongolia. So they are attempting to work out a new route that would go around Mongolia and presumably would come in through northeastern China again, same as Power of Siberia one. And it's, of course, the name's changed.

Vykal points to a new route which would not be through Mongolia. The Mongolians won't be happy. This is a big blow for a very, very... The Mongolians were set to do... That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Mongolia would position to do really, really well out of it as well,

because they'd managed to negotiate not just transit fees, but there was also going to be a great deal of investment into Mongolian energy infrastructure. And Mongolia was also going to get a share of some of the gas that was coming through. But it is going to move ahead. And the change of name is a sign. It's a priority. Yes, it's a priority.

It is a priority. Well, there was one thing, and this is my last point, one thing that you said to me, which has remained with me ever since I was, you know, we first met, which is that every single taxi, ask any taxi driver in Beijing about what the war in Iran is all about. And it is ultimately about China. So everybody seems in China, there seems to be an awful lot of public awareness of what is happening. Does that strengthen the position of the government in the sense that if there is an economic shock, people are to some extent already adjusted for it, politically adjusted for it.

Or, I mean, what is your sense of that? Yeah, I think that's true. I also think it's not, I mean, it's not something that's happened recently. It's really what has underpinned much of the political changes in China over the last decade. It's one of the reasons why the constitution was altered. in order to allow Xi Jinping to stay on past his second term because the senior levels in the senior levels in the government understood that this was coming. And that in order to navigate it, they needed a continuity of leadership. And they needed to have a strong, they needed to like reinforce the ideological backbone.

of the country, which had very much kind of, you know, there was a, it's still, there's still a very big sort of liberal leaning pro-US community, particularly in sort of like, you know, in the big coastal cities. But that sort of reorientation back towards a more kind of socialist education system was very much about preparing precisely for this, because they understood that that was the weaknesses that were likely to be exploited. And as I said, you know, you literally, if you get in a taxi and a taxi driver, if taxi driver starts talking about the Iran war, then he'll tell you that it's actually all about China. And similarly, almost all the time when they talk about Ukraine war, they'll say that it's ultimately about China. Or they at least know that it's about regime change in Russia.

and then, you know, by extension, by extension motivated by policy towards China. We're living in very interesting times. The Chinese themselves, I believe, actually do you say. Ryan, thank you very much for coming on this program. I'm sure we're going to have more discussions about this because this is clearly an evolving situation. Scott Besson is clearly the man to watch. and we will see what he gets up to. Thank you very much.

And before you go, can you just, Alex, I think we'll have a few more things to say briefly. Just your address for your links for subspec. Oh, yes. So it's Ryan Perkins' geopolitics and on Twitter, China Indicator. All right. Those links are in the question box.