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