Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Today, we discuss the disconnect between the reality of China and the imagined China of those in the U.S. public who've never been. 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. Yeah.
Hi, everyone. My name is Jason Smith. I'm originally from sunny California, now living in beautiful Beijing. Today, we are joined by author and political commentator Kyle Ferrana, author of Why the World Needs China, Development in
Environmentalism, Conflict Resolution, and Common Prosperity, published by Clarity Press. Farhana is a writer, software engineer, and tenant organizer. He is also a contributor to The International Magazine. You're very active online, so I'm always watching you work sort of in real time. So that's kind of really exciting. You just...
Took a second trip to China. Could you tell us a little bit about where you went and what you saw? Yeah. So last time I saw you was in June. I was in Beijing. And this time I went to Guangzhou in December. I was invited to a conference about China's reform and modernization. It was organized by this think tank called the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy. There were a couple hundred guests, I think, a few dozen at least.
foreign guests like diplomats and journalists, ex prime ministers and various other notable figures, I suppose. It was great. It was great. We got to hear a speech by the vice premier, Ding Shui-hsing, and saw one of those fancy drone shows at the Canton Tower there in Guangzhou. Then afterwards, we went on a tour
We got to see some of the countryside. We saw an electric vehicle factory, one of those solar fields where they're cultivating crops underneath the solar panels so the space is still used.
we saw a minority autonomous County and, um, a tea farm, a bunch of, a bunch of cool stuff. May I ask about the drone show first? Uh, which one was it? Was it the one with the ring and the fireworks mixed together? Oh, it, it, I don't think it was quite that big. Uh,
I mean, I remember there was like a train, like there was a picture of a train they showed us. A lot of it was just, you know, texts like, you know, welcome to this conference and all that. But it was quite impressive. I mean, it's the first drone show I've ever seen. The solar farm, you mentioned that they're growing something underneath. Is that just like shrubbery for goats to eat away? Or is this like for human consumption? What was actually growing there? Some of the agrivoltaics...
have goats like or livestock there but this one was um root vegetables there is there's this um southeast asian root vegetable called uh konjac konjac i think is is the term is the name it doesn't need a lot of sunlight so you can just you can just bury it and as long as you water it properly uh
It'll be fine. Is this a medicine? Well, it might be. I don't know a whole lot about it. I think it's just like just a random vegetable. I'm sure it has, you know, some kind of properties. Because I was in the desert in Xinjiang and we went out to the Suosuo forests where they planted these forests to cover up
the desert sort of take over and bring forests. They were like, oh, these are going to be one meter tall. When we got to the full grown forest, they were actually like two meters tall. But then they started digging while I was looking around and I came back and apparently they're growing all of these tubers underneath the swastika trees. And these were for Chinese traditional medicine. And they were extremely bitter. My wife was with me. She bought a bunch of them. And now she's putting them in my tea. So every time she makes tea,
She's putting these in there and it makes the tea very bitter, but I'm told I'm going to live much longer. You know, I, I'm, uh, I'm a convert to the, the tea drinking lifestyle, I guess. I didn't really before, you know, I spent much time in China, but cause you know, they have tea with, with meals usually. And like, that's how, like during the tour, they would, they would do it. Like you would just all sit around a circular table and they would serve you tea. And then you would just eat from the, uh,
like whatever they brought out on this, the like lazy Susan kind of thing. And like tea is great because it's just so insubstantial. You can just drink as much of it as you need. I've noticed that in order for me to wean myself off of mochas, which are very caloric and,
I've just been drinking enormous amounts of tea lately, which has been helpful. I really want to ask you because I think your perspective is different from mine. I've been living in China consistently for like more than a decade. And I think I've lost the ability to see China through American eyes because I don't really think I can perceive things in that way anymore.
So, you know, I'm just so used to life here. So, you know, you go back and forth. You have been in the United States and living there consistently, but you're taking these sojourns to China. So from the current zeitgeist of Americana, what is China like back in the States versus what your experience was like actually coming to China? Well, um, I don't know. I mean, I suppose, uh,
There's stuff that I look for, you know, writing about politics and the economy and all that. And of course, you know, I love the high speed rail system, obviously, the level of infrastructure, which is far superior to anything here, of course. I don't drive to get around. So like if I'm in a big city, like I've got to figure out the mass transit and all that.
Mass transit in the Chinese cities I've been in is pretty incredible. They have subway systems that are probably as big as the whole US. Subways put together, like I'm thinking of the Beijing metro. It's got dozens of stops at least.
It's so enormous. And if you go to like the BART or the DC Metro, it's far less. I don't really feel qualified to remark about like the culture or whatever, because like my experience is just like my own anecdotal experience.
And, you know, if you've read any of my book, you'll know that, like, I prefer to deal with statistics and trends and so forth, like with data that, you know, we can all agree on or that we can all at least, you know, see the provenance of. What about this? The last time we spoke, you had come to Beijing for the first time. And you said at that time that you were on the hunt for homeless people and you were actually going out like deliberately. Yes.
under overpasses and so forth, looking for homeless people. Now, I actually think that there are homeless people in China. I just think that there are far fewer and way far fewer as a percentage of the population. Did you manage to find some homeless people on either of these two trips? And if so, was it an overwhelming amount? I didn't have time to look this time.
I mean, it's been some time in the countryside, of course. So I kind of got to see the level of infrastructure there, like the road system, for example, which was quite good. The road that we traveled on seemed like it was just freshly paved, in fact. So I kind of look for that to...
Like measure homelessness. I mean, as an individual, like again, like my own experiences, I don't think are really that important. I mean, I'm sure that I could find some, you know, if I if I looked. But the way that homelessness works is completely different in China. Like the homeless folks in China, like usually, you know, have homes. They just they're just in the countryside.
So it's qualitatively different than here. Like here, people will be like sleeping on the street because they literally have nowhere else to go, which is just getting worse here. Like the homeless population in Portland, I think I mentioned this last time, increased by 50% the past five years. And there's new statistics out just last week saying
They measure it every year here in the U.S., and they don't measure it very well. It's severely undercounted, but it also increased again. And it was previously at the highest level ever, and now it's even higher, which is just like such a damning indictment of the supposedly good economy that we were told is actually working, when in reality, you just have to go down the street to see that it's not. Most of the U.S. economists that I follow...
who are pro-U.S. economy, everything's going great, they like to analyze the stock market and they like to say, oh, look, the stock market's doing wonderfully, so therefore the U.S. economy is doing wonderfully. What's wrong with that in your assessment? Well, I
I've been taking some notes to talk about the Chinese economy because it's what everyone's talking about in the Western press right now. So I have a whole list of aspects of that that I could talk about. With the United States, with the stock market, that's famously disconnected from the quality of life of
of the people, right? Like if the stock market does well, that means that investors are doing well. And, you know, most people are not big investors, right? Few people or if people have soccer, like most people who do it just have a little bit. It's just for the rich, the business owners, the landlords and so forth to measure success by the stock market. Just want to point out that your cat seems to be really excited today.
Oh, yeah. Well, he thinks something's going on because I'm chatting with someone. So he wants to be included. He might jump up here at some point. Apologies in advance. 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. You're listening to The Bridge.
When I read Western media, Bloomberg, FT, Foreign Policy, all of them, there are a lot of writers on those publications that like to talk about how China's economy is facing headwinds and slowing. What's your impression of how China's economy is doing?
Well, it looks fine to me. I think it's kind of funny, like all this complaining from Bloomberg and Financial Times and so forth. And I'm just going to list all the reasons they give for why China's economy is collapsing or doing poorly. First of all, China exports too much stuff or has overcapacity, which that sounds to me like a good problem to have. I would rather have overcapacity than undercapacity. Chinese people aren't spending enough money, which I
First, I don't think that mindless consumption is really something to celebrate. In fact, one of the big problems in the world is that Westerners, especially Americans, consume disproportionately more resources than the rest of the world. And if the whole world consumed at the rate that Americans did, climate change would be unsolvable and we would all...
have the climate apocalypse and that we wouldn't survive as a civilization. So I think that really the answer is that Westerners need to consume less eventually. The yuan is deflating, the deflation in China. That's particularly funny because in the U.S., Americans have been
Like we've just suffered like very horrible inflation in the pandemic shortly after the pandemic began, which is now, you know, return to normal more or less. But like just because inflation is normal, like the prices are still inflated, like you have to deflate to get the prices back to where they used to be.
So, if your currency is deflating, that means that the savings that Chinese people are being scolded for not spending are becoming more valuable. Also good. By the way, the traditional economic wisdom, quote unquote, for why deflation is bad is that supposedly it will drive down wages, which is also not happening. Wages are still going up in China, according to the latest statistical data.
Housing prices dropping. That's especially funny to the 100 million plus Americans, myself included, who can't afford to buy a home. The stock market and GDP, of course, are supposedly doing badly. First of all, who cares about the stock market? That's for rich people. Secondly, all this moaning about GDP is especially amusing because China's GDP actually grew by, I think it was 5% last year, very close to that. Most Western countries can only dream of that level of growth.
But if we're going to talk about whether China's GDP is real or not, because that's the level of cope that you see establishment folks have about this, we should talk about how accurate GDP itself is. Let's take a look at the American economy. How much of the American GDP growth is just trading financial assets? And finally, youth unemployment.
which I think you may have tweeted about this article in the BBC a couple of days ago, uh, where the guy they found to interview, uh, about this was like a college graduate who went to work at a hot pot restaurant, uh, because he couldn't get his dream job of working as an investment banker. It would like, they're telling, they're telling this with a straight face. Like it's, it's bad that, uh, you know, this guy couldn't get his dream job of being an investment banker. Uh,
Like who dreams of being an investment banker? Like, is that the job that you dreamed of having? So I think the world could definitely use more hot pot and less investment banking. And I don't think that if this terrifies the BBC, they really don't want to hear what I think should be done with investment bankers. Well, you know,
I actually on the youth unemployment thing, I think that's really interesting because the weight it's calculated, it's always very high in the summer after graduations, which are enormous in China. But if you look at actual unemployment, just unemployment across the board, it's like five point one, five point two percent, which is pretty.
pretty healthy actually it's nominal unemployment rate so they just it seems like western uh economists are looking for the very specific loci of the economy which might
yield negative results or they can say look something I found it's not good but like why aren't we looking at all of the other metrics in context that show that it's actually doing pretty well so I think that there's a lot of cherry picking going on in Western media about Chinese economy personally yeah I I get to hear a convincing case that the Chinese economy is doing poorly for uh anyone other than you know people who uh own corporations or work in finance
And in the U.S., it's like the opposite. Business owners and bankers do well while everyone else suffers. So I think we should be celebrating that there is somewhere on Earth where the opposite is happening. I want to ask you again in a different way because I'm hoping to get an answer for me personally. I want to know. Yeah.
As someone who's not living in the United States, like I only read media, which what I from what I hear online, most Americans no longer trust the media. But when I read all of American media, it's like, you know, bad, bad China economy, so terrible.
What are normal people in the cafe or at Denny's or wherever when you're running to people outside? What is the perception of what China is like among regular people, at least in Oregon? Well, I think it depends. I mean, it's definitely like...
I get the strongest reactions from online, like social media, like positive and negative. I think that the less online you get, I think the more you realize most people in the US just don't have very strong feelings about China one way or another. Like their idea of China is usually negative by default, since like whatever news they read or watch is usually negative. It's just hard to find the news with a positive perspective.
That's kind of how the propaganda machine works, unfortunately. But again, by and large, the average person doesn't give a lot of weight to what they hear on the news anymore, I think. I find that if you can explain something more intelligently than the BBC or The Economist or The Washington Post or whatever, which generally is not too difficult and
your explanation makes sense, then people are going to. Well, I mean, that kind of segues into my next question. You know, firstly, when is when is China planning on the actual invasion of the United States? And by that, I mean, when you read this kind of media in the US, obviously, you know, there is China is just mostly just trying to take care of itself. And there's nothing going on beyond that. There's no chance in I would bet
my life that China is definitely not going to invade the United States. So why, in your opinion, at least your opinion, anecdotally, is China being made into a villain by the U.S.? Well, I believe the real reason is that the rise of China is just making it harder for the U.S. empire to operate in the world.
First of all, China is just proof that wealth can be shared. An alternative to neoliberalism is possible. We were just talking, somehow they can make an economy in which the rich do poorly and everyone else still sees their living standards rise.
Um, so I think that, um, like that kind of proof that, you know, a poor country can become prosperous without exploiting other countries, like the way the United States became prosperous. Uh, like that's a very powerful example. And if the capitalist class, the U S wants to keep increasing their wealth and privilege, uh,
which they do. To do that, they need the majority of the world to stay poor and underdeveloped, and they can't do that if China keeps building infrastructure around the world, exporting cheap renewable energy and electrical vehicles and so forth. But they can't just come out and say that China is bad because China is just bad for being prosperous or helping others prosper. They've just got to invent some other reasons that make China look bad instead. That seems pretty accurate. Well, and succinct.
You've commented on state-owned enterprises online, and this is something fascinating to me. I'm trying to understand all the time better how these basically utilities operate in China, which are a huge part of the Chinese economy. What do you make of the relationship between SOEs and the success of China's economy? Well, I think they're absolutely essential and important.
I look at it from a very high level, of course. I don't have personal experience being a customer of a state-owned utility company in China, of course.
I think much more of the Chinese economy is state-owned than many people realize. You'll see statistics quoted in Financial Times or wherever about unemployment or employment in public versus non-public industry or market capitalization, which shows that the private sector is as big or bigger than the public sector. But I think you can get a more accurate picture if you look at what kinds of companies are private and what kinds are public.
Almost all the largest corporations are state-owned. If you look at the Fortune 500 list, the top most valuable corporations in the world,
about nine and 10 of the Chinese companies on that list are state owned. And like both, both the private and public, uh, fortune 500 companies, like they're expanding at about the same rate or the, the public sector is expanding a little faster. Even there's a government slogan that describes is actually, I'm sure you've heard before. It's like, uh, uh, grass, grass to large, let go of the small, uh,
which is the government's policy, basically. Keep a large industry, like the key industries, state-owned and working for the public good, ultimately, and let the private sector develop as it does, unless it gets out of hand, as it did with the real estate industry, for example. And then not every private company is entirely private either, because often the government owns stock or owns a company that owns stock.
in a private company. A great example of why I think this model is superior to neoliberalism is the high-speed rail system. Of course, all the major rail companies are SOEs and they built the world's largest high-speed rail network in just 15 years or less.
uh because their goal is the public good it's absolutely incredible actually you know i was thinking about this a great deal because i was i was talking to mutual friend of ours ben norton and he was explaining soes to me and he was saying if you want to open a factory in the united states
You have, you know, extremely high real estate, extremely high, you know, cost of electricity, extremely high cost of transportation, et cetera, et cetera, compared to China, because all of these things are utilities in China. Electricity, water, transportation, they're all utilities. Plus you get, you know, if you go to a special economic zone, the real estate's nothing, you know, so the cost of inputs for building manufacturing in China is really low.
So when we're talking about the failure of capitalism, not of socialism in the United States, part of that is the failure of the government to maintain utilities and privatize everything. If we want even like capitalist enterprises, market economy driven enterprises manufacturing to come back to the United States...
Having public utilities that are managed by the government lowers the cost of electricity, of telecommunications, of logistics and transportation. So actually, China, the reason the market economy part of China's economy works so well and manufacturing is so successful is because all of the inputs are from SOEs, are from utilities, are from state-owned enterprises, which enables the market economy part of China's economy to be more successful.
which I think is really important for Americans to understand. In a sense, like it's more cooperative, like you're working together to produce things, whereas in like the U.S. or a more purely capitalist country, like every corporation, you know, every level is just taking as big a bite of the pie as they can. You know, at one time, our rail were public utilities and it was actually the best in the world.
And now that it's all been privatized, it's I mean, everyone sees videos online of the US train system just falling apart. I think there's more than 1000 crashes of some kind in the United States on rail every year, which is two or three a day at least.
So it's crazy that I think we should deprivatize, nationalize, I guess is the right word, our public transportation networks in terms of rail and rebuild them, looking at China's model or models similar to that around the world, because the United States would benefit enormously. The market economy part of the United States would benefit enormously from nationalizing public rail. Of course, I don't think that's a
That's a non-starter in the United States, so we're not going to see that happen. Absolutely. Unfortunately. I think in general with railroads, particularly high-speed railroads like modern railroads, it's very difficult for a private corporation to build one. I think the only...
The only example of, of it ever happening is in Taiwan. Uh, there, they built a, a private company built a high speed rail network. Like it's very, very small, of course, but they ended up like needing the government to, to bail them out. As I recall, uh, anyway, cause you can't really turn a profit. Like you can't, you know, deliver quarterly profits to shareholders. If like, you've got to build the track takes years. Uh,
You've got to run it enough to recoup the investment. And of course, if the ticket prices are too expensive, it's just a train for rich people and no one's going to take it. So yeah, I mean, that's just, you know, I think one of the most obvious examples of being able to produce a public good, like you need to have a public sector.
Otherwise, it's not going to work. Let's talk about EVs for a little while. BYD has a hybrid. It is not an EV. It is a hybrid gas electric car. And on one tank of gas, it can travel 2,000 kilometers. So you can gas up your car and drive, I don't know, from Los Angeles to, I don't know, Chicago or something. Not Chicago, to Texas, right?
So that's incredibly impressive to me. And it doesn't seem like the United States has this kind of technology. And it's also, by the way, in U.S. dollars, it's $12,000. So why, in your opinion, if this amazing technology at affordable prices exists, has the United States chosen to tariff
EVs from China at 100% and basically not include China in the U.S. market? Well, I don't know too much about cars in particular, so I may not appreciate how good those numbers are. But I know that an electric car here in the U.S., it's normally about $30,000.
The bottom line is that the U.S. was never willing to produce a cheap electric vehicle because that would require making long-term investments in technology and production process like China did. China spent the last 20 years investing in
in that production process and technology so that they could produce electric vehicles at the rate that they're doing now. But if the U.S. did that, that would mean that the oil industry might not be able to sell as much oil. So you can't have that. So the only electric cars that we could produce are these very expensive luxury items. So now if I can buy a cheap electric vehicle from BYD, both the U.S. auto industry and the oil industry are going to lose out.
So China doesn't have that problem because the state controls the oil industry there and not the other way around. Well, let's switch to international politics a little bit. The Belt and Road Initiative, formerly called One Belt, One Road, is a massive project involving about 150 countries around the world. What is it? The Belt and Road Initiative is China's effort to export infrastructure to the rest of the world.
China is one of the very few countries with the resources and the willingness to build things like roads, railways, and power plants on a large scale in the global south.
And it currently undertakes the majority of all such projects. So this is stuff that peripheral countries obviously need really badly. You can't, you really can't transform a poor country into a wealthy one without roads and railways. So it's, I think it's very telling that most of China's Belt and Road partners are former colonies of Western empires, which had decades of opportunities to, you know,
do what China is doing now, but they never did because the underdevelopment of those countries served their interests and continues to serve their interests through neocolonialism. Keeping them poor is how the U.S. ruling class stayed rich. Well, let's kind of take – parse this out so that it's digestible. How – I mean for – OK. I'm Kenyan and China comes and builds a new road for free or a 0% interest and I get to drive on the road. OK. Yeah.
but how does that help kenya's economy how does that actually you know we're the belt and road initiative is supposed to increase global interconnectivity and economic prosperity for developing nations but beyond just me driving down the road as a kenyan how does it actually do that well if you can travel to another city easily or even if you can like get around the city you you do live in uh
easily, then you can switch jobs more easily as well. And not only that, from the perspective of you, an individual worker, there's that. But then also from the perspective of industry there, you can transport goods between places far more easily, which will make things cut your expenses and make it easier for you to develop an economy overall.
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. You're listening to The Bridge.
Let's talk about ports because China builds ports. And this is what people mostly hear about the port in Sri Lanka. But what about the port in Peru that China just opened with the Peruvian government? How will that port help Peruvians?
Well, I haven't read a whole lot about this, but obviously like every country is going to need a port. Like if you're, if you're a landlocked country, like that's bad because you need other ways to conduct trade with other countries. So having, having a port where you can, you know, receive shipments of goods, you know, maritime trade, that's, that's obviously good. And the more capacity you have for that, the,
the better your economy will do and the more your country will prosper, the more wealth you will have and the better lives your people will have, hopefully, if it's managed properly. Well, let's talk about the difference between, you mentioned the former Euro-US empires versus what China's Belt and Road is doing. Because I think most regular people who know about these things in the West who don't like them say that what China is doing is entrapping these countries in debt and
So how is China's Belt and Road Initiative, how does the finance work for these developing countries? Well, the Western press loves to say that about the Belt and Road, that it's neocolonialism or a debt trap. And they have to say that because they can't just come out and say that they don't want the people of Africa and South Asia and so on to stop being poor.
They have to pretend that Chinese infrastructure products aren't real or are a scam or have some kind of sinister motive behind them. I'm sure you saw the news somewhat recently about the U.S. Congress voting to spend $1.6 billion on negative press coverage for the BRI. They can't compete with the BRI. They can't convince China to stop doing it. They're just trying to
convince the rest of the world not to work with China over what's usually just made up reasons, right? I like to call this kind of propaganda, accufessions, combination of accusation and confession, because not only is China not debt trapping anyone, it's Western governments who are actually guilty of debt trapping other countries. It's like how the US media is always accusing like Huawei of spyware.
spying on Americans or Europeans, when in reality, the US government, like all these, the NSA, all these three-letter agencies are actually spying on Americans.
and everyone else in the world for that matter. So you mentioned, uh, Western governments in trapping countries in debt. Um, are you referring to private enterprises like the club of Rome, or are you talking about the IMF and world bank? And if so, how do Western governments or how have they historically debt trapped developing countries? Well, it's, it's all of the above really the Western governments, uh,
like they serve the Western banks and the Western capitalist class. So when a private Western bank loans money to a developing country, the government of the U S or other, uh, imperialist countries in Europe, like will manufacture a crisis and,
victim country will be unable to pay its debts. If you can't pay your debts, you get cut off from the global financial system. That's terrible for you and your country. They fall into this distress. The IMF comes to the rescue and they promise, "All right, we'll loan you enough money to pay back these other loans to the private banks who really matter. We're here just to make sure they get paid."
In exchange, you're going to restructure your economy to make things better for us. You're going to devalue your currency. You're going to privatize state industry. You're going to lay off public employees and so on. Make things better for Western investors or international NGOs and all that. I use an example of Sudan in my book.
Recently, a few years ago, Sudan was unable to pay its debts. It's one of the heavily indebted poor countries classified by the IMF. The IMF promised to take care of Sudan's debts. They would give them debt relief from Western governments and banks.
only after the government of Sudan agreed to cut fuel subsidies for the people and normalize relations with Israel. So basically, they had no choice but to agree to do these things, because if not, you'd be cut off from everything, and that would be so much worse for you. So that's kind of how the playbook goes. They're all cooperating. These international institutions like the IMF and the World Bank
and Western banks and Western governments. They do it to maintain this cycle of underdevelopment in the global periphery because as long as the standard of living and the price of labor there is kept artificially low,
That means that they'll be able to continue to drain wealth through trade from those countries. Part of what the Belt and Road Initiative seems to have accomplished in the interconnectivity part is an alternative to trading with the center. You keep mentioning the term periphery, which comes from the notion of neocolonialism, the center being Europe and the United States or the G7 countries.
And the periphery being all of the developing world, the global south, as it's sometimes called, or the underdeveloped world, as it's also sometimes called. China is now trading more with the developing world than with the G7. So it does look like institutions like the Belt and Road Initiative and BRICS are creating a kind of new international economic order or financial order. What do you think the effect on both the US and China is?
of a tariff will be in that context, in the context of a global south trading more with itself than with the global north. Well, I mean, I won't try to give a prediction about the tariffs or how extensive they're going to be or if Trump is going to be able to do all the tariffs that he said he's going to do.
So, but I will say like, you know, if tariffs do happen, uh, anywhere near, uh, like what he's planning, uh, prices in the U S might go up, you know, for, you know, the average person. But I don't think, uh, you know, if there is like, you know, a tit for tat tariff, uh, exchange with China, like, I, I don't think that the China will see, uh,
a corresponding increase because China imports a lot less from the U S than the U S imports from China. And now if importers in the U S are less willing to buy Chinese products, China can sell them elsewhere. Like there's, there's no shortage of demand.
for Chinese products, electric vehicles, solar panels. Pakistan, for example, they're undergoing a revolution in rooftop solar power generation because solar panels are so cheap and abundant because of the Chinese solar industry. And Pakistan as a post-colonial country, their infrastructure has never been that great, right?
And this is kind of a way to sort of bypass that. Like if you, you know, if your local electrical grid can't supply you consistent power, you can just buy, you know, a couple of solar panels and put them on your roof and problem solved. That's happening really across the world. Sorry, go ahead. I really like that it's diffused because I think that the probability, in my opinion, of the United States interfering in countries like Pakistan at this phase in their development is high.
And so if the sources of – Oh, well, the USCLA loves to interfere in Pakistan. Yeah, if the sources of modernity are diffused throughout the country to like the individual level or the household level, that is going to prevent –
any kind of central role of disruption from affecting too many people so actually i really like the idea of more people having access to their own electricity especially in countries that are in a sensitive development phase like pakistan but i mean another huge thing as long as we're talking about pakistan is the uh cpac the china pakistan economic corridor which is seeking to bring chinese goods
out through the Indian Ocean, through the port in Gwadar, which is in Pakistan. I really hope that
The United States is not able to disrupt that project because that project promises to bring enormous wealth to the people of Pakistan. Any thoughts on that? Yeah. I mean, I don't know a whole lot of details about that project specifically. I was just thinking I met some Pakistani folks at the conference last month and they
they were telling me about how, uh, scenic the Karakoram highway is there, which is like the, the main road from Pakistan to China. So, um, really made me want to, uh, go and drive that. Um, even though I, I'm not much of a driver, but, uh, yeah, uh, I,
I do just want to say, I think that overall tariffs and sanctions are just not as effective as they used to be. We've seen this with Russia the past few years. The U.S. since 2022 has been telling every country in Europe not to trade with Russia.
And what ended up happening is that they started trading more with third parties instead, like India and Kazakhstan, who were willing to trade with Russia. So Russia ended up being all right. They ended up getting more or less what they needed anyway. It just made supply routes and supply chains no longer and more complicated.
Another example relating to China specifically, the U.S. government also put tariffs on Chinese solar panels. And as a result, the U.S. bought less Chinese solar panels, of course.
But they also bought more from India, and India bought more solar from China. So international trade, in the modern world, it's kind of like water. It just flows along the path of least resistance. So you can lengthen supply chains, but breaking them and decoupling, as they say they want to do, is not a good idea.
is a lot more difficult i have a friend um who of the show i interview pretty frequently his name is mitch presnick and his idea he is a researcher with harvard university uh i think it's fairbank center for china studies he uh thinks that the best course of action for the united states at this point instead of attempting to decouple or to have a trade war is for the united states to leverage china's strategic advantages in fact
trade more with China and use the things that China is good at with the things that the United States is good at to help the U.S. economy prosper. What do you think, as an American who is studying China, the best course of action for the United States to take for its own economy? Well,
I think in terms of solar panels and electric vehicles in particular, I think if the U.S. can't make them, then we should definitely import them. Let me just bring Mao out for a second. He wrote famously, we should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports. And I think that everyone can agree that
the, the fossil fuel industry and the oil industry are the enemy unless, you know, someone who works for the oil industry might disagree, I guess. But so I think even if you don't like China you should still supporting support, importing cheap electrical vehicles. Like that's China has proven that it can do that well. And the United States said decades to do it well and failed. And we need electric vehicles. Like that's inarguable. So, you know,
you know, we should do it, you know, for the sake of the planet, if not for the sake of the US. You're listening to The Bridge. I wanted to kind of talk to you about your plans for visiting China because you obviously are, you know, doubling down on studying China. I see you advertising your book, Why the World Needs China, frequently. And it probably, I'm assuming that a forthcoming book in the next couple of years is something we can expect.
Uh, where else would you like to visit in China and why? Oh, well, I'd like to see every part of the province eventually. Uh, but I think the place I want to see most yet that I haven't been to is Chongqing. I understand you've been there. I've seen you post about it, seen lots of pictures and videos, uh,
like all the stairs, the monorail, right? It's a monorail. And it just looks incredible. Like, you know, whatever the Chinese tourism industry, like they're doing something right because like all these videos and images really make me want to see it. What about in terms of, you know, you've mentioned visiting a car factory. What car factory did you visit in Guangzhou? I'm embarrassed to say I don't
remember the name of it. It was mainly assembling these little moped kind of scooter things. But it was really cool to see it. Like you can go into the factory floor and like walk along the assembly line and you see it being assembled. And finally, they like plug it in and drive it up a ramp to make sure that everything works. It's pretty cool. Well, I guess my question is more about this. You study statistics, analysis, the economy and so forth of China.
And what parts of China's economy would you like to see? What kinds of factories or agriculture or so forth would you like to see in China? I know you think it's anecdotal because it's just your personal experience versus the data. But what would you like to accompany your data with your actual physical experience? Well, I think I'd like to get some more personal experience looking at agriculture that I've read a bit about.
is aquaculture, like the fish farming and how that is, you know, increasing also exponentially almost in China. I kind of like to see how that, you know, works in practice. I've seen like those floating solar panels, like to see how they do that. All these like desert tree planting initiatives, how,
I noticed there's not a whole lot of good photos about it. I guess it's it's so like widespread and decentralized that it might not be. There might not be a lot of like good photographs that that just show how many trees have been planted. But I mean, I understand it's quite a lot. It's it was remarkable. Let me tell you a story. I was in Xinjiang this two months ago, three months ago.
And we landed in Kucha and we drove out to another smaller town. I don't remember the name of the smaller town. It was near Kucha. And the next day we drove for like five hours into the desert to go to where they were now planting new so-so trees. And, um,
After the first hour, we were in the Swaswat tree area. And for the next four hours, we're driving, I don't know, 100 kilometers or more. Very, very far. It was just constant Swaswat trees. Like all of them just where desert used to be. It was outstanding. And then after we finished, we took a different route home.
back to the hotel. And it was just hours and hours and hours of more human planted swassaw trees. And it's just, and this is just one kind of initiative. That was just one place because like you said, it's diffused. It's all over the place. There are different initiatives with different kinds of trees all over the place. For example, I went with a group three times last year to 2024, three times I went to tree plantings north of Beijing where we went and planted trees and
And this is just something that goes on. You know, oftentimes there's like any kind of event where like a team is meeting with another team. Let's go for a tree planting. So it just becomes like part of the culture at this point. Modern contemporary Chinese culture to go do a tree planting because, oh, it's it's the anniversary of this or that. Let's do a tree planting. So they're just the opportunities to see that and participate are myriad if you get to spend an extensive amount of time.
uh here I also was on the issue of fish I was sitting down with some Chinese gentlemen at a dinner about a month ago and one of the people at the table was one of the major CEOs of a company that does Aqua farming and I had the opportunity to ask some questions it was really interesting he was like yes we have salmon because I asked him oh I hear the salmon a lot of the salmon wheat comes from the desert
And he was like, oh, yes, we have salmon, but we don't have the kind of salmon we want. There's actually he want they really would like the salmon from northern Europe. And I said, why don't you just go take some? Right. You know, you just need like a daddy salmon and a mommy salmon. He laughed at me. Apparently, it's not that simple. I think they need to go through the official channels of getting the fish and so forth.
Well, yeah, maybe it would be like an invasive species. I don't know. No, they do it in like in the middle of the desert. I don't think it's going to invade anywhere. But, you know, I think it's something like they need permission and there's like all kinds of legal red tape between countries. And so they need to get permission to actually get those species of fish. They can't just show up in a secret submarine and James Bond them. So anyway.
Anyways. Okay. So I wanted to last question, uh, and I hope you have a, you know, extensive answer because I think this is the purpose of what we should be talking about for most Americans who just watch mainstream media. And then they claim they don't believe mainstream media, but actually do. What would you like them to know about China and what it's really like versus the perceptions that they're given in Western media? Hmm. Well, um, I guess, I guess there's two things. Um,
I think for Americans, what they need to understand first isn't China, but what the rest of the global South looks like. And I think a lot of Americans don't often think or don't want to think about what conditions are like for people in very poor countries. So that means they don't generally have an appreciation for just how far China has come in the past few decades. Like they don't
They don't really understand that comparison, I think. And if more people did, like, like, I think they would, they would recognize it. But once they do acknowledge, then we can have, once they acknowledge that reality, then we can have a conversation about how and why China could do it, but other countries haven't been able to and what it would take for them to do it too. So yeah, I think personally, I think that the biggest factor in this is the reason that capitalists don't run the government in China.
whereas in almost every other country in the world they do. And that has, I think, very profound impact
like that, that spreads like everything else flows from that. Really. I see that like when, when people look at China and they recognize that China is successful, uh, the first explanation they often reach for is something like, well, I guess the Chinese can do it because of, you know, blank, like, like, uh, Confucianism or like the idea that, uh, Chinese people have some kind of like unique cultural values or are like naturally more hardworking than, uh, other cultures, uh, et cetera, et cetera. Uh,
And like the more I see like people say stuff like this, the more I see it as just kind of an excuse, right?
But like, you know, well, there's something innately Chinese about success itself. And therefore, the rest of us shouldn't even try to succeed. Right. And I think that's completely wrong. Like, I certainly don't want to think of the world that way. It's I think it's a pretty dark vision of humanity to think that that only China can be successful. I think that there's no end of material reasons for China's success that we can analyze that aren't tied to culture. You have to look at how the government operates like.
how they manage the economy, how they train civil servants, what the class structure looks like, how the party operates, who they put in charge of making economic plans. Famously, everyone on the Politburo has an engineering degree, and most people in Congress are lawyers, U.S. Congress lawyers.
And I think like, you know, that all flows from from class in the class struggle. And you really can't ignore that. And I see a lot of people like seeking explanations that, you know, have anything else. Right. Anything else to explain, you know, why China can do all this. And it seems like no one else can. So, like, I'm trying to demystify that in my book.
And, you know, put forth, I think, what is the most what makes the most sense to explain it? What sounds to me that you have your thesis and purpose are related, but your thesis is that there's a certain economic system or a certain class of economic systems that is going to work better for people. But it seems like your purpose is when you talk about the global south and also when you talk about China, also when you talk about the
the United States is to see people's livelihoods become better. Would you say that's fair? Absolutely. I mean, I think that that should really be the goal of everyone. I mean, ultimately, like, you know, there's a lot of socialist theory about, you know, how to how to implement, you know, economic changes and all that. But that's really what it's for. It's it's, you know, to make sure that, you know, wealth and resources are are shared equally and
And, you know, everyone has, uh, you know, a chance to, uh, you know, be part of society and contribute and, and develop and enjoy the things that are disproportionately, uh, enjoyed by, uh, folks like, you know, Western capitalists and, and landlords and business owners and all that. Uh, and right now, like the, the wealth inequality in the world is, is still getting worse, uh,
China is one of the few places in the world where...
things are starting to even out, which I also talk about a little in my book. And like, we have to figure out how to do that everywhere or like as a civilization, we're doomed. So I'm trying to find an answer to that question. And I think China is the best answer currently. Last, last question. I guess it feels like your work for you is important that it's done where you are, but is there any chance of you ever moving out here to China? Yeah.
Well, I don't currently have any plans to, but who knows? I mean, as far as my writing career goes, I suppose I value my independence. I like to think that living in the U.S. gives me a certain credibility with the Western audience still.
And that's primarily who I've been writing for because it's their minds that need changing the most. Right. The more time I spend in China, like, you know, the less I'll be perceived as independent, unfortunately, but it's got to there's there's a balance there. But, you know, again, who knows? Like, I try not to predict the future or at least only predict stuff that I that I'm sure of.
But no, I think no one could say, say, I don't think anyone can can say like what the world's going to look like in 10 years or 20 years. The United States itself might not even exist. So who knows? Like anything could happen. Where can we find your book? You can find it on Amazon and and other major online retailers. You can also buy a direct from the publisher. If you go to is China good dot org, that will redirect you redirect you to the publisher's page. You can also find me on Twitter and ask me about it and I will respond.
direct you to the appropriate venue. You might be able to find it in a local bookstore. It's here in at least one bookstore in Portland. They don't put it near the front. It's back in a corner somewhere, but it is in some places. I'm told that there might be a Chinese translation coming. Wow. I'm not sure how soon that'll be. My publisher deals with all that, but she is confident that
that we will get. Thank you so much for your time, Kyle Ferrana. Thanks for having me.