The Ricochet Podcast - The China Syndrome

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

It’s a podcast about big things today! Our guest is Josh Rogin, author of Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century. He takes us through our predicament with that big, menacing foe in the Far East; and warns against the current American tendency to allow the conflict with China to become another stage for political squabbling amongst ourselves. He and the hosts... Source

Spring is here, and so are the new season ranges at Decathlon, with more products and value than ever before. Evenings are getting brighter, weather is getting better, and Decathlon is here to get you moving, with over 70 sports on offer. So get up, get out, and get ready to play. Spring into our Ballymun store or check out decathlon.ie. Spring is here, and so are the new season ranges at decathlon with more products and value than ever before evenings are getting brighter weather is getting better and decathlon is here to get you moving with over 70 sports on offer so get up get out and get ready to play spring into our o'connell street store or check out decathlon.ie i've been punished for my uh work i have a dream this nation will rise up live out the true meaning of its creed.

We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. It is zero price tag on the debt. We're paying. We're going to pay for everything that we spend. That's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lollix and I'm joined by Peter Robinson and Rob Long. We're talking to Josh Rogan on China.

Big topic. Let's have a podcast. I can hear you. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 722. It was number 564, but inflation. I'm here with Peter Robinson, California, Rob Long. We presume somewhere gallivanting about Fanyu that he is. Probably New York. I'm James Lollix. I'm here with Peter Robinson, California, Rob Long. We presume somewhere gallivanting about Frenier that he is.

Probably New York. I'm James Lollix. I'm New York. Hey, everybody. What a week. Are you as excited and thrilled as I am by all the insider drama that attends a debt ceiling limit? To me, it's the epitome of the story that I don't care about and I should because it really does sort of sum up all the kabuki, which has a real impact on what we do because we're just borrowing and printing and spending a lot of money.

And no one seems to be able to do anything about it except to argue, oh, I don't know, $4 trillion, as David Froome suggests, that's a bit too much. How about $3.8 trillion for something? What do you think is going to happen i don't honestly i'm with you i'm numb i i sort of understand that what's going on represents an outrage of of really almost staggering magnitude bernie sanders tweeted this See, see how current I am, Rob? You think I'm too. I looked at my tweet feed. Bernie Sanders tweeted that two senators should not be able to thwart the will of the people, by which he means Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the two Democrats who are holding out against this thing. He said two senators should not be able to thwart the will of the other 48. Well, what he really means is that 52 senators should not be able to thwart the will

of the other four. I mean, it is just outrageous. We're now anti-majoritarian. All right. And the amount of money that the infrastructure bill has the support of, let's call them, Rob Long Republicans. Oh, my God. I'm waiting for Rob to defend himself against that. So that has at least bipartisan support of some kind, but not this $3.5 trillion thing that they may never even get to vote on but the way bernie sanders is talking the way the progressive wing of the democratic party expects right not the whole country but the moderates in their own party to take orders and fall in line and put their seats at risk in the next election it is politics turned upside down it is as naked a will to power by the left in the united states

as i have ever witnessed. I guess that's what it is. It's a moral imperative to spend this money, and it may be their last chance to do so, they think. What do you think, Rob? Yes. Well, I mean, that may be the case. I mean, that is how it works. That's how the system works.

It does seem like there's a lot of people banging their heads against what is the system we have, which is that you do not get, I said it over and over again, you do not get the A-plus or the B-minus version of what it is system we have, which is that you do not get, I said it over and over again, you do not get the A plus or the B minus version of what it is that you want, no matter who you are, unless you have a super majority, and even then you're terrified because you got to run,

a third of the government's got to run every two years. You get a C plus version of what you want. These people are like, they continually bat up against this brick wall. All of the components of this bill may or may not be popular. You know, it is it is conceivable that if they broke it into five pieces and spent a week just telling you all the specific free stuff you're going to get in this bill and then the specific free stuff, you know, the next bill, they could actually garner some kind of support or energy around this. But they they won't and they can't. And so they seem to be angry at reality.

They're angry at the map of the United States. They're angry at the founders. They're angry at the Constitution. And what's so bizarre to me is that Kristen Sinema and Joe Manchin are the solution to their problems. They are not a problem to be solved. That's the solution. It's not a hurdle to be overcome. You need to embrace those people.

Those are senators from West Virginia and Arizona, two states that are important and they could win and they could persuade, but they instead, what they want is they want to wish those states away and wish the senators away who are senators who are center left mostly center a little bit left in a country that is center left they cinema and mansion are showing them the way and instead they prefer um to sort of retreat to the behind the MSNBC barricades. And that is silly and kind of baffling.

But ultimately, you have to shrug and say, what country did you think you woke up in this morning? You woke up in a country where the point of politics is to deal. That is what it is. We always say, oh, I don't know how the sausage is made. That's what it's supposed to be. That's the founder's architecture. You got to go in a room. You got to make peace with people you hate.

That's what you got to do. And even when you're absolutely convinced you're the most popular thing in the world, you still have to eat a certain kind of sandwich that um ricochet code of conduct refused and joins me from telling you what kind of sandwich it is but you know what kind of sandwich it is and it's the kind of sandwich you have to eat in order to get most of what you want and um i don't find that to be a problem i find that to be a glorious part of american life you're presuming that they believe that the part of american life you're describing is indeed glorious when actually it's a it's a remnant of white supremacy founded in Western Western colonial centric notions of how things should be. The point is no longer to make deals. The point is to do the right thing and shove the country towards utopia, which means that any institutional barrier, be it the size of the Supreme Court or the composition of the Senate

or anything or what the parliamentarian says, all of that stuff can be cast aside in favor of saving our democracy, which is now a wonderful term for getting everything that we need to do to make this the post-American country that we know it has to be. Well, yeah, but I mean, that's like you're down inside their head. I don't care. That's fine. They can have any problem. The system isn't going to, it is not going to change. You can scream at the ocean tides all you want. They're still going to come

in and go out the way you want. You can't legislate that away. And it seems to me what's so ironic here is that they have been given this incredible gift, which is, despite their progressive weirdness that is way to the left of the American people. And, you know, the right is weird, too, but they're less weird than the American people. And that's why they tend to win in congressional districts.

They're given this guide. You can have a lot of what you want if you can get joe mansion to say yes and the the problem is not joe mansion is that joe mansion represents the center-left in america which is really really big and very persuadable so why not do that you are talking about people who literally are screaming at the tide these are people who believe that they can use the instruments of government to manipulate exactly i'm not arguing james that they are right i am saying that what baffles me is that they don't understand the solution is within arm's reach and they will not reach for it and that to me is hilarious and i think no no tragedy because the system's working It's serving them up a slice of humble pie.

And that I can't tell you how happy I am to see Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden and the Democratic Assembly in the House and the Senate eating that pie simply because a kind of a plotting, colorless, not that interesting, maybe not even that bright senator from West Virginia is saying, that's a lot of money. 3.2 is a lot of money. Can't you do it for less? Now, you don't think there's 90% of Americans are saying the same thing? Like, wow, that's a lot. That's my money too, by the way. You can't do it for less? Right, right. Just do it for less. By the way, on Joe Manchin, he may be plotting. I don't think he's unintelligent because of the news, the news that the Wall Street Journal broke yesterday. By the way, it says something about what a good party loyalist Joe Manchin is that he he'll go for, and the number is 1.5 million, and he needs this, and he needs this, and he needs...

They sat down and worked it out in writing something like two months ago. Somebody will correct me on that, but it's weeks. It's still a lot of money. It's still a lot of money. I mean, he's still a Democrat. He's not one of us. But they sat down and worked it out.

And Chuck Schumer has had this piece of paper with which he could have discussed matters with Speaker Pelosi. And they could have sort of worked toward Joe Manchin. Maybe they could get Joe Manchin up to $2 billion. But they had a document to use as a negotiating measure for the last weeks. And now they're all running around saying mansion he's thwarting the will of the democrat it's ridiculous he's the way ridiculous and what's what seems so strange to me is that it isn't is that joe mansion represents a lot of them there is a hardcore right-wing movement of which i uh staunch belong to, which thinks that one point two trillion is too much.

That thinks that point two trillion is too much. That thinks that point oh one trillion is probably too much. Right. There's a reason why the LLC that contains this great, mighty ricochet network is called Silent Cal, because we like Calvin Coolidge, because that's what he would think, too. But there is no evidence. In fact, there's a lot of contrary evidence to suggest that the bulk of the Republicans or the bulk of the people who claim to be conservatives are against government spending. So the fact is, government spending is a fantastic, fantastic thing to advocate. Correct. But 3.2 is too much. So, you know, you're going to buy a new car. Maybe you don't buy the Rolls Royce. Maybe you buy the, I don't know, something.

The Cadillac. Whatever the nice car is. But it's not like austerity is not on the menu here. And austerity is not something that American people have ever voted for. Ever. Ever voted for. So what's just so amazing to me is they won't take yes for an answer. It's also remarkable how they've done a bad job at messaging, telling us what's in this thing.

If people knew specifically and clearly, they could debate the various merits. But what we hear from them is climate change is infrastructure. Health care is infrastructure. Telecommunications is infrastructure. Pokemon is infrastructure. Pastrami sandwiches for lunch are infrastructure. So we're just supposed to believe that this thing will just descend upon the country and ooze into its cracks, and from them we'll spring a thousand flowers. I mean, if they said, we have 72 bridges in this country that are in danger of falling down in the next 10 years, and that's what this bill does, that would be infrastructure. If they said, we're going to upgrade the rail system so that we don't have any problems with derailments because we're shipping a lot of oil on them, that would be infrastructure.

What we get, though, are things, buried little nuggets that you find out from people that say, oh, there's a pilot program in here for a mileage tax. So this is such a grand idea that they want us to come forward and make the case for it and explain exactly why you're doing this. But when they hide it and then it comes out, people get this crazy idea like they're trying to slip a mileage tax in here that will be on top of the existing tax that we have. And what's more, we'll require our cars to report to the government everything that we do and everywhere that we drive. And, oh, look over here, here's something else they didn't tell us about. If they came up with banking reform and said, look, we're going to make sure that those top tier crooks who are moving hundreds of millions of dollars around don't get off scot-free, but they come out with something that we find later is monitoring every transaction in your bank over $600. So people look around and say, wait a minute, I'm a small business guy. I haul

up stumps from people's yards. I just got one the other day. Are they going to be coming after me because I made an error in my bank? So when all the little details come out like that and you think, how many other are there? How many others are there that are going to affect my life in ways that I won't even see until all of a sudden I'm in arrears or not in compliance two years, six years down the road? It's a mess. It's a huge, big, broad-disc making bowl of jello studded with all sorts of vegetables that nobody can tell what it is. So yeah, bad messaging. Yeah. But what's funny about that, I think you're completely right, is that it doesn't have to be that way for them. No. When was the last time the American people said, no big spending? They like

big spending. You just want to know what it is and how it helps me. Now, they may not want big spending on some of the stuff that we're talking about here, like the weird Green New Deal nonsense or whatever is adjacent to that. But they absolutely do want the spending, I think, that Joe Biden outlined, which is like the person to come take care of your parents, the home health care, all that stuff. They do have an appetite for freebies. Let's be honest. It isn't as if the country is is, you know, Calvin Coolidge is standing at the wharf of this spending machine. Unfortunately, I wish it were. So, again, the path is so obvious.

What strikes me is, like, I feel like none of these people are really interested, actually interested in the things that they say they're interested in. Not really interested in even the Green New Deal. What they're interested in is power. Power! Yes. Getting you to do stuff.

And so what makes them so mad is that they don't... Of course, if you have a goal, negotiating towards that goal is, you know, it's galling in many ways, but it's satisfying because at the end you get to shake your hands and everybody says, well, we all got something. But what if you don't really want that thing? What if you don't really care? What if what you really care...

Flying from Cork? Start your trip stress-free with the Stay, Park & Fly package at Cork International Hotel Enjoy a luxurious overnight stay free parking and a hassle free airport transfer with rates from just €165 for two people

Relax before you fly and leave the rest to us Book now at www.corkinternationalhotel.com I don't know if I can do everything on the spot. Well, you can do everything. When you go to the grocery store, you can't go to the grocery store without going to the school in the morning. You can't go to the grocery store without going to the school or the other grocery store.

So, Jane Keen will be making groceries for her children this week. I'm making groceries for my children and I'm going to tell them everything. And I'm not going to tell them the history and the history of the people I've met this year. We'll see you next time. Yes. And also, you know, looking glamorous as you do. So what's the line? You can never be too rich or too thin, but you know, if you're counting calories, you know, that counting calories is not enough to get you thin. No, it's gotta be the right kind of calories, right? I mean, you can eat your 2000 calories a day, but it's junk and nothing happens to you and you feel bad because of it. Well, let me tell you about some science, the science it's clear, a healthy gut

microbiome with the good bacteria that help our bodies process food is a key to a healthy lifestyle. But now we're learning about the connection between your gut microbiome health and type 2 diabetes. Our sponsor, Pendulum Glucose Control, is the first and only medical probiotic that's designed to manage A1c and blood glucose levels of the health of your microbiome. What's your microbiome? You know, well, it's the vast array of

microorganisms that help you digest food. They may be small, they're tiny. These guys are darned important. And with Pendulum, they can help you get the help you need to manage your type 2 diabetes. Over time, people with type 2 diabetes lose the gut bacteria, the essential stuff that helps digest fiber and manage your blood glucose levels. So diet and exercise are still important, but if you struggle to maintain your levels with diet and exercise alone, your gut microbiome might need some help and attention. Pendulum glucose control helps fill in the gaps by providing the first and only probiotic design to manage blood glucose and A1C levels. With Pendulum, you can feel the control of your levels, not the other

way around. Take control of your glucose levels today. Try Pendulum, you can feel the control of your levels, not the other way around. Take control of your glucose levels today. Try Pendulum Glucose Control for 90 days. If you're not satisfied with your results, your levels, you get your money back. Visit PendulumLife.com to find out more. And use that promo code Ricochet, of course, for 20% off your first bottle of membership. That's P-E-N-D-U-L-U-M-L-I-F-E dot com. PendulumLife.com. Promo code Ricochet. And we thank Pendulum for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Now we welcome to the podcast, Josh Rogin, foreign policy columnist for the Washington Post.

He's been an invaluable source of honest commentary on the CCP's handling of the pandemic, human rights abuses, and their global ambitions. What? They have global ambitions? Can't wait to hear this. He's the author of Chaos Under Heaven, Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century, which was released last March. Thanks for joining us on the podcast today. Great to be with you. We were first hearing stuff about this pandemic in China. I remember the early stories, they're dropping dead, they're welding shut the doors. At the time, you were working on a book about US and China relations. So tell us about China Under Heaven and what its aim was, how it may have changed in the writing when we went from

the pre-pandemic to the post-pandemic world or the pandemic world, which taught us a lot about China, or at least for some, opened their eyes to the truth of the regime. Right, exactly. Well, you know, I started covering the U.S.-China relationship for the Japanese japanese newspaper the asahi shinbun in 2004 and that was shortly after you know this large bet had been made on china a bet that if we just engaged china as much as possible and cooperated as much as possible and gave them all our money and took all of their money uh admitted them into all of our systems that eventually they would liberalize economically and then politically and that would solve all the rest of our problems. And that was codified by their entry into the WTO and lots of other stuff that you remember from those days. And over the past 20 years, it became increasingly obvious to an increasing number of people inside Washington and then around the country and then around the world that this bet had been lost, that essentially China had decided to go another way, that they don't want to liberalize, that they don't want to evolve into a system that looks anything like the one we wish them to or the one that we possess. But the realization of that and the

action to respond to that has been ridiculously slow. And when Donald Trump came in, all that we knew was that it was going to be disruptive. And sure enough, it was. And that's why the book is called Chaos Under Heaven, because it was really chaos, both in the United States relationships with other countries, but also inside of our government, as I'm sure you guys all remember. But, you know, the subtitle of the book is Trump, Xi and the Battle for the 21st Century. And that's a bold claim. to claim that this relationship, the U.S.-China relationship, will be the most important relationship in the 21st century and the most important relationship in our, the most important thing in our foreign policy for the rest of our lives. And, you know, when I started writing the book in 2019, I thought that would be a difficult case to make. But then the pandemic hit, and that really changed everything. Because for everybody, all human beings and all seven billion of us all over the world, we know instinctively we can debate

how much but we know that the rise of china and the malign character and actions of the chinese communist party have exacerbated our suffering they've made this pandemic worse that we now have a view of what it looks like uh when china has the first mover advantage in the most powerful and the most influence and how it uses that influence to not advance not its national interest but the party's political interest at the expense of our security our prosperity our freedom in our public health so writing the book inside of the my quarantine was kind of like uh building a plane and flying it at the same time but what ended up happening was that the the chinese communist party ended up proving the thesis correct, because the thesis was that we need a new strategic approach. We need a new response to

a China that is increasingly militarily expansionist, internally repressive, and interfering in free and open societies. And, you know, like I said, in 2019, there were a lot of people who thought that way, but in 2021, I feel like it's pretty obvious and now we're just waiting to marshal our resources to do something about it josh my late colleague at the hoover institution harry rowan who was at rand and served in and out of government in very high positions a very wise man wrote a column published a column in the Wall Street Journal in, I think, 1996, in which he said that China would become a democracy around the year 2015. Now, that sounds preposterous today, but his argument was that at the rates of growth that obtained in the 1990s, China would become about as rich by 2015 as South Korea was and as

Taiwan was when they became democratic. So here's the pattern. South Korea, Taiwan, first they become rich or experiencing an enormous period of economic growth, and then political liberties follow. As I say, that's preposterous to us today. But here's the question. Were Americans wrong all along, or did China change its mind? Right. I mean, the question of who lost China is one for the historians. I'll tell you this, you know, for the generation of young agent hands that I came up with in the last 16 or 17 years or so, that question didn't much matter, frankly. You know why? Because we weren't in on that bargain. We had no allegiance to that bet because we weren't in government and we weren't even in our professional lives when that bet was made. So, you know, for a lot of us to sort of,

oh, well, was it wrong to make them this offer or was that the responsible thing to do and they just went another way? Or is it still right to make that offer today remember there are plenty of people in our china hand community in our china watching community that still think the only responsible thing to do is to engage and cooperate with china as much as possible and again for the young asian hands and i say young uh you know carefully here because we're now in our late 30s and early 40s uh we didn't really care because we always saw china for what it was that doesn't mean that the younger generation was a monolith of opinion or analysis but there was a lot less disagreement about the prognosis than the solutions

and you know what the book is about is about that generation sort of taking hold inside the government during the trump administration and having the first chance to really take a crack at this policy because of all of the craziness and opportunity that the Trump administration and having the first chance to really take a crack at this policy because of all of the craziness and opportunity that the Trump administration provided. And what we saw was a turn towards what I would call a less hubristic approach, which is that China's development can't be determined by the United States or by Congress. It will be determined by the Chinese people one way or the other. But what that means for us is that rather than try to shape China, we have to prevent China from shaping us, that the real debate is not over who lost China or the societies trap or are we entering into a Cold War or think a lot of people including myself now advocate is that what we need to do is we need to

change our behavior to essentially put the ccp to a choice that if it wants to continue its blatant violations of everything from basic human rights law to economic law to you know basic interactions with states and peoples uh that we're going to raise the cost for them and then if they still insist on doing all of their horrendousness that we're going to protect ourselves and that's going to mean some decoupling and that's going to mean some bolstering and all that other stuff so we've come who lost china i don't know i wasn't there i can tell you what we're trying to do about it right now but i mean we've come a long way with i mean just in past five years with china i mean mean, look at the pattern.

If you're Chinese, just go to, you know, look at these patterns here. We had a Trans-Pacific Partnership, which almost signed, which both presidential candidates said they were against, even though it would probably be the only way to corral China into sort of a regional trading block that had leverage against it. We had a very anti-Chinese bellicose president half the time. The other half of the time, he was making deals with them that ignored the crucial part of intellectual property law, which is what most American companies complain about. And finally, we had COVID. I mean, let's be honest. It was a leak in the lab. We know that.

I mean, the idea that it's not a leak in the lab, I mean, give me a break. It was a leak in the lab, and there have been zero, not only have there been no repercussions, I mean, just a thought experiment. If that lab was somehow in Tennessee, the world would be a six-act play about who did it. We would know the guy. And the only thing foreign powers understand, the only thing powers understand when they're dealing with each other is leverage and pressure and consequences, none of which we have ever applied to China. So why shouldn't President Xi at this point be looking at Taiwan and thinking, hmm, that's an interesting place that's Chinese.

Why shouldn't he? It seems logical. Right. The idea that we need to change our behavior is like i mean i i really the the horses haven't left the barn already no i mean that's why you play the games of course it's not over you know i think what i did try to detail in excruciating uh uh uh anecdotes and and reporting in my book chaos under heaven is that well it's not excruciating it's a good book thank you but like some of the stories are are harrowing because they show that at the same time that the trump administration is waking up to the rising threat of a rising china which does require a new strategic response uh their response was mangled because of the sheer dysfunction in our government and inside that administration and so therefore our first whack at sort of this new strategic response was badly mismanaged on a number of important levels at the same time no

appetite there's no appetite in the media and the media for 30 years well for anti-china like when when you remind people of china what the chinese genocide activities in the world the uyghurs or human rights violations across the country that China has represented in American culture since 1972 a kind of a funny little panda a friend that we have and we use them as a lever against the Soviet Union and then when the Soviet Union fell apart we still kind of treat them as if they're competitors and strategic friends right I mean well listen Rob you know there's been a lot of, again, due to the pandemic, and just to address your point on the lab leak, because I think it needs to be addressed. What I say in the book is we don't know how the pandemic started.

We can't rule out the lab, so we ought to investigate the lab full stop. say uh often is that listen if you look at the piles of circumstantial evidence it seems to me that the pile of circumstantial evidence pointing back to one of the wuhan labs has somehow connected the outbreak is way larger than the pile of circumstantial evidence that might lead to a natural spillover but again that's a matter of intense debate but the fact is that we've never investigated the lab because one the chinese government cover-up centers around the labs which should tell you something. And two, that the U.S. government hasn't done what it needs to do to investigate what we know, what's in our files, how our relationships with those labs, including people like Anthony Fauci. Comparing it to Chernobyl. Chernobyl was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union when you were inside the Soviet Union. So former Soviet citizens say that's when we knew

it had to end right no such thing is happening in fact china right now president xi is he is leading as a lot of leaders in china have done over the years he is leading his own internal revolution his own kind of purge right i mean if you're a billionaire in china you're in trouble you better move to new york city fast right I call it the great leap backward. Right. OK. Right. But they're turning back. They've they've got enough of our money there. They've seen that we've started to decouple from them and now they're starting to decouple from us. But on Xi Jinping's terms, it's a very ugly situation that's getting worse. That's my second question. My strategic question, which is, you know, I whenever we talk about China, I always bring this up.

One of the problems with China's generational so you have the older generations remember starvation and they remember cultural revolution and they remember all that if you're younger if you're 50 you don't really remember that what you remember are billionaires what you remember is uh webo and wechat and seeing billionaires driving around uh who are who own factories chinese billionaires and so there's a definite feeling from a younger people that they're that the past was glorious and and equitable and that the present is filled with oligarchs and uh corruption and and riches so if you're she the best thing to do is to throw a couple oligarchs under the train and and and try to win back the young people again without it all exploding but thought experiment china explodes all the you know every hundred years they go nuts right um

what's the likelihood that there's internal chinese disunity right so internally it's not as solid as we think it is right so i So I think what we're seeing right now, especially with the drastic crackdowns and consolidation of power by one faction of the CCP, I describe the CCP as essentially operating like a cartel, like a mafia organization. It's like if the Gambinos ran the biggest country in the world. OK, and they have factions and the factions hate each other and kill each other all the time. And and it's just like the mafia. If you get too famous, you get whacked. And essentially what it is at this point is a worldwide extortion ring. They go to companies and countries and continents and say, hey, nice country guy.

There'd be a shame if something happened to it. And then everyone pays up. And so if you think about it that way, well, then that clarifies sort of what our responses should be. It's with the way that you would deal with a criminal organization that involves more law enforcement and less diplomacy. And it's definitely not a military problem as much as it is an economic, technological and ideological problem. So I think that's a shift again that we're in the process of doing. But to answer your question directly, I don't think we can count on the CCP to implode. I don't think that's a responsible way to make strategy. What we see is that the Xi Jinping faction and the security state have melded into a super faction that has no rivals, that has no precedent, and that has no constraints on its power or its willingness to do evil stuff and that

is a a different kind of problem that we have to think about in a different way the last kind of leverage war we fought was the cold war and one of the things we did was we supported dissidents within the soviet union we supported dissidents within the soviet satellites we actually actively actively tried to break up the soviet union um And we did it and we were sort of effective in many ways, but we were most effective in rattling the Soviets and the Politburo. Now, we didn't have any economic ties with Russia, so it didn't matter to us if the Russians were all unemployed, if the Russian economy imploded.

We didn't care. They didn't hold any of our paper. So the Chinese problem has sort of got two sides to it. But shouldn't there be an all out. Media or message war, Cold War against the Chinese, the Chai comms, right, the Chinese communists and say, you know, the Uyghurs should have their own state. And up north, the in the Koryo and Dongbei, they should have their own they should have their own country. And we recognize this region. You know, in The New Yorkbei, they should have their own country. And we recognize this region. In the New York Times, they don't even recognize Tibet. It's an autonomous region of China.

Shouldn't we at some point play tough? Right. So, listen, the reason that the Cold War analogies are so imperfect is because this competition, this confrontation is different. OK, there were more interconnected. They're more powerful. They have more money than the Soviet Union did. And by the way, we don't know exactly why the Cold War was won. Was it the dissidents?

Was it the Helsinki Accords? Was it the fact that we just starved them of money? Right. I think it's probably about that last one. And I think when we think about getting tough with the Chinese Communist Party, my idea is how about we stop funneling trillions of dollars of American investor cash to their worst companies, to the companies that are building the concentration camps and the cameras that sit atop the concentration camp walls and of competition and the bleeding edges in the capital markets okay it's it's really and yes we should use human rights as leverage and yes we need to support dissidents and no we didn't do that in hong kong and that spells a terrible danger for taiwan so i'm not saying that shouldn't be an important plank of it

but if we if we're thinking it like it's 1989 we won't realize that it's 2021 when the real way to starve the Chinese Communist Party is to stop giving them all of our money. OK, and then we do that in such ways and then to stop taking all of their money to influence our institution. So, first of all, the competition is fought inside of our borders. It's different than Russia. It's not the same thing. We have to drain the swamp of chinese interference and influence efforts in our universities in our tech companies in our sports in our hollywood theaters but that is especially in our wall street it's a type of it's a systems battle okay but again if you keep using the term cold war then you're going to keep coming back to well i just mean that as a phrase as a phrase a phrase of all-out cultural war yeah but it's been abused to the point of diluted to the

point of being useless in my opinion but i would have to reclaim it right i mean you what you're arguing is a gigantic movement in the country uh that i mean we couldn't even say the new york times and national public radio couldn't even say until a month ago practically that it was probably a lab leak so how they still don't say that right how do you think they're going to react when we say you know what we can't have any more chinese students coming over here and studying technology what i what i think about that is that we need to engage all americans in a constructive dialogue about what to do and i think that's not happening in part

because our media ecosystems and believe me i know this from working in mainstream media for the last 17 years are divided in that the china issue has become another uh you know cudgel from which the left and the right used to bash each other for their own partisan political bullshit and that's a problem so what i'm trying to do is depoliticize the issue by not saying to the new york times how dare you be a ccp you know agent which i don't think is the case i think most mainstream media, and I've worked in 10 of them, by the way. James wants to run. Okay, go ahead.

Most mainstream organizations don't know how to cover China, and they're not paying enough attention to it. And if we just use the issue to bash them, then we're not actually helping solve the problem. Bingo. Mainstream news and how they cover it. You're exactly right. I like the robbering of the Cold War. I grew up during the Cold War. Then I remember that it was very,

very different than what we see reporting on China now because the Soviet Union was an existential threat and we were constantly grappling with them in secondary wars and with diplomatic initiatives. We would spend a year or two on the page of the front page of the newspaper talking about salt and start and all these other things that we're going to say, but there's nothing like that in the paper. The tone with China is completely different. You have to go to some foreign press to realize that China has deforested an area the size of Montana and will have grave ecological consequences. Really, it's bad for them because I don't think fast-growing trees ships to China. Too bad. By the way, I don't know what the perfect time is to plant trees and shrubs

in China. Do you know what the perfect time is for your place? Well, the big box experts will tell you, hey, anytime, or that's a good question, man. But the best time to plant is actually fall, which means now, now is the time to go to fastgrowingtrees.com. Skip the big box stores and head to fastgrowingtrees.com, the world's largest online nursery. No more waiting in lines, messy cars with dirt in the boot. Digging through that lackluster selection. Just go to fastgrowingtrees.com and choose from thousands of varieties of trees, shrubs, and plants expertly curated to thrive in your area and delivered to your door in one or two days. Whether you're looking for shade, privacy, fruit trees, just added color for your

yard, every plant is shipped with a well-developed root system ready to explode with new growth come spring. And I'll tell you this, I'm not going to tell you which tree I got because I haven't got it yet, but I'm looking at what they have because we just lost a couple of trees. My wife and I are trying to decide what to get. And to tell you the truth, if I went to the big box place, I'd have two or three options and I'd be disappointed with this. Looking what they've got at fastgrowingtrees.com, well, we got to make our selection soon, but wow, what a variety.

It's going to look great too. And it's going to live. I like that. There's a better way to buy trees and shrubs and plants for your home and yard. And that of course is fastgrowingtrees.com because fall is the planting season. Don't let anybody tell you different.

Join over 1 million satisfied gardeners at fastgrowingtrees.com. And they have a what? Oh, they have a 30 day alive and thrive guarantee. Not everybody gives you that, and that means your plants will arrive happy, healthy, and ready for planting. Now through November 30th, it's coming up. You got a couple of months. Go to fastgrowingtrees.com slash ricochet for 15% off. That's 15% off at fastgrowingtrees.com

slash ricochet. Fastgrowingtrees.com slash ricochet. And we thank Fast Growing Trees for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. But when it does come to the ecological perspective that some people have on China, the recent stories about China's energy crunch seem to indicate, A, how we don't understand what's going on, and B, the delusions that some people have about China. Some people are looking at the energy crunch that they're going through now and saying it's wonderful because China is getting off of coal. They're really devoted to a great green new future. And that's not the case. So tell us, A, what is going on in the energy sector in China?

Because I think it is important. And B, how bad is our media's coverage and understanding of China, because it seems to me that they are leaving out 99% of what we need to know, either because, as you said, the news corporations themselves are invested in having a market in China, or they're ideologically predisposed to wave it away because to be bad to China is to be Trumpish in some way. So energy first. Right. Well, the hottest debate inside the Biden administration right now is between the climate change people and the human rights people, because we've sanctioned all the Chinese solar panels and polysilicon coming out of Xinjiang under forced labor rules. And the Chinese bitched and moaned and complained to John Kerry that they're not going to cooperate with us on climate change. And this is standard CCP tactics. They put two American interests against each other in order to divide us us in order to protect themselves for doing things like using forced laborers to build silicon now the other part of that of course is what you alluded to which is that they're building all the

solar panels with dirty coal which totally makes them uh you know a push in terms of actually doing anything to help the environment uh which is ridiculous but what john kerry argues internally is that we have to look the other way at human rights abuses in order to work with China on climate change. And that's the state of the debate. So China has promised to stop building new coal plants or to peak in its coal production in 10 years from now. I mean, that's a joke. I mean, in 10 years, in the long run, we're all dead. And, you know, I think their game is to use this sort of false head nod towards energy progressiveness. And that's not to say they don't have a lot of solar and all that stuff. I'm

just saying they're doing it all. And their concern is not the environment, it's to fuel their expansion. And unless we realize that we're going to fall for it again, and what we're going to fall for is them promising to work with us on climate change in order to undermine our criticism of all their other bad actions. I think that's really the hottest debate. I don't know which way it's going to turn out. I hope that Joe Biden stands up for the things that we believe in. Because, by the way, if we look the other way at forced labor, solar panels in China, then we're really screwing over our own industry because how can american companies pay their workers and make solar panels without using dirty coal if there's so much uh chinese polysilicon that's based on forced labor and horrendous ecological practices so that's just another huge thing now uh when it comes to the

media listen i'm telling you i'm telling you i've i've it's in the six months since i've done this book i've been on shows from joe rogan Barry Wise to Steve Bannon to Morning Joe. I've done it all. And I always say the exact same thing. I say we can't let the China issue become a pawn of our media wars. It's too important. It's if we if we just retreat to our teams and to our corner, then our incentive will be to not solve the issue, which is sort of what you're seeing happen in Congress right now. And Republicans would rather have the issue than to solve the issue sometimes, it seems. And Democrats would rather, you know, defend their progressive wing from accusations that they got it totally wrong than admit what you just said, which is that the lab leak theory looks increasingly obviously likely. And that's a

danger to our public health and our national security. And that's what I'm here to advocate for, is to rather than attack each other in china to start to realize that we're all in this together and that you know yeah our the the performance of the mainstream media in china has been atrocious and their their refusal to take the lab leak seriously uh is unforgivable and i live that every day but at the same time i work at the washington post and cnn and i talk exactly the same way on those channels as i do right now so it's not a 100 monolith it's complicated and it can get better and that's what i think we all need to be striving for peter you had one more before yeah what's it you're talking about what we need to do what we

need to do what we need to do what do we need to do, what we need to do. What do we need to do? Say, well, here, I'm talking to you from Silicon Valley. Two or three years ago, I talked to a, I shouldn't name him because he's a major venture capitalist. And that year, his firm was putting 90% of its investments, which ran to many tens of millions of dollars, into China. Should that be illegal? Should that be illegal? How did that work out the chinese crack down on the tech sector cost one trillion dollar in shareholder value in the last two months just think about that a trillion dollars i didn't care for no reason what do you want to do about it do you want to make what i want to do is i want to i want to enforce transparency and accountability

uh the way that our law uh prescribes in other words we can't have the system where we allow China to flaunt all the rules because we think we're going to make a couple bucks before the gate closes, okay? And that starts in our markets on Wall Street. It starts with the SEC, okay? And if you just think about all those Chinese companies that can't be audited, all of their books cannot be verified by Chinese law. And then you think about the fact that our wall street firms are pumping institutional investors into those companies hand over fists building a constituency

in our society such that we're so invested in these chinese companies that we can't sanction them when they commit atrocities that's the whole argument what do you want to do about it you want to just wait for wall street and silicon valley to come to their senses no i think well you want to make it illegal for them to to ship that kind of make that kind of investment i i want to enforce the laws that we already have which is which is that we should chinese companies that raise money in american markets have to follow certain rules which they haven't done ever once ever so we don't really need a new structure we just need to enforce the laws that are on the books as far as wall street goes now we sort of see that happening a little bit. We just need to enforce the laws that are on the books as far as Wall Street goes.

Now, we sort of see that happening a little bit belatedly right now. The next thing I think we need to do is we need to have transparency of all of the Chinese money flowing into our tech companies, our Wall Street firms. Wouldn't that, I mean, just think about it. You don't have to make anything illegal. We don't have to close down our system. How about just basic transparency on what Chinese influence organizations are giving to our universities uh what chinese companies are investing in our local municipalities and our local police stations i mean in our local uh you know what what are the actions of chinese communist party influence organizations you know in our schools and in our uh in our other institutions i, if we just started that work today,

it would take a decade and no one wants to start it. So if you want a list of things to do, I'll rattle you off a thousand things. But the first thing you have to do is have the will to do any of these things. And that's why I'm always trying to move the conversation to action items, because right now we're still debating over who lost China and do we have a problem here? So the answer to who lost China is who cares? And the answer to do we have a problem here is yes. And so then, yeah, let's go institution by institution and name and shame the bad actors and expose all of the corruptions and then enforce all the laws. And if we just did that, if we just did that, that would be amazing. That would that would get us back to someplace where we'd we'd say okay now what do we need to build what do we need to do in the areas of technology and in the political uh warfare and

in the ideological warfare to actually compete right we haven't even talked about first i'm talking about protecting ourselves and defending our institutions from an attack that's ongoing all right that's the first thing that the fight against china begins inside of our own borders then it's about building institutions with the frontline states. And then it's about building common efforts with free and open societies. And then it's about the third world countries where the competition is raging. And each one of those are our podcasts all by themselves. But what we need to do, yeah, there's no shortage of options.

There's just a shortage of will. Well, you say there are a thousand things that we can do, and there's a podcast in each of them. We are at five hundred at 564 podcasts now we're going to have you back every week and i think we'll probably conclude within a day or two and we'll learn an awful lot hey josh thanks an awful lot give my regards to the washington post so i still know a few p i still know a few people who have hung in there from since the 90s so they they got to be good or have something on somebody so um all right thanks for joining us anytime you know the thing of it is is this um the more you think about these things the more you realize that you know reading the twitter as peter was talking about doing earlier watching the news uh is disconcerting and you start to develop this sort of fugue state in your head of events in

the day. There's, Oh, it doesn't seem sometimes that there's any way around it. Well, there is, you can't control the vibe of the world, but you can control the vibe inside your head.

My personal little space where I stopped listening to the news and I stopped hitting Twitter is when I walked from my car to the work. That's when I'd like to get some music to give me my own soundtrack for the daily jaunt to come. So what do I do? I reach in the car in the glove compartment and pull out my Raycons where they always are. And they're always powered and they're always ready to give me the little environment that I want to craft my own world between car and work. And whether you use them to pump up or wind down or work, work out Raycons, they're going to be your go-to for on the go audio. And with the new everyday earbuds, look, feel,

and sound better than ever. They've got an improved rubber oil look. They can feel and optimize gel tips for the perfect in-ear fit. You're not going to have any leakage. No, these are impressive before you even start listening. You get three new sound profiles to make sure that you're listening to everything correctly with just the right amount of bass. There's pure mode for your blues and instrumental, balanced mode for podcasts and listening like this, rock, heavy metal, bass mode if you find yourself in a hip-hop or EDM or reggae mood. And yes, I am in an EDM mood often. That's the setting I use. There's also an all-new awareness mode for when you need to listen to your surroundings instead. And you know, somebody walks downtown from car to office, you want to hear if there's somebody shouting crazy or sirens or something. And you don't have to worry about

the sound going on because you've got eight hours of playtime and a 32-hour battery life. It's also a built-in mic, so you can take calls in your earbuds with the press of a button. Raycons start at half the price of other premium audio brands. They sound just as good. And Raycons come with a 45-day happiness guarantee. Happiness guarantee! Right now, Ricochet listeners get 15% off their Raycon order at buyraycon.com slash Ricochet. That's B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N.com slash Ricochet to save 15% off your Raycons. Buyraycon.com slash Ricochet.

And we thank Raycon for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. You know, one of the things I thought we could do, and of course we won't, although Peter, maybe you would agree that we could, I would like to see some sort of board that would stick at the China for every intellectual property violation that they've ever done and just simply refuse to if they're found guilty of something, that's it. That's it. Your factory no longer is allowed to ship the United States. Your company is no longer allowed to ship. Your board of directors, the people who run your company, sorry. That's it.

I had back in the days when I was using electric razors before I went to Harry's because, of course, Harry's is a great product. Come back, Ab. I had a Phillips electric razor that I really liked. And for some reason, I needed another one. And so I bought one online, Amazon. And it was an exact duplicate. The styling, the feel, the heft, everything about it was the same. They had completely copied everything that Phillips did.

And Phillips, I think, was building their razors in China. And I've talked to other people who say, yeah, you open a factory there. They walk in, they take specs, and then they go make it themselves for cheap. It's to the, I mean, we're all more, tell me if I'm wrong. It used to be you get a box of stuff from Amazon. It's like, oh, it's from China. Of course, it's from China. And now you look at it and you say, damn it, it's from China.

Damn it, it's from China. I wish it didn't have to be from China. And it's not because you're xenophobic. It's because you realize how much of this stuff is made over there and you realize what we've gotten ourselves into by all of us tacitly going along with it and shrugging our shoulders and saying well it was cheap um that has to change i mean decoupling means the last time i get one of my my iphone is a year and a half old now yours is probably more i'm sure Rob's is more current than that.

But I bought my iPhone. I paid for it at the Apple store. And then they sent me a link. And the link showed me a map from Shang Tsung or what I'm sure I'm mispronouncing it. Wherever, whatever the city was where this thing was a map from China as it crosses the ocean and so that i could track it and i have to agree i thought to myself you know getting that little apple package that says designed in california does not cut it anymore designed in california but here's the little blip showing you making your phone making its way across the ocean from china i'm just giving you

my sort of visceral reaction two years before that it would have been the coolest thing imaginable but now no i don't like that i don't like that designed in california means that there are 10 jobs and we should all feel very special to be in the same country with such geniuses but it also means there are 10,000 people over here making it. But the price is right. I mean, we do benefit from the price. So there are these sort of trade-offs that we're doing. I mean, the electronic manufacturing of the kind that you're talking about

with the iPhone will be, I mean, you know, there's no point in investing in that in this country because it's going to change radically over the next five, six, seven, 10 years. They'll print them in the Apple store. We'll print your phone for you. When you order it, you'll go order it and then take a little walk around the mall and come back. It'll be printed and ready to go. That's actually not that far away.

So making the 3d printers. Well, I mean, that's, that's, that's another another that's another issue right but that that would be what we would want to invest in rather than investing in uh um you know iphone factories the problem with this kind of investment for us is that that manufacturing changes so quickly and that the requirements of manufacturing change so quickly that a country that has 300 400 500 million poor people uh or maybe 600 million poor people like china it's much easier to sort of push them around that it the truth is that the that a totalitarian top down fully organized structured economy with a um a despotic regime at the top uh is a very efficient way to build ipads it's just not necessarily a so can we take suppose we take that just as a kind of thought experiment as i wish i thought of it while josh

rogan was still with us apple makes its iphones in china in some way that's probably not a good idea right but it's an example of the kinds of supply chains that one manufacturer after another has. As best I can recall, Apple is unusual in that it sources most things through China. It doesn't seem to have backup supply chains elsewhere. So, A, do we pass laws saying, Tim Cook, you've got to change that and you've got three years to do it? Do we, or B, do we wait for public uneasiness of the kind I expressed? You know, Apple, I wish I'd feel much better if I were seeing a blip crossing the ocean from the Philippines than from China and let Tim Cook realize that maybe he can make his customers happy.

They'd be willing to pay 50 bucks more and just wait for the market to solve the problem. What do you actually do about it when we are so tightly integrated with that gigantic economy for the good economic reasons that you just laid out? Well, I would say a lot of those things that Josh Rogin talked about, we probably do need to do. We probably do need to enforce, you know, generally accepted accounting principles shouldn't just apply to american companies they should apply to chinese companies too um and that if they they're found to be wanting they should be delisted that was something that the uh delisted from our exchanges from our exchanges something that the trump department treasury was trying to do uh and seemed like a good actually a very good warning shot of

the bow but you also want to look around when you're in ever involved in a complicated negotiation like this which involves which involves leverage and that they have some leverage over us you look around to see okay who else in the in the in this sphere has the same concerns that we do and can we be friends with them in this respect and we had it was called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And everybody hated it. Trump hated it. Hillary Clinton hated it. And that's how you know it was probably the right thing to do. Because what it did was it assembled all those other countries together in a voting block

that China had to join. And that's a way that you get friends. And those friends, we and Vietnam andietnam and thailand and india and countries like that have together have leverage over china and that's kind of how you have to do it i don't think i think it was imperfect but it was a start but it was boring and it was out of dom and it was like it sounded like we were given it just sounded like bad stuff so everybody was against it um but that's what you have to do it's a delicate thing the fish hook is in you can't just yank it out so you gotta you gotta work your way around it i would like us to be part of some multinational exercise that that did the adjudicated these

matters for the benefit of all but i also fear that there would be institutional capture where the people who were doing representing the united states were not necessarily representing united states interests but those of transnational finance and the rest of it and all those other paranoid ideas i want to go back to something that rob said about the iphone right and peter too that it would be more expensive to make it here that's true now i am one of those people who sometimes i think that i change my iphone more I change my sheets. And the reason for that, by the way, is that my sheets are fantastic. The thing is, if you take your bowl and branch sheets off, you better have another pair ready to go right away. You put them in the hamper,

laundry doesn't get done right away. What are you going to do? Are you going to sleep on the mattress? No. Are you going to sleep on some sheets you bought at the department store? No, that's just like sleeping on the mattress cover or the pad because there's nothing like Bowling Branch. We all have uncompromising standards in other parts of our lives. I like a car that's got good pickup. I like headphones that sound good. Why skip out on quality when you spend a 30-year life in the bed sleeping, right? Well, the husband and wife team that started Bowling Branch realized no sheets on the market really met their standards for quality. So they created their own. They were super soft and expertly crafted the signature sheets. Experience uncompromising comfort with the best-selling 100% organic cotton signature hemmed sheets. The cloud weight super

soft satin wave gets softer with every wash. That is true. They're crafted to the highest standards of attention of detail from sourcing to packaging and the perfect balance of weight and breathability will pamper the warm or the cool sleeper throughout any season. So like I say, I've got them and I've had them for a long time because we've been doing these spots with them for a long time and they just simply get better. I've had ones where, you know, after a while it's like, what am I doing? Am I vibrating and sleepy or I seem to have worn through this thing in the course of the year? These are as solid and as soft, softer than the day we got them. And I'll never ever part with them. That's why I got two pair. So give your bed, the white house treatment with sheets that three presidents have fallen in love with to experience an entirely new standard

of comfort. Visit BowlingBranch.com. Get 15% off your first set of sheets with the promo code Ricochet. That's B-O-L-L-N-Branch.com. Promo code Ricochet. And we thank Bolo Branch for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Anyway, no, I do. I change my sheets more often than I change my iPhone. But the thing is, is that if my iPhone costs twice as much, I don't think I would realize it. I haven't actually sat down and bought one of these things for four or five iterations.

I go in and there's this complicated sort of transmutation whereby the old one is converted to this amount and the new one is wound into my contract. And it's almost, there's no increase, maybe a dollar or something like that. And maybe the contract is extended by a few months or something. But the idea of writing a check for the iPhone every year, i have no idea exactly what the thing costs because it's all so amorphous and there's in the future they always talk about more and more things being like this you rent them you you don't actually own them it's just part of the constellation of objects in your life that you're constantly paying a monthly fee for so i just wanted to say that

about the iphone and it has the no that's i think it's really true look we have to but we will have to decide no matter what that we are uh willing to have major disruption in some areas in order to reclaim there are as a thomas soul teaches us there are no solutions they're only trade-offs you're going to pay more for this or that you're going to pay more for some stuff it's not going to you're not going to get it when you want it um there are benefits to having 600 million impoverished chinese slaving away and factories making stuff for us there are i mean there are benefits and so you have to give up those benefits and acting like there's no payoff pay payout is is a mistake where i think we we could do i mean what i would want to do is i want to identify who are the chief and this is i mean i

will now you know we are working at here at the ricochet network on a podcast uh with our host who a gentleman we had here david adler who's very smart about this stuff and has been studying about for for years called us versus china how do you win and he's going to have a whole bunch of guests and he's probably going to have rogan on him and that'll be interesting um how do you win? And he's going to have a whole bunch of guests and he's probably going to have Rogan on him. And that'll be interesting. How do you win? But I don't think anybody believes that we're gonna work that, or that it's even desirable that we beat China.

We, I, we want China to be prosperous. I would like there to be 1 billion Chinese people who are prosperous and rich. I just don't think that I want that to, I want to enrich, prosperous i would like there to be one billion chinese people who are prosperous and rich i just don't think that i want that to i want to enrich a tyrannical oligarchical slave state right but threading that needle is going to be complicated and it's probably going to mean i don't get the

stuff that i want when i want it we have a thick thick wet jute rope in our hand trying to shove into that needle peter last question before we head out here. You know, when the guest was talking about, we have to talk about and surface and make people aware of Chinese communist penetration of various academic institutions, for example, do you think it has the same resonance as it did in the 50s when we're talking? I mean, back then we were talking about the Red Peril. People knew exactly what we meant, and it was a certain ideology. The word communist just doesn't seem to work in the same residency. I mean, I don't know if people have a reflexive hatred of McCarthyism.

Oh, my gosh, we can't go back there that if we started talking about communists in our institutions that people would think McCarthyism. I don't think so. Or am I wrong? And does it do they to, it's not the same flavor of communism. You're, well, all right, here's this Stephen Kotkin, who's working on his third and final volume of his biography of Stalin. Stephen has read, as far as I can tell, Stephen Princeton historian, and a friend comes here to the Hoover Institution each summer to look at the archives. And so I was chatting with Stephen one day, and I said, you know, I think it could well be argued that you have spent more time, he's been studying Soviet archives for 35 years now, you've read more in the Soviet archives than any other human alive. What's your big finding? What's the one central finding? And Stephen replied without hesitation, they were communists. This was not some great power struggle.

They weren't using communism to assert Russian dominance in the world. Even when they were alone with each other and had nothing to prove to anybody, they talked like communists. All right. I spoke the other day with a fellow here at the Hoover Institution. There's a new book coming out in a year. And he's still working in China, so I won't mention his name because he wants to lie low until the book comes out. There's still research to do. But he said exactly the same thing about the Chinese.

The reason China didn't become a democracy, hasn't moved toward democracy, as did South Korea, as did Taiwan, Taiwan and South Korea were authoritarian. China's communist. Now, they may be more Leninist than Marxist, but these people really believe it. And so when it comes to a question between economic growth and asserting the control of the Chinese Communist Party, they will always choose the latter, which is why they cracked down on Hong Kong, which made no economic sense whatsoever. Up until last year when they cracked down, maybe still for all I know, but certainly up until last year, 60% of foreign investment into China made its way into China through Hong Kong institutions. They needed that capital. They cracked down on Hong Kong all the same.

And what's interesting is that when they took over Hong Kong and up until really, I mean, maybe six months before the crackdown smart in inverted commas smart people were saying well let me tell you something the chinese are smart they're never gonna they're never gonna crack down on hong kong they need hong kong they're never gonna do that like it's fine that they took it over there here's what they're now here's what we know they won't do and then they went ahead and did it um and i i would say difference, I guess I would just, I agree with you, but I would add an amendment is that the Soviet Union wanted us to be communists. They wanted the communist party to win the presidential election. They wanted communists to be in the House and the Senate.

The Chinese do not care what happens to us. They know that we are not going to turn Chinese. There's a racist or ethnic component to their race. They are Chinese. And that allows them to have a Chinese way and to want to gather up all the Chinese people into one larger nation empire. And it's why I think they don't have expansionist tendencies. They are not interested in annexing or coming in or saying, you know, Thailand, you're not part of China. Vietnam, you're not part of China.

Those people are not Chinese. So they don't want them. But they also don't want to get smaller. response to china should be to encourage in a highly disingenuous way all sorts of ethnic groups in china and their separation functions and their desires to be recognized as independent provinces it shouldn't we should make little tibets out of every region of china we possibly can um and let the chinese settle it i met my favorite moments of the Trump administration was, of course, eventually, within 20 minutes, I think, disappeared. But there was a

moment when Donald Trump sat down with President Xi in Mar-a-Lago very early. I don't know if he'd even taken office yet, but very early. And he said to President Xi, what do I care about North Korea? That's your problem. Isn't North Korea your problem? Shouldn't we hold you responsible? He didn't say it like that, but that's what he meant. It seems like That's your problem, right? Isn't North Korea your problem?

Shouldn't we hold you respond? And he didn't say it like that, but that's what he meant. It seems like it's your problem, not ours, which he then within, you know, an hour changed his mind.

Thought, no, I'm going to meet Kim, you know, little Kim Jong on the robot guy, whatever, but he had, his instinct was correct. Like we,

there are levers that we can use and we should use them. Just to conclude. It was interesting. And Rob's right. right i mean if you go back 300 episodes of this podcast you know that rob has been talking about chinese ethnicity for a long time it's it's his hobby horse but he also happens to be knowledgeable about it is so i mean at least to someone who knows little like me rob seems knowledgeable about it so that's my usual tip my hat but when peter said that i mean i still have a hard time getting my brain around the guys that these guys that the chinese are doctrinaire marxist leninists and have steeped themselves i'll buy it fine okay if that's the case but if so you said they're more leninist than stalinist leninist yes in as much as

what they've done is is like lenin taking the new economic policy in the 20s and saying, all right, to forestall a collapse, we're going to loosen up, lighten up a little bit and have a brief period of economic liberty, except in the case of China, it lasts 30 years. That's a hell of an NEP. But when you read the last couple of weeks about the collapse of Evergrande, this huge property management company that they had that was threatening to have a contagion that would bring down all sorts of banks and the rest of it you thought how communist can they be if they're eventually undone by a property bubble because that's not the sort of thing that is supposed to exist at all in in a communist society yet that what seems to be one of the things that imperils

them most phony bank loans ghost cities i don't know you could say it's the propped up account it's the desire to get the eight percent every year that has made them to build endless numbers of ghost cities and have the desire now they seem to um yeah so the journalism it's all it is all fascinating jack ma is it a conference maybe it's bad well but fascinating in a bad way uh jack ma conference with jack, maybe this would be what, five, six, seven years ago. And here he was in California and he was taking questions from the audience. And for all the world, he was an American, I beg your pardon, he was a Chinese Jeff Bezos or an Elon Musk. I thought we can recognize this is the same kind of person. He had creative

business ideas. He wanted to invest in Hollywood because he thought there was tremendous opportunity for bringing Hollywood skills to bear in China, telling Chinese stories. It was fascinating, full of daring and ideas. And now he's gone. He is just gone. I'm not, the communists haven't killed him as far as we know, but he has for sure been given a message. Right. You've become too famous and probably too rich.

Go away, be quiet. And he has. All right. That's a, that is nobody. Nobody would have become that kind of person in the first place. This is, they're alike and they're different.

They're different because there was no Jack Ma in the old Soviet Union. Nobody. The only economic exchange we had with them was when we lent them money to buy our grain. It was pretty limited. There were over half a million chinese students chinese nationals studying in this country right now there were a few minor exchanges among physicists in the old days with the soviet union so there was no soviet jack ma that's different but here's what's alike jack ma's gone they've silenced him that kind of cross the state and we will come down on you that's communist that much is alike this this is that's why i say it's fascinating in a bad way i grant you that

and just i know you that we got to run but in the uh in the early days of the internet and even in the early days of web 2.0 or whatever they called it back then um there was this enthusiasm for technology and communication especially as it as regards uh oligarchical tyrannical dictatorships like china you cannot be able to hold the bits and the bites together with a with fiber optic cable there'd be international communication well you know what exactly figured out how to do it and so the biggest criminals in china are the jack ma's and the most important thing they can do is build a firewall around the country which they've done and with the absolute complicit i don't know what what's the word uh capitulation

of american technology giants google Google, Facebook, Apple. Can I, last anecdote, I'm sorry, but there was a woman studying here at Stanford from China. She was from, I won't even name her universe. I don't, you know, dealing with China, you don't want to name names, even in that big country. Okay. But I said to her, she was here for a year. And I said to her, what's the biggest difference? And I thought she'd say, oh, the weather is so much nicer in California than it is in my coastal city of X. Or American students are so much more forward. No, she immediately said, oh, Google searches.

Here I can do Google searches. At home, when I do a Google, of course, we have Google. But at home, when I do a Google search, they're watching me and they give me filtered results. Here, I can do a Google search. Now, incidentally, even that has changed. We're now more suspicious of Google ourselves. in china typing in a search term in google is conscious that the state is watching her as she does that she better watch what her search terms amount to that is just i mean it's so such a small matter that it's all the more horrifying we'd be we'd be wise to loft a bunch of starlink internet provider satellites over China and give it away for free. That would be like radio-free Europe on steroids. That is the best idea anybody's had in this whole darn podcast.

Now you may wrap it up. And I will. I will be dictatorial, too, and monotonical in doing so by shutting up my co-hosts. And saying thank you for listening, by the way. This podcast was brought to you by pendulum, fast growing trees, rake on and bowling branch. Your life will be better. If you avail yourself of all of these fine services,

you also may want to join ricochet today. Would it kill you? No, it wouldn't. And it'd be great. Yes. The member page is free. Yes. The podcasts are free, but all the member sites, the secret society.

That's where the fun is. Listen to the best of ricochet radio show hosted by moi this weekend on the radio Radio America Network. Check your local listings. And of course, leave us that five star review. I don't know why I say it. You're not going to do it. I'm just, just frankly, I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed, which could make me happy by doing it anyway. Reviews allow more people to discover us and keep Ricochet going up until, oh, I think we're scheduled to finally quit it around episode 3000,000. Can't wait. Be a long time between then and now.

And in between, we will see everybody at the comments on Ricochet 4.0. Next week, gentlemen. Next week, boys. Next week, fellas. Welcome to your life There's no turning back Even while we sleep We will find you acting on your best behavior Turn your back on Mother Nature

Everybody wants to rule. Ricochet. Join the conversation. It's my own design. It's my own remorse. Help me to decide Help me make the most of freedom And of pleasure Nothing ever lasts forever

Everybody wants to rule There's a rule where the light won't find you Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down When they do, I'll be right behind you So glad we've almost made it So sad they had to fade it Everybody wants to rule the world Our sponsor, I'm sorry, 3, 2, 1.

I knew I'd get that wrong. Our sponsor, Pendulum. Pendulum. 3, 2, one.