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Hello there. Welcome back to Conflicted. I'm Thomas Small and my friend and co-host Eamon Dean is here with me as well. Hello, Eamon. Hello, Thomas. How are you? Have you contracted coronavirus yet? Not yet. I believe we're all going to die of it soon.

No. Well, inshallah, as you say. So far in season two, we have been dissecting America's ambition following the end of the Cold War to establish a new world order of global capitalism, liberal democracy, all protected by America's military might. Last time, we talked about Russia and about America's ambition to establish a new profitable partnership with their old enemy.

And, about how, thanks to Vladimir Putin, that didn't quite work out. So, we've done the Middle East and we've done Russia, and today we're focusing on the third object of America's attention as it strove to build a new world order. And of course, I'm talking about China. For the new world order to succeed, China would have to be fully integrated into the global economy.

which would result, or so America believed, in China's leadership enthusiastically embracing liberal democracy. Let's discuss how successful that plan was. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there are only a dozen years left for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius. We're seeing the end of capitalism, the end of capitalism as we know it, and I say good riddance to it. What is at stake?

So, Eamon, in your life now as a contractor, let's say, around the world working with all sorts of governments, you have grown into something of an authority on really the entire what used to be called developing world. But let's face it, they're pretty developed now. So you have authority to speak on China, would you say?

From a political and security point of view, yes, to an extent. Because, you know, my first trip into China, and it was the first of hundreds of other trips like it afterwards, was in 2010, when I was invited by one of their largest oil and natural gas companies, state-owned, to lecture on issues regarding security issues.

After the lecture, I ended up basically being signed on as their security advisor in the Middle East. And I started basically frequenting China sometimes six, seven times a year, more than that. What was your first impression of China when you arrived?

We're talking Beijing here? Yeah. Beijing. I went to Hong Kong, of course, basically, and other places across China, from the northeast, you know, all the way to the northwest and beyond. So I really was fascinated by this inner society, by this place, which, you know, I remember my first trip was in the middle of winter, so it was so cold. Yeah.

But in time, my relationship started to extend beyond just, you know, oil and telecommunication companies, started even to grow even with the government departments there, you know, in order basically to talk with them, think tanks that actually, you know, advise the leadership of the Communist Party. So I started basically to have, you know, greater integration with them in terms of understanding, first of all, their fears and also their aspirations, their fears,

of dealing with the Muslim world, but at the same time their aspirations into really economically conquering the Muslim world as they have done in the 1420s, 1430s and 1440s during the voyage of the Muslim admiral from China, Zheng He.

So they wanted to have this extended trade network with the Muslim world because that's where the energy is. And that's where the potential for China's economic expansionism is. We're going to get there in the end. So let's focus our attention on Hong Kong and see what the tensions between it and China can tell us about the wider question of an American-led New World Order.

Eamon, as you know, Napoleon famously said, China is a sleeping lion. Let her sleep. For when she wakes, she will shake the world. I would have corrected him by saying, China is a sleeping dragon. When she wakes, she will burn the world. Well...

In this case, I'm not saying burning the world, but I would say basically more or less embracing the world. But how tightly this embrace and how suffocating? Well, that's what we are going to discuss today. So...

The theory has been for the last 40 years or so that if China is integrated into the global order of world trade and the American-led Atlanticist order that they built up following the Second World War and ramped up following the end of the Cold War, if

If China could be integrated into that, then not only would economic growth occur there, but liberal democracy would flourish there. Why do you suppose Western leaders first assumed this to be the case, that with economic growth comes liberal democracy?

I think because they always equated capitalism or free market system with liberal values and democracy, which is not the case. If you look at many prosperous nations around the world, not all of them basically follow the same liberal democracy and human rights as

Others, you know, there are many prosperous nations that are really autocracies. So from the Western, I mean, when we're talking about the West, this is just an ideological fixation. Liberal democracy and capitalism go together. They just think that. But there's no reason to think that. There is no reason. I mean, just look at, for example, a country like the United Arab Emirates or Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. And if you look at a country like even Singapore.

Because it is very strict. You can't chew gum there. You can't throw anything in the street. It's very, very regimented. Not known for its liberal regime. Exactly. So if you look at a country like the United Arab Emirates,

I mean, people there do not have the aspirations to become a liberal democracy because for them, they believe that, well, look, we're already a free market, free enterprise society. We are doing really well.

Why do we have to rock the boat? I want to stop you so that we don't get off track because we're talking about China. And so we've said now that the West was looking at China and thought we've got to make them liberal Democrats. We'll make them liberal Democrats by incorporating them into our global economic system. And with prosperity will come liberal democracy. Fine. Let's move away from America's point of view and try to imagine ourselves into China's point of view, particularly the point of view of the Chinese leadership. And as this series is talking about the new world order,

the post-Cold War world, it's good if we start back in 1989. The Berlin Wall is falling and precisely around that time in China,

The communists are crushing protesters in Tiananmen Square. This is a very famous event, the protests by students in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. I remember 10 years old, I guess, maybe 11. I remember watching it on TV and that famous image of the lone student standing in front of the Chinese tank, daring the tank to crush him, daring the Chinese regime to crush his aspirations—

for a more liberal, more democratic China. Do you remember that episode from where you were at the time in eastern Saudi Arabia? Vividly. I was a child in Saudi Arabia, but it was a picture that was posted in most of the Arab newspapers at the time. So...

The Chinese leadership in Beijing are watching the Soviet Union slowly collapse while struggling but succeeding in crushing any liberal dissent internally. But as they're watching the Soviet Union collapse, they're pretty concerned that the same thing not happened to them.

They were born out of the same sort of ideology as the Soviet Union, Maoism, communist China. They had been allies of the Soviet Union before. Famously, they broke away for geopolitical reasons that we don't want to go into. But they shared so much in common with the Soviet Union ideologically that they are – obviously, the collapse of that empire would have threatened them, would have frightened them. So they're determined not to have the same thing happen to them.

Do you think it was ever likely around that time that the same thing could happen to them? Well, what was going on through their mind, and remember basically that the Chinese leadership have greater collective wisdom, at least, than the collective wisdom of the Soviet Union leadership at that time. So for them, they realized that Tiananmen was a wake-up call. And some within the party realized

you know, within the Communist Party, decided that the direction is to go into more repression and more state control. Deng Xiaoping, he basically envisioned that, no,

We can survive. We can basically survive as a quasi-communist government if we liberalize the markets. He basically saw that there is a way forward for China. I think the important point here is to really ignore ideas about communism. It gets in the way.

The Chinese leadership were primarily interested less in maintaining communism as an ideology and maintaining their one-party totalitarian rule. They want one-party rule in China focused entirely on Beijing.

And their totalitarian system had already, over the preceding 40 years, been through a lot. I mean, during the period of Chairman Mao, there were two great waves of extraordinary, really extraordinary violence and social disruption, let us call it. First, the so-called Great Leap Forward, which caused a famine that killed about 30 million people. And then only 10 years or so later, the so-called Cold War.

Cultural revolution, the cultural revolution which killed at least 20 million. So China has been through the ringer. Now in the 70s, things began to change. Nixon famously went to China in 1972 and brought China in from the cold and from that point onward, the American leadership worked closely with China. At the time of course thinking, well, since China and the Soviet Union have fallen out, we can maybe take advantage of that by making the enemy of our enemy our friends.

And then following Mao's death, when this Deng Xiaoping becomes the premier, he starts this shift away from Maoism and towards allowing aspects of a free market or at least a private property dominated economy in the country. So China has already, by the time of Tiananmen Square, started to make these moves. But you're saying that Tiananmen Square was a wake up call, but it wasn't a wake up call like maybe the West wished it to be. They didn't think we need to have liberalism. They just said what? What?

what they said is we should embrace pragmatism. In other words, that if the people have enough, if the people have financial aspirations,

then their political aspirations can be kept in check. So this is, in fact, the opposite of the Western point of view. So the Chinese are saying with prosperity will come political quiescence. Now, that's interesting because in the last months we have seen in Hong Kong the opposite of political quiescence. The Hong Kong people are rising up.

Hong Kong, which is a very important bastion of the Western economic system right there beside China, sort of quasi a part of China since 1997, which beginning in April 2019 has seen lots of protests, which became increasingly violent, increasingly inflammatory.

over all sorts of questions, questions that really get to the heart of the Western economic system, what's called neoliberalism, because in Hong Kong, they're facing growing property prices. The young generation feel disenfranchised. Economic growth is stagnating. The system actually, though it seems to have a veneer of democracy, is being revealed more and more to just be a kind of

economic capitalist, crony capitalist oligarchy. So first of all, before we start analyzing it, what can you tell me about these Hong Kong protests? Why did they start? When did they start? What do the people who are protesting in Hong Kong want?

In Hong Kong, the protesters are protesting mostly because of the extradition treaty between China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, which talks about basically the extradition of criminals or people basically who have been deemed a criminal in the Chinese justice system and Hong Kong justice system and in Taiwan justice system.

So basically, the idea is that it's an extradition treaty. So someone will say, basically, well, is that really? And I will answer, no. Basically, it's a culmination of so many things. And the feeling that this is just an excuse by China to extend this hegemony into Hong Kong.

Now, Eamon, it must be said that the Chinese crackdown against these protesters has been, at least from our lights, severe. President Xi Jinping, he is China's strongman at the moment. He threatened the protesters openly. He said that any attempt to endanger China's national sovereignty and security or to challenge the power of the central government crossed a red line and would be dealt with heartbroken.

He did say that, which is in general a very clear articulation of the Chinese political perspective, which is you will not stop us. China is going to win. But, you know, basically there has been there hasn't been any direct Chinese crackdown in Hong Kong. But he said they would. They would, but they didn't. No, I know, but they would. Well, I mean...

The Hong Kong police have cracked down very harshly and everyone knows, you know, to whom the Hong Kong police actually answer. Yeah, but whose fault is that? You know, Britain did not defend, you know, basically its, you know, position in Hong Kong. It is not Britain's fault that Hong Kong police are cracking down on protesters. Britain doesn't have the power to. What I mean, what I mean basically is that they left, you know, in 1997.

So 22 years later, who do you think basically the Hong Kong police will answer to? If it's not to China, then to who? Maybe to the people of Hong Kong. That would be nice. Yeah, but in 20 years, it will go back to China. That's true. Well, in 20 years, they can deal with that. It must be pointed out that for almost 200 years, Hong Kong was part of the British Empire. It was sort of leased to the British in the early 19th century on a long lease, and that lease came up

in 1997, at which point Hong Kong was handed back to the Chinese. Now, a very complicated set of negotiations led up to that handover. And one of the many concessions that the Chinese agreed to was, for example, not to extradite criminals from one justice system to the other because the Hong Kong residents were, for justifiable reasons, afraid that the legal system of Hong Kong based on

British common law and respect for human rights and things might clash with the system in China. So the extradition treaty may seem like a small thing, but it symbolizes something, which is that the agreement that the Chinese had made might be coming apart and that the Hong Kong will be integrated more completely into the Chinese system, which Hong Kong people fear. Is that fair? Yeah.

Well, one of my bosses when I was working in that particular global bank I used to work for after I left the UK Intelligence Services, he said to me that up to 1997, the people of Hong Kong were feeling so nervous that between 1992 and 1997, many people basically migrated to Canada, the US, UK and other places, you know, because they were afraid that

that the handover will basically, you know, make them proper Chinese. And remember, 1997 China wasn't as advanced as now. No, and also, and the shadow of Tiananmen Square hangs over this whole conversation throughout the 90s. China was still kind of a baddie. It hadn't been, you know, it hadn't been brought in entirely from the cold. But, you know, when I started going to Hong Kong, I started to see basically that people there were relaxed.

about it because why because up until then up until even up until the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the handover in 2017 because I was there in Hong Kong also and I was you know seeing all these you know billboards and advertisement and celebration of better together and all of that so

You know, you ask people there and they say, well, so far, China did not interfere too much. But also people are saying we are now, you know, almost, almost halfway to become fully integrated into China. It is 2047. That's a date when the special status, most likely the special status of Hong Kong as an SAR, a special administrative region of China, will come to an end. This was also part of the negotiations with the British at the handover.

The settlement that they agreed on would last only 50 years, at which point China would do with Hong Kong what it wished. And everyone assumes that will be to incorporate it as a proper a proper part of the country. Exactly. But since then, if you see basically the Pearl River, you know, Delta in the Pearl River Delta. Yeah.

You know, we're talking here about, you know, Macau, Hong Kong, but also Xinjiang and Huanju. So basically all of these cities, you know, there are over 95 million people basically live in that delta. And China now has, you know, basically built a sea bridge over Huanju.

in that delta in order to connect all the four cities together. - So they're coming. The infrastructure is being laid down already. - Exactly. So for them, for the people of Hong Kong, they started to feel that, oh my God, basically we're being incorporated. But at the same time, the living standards in the cities around Hong Kong, especially Shenzhen, just to the north of it, started to improve considerably. And this is mainland China.

And, you know, this is something that started to affect the people of Hong Kong, where they started to have this kind of double loyalty. They fear China, but at the same time, they admire the fact that China builds while Hong Kong doesn't.

There is a monopoly of land in Hong Kong, and that basically has caused many young people to feel despair over the fact that they will never be able to own a property because it is the most expensive real estate in the whole world. This is extremely interesting to hear because...

in a way, Hong Kong is like a little Western satellite just beyond China. And the West as well is kind of going through waves of similar realizations that its relative prosperity is less than it used to be vis-a-vis the rest of the world, especially China, as a result of which it doesn't command the same sort of power. It looks across at China and is a little bit concerned or half concerned, half admiring.

Property values throughout the Western world are skyrocketing, especially in the cities. The young generation can't afford to buy houses, including, you know, even the middle generation like myself. And so the Hong Kong people are kind of going through the same thing. But ten times worse. Ask any person from Hong Kong, can you afford to buy a house, which is in reality a shoebox in a high rise? That's what it is.

And they will tell you basically it's, you know, not until they are in their 40s they can, you know, they will be able to afford. And that is the problem here.

Yes, it's true. Hong Kong is the world's most expensive real estate market by far. The average house costs $1.2 million in Hong Kong. This is well above Singapore, which is the second most expensive in the world. So that's a big problem. Hong Kong's real estate prices are extremely high. Not for a shortage of land.

Not for shortage of land. It's an island. Yeah, no, but still they have, you know, a good decent part of the mainland basically that belongs to them. So basically it's not the shortage of land. It is the monopolization of land by the land department of the government of Hong Kong.

They, you know, rarely basically put out small parts of land for development, for auction. And of course, it will be the highest bidder. And as a result, you know, the prices just keep going higher and higher and higher. They control it because basically of the fact that there is when people say Hong Kong is, you know, a democracy. I really start to laugh.

It's an oligarchy of real estate barons. It's true. Hong Kong is headed up by someone called a chief executive, which is quite funny because that's an expression we usually associate with the world of corporations. So the Hong Kong chief executive oversees a committee which is dominated by property oligarchs, really, but then who also have their fingers in all the pies of Hong Kong. Exactly. So what happened here is that now,

The protests are about anti-China. That's what, you know, what's happening. But the question is, what triggers it? What triggered all of this? Yes, the fear that China is going to rob them of their, you know, human rights, of their freedom of expression, freedom of assembly. And that's right. You know, but if I tell you what a Chinese official told me over dinner,

And he is someone I also met in Hong Kong, you know, several times as well as in mainland China. And he said that the problem is I feel that the, you know, Hong Kong young are protesting against China, but they are protesting at the wrong, you know, enemy here. The real enemy are the ones who are robbing them of their aspirations.

because he compared a young entrepreneur from China, from Shenzhen, just north of the border, and a young entrepreneur from Hong Kong. And he will say basically that the young entrepreneur in Hong Kong won't have enough savings or money to invest in his business or invention because he's already spending so much of his income on rent because he can't buy.

And if he tried to get an officer and cooperate, basically, it's even more expensive. But a young man from Shenzhen can save more, even though the income is less, can save more of his income because the rents are less. And, you know, if he wants to incorporate and start a business and all of that, the cost of business is less.

So, you know, the reality is that Shenzhen is now becoming more successful than Hong Kong, you know, as a tech capital of China, while Hong Kong remaining reliant on the financial sector as well as the trade sector. But if only the real estate prices start to go down, only then we start to see basically that the people of Hong Kong will start to feel more secure about their future. It's difficult, though, because the entire Hong Kong economy

political economy is propped up by high house prices. Unsustainable. It may be unsustainable, but it's true. I mean, because Hong Kong has famously low taxes, which is claimed, which lies behind its rise to economic domination over the 20th century. Fine. But the state, which still needs to provide public services, is funded largely by

its ownership and its selling and renting of property. So they have to keep the price very high in order to sustain the system as it is. But then the system will lock out the next generation. The next generation will remain locked out of the property market because it's just too high. It's just unrealistically high. So what does the Chinese official say is the solution? What would the Chinese Communist Party do to solve this problem?

Well, for them, they are saying, well, we are going to wait until 2047. We are biding our time. 2047 is around the corner from a historical point of view. And only then, basically, when the whole, the two regions, basically, I mean, both Macau and Hong Kong become fully integrated into China,

then the real estate market basically in Hong Kong will collapse automatically because then there will be no border between Shenzhen

you know, and Huan Ju and other places in mainland China and Hong Kong, people can commute. It will be linked up by train. There will be no visas or passports or border anymore. There will be commuter belt created for Hong Kong by then. People can just live in Shenzhen or its suburbs and can basically commute to Hong Kong on daily basis.

So the Chinese are not threatened by these protests. We hear all the time in the news here that the protests in Hong Kong are a harbinger of big problems for China, that it might be the first domino in a set of dominoes that brings the whole system toppling down. The Chinese, they're pretty sanguine. They're not afraid.

This is the problem. I mean, it's the West always get excited about protests and freedom and all of that. Like, I mean, but, you know, you need to understand that it's far more complex than that. The Chinese media machine is very formidable. They really know how to steer the public opinion of their people without the people knowing that they are being steered into the direction.

The argument I made now that the protesters in Hong Kong, you know, have been, you know, yes, they have been triggered by the treaty, but in reality, basically, they are also protesting about... The extradition treaty. Yeah, the extradition treaty. They've been riled up about it, but also they are riled up because they feel that they don't have a future in Hong Kong because of the fact that they will always remain renters, you know, rather than, you know, property-owning individuals. Yeah.

and professionals. And so that is, so the Chinese media really made it into, oh, these poor people, they are misled because while they are, you know, they are protesting against the wrong enemy here. Their enemy is the oligarchs, those capitalist oligarchs who have monopolized the land. Look at them. You know, unlike us, we are building entire cities here.

you know, in months in order to accommodate you, our people. So you have cheap, you know, affordable, high quality homes. So this is the Chinese counter-narrative. Exactly. Is it landing? Is there any indication that you know of that the Hong Kong people are listening and thinking, oh, that's interesting? Well, it's not directed at the Hong Kong people. It is directed at the Chinese people. Because when the Chinese people see the protest...

The Chinese government want to make sure that it's not imitated. The protests don't spread. Exactly. So what they are saying is,

"Look! Look at Hong Kong model! People can't afford the shoebox!" You guys, however, basically, we are building like there is no tomorrow! So, in a sense, they have actually cleverly turned the narrative upside down and that the protesters are just misled people who think their enemy is China while in fact, basically, they are angry about their living conditions.

So the Hong Kong protests aren't going to derail the Chinese juggernaut anytime soon. Let's switch now. Let's move to the other side of China and return, in fact, to a topic that we discussed in season one of Conflicted. And this is the other thing that you often hear about these days that's going on in China on the west side of the country amongst a population of Uyghurs, the Uyghurs of Xinjiang province in the west.

Briefly now, because we did cover this in season one, who are the Uyghurs? They're not actually Chinese. Well, remember that China have 56 ethnic minorities. So they are one of the ethnic minorities of China.

They're not Han Chinese. Oh, no. The Han actually make up the vast majority of Chinese people. But then remember, there are Mongolians, Kazakhs, there are Tibetans, there are the Cantonese. Basically, there are the Huey Muslims who are actually Han Chinese by ethnicity, but Muslims.

And don't forget the religious minorities who are always, you know, prosecuted. Like many people basically talk about Muslims being prosecuted. Not necessarily. Huey Muslims don't have the same, you know, trouble that the Uyghur Muslims have. And that's because of the separatism that the Uyghurs have, which...

Now, Eamon, I want to push you on this. You say that we Muslims haven't faced persecution by the Chinese state. I think that's not strictly speaking accurate. Now, it's true they're certainly not experiencing what some of the Uyghurs are experiencing. But in April 2018, the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department took control of the State Bureau of Religious Affairs. And so they are now directly overseeing religious affairs, no longer the government itself.

And this united front has emerged as a very aggressive proponent of making sure that religious groups throughout China are not expressing anything that they consider to be anti-Chinese. It's part of a larger process of signification of religion in China. So, for example, amongst the Hui Muslims, they've been knocking down domes and minarets, anything that smacks actually of Arab aesthetic, Arab Islamic aesthetic.

Now, I think it's important to point out that this actually, in fact, this actually backs up your larger argument, I would say, which is that the Chinese state is involved in state building, in creating a viable nation state, which can then project its power outwards.

And Muslims within China are considered to be potentially antagonistic to that effort. Ironically, as they are often considered to be elsewhere in the world, even in the West. You know, it is Muslims that often create this sense that they're not really one of us. They're not really signed up to our national identity. Well, historically speaking.

The Huey Muslims, you know, filled up many, many posts in the government that are related to commerce, diplomacy and even the Navy. So in a sense, yes, the emergence of that committee from the Communist Party to take over the religious affairs of China was worrying and worrying for so many people, including the Huey.

But for the Hui, when they were saying, yes, only very few mosques of ours basically have minarets and domes because the vast majority of Hui mosques, and I've been to some of them, look exactly like Chinese temples. It must be beautiful. And they've been like this for centuries. You know, the Hui Muslims from the beginning, from a thousand years ago, they built their mosques, you know, not distinguished at all from the rest of the Chinese architecture.

So when you see, you can't tell a mosque from outside, and this is not because of the Communist Party or anything. It's been happening from a thousand years ago. It's true, but more recently, in fact, the Hui Muslims have received some money from the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia. And, you know, and...

Salafi missionary movements have been appealing to some Hueys and the Chinese state is trying to stop this. Exactly. I mean, and ironically, some members of the diplomatic mission of China in Saudi Arabia are Huey Muslims themselves. And they were talking to religious scholars in Saudi Arabia, telling them, please, you know, just leave us alone when it comes to our religious identity. We are Muslims. Muslims enough. Thank you so much. Just stay out of it.

Okay, now you're racing ahead now. Who are the Uyghurs? So the Uyghurs are a Turkic

ethnic group. So they are more similar to people in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. So they are Turkic in their, in fact, it's the birthplace of the Turkic based languages, especially in places like Kashi, which called in Arabic Kashgar and in the local language Kashgar.

So, you know, which is basically sitting in the southern part of the Xinjiang province in northwest China.

Reporting live from under my blanket, I'm Susan Curtis with Dunkin' at Home. Breaking news, pumpkin spice iced and hot coffees are back. I'll pass it to Mr. Curtis with his blanket for the full story. That is so right, Susan. You know, it's never too early to get in a spicy mood. I'm talking cinnamony goodness that's so tasty, people don't want to leave their blankets either. Back to you. No, back to you. All you. The home with Dunkin' Pumpkin Spice is where you want to be.

So let me just tell you what I know about the Uyghur situation in China. The Chinese are evil and they're erecting enormous concentration camps, shoving millions of Uyghurs in them and brainwashing them into not being Muslims because they hate God. No, it's not like that. Really? I mean, that's what I've been told. Okay. Okay. First, before you just destroy the received wisdom of it, to what extent is that narrative true? Okay. Okay.

So, you know, a disclaimer to, you know, the listener here, you know, as I have, you know, a lot of commercial interest in China myself. So basically, I'm not, you know, basically defending China because of that. And I'm not actually, you know, defending NSA. I'm explaining the situation as it is. Great. But also, I have to, you know, basically state that I relied a lot on the official Chinese government

narrative here. In fact, when I was, you know, invited to come to Xinjiang myself, I've been there and I visited even one of the camps, you know, basically being talked about. So I was still being minded. I was still basically like in a way, you know, Chinese government minder. Exactly. But you have visited one of these camps that are holding Uyghurs. Indeed. So for them, they believe that the separatism, you know, that the Uyghurs basically, you know, harbor

Like Tibetans say. So the Uyghurs think we're a people. We shouldn't be dominated by Beijing. We want to be separate. Yeah.

So the separatism, you know, which is cloaked in Islamic, you know, ideology also with it. Because Uyghurs are Muslim. Exactly. Sunni Muslim, like Saudis, like Egyptians, like Algerians. Yeah, Sunni Muslims. But, you know, there is a division there, you know, between those who are Sufis and those who are more, you know, influenced by other schools of thought. Not just only Diobandi. Which is a kind of hardline Salafi kind of movement from the south, from Saudi Arabia.

from South India, South Asia. Yeah, it's not Salafi. It's a hard line Hanafi. Oh, sorry. Yeah, it's a hard line Hanafi. These different labels get all confused. I know, I know. So trust me, I struggle always basically to explain this to others. But, you know, there are so many schools of thought that have influenced, you know, the Uyghurs basically in terms of religious affiliation. Remember, Xinjiang province as a whole have about 26 million people.

and despite being so big as a province and roughly about 12 million to 13 million are Uyghurs so roughly half roughly half below half

So, you know, but they are concentrated mostly in the southern half of the province and the northern half have less Uyghurs and more Han and Huey and Kazakhs and other ethnicities. So the Uyghur population, which lives more in the south part of the province, they're broadly speaking Sunni Muslims. So what are the Chinese government trying to do to them? Okay.

The Chinese didn't have that much problems with them, basically, you know, in the 1970s and 80s, because mostly it was Sufi Islam that was dominant. I remember I was talking to an imam there in Kashi and he said to me something interesting. He said, look, you know, you've noticed that, you know, on the way here, you know, there were villages that are looking like a post-apocalypse, like, you know, basically no one is there.

you know, a mosque is destroyed, bulldozed completely and the streets are empty, no one is there. And then you pass into another village or another town where the mosques are open, you know, with lights and celebrations and, you know, the streets are bustling. He said this is when you see a Sufi, you know, village that is or a town that is cooperating with the authorities and you will see another place where there is more spirit of separatism. That's a place that is deserted and this is a place that is rewarded for

So the Chinese aren't really, it's not really about Islam. It's about a form of Islam that some Uyghurs have embraced over the last few decades that is more political in its orientation. Let's call it Islamism, more Islamist in its orientation, and which feels that being within or being under the Chinese state is against Islam or something. They're political separatists. Yeah. So what's happened here is that the problem is there were a group of people

from Xinjiang, who when they were studying in Pakistan in the Islamic University of Islamabad in the 1980s, their teachers included people like Kamal al-Halbawi, who was one of the most senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in the world, and Abdullah Azam, who was the... The great ideologue who basically started the jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviets. Oh, yes.

So they influenced a new generation of Uyghur students in Pakistan. Indeed. And they started to return and preach the gospel of jihadism. I know it's a contradiction of terms, but anyway. So they started to preach jihadism, Muslim Brotherhood ideals, and even some of them returned, you know, basically from places like Uzbekistan and other places with jihadism.

The new ideas that coming from the Middle East, which is the ideals of Hezbollah, which is a radical Sunni Islamist group. Exactly. Which calls for the return of the caliphate. Like all the other bozos. Exactly. To the point where, you know.

It's estimated that the number of Hezbollah members, underground members, basically, in Xinjiang, according to Hezbollah sources themselves, exceeds 6,000 to 7,000 members. That doesn't sound like so many people. I mean, the country has 1.3 billion. Yeah, I'm talking about the Uyghur population is 12 million. So basically having 6,000 or 7,000 members of Hezbollah, and that's only Hezbollah, we're not talking about the Muslim Brotherhood, and not to mention the jihadists.

Because there have been Uyghurs in Syria, as we discussed in season one. And Afghanistan, and fighting alongside the Taliban. So the Chinese are afraid of the separatism that is being incubated amongst this kind of Islamist ideology amongst the Uyghurs. But what are they doing to the Uyghurs? So...

If you are looking at them, they basically believe that, look, as we have pacified Tibet, they believe they have pacified Tibet. So the person, you know, the individual who actually was responsible for the pacification of Tibet is now in Xinjiang, and he's been there for a few years.

He is now basically leading the effort to pacify Xinjiang. Eamon, I'm afraid you're not selling this to me because my whole life I've only heard that the Tibetans have been utterly crushed by the Chinese behemoth. And Richard Gere has told me many times at the Oscars that the Tibetans are suffering. Well, OK.

Suffering politically, maybe. But economically speaking, things are starting to change a lot. We're back again to that. This is the Chinese way. We will make you rich. Yes. And you just give us your freedom in exchange. Well, yeah. You know, this is the money. Obey.

That is the Chinese methodology and this is why when I talk to people about it, they keep saying, but they are not supposed to do that. I remind them that this is China. This is not Europe. This is not North America. This is not Australia. This is China. The Chinese have their own way of dealing with things and therefore we have to understand their mentality, their mindset,

I must stress, Thomas, that I made my position very clear, you know, basically in my lectures on counterterrorism to Chinese officials, that repression doesn't work. Repression will breed only further acts of terrorism and further acts of violence. And what's happening is beyond what could be endured by the population who are very proud people. The Uyghurs. Yeah.

And, you know, and I made my position very clear. I'm glad you're saying this because I want the listener to understand that Amon is not justifying the Chinese state repression. He's simply explaining it. I'm explaining it. I tell you, there is a possibility of a negotiated settlement for this entire sorry crisis.

There are many people in China who are good-hearted people, decent people, whether in academia or in the think tanks that advise the Chinese government. If the demands for separatism is dropped, then the negotiation over religious freedoms can kickstart, really. And this is why I'm saying, as long as there is a possibility of talks,

of secretive talks basically taking place. Take this chance. It's about the survival of the Uyghur Muslim religious and ethnic identity. Eamon, this is all very interesting. I mean, I must say it freaks me out what you're describing about the Chinese and their apparatus of repression in Xinjiang against the Uyghurs. Well, you know, we have to understand, you know, basically...

We don't excuse, by the way. We just say understand why they want to maintain the integrity of their borders and the integrity of China as a unified country. And their way of doing things includes setting up camps, putting recalcitrant Uyghurs into them,

and brainwashing them into being obedient to the Chinese state? Is that basically what's going on? Yes. And are they being murdered in droves if they refuse? Well, I mean, basically, the question here is that when I ask the question all the time,

Are there any people basically who has been executed? And the answer is there are people who's been executed since 2009 until now on charges of terrorism and the fact many of them were returnees from Afghanistan or you know in later years basically returnees from Syria who were trying to carry out acts of terrorism.

There has been dozens of acts of terrorism by the Uyghurs, you know, who are jihadists basically in China. You know, the Kunmin Massacre, you know, is one of them. I've never heard of the Kunmin Massacre. Well, it is, you know, in the province of Yunnan, I think, basically it was in 2014 where at the train station,

It was a knife attack. Someone went berserk and killed all sorts of people. Exactly. Like, you know, dozens of people were killed. Hundreds were wounded. I mean, and so, you know, and there were many other acts of terrorism, you know, basically, you know, car bombs against police stations in Xinjiang. I mean, basically, the Chinese, you know, released a video basically containing five minutes containing, you know, all of these acts of terrorism happening on caught on CCTV and all of that. So,

Now, so jihadists have been executed in China. But what about just garden variety Uyghurs who would frankly rather be Muslims and not Chinese? OK, so this is basically when you ask and they say, no, we don't basically execute people because they think differently. And we will put them in prison until basically they recant. But we do not execute people in this way. That's what they say. And I haven't seen any evidence of people basically being executed differently.

You know, for thought crimes. Frankly, even if that's the case, it doesn't make me really want to move to Xinjiang. But the real question is, why does China care that much? I mean, it's Xinjiang. Who cares about Xinjiang? Why can't these people just... Why don't we just allow a new Central Asian Republic, call it Xinjiang, to be established and it breaks away from Beijing? I mean, Western China, it's nothing. It's just desert and crap. Yeah, I know. Yeah.

You know, I've been there. But actually, you know, if you tour the place, it's really beautiful. I mean, really, I'm not kidding. It's really beautiful. Sure, there are lots of beautiful places. The Chinese don't need to own them. Yeah, yeah. But historically speaking, first of all, the Chinese border always fluctuated

against the Russian Empire, against the Turkic Empires, you know, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. That's always the case. And since the Qing Dynasty and before even, that the Uyghurs lived, you know, for periods of time under, you know, Chinese influence, under Russian influence, under Turkic influence,

So there were always these, you know, movements. There wasn't a single country, you know, basically called Turkestan or East Turkestan, as they call it, you know, in Xinjiang, except for brief periods of time. This part of the world is a frontier zone between empires and always has been. It always has been. So now for when I, you know, I will not say this as my opinion. I will just tell you what that Imam Famkashi, who was...

telling me about why the Chinese are putting hundreds of thousands of people in the camps and talking about them and saying, while it is regrettable, he believed it was necessary because, you know, the ideologies that are coming out of other Muslim countries has infected them with the rebellious nature, which doesn't, you know, bode well for the future of the Uyghurs in the region. He said that, look,

We are 12 million people in this province. This province was always the backdoor of China. You know, there was no reason for the Chinese to hold on to it because basically it is not exactly rich in natural resources, it is not basically very strategic, but something changed in recent years. Now, instead of being the backdoor of China, now Xinjiang is the front door of China, the new front door.

Of China. And it's important for a strategic survival. And why is that? What's changed? Okay. What changed is the Belt and Road Initiative. The Belt and Road Initiative. And I think just because it's easier to say and to remember, let's call this the New Silk Road. Exactly. Because it has a very Orientalist flavor about it. Exactly. So the Belt and Road Initiative, the New Silk Road.

is essentially a continental high-speed rail network which connects China to Europe via Central Asia and the Middle East and Russia, meaning that goods can get to Europe faster than by ship. And...

This is amazing because it undercuts American naval shipping routes. It basically is shifting back to the continental system from the Atlanticist naval-dominated system. And it includes all sorts of things, ports, new maritime routes. The Chinese are basically throwing down the gauntlet to the way the world has been run for the last 500 years and saying, we're back. We are going to dominate global trade. Look.

The Belt and Road Initiative is a gigantic, gigantic project. It will cost a trillion dollars and that's only phase one. What will happen is that there will be, you know, basically Xinjiang, whether it is Urumqi, the capital, or Kashi, the second city basically in the south of Xinjiang, they will become the junctions of this new Silk Road.

Freight trains will leave Beijing with containers and they will arrive in Berlin in 16 days. Now, these days, it will take by ship between 40 to 48 days to do it. That's astonishing. That's really undercutting the time. Yes, and not just only that. So it will cut the time by 30. But also…

It will reduce insurance premiums because it's a rail, it's safe. You know, while the shipping routes basically are, of course, you know, threatened by hurricanes and weather. Pirates. Pirates and the Malacca Strait and, you know, which is a chokehold. And also the Somali pirates, basically. You know, there are many chokeholds. The Strait of Malacca, you know, the Bab el-Mandab, you know, the Suez Canal. And you have to pay money there and all of that. So what happened is...

If the railroad will go from Beijing to Urumqi, from Urumqi then it goes to Almaty in Kazakhstan, from there into Moscow and St. Petersburg, and from there into Poland and Germany and France and UK and Spain. And also there will be another one from Kashi going...

all the way to Gawadar, which is a port in Pakistan. On the Indian Ocean. No, on the Arabian Sea, just on the mouth of the Gulf. The Arabian Sea is part of it. Yeah, the Arabian Sea is part of the Indian Ocean, but to be very geographically accurate. Sorry, I'm a nerd. So basically 3,000 kilometers of railroad access

and a truck road basically going from Kashi all the way to Gawadar. And that port basically will be, you know, selling goods to Saudi Arabia, to the UAE, to the Gulf countries, and even to Iran and to Pakistan itself, and maybe even to India. So the idea is that Xinjiang no longer, you know, basically a backward province. It is now going to be the center of trade.

China's new Silk Road. It's the junction. And this is what the Imam told me in Kashi. He said, if China didn't let us go, basically, when our province mattered little, they will never ever let us go. They will not let 12 million Uyghurs stand in the way of progress of 1.4 billion Chinese. So what he said, for the survival of our religion, for the survival of our race,

We need to cooperate with China. He said basically just like and he mentioned this name. He said just like Ramazan Kadyrov in Chechnya realized. From the last episode, Kadyrov who's Putin's little lapdog. Yeah. So as Ramazan Kadyrov in Chechnya realized in the middle of the war against Russia that we're not going to win.

The Russian bear will crush us completely. So for the survival of the Chechen race and for the survival of us in our Chechen religious identity. Just like Khadirov, the Uyghurs need to bend the knee really and just get with the program. Exactly. The program's not changing and the West is not going to change it. So no one is coming to our rescue. No one is coming to our rescue. Not the Muslim world, not the Western world.

we are the only ones who can save ourselves by accepting, like our ancestors accepted before Qing Dynasty, you know, hegemony over the Uyghurs. We can basically accept the current hegemony, but

We have to negotiate in order to regain our religious freedoms. So, Ayman, preventing Islamism from spreading amongst the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, preventing separatism, political separatism amongst the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, is this really just an excuse that Beijing is giving in order to

do whatever they want in Xinjiang, including, say, ethnic cleansing, just killing all the Uyghurs. Often that is what you hear in the media, that in the end, the Uyghurs are done for. They're just going to be wiped out. No, of course not. I mean, otherwise, basically, we would be hearing about, you know, hundreds of thousands of people dying, but that's not the reality. You know, why spend, you know, billions of dollars basically trying to re-educate the whole population, you know, only to kill them later? Right. So I can understand that perspective, but...

But let's like zoom out a bit from the Uyghurs and talk about the New Silk Road and of a Chinese-dominated economic transport system that completely changes the way everything is working.

Officials in the Western world have actually known for quite a long time that this was coming. As I quoted at the beginning of the episode, China is a lion. When it wakes, it will roar. Dragan. So I was personally first introduced to this new reality of a growing China by a friend of mine. His name was Alexandros Peterson, a brilliant young American man who lived in Central Asia, lived in China, lived in China.

and was studying. He was actually one of the world's experts on the New Silk Road and what it meant for the world. Sadly, the Taliban assassinated him. He was a victim of a Taliban bombing in Kabul where he was teaching at a university and he died. What a waste. It's a terrible waste. He wrote a book called The World Island in which he reintroduced to people

An older geopolitical theory, it's the World Island Theory. It was first formulated in 1904 by a Victorian geographer called Halford Mackinder. The World Island Theory is basically this, that if you take the whole globe, the African-Eurasian part of the world is...

The vast majority of the world's land, it's the world island. And in the middle of this world island is what's called the heartland, which is basically Central Asia, the Eurasian plateau that stretches from the west of Russia into China, the heartland. The theory is if you control the heartland, you control the world island. And if you control the world island, you control the world.

Now, in fact, if you think about it, the whole history of the 20th century is the history of attempts to control the world island on the part of big land empires and the Western world, especially the British American world, trying to prevent that from happening, most famously during the Cold War with the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union controlled the heartland and the American imperium, if you like, was absolutely animated about preventing it from maximizing the power that the heartland gave it. And it succeeded. The Cold War ended with the Soviet Union failing to take power that it got from controlling the heartland and dominating the world.

Now we have China. China is dominating the heartland today and is laying down the foundations for a new wave of economic domination that by taking the power of the heartland, by linking the entire world island via land-based trade routes,

Like in the old days, like the Silk Road, before the Portuguese and the Dutch and the British created the new maritime shipping system that has dominated the world for centuries. Now China's doing it and they're going to succeed.

So, Eamon, given the fact that the Chinese New Silk Road and its own New World Order really threatens America's, is America trying to stop this or undermine it? Is this what lies behind the frankly bellicose language of President Trump in the last few years and the trade war between China and America? Is America trying to stop the New Silk Road?

Yes, but half-heartedly. Because, you know, there is a problem here, okay? And the problem is this.

Trump has been engaging in a trade war, not only with China, but also with Europe, and also basically insisting on America's energy independence, which means they don't buy oil anymore from the Middle East or beyond. So who's buying the Middle East oil right now? It's China. So at the end of the day, it's like, okay, America, you don't want us to trade with China. You

So by isolating itself, America is forcing the rest of the world into China's arms.

Precisely. So if you are going to pick up fights with Russia over the Ukraine and the Crimea, impose sanctions, who will Russia trade with? It will be China. If China is going to buy Russia's oil and gas, if China is going to buy the Middle East oil and gas, if China is going to export machinery to both Russia and the Middle East, then America basically is saying, well, I mean...

We are going to defend the human rights and we are going to stand for freedom and all of that. OK, you want to stand for freedom, then become a viable economic partner or just do not try to sabotage another economic partnership that is emerging. If the United States was being led by someone more internationalist in outlook than President Trump.

Is it possible that he might be able to create a genuine global alliance or coalition against the rising China? Do you think that would be possible? No, because, you know, Obama also failed and he's an internationalist. America doesn't need a protectionist or an internationalist. What it needs is a pragmatist. So you just, America just needs to face up to the fact the Chinese train has left the station. You better get on board. Yes. And so really, dear listener, everything is going to change.

The Western world is sort of over as we understand it. And the new century is China's. Now, this whole season is about the new world order that George H.W. Bush wanted to create.

America, it's not necessarily that America's failed. It's that China has succeeded. The Chinese New World Order is being born today. What do you think? Am I right about this or am I exaggerating? You are right, but there are some caveats here. You know, we have to always remember something. China is not a nation of innovation. China is a nation of imitation.

And it will remain so for a little while. When will I see China rise to heights of greatness that was never seen before is when they are transformed from a nation of imitation to a nation of innovation.

Because? Because then if they become innovative, nothing can stop them. Because at the moment, why the American economy is so dominant. With the tech boom and the internet, I mean, we dominate all of them. We, I mean, I'm an American. I personally dominate the world economy. America dominates all of the innovative technological advances that are creating economic growth at the time, especially from Silicon Valley. Why? Because basically America is the innovation economy.

Yeah, China manufactured the iPhone, but really, who designed it and made it and created it is America. Okay, but what about, you know, Huawei and all of these big Chinese firms and East Asian firms more generally, which fall within the Chinese orbit? Exactly. That's why I'm saying that at the moment they are imitating, but when they start innovating and they're beginning to, you know, we can see the transformation now from the imitation nation to the innovation nation.

This is basically when we start to see a greater Chinese dominance. Why? Because then there will be a true alternative. And the most important example of this now is the 5G row all over the world.

The question is... Huawei's 5G network that right here in the United Kingdom, you know, absolutely, it's tearing political parties apart. Do we allow a Chinese firm, you know, basically linked to the Chinese security service to install for us our telecommunications network? But here is the problem is that the Americans could not yet come with a viable alternative. So I didn't exaggerate. So the new world order is Chinese. Exactly. This is why I said that...

You know, and I remember I was at a dinner at, you know, the largest oil company in China. I was their guest of honor at the time. And that was in 2010. So it was a really long time ago, almost 10 years ago. So I remember I said these exact words because they were asking me, when do you think basically China will become the top economy of the world? You know, and I was asking, you're Chinese, like, you know, why do you ask me? He said, because we love to listen to the opinions of others.

So I said, OK, once you stop imitating and you start innovating, then the world is yours. Well, it's happened. Yes, it's beginning. It's beginning to happen. It's beginning to happen. And it seems to me that the Western world is beginning to wake up to this fact and start

This is directly connected to this new world order America's new world order that it wants to to to create because actually China hasn't played along China all along has had its own plan to create its own new world order and it is succeeding and So we see it with Trump and the trade war against China We see it with with you know, even European leaders usually so different to China or

are beginning to speak out against the Chinese, against the power that they're, the growing power they have. Even George Soros, famous for supporting all sorts of internationalist liberal causes, in February of 2020 in a speech said that China is a rising threat and the Western world really needs to begin countering it.

This represents a big change, and it could result in perhaps even a military clash between these two new world orders, these two visions for the 21st century. Well, we hope it doesn't happen. China is a nuclear armed, and it has an important ace, which we didn't talk about. China has basically what I call the secret weapon. Oh, God. Putin. Oh, I didn't expect you to say that. Yeah, and I tell you why.

Vladimir Putin is looking at China as an important, not just only an important ally, but an important, you know, backer of the Russian economy. I mean, after all, basically, China buys a lot of oil and gas from Russia. It's an important client. But also at the same time, the New Silk Road, you know, is going to pass through Russia and through Russian satellite states like, you know, if you can call Kazakhstan a satellite state, but

you know, as an allied, you know, allied to the Russians. So basically the Silk Road will pass through Russia to Moscow and St. Petersburg and then from there into Europe. This will empower Russia even more.

Because basically, you know, so many goods and services coming from China and so many European imports. Don't forget, it's a two-way street. European exports from the UK and Spain and Italy and Germany, you know, the cars and the machinery will also travel from Europe to China through that.

So Russia will become the middleman between China and Europe and the rest of the world. And so for Putin, he's looking at this and rubbing his hands, licking his lips and thinking, brilliant.

Well, there you have it. America's new world order is being rather successfully countered by the Chinese alternative, a real competitor with the new Silk Road initiative from China. And, you know, you never know what the future is going to hold, but the Chinese economy is still chugging along pretty well. Economic growth in the West is not so hot in comparison.

Neoliberalism. This is the economic faith of the West in the New World Order era. It was meant to spread. It was meant to promise endless economic growth for Western countries. It's not really happening and it certainly became spectacularly unstuck during the credit crisis of 2008. And in the next episode of Conflicted, we will be talking about just that. What exactly happened in 2008?

And what did it mean for America's grand vision? I have to come wearing my banking hat next episode. This season we've set up a Facebook discussion group where we post recommended reading. And if you want to go into even more depth about the topics we cover on the show, as with every episode, we are giving away a recommended book this week. This week's book is Belt and Road: A Chinese World Order by Bruno Macias.

A book which successfully captures the exuberance as well as the apprehension that this huge project generates. Once again, all you have to do to have a shot at winning this book is join the Facebook group. Thanks to everyone who has. Your messages, comments, and feedback mean so much to us, really, and are actually very helpful in shaping the future of Conflicted.

Find the group on Facebook by searching Conflicted Podcast Discussion Group. You can also find the show on Twitter at MHConflicted. And if you like the show, please rate and review us in your podcast app. It would also mean the world to us if you spread the word about Conflicted to your friends or even to your enemies, whether on social media or in person. Thanks again for listening. Eamon and I will be back in two weeks.

Conflicted is a Message Heard production. It's produced by Sandra Ferrari, Jake Warren, and Jake Otajewicz. Edited by Sandra Ferrari. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley.