In this week's Friday What's Happening with China episode, we're joined by the crew from China Uncensored and America Uncovered to talk about what's going on in China right now, including the Biden administration, the growing tensions between China and the United States, and the growing threat of war with China.
00:00:40.000yesterday we were talking about something called Strauss how
00:00:54.000generational theory And according to that theory, which was developed some time ago, about 25 years, they say that we are in the fourth season, the winter period, where we'll be entering some kind of crisis.
00:01:06.000On that show, we talked a lot about what that crisis may be, and we should be in the peak of it, so perhaps it's some kind of internal conflict here in the U.S.
00:01:15.000But there's also something called Thucydides Trap, which suggests we may be looking down the barrel of war with China.
00:01:22.000Strauss how generational theory could be predicting that maybe the crisis we face is World War three or some kind of large international conflict and that may be China So one of this we have a bunch of different stories pulled up one of which is about China wants to teach young men masculinity Because they're scared about changing gender roles and it's something very different than what we see here.
00:01:42.000So maybe the crisis we're facing is multifaceted Well, we're gonna talk a lot about China today and what's going on with the Biden administration, what's happening in the South China Sea and Taiwan and Hong Kong, and pineapples apparently getting bought up like crazy because war can be weird.
00:01:58.000And we're joined today by the crew from China Uncensored.
00:02:01.000So why don't you guys just introduce yourselves and let everyone know who you are.
00:02:04.000I'm Chris Chappell, the host of China Uncensored and America Uncovered.
00:02:20.000So we're going to talk just a lot about China, I guess.
00:02:22.000It'll be the Friday What's Happening with China episode, I suppose.
00:02:26.000And I think it's probably important, too.
00:02:28.000I'm glad you guys came because before Joe Biden got elected, there were a lot of questions about what we might see under a Biden presidency with policy towards China.
00:02:36.000And you guys were mentioning that some of the people he had in his transition team were very favorable, friendly towards what China had done, what they would do.
00:02:43.000Probably doesn't sound all that good for us, so we'll get into all this stuff.
00:02:47.000Before we do, however, head over to TimCast.com, become a member, because we've got a ton of exclusive members-only posts.
00:02:53.000When you become a member, you provide that safety net in the event that we get banned, because it's entirely possible we do.
00:02:59.000We got a ton of really awesome guests, though.
00:03:01.000We've got exclusive segments and episodes with people like Ben Stewart, Jack Murphy, Ryan Long, Cassandra Fairbanks.
00:03:06.000We had James O'Keefe, Sidney Watson, and you can even see this one right here.
00:03:26.000And before we started the show, I asked you guys if you knew a lot about the gender role stuff, the culture war stuff.
00:03:33.000And then in the context of China, I think it's really, really fascinating what's happening in Southeast Asia in general.
00:03:40.000Because I think, Shelley, you mentioned like K-pop and stuff and how they're kind of worried about it over there.
00:03:45.000Let me read a little bit from this article from NBC News and then we'll just we'll talk about it.
00:03:49.000NBC reports China proposes teaching masculinity to boys as state is alarmed by changing gender roles.
00:03:55.000Boys in China traditionally are expected to be strong leaders, get good grades and excel at sports, but the gender balance in China is changing.
00:04:03.000They say they start with this like I hate when journalists do this out with a story.
00:04:07.000No one invited Bu Yunhao to be in their group for the annual class trip.
00:04:11.000The other fifth graders at Shanghai Shangdi Experimental School made fun of the 11-year-old, calling him too girly.
00:04:18.000Quote, I wanted to run away right out of the classroom, said Yunhao, now 13 and a first-year middle schooler in Shanghai.
00:04:25.000Some of his classmates made fun of his high-pitched voice and the way he screamed when he tried to maintain discipline among his fellow students as a class monitor.
00:04:32.000Others teased him for spending so much time with the girls and said he acted like he was trying to date the other boys in the class.
00:04:39.000The bullying eventually stopped, but a recent announcement by the government that singles out boys who don't fit traditional Chinese ideas of masculinity has revived the painful memories.
00:04:49.000The plan to, quote, encourage masculinity in male students has inflamed a debate over modern gender roles as China's government increasingly emphasizes what many consider to be outdated and damaging stereotypes for men and boys.
00:05:03.000I think it's interesting because that perspective is wholly American.
00:05:07.000Like, in America, it's very much... I'm reading the story and it's like, if that happened now, there would be a PSA.
00:05:12.000They'd bring in bully experts and then say, no, no, no, it's okay that he's effeminate and things like that.
00:05:17.000But it also reminds me of that commercial that we saw out of China a while ago where they put the black man in the washing machine and he comes out as Chinese.
00:05:24.000People in the United States were outraged.
00:05:31.000I don't know whoever wants to jump in about the gender roles in China and what you guys think is happening.
00:05:36.000Well, one thing that jumps to mind is, you know, back in the Cultural Revolution, it was sort of the opposite, where they were making an effort to, like, completely eliminate any kind of gender.
00:05:45.000Like, the women had to dress in almost, like, military attire, very baggy, had to have short haircuts.
00:05:52.000any kind of display of femininity was not allowed and now...
00:05:58.000similar now I guess right? well I think the women are allowed to be and
00:06:02.000encouraged and that reminds me of the guy who had a was found out to have a hundred
00:06:06.000mistresses I think he wanted he wanted them to be very feminine still. he got
00:06:29.000I don't know where the mistresses are.
00:06:31.000But yeah, Shelley, you made a good point about sort of the influence of South Korea on China.
00:06:36.000Yeah, I think the thing is that with the growing, like, K-pop, K-dramas, like, this whole Korean wave coming, and, like, there has been kind of more, like, the more effeminate kind of male has been, like, the ideal in movies and music and all this stuff, and it's affected China a lot.
00:06:55.000and in response the Chinese Communist Party tried to basically have their own like patriotic boy bands and patriotic they love that word yeah and then it's it didn't quite work well but they're trying to like basically use um like Chinese culture to fight this like incoming Korean like popular culture that they didn't like and then you've also got this so like in Chinese the word for like the type of like effeminate like male like these like really pretty young men is called like small soft meat like small tender meat all right so that's so that's become like super hot and then the Chinese Communist Party is like that's not masculine enough meanwhile the Chinese Communist Party is making movies like Wolf Warrior right like they want like the Chinese Rambo
00:07:45.000I mean, they're communists, and then in the United States, the right criticizes all of this stuff by saying those trying to strip away masculinity are communists, right?
00:07:54.000So we had Jack Murphy on the show recently, and he went on this tirade about Marxism is inherently anti-masculine because they want to get rid of the patriarchy and things like that.
00:08:06.000But how does that make sense that the Communist Party of China wants strong, burly, masculine men, and they're literally the Communist Party?
00:08:14.000It's like, well, there are different different tactics to communism.
00:08:19.000And in a communist country like China, they want a big, fearsome military that intimidates other countries.
00:08:27.000China is definitely gearing up for the day they invade Taiwan.
00:08:31.000They've been very open about wanting to invade Taiwan.
00:08:35.000And so I think this is partially a response to, like, creating an image internationally of, like, this is a fearsome military force that will be able to take Taiwan.
00:08:48.000Don't mess with it in the South China Sea.
00:08:50.000But is this have anything to do with what's happening in the U.S.?
00:08:53.000Are they responding to what's happening here?
00:08:55.000I know you guys mentioned Korea, right?
00:08:57.000Isn't a lot of what happens in Korea related to, you know, they want to sell to America.
00:09:02.000They like the culture that America exports.
00:09:04.000They try to adopt certain things like that.
00:09:06.000Like boy bands weren't invented in Korea.
00:09:09.000Yeah, they... I don't know if they were invented here in America, mind you.
00:09:14.000They definitely were obviously inspired by the American music industry, but I think they've been fairly unsuccessful at really penetrating the U.S.
00:09:23.000market outside of, like, BTS or, like, Gangnam Style, which was... But Psy isn't, like, a real... He's not the typical.
00:10:24.000Like, they want to use, you know, soft power to project, like, the way that, you know, American Blue Jeans or... I brought up Rambo, right?
00:10:42.000masculinity that that kind of like power like that appeals to the Communist Party because that seems like it's like oh then you have the power to like Wolf Warrior was about you know these Chinese soldiers who went to rescue Chinese citizens who were you know in Africa right so like they were you know the whole idea was like the motherland will never leave you behind like it was this like whole like very patriotic yeah it's like 80s yeah yeah And the whole idea, like, the Communist Party uses the propaganda of the century of humiliation constantly.
00:11:15.000The idea that, you know, foreign forces have humiliated the West, and so China needs to be strong.
00:11:20.000We need to be strong and fight against the hostile foreign forces.
00:11:25.000What do you think the sentiment among the Chinese people is, though?
00:11:29.000I mean, it doesn't really sound like the Communist Party is communist.
00:12:13.000What we see in China is there's a lot of capitalism going on in the sense you have a lot of private industry now and you have in the last 40 plus years since the reform and opening up started in 1978.
00:12:29.000But the reason China is still completely a communist country is number one, the Communist Party actually controls all those private industries.
00:12:39.000So you've got, you know, Alibaba, Any company has to have a Communist Party branch in the company that's even funded by a company, and they're involved in big decisions that are happening in the company.
00:12:57.000In fact, even foreign companies that go into China, like McDonald's, IKEA, they all have party cells in the country by law.
00:13:04.000They have to have party cells in the company.
00:13:07.000And so there's that control of private industry.
00:13:09.000On top of that, you've got some of the biggest industries in China that are directly state-owned enterprises.
00:13:15.000Steel, coal, telecommunications, some of the construction.
00:13:24.000And then on top of that, you've got the sort of communist legal system, which is that they don't have the kind of legal system we think of here.
00:13:33.000You've got obviously the rubber stamp Congress.
00:13:36.000But you also have the way that they rule is not through rule of law.
00:13:41.000They rule through these mass political campaigns, which is a whole other topic.
00:13:48.000But simply put, Xi Jinping will say something like, we need to improve the quality of public
00:15:06.000I don't, I don't think that, like, but like, there is, like, there is this, you know, this whole populism versus the elites thing that's happening basically all around the world.
00:15:17.000In China, the Communist Party is like uniquely positioned to take advantage of it because they're a Communist Party.
00:15:22.000So they already say, you know, it's the people's this, the people's that.
00:15:26.000But Xi Jinping has specifically made an attempt to be a populist leader within the Communist Party even.
00:15:33.000So, he'll do things like his anti-corruption campaign, which was really about, kind of, getting rid of his political enemies, but a lot of it was positioned as, like, we're getting rid of, like, the excessive, like, elite communist members who are just, you know, wasting money and drinking and having mistresses and this kind of stuff.
00:15:54.000And then he'll be photographed, you know, eating steamed buns at, like, an ordinary restaurant with the common people or, like, He's a guy you could have a baijiu with.
00:16:06.000Yeah, he's a guy you could eat a steamed bun with.
00:16:09.000It's very Maoist in that way, where it's man-of-the-people type of propaganda.
00:16:13.000So he's making a specific play to become the populist leader, I think probably partly because of the power struggle that's going on within the party.
00:16:21.000So he kind of understands that he needs to have the ordinary people on his side, quote-unquote.
00:16:29.000That's what drove the Cultural Revolution.
00:16:43.000Do regular people in China like, generally speaking, the Communist Party or Xi Jinping?
00:16:47.000Well, they'll certainly say so publicly.
00:16:49.000It's hard to really know what the opinion is because there is no forum that they can really... Actually, Clubhouse was kind of an interesting example of Maybe some signs of dissent.
00:18:02.000And I think that's a lot of times because you have a very small subset of people that end up
00:18:07.000making it to the United States. And the reason they got their wealth so they could come here
00:18:12.000is actually because they had connections within the party.
00:18:16.000And many of them were party members And so you've got like a very small and non-representative subset of wealthy or influential overseas Chinese who are saying, we like the Communist Party.
00:18:30.000Well, they say, oh, maybe there's a few issues, but basically it's been really good for China.
00:18:34.000You're talking about the people who have come here within the last like 10 years.
00:18:39.000And so but then you have like if what you're really talking about is the other 1.3 billion Chinese people, you may have a very different perspective.
00:18:46.000And I remember, Shelley, when you were talking with blind Chinese rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng about what was on the ground in China.
00:18:54.000And he talked about how, you know, many people are very fed up with the Chinese Communist Party.
00:19:07.000Yeah, so it's not a joke that people are seriously getting in trouble for what they say online.
00:19:14.000Yeah, well it's happening here now, just in different ways.
00:19:17.000I think it's interesting how we've basically just outsourced censorship very different from what they do.
00:19:22.000I mean, for them it's the Communist Party that dictates the censorship, right?
00:19:25.000Here it's just, oh, we can't interfere with what the monopoly wants.
00:19:30.000So now you look at how all the conversations here are being controlled.
00:19:34.000It seems like there are parallels, not completely identical, but still similarities where people are getting, you know, it's getting worse and worse here.
00:19:53.000If we give all the power to the government, you'll end up with a similar problem.
00:19:56.000However, we have a Bill of Rights in this country, so there's at least that to protect us in the event that in the U.S.
00:20:01.000we say, okay, we're going to nationalize or regulate these companies.
00:20:05.000But you'll still run the risk, no matter what the supreme power is, the centralized, unified authority, no matter what it is, it's going to tell you, you can't do things it doesn't like.
00:20:15.000Well, I mean, the foundation of the United States is the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely, so it's a system in place to prevent the elite from getting too much power, because what always happens is the people who become elite think they should have more power, and have a general disdain for all of us other schlubs.
00:20:51.000Yeah, well, to a certain extent, I mean, the Communist Party is just the elite.
00:20:57.000The people who choose to join it, they're doing so because they know they will get the elite ranks, the privilege, the access.
00:21:03.000They use the same line that communism has used all along, that there's class struggle, the world would be a better place if there weren't this group oppressing everyone else.
00:21:13.000And so they are the people and then they kill everyone.
00:21:18.000Well they kill the bad people and then take over and then obviously since they're the good guys they can do whatever they want.
00:21:27.000And it's hard when you get into power on the premise that you're fighting those in power because then you don't want people to fight the power when you become the power.
00:21:40.000Well, then they just have to come up with a group to target, right?
00:21:57.000And there was the Tibetans, which they've been targeting for a long time.
00:22:00.000And now that they've run out of the Falun Gong organs, they go to the Uyghur.
00:22:04.000I mean, and actually, you know, we had a guest on our show talking about how, like, there's not a lot of Falun Gong practitioners in China anymore of a certain age group because so many of them have been killed for their organs.
00:24:14.000Hospitals need to make their own money.
00:24:15.000And one of the key ways they do that is through transplants.
00:24:19.000So whenever we hear this argument that, you know, the United States is one of, like, three countries without universal health care or something, China actually doesn't provide that kind of coverage for people?
00:24:32.000But the problem is that, like, Like, you can go to a hospital and that'll be provided, but you'll still have to pay for your own food in the hospital.
00:24:41.000You have to pay for your own nurses in the hospital.
00:24:44.000There's a lot of things about that system that don't work.
00:24:46.000You have to buy your own medicine still.
00:24:47.000It also depends on who you are and where you are.
00:24:50.000And what kind of publicity there is going on.
00:24:52.000Like, during COVID, there was a lot of, the country is paying for the medical care of these people who are getting the coronavirus.
00:25:55.000You see that China did ramp up the construction of specialty hospitals designed specifically for organ transplants.
00:26:02.000And this is at a time when there is no organ donation system.
00:26:06.000Yeah, for a lot of cultural reasons and whatever, maybe all across China a few hundred people or at most a couple thousand people are volunteers, organ donors.
00:26:18.000And their system isn't even really functional in most parts of China.
00:26:21.000So the vast majority of organ transplants are from non-voluntary donors.
00:26:27.000And they're not even executing enough convicted criminals to account for the tens of thousands of transplants that are happening every year.
00:26:37.000And so these organs have to come from somewhere.
00:26:39.000And the reality is, almost certainly, that they're coming from one or more repressed groups.
00:28:47.000I wonder, you know, I'm not a Muslim, but I wonder what the actual scripture says or the teachings would say about being a Muslim and then going and then having a country that is subjugating Muslims.
00:28:58.000Taking their organs and then you as a Muslim are like, I'll take that organ.
00:29:02.000I can't imagine that's Right in like in their religion, you know what I mean?
00:29:07.000Yeah, but people within the same religions have been killing each other for centuries So, I mean there's always that but I think that the that the people who are going to get the organs I think they typically aren't thinking about the source.
00:29:19.000They don't want to think about the source and no one is Yeah.
00:29:26.000them think about the source. And so it's just like, oh, I'm just going and getting a transplant.
00:29:31.000And that's from a voluntary donor. That is what they will be told. Yeah, they will be
00:29:35.000told it and like, and they might have their heart missions, but they don't want to think
00:29:39.000you don't want to let your mind go down that path. Yeah, right.
00:29:42.000I guess when people are faced with death in an organ, they'll believe whatever they have to believe to justify their existence.
00:29:47.000I mean, but like, also the Western, you know, medical system is supporting this.
00:29:53.000And they don't have the excuse of the fact that they're facing life and death.
00:29:56.000Because the transplantation society has willfully not looked into this and have been like, Uh, like, we don't see anything wrong happening in China, and, you know, there's been a lot of brouhaha over China's done a lot of cutting-edge organ transplants, like... Cutting-edge.
00:30:21.000A lot of the new drugs that are coming out that make taking organs out of people easier, letting the organs survive longer outside the body.
00:30:31.000These things are all coming from China in the last decade or so, and it's because they're doing all of these transplants.
00:30:39.000It's like a society that doesn't care at all about the individual.
00:30:47.000Yeah, and unfortunately, China is trying to draw medical and scientific talent from around the world
00:30:54.000because they have access to a lot of funding, state-backed funding,
00:30:59.000and there's often not the kind of moral restrictions holding them back.
00:31:03.000Like, in the U.S., for better or for worse, you have all kinds of restrictions.
00:31:08.000Like, stem cell research is a huge issue.
00:31:11.000None of those kind of moral dilemmas ever hold back the Chinese Communist Party.
00:31:14.000So, like Shelley was saying, they're able to make these breakthroughs in organ transplant technology because They have willing live test experiment.
00:32:05.000I like I have no specific There are some countries that have outlawed organ tourism to China because like Israel was one of the first countries to do it actually South Korea has now Taiwan has I think these are there was a lot of tourism coming from like South Korea and Taiwan You know, Asia.
00:32:23.000So like when, but once like this started to become known and then like doctors in those regions started speaking up and being like, we should not do this.
00:32:34.000Uh, but like, it's still a very under the radar issue in general.
00:32:39.000Has the world always been this way, or are we just in every possible conceivable iteration of a dystopian nightmare?
00:32:46.000Book burning, censorship, zealotry, communism, organ harvesting, organ tourism.
00:32:52.000It's like all of these stories, not just here in the US, but around the world, and it's like... It's like every single nightmarish dystopian novel has come into existence at the exact same time, or around the same time.
00:33:31.000That's the crazy thing, too, about, like, in the U.S., not to derail too much off of China's internal problems, but, you know, they claimed Trump was demonizing migrants and Muslims.
00:33:41.000Well, they were demonizing American citizens.
00:33:44.000You know, so we do see, regardless of which faction is trying to gain power, demagoguery and attacking a specific group seems to be the strong path to power.
00:33:55.000Since you mentioned that, like, Xi Jinping recently said the U.S.
00:33:59.000is the biggest threat to China's development, and imagine if Biden said that about China, or any U.S.
00:36:47.000migrant crisis that's happening right now, and I'm not assuming you guys know a lot about it, but Joe Biden is getting a lot of criticism from the left and the right.
00:36:54.000It's typically being seen as a dramatic failure by both political parties.
00:36:58.000Obviously, there are establishment Democrats who are supportive of Joe Biden, Republican party, Trump populist types, they're super critical, and left populists are looking at Joe Biden as though he's failing miserably in this regard because he's not really getting anything done.
00:37:11.000He's not helping the migrants in a capacity where they'll be able to come in here and get healthcare and get access.
00:37:16.000Well, they're kind of coming in and being released.
00:37:29.000We understand the arguments made around it.
00:37:31.000Is that a sign of Joe Biden's leadership on other issues as well, which may reflect on what could happen with China?
00:37:37.000Well, I think from things that have been said, and again, this is things that have been said and not done, they talk about diplomacy cooperating with China.
00:37:46.000China might be a rival or a competitor, but we need to cooperate with them on climate change etc etc but the fundamental issue is when you look at the Chinese Communist Party as a regime that is committing genocide and that as we can see in the case of Hong Kong lies about any promise it makes how can you cooperate how can you be diplomatic
00:38:10.000with this kind of monstrous authoritarian regime.
00:38:12.000So it blows the fundamental premise of what he's said out of the water.
00:38:16.000I think the danger for the US and the Biden administration here is that
00:38:19.000they are going to want to differentiate themselves so much from the Trump administration
00:38:26.000that they have to be like, well, we are going to be diplomats.
00:38:31.000We're going to talk about cooperation.
00:38:32.000This whole line about China being a rival, but we have to still cooperate on shared goals is one that's consistently been said by like every Biden nominee that's gone up in front of like Senate hearings or whatever.
00:38:43.000So you have to say this is the line from the Biden administration.
00:38:47.000The problem is that's not what the Chinese Communist Party means by cooperate.
00:38:51.000The word in Chinese, it just kind of means like exchange in any way.
00:38:55.000So it could be just like, you know, the cooperation doesn't, it doesn't mean like we're going to both work together on climate change.
00:39:01.000It means if you want me to do something about climate change, uh, yeah.
00:39:24.000As they're building more coal-fired power plants.
00:39:28.000We've seen challenges with cooperating with the Chinese Communist Party in the past.
00:39:32.000If you look at the George W. Bush administration, they initially took a tough stance on the Communist Party, but after 9-11, They're like, well, we have to work with the Communist Party on fighting the biggest threat, which at the time was terrorism.
00:39:47.000And so the idea is we're going to work with China to fight global terrorism.
00:41:23.000You know, I think we're in a propaganda war, an information war, an economic war, and we are... I don't think the physical confrontation matters as much.
00:41:33.000If it comes to a point where Taiwan knows the U.S.
00:41:35.000has become too weak to actually defend it, and their option is allow China to come in or die, I mean, I feel like they might just be like, well, we've got no defense anymore, we've got no leverage, that's it, we're China now.
00:41:46.000It's hard to say because they know what it would mean for Taiwan is they become the next Hong Kong.
00:41:52.000And Hong Kong is looking more and more a little less like Shanghai and a little more like Xinjiang.
00:41:58.000That was a point you made the other day where it's very... What does that mean?
00:42:02.000It means like it's basically like when the Chinese Communist Party is turning Hong Kong into another Chinese
00:43:00.000So really what happens in Taiwan will determine whatever happens with the next But I mean, you look at these American companies, that's why I say it.
00:43:11.000Was it LeBron James, who came out and defended China?
00:43:15.000And then you had, was it Steve Kerr, I think it was?
00:43:18.000Well, we don't talk about Black Lives Matter, or they don't talk about Black Lives Matter, so we're not going to talk about what's going on over there.
00:43:26.000And the NBA has a training camp in Xinjiang, and Disney thanked Yeah, we talked about that.
00:43:31.000All these industries, they make so much more money there.
00:43:34.000You gotta look at who owns these big companies and their access to wealth.
00:43:38.000American companies, I shouldn't even call them American companies necessarily, they're multinational corporations at this point, and the people in charge of them are like, I'm rich, I can do whatever I want and no one will stop me, why would I care about anybody else?
00:43:52.000I mean, BlackRock has this whole webpage about unleashing the potential of Chinese bonds.
00:44:50.000My understanding is that the goal of the European Union was to compete with China because they saw how quickly it was rising and they needed some kind of united force.
00:45:02.000And that has to do with the manufacturing and corporate power of Germany in particular being very interested in developing relationships with China.
00:45:13.000Angela Merkel has been very supportive of that.
00:45:17.000Volkswagen went into China in like 1978 or 79.
00:45:20.000It's like the first Western company to go into China.
00:45:25.000Well, all of these companies that go into China, they create a Chinese Communist division within the company for the Communist Party.
00:45:31.000So if you have 50 or more employees, then you're required by Chinese law to have a party branch within your company.
00:45:38.000And this applies not just to Chinese companies, but also to foreign companies.
00:45:41.000Foreign companies also have to work with a Chinese company, by law.
00:45:44.000Yeah, so they need a partner, and until recently it had to be a majority partner, 51% majority.
00:45:52.000And so essentially the foreign company can operate, but there are certain things that they can and can't do according to the party whims, and the party is in there with every major decision.
00:46:04.000McDonald's having a party branch in China, it's hard to understand what that would really mean.
00:46:11.000But when it comes to Volkswagen, their party branch is going to help arrange things like cheap labor, for example.
00:46:19.000Or Nike will have a party branch, and maybe there's certain political things that Nike can't say, and there's also possibly the help that they give.
00:46:27.000You get very cheap labor from Uyghurs who don't have much choice.
00:46:32.000Well, this is why Nike was fighting against a forced labor bill that would have potentially gotten them in trouble for using forced labor in Xinjiang.
00:46:41.000Not that they were directly using it, but because of the web of how many of like, you know, you source something from this person who sorts something from this company down the line, and then somewhere along the line, there's Uyghur slave labor.
00:46:52.000I mean, it was so easy and cheap, so they decided to just do it.
00:47:14.000Versus just, like, well, like, so the issue with Falun Gong was they were just anybody.
00:47:19.000They were just people who did Qigong practice, and so they blended in, they weren't, like, in one location, so you couldn't, like, see, like, oh, this is the specific concentration camp where they're putting them.
00:47:44.000There has been, you know, we all know the Trump administration was a bit controversial.
00:47:51.000China was one of the few bipartisan issues.
00:47:55.000I would imagine the Biden administration said it's reviewing the Trump administration designation of what's happening to the Uyghurs as genocide.
00:48:03.000I can't imagine it would be politically feasible for Biden to come out and say, well, you know, maybe it isn't genocide.
00:48:30.000Because it's just like how the Canadian parliament recently voted that it was genocide.
00:48:35.000But Trudeau and his entire cabinet basically just didn't show up for the vote.
00:48:41.000Because they were like, the government abstains.
00:48:45.000I can actually understand and respect why Joe Biden would not do that.
00:48:50.000Because he needs to go in and be able to have some kind of relationship to actually have influence in a certain capacity.
00:48:56.000However, while I can understand that, and the same is true for Trump, when he would go and negotiate, like, why is he talking to Kim Jong-un or whatever?
00:49:01.000Like, what is he gonna do, throw a bomb first?
00:49:06.000At a certain point, there's a line, we gotta figure out how we stop these things.
00:49:08.000I mean, the gulags in North Korea are nightmarish, and the genocide and the concentration camps in China are probably the worst possible thing we could imagine existing, in terms of what a human could do to another human.
00:50:12.000Well, I think with the genocide, this is why genocide is such a touchy issue.
00:50:16.000It's if Western democracies, and now the Dutch parliament has come out and also called it a genocide, if they actually start using the word genocide, then it becomes a lot harder for not just like leaders of countries to just act like China's normal country, but also, you know, Wall Street for businesses, because really the thing that we can do to stop China is to cut off the money.
00:50:59.000it has to be like when we were talking about how people now see more and more people see China's enemy or
00:51:06.000Like like some kind of threat like it has to be people who it has to be so bad for these companies in the u.s
00:51:13.000to not cut off that source of money in China or whatever that they are willing to do it like If the alternative is that they really, like, with Google and Dragonfly, like, it's such a bad thing for them that they actually have to stop, like, that's where we have to go.
00:51:38.000And I wish employees at Nike and the NBA would... I mean, if you had, you know, if you had a bunch of NBA stars, like real stars, who said, you know, we got to condemn what's happening there, then there'd be enough public pressure that there couldn't be much the NBA would do.
00:51:55.000LeBron James needs to call out genocide.
00:53:01.000So to the degree that you can cut off the foreign company or American company interaction with China, That's the degree to which we're going to be able to rein in that authoritarian power.
00:53:16.000But it's clear that even the Trump administration, which seemed to really want to do it, was unable to achieve a whole lot with that.
00:53:27.000Well, it's going to take a lot, a lot more Google dragonfly situations where people working here who have that power as employees, empower citizens and as media to say, we're not going to tolerate our companies working with a genocide dictatorship.
00:53:44.000Also, you know, consumers not buying products made in China.
00:53:52.000government could do was what the Trump administration started doing, like actually putting Chinese companies that work with the Chinese military on entity lists, like blacklisting them.
00:54:01.000Getting them delisted from the stock exchanges.
00:54:03.000Yeah, so soon there are going to be a bunch of big Chinese companies that can't trade on Wall Street anymore.
00:54:08.000But is Joe Biden going to keep those policies going?
00:54:12.000I kind of feel like he wouldn't do that.
00:54:16.000Like you mentioned before, you know, he's going to try and differentiate himself from the Trump administration.
00:54:21.000So already, you know, we had this, uh, this Trump put in this executive order about keeping China out, Chinese made, you know, equipment out of the U.S.
00:54:45.000I think it's a little unclear what happened.
00:54:47.000And like, he could potentially be using that for his advantage.
00:54:50.000But there was sort of a blanket freeze on a lot of last minute policies by Trump, which I think is in general pretty common for an incoming president to do.
00:55:02.000And the issue is with Biden, like, so that could be... I'm so fine.
00:55:08.000The issue with the Biden administration is it comes under this cloud of Uh, Biden personally and a lot of the people he's appointed to his cabinet, their past failures with China policy, uh, scandals like Hunter Biden, putting this cloud over Biden.
00:55:24.000It gives him the appearance of like, you should not be questioning if the U S president is really going to condemn genocide.
00:55:33.000And the other thing, too, is I think it's fascinating how they say that, you know, Donald Trump was the Manchurian candidate for Russia or whatever, that he was a Russian asset, he was a puppet or, you know, and all that stuff.
00:55:43.000And now we actually have this circumstance where, you know, we're six weeks out and Joe Biden has not given an address to a joint session of Congress.
00:55:52.000You'd have to go back to Jimmy Carter in 1977 for the last time it took this long.
00:55:56.000Now, he was into April, so maybe Joe Biden will still beat Jimmy Carter and give some kind of speech, but he's not given a press conference in the entirety of his six weeks.
00:56:06.000So, already things seem to be a bit unprecedented.
00:56:09.000And then we had that scenario where he was talking to the Democratic caucus, and then he says, I'll take questions, and the camera shuts off.
00:56:52.000What's going on to where the President of the United States isn't doing press conferences, isn't giving an address to the Joint Session of Congress, and then he can't even answer questions on a live stream?
00:57:03.000And then you tie that into the Hunter Biden stuff.
00:57:06.000Flying his son in Air Force Two to China for that private equity deal.
00:57:10.000And then, am I supposed to trust this president has our best interest at heart as we're entering either the Strauss-Howe generational theory winter, or Thucydides' trap?
00:57:22.000There's academics who are telling us, we're in for some serious trouble, and we're looking at genocide, and we're looking at organ harvesting, and we're looking at Hong Kong falling, now we're looking at Taiwan.
00:57:32.000It looks like China is getting away with every single thing they've done wrong, and we're doing nothing about it, but say what?
00:57:49.000They turned that completely around, and now they are using that as propaganda for how well that their system is doing compared to everybody else.
00:57:58.000And I think that, like, the one thing, the Biden administration recently came out with their interim national security policy.
00:58:05.000And reading that, I was actually pretty worried about how they were going to, like, deal with China because it seemed to kind of revert back to, like, an Obama administration era of, like, the whole thing that we were talking about before about, like, we need to cooperate still.
00:58:19.000The Trump administration specifically, in their national security policy, called out the Chinese Communist Party and said, you know, it's a Marxist-Leninist organization, said, we are going to treat this the way that the Chinese Communist Party treats this, which is, they said that they are in a great power competition with the U.S.
00:58:36.000So fine, we acknowledge that, you know, China says that we're in a great power competition with them.
00:58:41.000And the Biden administration seems to have gone back to that like, oh, you know, we disagree, we're economic rivals, we're competitors, but we can work together on some things.
00:58:51.000And then the other part of the national security policy that I found kind of a little bit alarming is the fact that they seem to want to blur the line between foreign policy and domestic policy.
00:59:00.000Like, there's a specific part where they talk about how, you know, we can't just have foreign policy and domestic policy be separate.
00:59:07.000We have to, you know, if we really want to have effective foreign policy, we have to fix our own internal problems.
00:59:12.000So then that brought up, like, systemic racism and equity and all this stuff.
00:59:16.000So it seems like if that's what they want to focus on, they're going to be too focused on, like, internal things and this ideological battle and not focused enough on the genuine threat that the Chinese Communist Party is.
00:59:29.000Which is strange because the executive branch, their main thing is to deal with foreign policy.
00:59:35.000Domestic policy is supposed to be the legislative.
01:00:00.000And we just keep, you know, doting along, accepting it.
01:00:04.000I will say, I posted a meme, though, that made everybody angry.
01:00:08.000It was on, I think it was the 20th, I said, the peaceful transition of power from the previous administration to the new administration is complete.
01:00:14.000And it was a picture of Vladimir Putin and then Xi Jinping.
01:01:03.000So I wonder, you know, to what extent China is influencing our social media and manipulating us much the way they accused the Russians of doing it.
01:01:12.000I don't know if you guys have seen anything that would suggest those kind of operations.
01:01:15.000I think it's a little different, actually.
01:01:17.000What China's really been manipulating very successfully is American elites.
01:01:22.000And it's almost like they don't have to do the kind of awkward, like, Twitter thing, right?
01:01:26.000Where they're, like, having dummy accounts on Twitter and trying to influence people on Facebook.
01:01:30.000Like, the Chinese Communist Party is much better at this than Russia.
01:02:06.000So that's kind of what I feel like when I see these like high rank, you know, these like, you know, officials in the Communist Party or like Chinese government officials, blue checkmark on Twitter, tweeting some ridiculous, absurd conspiracy theory about the election or the president.
01:03:16.000The overall idea is like, you know, Tim, you talk about the overt stuff, the superliminal we're seeing on Twitter, which is the propaganda from the Chinese foreign minister.
01:03:26.000But the real way that we're seeing that influence is actually through what's called elite capture.
01:03:32.000which is the Chinese Communist Party convincing influential people around the world,
01:03:38.000including American politicians, American business leaders, American academics, and journalists.
01:03:45.000These are the thought leaders in American society, and the Communist Party is influencing them.
01:03:51.000And now these groups, the politicians, the business leaders, the media,
01:03:58.000are all the cheerleaders for the Communist Party.
01:04:02.000And it may not be so obvious that they're saying, rah, rah, rah, communism, because they're not saying it that way.
01:04:08.000What they're saying is like, well, look at, you know, China's lifted millions of people out of poverty.
01:04:14.000China is a competitor, but we need to work with them.
01:04:18.000And they've gotten people to parrot these lines, which on the surface seem reasonable, but actually they're exactly what the Communist Party wants.
01:04:27.000And they do that through a variety of influence campaigns to get these people on their side.
01:04:32.000The challenge is, like, when we hear, you know, whether it's, you know, Bernie Sanders saying, oh, we know, but, you know, China, I don't like authoritarianism, but China has lifted 700 million people out of poverty, right?
01:04:48.000It's that's the propaganda line that's making you think well maybe they do have some elements to their system that work is look how many people they've lifted out of poverty and it is true that since 1978 hundreds of millions of people in China have gotten out of poverty. But it's not the Communist Party
01:05:06.000that lifted them out of poverty. It was the Communist Party that put them in poverty in the first place.
01:05:12.000But then how did they get out of poverty? It wasn't government policy. It was actually the
01:05:17.000reform and opening up. The Geiger Keifung started by Deng Xiaoping in 78. And these policies
01:05:23.000gradually took the boot off of people's necks so that they could have businesses and start their
01:05:29.000own enterprises in the free market. And people lifted themselves out of poverty. And for investment.
01:05:35.000It's kind of like when it's, you know, in the summer and it's really hot and you're really sweaty.
01:05:39.000So you go under the blanket for a few seconds and then you get really hot.
01:05:42.000When you take the blanket off, it feels really cool and refreshing for a little bit.
01:05:46.000So maybe what we should do in the US is have this extended lockdown where we destroy everyone's business for maybe a year.
01:05:54.000And then after about, you know, two years, because, you know, Biden's saying next year is normal, then we can be like, look at all of the people the Biden administration has lifted out of poverty.
01:06:07.000Which, I mean, they came in real quick to save those folks.
01:06:10.000And, you know, I mean, I'm not saying there's anything, you know, necessarily wrong about trying to keep the stock market from having a complete crash.
01:06:18.000But definitely there are some shortcomings in terms of the overall response.
01:06:25.000But anyway, to get to the point about, like, you've got the Communist Party getting people to repeat these lines.
01:06:33.000But the problem is, you know, when you hear this, you know, lifting millions of people out of poverty, you also have to realize that China now says, for example, You know, being out of poverty is a human right, right?
01:06:52.000And so a lot of people on the surface, they think, oh, well, like, yeah, like, like, it's so bad to be in this abject poverty.
01:06:58.000Like, maybe, maybe it is a human right to have money.
01:07:01.000And, you know, you can agree or disagree on that, but that's not the point.
01:07:05.000The point is that now, you know, you've added, the Communist Party has added economic prosperity as a human right.
01:07:14.000And they've gotten a lot of people to kind of go along with it.
01:07:16.000But what you're not seeing is that they haven't just added on to the meaning of human rights, they've actually changed the meaning.
01:07:24.000China is using that instead of giving people the human rights that we consider human rights, the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
01:07:33.000You don't have the right to life when you can be sent to a concentration camp or killed for your organs.
01:07:39.000Or welded into your apartment so you can die.
01:07:45.000The fact that that's happening in China as part of their COVID response shows a complete disregard for human rights, a complete disregard for individual liberties.
01:08:05.000The giant bar they like wedge between the door and the wall so the door can't be opened.
01:08:09.000There's one of like a woman being dragged into like this box on a pickup truck screaming the whole time.
01:08:14.000Yeah, well I think the other thing with the elite capture is like, one thing that it's important to notice, and I think we'll see more and more of this, is you'll see people saying we need to re-engage with China.
01:08:28.000There was a Foreign Affairs magazine article by this guy named Ryan Haas that was basically saying, you know, China alarmism doesn't help anyone.
01:08:38.000Yeah, like, yeah, this whole idea that, like, oh, we can't, you know, Mark Cuban, definitely the whole, like, China's a customer, so we can't really criticize, I don't want to criticize them because they're a customer.
01:08:46.000But, like, this whole idea that, like, we need to, like, re-engage, like, oh, the Trump administration was wrong to, like, you know, they made the conflict worse when really it was really the Chinese Communist Party.
01:08:58.000But the whole idea is that we need to now Like, we need to soften our stance on China.
01:09:03.000The Communist Party is not so bad, you know?
01:09:05.000Yeah, I mean, it's just a little genocide.
01:09:07.000You want to talk about that atrocious Economist article?
01:09:11.000Oh yeah, there was an article in the Economist after the whole genocide thing with the Trump administration, and they said, okay, the Canadian parliament was voting that it was genocide, and the Economist ran this article basically being like, Is it really genocide, though?
01:09:27.000Because, you know, when people, even though the UN definition of genocide includes trying to eliminate a people, including by preventing births and sterilization and things that are happening to the Uyghurs in China, like, that is part of the UN Convention on Genocide.
01:09:47.000The Congress was like, but most people think of genocide as being mass murder.
01:09:51.000So if it's not to that point yet and we use the word genocide, aren't we kind of You know, isn't that worse for, you know, future genocides that, like, we've now cheapened the word genocide?
01:10:01.000Well, specifically said, they're not slaughtering them as they're being butchered for their organs.
01:10:05.000Well, no, the organ harvesting is just win-win mutual cooperation, cooperation on the Communist Party's terms between the Uyghurs and the organ recipients.
01:10:15.000Yes, there's an exchange going on, so it's cooperation.
01:10:19.000As long as two parties are willing in this, it doesn't matter if someone else isn't.
01:10:24.000I mean, it's a democracy, so it's for the good of the majority.
01:10:27.000Yes, what do they say, the people's democratic dictatorship?
01:10:31.000Well, if they don't view the Uyghurs as people, then there's no, as humans, there's no human rights violation, right?
01:10:36.000Oh no, the 56 ethnic minorities of China are very happy.
01:10:41.000Every year they have a wonderful New Year's show where they bring them all out and have a little dance number.
01:10:46.000Or they'll give the BBC a guided tour of these alleged concentration camps.
01:10:50.000And they're singing and getting job skills.
01:10:54.000And they're dancing for the camera with bruises over their eyes.
01:10:59.000But it's very hard for foreigners to see what's actually happening in China.
01:11:03.000I think you have to break it down, yeah.
01:11:06.000You just don't get access as a foreigner.
01:11:09.000The last time I was in Mainland, which was more than 15 years ago, it wasn't even so closed off.
01:11:18.000But at the time, they wanted foreigners to be in certain parts of the big cities.
01:11:24.000And they wanted you to be on tours, and they didn't want you to go outside of that.
01:11:29.000And if you did go outside of that, the authorities might try to get you to go back to your hotel.
01:11:40.000They keep journalists out of going to villages where controversial things are going on.
01:11:46.000Essentially, a foreign reporter can't possibly get into Tibet or Xinjiang anymore.
01:11:53.000The people who are going to China, the politicians, the business people, the academics, they're going to the cities, they're getting on these high-speed rails, they're staying in the five-star hotels, they're eating at nice restaurants, and this is the part of China they see, and so they have a very skewed view of what China is.
01:12:14.000OK, well, so here's a bit of optimism for you.
01:12:50.000People are talking about the Chinese Communist Party in a way they were not even eight years ago, even five years ago.
01:12:56.000It's interesting, the president thing, because I have had multiple conversations with friends of mine who were like, didn't know that China didn't have democracy because he's called President Xi Jinping, even though the word in Chinese is not president, it is chairman.
01:13:25.000Because they started translate in the 80s.
01:13:27.000They started translating president that Zhu Xi, which is chairman as president, like officially the official translation in China, in China.
01:13:41.000Another example, I want you to tell the story about the struggle, Xi Jinping and the struggle.
01:13:49.000Yeah, so Xi Jinping recently gave a speech to young Chinese Communist Party members where he told them, you know, you know, you have to like really believe in the party and carry on the strong traditions and spirit of the party.
01:14:02.000And the Chinese language, in the English state-run media reports, it was like, oh yeah, and he was inspiring them to talk about, you know, how great the party is and serve the people.
01:14:11.000In Chinese, there was a, like the term that they, he kept bringing up was the term struggle, which is douzheng, which is a Marxist-Leninist, like Chinese Communist Party idea of using the dialectic, right?
01:14:22.000Like two opposing sides, and then they have to struggle, and like one has to win against.
01:14:27.000So it's like oppressed versus oppressor.
01:14:29.000Or, you know, proletariat versus bourgeoisie, whatever.
01:14:32.000So it's like in China, like the Chinese Communist Party will have, you know, in the Cultural Revolution, you had to dojeng against the counter-revolutionaries, like this idea of struggling against an opposing side.
01:14:45.000So in Chinese, Xi Jinping said struggle.
01:14:49.000The whole time during the thing like we have to young Communist Party members must remember this to struggle the Communist Party is like tradition of struggle all this stuff completely wiped out in English because they don't want to make the Communist Party look like that.
01:15:03.000So we look back at history and we know the Cultural Revolution was horrifying.
01:15:16.000Was the government horrible to its people?
01:15:18.000Well, people kind of mistakenly talk about Chinese history like it was its monolithic thing, when in fact it was very diverse over thousands of years and there were definitely times where
01:15:34.000the Sahajid was more prosperous and stable, there was times it was more oppressive.
01:15:39.000Like even like we started talking about like the masculinity thing and like in a lot of
01:15:44.000articles I was reading about that the sort of Western take on that was well you know
01:15:48.000in China they believe that you know yang masculine is strong and you know yin is weak and women
01:15:56.000again, as women and should be weak and submissive.
01:16:43.000This year marks a hundred years since the formation of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, which was connected to the Soviets, which the Soviets had tried to, you know, start the third Communist International, the Comintern, and get that branch going in China.
01:17:02.000Because at the time, the idea of the Soviets was, we're going to have communism spread around the world.
01:17:07.000So they were starting all these party cells.
01:17:09.000So the Qing dynasty fell in 1911, and then it was followed by a little bit of chaos,
01:17:18.000and then the Republic of China came about. But within a decade, you had the Communist Party
01:17:24.000starting and essentially sowing chaos throughout the country to the degree that they were able to,
01:17:31.000sometimes working with the Republic of China government, sometimes fighting against them,
01:17:36.000but always, even when working with, they were subverting it from within. And so there was no
01:17:41.000real chance for the Republic of China government to be a fully functioning government. And it was
01:17:47.000a very difficult time. And I'm not defending some of the things that happened there, because there
01:17:50.000were some challenges, but— It's the classic Communist Party tactic of, you know, the Republican
01:19:14.000The campaign to criticize Confucius and Lin Biao.
01:19:16.000It was like the mass political campaign to criticize the political enemy.
01:19:22.000But if you look at Marxism, if you read Marx, Marx's view is that, Karl Marx, not Groucho Marx, the view is that the history of humanity is a history of class struggle.
01:19:34.000And this is, I believe, an inaccurate view of humanity and history, but that's the Marxist view, and that was the Leninist view, and that was the Maoist view, and that's the Xi Jinping view.
01:19:44.000So the idea is that There are always these two opposing forces that always have to fight.
01:19:51.000And the only way for history to progress is through these groups struggling against each other.
01:19:57.000And so the communists, they believe this actually.
01:20:02.000And so they believe that they must struggle against enemies.
01:20:05.000And if there's not an enemy, if they've defeated an enemy, they need to create another enemy.
01:20:09.000So there's always going to be an enemy.
01:20:11.000There's always going to be a persecuted group.
01:20:13.000There's no way for a Communist Party to not have a group that they're going after, because that is the way they see their own society and power is moving forward.
01:20:24.000There has to always be class struggle.
01:20:26.000Which is why we as Americans should be very concerned with Xi Jinping telling the new cadre to struggle.
01:20:33.000I mean, on a foreign policy level, the Chinese Communist Party has to struggle with the United States, which is the global hegemon, right?
01:20:40.000So there's always going to be that struggle.
01:20:42.000Do you see parallels between the Cultural Revolution and what's happening today?
01:20:47.000Because, you know, a lot of people call what's happening with cancel culture struggle sessions.
01:20:52.000Well, so, it's... This is something that has been, people have made that comparison before, and it creates a lot of controversy because there aren't roving bands of Red Guard killing people.
01:22:24.000I remember speaking to one Chinese person who was alive at the time and they said it was basically, we talk about like the 10 years that we went crazy.
01:22:58.000I think that there's a few big differences, and the chief one is that the U.S.
01:23:04.000government protects freedom of speech.
01:23:07.000And, you know, even if you get canceled on Twitter and kicked off of YouTube and, you know, your books are banned from the publisher, like, you're not going to be arrested.
01:23:17.000You're not going to be... There's no legal mechanism to send you to prison.
01:23:26.000I mean, take a look at the Antifa riots throughout the Pacific Northwest.
01:23:31.000We just learned there was an investigation that found 31 of 90 had their charges dropped and many dismissed with prejudice, which, according to one expert, this is extremely rare for them to actually do this.
01:23:42.000Some of these were felony charges where Antifa literally assaulted an officer.
01:23:47.000Now, when it comes to the out group, which would be these Trump supporters at the Capitol, You have the instance of some people... This is really interesting because I'm seeing journalists say this.
01:24:03.000The cops are waving, and people are following the cops waving, and then the cops open the door.
01:24:07.000Not everybody who went in the building were shoving their way through police and fighting with cops.
01:24:12.000There were many circumstances where the doors were just opened up.
01:24:14.000Now, I think, obviously, everybody who went in the building was dumb, and it was a huge mistake for these people.
01:24:18.000But you take a look at how, after, you know, six, seven months of rioting and cities being burned down, and these Antifa people— I mean, the vice president was soliciting donations to bail her out.
01:24:30.000So we can say there's no legal mechanism, in a sense, but there is a cultural mechanism that guarantees if you're a far leftist and you burn down a city, it is very likely that you will face no cultural repercussions.
01:25:45.000I do think that it is different in the U.S.
01:25:48.000If the Cultural Revolution happened in the U.S., it could not happen the same way that it happened in China, because we do not have... We have guns.
01:25:57.000Well, besides that, the whole mechanism is started in China by the state.
01:26:01.000It's started by the Chinese Communist Party.
01:26:04.000Also, the cult of personality Mao had, which doesn't exist.
01:26:07.000You're saying there's no cult of personality around China?
01:26:11.000I think that, like, in the U.S., the mechanism is, like, if you have these tech companies, if you have, like, the Democratic Party, or, like, you have this, like, cultural mechanism for it, that is, like, a different manifestation, but it could, like, psychologically, there are similarities, I would say.
01:26:30.000And especially in terms of, like, things like the, you know, reporting on people, like, There are things that could happen with this cancel culture stuff that's going on that could follow, like, the course of the culture revolution without being a thing that is done by the... The bloodbath.
01:26:48.000Yeah, or done by the state, exactly, or like, you know.
01:26:51.000But it could have, like, the same... You could have neighborhood watch committees where, you know, or, you know, everybody's looking at whatever, you know, you're pulling up what you said on Twitter 20 years ago.
01:27:02.000Perhaps we're just not at that stage of what the Cultural Revolution was yet, but we do have, you know, just recently the, it was Christopher Wray, I believe it was FBI, saying, you know, domestic terror coming, you know, I don't know if he specifically called out Trump supporters, but I think he said, you know, far right, domestic terror is the biggest threat we're facing.
01:27:22.000You've got the Democrats saying Trump supporters and QAnon, they're claiming that they need to keep these troops surrounding D.C.
01:27:29.000with razor wire fences and these, and you know, razor wire and these fences because of these conspiracy theories about Trump's true inauguration.
01:27:38.000You are getting from mainstream press a narrative over and over and over again of who the evil is calling for, they're calling it the 1-6 commission.
01:27:47.000They want a 9-11 style commission on what happened at the Capitol.
01:27:49.000They're acting like it was on par with 9-11.
01:27:52.000And they're continually demonizing Trump supporters, populists, right-wingers, conservatives, to the point where, you know, we've mentioned it several times now, Echelon Insights interviewed Democrats, what is, you know, of these things, how would you rate your level of concern?
01:28:05.000The top concern among Democrats is Trump supporters, white nationalists, white supremacy, and among Trump supporters, among Republicans, it's illegal immigration, taxation, support for the police, very run-of-the-mill conservative positions.
01:28:19.000It seems like the narrative we're getting from the mainstream press about how bad and awful the right is in this country is reaching that level where, I mean, people I think are ready to burst and go insane.
01:28:29.000So perhaps it's not the point where you'll see Redguard going around literally murdering people, but we are getting to that point where I believe it's entirely possible you will see the Democrats come out and straight up say, Arrest them all.
01:29:18.000Perhaps right now we're saying, oh, but in the Cultural Revolution, they were called upon by the party, by the political figures to go and do these things.
01:29:26.000And it's like, okay, well, maybe in a year they do that.
01:29:30.000All I know is right now, I'm constantly being told by the press how Trump is an insurrectionist who tried to overthrow the United States government, and YouTube has deleted every iteration of his speech from CPAC.
01:29:41.000This level of tribalist demonization isn't stopping.
01:29:47.000And it seems to me like we are dangerously close to this point where the hysteria reaches this level.
01:29:53.000Perhaps we have a president in Joe Biden who he's already failing his first test in the migrant crisis.
01:29:58.000The left is outraged over his migrant detention centers for children.
01:30:02.000The right is outraged over his releasing of COVID positive patients, COVID positive illegal immigrants into Texas, as well as shutting down Trump's border wall.
01:30:10.000So now you've got both sides angry with him.
01:30:11.000He didn't get the stimulus checks out.
01:30:14.000Are we potentially looking at a pathetic and failed leader who causes widespread demoralization among even moderates in this country that results in Donald Trump running again in 2024 against Kamala Harris, who does not have the charisma to win?
01:30:30.000Trump ends up getting a decisive but slim victory.
01:30:33.000And then you have all of that conditioning over four years of the demons of the insurrectionists.
01:30:38.000Trump finally completed his insurrection.
01:31:00.000The government used terrorism to create the Patriot Act, which was really more about making the government more powerful and taking away the rights of the American people.
01:31:09.000I mean, it's about power and control and what you kind of just described was a struggle session, essentially.
01:31:15.000And so this is where people need to learn from history and see the patterns.
01:31:19.000Are these actual threats that are being discussed, or is it just somebody creating that opposition that they need to have the dialectical conflict?
01:31:45.000Well, people can read that themselves and draw their conclusions.
01:31:47.000But it looks at history and you do see, you know, there are people who learn from all of these tactics that have been used for control.
01:31:55.000And people who want control, they're not idiots.
01:31:58.000They look at what has worked and what hasn't worked and refine.
01:32:01.000The Chinese Communist Party is a much more refined Soviet Union.
01:32:06.000They're not making many of the same mistakes the Soviet Union did because they learned from them.
01:32:11.000That's why the Chinese Communist Party is still here.
01:32:13.000Yeah, they constantly talk about Gorbachev and how nobody can be a Gorbachev, basically.
01:32:18.000Remember when people thought Xi would be Gorbachev?
01:32:20.000I remember there was an event held in D.C.
01:32:23.000A bunch of Trump supporters were protesting against massive multinational billion-dollar corporations that were suppressing speech, political speech in the U.S.
01:32:31.000The Trump supporters were protesting and targeting billionaires.
01:32:35.000Antifa showed up and physically attacked them.
01:32:38.000It's interesting that you have this demonization.
01:32:42.000For the populist right, it's the elites, it's the establishment.
01:32:46.000For the populist left, it's the populist right.
01:32:49.000And I wonder if that's just the convenient tool of the establishment to say, get these people to attack them because they're attacking us, using this idea of the struggle, this conflict between factions, to make sure nobody actually goes after them.
01:33:04.000If they keep doing that, well, eventually using Trump supporters, conservatives, and populist right-wingers as your scapegoat will result in such extreme hyperpolarization that people start getting killed.
01:33:16.000We've already seen with the riots over last year, I think there was 19 official deaths caused by the riots, and then there were, I believe, 11 or 12, about 12 peripheral deaths just in, like, as a result of the rioting, some people died for certain reasons.
01:33:30.000But then we also had that That guy in Portland who took two in the chest from that Antifa guy.
01:33:35.000He had the Black Lives Matter tattoo on his neck, the revolution fist, and he shot him twice in the chest.
01:33:39.000When you say riots, you're talking about the mostly peaceful protests, right?
01:33:43.000Yes, where buildings were on fire and destroyed, and over $2 billion in insurance payouts, not even the total cost of damage that we saw, and the vice president and president supporting those actions.
01:33:56.000You want to know something absolutely insane?
01:33:58.000Andrew Cuomo, there's a new report coming out that he, his administration instructed the health department to obscure the amount of people who died in nursing homes as a result of their policies.
01:34:12.000On March 25th of last year, Cuomo announced his policy to send COVID patients into nursing homes.
01:34:19.000Nursing homes resisted, saying this will introduce the virus into the most vulnerable populations.
01:35:45.000We'll see what the audience has to say.
01:35:47.000If you haven't already, smash the like button and subscribe at the notification bell.
01:35:52.000If you're listening on iTunes, Spotify, or any other podcast platform, leave us a good review, give us as many stars as they allow, and then write why we're the best, because it really does help the show.
01:36:01.000And I guess the saying goes, the only way people find out about podcasts is from people who listen to podcasts, so if you like it, you just gotta share it.
01:36:07.000But again, smash that like button and let's read some of these Super Chats.
01:36:11.000So usually this happens if we have a pinned bit of merchandise.
01:36:14.000I can't see the name of the person who gave us the first super chat, so I apologize.
01:36:18.000But they ask, have you ever watched Attack on Titan?
01:36:21.000And if so, do you see parallels that it has with our reality?
01:36:24.000Have any of you watched Attack on Titan?
01:36:59.000Jordan Jones says, I hope that the team is doing well at TeamGuest IRL.
01:37:03.000At what point do states and individuals stop sending resources to the federal government that is pushing radical left policies that are hurting their well-being?
01:37:14.000Do you guys see any... I know your specialty is more China, but perhaps that was just my opinion thinking, you know, being more pessimistic, but what's your prospect on this country?
01:37:47.000Well, in ancient China they didn't always agree with that either.
01:37:50.000But I think people, there's an innate goodness to them that they want to, they value, there are universal values that people have.
01:38:00.000And I know that's not something that's necessarily... people like to talk about universal values anymore, but... You know, I can be both pessimistic and optimistic at the same time in saying that I think the night is always darkest before the dawn, and we have not yet reached the darkest point of the night yet.
01:38:18.000So it seems like things are going to get pretty bad, but then maybe after the tumult, things will be a bit better.
01:38:43.000Is there any grassroots lobbying that can be done to bring our manufacturing back?
01:38:48.000Interestingly the Biden administration is currently doing a review of supply chains in the U.S.
01:38:54.000So this is something that I think Democrats care a lot about and Republicans from a national security standpoint and from like a kind of you know a workers rights you know like populist standpoint.
01:39:06.000So this might be one of those things where we do start to bring back some of the at least
01:39:11.000critical manufacturing like drugs, medical supplies.
01:39:15.000Chuck Schumer was talking about making some kind of law to help us out-compete China.
01:39:21.000So I think a lot of the things that happens is that U.S.
01:39:24.000politicians, when they talk about China, they don't actually have a very good idea of what the Chinese Communist Party is.
01:39:28.000They're more using it as a mirror to reflect the U.S.
01:39:32.000But in this case, because of the supply chain issue, I think this might be something where there's a concerted effort to bring back American manufacturing.
01:39:39.000People just need to buy American more.
01:40:27.000And it's in the sense of the Marxist class struggle.
01:40:30.000It is pitting one group against another group.
01:40:33.000And so, again, I wouldn't say the Communist Party is behind it, necessarily, but they certainly like it, and it certainly fits the way that the Communist Party would do things if they were to try to sow discord within China.
01:42:04.000Yeah, so, I mean, in some ways, like, if a hot war would happen, the sooner it happened, the better it would be for the U.S.
01:42:11.000Because the longer... Like, it just gives the Chinese Communist Party time to build up the military and... So you're saying double the military budget?
01:42:20.000I mean, I think that they have to take the military, and they are talking about this, and take the focus away from the Middle East and, you know, go back to focusing on the Pacific.
01:42:46.000China's anti-ship ballistic missiles already have a considerably longer range than U.S.
01:42:52.000anti-ship missiles, which, if you think about what that means in an actual ship-to-ship warfare, is the Chinese ships can get their missiles off much sooner and sink the American ships before the American ships can do anything.
01:43:05.000But the solution isn't to double the U.S.
01:43:10.000I mean, like, it would be much easier to just stop investing in China.
01:43:15.000You're saying we should blow up China now, before— I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
01:43:20.000All right, we got Samuel Powell says, Tim, you are wrong about Gen Z. As a Zoomer myself, I would say that at least 60% of us are conservative.
01:43:32.000The reason most of us are closeted is because most of the people who have the authority around us hate anyone who has right-leaning views.
01:43:39.000Most of us are anti-porn because it's affected us negatively from a young age.
01:43:45.000Well, then I would just say perhaps I am wrong and you are more conservative.
01:43:49.000I have pointed out that the Pew Research shows there's a slight movement towards conservative for the first time in like four generations, but then you have to be brave, I suppose, and just speak out.
01:44:03.000You gotta learn how to actually hunt for your food?
01:44:05.000Oh heavens, like humans had to do that for thousands, tens of thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years.
01:44:10.000I guess, you know, my thing is that having grown up in a rough and tumble area and being homeless, I'm like, what's the worst someone could do to me?
01:45:11.000I had this guy who was super rich told me, what's something that you're an expert on that is a common concern of people?
01:45:20.000Really easy example would be, like, dating.
01:45:24.000Most people, be it a man or a woman, wanna have some, like, better understanding of dating.
01:45:28.000So, what he said was, if you're good, if you have good insights, and you're a good person, and you wanna help people, you simply write a small book, and then you advertise it on Facebook and Google, You find out what your price point is per advertisement.
01:45:42.000So if it takes $5 worth of ads to sell one book, sell it for $5.50, and you've automated the system, and then you make passive income from one book you've written, and it could seriously be like 50 pages.
01:45:53.000And so he explained to me that, you know, one of his paths was he had done things in his life, like he worked out and he trained, and then he realized he was actually pretty proficient in this, very amateur, but he wrote a book about what he did and said, not medical advice, I'm just a guy, here's my ideas, and he made a million dollars in a year.
01:46:11.000If you guys wrote a book called China Uncensored, and it was just not even that long and it said, you know, understanding the basic facts about China and what you need to know, and then you put it up, you just do like ads on Google or Facebook or whatever, it's automated.
01:46:25.000So it takes, you know, if five dollars in ads gets you a thousand views or whatever, And every thousand views gets you one book sale, $5 and 50
01:46:50.000Edud says, Tim, the USA is actually being censored by the CCP.
01:46:54.000Remember, Facebook, Twitter, and Google hired the firm responsible for the great CCP censorship firewall to tailor their algorithm to prevent right-wing extremism.
01:47:06.000I know we mentioned this the last time we were on the show, that there was a case of one of the Facebook fact-checkers being tied to some company that was getting funding somehow or another through China.
01:47:20.000I don't remember all the details, but I know we did talk about that.
01:47:23.000There was genuinely a concern about that, that these fact-checkers, they get money from somewhere.
01:47:30.000But there is a lot of AI research going on in China.
01:47:33.000Like Google, they did shut down their Dragonfly censored search app, but Google is in China now doing AI, and they're not making a big public splash about it.
01:47:43.000But Google wants to be in China because they have access to enormous amounts of data.
01:47:48.000There's no user privacy restrictions in China.
01:47:51.000And so Google's working with Chinese companies to build up Google's own AI systems.
01:47:57.000And no doubt Google is or will be at some point intending to use that AI technology developed in China with Chinese companies and Chinese data, and then use that for its American customers.
01:48:11.000Is that a direct connection of the Communist Party using it to censor Americans?
01:48:15.000I don't think there's a direct connection there, but there's certainly some, you know, within a few steps, there's some connection to China.
01:48:23.000Association with an authoritarian regime always pulls the democracy down.
01:52:11.000Publius the Good says, my buddy Dylan Witcher was banned from China when we were in high school because he started a massive free Tibet website in 2002.
01:53:11.000I also imagine secret police have been around for longer than 600 years.
01:53:16.000But that does sound like an interesting thing.
01:53:18.000Steven Valdez says, Chris, I had a super Patreon account with you guys for seven months, but never got my name at the end of a video, as promised.
01:53:25.000Messaged you guys three times on Patreon.
01:53:27.000Love your work, but was hoping you could respond.
01:56:08.000Christopher says, you said you were planning on making a new site and new content.
01:56:12.000Would this be free or eligible for Timcast members or a whole new subscription?
01:56:17.000Uh, so we're planning on making a network of different websites and it's one subscription for all of them.
01:56:23.000So quite literally my, my, my goal is if you are a member of Timcast.com, I just want to make sure we just keep making more and more stuff for you and ultimately have one parent brand that, you know, if you're a member of it grants you access to basically everything.
01:56:37.000There are going to be some things, because they'll be joint ventures, where they'll be entirely separate subscriptions and websites, so... I think the new show we're planning on doing will not be part of this, because I'm doing it with other people.
01:56:48.000And it'll have to be its own thing, so... But ultimately, that's what I want to do.
01:56:50.000I want to do shows, originals, sketch comedy, documentary, and have it just be part of one big brand, so ultimately, everybody who is already a member at TimCast.com will get access to all this really cool stuff we're planning to build.
01:57:02.000Quite literally, the membership you have, that money is going towards expanding, hiring new people.
01:57:08.000We actually have some people coming out soon to interview about jobs because we're going to be doing a lot more, producing a lot more, and then hopefully that helps us make more money and start more companies.
01:57:18.000So if you really like the show, then go to TimCast.com, become a member, smash that like button, and share the podcast.
01:57:25.000And aside from that, I've got my other YouTube channels as well, but we're trying to do more and more and more, to put it simply.
01:57:31.000Claymore says, human is the most racist word there can be.
01:57:34.000Words of racism are words designed to defy people.
01:58:13.000Yeah, there was uh, I think I mentioned it to you guys last time There was apparently some campaign hitting up medium like small size youtubers with decent followings Maybe like tens of thousands where they would say hey just upload this video to your YouTube channel That's all and we'll pay you, you know 500 bucks or 600 bucks and it was some guy explaining why the Falun Gong was a dangerous cult and he was like complaining that they were performing in New York and that Everyone should go and complain to the Performing Arts Center to get Falun Gong banned or whatever That was really weird when I saw that.
01:58:44.000I'm like, who would upload to their channel a video from some random person?
01:58:48.000But also, it should be a red flag if the authoritarian communist party is persecuting a group.
01:58:56.000That should be a signal that you shouldn't also be persecuting these people in a free country.
01:59:02.000Maybe there's something wrong with the group that's doing the persecuting.
02:01:42.000Anyone just can randomly arbitrarily show up and they can watch the ballots being counted, read aloud, and tallied on a board.
02:01:50.000Not just aloud in the building, but they can actually see it.
02:01:53.000Yeah, the observers can actually observe, right?
02:01:56.000And so for the in-person voting ID, clear chain with paper ballots and the observers, it's very, very hard to commit fraud there.
02:02:09.000Well, the flip side of this, obviously, is that, you know, if you can't vote by mail, you could say, well, there's maybe some disenfranchisement.
02:02:16.000And every country has to figure out what's the balance between security and ensuring the integrity of the election and making sure that more people have access to voting.
02:02:25.000Taiwan has made that choice to ensure security because they're under so much threat.
02:02:44.000So they treasure, like for presidential elections, so they treasure their democracy a lot.
02:02:50.000And I think it was, you know, all of us felt quite moved watching the whole process of people bringing their kids to watch the vote count and things like that.
02:03:09.000Justin Wheeler says, Will Timcast ever have an app?
02:03:13.000We are working on it right now, actually.
02:03:15.000So, we know that most people who watch and listen are doing it on mobile, and so we are trying to build that mobile app so it's really easy for members to just log in and do all that really cool stuff.
02:03:35.000I had a really, really bad impacted wisdom tooth, this one.
02:03:39.000And getting it taken out was like, the dentist, it looked like he was doing, you know, street construction.
02:03:46.000Yeah, and it was I was shaking and sweaty and just like for like three days I was like all these painkillers was like the worst pain ever So isn't it nice to know that your show is less bad than that?
02:03:57.000Yeah, just a little bit a little bit a little bit less bad than getting your wisdom to the ripped out of your face Please have us back.
02:04:30.000by the time the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre happened.
02:04:34.000And my dad, before, he had gotten a scholarship from the Chinese government to study, get his PhD in America, so he was supposed to go back.
02:04:43.000And he was intent on bringing us back until the Tiananmen Square massacre happened, and then he basically just was so furious.
02:04:52.000Like, the Chinese students in America at that time, they marched in the streets of the U.S.
02:05:02.000And basically we ended up staying in the U.S.
02:05:05.000because the Bush administration at the time gave Chinese students who had been in the U.S.
02:05:11.000and protested during the massacre like amnesty because the idea was that you could be, you know, if you went back to China you could be persecuted for protesting in the U.S.
02:06:56.000collapses into, you know, the Democrat states in the North, for the most part, join Canada, and then the rest become Jesusland, as the meme dictates, then China won't have any unified opposition, for the most part, and then they can shift their focus to India, maybe Australia.
02:07:14.000Otherwise, India and Japan and Australia, maybe South Korea, though, There was a whole thing about election interference in South Korea involving China, but that's another story.
02:07:47.000Gabriel McLeod will do this last one, says the potential for diplomacy with China implies those in a position to be diplomatic have any interest in enacting change for the good of the world instead of simply maintaining the status quo.
02:09:19.000And I am Sour Patch Lids here in the corner.
02:09:21.000You can find me on Twitter at Sour Patch Lids as well as on Mines at Sour Patch Lids.
02:09:26.000And I'm also on Instagram and Gab at Real Sour Patch Lids.
02:09:30.000Everybody, thank you all so much for hanging out.
02:09:32.000I don't think we're going to have a special extended segment tonight, but, uh, and it's always because I'm trying to do something for the weekends where literally every single Friday I'm like, we're going to go to the range and we're going to film it and then we don't because people are leaving.