Unclear and Present Danger - Red Corner

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

On this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John watched Red Corner, a 1997 legal thriller directed by Jon Avnet and starring Richard Gere, Bai Ling, Bradley Whitford and Peter Donat.In Red Corner, Richard Gere plays Jack Moore,, an American businessman who becomes entangled in nightmarish legal ordeal after he spends the evening with a Chinese fashion model and wakes up the next morning to find that she has been brutally murdered.Jack insists that he’s innocent, but learns that the Chinese legal system is very different than what he’s used to in the United States. He is denied access to an American lawyer, interrogated without counsel, and pressured to sign a confession rather than defend himself. His state-assigned advocate, Shen Yuelin, assumes that Jack is guilty. But as she investigates the case, and grows closer to her client, she starts to doubt her conclusions. Gradually convinced of Jack’s innocence, she uncovers signs of a larger conspiracy involving high-ranking officials and powerful business interests. As political and legal pressures mount, Jack and Shen race against time to try to expose the truth, navigating a perilous maze of corruption and authoritarian control.You can find Red Corner to rent or stream on Amazon and Apple TV.For our next episode, we will cover Paul Verhoeven’s adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers.  

Your great chairman, Mao, once said, use the West for Chinese purposes. If our programming teaches your people that America is imperfect, often violent and prurient, wouldn't I tend to discourage the pursuit of Western values. This is how you imagine, Simon Jack? Jack Moore is a brilliant attorney. There's not a door he can't open

or a deal he can't close. Jack Moore. Ling, Hong Ling. So you do speak English? But after one night in an exotic land, he'll discover there's one thing he can't talk his way out of. You speak English? He's saying you must. I'm American. I'm innocent. A foreigner takes a girl to bed after knowing her for a few hours.

The next morning, she is dead. The accused, please guilty. The hell I do. Get me a lawyer. Call Joe Shapiro in Washington. to non-Chinese lawyers aren't allowed to practice here. In America, he would know his rights. If you plead not guilty, you will be shot within a week, and the cost of the bullet will be billed to your family.

But here, justice doesn't translate. No! You believe me or not. Now, his only chance lies with a stranger, someone who must open her mind. I'm very sorry that I did not believe your innocence. But now I do. And risk her life.

Why are you to ask? I do not wish to be silent anymore. To save his. No, no, no, no, go, no, go. Man, see your passport. If I had a passport, I wouldn't need asylum. You sure is, I want the embassy on a limb. We've got zero options.

The embassy out on a limb, what are you crazy with about her? Richard Gere. No, I don't have any money. I got I got some shoes Take the shoes that don't pay for the bullet I have lost my patience By Ling He can let them take you out of his room

Presidency Chairman You must recommend the court And allow my clients to be crissed You put a bullet right now Back on my head, all right? Do it right here back! I'm not do it right here, right now I don't want to wait! I said you are in contempt!

What are you going to do? You're going to shoot me twice? Red Corner Hi, and welcome to unclear and present danger, the podcast about the political and military thrillers in the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a column just for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write an opinion, no, well, yeah, it's an opinion column for the nation.

Yeah, it's my opinions. I write the substack newsletter on popular front and I'm the author of when the clock broke conman conspiracists and how America cracked up in the early 1990s, which is available on paperback and also available in the UK with a slightly different title. So yeah, if you haven't got that yet, pick up a copy. I've been thinking about revisiting the chapter

for that book on David Duke because I've been on this Hurricane Katrina binge And I'm reading Katrina History in 1950 to 2005 by, I just forgot his name. But it's a good book. And I'm just like thinking more about the political economy of Louisiana. Louisiana is a crazy, weird state, completely unique in the union with a wild history. A truly wild history. Anyway, good book. Katrina, good book.

Your book, good book. Thank you. On this week's episode of Unclear and Present Danger, we watched the 1997 mystery thriller Red Corner, directed by John Avnet, who you may recognize from Risky Business, who, sorry, he produced Risky Business and directed, who you may recognize from fried green tomatoes, a movie I remember, I don't know, why is that movie in my memory? I've never seen it, but I know. I know that movie. It was like always at the video store. It was on TV. It was like a big phenomenon.

I just looked it up. Yeah, it grossed $120 million on an $11 million budget in $1991. So yeah, this was a, that was a huge hit. Yeah. All right. So he directed Fried Green Tomatoes a 1994 movie called The War, starring Elijah Wood and Kevin Costner. It's a coming of AIDS tale. in Mississippi.

Is that southern? It seems like you might be. In the 1996 film Up Close in Personal, starring Robert Redford. Now he was born in Brooklyn. Michelle Pfeiffer. Born in Brooklyn,

but loves the South apparently. It's fair. Yeah. Red Corner is his fourth directoral effort. And I guess he produced a ton of stuff. His production credits include

risky business, less than zero, the Mighty Ducks films. Like he's, he's a, Big producer, produced Black Swan back in 2010, so that's interesting. But Red Corner is a mystery thriller, legal thriller, political drama, that stars Richard Gere as an American businessman who becomes entangled in a legal ordeal, a nightmarish legal

ordeal at that while on a work trip to China. He is trying to negotiate a major satellite communications deal with the Chinese government, and after successfully closing the deal, he spends the evening with a Chinese fashion model. The next morning, he wakes up to find her brutally murdered in his hotel room, and he is immediately arrested for the crime. Gears' character, Jack Moore, by the way, Jack, insist on his innocence but quickly learns that the Chinese legal system

is very different from the one he's used to in the U.S. He's denied access to an American lawyer, he's interrogated without counsel, he's basically tortured, and he faces a system where guilt is often presumed, injustice, opaque. I will talk about this. I know nothing about the Chinese legal system, but something tells me this movie isn't accurate.

I don't think that it was probably bade without an agenda we could discuss. I think that basically, I'm not an expert in the Chinese legal system too. It's a civil law system, like most Chinese, most communist countries, which is different from our common law system. And it has a inquisitorial rather than adversarial trial. So the point of the trial is to discover the truth not to have the different parties argue the different cases of the sides.

I think that pretty much if you are charged with a crime in China, you are going to be convicted. I don't think it has a high degree of acquittal rate, although I'm sure it does happen. But some of that, that in itself is not a sign of, although I'm sure it is not the, you know, fair a system all the time. High conviction rates can also just be based on the choice of cases that they only bring cases against people they're sure to convict. I mean, the United States has a very high conviction rate and partly that it's because of plea deals. So, yeah, I think that basically, you know, obviously the most powerful institution of the country is the Communist Party. But, you know, there is, it is not a lawless country. There are probably political cutouts of the law for powerful people, but there is the rule of law.

It's just a very different legal system than we have. Yeah. I just wanted to raise that issue just because watching this film, I was like, I feel like, you know, China, authoritarian country, legal system very different at ours. And yet this, even this feels a bit extreme for what it's portraying. But let me get back to finishing our plot synopsis. So Jack, who insists in a sense, is assigned a young Chinese defense attorney named Shen Yulin, who initially believes Jack is guilty, but as she investigates the case, she discovers evidence of a larger conspiracy involving high-ranking political officials and powerful business interests, gradually convinced of Jack's innocence by the evidence and also by Jack's ten. in advocating for himself, Sheev begins to fight for a fair trial in a system that seems to not want one whatsoever.

As the pressures mount, Jack and Shen fight to expose the truth, navigating a dangerous maze of corruption and authoritarian control. Eventually, they are able to prove Jack's innocence and uncover the real killer, who, and I'll spoil this for you, is shot dead in the courtroom. And we'll talk about that scene. Red Corner can be found. You can rent it on iTunes, Apple TV, Amazon.

The tagline for Red Corner is severity for those who resist, which is a line in the film. Red Corner did not do well at the box office, was made on a budget of $40 million, earned about $22 million in the USA, and I'm sure it didn't do great internationally either. So it was kind of a big stinker. It does have a few familiar faces in terms of cast members. Bradley Whitford shows up.

Robert Stanton shows up as well as a just a random bureaucrat. Peter Donat also Donat, Donat, Donat, also shows up as a character in the film. red corner was released on october 31st 1997 so let's check out the new york times for that day okay dokey we got it right here uh october 31st 1997 pretty boring middle of the 90s newspaper here it's a lot of local news

u.s is set to lend three billion to help bolster indonesia many strings attached International Monetary Fund is committing $15 billion to spearhead bailout. The United States will announce Friday that is committing roughly $3 billion to what senior administration officials describe as a second line of defense to Adennesia, the first direct American financial contribution to restore financial stability in Southeast Asia. I think this is the Asian financial crisis happened around this time. And that almost crashed the whole world economy.

but didn't, partially because of timely interventions like this one. But large, you know, a lot of Asian countries were running very hot in the 90s and then ran into a financial crisis in the later half of the decade. What triggered it? I couldn't tell you. I just looked it up real quick. It seems to throw out a bubble economy is emerging. Yeah.

In the developing countries of Asia. and lots of external borrowing. Yeah. And unusually large exposure to foreign exchange risk as these economies of basically buy up more currency. Right, right. Yeah, that foreign exchange stuff is very complicated. Yes, it's hard to understand.

But, but, and it's why, like, FX traders are extremely rare and a lot of them go broke. But, yeah, it was a, there was the kind of a miracle of Asian economies running really hot in Southeast Asia and then a sudden sort of explosion, which showed a kind of fragility of neoliberalism and similar kinds of crises would start to happen. in the Western world as well. A decade later. Yep, a decade later. Just 10 years later, the big one. Yep. Yeah, and just not too long

after this is a dot-com crash, which is a little different, but yeah. What else we got here? Transcripts of Nixon tapes show the path to Watergate. Well, I'm a huge fan of the Nixon tapes.

I spend many, a lonely evening, listening to Richard Nixon rant and rave to his. You've said this before, I think the last time you said it, That was like, that's the craziest thing ever heard. Listening to him rant and rave like a lunatic to his cronies.

Christ, impeached the president, Richard Nixon, rage one night, April night in 1973, cursing his enemies, giving full voice for the first time to his worst fear. I'm the only one at the president in this whole wide blinking world that can do a goddamn thing, you know, keep it from blowing up, he railed. Look, if we went in a sackcloth in ashes and fired the whole White House stuff, staff the president told his press secretary that isn't going to satisfy these goddamn cannibals they'll still be after us who are they after each out they're after me the president they hate my guts so okay okay let me apologize john this is very compelling have you never gotten into this

i've never just said that and listen to them oh my god they're amazing this is extremely compelling no they're amazing and he's he's just he's sitting there and he's like a paranoid lunatic and he's just ranting and raving and cursing and saying insanely racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic things. And his, like, Halderman and Ehrlichmen are just like, yes, sir. And he's like, right, and that's how you know about those people and blah, blah. And he's like, you never can know too about the Jews. And he's like talking shit about Henry Kissinger behind his back. And like, he's just, he's just so crazy.

And the, the, and it's extremely funny. And they're funnier because he's kind of like. you know, it's funny because he in public would speak with this very kind of sanctimonious tone about the United States. And, you know, everyone knew that Nixon had a screw loose because he would show it sometimes. But then when you see him in private, he's just a total lunatic. And it's funnier, it's funnier in a way than Trump because Trump doesn't hide anything. Right, right. He is who he is. He's not talking that much differently than he does in private. I mean, it's probably way worse in private.

We know it's way worse in private. But yeah, the Nixon tapes, I highly recommend. And is this Tim Weiner? Is that the guy who wrote the CIA book? Legacy of Ashes. Yeah, I think it is. I don't see. Yep, Tim Weiner.

Yeah, I think it's him. Okay, so that's the reporter on this story. What else? Recommend Legacy of Ashes. We've never read it. Yeah. Well, we've had occasion to, touch on it a couple of times.

And he just came out with a new book about the called the Mission, the CIA in the 21st century, which I haven't read. Pen in hand Roll Salinas denies murder and theft. When his brother was president of Mexico, where all Salinas de Gortari lived the high life

enjoying the thoroughbred horses, fast cars, and luxurious houses readily available to someone who could deposit more than a hundred million in Swiss bank accounts. Now, after spending much of the last three years in a cramped frigid cell in Mexico's harshest prison

Mr. Salinas says that he amassed his fortune legitimately, but acknowledge he did it by seizing the huge opportunities for business deals afforded by a sibling of Mexico's leader. Uh-huh. Yes. I don't know a ton about this.

I know that there is a history of corruption in that country. And I guess this is one reason why has that reputation. Anything else here, Jamel? Not really lots of... It's amazing that the middle of the 90s the news just dies.

Yeah, there's like not really anything interesting here. I'm going to flip through it. Yeah, turn the page. Yeah, see if there's anything. A Defiant Iraq, this is on page 3, A3. A defiant Iraq bars entry to three U.S. Arms Inspectors. Iraq, bar three American armed inspectors from entering the country today, ignoring threats of retaliation from the United States.

The government of President Saddam Hussein acted only hours after the Security Council unanimously warned Iraq on Wednesday night, not to make good an inspector throughout all Americans working for the United Nations in Iraq. After the Iraq war, of course, the U.N. imposes a sanctions regime, the U.S. imposed the sanctions regime, and there is UN weapons inspectors. and this is part of that saga. I think for the first time I discovered something that is directly connected to the movie that we watched. And I can go to page A8. I think this is why they released it on this date.

Zhang Zemin was visiting the United States, which was probably scheduled for some time. Oh, China's leaders rebuked by American legislators. Yeah. Washington, October 30, a day after a summit meeting with President Clinton, Zhang Zemin, the Chinese president, entered a guerrilla on Capitol Hill today by legislators from both parties. You question him sharply about human rights, nuclear proliferation,

and religious freedom, enforced abortion. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a piece above it about the same visit. In birthplace of U.S. democracy, Jang finds the trappings and traps of liberty. For China's president, Zhang Zemin, a history, fond of quoting Thomas Jefferson arriving at the birthplace of American democracy today

should have been like reaching the ultimate destination a journey of enlightenment about the nation's history. Coming after sharp exchanges in Washington Day and on Wednesday over the meaning of democracy and human rights, the president's visit to the revolutionary sites in Philadelphia might have taken on special significance. Yet democracy has a way of yielding unpredictable obstacles, said Jang staff, and Jang staff seemed rattle by a contingent of demonstrators who chanted outside Independence Hall. They were only 200 or so, but they were noisy enough to force Mr. Jang to enter through the back door and to cancel his plans to walk over the Liberty Bell. The Chinese asked us to move all the demonstrators so they would be out of the

president's view, said Mayor Edward Rendell. We tried to explain them as patiently as possible that we couldn't force them off public streets. Well, True and not true. I mean, if they really wanted to, they could. Yeah, yeah. But they were making a point. And a good point, but it was definitely a point. So, yeah, the Zhang is visiting, is visiting,

there's a whole page dedicated to is visits the United States. And I'm almost 100% sure that's why they chose to release the film at this exact date. so because there's an historic visit and they knew he was going to be here this movie has a political agenda so yeah good thing i turned the page so let's let's talk about the movie red corner had you seen it before i you know what i actually have it i have no idea why i have no idea why i i i watched it i guess it was just streaming and i threw it on sometime and it feels like a movie whose description suggests it might be better than yeah exactly and it's a you know our kind of movie but i watched it and i didn't like it that much and then i watched it again and i didn't like it again and it's not it's got moments but it's it's

not you know the critics at the time found problems with it so basically what you have to understand about this movie first and foremost is richard gear is a strong proponent of the free Tibet movement and a personal friend of the Dalai Lama. And I think of practicing Tibetan Buddhists, I don't know, maybe that's wrong. Maybe I'm just making that up. But he is a very big sympathizer of the Tibetan cause. The Tibetan cause itself was big in the 90s. We did not exactly have, as you can see the opening, well, China had been opened by Nixon, of course, famously.

But our trade relationship to China is growing during this time. period. Globalization is taking place. The free trade agreements are being put into places. The era of the WTO and the World Bank and all this kind of a big global trade institutions. The United States is getting more and more involved in the Chinese economy. And part of the effort, United States diplomatic and economic push was to kind of say, okay, we're going to do business with you, but can you take human rights a little more seriously and China just stonewall the United States? They just said, no, we're not discussing that with you. We're not discussing you can't enforce, as they call it, your human rights concept

on us. We know you want to do business. And the fact is that the United States did want to do business and business won out. But there was a period in which, you know, American, a lot of people in the United States had strong, you know, criticisms of the Chinese Communist Party from various angles. The Tibet angle was, I would say, kind of a left liberal one. And very popular with elite liberals, Hollywood. And, you know, it's difficult to assess. And a lot of people in entertainment were very into it. And there was a lot of Hollywood movies made about Tibet in this time period. Tibet was idealized.

The Dalai Lama was idealized. Tibetan Buddhism would idealize a big part of 90s culture was a kind of fascination with Tibet. And it makes sense because Tibet is a very beautiful and interesting place. Tibetan Buddhism has these beautiful monasteries. It was a place that was untouched by modernity. China was presented as a and you know there's reasons for this

I'm not saying it's a mischaracterization as a tyrannical occupying power who was destroying the ancient culture of this unique part of the world so gear is coming out of this and he makes this movie I would say as he put it as another way of kind of approaching the Tibetan issue by writing

a criticism of communist China now today this movie would never get made and I'm not saying that's a good thing because unfortunately, like, we make a lot of movies for Chinese markets, and that has effects on what kind of movies are being made, not even only political, but just in terms of the subject matter being transferable and not just for an American audience. Right.

Yeah. So, yeah, I think that this film on an artistic level is lousy. Its politics are, you know, I mean, yeah, I'm sure. sure like even critics of the time were like this movie borders on the xenophobic um it has a kind of orientalist picture of china i would say an extremely orientalist picture of china um i mean specifically it's quite bad on chinese women kind of presenting kind of indulging the old stereotype that asian women are submissive and like you know right um right ready to sleep with any you know you know, white western man who

entered their vicinity. Right, exactly. Like, it's, uh, yeah, it, it, it engages in some pretty, some pretty lousy stereotypes. Um, you know, I would say like the courtroom drama itself is sometimes compelling,

like the judge, the, uh, presiding magistrate, the, the, the, the, the, the, the scenes of like, the administrative, the very rough administration of Chinese justice. It's like, those are compelling scenes. Are they fair to the Chinese? I don't know. Probably not.

The movie, as you mentioned when we were getting going, also has absolutely no dramatic center because it's clear that he's innocent from the beginning. And as you mentioned, a more ambitious movie, one that was less tendentious, would perhaps propose a hero who was more morally complicated to the point where you made actually suspect him. Right, right. And I found, so I found that this movie was basically sort of suffocated by its, it's plotting. It's sort of, it's all, it's all plot. It's all sort of like, you know, unraveling the not really mystery, mystery of who set up Richard Gears character. And there's not really any time for like meaningful story development, like meaningful character development.

And it's very, it's like, it's, it's written like a bad airport thriller, basically. But even then I found that the film might have been just like more enjoyable if there were any kind of sense that the gear character might have actually killed the woman. You know he didn't from the jump. Like the movie makes very clear that he didn't. It's not hard to figure out like within 20 minutes of the plot beginning in earnest who is responsible. here it's like it's telegraphed pretty pretty heavily yeah um yeah like the the rarely sleazy guys are the are the obvious uh but i think it's kind of interesting that like it's sleazy chinese businessman which the depiction is honestly maybe a little bit racist um

and the communist party people and the military are portrayed as authoritarian but kind of fundamentally also like not corrupt you know what i mean like and when push comes to shove like are like do well sort of like behave correctly or according to procedure um like there's political pressure but it's like it shows a country that's not totally under sway of like of rich business people although they have some sway in the communist party so like i think strangely it shows it shows it shows chinese institutions as being like it does this very American thing where it's like, well, you could all be Americans too if you just believed in the system that you already got and you followed the rules, you know, like it's a very naive American liberalism of like, well, you have the rule of law too. Maybe we're not so different. And, you know, he turns her into like a kind of public defender, Western liberal public defender. And she becomes like, you know, committed to overcoming the you know the injustice is her own system and she has this tearful

confession almost a self-criticism to come to think of it where she says I was silent during my father's humiliation during the cultural revolution and I shouldn't have done that and I should have stood up but and the American of course stands up for himself and isn't afraid of the system. Right. And it has the worst American attitudes, which is just like, if only somebody stood up for themselves and said, hey, just a, just a second now. Just wait a minute. Then, you know, like all of these, these lesser, lesser races would, would, would see the errors of their ways and kind of go scurrying in the right direction. So, yeah, it's got some very obnoxious attitudes. Now, I don't want to be like China is a country with no problems and this movie is a

horrible caricature of it, but it is a caricature. And yeah, I can understand that the Chinese weren't thrilled about it. And I think, you know, obviously because it criticizes their system, but I think probably they just were insulted by it. Yeah. The other thing I think you were about to mention this and I mentioned before you got going is that there's a version of this movie that is at least a little more watchable. And it's a version that swaps Richard gear for Michael Douglas. This seems like perfect Michael Douglas material, you know, kind of sleazy businessman, you know, womanizer type. Like, yeah, I get Michael Douglas in there. And Michael Douglas is a great asset on screen is that like even when he's playing the hero, like someone who you are rooting

for, he's kind of sleazy. Yeah. And he always gives the impression of being kind of guilty. right even even when he's not he kind of is yeah it's not hard to imagine he's got something to hide right right even when you there's a version of this movie where it's Michael Douglas who is the frame businessman and the

whole time you're wondering if he actually did it yeah I'm trying to think of a Michael Douglas performance I really love is in David Fincher's The Game and underrated and underseen David Fincher film and in the game Douglas plays

an overworked businessman, but the, I mean, the funny thing about the performance is that the whole time you're like, is he, is he just like too busy for his family or is he like evil? Right. Like you can't. Yeah, yeah. You can't really. And in the end, it turns out he's a perfectly decent guy. He's just like too busy for his family. Right. The way Douglas plays it, you're like, is this like a bad guy? Uh, or is he just, you know, needs to chill out a bit? Good movie. people should watch it. So one thing this movie had me thinking about while I was watching it, just because the plot involved in American businessman trying to, basically trying to do a sell satellite TV

package, so I guess like the Chinese government. And part of the concern by Chinese officials is just opening up the public to Western media and Western ideas. And his interlocutor is a younger businessman who ends up being the one responsible for all the drama here, who wants to, you know, increase the, uptake of Western media and China under the idea that this will help produce a change in attitudes and beliefs maybe even a change in the system. And I was thinking about the argument for greater economic integration with China in the late 90s was precisely a version of this,

right? Yeah. That greater integration with the liberal democratic West will spread liberal democratic values to China. And this is, you know, this podcast is nominally about the end of history. And this, the, the case for greater openness with China, it's very much cast in these terms in terms of this is the path towards democratizing China. You know, Russia already democratized, already under the aegeus of the liberal democratic world. And this is the path to bringing China into the liberal democratic world. Right. Of course, what happened is not bad.

Yeah, of course, of course. And no. And again, I think that as I was mentioning, China was just very adamant that they just didn't care to hear it from the American. They didn't want to have any lectures from Americans, which, you know, in a certain sense, fair enough. I mean, they have their own country and, you know, we were, at that time, you know, yes, it was very much an end of history attitude that the United States was the victor in the Cold War and then was at kind of like, you know, we could dictate terms to the rest of the world about the way they should have their country, they should run their countries.

Now we've gone to the opposite, which is a complete indifference to what people do of only caring about a very warped notion of our self-interest. I'm not sure if this is superior to the integration with China. It's kind of like our close integration of China created a lot of problems, but I think the decoupling and the cold and the threat of a cold war with China is almost worse. I mean, it's, it's difficult to see what to do, you know, like... Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, you know, the... I was a child in the late 90s, but if, if Jamel of today could, like, go back in time and, like, offer analysis of, like, this idea, I'd say that, you know, the Chinese Communist Party, you know, 97, 98 still maintains, like, a tight grip on the society is, you know, the field in which civil society in China takes a... place. And there's no reason to think that greater economic integration somehow going to dislodge

the Chinese Communist Party, especially if, right, like, you know, most at this time, most Chinese citizens are impoverished, right? So if the, if the party can use integration to provide material benefits for the people of China and can say, you know, under our leadership, we are producing the kind of economic growth that will pull you and your children at a poverty. and even pull you into middle-class life, then that's only going to entrench the Chinese Communist Party. That's only going to tighten its grip. And that's more or less what happened.

And I'm not China expert by any means. But my understanding is that sort of like the bargain of Chinese society is exactly this. Like the CCP delivers meaningful economic growth and meaningful economic opportunity to, you know, many hundreds of millions of Chinese people. And in return, it basically gets sort of like, yeah, we can live in like an autocracy. Yeah. And that's why, you know, over the last like 15 years, whenever there's a discussion about slowing growth in China, it's both sort of concerning for economic reasons giving the tight integration between the U.S. and China, but also for political reasons, right? Like the Chinese state really doesn't want growth to slow.

Yeah. Because slow growth, idle mind's the devil's workshop, right? idle hands may be the thing that begins creating unrest. And notably, right, notably this, you know, right corner comes a little less than a decade after Tiananmen, that like Chinese leadership had actual experience with the kind of discontent and discord that can produce kind of revolutionary conditions.

And so they're very much aware of both managing that and preempting it. And that's that they did it successfully. It successfully managed and preempted some of this energy. So fast forward to the present, you suggest John, you know, there's this effort to kind of create Cold War conditions with China and to decouple China in the United States. But it's not clear to me either if this is something that we really want. Like you can stipulate everything you want about China, about the Chinese government, about the system, about human rights abuses, everything. and still fall on the side of, it's better. It's on net better if Americans and Chinese are cooperating with each other.

There's obviously going to be rivalry. But if we're on speaking terms with each other, if we're trying to, you know, treat each other with a mutual respect, then it is to be in a position as adversaries. Yeah, and hostility with hostility. Yeah, I think that there is a sense, I think in the United States, and I think this has got a lot to do with Silicon Valley and a lot to do with Trump's rise, is that, you know, we're falling behind China. And, and, you know, if you see a lot of the images that we get from China, which are propagandistic, you know, Chinese cities look in advance. The United States looks like it's falling behind technologically, dirty, so on and so forth.

Have you ever seen the meme of, it's like a character from the goofy movie, Max, as an adult walking into a woman's room who's also like an adult goofy movie character and saying, bitch you live like this? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. That's kind of the vibe of. Yeah, yeah, of America, of Chinese observation of America. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, like, you know, China has internal problems, as you mentioned, has starting to have economic problems, the rate of growth that brought all these people out of poverty. The question is, is that's sustainable. China has, you know, been a very productive economy. The question is, can it shift to being an economy of consumers in the way the United States did? You know, it has an uncertain future as well, as any nation does. But certainly if we're going off vibes, at this point, and, you know, this has been mistaken in the past, people count the U.S. out and it's like, well, we're an incredibly powerful and economically dynamic country and it's just like hard to beat us in the end.

But I mean, with the United States and the kind of political chaos it's in now and the total idiocy of the direction that we're, you know, focusing money. and resources in this country, I mean, it's understandable that people think that China is going to overtake us. It's, I mean, there's an irony there, right? Like, so there's this fear, this panic about China overtaking the U.S., very similar to the Japan panic of the 1980s, which we've talked about in previous episode. Check out, what was that Sean Connery, Rising Sun. Check out our episode on Rising Sun, where we talked about this.

But even, even more racist. But there's this China panic. And I think you're right to identify it as part of behind Trump's rise is the sense that we're falling behind that the whole world is getting over on us. And so the solution for especially American nationalists who are panicked about China is to basically try to like do Chinese style, you know, authoritarian development, you know. going to invest. We're not just going to invest in these industries. We're going to tell you. We're going to get people back into the factories. We're going to make America manufacturing. We're going to do all this stuff. And the effect of it is to make the U.S. like a less dynamic economy, like a poorer and less dynamic economy that may well get overtaken because while the Chinese economy benefits from its large

supply of cheap labor, the American economy does truly benefit from its dynamism and flexibility. Part of part of what is the challenge of governance in China is that you don't have the kind of, you know, signals that you get from a free society, frankly, that allow the society kind of the change and change shape quite rapidly when new conditions arise. And so, you know, the authoritarianism in China is in part of response to the fact that, like, they, the, the, they're not getting response, but like the authoritarianism has to, you have to consider that in the context of the fact that

it's not, it's hard for Chinese bureaucrats, the political, the political class to actually really know what's going on in the country and to respond quickly and accordingly. To say nothing of sort of the incentives that all authoritarian systems produce when it comes to sort of like accurate information flowing back and forth throughout the system.

Right. And the U.S., I mean, its advantage is, in addition to its size and its wealth and its obvious global presence and everything, it's just like the dynamism of the country means that, you know, what may appear to be the country slipping behind could be just an illusion. Yeah. I think that actually was that that was the case for the first half of this decade. Yeah. That the U.S. economy is growing at a dramatic clip, that it is increasingly dynamic, that

after a slow start, it's rapidly building clean energy production, investing in all kinds of new technologies. And it's like very clearly on the path to being a dominant economy for another, for another century, maybe not an American century, but certainly another century of the U.S. is like a leading nation in the world. And, you know, the irony is that the feeling that that's not the case has produced a government in a political movement that is really doing its best to drag the United States

back to win it was not even a peer nation but kind of just like a backwater. Right. Yeah, I mean like their goal is like America when it was beginning to industrialize it was not, I mean the United States

was not the dominant industrial power. it was until after the First World War, really. I mean, the United States was a rich place, started to become a rich place, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't nearly, you know, what it was in the second half of the 20th century. Right.

In the 19th century, yeah, their goal seems to be kind of the shrink the country and its aspirations down to something very slight. I mean, to put it in concrete terms, what, they would prefer a country like right now for the most part maybe pre tariffs the u.s is a country where someone can come up with an idea for a product contract with the chinese factory have that

factory produce that product have that product live with for american shores and sell that product in like a storefront business that employees you know shippers and stockers and all kinds of people, a lot of people in service work, um, and then they sell that product to, to the consumer. Yeah. And so there are jobs being created. There's lots of economic activity happening, lots of dynamism, whatever. And this is, this is the state of things. They would, they don't like that. What they would prefer is that all those people are working in factories. Yeah. For like, what are basically aesthetic reasons. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very strange idea. Well, I don't know. I mean,

like, I mean, here I'm a little bit of like an old school right and right Marxist that I like kind of believe that we cannot like we need a manufacturing bait. Like the American economy is going to need to manufacture things in order to produce value. And we were in a stagnation because of the lack of manufacturing. and the importation of cheap goods in abroad was not enough. And that is why there was a broader kind of feeling of crisis, although it wasn't sure what it was about. What I don't think this, I don't think that this idea of like,

we're going to go back to factory towns as they were, you know, in the golden age of the U.S. with union level wages. is, well, there's no union, so how are they going to be union level wages? And that's going to be accomplished through tariffs. That seems to be a fantasy. I do think that you cannot forever run an economy. Like, we did do ourselves a disservice by deindustrializing in the way we did. But that process begins, like, first of all, it's no one's fault necessarily.

It's sort of a systemic. And that process begins, as economic historians have pointed out, a lot earlier than people thought it did. Like, we start to kind of begin deindustrialization, like, not long after the Second World War. I mean, it's, long process. It's, if anything, the Second World War prolongs the period by which America can maintain any kind of industrial dominant. It's just because the rest of the world's and tatters. Yeah. But, like, kind of it's inevitable, right?

Like, once everyone else gets their factory is up, and the U.S. is very. becoming a wealthier society. It's just we're going to be in a place where we're going to have competitors. Yeah, we're going to have competitors. And we have like, yeah, that's, that was the problem. And in certain ways, Trump is like the solution to a problem that's about 30 years old or or more than 30 years old because like he, you know, as I talk about it in my book, the United States is facing industrial competition, cheap and high quality goods from places

like Germany, South Korea, Japan, American manufacturers can't really keep up. So we're in a slightly different situation now. I mean, that state has advanced quite a bit farther than I think, you know, I think that a lot of the solutions, it's interesting, basically like on the other side, and I don't talk about this much of my book, but a great book that we've talked about, you know, on here, which is a fabulous fair, you know, by liquor. Kinski and Stein is like, so Biden basically like Trump does the kind of papy can and Ross Perra kind of shit of trying to do protectionism and all that kind of stuff.

And Biden basically goes back to some ideas that had in the Clinton administration, but kind of got shelved because of for a lot of different political reasons of doing industrial policy. So like basically we're now at the ability politically to do things that, you know, might have made sense to do 30 years ago, which puts us in. a little bit of a problem area and a lot of the underlying issues have accelerated and now we find ourselves as a society in crisis. I am still a bit of an old school Marxist where I just believe almost fetishistically, but I think there's a reason that that heavy industry

produces value, not even heavy industry, but industry produces value in a way that is different than services and is more basic, but the problem is that we don't invest, there's not, because of, you know, investment becomes a problem in capitalist economies because, and this is what an authoritarian country like China has an advantage over us, is like they just can force investments, right? Right. Right. And, and, and stop speculative enterprises, right. So we can't do that. We have to kind of, like, we have to do this Rube Goldberg machine, which we, where we, like, generate a bubble, hopefully some investment in some new technology comes out of that bubble,

then the bubble collapses and the government cleans it up. That's basically how the government kind of sparks a bubble and then cleans up the aftermath of bubble. That's the way we do it. And it's extremely wasteful and destructive. It's not, yeah. So I think that it's in the Biden administration sort of presented this alternative. I don't think you necessarily need to create bubbles. Like, it's possible to have direct government.

Beyond, like, government investment in basic science and research and that kind of thing, it's possible to have, like, direct government investment in industry. Yeah. Support, you know, kind of both supporting and encouraging private investment, but also just doing the investment itself. Yeah. Without having to create speculative bubbles. I think, like, the creation of speculative bubbles was the alternative to, like, industrial policy.

Yeah. Like, that's what you do instead of, instead of just, like, doing a thing. That's what we do instead of, industrial policy. Yeah. So I understand sort of the view that, you know, industrial production is like, it produces a different kind of value than services. I may be sort of like of the view that the U.S. just as like is an advanced service economy and we just got to run with that and like accommodate that, you know, when it comes to, you know, supporting the rights of workers, et cetera, et cetera. But I'll say that, like, one of the things that is genuinely kind of

disappoint, not disappointing, it is disappointing. I'm looking for a stronger word in that, dismaying about the present moment is that you actually can't envision the basis for something like more industrial production in the country, but it's not, you know, what, what, you know, the Trump team envisions that you'll have Americans like making iPhones, right? like but what what is actually more viable is we just do advanced industrial production right like we're building which is already the case with aircraft right like you people build you build planes in the u.s you don't build you don't build the constituent parts for planes in the u.s you build the planes themselves you build solar you can build solar panels in the u.s batteries um uh you know trains

like there's there there is lots of stuff advanced stuff that still needs to be built that you can conceivably and affordably and competitively build in the United States but it's exactly the stuff that the current administration's allies have like an ideological opposition to right like green energy is like weak and liberal so we don't want that even though

green energy is a pathway to the production of the kind of jobs they say that they want yeah no I'm 100% with you there I think you could I think you could have like you know what's the I did mention another meme that meme that's always like, you know, if X didn't happen, this. Yeah, the society, the green society, which looks exactly like the cover of abundance. Have you noticed?

Yeah. But that's, I mean, this is where I'm like quite sympathetic to the abundance guys, right? Yeah. That there is missing in American politics, like an actual vision of like the production of a lot of useful things. And instead, it's sort of, you know, there is, I think, an overstated, but like a real kind of like, de-growth tendency in American politics. And then there's like this nostalgia for a time when people like broke their backs making widgets. Yeah. And not a willingness to imagine what might, you know, a future of like actual productive production would look like. I mean, honestly,

I have not read the abundance book. I, I am sort of, and I don't want to risk making a kind of shallow and my own aesthetic critique of it. My suspicion is that there are issues in the United States economy that are not reducible to, let's talk, better zoning. And I think basically that has to do with the lack of power of labor. This is my social democratic side coming out and related. but different is an intrinsic problem with capitalism not being on its own an efficient director of investment towards the kinds of goods that need for advanced society to continue. Like we need more socialized goods and like, you know, I'm sorry, like capitalism, like, capitalists do not want to invest in infrastructure. why would you do that when why would you tie up your capital in in something with an extremely low rate of return and it is not liquid at all when you there are so many speculative gambols or or you know or assets that you could that are highly liquid that that return fantastic returns and or just they're safer like so i i just think that you know there needs

to be yeah and this is where I believe in industrial policy absolutely it's just like there are certain things in our economy that require a lot of investment and focus and the market itself is not going to do it and I don't believe that's only because we have in this kind of quasi libertarian and you know this is a liberalitarian adjacent view as abundance. You know, these guys work closely with people at the Niskanin Institute. I don't think they're the worst people in the world.

I think their hearts are in the right place. But I'm more skeptical about them about, like, the fundamental idea there is if you allow markets to work, they're going to do a lot of wonders. And I just don't believe that anymore. I believe that. Sometimes you've got to, you know,

the government has got to go and force people to build stuff. No, I mean, I think that's right. You know, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, as the, as somebody grew up a military basis, right, who grew up kind of like in, in the cradle of public services in a very direct way. Like, I'm a firm, I'm a firm believer in the, in the necessity of the production of public goods. Yeah. But I could be, I'm like not, I'm not,

unsympathetic to the view that there are, at least, sectors where the market actually can produce more and we're just not letting it. Yeah, I absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of, like, rent-seeking behaviors and, you know, perverse incentives, and I have no problem with reforms. I'm going on the record here. I have no problem with reforms that would remove certain rent-seeking behaviors from the economy and to see what happened. I have no sympathy for trying to protect some of those industries or parasitic industries. So, you know, in principle, I'm willing, I'm open to it. I would say philosophically, I'm skeptical of its assumptions about the way the world works.

And I think it's a little bit naive, maybe deliberately naive while acting realistic about what markets can actually accomplish. But whatever. We've come very far away from Red Corner, but it just shows how far the world has come since Red Corner. So the discussion, the types of things being thought about, about China in the era of Red Corner were like, human rights, Tibet. And now, you know, that seems almost childish. Now we're like, how are we going to build our economy for the 21st century? I mean, there's not movies exactly made about that kind of thing. But in a way it is. I mean, if you look at the films that are being made now, you know, Oppenheimer comes out a few years ago. And that's a movie

that has like both left and right readings, I think. Like everyone's thinking about what What made America greed, you know? And like, and then the left reading of Oppenheimer is like, well, you know, he was like, he came out of like a left wing popular front milieu and like that was a culturally related dynamic and he was very inspired to fight against Nazism and, you know, like he was an extraordinary guy. And then the right wing kind of reactionary modernist and Silicon Valley reading of Oppenheimer is we need the government to help us through.

something evil and that will get the economy going again like we need to build some kind of evil weapon um so i think there's like the oppenheimer is like like resonated in the imaginations of a lot of people um of being like well how does the u.s get back on trapping and and and to lefties were like obviously like he's a product of the civilization of the new deal and that's and and and the anti-fascist struggle and then right wingers are like well it's a big bomb and we showed we sure showed the Japanese like it's two very different

understandings of what's depicted in that movie and I think unfortunately what we're seeing right now is the Silicon Valley people trying to do a Manhattan project without a new deal and it's a scary idea

you know the idea that they're accelerating I don't know if it's all boondoggle or not But, you know, they're trying to do some kind of advanced weapon, capital expansion for advanced weapon production and a kind of AI Manhattan project. It can all be bullshit. And some people say it is. Yeah, I'm inclined to say that it is.

I still don't think there's a, there's a use case for this stuff in like specialized fields. But like the idea of like, you know, AI in, you know, schooling or anything like that. I think it's a lot of hot air. I think maybe there is some revolutionary technology there, but first we're going to have a big bust. And then maybe 20 years from now, people are going to be like, oh, actually AI does some really cool stuff.

And it works and it helps us in our jobs. But that's going to first, like I think this technological thing is going to sort of get to a saturation point. There's going to be a recession. And people are going to be like, AI's garbage and then, you know, people, those companies won't go anywhere. There will be maintained some investment in it, but there's probably overinvestment and overhype at this point. Right, right. Yeah.

I think, I think we've run the course on commentary about right corner. Yeah. So let's wrap this up. Movie-wise, as we said, I think this is not particularly worth watching. It's forgotten for a reason. I'll say that. There's a reason why no one's like, you got to watch Red Corner. Yeah, no one has ever said.

that. I feel confidence in those words have never been uttered by a human being before. Yeah. New words. New, new combination of words. So don't worry about watching Red Corner. But in the same way that a lot of the most mediocre movies we cover are, it is actually kind of like, it's an interesting look at sort of American attitude, at least a certain sense of American attitudes towards China on the cusp of greater integration with the country. Yeah. And that makes it worthwhile, I suppose. All right, that's our show.

As always, thank you for listening. You can find Unclear and Verizon Danger wherever a podcast are found, that Apple, that's Spotify, that Google, we're everywhere. RSS feeds. If you can pick up an RSS feed, you can listen to the podcast. Um, you can reach us via social media if you're so inclined or you can reach us via our feedback email on clear and present feedback at fastmail.com for this week in feedback, we have an email from Randy. Randy writes, thank you for uncovering hostile waters for your listeners. A good submarine movie is a terrible thing to waste. During your movie discussion, you mentioned it took the U.S. and Soviets about 20 years to work out a way to communicate. about possible Armageddon to reduce the risk of accidental global incineration. That risk reducing open communication served well in October 1962.

Hostile Waters shows it was over by 1988. The obvious response to the perceived threat from the Soviet sub was to call Gorbachev or the Von Seidel character and ask what's going on. In the movie, that was an impossible response because it would have been an admission that U.S. subs were playing chicken with Soviet subs, an accusation that Soviet subs were menaced in the U.S. and thereby jeopardize the peace meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev. So instead of communication being a relief foul, communication was a danger that could confirm activities that everyone knew were happening,

but no one should be so rude as to admit. Makes me wonder how we survive for 76 years. You know, I'll say this. I, you know, it was, we recently passed the anniversary of the use of the atomic bomb in Japan. And I do sometimes marvel at the fact that we've gotten this far without it happened. again. Yeah, I know. It's really amazing. And it's it may just be more dumb

luck, you know. Yeah, yeah. One of the unfortunate legacies, I think, of this current administration is actually going to be a bunch of nuclear proliferation. Yeah. Because if you establish a status quo where you can just invade countries will and nilly and take land,

then the only real thing that can prevent that is a nuclear weapon. Yeah. thank you randy for the note again you can reach us for feedback at unclear and present feedback at fastmail dot com episodes come out every two weeks just or just about and so our next episode let me see this i didn't even look what our next i think it's fun something fun i think our next episode is something actually good yes the next episode is starship troopers oh yeah wow

Paul Verhoeven's 1997. That'll be interesting. Satire. Kind of satire. I have a take about this movie. Yeah, everybody has a take about Starship Troopers. I got to come up with one. You know, I saw this movie when I was 10.

My dad took me to see it. Yeah, my dad also took me of Starship Troopers and did not like it. But we could talk about that. A quick plot synopsis. Set in the future, the story follows a young soldier named Johnny Rico and his exploits in the mobile infantry. RICO's military career progresses from recruit to non-commissioned officer and finally the officer against the backdrop

of an interstellar war between mankind and an arachnoid species known as the bugs. You can find search of troopers to watch on Amazon and Apple TV, also in Google Play and Netflix, it appears. You can also buy the 4K disc, which I own. And it's a good 4K disc. Paul Verhoeven,

a master, well, we can talk a lot about Verhoven. I might even see if we can't get a guest for this episode. That'd be cool. This feels very guest appropriate. Yeah. Next episode is Starchip Troopers over at the Patreon. Patreon.com slash unclear in present notes. Sorry, patreon.com slash unclear pod.

We have an episode on the Carlos miniseries in 2010. Great movie. Highly recommend it. And please listen to that episode. The Patreon is just $5 a month for two episodes a month on things that are related to the podcast at this point. Technically Cold War era stuff. But we kind of go over the place.

The next film we're doing for the Patreon is the Bader Mindhoff Complex from 2008. So that's Patreon, the next main feed. Very excited for both of these. And I think that's all for today. Our producer is Connor Lynch. Our artwork is by Rachel Eck. For John Gant, I'm talking about Rudy, and this is unclear in present danger. And we will see you next time.

You know,