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Are U.S. plans to prevent China from scientifically and technologically developing working out? Welcome to The Bridge, enlightening conversations on world cultures, life, and everything in between. Hey everyone, this is Jason Smith, host of The Bridge podcast from sunny California. If you like the show, don't forget to subscribe. We love The Bridge.

Hey everyone, my name is Jason Smith. Today's guest is Lee Barrett. For the second time, he is a social media influencer and key opinion leader with more than 387,000 followers just on one of his YouTube channels, not to mention his fans on other platforms. You can find him, BarrettYT, a

a citizen of the UK living in China. He makes videos about his life in China and does analysis about China and geopolitics. Many of his videos deal with technology and industry as they impact human beings, society, and civilization. He is regularly featured in

in media, including CGTN. Welcome back to the Bridge to China, Lee Barrett. Very much. Thank you for having me back. It's a pleasure. We got to meet each other in Harbin recently for the ICE Festival in preparation for the Winter Asian Games. Was this your first time? And if not, or if it was, what did you think? Actually, it was my third time in Harbin. I

I first went there in December 2023 and I'd been wanting to go there for many years and there's always something came up where I couldn't make it but I went there and shot some video there which went kind of a bit viral and part of that video won a competition which is why I returned

this winter, but I've also been back there in the springtime. A very different vibe in the springtime. I was actually there to do the, I think it was the 300 days or the start of the 300 days countdown to the Winter Asian Games. So that was kind of cool. I'm kind of surprised they count from 300. Wow. Yeah, it's a strange number, right? It just seems really far in the future, I guess.

I guess people are in the background or making preparations at least a year or two in an event of that size. They must be. They must be because there's a huge amount of organization to do for sure. OK, so let's picture this. Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and former President Biden decided to build a, quote, small yard with a high fence.

and this is essentially trying to keep advanced US technology away from the developing world, but especially China. How did that work out? Well, not so good. As probably most of the world knows, about two weeks ago there was a

a launch of a large language AI model called DeepSeek and that sort of really set the cat among the pigeons. Now it was a massive shock to the West which kind of a bit funny really because

Had the West have been keeping an eye on things or really going on in China instead of having their head in the sand, they would have probably been well aware because actually DeepSeat, the company behind it, released papers months before telling people what they were doing. There's a lot of controversy about how much the model cost and what CPUs they used.

But there's a couple of things in here. The first one, this trying to cut China off from high-end chips is really futile from America's point of view. It does two things. It drives the Chinese harder to innovate faster. Now, semiconductor manufacture is a central pillar of the government.

It's a major policy here. They realize that they cannot rely on American technology. They were quite happy to before. And a lot of people say: "Oh, they're so behind in chips and technology." Yes, they were. Simply because they didn't need to do it. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. We can buy from somebody who's already done it. We can enhance it.

But America being America wanted to retain their technical hegemony. They wanted to cut China off. So China then realized, look, we can't rely on other people. We've got to do it ourselves. So then the U.S. started implementing numerous kinds of sanctions and tariffs. But the reason this is futile is China have

a huge amount of top talent. In fact, if you look at a lot of the semiconductor and AI engineers in the US, many of them are actually Chinese.

And there was also at that time, if you go back sort of eight to ten years, there was a lot of Chinese people, young people who went and studied in the US. They would graduate, get their masters, get their PhD, and they would stay there. And they would work for all the top tech and AI companies. What happened when the first Trump presidency, he sort of had this like, well, basically became sort of like anti-China. And he drove a lot of them out. And a lot of them came out.

came back to China. Some went to other countries, but many came back to China. The reason they came back to China is because the opportunities were expanding in China. There's a lot of semiconductor companies, a lot of AI companies here. There's a lot of research and development here over the last 10 years. Chinese academies and universities have gone way up the ladder. Interestingly, just yesterday,

There was a table from Nature magazine that now shows that most of the top institutions for physics are either China or Europe.

The first one that America ranks is 13th position. In fact, China holds the top three positions for physics. Now, physics is probably the discipline that's the most important discipline behind semiconductors, actually. A lot of semiconductor engineering is based around physics, you know, atoms, protons, this kind of thing.

So it's actually not only as the US driven a lot of top talent back to China, China have this new sort of wave of young people that are quite patriotic and they're very hungry to be top achievers.

So this is why you've got like DeepSeek, you know, the whole team are there, all educated in China. None of them attended foreign universities, but they're hungry. It's not about money for them. It's about proving themselves, you know, and doing something good. And this is just amazing to see. So and then the other thing that these sanctions put, whenever sanctions are put onto products, a grey market will spring up.

So this is kind of funny. In the last couple of weeks there's been a huge amount of these Nvidia AI chips appearing on sort of sites like Alibaba and all these sites and the prices are falling because China has so many of them that they don't actually need as many as they've got because

you know, wherever, as I say, sanctions, there'll always be a grey market. I operated in a grey market many, many years ago for computers. Games software, there's always willing somebody to make some money somewhere along the line. But not only that, you have Huawei, who are China's largest tech company, they have a chip

which is direct competition to Nvidia's chips. Now, okay, right now they're on the third iteration, which is the Ascend 910C. And they launched that at the end of 2024. And it's with a number of large scalers at the moment.

data center provides at the moment under tests and they anticipate going into large-scale manufacture in this first quarter of 2025 now it's said to be somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of the performance of nvidia's best but you are seeing data centers now switch that you're possibly aware there's been a sort of um

not narrative, I forget the word, legislation, not legislation, but similar from the government to say, look, we want to phase on to Chinese products as opposed to using foreign products. So some of the biggest data centres in China, obviously Huawei, I think ByteDance and a couple of others, China Telecom or China Mobile are using Huawei data

semiconductors in their data centers. They're all fair enough right now. Let's say you have a data center with 10,000 Nvidia chips. You may need 12 or 14,000 Ascend chips to achieve the same level of performance. But they're rapidly closing the gap and they're actually doing it.

They have a bit of a bottleneck in manufacturing. I just want to make it clear to everybody that as far as designing semiconductors, China are not behind at all. They have some very smart semiconductor designers here. The problem is in the manufacturing. And there's one specific area of that manufacturing that's a bottleneck and that's lithography. The US have sort of put restrictions on Holland.

there's one company in holland asml that manufactures these lithography machines that do euv which is extreme ultraviolet it's the smallest lithography that you can get however

There's a number of Chinese institutions now making major breakthroughs in this area. Very recently, Harbin University made a breakthrough in EUV light source. And there's a lot of other things going on that are sort of overcoming those limitations. You're listening to The Bridge.

Let's switch gears a little bit to electronic vehicles, EVs. It's pretty well known in the United States has a 100% tariffs on all Chinese EVs. You're from the UK. If you were in the UK right now, could you buy a BYD?

I can actually, right now the tariffs in the UK are not so high. Europe have put high tariffs on, but the UK have sort of stood back a bit. I think actually the UK are trying to mend their relationship somewhat with China right now.

But the big issue in the UK, which I see stopping EV adoption, is the infrastructure. So if you take China, it was again a government policy to roll out a large-scale EV charging infrastructure. Well, in the UK, it's left a private company, so they don't see a quick return on their investment.

You own an EV in the UK, it's fine if you're just a city driver and you're doing a commute, you can charge it to home. But as for a sort of national large-scale charging network, it doesn't really exist yet. And that's the difference in China. I mean, I drove this year from Shenzhen to Xinjiang over a two and a half, three week period.

And we had no issue whatsoever. We did it in our pure EV and we had no issue whatsoever. And that's like, even when we were purchasing the car, the salesman says: "Oh no, if you're driving that far, you shouldn't buy a pure EV, you should get a hybrid." I said: "No, no, I've got my mind set. I want a pure EV." And we had no issues. There was absolutely... We'd stop at kind of little rural villages

on our journey and they'd be like

15, 20 like high-speed charging stations in the village, you know, and you think, wow. And that's because the way the Chinese government operates, it's not about making profit. It's about providing service. And that's the big difference here to the West. I heard a rumor that Tesla's coming out with a new car in the coming year, and it's supposed to be like the everyman's car, you know, like a more affordable vehicle. But I kind of want to pivot here.

The United States is engaged in a tariff war with Mexico, Canada, apparently the European Union is next, and China and a bunch of other countries as well. Do you think U.S. sanctions and tariffs are helping U.S. companies? Well, they seem to be until the latest figures have just come out. And the latest figures pretty much across the whole of Europe are down. Even though in Germany, EV sales are rising.

Tesla sales are down. Now Tesla still does pretty well in the Chinese market. That really has me somewhat scratching my head actually because if you actually compare Tesla with Chinese brands, value for money and the technology you get in Chinese brands is far superior.

for the same money you're paying for Tesla. And something interesting, I think it was Xiaopeng have just bought out there, I think he's called Mona, and it's about 100,000 RMB cheaper than the Tesla Model 3, but it's pretty similar in specification. And from what I understand, there's a lot of people going for that. It's literally, you know, $130,000.

30,000 to 160,000 RMB and it's as good if not better than a Model 3. So I think actually Tesla are going to start to come under more and more pressure in the Chinese market. I think people have been, Chinese people have been very focused on what they think is a very safe car, which it is, it is a very safe car. But actually in Tesla, Chinese cars

you know, performing just as well in safety tests. Chinese companies, from my experience of visiting their factories, put a lot of effort

an emphasis on safety, actually. It's interesting to see, but personally, I think really Tesla needs to up their game if they want to keep their market share, both in China and in other parts of the world. I heard a rumor that Tesla's coming out with a new car in the coming year, and it's supposed to be like the everyman's car, you know, like a more affordable vehicle. But I kind of want to pivot.

The United States is engaged in a tariff war with Mexico, Canada. Apparently the European Union is next and China and a bunch of other countries as well. Do you think U.S. sanctions and tariffs are helping U.S. companies? I don't. I think they're actually harming U.S. companies. Like if you look at NVIDIA example, who are the one that are in the news a lot at the moment because the sanctions on semiconductors affects them more than anyone else.

they, I think it was in 2024, still make like 40% of their revenue from the Chinese market. Now, because of some of these loopholes where the chips have still been getting through to China, just in his last few days, announced this new sanction where countries around the world are on kind of a tiered level. So tier one countries like Australia, the UK, certain European countries, Japan, they can buy as many as they want.

Then tier 2 countries, which many were shocked that they were on tier 2 because they thought they were allies of the US. They're only allowed to buy a certain amount or they have to apply for special licenses. And then tier 3 companies, China, Russia, Iran and a few others, they're not allowed to buy any at all. But actually this is going to massively affect Nvidia's revenue. If they get really tight on this,

that leads to that if Nvidia's revenue drops that means they have less money to spend on R&D which means they do less R&D so they don't move as fast and ultimately they will drop behind I actually think that we've seen some big announcements in technology in just the first five weeks of 2025 we had the um

the generation six jet fighters. We've had some announcements about some missiles and a submarine detection system.

We've also had the Artificial Sun that they run for like however many minutes, like breaking a new record. I think it's like 10 minutes now, which is insane. Yeah, it's crazy. And then obviously Deep Seek. And I honestly think... And Quen 2.5. Yeah, Quen and Kimmy. So I think that there's going to be a lot more to come. And I find that it's quite funny because...

China are very strategic in the way they announce these things. Like the submarine announcement was just around the same time that Australia were paying for AUKUS that China came out and goes "oh we can detect any of these submarines like anywhere" like so basically it's sort of a finger up to Australia saying you're just wasting billions of dollars you know because

these nuclear submarines that you'll build into to patrol the South China Sea and the Pacific, we can know exactly where you are. So it's just a big waste of money. It's just funding America's military industrial complex. I actually think there's going to be

a lot more big announcements coming from China this year I really do and I think I think one of those is going to be around semiconductors and I think I really think that Huawei will make some big announcements at some point in this year

Yeah, it seems like a new technology is announced once a week in China lately. I mean, like a new world changing technology disruptor, like once a week, it's like, here's something new. Oh, here's something new. It's hard to keep up with all the technology that's coming out of China. Jason, let me just add one thing before you move on.

Something really interesting I saw yesterday, the open source version of DeepSeek, which is the version you don't use on their website, you download it, you install it on your machine or your servers, has had 1 million downloads. It's been embraced by developers and many medium-sized corporations all around the world and that's just phenomenal.

I kind of, in a way, feel sorry for some of the other companies like ByteDance and Alibaba because they had models which are also very, very good. But DeepSeekers just completely stole the limelight. And it is a very, very good model. You know, on social media, there's a lot of people trying to discredit what they've done. If you weed out some of the people on Alibaba,

Twitter ex, sorry, who know what they're talking about, who can read through the technical papers and understand the technical papers. They've really achieved some very, very impressive stuff. And this is just the start. You know that recently, as they got back after Chinese New Year, they've put lots of job

available there because they're expanding the team. There's like big companies falling over themselves wanting to invest in them. So this is like, this is a fantastic moment for Chinese AI. You know, it really is. You're listening to The Bridge.

I read an article about investors pouring, literally pouring, not literally, but the headline said pouring money into Chinese tech companies after deep-seeking Quinn. You have the privilege, more so than anyone I know, of going to a lot of Chinese high-tech factories. So could you tell us what is Chinese manufacturing like in 2025? Well, it's really on the cutting edge. I mean, I think this is where A,

AI is very different in the West to it is in China. So for example, in the West, it was all about ChatGPT and how it can write articles for you and, you know, summarize documents for you, which is great, you know, there's no getting away from that. But, you know, two or three years ago, China were already putting AI to work in factories and ports

where it really matters. They held back off the sort of consumer side of it. They really focused on the industrial side and I've been like gobsmacked. I've even recently I went to like, so obviously you expect AI to be in sort of car manufacturing and appliance manufacturing electronics, which it is extensively. But I went to a sportswear factory not too long back and to

And they had like AI, although some of the work is still done by humans, some of the sewing work and that. I was just gobsmacked by how much technology and AI was at work in a sportswear factory.

That was kind of like mind-blowing. You know, previously in factories you've had they'll set up a line to make one type of garment and they need to make 50,000 to make it worthwhile. At least Antwerp factory, they can make really small batches of stuff because like everything is like controlled by AI, you know, from the order to the final production. Fantastic! And we actually, they make, Antwerp launched a fabric which is pretty similar to Gore-Tex, a breathable fabric.

So the factory part we went to where they actually weave this fabric. No lie there was there was probably 150 to 200 weaving machines and literally there was like three people and literally they were just walking around just checking that everything's running okay and like

Even the spools of the yarn were being loaded onto the machines by robots from the warehouse. They go and pick them up, load them onto the machine. So I think this is why a lot of people say, oh, well, you know, China won't be competitive. All the manufacturing will move to Vietnam and India. And I just don't buy that.

because I think China have understood the importance of automated manufacturing, not just from a point of view that it's super efficient, but from a point of view that there's this population of young people decrease that everybody talks about, the ageing population. Well, I think that will have much less effect in China because they've really understood

about automating. I think another one of the big areas this year that we're going to see China really excelling is humanoid robots and these four-wheeled sort of dog style robots. There's a number of Chinese companies one of the leading ones is Unitree. Unitree were the ones who had the dancing robots in the spring festival gala but they're making some

amazing, fast progress. And I think they already have these robots being trained on the production lines of BYD and NEO right now as we speak. And I just give you one other example. I went to GRI, which GRI are a huge Chinese company. They make most people will know that for water heaters or air conditioners. And I was

absolutely gobsmacked at the things they're into. They also make industrial robots. But the one thing that shocked me is that over the years their workforce hasn't decreased. But where like 15 years ago like 80% of their workforce was factory workers, that's now decreased to something like 30 or 40%.

but they've massively increased the people in R&D. So actually the headcount has stayed pretty much the same, but the types of jobs people are doing has changed from production of factory floor workers, which now accounts for a much smaller proportion of their overall workforce than their R&D and development and stuff like that, which is very, very interesting. And again,

they have automated a lot of their production lines and that's going on all over China. From the smallest companies to the biggest companies, they see the benefit of AI and automation in commercial environments, whereas at the West have really concentrated on consumer. And I think that was the same actually with the 5G. The West, it was all about, oh, well, you can download a film faster

But in China, it was all about, OK, we can have these autonomous vehicles in ports that are all controlled by these massive 5G. And in mines. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I was lucky enough to go down a mine and that was mind blowing. Just the oversight that management now have of processes in the mine is just, you know, the AI is even helping them to predict.

the coal price on the international market. So they sell at the right time to maximize their profits. Fantastic. You know, I also was thinking about the decrease in workers in the future, potentially because of the decrease in population of young people. And I had that same idea. But one thing I'm very interested in personally is elder care, you know, because I think with humanoid robots,

coming off of the assembly line here because you can already buy a couple of different types. They're not perfect yet, but they're getting pretty good. In maybe five years, we might be able to actually have a lot of our elder care done by humanoid robots who will be able to pick people up, move them from the bed to the living room, or

clean the house for or with them. So I think a lot of that is very interesting technology because not just in China where the population is decreasing, but we have the same issues in Europe and Japan and the United States and other places. And so these humanoid robots could be a game changer in terms of helping our elderly populations all over the world.

Absolutely. I mean that will be just a progression of those robots. I think first we will see them doing household tasks like making simple drinks and it will just go on and on from there and like just things like doing washing and ironing and visiting a local store to get something for somebody who finds it difficult to get access. I mean it sounds like science fiction now but I

I think it's going to be with us sooner than people realise, I really do. I think there's a huge, huge market for that because if China has anything to do with it, they'll become very affordable as well.

You know, they really will. One thing that China does really well is scale. You know, we have Boston Dynamics and then you have Chinese companies as well. But the difference is scale. China will produce a thousand times as many of them. And that makes the market saturated and then overpopulated.

makes it affordable for regular people like you and me. Absolutely. Just, and I think this is one of the problems with Trump's tariffs. You know, he's got this idea of bringing manufacturing back to the USA, which, you know, it's not a bad thing, right? However, that's all well and good if you can be competitive with China. But I see what will happen is let's say you bring manufacturing back for some widgets, but,

But because of the way America is, that's then going to cost $10 to produce as opposed to $5 in China. Are really American customers going to pay $10 for the widget as opposed to $5? And I think this is the, you know, a lot of these Western nations sold out to China their manufacturing. This notion that, oh, China stole all the jobs. That's just nonsense. American and European corporations were happy

to send it to China because they could get it made cheaper to make more profit. And actually China kept inflation low in those Western economies for 20 years. And now the chickens are coming home to roost. Now China's climbed the ladder because I have no doubt in my mind that if China was still the China of 15 years ago, making the cheap disposable goods for the American market, America would have no problem with China.

It's simply because they've climbed the value chain and they're now challenging America and actually beating America in many technologies. It's scaring the hell out of the US because all they have left is finance industry, which is paper money really. I remember when I was in history class in university and

And they were saying one of the problems with the UK economy in the 60s and 70s is that they started saying, oh, it's no problem. We're a paper economy. And I often think about the United States in the last decade or two is basically following that same route. And it doesn't look like it ends well, my friend. Yeah.

Absolutely. You know, I very much believe in that. If you're a manufacturing economy, you have a strong economy because you make something, you sell it for $100. That's $100 you've got. You make $100 today in financial instruments, that could be $20 tomorrow. Once you've sold physical goods and you've got that $100, in a day's time or a month's time, it's still going to be $100. And we saw with the 2008 crash, you know,

in these Western countries, just a huge Ponzi scheme, you know, and it's all going to come crashing down at some point again. You're listening to The Bridge.

I wanted to talk about technologies where China leads. You just touched upon this topic. I think it's interesting because a lot of the Americans that I talk to online, who are clearly not in the know, think that China cannot innovate and that China is, you know, two decades behind the West. So what is the reality? Where does China lead? Well, China leads in pretty much every technology. So ASPI, which are the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's

Released a report, it's probably about a year ago now, that showed China was leading. I think it was 57 out of 64 key technologies

And just today, the Wall Street Journal published an article that has again shocked America that China are now leading in biosciences. Just four or five years ago, they had 5% market share. Now it's 30% market share. And this is scaring investors because apparently China have developed a cancer drug that's better than an American one that took $30 billion to basically research and

make. So a lot of the investment community now is starting to get worried, well, why should we put all these billions of dollars into American who've led for many, many years in this area?

when China are coming up with things that are better and a fraction of the price. But that again maybe goes back to the whole drug cartel in the US where you've got a few big companies that basically rip off everybody else. And that's the difference in

It blows my mind that there's a drugs that you can buy in China for say $10 which costs $500 in the US for the same drug. There's got to be something seriously wrong with the system.

if that's the case, you know. But I don't know which technologies it is that China are not... Semiconductor manufacturing is one of them. I don't actually remember the others from the report, but even the ones that China are not leading in, they're not very far behind. I think the next five years is going to be absolutely pivotal. And

What I find difficult to understand is, well maybe not, maybe it's because the people that make the decisions in America just have very little understanding of China and what goes on here. But if Americans had any sense, they'd drop the tariffs and they'd start tying up partnerships and strategic sharing. Because I see that the way the US are going right now, they're just going to become

Marginalized. There'll be China supplying very affordable EVs to pretty much 80% of the world. And then you'll have American factories building a few, which will be even more expensive because they haven't got the economies of scale supplying to a few American customers, you know. And I think that is just ridiculous. They need to concentrate on not trying to handicap China, but just being better themselves. I grew up...

at the time when I remember the first space shuttle launch I was wow America is so cool they led technology and they got complacent and now instead of trying to run faster they just want to handicap the competition I think it's kind of sad really to see that happening because America were a really great country I think and in the last 15-20 years they've really lost their way you know

I feel it's sad. What you're saying echoes Harvard researchers who used to live in China and owns a hotel chain here, Mitch Presnick. He says the same thing in a Harvard Business Review, that the only way forward for the United States is to partner with China and to leverage China's advantages with US economic systems and make it work for the United States instead of

pretending that putting their fingers in the ears and pretending china isn't there it's it's ridiculous yeah they've really got their head in the sand i saw something there was a little interview that elon musk did a couple of days ago and i put a clip on x yes i saw your clip yeah very interesting basically says look china has a lot of smart engineers and scientists and china will

produce a lot of cutting edge things and he's right and he's seen from his own experience you know his Tesla factory in Shanghai he was like gobsmacked at how quick that was built

And it's his most productive factory in the whole world by a big margin to other factories. So he sees how quick that like supply chain clusters work here. I don't know whether this is true but there's rumour that when he wants to build a factory in another country he contacts all these Chinese suppliers to build a cluster of factories around his factory in the country he's building in. Because he sees how slick

and polished the Chinese supply chain is and it really is. There's no other country can touch it. And this is why I think that manufacturing will never ever move to India or Vietnam because they just don't have that supply chain infrastructure. That's something you can't just build in a week or two or a month. It takes many, many years. China were planning ports 10, 15 years ago. They got into EVs.

15 years ago you know they did deals with mine to get the minerals and stuff like that now all these other countries who dispatched it as oh it's not that important and now go oh shit you know we're left behind because china have this long-term vision and the thing i really believe that allows that is having a one-party government now a lot of people don't agree with that

I actually think it's done a massive amount of good for China. If they'd have had a system like America or the UK, they'd have been like India now. Like their economy, what, in the 80s was the same size as India's, China's was, same amount of people. Now China's six, seven times the size.

Because they had this strategic vision, the government has a strategic vision. They don't go, "Oh, well, we're going to plan to get ourselves re-elected in four years time." They go, "Oh, we're going to plan 15 years down the road. Where do we want to be? So what do we need to do in five years, in 10 years, in 12 years?"

Fantastic. Yeah, I think that my country, I hope, would adopt something similar, but I don't see that happening. Not necessarily in terms of the party system, but definitely in terms of long-term planning. And I think the party system, like you said, is actually...

the ability of nations to plan because parties don't agree. But let's move forward. And I want to ask you about overcapacity. So the narrative that the West is selling is that China is producing so much solar that Chinese companies are drowning themselves and none of them can survive. And they're dumping all over the world and there's too much solar. Ah,

So what's your take? Well, this again goes back to what you said. It's economies of scale. China can produce. The demand's there. This overcapacity thing, it's basically the problem with the West is they just can't compete. So whenever they can't compete, they cry overcapacity. Now,

Solar is something very, very interesting. I don't have the name to hand, but there was a report that was published. It was a... I can't think of the publication, but basically it explained how America lost the solar race.

So America were leading in solar. It was one particular company. But the article basically says that the American company, the management was poor. They failed to keep investing. They became complacent. China saw a gap in the market, invested, invested, invested, built out scale. And that was the end of the story for America. If America had done what China did,

they could have still been leading the solar market. And I think this is a big problem with the US. So if you look at Chinese companies, they invest a huge amount of their revenue back into R&D. What do American companies do? They invest a lot of their revenue back into filling the pockets of a few big shareholders and buying back their own shares.

So it's the story of so many American companies that were leading the market in areas and now are not because they got complacent and they didn't reinvest. And I think that's something that Chinese companies don't do. They don't become complacent. And I think that's down to the environment they operate in.

There is so much competition in the Chinese market. It's just unreal. So you get all these companies, "got to get our product to market, got to get our product to market" because if they don't, their competitors beat them to it. Take for example, cars right? Legacy Manufacturers. You were lucky to see a new model every two to three years.

right in china there's a new model every month you know it's like i bought a car an ev i bought the huawei ito m5 like a year ago and it's already like old-fashioned yeah you know and when we were buying it my wife says oh well we shouldn't buy it because there'll be a better one i go but we'd never buy one

Yeah, there'll always be a better one. And something I'd like just to talk about, we have the autonomous drive system on that car. And it was on version 2 when we bought that car 12 months ago. And almost...

Since then we've probably had eight updates. One being a major update to version three. And the improvement has been absolutely massive. Now I use it nearly all the time. Whenever I drive anywhere I'll switch it on and most of the time... No. Okay. It's not perfect. Occasionally it will make some silly mistake. But that is more because it errs on the side of caution rather than... Humans by nature will take risks.

Whereas AI software for autonomous driving doesn't take risks. It will always err on the side of caution.

but man it has got good and i'm lucky to know the Huawei guy that is the lead project engineer over the assisted driving project and i saw him about three months ago he said oh we've just come back from California so why are you in California because oh we went to test the latest version of Tesla's system over there and i says what do you think he goes it's nowhere near as good as ours

It's going to be really interesting because I think later this year Tesla are looking to launch their FSD onto the Chinese market. Because I don't know whether you know, but if you buy a Tesla in China, you can't have FSD. It's not available. They have this like sort of keeping in a lane on the highway and very, very basic, but not FSD. Because before they're allowed to do that, they need to house the data in Chinese data centers.

and also they have to comply with certain regulations, which I believe they are now doing or they've done. But it'll be really interesting to see that because I think building software to drive a car on Chinese roads is a whole different ball game to building software to drive on foreign, like European or American roads. - Yeah, I was thinking about that, the big data that they may be using, right, it'll be a bit different. Like my wife is really interested in

And she likes the Xiaomi Sushi, but she says there's a new Xiaomi. Xiaomi's lovely. There's a new Xiaomi car. That's right. It's a bigger, more like a SUV car. That looks really nice. She's interested in that. Okay, I want to talk about high-speed rail. So let's pivot a bit. So does the UK have high-speed rail? I know Europe does. The United States does not. Not really. Yeah, so... Not really. A lot of people say China is copying technology from the West.

Is it? Nope. So when Deng Xiaoping, he visited Japan and he came back, he saw their high-speed trains and he says, China have to have this. So they went on a program of developing their high-speed rail. And

They hadn't got the technology so they said "Right, what are we going to do?" So they approached Japan and they approached Germany. They approached Suzuki, Kawasaki, not Suzuki, Kawasaki, another Japanese company and Siemens. Bombardier as well, which I think is a Canadian company maybe. Anyway, they approached these and they put a tender for contracts. And these contracts were huge. Multi tens of millions of dollars. But those contracts stated in them that there needed to be a transfer of technology. Now on the first round,

Siemens of Germany decided that they were not comfortable with transferring the technology. So they turned the offer down. But two of the Japanese companies took on the contract. So the first part was they had to be built within China and use Chinese labor to create jobs. Secondly, there was a transfer of technology. Then on the second round of tenders,

Siemens, a German company, decided that "okay, we don't want to lose out, we'll accept a transfer of technology". So actually China purchased that technology. But what they then did is they built on that technology to improve it and improve it. And they continually do that. I think late last year it was announced that they have a new version of the high-speed train that will do an in-service of 400 kilometers an hour.

fallacy that China stole technology is just completely untrue and if people actually do their research they will see that. I've made a couple of videos on it in the past but still you get this narrative that "oh they stole the technology" and actually this is the same even nowadays you know people still accuse them. I have numerous sort of commenters on my x feed that anything I put up "oh China is stealing the technology" well

If China were leading in 57 out of 64 technologies... Who are they stealing from? Who are they stealing it from? You know, some outer galactic planet that's 100 years ahead of us, you know? Because, like...

I look at America, America have done some cool things as well. I actually think Musk has done some cool things. You know, he's got the Starlink, which I think is fantastic. Now, China are launching their own Starlink in 2024. China launched a lot of satellites, not just one company, numerous companies, and they continue. So China have a system like GPS called Beidou. Oh, I use it. It's amazing. Yeah, that's much more accurate than GPS now. It can tell like which lane you're in.

Yeah, yeah. And recently they have been protesting or testing sort of Starlink alternative competitor. That is they use some sort of laser communication and it's like infinitely faster than anything else that that's out there. I think you're going to see in the next two or three years that Starlink.

China will launch a competitor to Stalin. But I do actually think Musk has done some cool stuff. And I think another one of the things that China will pursue is reusable rockets, something which Musk has pioneered. But wouldn't it be cool if America says, OK, let's let Musk work with China. We'll develop something together.

for the benefit of everyone. I have a little story, a quick one. So Bill Gates funded an organization, I don't know the name, to develop a new type of nuclear reactor and he couldn't get anyone in the US to fund building a prototype, basically the first one. He actually found somebody, a company who would fund that in China and he was stopped

from doing it by the American government so he never got built which I think is very very sad. You know if he had cooperation so many people could have benefited from that because it was a new design which was apparently very very much safer than previous designs and as I said earlier I feel that the US with its current policy which doesn't look as if it's going to change anytime soon they're going to hobble themselves because China in the next

few years are just going to surpass them in every major important technology there is, I think. And once they get to the point where they can manufacture cutting edge semiconductors, it's game over for anybody else, I think. I think you're right. You're listening to The Bridge.

Let's switch gears. I want to ask you some other slightly less technology related questions. I saw a video that you did on freedom in China. I think this is absolutely a fascinating topic.

And, you know, usually if I do finally get, oh, China's innovative, all the technology is doing, the economy is going well, then finally people will revert to, yeah, but I'd rather have freedom than high tech. So what do you think about freedom in China? Are Chinese people just working in sneaker factories? Absolutely not. I mean, personally, there is nothing I can't do here that I would do in the UK. Like nothing.

Okay, so I know I can't criticize openly criticize government here like like I can't swear about the leader or stuff like that. But like when you put that to the Chinese people, yeah, but why would you want to do that?

And like, what does it achieve? And a lot of the time, there's obviously this massive fallacy in the West that we have a social credit scoring system here, where if you cross a road when the light's red, you get points deducted and blah, blah, blah. The only system of scoring here is almost identical to the West. It's called credit scoring. OK, the penalties are a bit harsher. Actually,

thought. I think that's good. I think if you've gone bankrupt and you owe people a lot of money, you shouldn't be staying in five-star hotels and traveling around in first class. So I think that's a good thing. I think that should be introduced to the West. But freedom, I honestly see that

There's no lack of freedom here. And it also depends on what is your definition of freedom? So maybe you have freedom in the US to talk bad and swear about your government and the things they're doing. But do you have freedom to walk around pretty much any neighbourhood you want at 3am without fear of being attacked or robbed or have your things stolen from you? No. So to me...

I would rather be able to walk around and live in a safe society than a society where I can swear about my leader. I want to add value to what you said because in Beijing, I don't know what it's called where you live, but we can call a number called 12345.

And just pick up your phone, any phone, and you just dial 1-2-3-4-5 and they connect you to a service. I went to the center here in Beijing and you can complain about anything. You know, your neighbor's tree is in the wrong place or like whatever, or there's someone harassing you. You're unhappy with a government policy.

or the train didn't arrive on time, whatever it is, anything you want to complain about. The police parked their car illegally in my neighborhood, and it's an eyesore. And I saw Andy Boreham did this on his channel. He called 12345 to complain about a police car illegally parked, and the police officer moved the car and apologized. Right.

So even though I can't, you know, yeah, in public start hold up a huge sign insulting leaders or whatever, what I can do is call a number and have a problem solved as soon as it is physically possible to solve that problem. Very recently, I was trying to check into a hotel in quite a fairly rural area. Now, for viewers that don't know, up until maybe six months or so ago, there was an issue where

Some smaller hotels didn't accept foreigners. Now, there was nothing more behind it than they just didn't have the system to be able to process a foreign passport. But that law was changed, that rule was changed. And quite recently I went to a hotel and they said: "I'm sorry, we can't check you in your foreign passport." I said: "No, I think you can. I think the rule has changed." "No, no, no." I said: "Okay, let's call 12345."

We didn't end up calling 12345. They ended up calling their local police station. They were guided to an app on their mobile phone, which allowed them to check me in. Problem solved. You know, I had the exact same experience. I was in Xi'an. We were going to stay at a more affordable three-star hotel. And we went in. They were like, oh, sorry, we can't take foreigners. And I was like,

You can. And so we didn't call 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We, my wife and I, politely, we called the local police department. And a police officer showed up. Not the police that are trying to anti-criminal police, but the local magistrate sort of person shows up.

And walks in and says, yes, you can take them. This is what you do. And he casually and politely explained the process to the staff there. And then voila. From that point on, the hotel knew, hey, foreigners can stay here. By the way, the same gentleman I mentioned earlier, Mitch Presnick, who researches at Harvard University, he's the owner of Superstition.

of super eight hotels. And after I told that story, he called his staff and made it so every super eight hotel China can now take foreigners. They were like, make sure you know how to admit foreigners. So it's getting rolled out. There may be some confusion, but still, yes, you can, you can stay at any hotel. And like you said, it's all a matter of just like, if there's an issue, you can always raise it politely through the proper channels and it'll get resolved.

So, you know, yeah. Generally, I find Chinese people are very pragmatic, actually, in dealing with things. It sometimes takes a while to get there, but there's always a solution, you know. That's how I feel. I've probably spent 15 years in China in the last 20 years. I've lived here permanently for the last seven, but before that I was coming and going. I've never seen, like, a major police incident here. Like, never.

In England, it's like a regular occurrence, you know? Like somebody's getting arrested for shoplifting or causing trouble. Yeah, I've never seen anything like that here. Like, never. And that just blows my mind, you know? I've seen old women arguing with police here. Like, I saw... It's like they will argue with the police, you know? It's like...

I guess if that happens in the US, you risk getting a bullet, you know. So, man, I mean, it just blows my mind how a lot of Westerners, oh, it's an authoritarian state. You look at some of the policing European countries, man. Wow. So, yeah, I mean, going back to your original question, I have no issue with...

doing anything I want to here as long as you stick to the rules as long as you abide by the law as far as I'm concerned there's no problem I agree with you completely I thank you for your time we are out of time would love to ask you a hundred more questions so hopefully we can have you back on later for sure yeah yeah that'd be great thank you so much no problem you're welcome