0:02 If Russian bots exist, do Chinese bots
0:04 also exist? I think first of all, you
0:05 should look down at the comments in this
0:07 video and you'll probably get a taste of
0:08 whether there are any Chinese bots. I'm
0:10 Michael Beckley. I study modern China.
0:12 Let's answer your questions from the
0:15 internet. This is China Support. [Music]
0:18 [Music]
0:21 S sheep herder wants to know, "What do
0:23 Westerners get wrong about China?" Well,
0:24 China is really big. There's 19
0:26 countries around China and so that big
0:29 military that China has is spread quite
0:31 thin having to defend all of China's
0:32 borders or the big economy. You have to
0:34 feed one of the largest populations on
0:36 the planet. You have to maintain control
0:37 over those people. That all drains
0:39 resources from the country and means
0:41 just that it's much more complicated to
0:43 analyze China. You have both a lot of
0:45 assets but also a lot of liabilities. At
0:48 Snow Lions wants to know when did modern
0:50 China start? Let's answer that with a
0:53 timeline. Let's start in 1911 with the
0:55 collapse of theQing dynasty. That ends
0:57 thousands of years off and on of
1:00 imperial rule. China then collapses into
1:02 the warlord era, which is every bit as
1:04 bad as it sounds. Then the Japanese in
1:06 the 1930s really step up their
1:08 aggression in China, conquering big
1:10 parts of it and basically starting World
1:12 War II in East Asia. The Japanese are
1:15 defeated in 1945, but at that point, the
1:17 Chinese civil war comes roaring back
1:18 between the communists and the
1:20 nationalists. The communists win that
1:22 civil war in 1949. They found the
1:24 People's Republic of China under Mao
1:26 Dong. China initially sides with the
1:28 Soviet Union in the Cold War, but about
1:30 halfway through they realize that the
1:31 Soviets are actually their main enemy.
1:33 That paves the way for the US President
1:36 Richard Nixon to go to Beijing. And at
1:37 that point, China and the United States
1:39 basically become allies in the rest of
1:41 the Cold War. The Soviet Union collapses
1:44 in 1991, and that sets the stage for the
1:46 US and China to become major trading and
1:48 investment partners. That culminates in
1:51 2001 with China's entry into the World
1:53 Trade Organization. But especially after
1:55 the 2008 financial crisis, you start to
1:57 see the United States and China looking
1:59 at each other more like rivals, feeling
2:01 like their economies are under strain,
2:02 and that the trade relationship is not
2:04 working out as well as they had hoped.
2:05 And that really paves the way for the
2:07 era that we're currently in, which is
2:09 one of tremendous hostility between the
2:11 United States and China. Hecubus asks,
2:14 why would China even want to invade
2:17 Taiwan? So, first of all, Taiwan is the
2:19 seat of a rival Chinese government that
2:22 is democratic, essentially tied
2:24 security-wise to the United States. And
2:25 so, if you're the Chinese Communist
2:27 Party and you insist that this is all
2:29 your territory, you can't have this
2:31 renegade regime going in a different
2:32 direction. Taiwan is where the
2:34 nationalists fled to when they lost the
2:36 Chinese civil war. So, they want to
2:38 finish that job. It's smack dab at the
2:40 epicenter of the East China Sea and the
2:42 South China Sea, where about half of
2:44 world trade flows through. So this is
2:45 probably pound-for-pound the most
2:47 strategic important waterway on the
2:49 planet. And Taiwan itself is you can see
2:52 the center cork of what the Chinese call
2:54 the first island chain in East Asia that
2:57 runs from Korea and the Japanese islands
2:59 down through the Philippines. These are
3:01 all American allies. They host American
3:03 troops. China has no California. It has
3:05 no west coast. Its only coast is
3:07 completely hemmed in by rival powers
3:09 that are allied with the United States.
3:11 Smashing Taiwan and taking it over would
3:13 give China an unsinkable aircraft
3:15 carrier in the most important waterways
3:17 and blast a hole not just geographically
3:19 in the US alliance system in East Asia,
3:21 but really in the credibility of US
3:23 alliances because no one would trust the
3:24 United States if the US just let Taiwan
3:27 go down. Every single Chinese leader has
3:28 said it's only a question of time. We're
3:30 going to take Taiwan one of these days.
3:32 Xiinping has said that it's a situation
3:34 that cannot be passed down generation to
3:36 generation, which some analysts worry
3:38 means he intends to do this on his
3:40 watch. BW asks, "Is there something
3:42 America can learn from China? Is there
3:43 something that they're doing right?
3:46 China is really good at mobilizing
3:49 resources for national missions. For
3:51 example, China has installed more solar
3:54 and wind power than any other country.
3:57 China is the world's largest trade power
3:58 in the world and has forged trade
4:00 relationships with a majority of the
4:02 world's countries. And China has built
4:05 infrastructure faster and on greater
4:07 scale than any country in human history.
4:09 And just the miraculous development of
4:11 bringing hundreds of millions of people
4:14 from living on less than $2 a day to
4:16 average disposable incomes of 5,000 to
4:19 $10,000 a year. That is a tremendous
4:21 almost miraculous undertaking that China
4:23 has been able to pull off. And I think
4:25 that only comes from having a sense of
4:28 national unity and a willingness to pull
4:30 resources for national purposes. The
4:33 United States, it's a dynamic, open,
4:35 decentralized system. But the downside
4:38 is it also generally does not mobilize
4:40 its resources on a national scale and
4:42 unify unless it's really confronted with
4:45 a crisis like a global war or a
4:46 depression. So there are areas of the
4:48 United States that are neglected in
4:49 terms of infrastructure. There are
4:50 neighborhoods that could be built up.
4:52 There are education systems that are
4:54 failing. And so that type of rallying
4:55 resources and coming together is
4:56 something that the US, I think, could
4:58 look to to China. But obviously you
5:00 don't want to go too far because part of
5:02 what allows China to do that is just a
5:04 lack of civil and political rights for
5:06 the Chinese people at great historian
5:07 asks who is winning the current trade
5:11 war between America and China. China is
5:13 very much an investment and exportdriven
5:15 economy. This trade war is really bad
5:17 for a lot of those major export
5:19 industries. There's been lots of
5:20 closures especially in eastern China.
5:22 There's been mass layoffs even just in
5:24 the short time that this trade war has
5:25 been going on. Now, on the American
5:27 side, the consumer market is roughly
5:30 three times the size of China's. So,
5:31 consumers are the ones who are being
5:32 hurt by this trade war because they're
5:34 going to have to pay higher prices for
5:36 goods that were manufactured in China.
5:38 Xiinping cares a lot less about GDP
5:41 growth. He cares about power and about
5:43 developing self-reliant strong
5:45 industries. And if this trade war
5:47 enables China to decouple and reduce its
5:49 dependence on the West, I think he
5:51 counts that as a win, even if it crimps
5:53 economic growth in the short term. And
5:54 for the United States under the Trump
5:56 administration, they similarly want to
5:59 decouple from China because they view it
6:00 as a national security threat. I see
6:02 these two countries as having a distinct
6:05 interest in trying to get away from each
6:06 other economically. These dependencies,
6:08 they both seem to want to push those
6:10 away. Chase the taco. Serious question.
6:13 Is China truly a communist country? I
6:15 know it it seems crazy. You look at the
6:18 Shanghai skyline. You fly in through the
6:20 Beijing airport. That is the gilded
6:22 veneer on the outside that's been built
6:24 up. But if you look at the superructure
6:26 of the economy, what's actually the
6:28 driving force behind it, it's a very
6:30 strong state presence. All of the land
6:32 in the country is owned by the Chinese
6:34 Communist Party. The energy industry,
6:37 the banking sector is stateowned. 90
6:39 plus% of the financial assets flowing
6:40 around the country. So these are all
6:42 what Lenin called the commanding heights
6:44 of the economy. And it can produce
6:46 incredible output. It can produce shiny
6:48 high-speed rail. It can produce gleaming
6:50 skyscrapers. But this is sort of like a
6:52 new modern form of a communist system
6:54 where you still have the party running
6:56 the show economically, insisting on a
6:59 one party state and a dictator ruling
7:01 over it all. Take Jack Ma, the former
7:03 head of Alibaba, as major company in
7:05 China, and he gave a speech a few years
7:07 back criticizing the way that the
7:09 government was running the economy. He
7:10 had his wings totally clipped. He was
7:12 sent out to Tokyo. He had his empire
7:14 completely dismantled and now has
7:16 basically had to come crawling back.
7:17 you've had many other billionaires
7:18 simply just disappear. And so at the end
7:21 of the day, even the high-flying titans
7:23 of China's economy know that their
7:25 livelihoods depend very much on their
7:27 relationship with the Chinese Communist
7:29 Party, which is why you see many of the
7:31 top titans of industry in China in the
7:32 National People's Hall during these
7:34 major conclaves sitting next to Xiinping
7:36 because they effectively part of the
7:38 same party system that he operates.
7:41 Dizzy Major 5 wants to know, "What do
7:43 the Chinese people think of Mao Dong? Is
7:45 he considered good or bad?" The standard
7:47 answer taught in Chinese schools is that
7:50 he was 70% right but 30% wrong. Here's
7:53 Mao as a young revolutionary. He was a
7:54 journalist for a long time. He actually
7:56 wrote a whole pamphlet in 1940 about
7:59 democracy and freedom in China. Of
8:01 course, once he becomes chairman Mao, a
8:03 lot of that stuff goes away. The 70%
8:05 right was he unified the country which
8:07 had been ripped apart by decades of
8:09 civil war. He instituted a mass
8:11 education campaign because he wanted to
8:13 lift China up. So that led to widespread
8:15 literacy. He wanted women to be active
8:17 participants in the labor force. Now in
8:19 terms of the bad, his so-called great
8:21 leap forward, which was this scheme to
8:23 turn China into a superpower in just a
8:25 few years, took millions of peasants off
8:27 of their farms, put them in communes,
8:29 had them melt down their pots and pans.
8:31 As a result, the food supply ran out and
8:33 45 million people starved to death or
8:35 were beaten or shot along the way. And
8:37 then in order to insulate and protect
8:38 himself, he then launched the cultural
8:40 revolution where he basically turned the
8:42 Chinese people on the communist party to
8:44 purge many of his rivals. That probably
8:46 killed another million to two million
8:49 people. So ruthless, brutal, but
8:51 effective in terms of bringing China
8:53 together, which for much of Chinese
8:55 history has not been the case. At Super
8:57 Coach 137 asks, "How did the one child
8:59 policy work out for China? It resulted
9:02 in several hundred million abortions
9:04 when people starting in the late 1970s
9:06 weren't allowed to have more than one
9:08 child. You'd be subject to massive fines
9:10 equivalent in some cases to a year or
9:13 more of your income if you had a second
9:15 child. In the 50s and 60s, China had a
9:18 massive baby boom because Mao Dong
9:20 wanted to turn China into a superpower.
9:21 So he encouraged Chinese families to
9:23 have lots of children. So then when
9:25 China did a 180 and implemented the one
9:28 child policy in the late 1970s, you had
9:30 this baby boom generation coming into
9:32 the prime of their working lives and
9:34 they had relatively few children to take
9:35 care of because they weren't allowed to
9:37 have them. And they had relatively few
9:39 elderly parents to care for because so
9:41 many of them end up dying in the famines
9:42 and the cultural revolution. So in the
9:45 90s and 2000s, you had anywhere between
9:49 10 to 15 working age adults available to
9:52 support every elderly retiree in China's
9:53 population. That's two to three times
9:55 the global average. It's five times what
9:57 the United States currently has. And so
9:59 as a result, China's population was
10:01 primed for economic productivity. And
10:03 demographers think that alone explains
10:06 about 25% of China's rapid economic
10:08 growth over the last 30 to 40 years. The
10:10 problem for China is now the situation
10:12 is flipping where that huge baby boom
10:15 generation are retiring and falling onto
10:17 the backs of this tiny one child
10:20 generation. That 10 to 15 ratio is going
10:22 to collapse to 2:1 in the 2030s. China
10:24 is going to lose somewhere like 70
10:25 million working age adults in the next
10:28 10 years and gain 130 million senior
10:29 citizens. That's going to be
10:32 catastrophic for China's fiscal balance
10:34 for its economic productivity. at right
10:37 side of MB says Siri, what are Chinese
10:40 ghost cities? Ghost cities refer to
10:42 entire apartment complexes, airports,
10:45 shopping malls that are either mostly or
10:47 entirely empty. And it's a result of
10:49 China's economic model, which is very
10:52 much about collecting the resources of
10:54 the Chinese people under the state and
10:56 then plowing them into certain
10:57 industries, including into the real
10:59 estate sector. It works really well for
11:01 an authoritarian government because it's
11:03 easy to pay off cronies who own the
11:05 companies that are doing all of the
11:07 building. The problem is it runs a muck.
11:08 These companies, they're getting paid
11:10 whether the apartments are occupied or
11:11 not. So, they build a bunch of stuff,
11:12 but then people aren't moving into them.
11:14 And now that China's population is
11:16 declining, there is going to be ever
11:18 lowering demand for a lot of this base
11:20 infrastructure. Methmet Toppel wants to
11:22 know, how much power does Xiinping hold
11:24 personally? Is he an absolutist like
11:27 Louis the 14th or like Stalin? I'm going
11:30 to reserve a certain category for divine
11:32 right monarchs like Louis the 14th and
11:34 distinguish that from Xiinping. So
11:36 Xiinping is probably the most powerful
11:38 leader since Mao Dong. He's made himself
11:40 president of everything for life but at
11:42 the end of the day he's one guy and so
11:44 his ability to pay attention to
11:47 everything that's going on in his vast
11:50 sprawling country is inherently limited.
11:52 So the real estate crisis that's going
11:53 on, he's demanded that people be more
11:55 frugal and not speculate on real estate,
11:57 but the market is kind of doing what
11:58 it's going to do. And as a result, you
12:00 still have that ongoing crisis. Zero
12:02 COVID, you know, he locked down Chinese
12:04 people in their apartments for months on
12:05 end. At a certain point, the Chinese
12:07 people had it and you saw protests
12:09 emerging that seemed to have encouraged
12:12 she to back down and undo that policy.
12:15 and he also has to worry about rivals in
12:17 the party, which is why he's embarked on
12:19 this massive anti-corruption campaign,
12:21 purging more than a million senior CCP
12:23 officials along the way. We do know a
12:26 bit about his backstory. His father was
12:28 a high-ranking official serving under
12:30 Mao Zidong. But he was purged and in
12:32 fact she himself and his family were
12:34 purged during the cultural revolution.
12:36 She was sent out to the countryside to
12:38 basically dig a bunch of holes. His
12:40 father was humiliated. She himself was
12:41 denounced by his own mother and his
12:44 halfsister died during the cultural
12:45 revolution. It's all speculation, but
12:47 people think this may have had a big
12:48 effect on him. And that's what he thinks
12:50 of when he thinks of rule by the people,
12:53 which may explain partially why he seems
12:56 so committed to centralizing all power
12:57 under himself and basically installing
12:59 himself to the point that he's literally
13:00 written himself into the constitution
13:02 and obligates other people in China to
13:04 read what he calls Xiinping thought,
13:06 which is his own sort of philosophy
13:08 about how to guide the country. Nick
13:10 Money Penney wants to know what was
13:12 China's ultimate role in the coid9
13:15 pandemic. We don't know for sure because
13:17 China the government has gone to
13:19 extraordinary lengths to cover up how
13:22 COVID emerged and details about the
13:25 virus. We know that in late 2019 they
13:26 basically got rid of a lot of their
13:28 virus samples that were related to
13:30 corona viruses. They floated conspiracy
13:32 theories that the virus actually came to
13:35 China from frozen food that was imported
13:37 from outside of the country. And they
13:38 didn't really allow international
13:40 inspectors until very late. And even
13:43 then, when the WH came to try to figure
13:45 out where the virus came from, it was a
13:46 highly scripted almost sort of like
13:49 North Korean tour around the facilities.
13:51 And as a result, we just don't know
13:52 where it came from. The two major
13:54 theories are that it either emerged from
13:57 this wet market in Wuhan because of the
13:59 animals that were being eaten and
14:00 slaughtered there. The other major
14:02 theories that emerge from the Wuhan
14:04 Institute of Urology, which is China's
14:06 premier place for studying corona
14:08 viruses, and we know the virus itself
14:10 has certain features that you really
14:13 only see if it's been modified in a lab
14:14 rather than naturally. The bottom line
14:15 is we don't know, but there's a lot of
14:17 circumstantial evidence that it was done
14:20 in this lab, which is a center of not
14:21 just Chinese research, but of a
14:23 multinational research attempt to
14:26 analyze corona viruses. at Jerry Dunlevy
14:28 asks, "Whatever happened to Tankman and
14:29 how many people did the Chinese
14:31 Communist Party murder at Tiennaman
14:33 Square?" So, what Jerry is referring to
14:36 is that famous image of a man standing
14:38 in front of several tanks that are
14:40 rolling into Tianaan Square to run over
14:42 demonstrators, mainly students that were
14:45 protesting there in 1989. We have no
14:46 idea what happened to Tankman. He's
14:48 never been heard of since. It wasn't
14:50 just a crackdown in Beijing and Teneaman
14:52 Square. There were massive protests in
14:53 basically every provincial capital
14:55 around China. More than 80 cities had
14:57 mass demonstrations that were then
14:59 forcibly put down. According to the
15:01 party, roughly 200 to 300 people were
15:03 killed, but most western estimates
15:05 suggest it was 10 times that amount. The
15:07 way that the Tianaan Square protests are
15:09 often portrayed is as a pro-democracy
15:12 demonstration by the Chinese people. And
15:13 certainly there were elements of that. A
15:14 lot of the students in Tiennaman Square
15:16 were calling for more democratic
15:18 governance. They built a giant replica
15:20 of the Statue of Liberty in the middle
15:22 of Tiennaman Square. But really the
15:23 crisis starts and the reason why it
15:25 spreads across the country was economic.
15:28 There was massive inflation. This led to
15:29 massive demonstrations. A lot of people
15:31 weren't being paid for jobs that they
15:32 were employed to do by the state. And
15:34 also keep in mind that communist regimes
15:36 were starting to crumble especially
15:38 across Eastern Europe. So the tail end
15:40 of the cold war and this belief that the
15:42 legitimacy the functioning of a
15:44 communist system is under question and
15:46 led to mass demonstrations and even a
15:48 split among the elites in the Chinese
15:50 Communist Party. Since then, now the
15:52 Communist Party is very much we have to
15:53 stay together. We either stay together
15:55 or we hang separately. I think that
15:57 informs a lot of the emphasis on
15:59 repression put on in China today. Milton
16:01 Merlo XD wants to know how does
16:04 censorship work in China. So, there's an
16:06 actual propaganda department. That's
16:08 what it's called in China. They set
16:10 guidelines about what is allowed to be
16:11 said and what is not allowed to be said.
16:13 It's all pretty predictable. you know,
16:15 criticizing the Chinese Communist Party,
16:18 promoting democracy. Western liberal
16:20 methods are all kind of looked down upon
16:22 and and squaltched. What the regime then
16:24 does is they have this vast great
16:26 firewall to control the internet where
16:27 they use a combination of artificial
16:29 intelligence and then hundreds of
16:31 thousands of people that are actually
16:33 working to monitor China's internet,
16:35 which is partially sealed off. What the
16:38 sensors really go after is not so much
16:39 people going off and mouththing
16:41 criticism about the leader, but much
16:43 more about trying to organize
16:45 politically, whether it's a house church
16:46 or student group or anything where you
16:49 get people together who can then talk
16:51 and then rally and potentially grow
16:53 their numbers. That looks too much like
16:55 the start of an alternative political
16:56 party. And the Chinese Communist Party
16:58 says, "No, we have a monopoly on power.
17:00 We're the only political party that's
17:02 allowed to be had in this system." And
17:03 that seems to be what the censorship
17:05 regime is primarily dedicated to
17:08 squaltching out. Mbaitment says, "Wait,
17:10 China's domestic surveillance system is
17:12 actually called Skynet." I know it's
17:13 kind of on the nose. It is called
17:15 Skynet. The idea is that there's
17:16 hundreds of millions of surveillance
17:18 cameras that have been set up around the
17:20 country as if it's a net coming from the
17:23 sky. China has pioneered methods to take
17:25 all of the images that are being
17:27 absorbed by these cameras and then use
17:29 artificial intelligence and speech and
17:32 facial recognition technology. Even gate
17:34 recognition so how you walk can be
17:35 identified and at this point they are
17:37 starting to export elements of this
17:40 system to more than 80 countries. Cuba,
17:42 Pakistan, Cambodia have all imported
17:44 aspects of this system. And so some
17:46 scholars think this is the emergence of
17:48 a new type of authoritarian system that
17:50 seems to have a lot of advantages in
17:53 terms of population control. At SpencoC
17:55 asks, "How does China's social credit
17:57 system work?" So in addition to video
17:59 cameras and speech and facial
18:00 recognition technology, the Communist
18:02 Party has access to your financial
18:05 statements, to your police record, your
18:07 education, any kind of disciplinary
18:09 action. And so what they've done is
18:10 basically created a doseier on every
18:12 single citizen. And so what they can
18:15 then do is instantly punish Chinese
18:16 citizens by saying, "Oh, you you
18:18 jaywalked. That's a point and so now
18:19 you're going to have to pay more if you
18:21 want a loan or you may not be able to
18:22 travel as freely or it may take longer
18:24 to get your passport when you go to a
18:26 government office." There essentially is
18:28 like a score and sometimes they will
18:30 actually post names of people who have
18:32 been blacklisted because they've
18:33 committed certain crimes or they've been
18:35 infraction of certain regulations
18:37 encouraging people to report on each
18:39 other. It's all over again. wants to
18:42 know, why is China so godlike in the
18:43 world of manufacturing? Well, it's so
18:45 godlike because it's designed to be
18:47 godlike. You have an authoritarian
18:49 system that essentially obligates the
18:51 Chinese people to put their life savings
18:53 in a stateowned bank. That means the
18:55 government has tons of money, a war
18:57 chest that they can then deploy at what
18:59 they call strategic industries. So,
19:00 they've spent hundreds of billions of
19:02 dollars every single year for more than
19:05 a decade. That's 10 times what other
19:07 rich countries in the OECD or the United
19:10 States spend as a share of their GDPs.
19:11 So in for example the electric vehicle
19:13 sector, China has spent about $230
19:16 billion. Semiconductors, biotechnology,
19:18 all of these key strategic industries.
19:20 And at the same time, many foreign
19:21 companies have sent over lots of
19:23 investment and training. So Apple, for
19:27 example, has spent about $275 billion in
19:28 investment in China. That's more than
19:30 the Marshall Plan that the United States
19:32 used to help Europe recover from World
19:35 War II. Apple also trained millions of
19:37 Chinese workers, 28 million, which is
19:39 more than the labor force of California.
19:40 And also, a lot of this is determined by
19:43 their geography. China has a long
19:45 coastline right in the heart of East
19:47 Asia, which is the most economically
19:49 dynamic region in the world. So many of
19:51 the world's supply chains flow through
19:53 these waters. In the 1970s and early
19:54 1980s, you had China setting up what
19:56 they called special economic zones,
19:58 especially in the southeast. in places
20:00 like Shenzhen as well as in Fujian
20:02 province in some industries whether it's
20:05 electric vehicles or in rare earths
20:07 China currently produces anywhere
20:10 between 60 to 90% of the global market
20:12 and now China has ports lining up and
20:14 down its coastline that serve as export
20:16 platforms essentially for the rest of
20:17 the world. In addition, China has
20:19 extremely low labor costs because
20:21 several hundred million people from the
20:24 poor provinces in the west. They move to
20:26 the richer east coast provinces to work
20:29 in factories for very low wages. But
20:30 that provides essentially a bottomless
20:33 source of cheap but effective labor for
20:35 China's manufacturing juggernaut. Roxy
20:36 USA asks, "What percentage of
20:38 pharmaceuticals does the US import in
20:41 from China?" In terms of antibiotics,
20:44 basic antibiotics, it's upwards of 90%
20:46 that include at least some ingredients
20:48 that are made in China. And so this has
20:50 become another national security threat
20:51 where the United States worries that
20:53 China could potentially cut the United
20:56 States off from basic pharmaceuticals if
20:58 there's some kind of crisis over Taiwan.
20:59 Whether China would actually do that
21:01 remains to be seen. At toxic cowboy 1
21:04 asks, "Are we headed to war with China?"
21:06 It's not completely out of the question.
21:09 In addition to the conflict over Taiwan,
21:11 there's also the risk of a war around
21:13 the Philippines. That conflict really
21:15 stems over who controls the South China
21:17 Sea, where a lot of trade passes
21:18 through, where most of China's oil
21:20 imports pass through. Under
21:23 international law, the Philippines gets
21:25 12 miles out from their coastline, that
21:27 is their territory, and then another 200
21:29 miles out from their coastline. That is
21:32 their exclusive economic zone. China
21:33 says, "No, that is all that's just all
21:35 Chinese territory." And they've been
21:36 building artificial islands there.
21:38 They've been turning them into military
21:39 bases. And they formed what they call a
21:41 maritime militia. So thousands of
21:43 fishing boats, coast guard vessels, and
21:45 naval ships that are basically shoving
21:47 other countries out of their exclusive
21:49 economic zone and confining them to
21:52 narrow bands along their own coastlines.
21:55 The Philippines took China to court in
21:57 2016, the World Court, which ruled that
21:59 China's historical claims to the South
22:01 China Sea are null and void. And in
22:03 recent years, China's really been
22:04 turning the screw on the Philippines.
22:06 One, I think to invalidate that ruling
22:08 and shatter its credibility, but second,
22:09 because the Philippines has started
22:11 opening up new military bases for the
22:12 United States, cuz they say, "We need
22:14 some protection from China so that we
22:16 can have access to our territorial
22:18 waters in our exclusive economic zone."
22:19 The Chinese have a saying, you should
22:21 kill a chicken to scare the monkeys,
22:23 meaning you should make a bloody example
22:25 out of a relatively weak adversary to
22:26 send a message to the more powerful
22:28 ones. The Philippines have very little
22:30 offensive air or naval capability. So
22:32 you just have to worry that Chinese
22:34 would look at them as a very juicy
22:37 target. Weak but symbolically important.
22:39 Adam Czech asks, "Is Tik Tok just a
22:41 China app to make Americans do dumb
22:44 stuff to get likes and views and keep us
22:45 distracted while they take over?" The
22:47 Chinese version of Tik Tok, you're only
22:49 allowed to use it for 15 minutes to an
22:51 hour or so, depending on your age and
22:54 status. And they also try to insert
22:56 educational, wholesome content in
22:58 addition to all the fun cat videos and
22:59 everything else that people are
23:01 watching. So I think the Chinese know
23:03 that this system is maybe not the best
23:04 thing that kids should be spending all
23:06 day on. Tik Tok is owned by Bite Dance,
23:09 a Chinese company. Under Chinese law,
23:11 Bite Dance is required to hand over data
23:14 to Beijing whenever and in however much
23:16 it wants it. It's like putting a Chinese
23:18 spy balloon in your cell phone with your
23:20 biometric data, everything you've liked
23:22 and disliked. There's been studies done
23:24 suggesting that the algorithm in Tik Tok
23:26 in the American version was promoting
23:29 certain views like after the October 7th
23:32 massacre in Israel, more pro- Hamas
23:33 views were being amplified or
23:36 pro-Russian views on the the Ukraine
23:39 conflict at NK1847
23:42 asks, "If Russian bots exist, do Chinese
23:44 bots also exist?" I think first of all,
23:45 you should look down at the comments in
23:47 this video and you'll probably get a
23:48 taste of whether there are any Chinese
23:50 bots. China. It's been well documented.
23:53 It uses both bots as well as what is
23:55 called a 50 cent army. Basically, it's a
23:57 bunch of mainly kids and and young
24:00 adults who are paid 50 Chinese cents per
24:03 internet post that they make to destroy,
24:05 undermine the credibility of messages
24:06 that maybe cut against the Chinese
24:08 Communist Party. It's reported there's
24:10 probably several hundred,000 people that
24:11 are essentially employed as internet
24:13 trolls by the Chinese Communist Party in
24:15 addition to obviously using artificial
24:18 intelligence and bots. at Psalm69 asks
24:21 why would China want to bet? I think it
24:23 becomes very clear when you look at a
24:25 map of China. You can see that most of
24:27 it is the highest mountains in the
24:29 world, the Himalayas, and a lot of it is
24:31 also desert. And so most of China's
24:33 population is packed in here and they're
24:35 desperate for water as well as strategic
24:37 space to defend themselves against
24:39 enemies. And so Tibet, which is in this
24:41 area here, is highly strategic. For one,
24:43 a lot of the glaciers up in the
24:45 Himalayas are where the major rivers of
24:48 Asia start. both flowing down into China
24:50 as well as flowing down into Southeast
24:52 Asia and into India. So if China can
24:54 control that territory, it controls the
24:56 source of vital water supplies. At the
24:58 same time, China and India, which is now
25:00 the most populous country on the planet,
25:03 have a long-standing rivalry, and Tibet
25:05 is the high ground, literally looking
25:07 down onto India. In addition, the
25:08 Chinese Communist Party essentially
25:10 inherited the borders of the
25:13 previousQing dynasty empire, which
25:15 included Tibet, led by the Dalai Lama.
25:17 And so when China took over Tibet and
25:19 conquered it in 1951, the Dalai Lama
25:22 fled to India and has been running a
25:24 government in exile in India ever since.
25:26 This next question is from Tapestry
25:28 Girl. Mom says China could take over the
25:31 United States because they own our debt.
25:34 China does own some US debt. It's in the
25:37 3 to 4% range. It topped out at about 7%
25:39 about a decade ago, generally in the
25:40 form of Treasury bills. And a lot of
25:42 this emerges just from the economic
25:44 relationship between the United States
25:46 and China where China is exporting a lot
25:48 of goods to the United States and the
25:49 United States will often pay for that
25:50 essentially with a piece of paper that
25:52 says I owe you in the form of a Treasury
25:54 bill. Analysts have looked at whether
25:55 they could use this as a course of
25:57 weapon and basically concluded they'd be
25:58 shooting themselves in the foot. The
26:00 value of that asset would suddenly
26:02 plummet. Japan owns more US debt than
26:03 China does. So I don't think that this
26:05 is a unique China thing or that they
26:07 could use it as some type of weapon to
26:09 coersse the United States. Let's take a
26:11 question from Kora. Is modern China more
26:14 influenced by Confucianism or Marxism? I
26:15 would say both because they lead in
26:18 similar directions. Marxism, Leninism,
26:20 stresses the idea of public or communal
26:23 ownership of the means of production to
26:24 produce wealth that is owned by the
26:27 state in China. It's led by what Lenin
26:29 would call the vanguard party staffed by
26:31 a top leader that is making decisions on
26:33 behalf of the people. And that's
26:34 consistent with certain elements of
26:36 Confucianism. Confucianism obviously has
26:38 a long lineage, thousands of years in
26:41 China. Confucious, a philosopher who
26:43 emphasized a natural harmony, people
26:45 knowing their place in society, that
26:47 everyone has a certain role to perform
26:49 in that society, and that you have to
26:51 have a benevolent leader that leads on
26:54 behalf of the people. That obviously
26:57 appeals very much to Chinese dynasties
26:59 over the millennia. You have Xiinping
27:01 today grafting that on to a Marxist
27:04 Leninist structure of the party. atgus
27:05 802 asks, "What happened with the
27:07 Chinese spy balloon hysteria?" In
27:10 January 2023, the United States detected
27:14 a balloon floating over areas, including
27:17 a nuclear missile silo in Montana. What
27:19 it was carrying was all this advanced
27:20 surveillance equipment that was about
27:23 the size of a regional jet airliner. So,
27:24 we're talking about a major piece of
27:26 hardware floating around. China's done
27:29 this in more than 40 countries in Japan,
27:30 over Taiwan. They've been floating
27:31 balloons even over potentially over
27:34 American bases in Europe. And there's a
27:36 fear that China is testing out this
27:38 alternative surveillance system because
27:41 balloons emit almost no radar signature.
27:43 They're really hard to detect. They
27:45 hover around 60,000 ft, which is higher
27:48 than a commercial airliner, but below
27:49 satellites in this area where people
27:51 really aren't looking. It gives China
27:54 eyes and ears over sensitive US sites
27:56 that otherwise they they wouldn't have.
27:58 The US sent a fighter jet up eventually
27:59 to shoot it down. And then the US
28:01 grabbed all of the technology that was
28:03 there and observed the balloon's flight.
28:05 That might have actually helped US
28:06 intelligence more than Chinese
28:09 intelligence. At all four stops asks,
28:11 "Who is winning the tech war between
28:14 China and the United States?" I think
28:17 they are each dominating different types
28:19 of technologies. The United States is
28:21 still doing quite well in high value
28:24 areas. So advanced computer chips,
28:26 aerospace, the complicated jet engines
28:28 that you need to fly a jumbo jet or a
28:30 fighter. China on the other hand
28:32 dominates scale. Taking existing
28:34 technologies from other countries and
28:36 then mass- prodducing highly effective,
28:38 costefficient electric vehicles,
28:39 run-of-the-mill computer chips, rare
28:42 earths, pharmaceuticals, medical PPE.
28:43 There's so many areas where China can
28:45 just flood the market with sheer scale.
28:47 Both of those types of technologies are
28:49 really important for a modern economy.
28:50 They're also very important for military
28:53 power. So each in their own way is sort
28:54 of winning in some ways but also has
28:59 major vulnerabilities. Joe Bart 85120716
29:01 asks, "Does China own American
29:03 farmland?" Yes, China does own American
29:05 farmland. It's like 0.05%
29:07 of American farmland, but some of this
29:09 farmland is near American military
29:12 bases, especially air force bases,
29:14 including some of those where American
29:16 strategic forces, nuclear forces, could
29:18 be taking off. And so there was a fear
29:20 that if China has this land, they can
29:22 put things on it, explosives, missiles
29:24 that could potentially attack American
29:26 bases if there is some kind of major war
29:28 and destroy US aircraft on the ground
29:30 before they even get up into the air. We
29:31 don't know the details on that. You'd
29:32 have to get classified information, but
29:34 the amount of farmland is small. The
29:36 location is a bit scary and
29:39 questionable. Kikba asks, "Can someone
29:41 explain Hong Kong to me?" So Hong Kong
29:43 was a British colony after the first
29:47 opium war in 1839 all the way up until
29:50 1997 where Britain agreed to hand back
29:53 Hong Kong to China and in exchange China
29:57 pledged to grant Hong Kong a quote high
29:59 degree of autonomy because within Hong
30:02 Kong there was a different rule of law.
30:04 There was an independent judiciary. So
30:06 you saw massive protests there over the
30:08 last five or 6 years when China was
30:10 basically trying to erode a lot of those
30:12 freedoms, crack down on the press, crack
30:14 down on the free flow of investment and
30:16 also on the way that the Hong Kong
30:17 government is selected. The Chinese
30:19 government passed national security laws
30:21 that made it possible for them to remove
30:23 protesters, take them to mainland China.
30:25 So at this point, it seems like Hong
30:27 Kong has basically become another large
30:30 cosmopolitan but ultimately Chinese city
30:32 run by the Chinese Communist Party. Iron
30:34 Lover 64 asks, "How does the quality of
30:36 life for the lowass in China compare to
30:38 that of the United States, let's say in
30:40 a red state?" So why don't we compare
30:43 the poorest of the poor in China to say
30:45 average wages in Mississippi, which is
30:47 the poorest state. For China, roughly
30:48 half the country is living on something
30:51 like 5 to$10 a day. In Mississippi,
30:52 that's going to be three to four times
30:55 that amount. There's a lot more obesity
30:57 in a place like Mississippi than there
30:59 is in China. On the other hand, in rural
31:01 China, you have a severe problem of
31:03 malnourishment and rudimentary health
31:05 care. Researchers at Stanford went out
31:07 and they found that roughly a third of
31:10 rural children, their IQs are around 90,
31:11 which is really low because of
31:14 malnutrition from a young age, a lack of
31:16 education. The average education level
31:18 is about an eighth grade or seventh
31:20 grade level in rural China because high
31:22 school costs money and so a lot of
31:23 Chinese families, their kids will just
31:25 drop out of school. And the other issue
31:27 is that your citizenship in China is
31:29 tied to your locality. And so if mom and
31:31 dad go to an eastern rich coastal
31:33 province to work in a factory, they
31:34 can't bring their kids with them because
31:36 they won't be allowed to go to school.
31:37 So they're just sending money back and
31:39 maybe only seeing their kids a few times
31:41 or maybe only once a year. So just in
31:43 terms of the basic health care and
31:45 education level and then just in terms
31:46 of the amount of wealth that someone in
31:48 Mississippi might have versus someone in
31:50 poor rural China, it's a very stark
31:53 difference. at Captain Trips 333 asks,
31:55 "What's going on with the Weaguer Muslim
31:57 population in China?" So, there's about
31:59 10 to 12 million Weaguer Muslims. They
32:01 live mainly in a province called Sing
32:03 Jang, which is in the western part of
32:06 China. Basically, since 2017, China set
32:08 up what they call re-education centers
32:11 or vocational education centers, what
32:12 people in the West have called
32:14 concentration camps and what the US
32:16 government deems an attempt at genocide,
32:18 and basically put in million to a
32:20 million and a half weaguer Muslims. So a
32:22 substantial part of the population in
32:24 these centers, we've heard from people
32:25 that have come out of them that there's
32:27 a lot of indoctrination that they were
32:30 enforced to renounce their heritage and
32:32 to learn Mandarin and basically to
32:34 assimilate with Chinese society. A big
32:36 part of what the Chinese Communist Party
32:38 is about is making sure a Soviet style
32:42 collapse never occurs in China. And one
32:44 of their theories about why the Soviet
32:45 Union broke apart was that the Soviet
32:47 Union was like one of those Hershey
32:48 chocolate bars that's divided into
32:50 little squares that you can break apart.
32:52 It was these just disperate republics
32:54 that all went their own way when they
32:55 suddenly could. So there was a fear that
32:57 a minority region like Sing Jang where
32:59 these weaguers were living was going to
33:01 try to separate from the mainland or was
33:03 going to become a base of terrorism
33:04 directed at China. So unfortunately the
33:06 weaguer Muslims are experiencing severe
33:08 repression right now under the Chinese
33:11 Communist Party. Lo Farrahale asks,
33:13 "Does China support or promote communism
33:15 around the world?" I don't think China
33:17 is promoting communism anymore the way
33:20 that the Soviet Union used to bankroll
33:22 revolutionary movements. They have
33:24 engaged in this belt and road initiative
33:26 where they've loaned out more than a
33:28 trillion dollars to more than a hundred
33:30 different countries mainly so that those
33:33 countries can employ Chinese companies
33:34 to build infrastructure on their
33:36 territory. So whether that's building
33:39 ports or roads or soccer stadiums or
33:42 what the Chinese call smart city
33:43 systems, there's a port in Greece for
33:45 example that is highly profitable. It's
33:47 a important valuable piece of
33:49 infrastructure that China helped fund
33:51 and build. One out of every three
33:53 infrastructure projects in subsaharan
33:55 Africa over the last 20 years has been
33:57 built partially or by entirely by
33:59 Chinese companies. So you see a massive
34:01 spread of infrastructure and part of the
34:03 reason really stems from the 2008
34:05 financial crisis and the resulting trade
34:06 protectionism that was emerging,
34:08 backlash against Chinese products. The
34:11 Chinese decided we need to open up new
34:13 markets. We can also get these countries
34:16 more hooked on our ecosystem of
34:19 technology standards, 5G networks, smart
34:20 city systems, and that way we'll have
34:22 dominant market share in a lot of these
34:24 areas that are going to be really the
34:26 growth of demand in terms of consumption
34:28 going forward. They also bring that
34:30 surveillance system that allows wouldbe
34:32 dictators to keep easier tabs on their
34:34 populations. At Ostanati asks, "What
34:36 happens when she dies? Who's next in
34:39 line? And will they be good for China?"
34:41 I think chaos could potentially ensue
34:44 because he has not designated a
34:46 successor. He's written himself into the
34:48 constitution. He's basically treated
34:50 like a demigod in terms of Chinese
34:51 propaganda. And if you look at the
34:53 history of the Chinese Communist Party,
34:55 there has only been one completely
34:58 orderly and peaceful transition of power
35:00 and that's when she himself came to
35:02 power. All of the previous leaders, it
35:04 was a vicious power struggle and there
35:06 was split authority. So for example,
35:08 Dang Xiaoing is purged and then
35:10 eventually comes back to power and has
35:11 to put down his enemies and imprison
35:14 them in order to take the helm. Then
35:15 Jang Zamin comes to power after the
35:18 Tiennian Square massacre in 1989
35:19 basically because the party realizes it
35:21 needs to unify behind a candidate or
35:23 they're just going to disintegrate. Then
35:26 when Huan Tao comes to power, Jang Zamin
35:28 is not willing to give up a lot of his
35:30 power and he keeps himself as
35:32 commanderin-chief even after Huan Tao
35:34 becomes president and general secretary
35:36 of the country. It' be like as if Joe
35:38 Biden was still head of the Pentagon and
35:40 the military and commander-in-chief even
35:41 though Donald Trump is now president
35:43 here in the United States. In other
35:45 words, in Chinese politics, it's very
35:47 rough and tumble. Even though it happens
35:49 behind closed doors, chaos is entirely
35:50 possible. And if you just look at the
35:52 broad sweep of Chinese history, vicious
35:54 power struggles tend to ensue. Some
35:56 people hope that you'll get a Chinese
35:58 male Gorbachoff, you know, the Soviet
36:00 leader who made nice with the West and
36:02 liberalized a bit at home. I think you
36:03 might actually get a Chinese Vladimir
36:05 Putin. It seems like the one thing that
36:07 everyone in the Chinese Communist Party
36:08 can agree on is that the Chinese
36:10 Communist Party should continue to rule
36:12 China in perpetuity. So those are all
36:13 the questions for today. Thanks for
36:15 watching China support. [Music]
