Full Comment - How China seizes on global ‘chaos’ so it can dominate Canada

00:00:00.000 hi everyone we've got an incredibly important discussion for you today it's all about China

00:00:07.920 the rise of China and the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party under President Xi Jinping it's

00:00:13.560 about China's ambitions to be the world's leading superpower what is Beijing doing what does Beijing

00:00:18.300 and the Chinese Communist Party want and what does this mean for the world for the West for

00:00:22.740 us here in Canada both in the here and now and what it means for you and your children's future

00:00:27.540 and there's really no better guest to cover this issue than Josh Rogan he's a syndicated

00:00:32.580 columnist for the Washington Post a regular analyst on CNN and someone who has had a front

00:00:37.320 row seat when it comes to how the US engages with China due to his great access to American

00:00:42.060 officials and the White House he has a must-read new book out available now called Chaos Under

00:00:46.380 Heaven Trump G and the battle for the 21st century Josh Rogan joins us now Josh great to have you on

00:00:52.740 thank you so much for joining us great to be with you let's get into it first of all the title of

00:00:57.980 the book the subtitle the battle for the 21st century what is that so the title of the book is Chaos

00:01:05.560 Under Heaven it's a quote attributed to Mao Zedong who said something to the effect of there is great

00:01:12.360 chaos under heaven the situation is excellent and what he meant by that was that as far as he was

00:01:17.660 concerned the more that his enemies uh and the CCP's enemies were caught in their own dysfunction

00:01:23.240 and infighting and uh confusion the better that was for the Chinese Communist Party and its struggle

00:01:29.600 and you know regardless of whether he ever actually said that uh you saw a lot of that uh carry forward

00:01:35.960 into the first four years of the Trump administration's policy toward uh China under General Secretary

00:01:42.420 Xi Jinping in other words it was chaotic and I think that won't come as a big surprise to a lot of

00:01:46.860 listeners and of course the chaos inside the Trump administration was baked into its DNA in other

00:01:52.400 words it affected everything and China was just only one example of that but the China issue was very

00:01:56.940 unique because uh it involved several different factions who fought against each other a president

00:02:02.100 who cared a lot about the issue but knew very little about it and who changed his mind on tactics all the

00:02:06.800 time and basically it was just a crazy story that started crazy and just got crazier and crazier

00:02:13.380 as time went on now the subtitles uh Trump Xi and the battle for the 21st century because in my view

00:02:20.120 this was sort of the first inning of what's going to be a a new phase a new game between not just the

00:02:25.520 United States and China but in China's relationship with the rest of the world in other words uh in the

00:02:31.340 2016 there was still a lot of uh pent-up uh optimism that uh China under Xi Jinping would um move towards

00:02:39.740 uh a strategy that um would lead it to liberalize economically and then in turn liberal liberalize

00:02:46.960 politically and join our world order and play by our rules uh but by 2020 it's really hard to make

00:02:52.880 that argument it's really hard for anyone in the world who saw how the PRC handled the coronavirus

00:02:57.860 pandemic just for an example to say that it's not increasingly clear that China is going another way

00:03:03.060 and what the book does is sort of lay out an argument for why we should uh acknowledge that

00:03:08.520 and then respond to it and how we respond to it will be one of the crucial and most difficult and

00:03:13.380 complex challenges uh of our century and I think that conversation is just beginning before we get

00:03:18.740 into the coronavirus what happened in Wuhan over a year ago what does China want I know we can say

00:03:24.280 that the world we live in right now is still to some degree a U.S. dominated world in terms of global

00:03:29.040 institutions uh you know United Nations and World Bank and so forth things that were put together

00:03:33.880 post-World War II it looks like China is saying well hold on a second we have these other bodies

00:03:39.720 these other institutions this other way of doing things and we'd like to kind of push the world in

00:03:44.520 that direction is that happening right now Josh right the way that I see it is essentially a systems

00:03:51.220 battle I see it as um you know and then this is based on my um research into uh what Xi Jinping has

00:03:58.760 said and written and you know he lays it out pretty clearly and a lot of this is in the book in

00:04:03.720 other words uh as far as Xi Jinping is concerned and therefore as far as the Chinese leadership is

00:04:08.820 concerned uh the values and liberal sort of uh institutions that we've built up over World War II

00:04:16.120 are not things that China wishes to join but rather things that China under this leadership sees

00:04:21.500 as threats to its own uh national interest and its own ambitions and therefore the what Xi Jinping

00:04:27.660 calls the China dream in other words he identifies uh non-governmental organizations and civil society

00:04:33.740 and even the free press not to mention lots of multilateral organizations as things that the West

00:04:39.440 has been using to keep China down and that under his rule we will see not China rising but a China

00:04:44.880 risen now what that means for us is that you know the bet that uh China could be coaxed or convinced

00:04:50.880 or prodded or uh um coerced into becoming more like us into becoming a system that more resembles

00:04:57.420 our form of governance and the way that we treat our citizens uh is lost and that you know perhaps it

00:05:03.480 was hubristic to think that China was going to develop in a way that would look like us in the

00:05:08.400 first place and China's development will be driven by the Chinese people but the that admitting that is

00:05:13.700 only the first step to addressing the problem because what we've seen under Xi Jinping is a

00:05:18.200 steady increase in the CCP's internal repression and external aggression and that affects us both in

00:05:25.140 terms of our values and our interests and that's the challenge that we're in it's not really about a

00:05:29.180 cold war or a Thucydides trap or risingness and fallingness in the international system in my view

00:05:34.820 it's about how does the international community especially free and open societies but not only free and

00:05:39.920 open societies respond to China as it rises well that's an interesting question particularly here

00:05:45.080 in Canada I know your former president in the U.S. Donald Trump was more than happy to have

00:05:48.980 something of a at least confrontational nature in terms of some verbiage with China here in Canada

00:05:53.780 lots of criticisms that no matter what happens to us Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the government

00:05:58.320 basically will not criticize China partially because we have this issue with the the two Michaels as we

00:06:04.180 call them Michael Kovrig Michael Spavor being held in detention for quite a long time now

00:06:07.980 basically hostage takings as we call them should other countries be just more openly criticizing

00:06:14.860 saying no Xi Jinping we do not want a part in this vision right well I think every country will have

00:06:22.340 its own interest in its own relationship with China and that's all well and good in other words I

00:06:28.360 don't expect South Korea and you know France to have the same exact perspective because they have

00:06:35.920 different interests and different relationships with Beijing and always will but you know there

00:06:40.900 are some things that bind us and you know if we profess to live in societies that believe in human

00:06:46.260 dignity and universal rights and then that those are things that we can't stay silent on because

00:06:51.800 the silence is the what the CCP needs to continue its atrocities including an ongoing genocide against

00:06:59.080 Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang but not also but also get mass atrocities against Tibetans and inter-Mongolians

00:07:05.000 not to mention the crackdown in Hong Kong pressure on Taiwan so in my opinion when free and open

00:07:10.220 societies censor themselves especially governments that profess to believe in human rights like the

00:07:14.660 Canadian government has no matter which party was in power then there that's actually a capitulation

00:07:22.900 to the the strategy that the CCP is putting forth which is to shut us up and you know it's a tragedy

00:07:28.300 that they're holding the two mics as hostages but you know and and I've written about this before I

00:07:32.840 think that the the self-censorship actually gives them a more of an incentive to hold the two mics

00:07:37.520 rather than to release them because the longer they hold them the longer they can keep Justin Trudeau

00:07:41.840 from saying anything bad about them so it's it's it's morally incorrect and it's also strategically

00:07:47.180 incorrect to shut up about the things that we believe in and you know again part of avoiding the cold war

00:07:52.580 and avoiding conflict is proving to the Chinese leadership that you know we can live together but that

00:07:57.520 doesn't mean that we're going to ignore mass atrocities or stand up for hostage taking or

00:08:01.480 anything like that so you know I think that's a complicated issue for a lot of countries I'm not

00:08:05.560 saying uh you know anyone has it exactly right I think the United States has to lead on these issues

00:08:10.360 because it is currently the most powerful country and other countries will will follow our lead I think

00:08:15.820 that's what you saw happening with the genocide designation uh uh that the U.S. government put out now

00:08:21.380 many others are following uh but yes these are competing interests these are tough issues I'm not

00:08:26.580 unsympathetic to the the sensitivities surrounding the two mics and what the Trudeau government is

00:08:31.260 going through at the same time I think that uh the way they've handled it has been out you know

00:08:35.580 at times 100% wrong. Josh there's a growing course of voices both domestically here in Canada

00:08:40.660 and internationally calling on the Trudeau government to ban Huawei from playing a role

00:08:45.400 in in constructing our 5g infrastructure a number of countries have already done this

00:08:50.000 is this something that we should do? You know I again not to give you direct advice but

00:08:57.200 here's here's what I would say you know uh I think that the vulnerabilities inherent

00:09:01.800 in building your tech infrastructure with Chinese tech especially companies that are so closely linked

00:09:08.240 uh to the Chinese government and the Chinese uh military and intelligence services are clear

00:09:13.000 there are very clear vulnerabilities uh and I think the mountain of evidence that is is is beyond

00:09:19.560 dispute now you know are you if you're going to take those risks well then you have to understand

00:09:24.400 the risks that you're taking it but you have to calculate is it worth it and what are you really

00:09:28.360 getting you're getting a a very good system that's a lot cheaper than market value and there's a

00:09:33.340 reason for that the reason is because it's heavily subsidized because they want to

00:09:36.600 apply Canada with you know easily compromisable telecom tech for a variety of

00:09:42.560 interests that are in the Chinese national interests and not ours so you know you you

00:09:46.920 you know Canada has to make its own decision are you going to ignore those risks I think it

00:09:50.660 I I I can speak for my country I'm I'm I don't think we should ignore the risks now

00:09:55.160 again that's complicated because the as far as the Chinese government is concerned it's all connected

00:10:00.460 and they're going to connect the Huawei ban to the two mics to the Halifax forum to the genocide

00:10:06.380 designation to Hong Kong to whatever they want because for the on their side and this is what's really

00:10:12.140 important for a lot of people especially Canadians but a lot of other people to understand is that

00:10:16.660 you know this is the CCP's uh uh priorities the political stuff it's not really the Huawei but

00:10:22.440 they'll use whatever they can to sort of put whatever pressure they can on governments to advance their

00:10:28.200 interests and I just think we have to be uh clear-eyed about that tactic so you know you want

00:10:32.960 you want to put in the the Huawei stuff all over Canada well that's your sovereign decision but

00:10:38.340 you know that will also have um uh downside consequences because if you have like a U.S.

00:10:44.300 company that's interacting with you or another from another another country much less a defense

00:10:49.460 interaction or intelligence interaction well that's that's going to be less trusted so that

00:10:53.740 you're gonna have to expect other people to make those kinds of calculations so uh you know I just

00:10:58.680 say proceed with with great care. Josh is it fair to say that there are other countries that have

00:11:02.640 not been proceeding with great care in terms of uh letting China get embedded into their economy

00:11:07.120 into their security infrastructure I know China does a lot to very aggressively court uh various

00:11:12.340 African nations I was surprised to learn the deep connections between China and Italy and how

00:11:16.760 uh iconic brands like Pirelli tires are in fact owned by Chinese state-owned enterprises which is you know

00:11:21.460 basically the Chinese government I mean what is going on in terms of their their international sway

00:11:26.460 right now? No I mean I think for the last 25 years uh China has done a very good job of combining

00:11:32.520 uh industrial policy and diplomatic policy and development policy in countries all over the

00:11:37.920 world uh the one belt one road project is a two trillion dollar infrastructure project and that's

00:11:43.340 linked to their political aims and their military expansion and all the rest so I'm not saying that uh

00:11:49.020 it's not effective it's actually very effective and you know dozens of countries in Africa and Latin

00:11:54.740 America have have bought onto this package and even though that we see many examples where these kinds of

00:12:00.160 investments turn out bad you know for whatever reason maybe it's a debt trap maybe your your your uh

00:12:06.220 your networks are compromised to Chinese spying or or or whatever uh but you know it's very hard for

00:12:12.680 these countries to refuse that much engagement and that much money and that much attention and you know

00:12:17.980 my criticism has always been of the western world for not alter offering a a better alternative and I think a

00:12:24.740 lot of countries in the world would rather have tech that's less susceptible to spying and you know

00:12:29.340 projects that are less debt trap and all of that but you know I think that uh you know the free and

00:12:34.900 open societies haven't been aggressive enough in presenting them with an alternative and if you just

00:12:39.660 look at any of these examples if you look at Brazil and you know they're on the verge of uh of of

00:12:45.220 banning Huawei and you know here comes the PRC with a bunch of vaccines they're blackmailing them

00:12:49.960 with vaccines they're saying would you like to live well you have to take the Huawei that's what that is

00:12:54.220 that's about as clear of a blackmail as you can they went to the power Paraguay and that told

00:12:59.180 the government there if you drop Taiwan you can have your shots think of that they're they're

00:13:04.200 blackmailing people the the Paraguayan Paraguayan government with vaccines probably only worth 50

00:13:10.220 anyway but they're better than nothing so why you know why doesn't the U.S. government or the

00:13:15.100 international community go in and take the Paraguayan government out of that bind so they don't have

00:13:19.280 to choose between you know their people dying or their diplomatic recognition of Taiwan which is

00:13:23.780 no choice you know what I mean so we have to understand that the uh uh that the CCP's uh

00:13:29.920 expansion also includes a lot of foreign influence and that means seeding a lot of institutions with

00:13:34.160 cash and through proxies and proxy organizations and networks and you know I we have to look at every

00:13:40.840 sort of aspect of our collaboration not to get rid of it because collaboration is important and you

00:13:46.360 know we need uh engagement with Chinese people but we need to understand that when that weapon

00:13:50.900 engagement is being weaponized against us and that includes in our schools and in our markets in our

00:13:55.580 Silicon Valley tech companies in our sports even and in our Hollywood films and you know this is a

00:14:01.720 again a very complex problem that pits you know well-meaning people in uh could have different opinions

00:14:07.420 about it but that's the discussion that we need to be engaged in and that sort of gets you to

00:14:11.760 scientific collaboration because if you can't cooperate with the Chinese government on you know stopping

00:14:17.120 a pandemic what can you collaborate on it seems like the most obvious thing that's in our shared

00:14:21.740 interest and yet uh when you get to when you just take one look at what happened in Wuhan and at these

00:14:26.980 labs and you know ever since and with the their pattern of uh cover-up and obfuscation and

00:14:33.980 misinformation uh you realize that this is really a problem that we can no longer ignore

00:14:39.280 Josh what really happened in Wuhan over a year ago some say just the wet market others well this was

00:14:45.000 this you know natural virus it somehow escaped no it was a bioweapon no it was this no it was that oh

00:14:49.600 if you say this you're a conspiracy theorist oh hold on wait the state department says this don't go in

00:14:53.580 this direction let's go in that direction it is such a mess that conversation it is so contentious

00:14:58.000 where does the truth lie Josh right well I think first of all the first thing that your uh listeners

00:15:03.560 can do is to uh pick up my book chaos under heaven where I go into this in much more extensive

00:15:08.220 detail than I'm going to be able to do in this podcast right now but I'll give you the broad brush

00:15:12.500 overview based on again I reported this twice I reported it at the time and then again with another

00:15:18.600 400 or so interviews for the book and you know it's very important to understand how we got here and I

00:15:23.980 think the easiest way to say it is that you know at this while the pandemic was raging across our land

00:15:30.080 in the spring and summer of 2020 while we were all engrossed in that sort of dystopian nightmare and we

00:15:36.200 didn't have good information we didn't know what was going on and we didn't have enough masks and

00:15:41.140 we didn't know what have enough ventilators and you know it was just businesses were going down and

00:15:48.120 family members were dying this was the craziest time I think in my life that I that I can think

00:15:52.620 I can say that pretty clearly and I'm sure it applies for almost every other human you know

00:15:57.440 during that time the Chinese government um did everything it could to uh uh thwart the free flow

00:16:04.920 of information it jailed journalists uh it disappeared scientists it disappeared doctors

00:16:11.580 uh it held back the actual scientific information it it lied about the scientific information as reported

00:16:19.440 in my book President Xi directly lied to President Trump in two separate phone conversations where he

00:16:24.600 told him that the virus would go away uh in the warm weather that they had it under control that

00:16:29.700 herbal medicine could treat it several other lies and so before we even talk about the origin of the

00:16:35.620 coronavirus which I'm about to get to we have to understand that forget about the origin for a

00:16:39.780 second just from what we know of how the Chinese Communist Party handled their early months of the

00:16:44.440 pandemic uh we know that their actions uh exacerbated our suffering you know and exacerbated and

00:16:52.360 sowed confusion into our systems including the WHO and the U.S. government and your government and every

00:16:56.860 other government and that cost many many many lives now when so when people say oh well the lab accident

00:17:05.380 theory is about blaming China no no no no no you know if you want to blame China and I'm not just about

00:17:10.820 blaming China although I think you know there is some liability there to be sure but if you wanted to

00:17:15.160 blame China there's plenty of things you could blame China you don't need the lab accident theory to

00:17:18.300 bolster that case China is clearly guilty of several other sins related to this pandemic the lab act the origin

00:17:24.280 question is about finding out how this happened so that it doesn't happen again because in any

00:17:29.160 disaster in any you know uh plane crash nuclear plant meltdown the obvious thing to do is to find

00:17:36.680 out what happened so that we can figure out how to make sure it doesn't happen again and that's why we

00:17:41.060 need to find out the origin story and the huge problem was that for a lot of the of the first few

00:17:47.380 months of the pandemic this story was hyper politicized for a number of crazy reasons uh one reason was

00:17:53.100 because the trump administration politicized it one reason was because the scientists who spoke out

00:17:58.680 initially against it had a clear conflict of interest and they were the best friends of the lab

00:18:04.120 and they got on tv and said how dare you you know imagine that the lab might be involved because they

00:18:09.480 were covering their own butts and they continued to do so so be skeptical of anyone who says don't look

00:18:15.040 into this you know that's a like kind of like a journalistic axiom if someone says oh no no you may not

00:18:20.140 ask this question you know that that that that line of investigation should not be pursued that's

00:18:26.240 the guy who you got to look who you got to look look at askance you know and you know i i my position

00:18:32.220 has always been that we have to look into both theories the natural spillover theory and the lab

00:18:37.060 accident theory but i also argue in the book and i'm prepared to argue right now that i think the

00:18:41.040 circumstantial evidence pointing to the lab accident theory is way more compelling and just there's just a

00:18:46.880 lot more of it including that those labs were working on bat coronaviruses including doing

00:18:52.440 experiments that made them more infectious towards humans and that that the that is i think right

00:18:59.580 there enough to warrant a little bit more investigation well why would they be doing that

00:19:03.620 is is that is there a medical standard to doing that or is that a fringe thing to do no that was a

00:19:09.080 200 million dollar program that they were doing in conjunction with u.s scientists partially funded by

00:19:14.520 u.s aid partially funded by the nih and and guys like francis collins and anthony fauci and what they

00:19:21.640 were doing it was a meant to predict and preempt the pandemic it was called the predict program but

00:19:27.400 guess what it didn't predict the pandemic but it may have actually uh accidentally i think sparked the

00:19:32.580 pandemic and you know basically what they did is they spent 15 years going to the places where the

00:19:37.960 worst viruses are all the caves and wherever and finding the worst viruses and bringing them back to the

00:19:42.580 labs and playing around with them and that was meant to see how they might evolve in nature in order that

00:19:47.060 we could anticipate a pandemic and develop therapeutics and vaccines and the such now that yes

00:19:53.120 it's kind of ironic if that research ended up sparking the pandemic they were meant to predict but that's

00:19:59.040 the theory now the the alternative theory is that because remember the outbreak happened a thousand

00:20:03.860 miles from where the bats are right it happened two miles from the lab and a thousand miles from where

00:20:08.700 the bats are if it had if the outbreak had you know begun where the bats are where like the first

00:20:14.160 SARS outbreak you might be more convinced that like it probably evolved from the bats but anyway the other

00:20:20.860 theory is that a bat bit of pangolin that walked a thousand miles and then spilled over right next to

00:20:26.300 the lab that's the other thing okay and i don't know which one is right you don't know which one is

00:20:30.520 right but again if you hadn't if this issue hadn't been politicized again first by the trump

00:20:35.700 administration then by the scientists who are the best friends in the lab in either direction

00:20:39.240 uh you would think we'd probably have to take a look at that lab and that's what i think that's where

00:20:43.500 i think we are now i think that more and more a lot of scientists especially 18 top virologists

00:20:49.080 yesterday finally you know came down from their ivory towers and told us we should look into the lab

00:20:53.920 uh you know dr tedros the head of the who uh criticized his own report the who's report said we shouldn't

00:21:00.740 look into the lab by the way it was written by the best friends of the lab and then and the chinese

00:21:05.540 government and then dr tedros said no we have to look into the lab robert redfield who's the head of

00:21:09.320 the cdc not a completely unproblematic human being in american politics but nevertheless not a trump

00:21:15.920 guy you know he said i think i took one look at this virus he's a virologist he said i took a look at

00:21:21.100 the virus i think it came from the lab and he pointed to the gain-of-function research and so to me

00:21:26.380 that seems like enough right there that we should probably take a look at the lab but yeah for the

00:21:31.300 reasons we just discussed nobody hasn't done that and josh you talked about what happened to brazil

00:21:35.120 when china basically said okay if you want the vaccines here's what you got to do at what point

00:21:39.280 did xi jinping and others in in the chinese communist party decide okay we want to use this

00:21:44.800 to our advantage now there are people out there who will say well since before day one they've always

00:21:49.320 sort of had their designs on this others you know it took a certain amount of time i'm sure you

00:21:53.100 recall the eu competition commissioner back about a year ago uh actually called on governments to uh

00:21:59.100 to buy stocks in their own major publicly listed companies to fend off hostile takeovers from china

00:22:05.020 fears from the eu that that was going to happen i mean a lot of fears that there would be crazy plays

00:22:09.060 and i guess your point about the brazil example there have been some crazy plays what what is the actual

00:22:14.720 strategic thinking behind this right well on the one hand i think it's kind of naive to think that

00:22:20.580 we would have the biggest disaster in human history and there wouldn't be geopolitical

00:22:23.760 geostrategic implications and i think you know when i talk to especially u.s officials especially

00:22:29.180 biden administration officials i'm always shocked by the fact that they don't seem to be attuned to

00:22:33.740 that or to care about that much in other words like when i say to the u.s state department people hey

00:22:38.320 uh you know chinese vaccine diplomacy in latin america is changing the balance of influence there

00:22:43.480 they say well we don't play games with vaccines we're not we don't do that we just want to give it

00:22:48.180 through kovacs and make sure you know whatever and i say okay well that you should know that this is

00:22:53.040 at least going on and i think that's uh that's just the latest example uh uh example of how the chinese

00:23:00.140 government has been way ahead thinking about the the next stages of this crisis in other words the

00:23:05.320 sickness is just the first stage you know there's going to be broad economic devastation there's going

00:23:10.340 to be you know uh reconstruction phase there's going to be a supply chain reorientation phase there's

00:23:17.400 going to be manufacturing onshoring and and you know here in the u.s i don't know about in canada

00:23:22.180 because i know you guys have different politics but here in the u.s it's like can we put our mask

00:23:25.580 on on the plane why can't we put on mask on why can't i take my mask off on the plane right which

00:23:29.820 is not really the most important public policy matter out there all right and you know the chinese

00:23:34.880 government has been thinking again to their credit about all of these different stages way in advance

00:23:40.900 and then because they're mixing the industry and the public health and the politics in other words

00:23:45.240 when they force brazil to take huawei that's an industrial policy play but when they force portugal

00:23:50.320 to i'm sorry paraguay to dump taiwan that's a political play right that has nothing to do with

00:23:55.420 the economy or something to do with the economy but in other words they're they're they're they're

00:23:59.800 mixing all of these things all the time and we're just we're all flat-footed because we're worried

00:24:03.860 about whether or not like the halifax forum can give an award to signing when that's the most

00:24:08.100 important you know what i mean that's we're focused on all the wrong stuff biden officials not being

00:24:13.500 attuned to things under the current biden administration i mean are things going to

00:24:17.780 improve or worsen in terms of how the international community should be engaging with china and

00:24:24.460 responding sort of in the late in the ways that you laid out there are are we going to make progress

00:24:28.440 you know i think definitely the multilateral piece is much much better one of the huge failings of the

00:24:33.780 trump administration uh as detailed in my book uh was that it they were they attacked allies and

00:24:39.740 adversaries at the same time donald trump didn't believe in multilateral organizations uh and uh he

00:24:45.600 treated allies terribly uh and uh including canada by the way and you know that was just like

00:24:52.000 you know so stupid so at least they're not doing that so that's good uh you know are they naive to

00:24:58.380 the to the extent of the threat well here's what i would yeah i i think the problem is that they're

00:25:02.840 still thinking about the the challenge in 2016 terms and they don't they didn't they didn't read

00:25:08.180 back they didn't a lot of them committed the sin of not reading my book yet and if they had they

00:25:14.120 would realize that like the game the game is moving and has moved beyond where it was and that

00:25:18.720 the things that are on the bleeding edge of it which are like you know what is china's infiltration

00:25:22.980 into our capital markets you know chinese uh companies are raising money through a variety of

00:25:28.600 crazy mechanisms in our capital markets that that is basically funding uh you know their aggression

00:25:34.420 against us not to mention making us complicit in their mass atrocities that's a that's a thing

00:25:39.500 that biden people can't wrap their head around because they didn't they weren't there for the

00:25:42.240 last three years when we were all talking about this and you know uh same thing with like huawei or

00:25:47.020 confucius institutes or you name it they just they don't know what they think about it and you know

00:25:51.300 time marches apace and they so they're they're i think they're they're they're good at the easy

00:25:56.040 stuff right the low-hanging fruit is like oh we're going to go to the g7 and it's not going to be a

00:26:00.440 disaster for once let me ask you about nobody's going to throw starburst starbursts at the other

00:26:05.800 lead you know what i mean but that's a pretty low bar when it comes down to it yeah let me ask you

00:26:09.820 was the trump administration right to ask canada to detain huawei cfo meng wang zu and was canada

00:26:17.340 right to oblige that request and do it getting us in this situation we are in right now with the two

00:26:22.400 michaels yeah i mean my view on that is that the way that yes there it was the i'm not regardless of

00:26:28.700 whether or not it was the uh a justifiable arrest right on the facts right right so you you could

00:26:34.900 look at the pieces of paper and say did they commit these crimes is the indictment valid at a rule of

00:26:40.380 law matter right and and i i'm not a lawyer but it seems to me that as if you just read the indictment

00:26:46.900 that it was a lawful procedure in other words they didn't corrupt that particular doj procedure but

00:26:53.560 that's that's really kind of missing the forest for the trees because as we know it's a really

00:26:58.500 important geopolitical issue and i think they handled it terribly because that if you remember

00:27:02.820 and this is in the book they arrested her on the night that trump was meeting with xi jinping in

00:27:08.100 what buenos aires or asaka i can't remember one of the two and they didn't tell trump and john

00:27:13.120 bolton got the call from the justice department like this is going down tonight and john bolton admits

00:27:17.440 this in his book and he says oh i didn't want to bother trump i didn't want to bother trump

00:27:20.920 so he doesn't tell trump they arrest her then trump has this whole dinner with xi jinping where they're

00:27:26.600 like trying to work out a trade deal and then they tell him afterwards and he's like what what are you

00:27:32.220 talking about you just arrested and like because the person who told him was trying to screw with

00:27:36.320 him they said they convinced her that that they convinced him that she was like the ivanka trump of

00:27:41.360 china which is not which is also a ridiculous thing to say but trump kept repeating it so he kept going

00:27:46.820 around why we arrested the ivanka trump of china what did we do bolton you crazy idiot what did you

00:27:52.060 get us into okay and so that undermined trump's faith in the process and therefore that's why he

00:27:58.240 didn't want to go to bat for canada when canada when the canadian government came back he's like okay

00:28:02.260 well we just did this thing and put ourselves in the soup do you have our backs or not and the trump

00:28:07.520 and president trump didn't care about it because he was you know what i mean because he felt

00:28:11.020 that that he had been like misled and that's the chaos that's what i'm saying is that regardless

00:28:16.520 of the merits of of arresting meng that was a big thing to do to to ask canada to ask our friend to

00:28:23.360 do and they messed it up because they were a dysfunctional mess internally so you know here we

00:28:29.100 are they put can we put canada in this tough spot and then sort of hung him out to dry and you know now

00:28:35.700 and then at the end they tried to make it tried to make a deal it didn't work out whatever

00:28:39.420 and i just think that that's like a good example of a a really important issue that they sort of

00:28:45.660 brought to the fore rightly but mishandled because of their own you know incompetence josh there are a

00:28:51.780 lot of revelations in your book uh particularly pertaining to the white house to the trump

00:28:55.800 administration what were the things that really surprised you the most about what happened behind

00:29:00.040 the scenes between the administration and china you know what surprised me the most was the the

00:29:08.120 the massive influence of people who were not in the government okay these are trump's billionaire

00:29:13.260 friends uh almost all of them i think all of them basically uh we're doing the bidding of the

00:29:19.160 chinese communist party as an official go-betweens between the top top top chinese leadership and

00:29:24.540 it was run often through jared kushner but also uh you know we're talking about adelson and

00:29:30.460 uh stephen schwartzman and larry fink and mnuchin and you know all of these guys big vegas guys all

00:29:37.760 the wall john thornton the the the billionaires the kind of you know the casino guys trump's guys

00:29:42.900 you know and then think about like uh what was the elliot broidy another billionaire who was doing

00:29:47.480 who pleaded guilty to right illegal lobbying on behalf of the ccp and that's just this coterie of

00:29:55.060 billionaires constantly injecting themselves into the u.s china relationship in what i consider to be the

00:29:59.700 most unhelpful ways and trump bought into it because that's how he thought of himself as like

00:30:03.960 an oligarch and that he thought this was like cool and of course the chinese government loved it because

00:30:08.280 they that's how they think you know that's how they think they think everyone we're all just monarchies

00:30:13.420 pretending to be uh democracies and we're all just corrupt families you know taking power from each

00:30:19.260 other you know because that's how it operates inside their system but the way you lay it out then i mean

00:30:23.240 you've got the billionaires who are who are maybe a little too close to china when you mentioned the

00:30:28.160 confucius institutes you're talking about how different universities all across the world we

00:30:31.920 have it here in canada are receiving funding from the chinese communist party you've got state-owned

00:30:36.280 enterprises buying things up we have those challenges those debates here in canada we've got the new

00:30:40.260 institutions like the asian infrastructure investment bank we're having debate about that

00:30:44.620 here in canada whether we should abandon it or not i mean what what is not what roads do not lead

00:30:49.860 back to china right now well that's the point is that you know uh because uh all of our institutions

00:30:56.280 are facing the same uh challenge it seems that we should all get our heads together on this thing

00:31:01.580 and i think the the commonality that we all have and not not all countries but all free and open

00:31:06.640 societies is that you know we don't want a war with china we we don't want a conflict we don't want to

00:31:13.740 decouple we don't want to live in two separate worlds where we can't deal with each other uh and

00:31:18.420 the so we have to find a way to live with china and for china to live with the rest of the world

00:31:23.440 without them using our engagement and our institutions against us without in other words

00:31:28.680 if we can't shape china fine but we can't let them shape us uh otherwise we'll lose the things that we

00:31:34.360 hold dear which are human rights and the role of law and the freedom to say what you want and to love

00:31:38.600 who you want to criticize who you want and to worship who you want and the basic dignity that all humans

00:31:44.420 are entitled to and if we stand for those things then i think those are the things that unite us but we

00:31:50.500 also have to live up to them and you know that so the best way to compete with china is to

00:31:55.140 be the best version of ourselves and to fix our systems and to prove that our model where people

00:32:01.360 are empowered instead of the party where people get to the focus of liberty not and don't have to be

00:32:08.060 chattel of the party state that that system is actually better but it's only better if we can prove

00:32:12.100 that it still works josh rogan before we go you know i hear from a lot of people after they get out of

00:32:16.520 government for your parliamentary term in canada just how quickly those four years can go by one

00:32:21.220 term can i'm sure it's the same whether it's trump administration biden administration or what have

00:32:25.340 you what are the specific action items what what's the top two three whatever it is things that you go

00:32:30.840 this is the stuff that you got to tackle and that the people have got to request the policymakers tackle

00:32:35.820 right off the gate you know i'm just gonna put genocide at the top of that list uh you know i think

00:32:42.900 once we have a world where you know millions of people can be uh herded into concentration camps and

00:32:49.940 you know tens of millions of people can see their identity culture language history and uh and future

00:32:59.940 generations just taken away from them uh with no consequence uh i think that's a a world that

00:33:07.300 it looks a little darker for all of us and i think that that is the model that i fear the most uh it's

00:33:13.300 not just the concentration camps it's the the surveillance and the ai and the you know the

00:33:19.380 living in the open air prison that is xinjiang before you get to the camps and the forced labor

00:33:23.060 that happens after you get out of the camps you know imagine that model exported to three dozen

00:33:28.260 african countries uh who might wish to purchase it imagine concentration camps and forced labor you know just

00:33:34.980 becoming more prevalent than you know people who are able to choose what they want to do for a living

00:33:40.820 and choose who they want to live where they want to live and who they want to marry and that's to me

00:33:45.460 is the most scary so i think that's something that uh uh it doesn't matter what party you're in it doesn't

00:33:50.500 matter what country you're in uh we have to stand against that first of all and that means talking

00:33:55.300 more about it even though it's a difficult and uncomfortable thing to talk about and then

00:33:59.300 you know i just put number two as uh um you know we have to uh understand and build transparency into

00:34:07.380 our system so that we know what we're dealing with when it comes to chinese communist party influence

00:34:11.540 in our societies in other words we don't want to target any one country we just want to know what's

00:34:16.180 going on inside of our system so that means forcing all of our institutions to be more transparent and be

00:34:21.940 more honest and and and if if they want to take you know money from this or that source that's fine but

00:34:29.060 we need to know about it so until we sort of have an understanding that foreign influence especially

00:34:34.260 by a adversary government that which is us harm is something that we need to increase our attention and

00:34:39.860 to then uh the problems will only get worse than not better and then the third thing is i think we

00:34:44.500 have to preserve our our this is a positive note we should preserve our engagement with the chinese

00:34:49.220 people who are not the same thing as the chinese communist party and uh you know uh that engagement

00:34:54.580 provides the crucial crucial uh lifeline between our two societies that could really come in handy

00:35:00.740 uh when if the chips are down powerful words and there's so much more terrain to cover and luckily

00:35:04.660 you've covered it in the book chaos under heaven trump g and the battle for the 21st century josh

00:35:09.780 rogan thanks so much for joining us thank you full comment is a post media podcast i'm anthony fury

00:35:16.500 this episode was produced by andre pru with theme music by bryce hall kevin liban is the executive

00:35:21.620 producer you can subscribe to full comment on apple podcasts google spotify or wherever you get your

00:35:26.500 podcasts you can help us by giving us a rating or a review and by telling your friends about us thanks for

00:35:31.220 listening

Full Comment - May 24, 2021

How China seizes on global ‘chaos’ so it can dominate Canada — and the world.

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