Podcast appearances and mentions of Jiang Zemin

Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao are often overlooked but pivotal figures in recent Chinese history whose role in steering China through its extraordinary economic transformation in the 1990s and 2000s is overshadowed by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. This is the first in a series of podcasts about these two figures and how they created the China now ruled by Xi Jinping.*****STOP PRESS*****I only ever talk about history on this podcast but I also have another life, yes, that of aspirant fantasy author and if that's your thing you can get a copy of my debut novel The Blood of Tharta, right here:Help the podcast to continue bringing you history each weekIf you enjoy the Explaining History podcast and its many years of content and would like to help the show continue, please consider supporting it in the following ways:If you want to go ad-free, you can take out a membership hereOrYou can support the podcast via Patreon hereOr you can just say some nice things about it here Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/explaininghistory. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As China's military capabilities expand, US-China frictions intensify, and regional tensions increase, concern is on the rise that a potential crisis, either accidental or deliberate, could take place that could spiral out of control. If a crisis arises with China, leaders may want to de-escalate and prevent a wider conflict. To do so, they will need to understand how China thinks about crisis management and escalation.The guest for this episode has dug into the writings of PLA strategists and authoritative PRC sources as well as Western scholarship to assess how China views military escalation and how the US and other countries can accurately predict and interpret PRC signal in crisis scenarios.Lyle Morris is a Senior Fellow on Foreign Policy and National Security at the Center for China Analysis at the Asia Society Policy Institute. His recently published paper is titled “China's Views on Escalation and Crisis Management and Implications for the United States.” Timestamps[00:00] Start[01:37] Methodology and Authoritative Chinese Sources[04:17] PLA Theories and Concepts of Managing Escalation[06:00] Controlling All Facets of Military Escalation[10:28] Doctrine of Seizing the Initiative[15:21] First Use of Force and a Reluctance to Use Force[19:37] American and Chinese Considerations of Misperception[25:46] Utility of US-China Tabletop Exercises[28:33] Predicting a Taiwan Contingency

When this episode goes live four days from now, Donald Trump will have been sworn in as the 47th president of the United States, after having served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021.Many countries around the world are closely watching to identify changes in US policy and assess their impact. China is one of those countries. As presidential candidate Donald Trump threatened to impose 60% tariffs on Chinese goods imported into the United States. He also proposed revoking China's Most Favored Nation trading status and banning China from buying US farmland. He pledged to curtail Chinese espionage and theft of intellectual property. On some occasions Trump praised Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and predicted that they would get along very well. In the past few months, Trump and Xi have been in communication through their representatives.What approach will Beijing take toward Trump's presidency this time around? Is China in a stronger or weaker position than it was in during Trump's first term? What is the likely trajectory of US-China relations in the coming four years?To discuss these questions, host Bonnie Glaser is joined by Dr. Evan Medeiros, who is the Penner Family Chair in Asia Studies in the School of Foreign Service and the Cling Family Distinguished Fellow in US-China Studies at Georgetown University. He served seven years in President Obama's NSC first as director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, and then as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Asia.  Timestamps[00:00] Start[02:00] Lessons Beijing Learned from Trump's First Term [04:11] Perceptions on the Balance of Economic Power [07:30] China's Reaction to American Tariffs[09:39] China Hurting the United States without Hurting Itself[11:48] Starting Anew with the Trump Administration [13:38] An Early US-China Meeting[16:46] An Inverse Bilateral Relationship [18:56] China Helping with the War in Ukraine[25:18] Chinese Use of Force Against Taiwan [29:22] US Alliances Under the Trump Administration[35:00] What worries Evan Medeiros in the US-China relationship? 

Susan Shirk discusses more events that happened during her time in the Clinton Administration, including NATO's accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Falun Gong protests in Beijing, and Jiang Zemin's visit to the U.S.Substack: https://pekinghotel.substack.comInstagram: peking.hotelAnd please tell your friends about us! https://pekinghotel.substack.com/p/do-you-enjoy-reading-peking-hotel Get full access to Peking Hotel at pekinghotel.substack.com/subscribe

Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party Part 5: The Collusion of Jiang Zemin and the Chinese Communist Party to Persecute Falun Gong

Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party Part 5: The Collusion of Jiang Zemin and the Chinese Communist Party to Persecute Falun Gong

Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party Part 5: The Collusion of Jiang Zemin and the Chinese Communist Party to Persecute Falun Gong

Bill Clinton e Jiang Zemin; George W. Bush e Hu Jintao; Barack Obama e Xi Jinping; Donald Trump e Xi Jinping: quattro incontri tra un presidente degli Stati Uniti e uno della Cina per capire cosa dovremmo aspettarci in futuro nelle relazioni tra Cina e Usa, dopo il voto presidenziale americano ormai alle porte. Una storia fatta di dialoghi, sorprese, accuse, passeggiate e torte servite annunciando bombardamenti in giro per il mondo. Gli inserti audio della puntata sono tratti da: U.S.-China Joint News Conference, C-Span, 26 giugno 1998; Bush welcomes Hu, ceremony, speeches, heckler led away, photo op, Ap Archive, 21 luglio 2015; Obama, Xi Meet in California, Voice of America, 8 giugno 2013; President Trump At Mar-A-Lago Dinner Table With Chinese President Xi Jinping, canale YouTube LiveNow from Fox, 7 aprile 2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robert Lawrence Kuhn, PhD., is the creator, executive producer, writer, and host of Closer To Truth, the PBS/public television series on Cosmos, Life, Consciousness, and Meaning that presents leading scientists, philosophers, and creative thinkers discussing fundamental questions. Dr Kuhn has published over 30 books, including The Mystery of Existence: Why is there Anything At All? (with John Leslie); Closer To Truth: Challenging Current Belief; Closer To Truth: Science, Meaning and the Future; How China's Leaders Think; and The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin (the first biography of a living Chinese leader published in China and China's best-selling book in 2005). His articles include “Why This Universe”, “Levels of Nothing”, and “Virtual Immortality” (Skeptic magazine) and “Science as Democratizer” (American Scientist). He is an “Expert Voice” on www.Space.com (multimedia essays on “Confronting the Multiverse: What Infinitely Universes would Mean”, “Testing the Multiverse: Beyond the Limits of Science?”, “Forget Space-Time: Information May Create the Cosmos”, “The Illusion of Time: What's Real?”, “Is Our Universe a Fake?”) and on LiveScience.com (“The Singularity, Virtual Immortality and the Trouble with Consciousness”, “Is Your ‘Self' Just an Illusion?”, “Can Your ‘Self' Survive Death?”). TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) - Introduction (1:37) - Inception of Closer To Truth (5:10) - The "Inside Story" of "A Landscape of Consciousness" (14:50) - Why wasn't "Landscape" published as a book? (21:00) The time "Landscape" was prematurely published (unintentionally) and Robert's reaction to this (29:17) - Landscape's Format of Landscape (37:20) - Robert's view on Consciousness (41:33) - What was Robert's inclusion criteria for Theories of Consciousness (48:44) - Feedback from Scientists, Philosopher, and thinkers mentioned in Landscape (1:04:50) - With 10 Categories for Materialist theories, does that make Robert a Materialist? (1:10:59) - Implications of Theories of Consciousness (meaning, purpose, value, AI consciousness, virtual immortality, life after death, and free will) (1:31:05) - Cosmos, LIFE, consciousness, and meaning (Philosophy of Biology as a new genre to Closer To Truth) (1:40:30) - Closer To Truth's impact on our lives (1:46:00) - Robert's final thoughts (new project expanding Landscape online) (1:47:25) - Conclusion EPISODE LINKS: - Landscape Paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610723001128 - Closer To Truth: https://closertotruth.com/ - CCT YouTube: https://youtube.com/@closertotruthtv CONNECT: - Website: https://tevinnaidu.com - Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/drtevinnaidu - Twitter: https://twitter.com/drtevinnaidu - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drtevinnaidu - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drtevinnaidu - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drtevinnaidu ============================= Disclaimer: The information provided on this channel is for educational purposes only. The content is shared in the spirit of open discourse and does not constitute, nor does it substitute, professional or medical advice. We do not accept any liability for any loss or damage incurred from you acting or not acting as a result of listening/watching any of our contents. You acknowledge that you use the information provided at your own risk. Listeners/viewers are advised to conduct their own research and consult with their own experts in the respective fields.

En entrevista para MVS Noticias con Manuel López San Martín, Eduardo Torreblanca, experto en economía, habló sobre México sube al ring para “castigar” a China siguiendo la línea norteamericana. "México reclama a China por la falta de reciprocidad en materia comercial, y lo cierto es que pues tiene razón. Tiene razón la Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público”, mencionó Torreblanca. ¿Cuál es la relación económica entre México y China? El análisis económico presentado por Torreblanca reveló cifras relevantes: "Las importaciones de nuestro país de artículos chinos han crecido un 152 por ciento entre 2014 y 2023, alcanzando los 81 mil 500 millones de dólares al término del último año. En contraste, nuestras exportaciones hacia China han crecido un 67 por ciento en el mismo periodo, sumando 18 mil 800 millones de dólares. El saldo deficitario en nuestra balanza comercial con China ha aumentado un 197 por ciento en la última década, favoreciendo claramente a China”. Refiriéndose a la evolución histórica de la relación entre México y China, Torreblanca destacó: "Curiosamente, México se suma a una posición beligerante en materia comercial que iniciara fundamentalmente Donald Trump hace poco más de 8 años”. China copió un programa maquilador de México Además, subrayó el papel fundamental de México en la configuración de la economía manufacturera china: "China se convirtió en la fábrica del mundo a partir de los años 80, influenciada en gran medida por México. Jiang Zemin, en su visita a México a finales de los años 70, estudió detalladamente nuestro programa de industria maquiladora de exportación, implementando un modelo similar en China poco después”. Torreblanca también recordó el reconocimiento oficial de China hacia México por esta contribución: "Jiang Zemin, luego como presidente de China, reconoció públicamente en una cena oficial que China había adaptado y mejorado el modelo maquilador mexicano”, concluyó.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Eneasz is too cool to be on the podcast this week, so Yassine Meskhout joined Wes and David to keep the rationalist community informed about what's going on outside of the rationalist communitySupport us on Substack!News discussed:Gaza pier is already broken EV sales have plateaued at around 7% of all auto salesBiden executive order on immigrationJustice Alito has been flying insurrectionist flagsSouth Korea used balloons to drop propaganda leaflets over North Korea. North Korea retaliates by dropping animal and human s**t, and other garbage on South KoreaHouthis claim to have Touched The Boat. The Ike's captain says that's garbage and that he's getting lunchRussia has been striking Ukrainian cities with artillery based inside Russia. NATO responds by allowing Ukraine to strike targets in Russia with NATO-provided weaponsThis resulted in the loss of 1270 Russian troops in 24 hours according to the British MoD, the deadliest 24 hours of the war so far. The PLAN has encircled Taiwan in the name of “military exercises” and also as “punishment” for Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan in her official capacityThe unlawful government of the West Taiwan Breakaway Region has also rolled back erosion mitigation measures implemented under Jiang Zemin to try to reach food self-sufficencyUS aid to Gaza is piling up in Egypt, since the pier is gone. Egypt declines to let trucks across the Gaza border.ICC prosecutor is requesting an arrest warrant for NetanyahuOpenAI stole ScarJo's voice?Greenpeace successfully sued to stop golden rice being grown in the Philippines SCOTUS: racial gerrymanders are cool nowHappy News!Cure for deafness?A woman (Georgia Laurie) saved her twin sister by punching a crocodileCome to Vibecamp!Got something to say? Come chat with us on the Bayesian Conspiracy Discord or email us at themindkillerpodcast@gmail.com. Say something smart and we'll mention you on the next show!Follow us!RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/themindkillerGoogle: https://play.google.com/music/listen#/ps/Iqs7r7t6cdxw465zdulvwikhekmPocket Casts: https://pca.st/vvcmifu6 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-mind-killer Apple: Intro/outro music: On Sale by Golden Duck Orchestra This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mindkiller.substack.com/subscribe

This week's guest is Dr. Gerard Postiglione, Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. In this episode, Gerry takes us through changes in higher education in China, from the initial opening under Deng Xiaoping, through the rapid system expansion under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, to the present system under Xi Jinping. 

Broken China? China borders 14 countries and is the 4th largest country in the world and second largest in terms of population. It's very surprising to know so little about the Chinese even though western think tanks and news articles have written volumes. It's shocking that a county which is at the very enter of the global supply chain for nearly every other country in the world is enigmatic, challenging, and difficult to understand. Perhaps it's due to China being an officially atheist state with over 40% of the population identifying as agnostic or atheist? This is remarkably different from nearly any other country in the world as is the lack of ethnic diversity 91.6% identify as ethnically Han. China is different, or is it really? In this video podcast with Comrade Ian Thornton-Trump CD, CISO for Cyjax, Comrade Lisa Forte and Comrade Philip Ingram MBE we wave the Chinese flag passionately as we explore China. Lisa, was our woman on the ground who travelled the length and width of the region including rural Mongolia in -45 Celsius (-49 Fahrenheit) and visited Beijing as well as some rural villages - we can categorically state China has some of the best ice climbing opportunities in the world. The ice climbing opportunities aside this video podcast is supported by a new report from our sponsor Cyjax written by Comrade Nikita Cole whose draft helped structured our discussion - the paper is available here:  This short excerpt from the CIA world fact book paints the picture and rather surprisingly is unbiased in relating to China's resent ascension to the second largest economy in the world (2024).    "MAO Zedong died in 1976. Beginning in 1978, subsequent leaders DENG Xiaoping, JIANG Zemin, and HU Jintao focused on market-oriented economic development and opening the country to foreign trade, while maintaining the rule of the CCP. Since the change, China has been among the world's fastest growing economies, with real gross domestic product averaging over 9% growth annually through 2021, lifting an estimated 800 million people out of poverty, and dramatically improving overall living standards." What the CIA world fact book has left out is the lifting out of poverty has created a massive middle class anxious for western consumer and luxury goods. The 2023 McKinsey China Consumer Report also found the middle class continues to rise. There is still no other country that adds as many households to the middle class each year as China does. Over the next three years, China is expected to add another 71 million upper-middle and high-income households adding to the 693.3 million identified in 2022. It's massive and a massive market opportunity for any firm.  But all may not be as well as it seems - the panel explores some of doom and gloom associated with China and how cracks may be showing in foreign policy, international relations and its relationship with the world's largest economy the USA - join us for a fascinating look at a country described by some as a "Frenemy" to the west but has radically transformed in less than 1/2 a lifetime - 45 years.

#CCP: The red nobility: Charles Burton, senior fellow at the Centre for Advancing Canada's Interests Abroad at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, on the end of the Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin patronage networks in Xi Jinping's Communist Party. @GordonGChang, Gatestone, Newsweek, The Hill 1925 Kuomintang

On December 27 and 28, 2023, the Communist Party of China held the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs. This was the sixth such meeting – the first one was held way back in 1971. This Foreign Affairs Work Conference was the third held under Xi Jinping's leadership, with earlier meetings held in 2014 and 2018.Xi delivered a major speech at the Work Conference, which marks the most comprehensive expression yet of his more activist approach to PRC diplomacy. The speech provides valuable insights into Xi's assessment of the global balance of power, his vision of the international order, and his views of the role of Chinese diplomacy.Host Bonnie Glaser is joined by Neil Thomas, a Fellow for Chinese Politics at Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis, where he studies elite politics, political economy, and foreign policy. Previously, he was a Senior Analyst for China and Northeast Asia at Eurasia Group.  Timestamps[01:32] Historical Significance of Foreign Affairs Work Conference[07:09] Xi's Key Messages from the Conference in December[11:10] Xi's Concept of the Community of Common Destiny[15:26] Major Country Diplomacy in Chinese Foreign Policy[20:03] China's Diplomacy Going Forward[23:07] Xi's Speech to Chinese Ambassadors 

This episode covers the role of US and Chinese domestic politics in the US-China relationship. There are many drivers of US-China strategic competition, and domestic politics is among them, and has become increasingly important, though it has not been well researched and analyzed in recent years. One reason for the lack of analysis on Chinese politics is that since Xi Jinping became China's top leader in 2012, domestic politics in China has become even more of black box than previously. Bonnie is joined by Dr. Evan Medeiros, who has recently published a pathbreaking study that seeks to update the understanding of political forces in China and the United States that are influencing the bilateral relationship. Medeiros is one of the world's leading experts on Chinese foreign policy. He is the Penner Family Chair in Asia studies and the Cling Family Distinguished Fellow in US-China Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. The report we will discuss today is titled: "The New Domestic Politics of US-China Relations" and was published by the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis where Evan is a senior fellow for foreign policy. During the Obama administration, Evan was on the NSC staff, first as director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, and then as special assistant to the president and Senior Director for Asia.  Timestamps[02:14] Influence of Domestic Politics in the US and China[03:32] Differences between US and Chinese Domestic Politics[05:19] Weakening of Historical Forces for Stability[08:35] Most Important Driver of Change to America's China Policy[13:34] Xi Jinping Shaping Domestic Politics in China[19:38] Reversing the Downward Trend in US-China Relations[21:44] Close Connections between Domestic and Foreign Politics[24:49] Biden and Xi as Leaders in the Bilateral Relationship

Mit der Verbreitung von Falun Dafa begannen viele Menschen zu praktizieren. Sie kamen zu mir nach Hause, um in der Gruppe das Fa zu lernen. Da wir mehrere Praktizierende in der Familie hatten, war unser Haus ein geeigneter Ort für die Treffen. Mein Mann verstarb später. Im Jahr 1999 begann Jiang Zemin, der damalige Führer der Kommunistischen Partei Chinas, mit der Verfolgung von Falun Dafa. Meine Kinder und ich wurden in unterschiedlichem Ausmaß verfolgt, einige wurden in Arbeitslager gesperrt. Trotz des Terrors und des hohen Drucks traf sich die Fa-Lerngruppe weiterhin bei mir zu Hause.... https://de.minghui.org/html/articles/2023/10/22/171132.html

Alla luce della guerra tra Israele e Hamas, tenere insieme ideologia e affari in Medio Oriente oggi per la Cina è diventato un problema. Perché l'ennesima escalation impone a tutte le potenze mondiali di prendere una posizione, di provare a far sentire la propria voce nella gestione internazionale della crisi. E in Asia, in situazioni come questa, la voce cinese non è più l'unica a farsi sentire. C'è anche l'India, che su Israele e Palestina negli ultimi anni ha fatto un'inversione di marcia quasi totale.  Gli inserti audio di questa puntata sono tratti da: Israel, President Jiang Zemin's visit, Ap Archive, 18 luglio 2015; Xi Jinping and Mahmoud Abbas announce ‘strategic partnership' between China and Palestine, Middle East Eye, 15 giugno 2023; Israel-Palestine Conflict Update: Israel's Envoy says 'Thank You India', canale Youtube Zee Business, 8 ottobre 2023; PM Modi Lands In Israel, Greeted With Hug By Benjamin Netanyahu, Ndtv, 4 luglio 2017; PM Netanyahu and Indian PM Modi Attend Demo of Mobile Desalination Unit, canale Youtube Israeli Pm, 6 luglio 2017; PM Modi and Israeli PM Netanyah at Joint Press Statements in Jerusalem, canale Youtube Narendra Modi, 5 luglio 2017 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

www.goodluckgabe.life    The Perils of Audience Capture How influencers become brainwashed by their audiences The Man Who Ate Himself In 2016, 24 year old Nicholas Perry wanted to be big online. He started uploading videos to his YouTube channel in which he pursued his passion—playing the violin—and extolled the virtues of veganism. He went largely unnoticed.   A year later, he abandoned veganism, citing health concerns. Now free to eat whatever he wanted, he began uploading mukbang videos of himself consuming various dishes while talking to the camera, as if having dinner with a friend.   These new videos quickly found a sizable audience, but as the audience grew, so did their demands. The comments sections of the videos soon became filled with people challenging Perry to eat as much as he physically could. Eager to please, he began to set himself torturous eating challenges, each bigger than the last. His audience applauded, but always demanded more. Soon, he was filming himself eating entire menus of fast food restaurants in one sitting.   In some respects, all his eating paid off; Nikocado Avocado, as Perry is now better known, has amassed over six million subscribers across six channels on YouTube. By satisfying the escalating demands of his audience, he got his wish of blowing up and being big online. But the cost was that he blew up and became big in ways he hadn't anticipated. Top: Nicholas Perry when he first started making mukbang videos. Bottom: Perry transformed by his audience's desires into Nikocado. Nikocado, moulded by his audience's desires into a cartoonish extreme, is now a wholly different character from Nicholas Perry, the vegan violinist who first started making videos. Where Perry was mild-mannered and health conscious, Nikocado is loud, abrasive, and spectacularly grotesque. Where Perry was a picky eater, Nikocado devoured everything he could, including finally Perry himself. The rampant appetite for attention caused the person to be subsumed by the persona.   We often talk of "captive audiences," regarding the performer as hypnotizing their viewers. But just as often, it's the viewers hypnotizing the performer. This disease, of which Perry is but one victim of many, is known as audience capture, and it's essential to understanding influencers in particular and the online ecosystem in general.   Lost in the Looking Glass Audience capture is an irresistible force in the world of influencing, because it's not just a conscious process but also an unconscious one. While it may ostensibly appear to be a simple case of influencers making a business decision to create more of the content they believe audiences want, and then being incentivized by engagement numbers to remain in this niche forever, it's actually deeper than that. It involves the gradual and unwitting replacement of a person's identity with one custom-made for the audience.   To understand how, we must consider how people come to define themselves. A person's identity is being constantly refined, so it needs constant feedback. That feedback typically comes from other people, not so much by what they say they see as by what we think they see. We develop our personalities by imagining ourselves through others' eyes, using their borrowed gazes like mirrors to dress ourselves.   Just as lacking a mirror to dress ourselves leaves us disheveled, so lacking other people's eyes to refine our personalities leaves us uncouth. This is why those raised in isolation, like poor Genie, become feral humans, adopting the character of beasts.   Put simply, in order to be someone, we need someone to be someone for. Our personalities develop as a role we perform for other people, fulfilling the expectations we think they have of us. The American sociologist Charles Cooley dubbed this phenomenon “the looking glass self.” Evidence for it is diverse, and includes the everyday experience of seeing ourselves through imagined eyes in social situations (the spotlight effect), the tendency for people to alter their behavior when in the presence of pictures of eyes (the watching-eye effect), and the tendency for people in virtual spaces to adopt the traits of their avatars in an attempt to fulfill expectations (the Proteus effect).   When we lived in small tight-knit communities, the looking glass self helped us to become the people our loved ones needed us to be. The “Michelangelo phenomenon” is the name given to the semi-conscious cycle of refinement and feedback whereby lovers who genuinely care what each other think gradually grow closer to their partner's original ideal of them.   The problem is, we no longer live solely among those we know well. We're now forced to refine our personalities by the countless eyes of strangers. And this has begun to affect the process by which we develop our identities.   Gradually we're all gaining online audiences, and we don't really know these people. We can only gauge who they are by what some of them post online, and what people post online is not indicative of who they really are. As such, the people we're increasingly becoming someone for are an abstract illusion.   When influencers are analyzing audience feedback, they often find that their more outlandish behavior receives the most attention and approval, which leads them to recalibrate their personalities according to far more extreme social cues than those they'd receive in real life. In doing this they exaggerate the more idiosyncratic facets of their personalities, becoming crude caricatures of themselves.   The caricature quickly becomes the influencer's distinct brand, and all subsequent attempts by the influencer to remain on-brand and fulfill audience expectations require them to act like the caricature. As the caricature becomes more familiar than the person, both to the audience and to the influencer, it comes to be regarded by both as the only honest expression of the influencer, so that any deviation from it soon looks and feels inauthentic. At that point the persona has eclipsed the person, and the audience has captured the influencer.   The old Greek legends tell of Narcissus, a youth so handsome he became besotted by his own reflection. Unable to look away from his image in the surface of the waters, he fell still forever, and was transformed by the gods into a flower. Similarly, as influencers glimpse their idealized online personas reflected back at them on screens, they too are in danger of becoming eternally besotted by how they appear, and in so doing, forgetting who they were, or could be.   III. The Prostitution of the Intellect Audience capture is a particular problem in politics, due to both phenomena being driven by popular approval. On Twitter I've watched many political influencers gradually become radicalized by their audiences, starting off moderate but following their increasingly extreme followers toward the fringes.   One example is Louise Mensch, a once-respectable journalist and former Conservative politician who in 2016 published a story about Trump's alleged ties to Russia, which went viral. She subsequently gained a huge audience of #NotMyPresident #Resist types, and, encouraged by her new, indignant audience to uncover more evidence of Trump's corruption, she appears to have begun to view herself as the one who'd prove Russiagate and bring down the Donald. The immense responsibility she felt to her audience seems to have motivated her to see dramatic patterns in pure noise, and to concoct increasingly speculative conspiracy theories about Trump and Russia, such as the claim that Vladimir Putin assassinated Andrew Breitbart, the founder of Breitbart News, so his job would go to Trump ally Steve Bannon. When her former allies, such as the hacker known as "the Jester," expressed concern over her new trajectory toward fringe theories, she doubled down, accusing all her critics of being Trump shills or Putin shills.   Another, more recent victim of audience capture is Maajid Nawaz. I've always liked Maajid, and as someone who once worked with the organization he founded, the counter terrorism think-tank Quilliam, I'm aware of how careful and considered he can be. Unfortunately, since the pandemic, he's been different. His descent began with him posting a few vague theories about the virus being a fraud perpetrated on an unsuspecting public, and after his posts went viral he found himself being inundated with new "Covid-skeptic" followers, who showered him with new leads to chase.   In January, after he lost his position at the radio show LBC due to his increasingly careless theories about a secretive New World Order, he implied his firing was part of the conspiracy to silence the truth, and urged his loyal followers to subscribe to his Substack, as this was now his family's only source of income. His new audience proved to be generous with both money and attention, and his need to meet their expectations seems to have spurred him, consciously or unconsciously, to double down on his more extreme views. Now almost everything he writes about, from Covid to Ukraine, he somehow ties to the shadowy New World Order.   Motivated by his audience to continually uncover new truths about the conspiracy, Maajid has been forced to scrape the barrel of claims. His recent work is his wildest yet, combining common tropes like resurrected Nazi eugenics programs, satanic rituals, and the Bilderberg meeting. Among the fields he now relies on for his evidence are... numerology.   Twitter avatar for @MaajidNawaz Maajid أبو عمّار  @MaajidNawaz British MPs have begun voting on a motion of ‘no confidence' in the UK Parliament against Prime Minister Johnson.    The vote commenced at:   6pm, on the 6th day, of the 6th month.    No joke.    آل عمران:[54] وَمَكَرُوا وَمَكَرَ اللَّهُ وَاللَّهُ خَيْرُ الْمَاكِرِينَ  Twitter avatar for @MaajidNawaz Maajid أبو عمّار  @MaajidNawaz 3 of our British MPs were at this dodgy af global Bilderberg meeting:   Michael Gove (con) Tom Tugendhat (con) David Lammy (lab)   Their attendance alone must be remembered if they ever seek leadership of their respective political parties and hence try to become PM of Britain https://t.co/EKohVzfaiN 6:52 PM ∙ Jun 6, 2022 957 Likes 287 Retweets There is clear value in investigating the corruption that pervades the misty pinnacles of power, but by defining himself by his audience's view of him as the uncoverer of a global conspiracy, Maajid has ensured he'll see evidence of the conspiracy in all things. Instead of performing real investigation, he is now merely playing the role of investigator for his audience, a role that requires drama rather than diligence, and which can lead only to his audience's desired conclusions.   Muddying the Waters to Obscure the Reflection Maajid, Mensch, and Perry are far from the only victims of audience capture. Given how fundamental the looking glass self is to the development of our personalities, every influencer has likely been affected by it to some degree. And that includes me.   I'm no authority on the degree to which my mind has been captured by you, my audience. But I do suspect that audience capture affects me far less than most influencers because I've taken specific steps to avoid it. I was aware of the pitfall long before I became an influencer. I wanted an audience, but I also knew that having the wrong audience would be worse than having no audience, because they'd constrain me with their expectations, forcing me to focus on one tiny niche of my worldview at the expense of everything else, until I became a parody of myself.   It was clear to me that the only way to resist becoming what other people wanted me to be was to have a strong sense of who I wanted to be. And who I wanted to be was someone immune to audience capture, someone who thinks his own thoughts, decides his own destiny, and above all, never stops growing.   I knew there were limits to my desired independence, because, whether we like it or not, we all become like the people we surround ourselves with. So I surrounded myself with the people I wanted to be like. On Twitter I cultivated a reasonable, open-minded audience by posting reasonable, open-minded tweets. The biggest jumps in my follower count came from my megathreads of mental models, which cover so many topics from so many perspectives that the people who appreciated them enough to follow me would need to be willing to consider new perspectives. Naturally these people came to view me as, and expected me to be, an independent thinker as open to learning and growing as themselves.   In this way I ensured that my brand image—the person that my audience expects me to be—was in alignment with my ideal image—the person I want to be. So even though audience capture likely does affect me in some way, it only makes me more like the person I want to be. I hacked the system.   My brand image is, admittedly, diffuse and weak. My Twitter bio is “saboteur of narratives,” and few people can say for sure what I'm about, other than vague things like “thinker” or “dumb fuck.” And that's how I like it. My vagueness makes me hard to pigeonhole, predict, and capture.   For this same reason, I'm suspicious of those with strong, sharply delineated brands. Human beings are capricious and largely formless storms of idiosyncrasies, so a human only develops a clear and distinct identity through the artifice of performance.   Nikocado has a clear and distinct identity, but its clarity and distinctness make it hard to escape. He may be a millionaire with legions of fans, but his videos, filled with complaints-disguised-as-jokes about his poor health, hardly make him seem happy.   Unfortunately, salvation seems out of reach for him because his audience, or at least the audience he imagines, demands he be the same as he was yesterday. And even if he were to find the strength to break character and be himself again, he's been acting for so long that stopping would only make him feel like an imposter.   This is the ultimate trapdoor in the hall of fame; to become a prisoner of one's own persona. The desire for recognition in an increasingly atomized world lures us to be who strangers wish us to be. And with personal development so arduous and lonely, there is ease and comfort in crowdsourcing your identity. But amid such temptations, it's worth remembering that when you become who your audience expects at the expense of who you are, the affection you receive is not intended for you but for the character you're playing, a character you'll eventually tire of. So the next time you find yourself in the limelight of other people's gazes, remember that being someone often means being fake, and if you chase the approval of others, you may, in the end, lose the approval of yourself TikTok is a Time Bomb The ultimate weapon of mass distraction   For thousands of years, humans sought to subjugate their enemies by inflicting pain, misery, and terror. They did this because these were the most paralyzing emotions they could consistently evoke; all it took was the slash of a sword or pull of a trigger. But as our understanding of psychology has developed, so it has become easier to evoke other emotions in complete strangers. Advances in the understanding of positive reinforcement, driven mostly by people trying to get us to click on links, have now made it possible to consistently give people on the other side of the world dopamine hits at scale. As such, pleasure is now a weapon; a way to incapacitate an enemy as surely as does pain. And the first pleasure-weapon of mass destruction may just be a little app on your phone called TikTok. I. The Smiling Tiger TikTok is the most successful app in history. It emerged in 2017 out of the Chinese video-sharing app Douyin and within three years it had become the most downloaded app in the world, later surpassing Google as the world's most visited web domain. TikTok's conquest of human attention was facilitated by the covid lockdowns of 2020, but its success wasn't mere luck. There's something about the design of the app that makes it unusually irresistible. Other platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, use recommendation algorithms as features to enhance the core product. With TikTok, the recommendation algorithm is the core product. You don't need to form a social network or list your interests for the platform to begin tailoring content to your desires, you just start watching, skipping any videos that don't immediately draw your interest. Tiktok uses a proprietary algorithm, known simply as the For You algorithm, that uses machine learning to build a personality profile of you by training itself on your watch habits (and possibly your facial expressions.) Since a TikTok video is generally much shorter than, say, a YouTube video, the algorithm acquires training data from you at a much faster rate, allowing it to quickly zero in on you. The result is a system that's unsurpassed at figuring you out. And once it's figured you out, it can then show you what it needs to in order to addict you. Since the For You algorithm favors only the most instantly mesmerizing content, its constructive videos—such as “how to” guides and field journalism—tend to be relegated to the fringes in favor of tasty but malignant junk info. Many of the most popular TikTokers, such as Charli D'Amelio, Bella Poarch, and Addison Rae, do little more than vapidly dance and lip-sync. Individually, such videos are harmless, but the algorithm doesn't intend to show you just one. When it receives the signal that it's got your attention, it doubles down on whatever it did to get it. This allows it to feed your obsessions, showing you hypnotic content again and again, reinforcing its imprint on your brain. This content can include promotion of self-harm and eating disorders, and uncritical encouragement of sex-reassignment surgery. There's evidence that watching such content can cause mass psychogenic illness: researchers recently identified a new phenomenon where otherwise healthy young girls who watched clips of Tourette's sufferers developed Tourette's-like tics. A more common way TikTok promotes irrational behavior is with viral trends and “challenges,” where people engage in a specific act of idiocy in the hope it'll make them TikTok-famous. Acts include licking toilets, snorting suntan lotion, eating chicken cooked in NyQuil, and stealing cars. One challenge, known as “devious licks”, encourages kids to vandalize property, while the “blackout challenge,” in which kids purposefully choke themselves with household items, has even led to several deaths, including a little girl a few days ago.   As troublesome as TikTok's trends are, the app's greatest danger lies not in any specific content but in its general addictive nature. Studies on long term TikTok addiction don't yet exist for obvious reasons, but, based on what we know of internet addiction generally, we can extrapolate its eventual effects on habitual TikTokers. There's a substantial body of research showing a strong association between smartphone addiction, shrinkage of the brain's gray matter, and “digital dementia,” an umbrella term for the onset of anxiety and depression and the deterioration of memory, attention span, self-esteem, and impulse control (the last of which increases the addiction). These are the problems caused by internet addiction generally. But there's something about TikTok that makes it uniquely dangerous. In order to develop and maintain mental faculties like memory and attention span, one needs to practice using them. TikTok, more than any other app, is designed to give you what you want while requiring you to do as little as possible. It cares little who you follow or what buttons you click; its main consideration is how long you spend watching. Its reliance on machine learning rather than user input, combined with the fact that TikTok clips are so short they require minimal memory and attention span, makes browsing TikTok the most passive, uninteractive experience of all major platforms. If it's the passive nature of online content consumption that causes atrophy of mental faculties, then TikTok, as the most passively used platform, will naturally cause the most atrophy. Indeed many habitual TikTokers can already be found complaining on websites like Reddit about their loss of mental ability, a phenomenon that's come to be known as “TikTok brain.” If the signs are becoming apparent already, imagine what TikTok addiction will have done to young developing brains a decade from now. TikTok's capacity to stupefy people, both acutely by encouraging idiotic behavior, and chronically by atrophying the brain, should prompt consideration of its potential use as a new kind of weapon, one that seeks to neutralize enemies not by inflicting pain and terror, but by inflicting pleasure. Last month FBI Director Chris Wray warned that TikTok is controlled by a Chinese government that could “use it for influence operations.” So how likely is it that one such influence operation might include addicting young Westerners to mind-numbing content to create a generation of nincompoops? The first indication that the Chinese Communist Party is aware of TikTok's malign influence on kids is that it's forbidden access of the app to Chinese kids. The American tech ethicist Tristan Harris pointed out that the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, is a “spinach” version where kids don't see twerkers and toilet-lickers but science experiments and educational videos. Furthermore, Douyin is only accessible to kids for 40 minutes per day, and it cannot be accessed between 10pm and 6am. Has the CCP enforced such rules to protect its people from what it intends to inflict on the West? When one examines the philosophical doctrines behind the rules, it becomes clear that the CCP doesn't just believe that apps like TikTok make people stupid, but that they destroy civilizations. II. Seven Mouths, Eight Tongues China has been suspicious of Western liberal capitalism since the 1800s, when the country's initial openness led to the Western powers flooding China with opium. The epidemic of addiction, combined with the ensuing Opium Wars, accelerated the fall of the Qing Dynasty and led to the Century of Humiliation in which China was subject to harsh and unequal terms by Britain and the US. Mao is credited with eventually crushing the opium epidemic, and since then the view among many in China has been that Western liberalism leads to decadence and that authoritarianism is the cure. But one man has done more than anyone to turn this thesis into policy. His name is Wang Huning, and, despite not being well known outside China, he has been China's top ideological theorist for three decades, and he is now member number 4 of the seven-man Standing Committee—China's most powerful body. He advised China's former leaders Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, and now he advises Xi Jinping, authoring many of his policies. In China he is called “guoshi” (国师: literally, “teacher of the nation”).   Wang refuses to do press or to even speak with foreigners, but his worldview can be surmised from the books he wrote earlier in his life. In August 1988, Wang accepted an invitation to spend six months in the US, and traveled from state to state noting the way American society operates, examining its strengths and weaknesses. He recorded his findings in the 1991 book, America Against America, which has since become a key CCP text for understanding the US. The premise of the book is simple: the US is a paradox composed of contradictions: its two primary values—freedom and equality—are mutually exclusive. It has many different cultures, and therefore no overall culture. And its market-driven society has given it economic riches but spiritual poverty. As he writes in the book, “American institutions, culture and values oppose the United States itself.” For Wang, the US's contradictions stem from one source: nihilism. The country has become severed from its traditions and is so individualistic it can't make up its mind what it as a nation believes. Without an overarching culture maintaining its values, the government's regulatory powers are weak, easily corrupted by lobbying or paralyzed by partisan bickering. As such, the nation's progress is directed mostly by blind market forces; it obeys not a single command but a cacophony of three hundred million demands that lead it everywhere and nowhere. In Wang's view, the lack of a unifying culture puts a hard limit on the US's progress. The country is constantly producing wondrous new technologies, but these technologies have no guiding purpose other than their own proliferation. The result is that all technological advancement leads the US along one unfortunate trajectory: toward more and more commodification. Wang writes: “Human flesh, sex, knowledge, politics, power, and law can all become the target of commodification… Commodification, in many ways, corrupts society and leads to a number of serious social problems. These problems, in turn, can increase the pressure on the political and administrative system.” Thus, by turning everything into a product, Western capitalism devours every aspect of American culture, including the traditions that bind it together as a nation, leading to atomization and polarization. The commodification also devours meaning and purpose, and to plug the expanding spiritual hole that this leaves, Americans turn to momentary pleasures—drugs, fast food, and amusements—driving the nation further into decadence and decay. For Wang, then, the US's unprecedented technological progress is leading it into a chasm. Every new microchip, TV, and automobile only distracts and sedates Americans further. As Wang writes in his book, “it is not the people who master the technology, but the technology that masters the people.” Though these words are 30 years old, they could easily have been talking about social media addiction. Wang theorized that the conflict between the US's economic system and its value system made it fundamentally unstable and destined for ever more commodification, nihilism, and decadence, until it finally collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. To prevent China's own technological advancement leading it down the same perilous path, Wang proposed an extreme solution: neo-authoritarianism. In his 1988 essay, “The Structure of China's Changing Political Culture,” Wang wrote that the only way a nation can avoid the US's problems is by instilling “core values”—a national consensus of beliefs and principles rooted in the traditions of the past and directed toward a clear goal in the future. Such a consensus could eventually ward off nihilism and decadence, but cultivating it would in turn require the elimination of nihilism and decadence. This idea has been central to President Xi's governance strategy, which has emphasized “core socialist values” like civility, patriotism, and integrity. So how has the push for these socialist core values affected the CCP's approach to social media? The creator of TikTok and CEO of Bytedance, Zhang Yiming, originally intended for the content on TikTok and its Chinese version, Douyin, to be determined purely by popularity. As such, Douyin started off much like TikTok is now, with the content dominated by teenagers singing and dancing. In April 2018, the CCP began action against Zhang. Its media watchdog, the National Radio and Television Administration, ordered the removal from Chinese app stores of Bytedance's then-most popular app, Toutiao, and its AI news aggregator, Neihan Duanzi, citing their platforming of “improper” content. Zhang then took to social media to offer a groveling public apology, stating: "Our products took the wrong path, and content appeared that was incommensurate with socialist core values." Shortly after, Bytedance announced it would recruit thousands more people to moderate content, and, according to CNN, in the subsequent job ads it stated a preference for CCP members with “strong political sensitivity.” The CCP's influence over Bytedance has only grown since then. Last year, the Party acquired a “golden share” in Bytedance's Beijing entity, and one of its officials, Wu Shugang, took one of the company's three board seats. The CCP's intrusion into Bytedance's operations is part of a broader strategy by Xi, called the “Profound Transformation”, which seeks to clear space for the instituting of core socialist values by ridding China of “decadent” online content. In August 2021, a statement appeared across Chinese state media calling for an end to TikTok-style “tittytainment” for fear that “our young people will lose their strong and masculine vibes and we will collapse.” In the wake of that statement, there have been crackdowns on “sissy-men” fashions, “digital drugs” like online gaming, and “toxic idol worship.” Consequently, many online influencers have been forcibly deprived of their influence, with some, such as the movie star Zhao Wei, having their entire presence erased from the Chinse web. For Xi and the CCP, eliminating “decadent” TikTok-style content from China is a matter of survival, because such content is considered a herald of nihilism, a regression of humans back to beasts, a symptom of the West's terminal illness that must be prevented from metastasizing to China. And yet, while cracking down on this content domestically, China has continued to allow its export internationally as part of Xi's “digital Silk Road” (数字丝绸之路). TikTok is known to censor content that displeases Beijing, such as mentions of Falun Gong or Tiananmen Square, but otherwise it has free rein to show Westerners what it wants; “tittytainment” and “sissy men” are everywhere on the app. So why the hypocritical disparity in rules? Is the digital Silk Road intended as poetic justice for the original Silk Road, whereby the Western powers preached Christian values while trafficking chemical TikTok—opium—into China? Since Wang and Xi believe the West is too decadent to survive, they may have opted to take the Taoist path of wu wei (無為), which is to say, sit back and let the West's appetites take it where they will. But there's another, more sinister and effective approach they may have adopted. To understand it, we must consider one final piece of the puzzle: an amphetamine-fueled philosopher who lived in my hometown. III. The Matricide Laboratory At first glance the British philosopher Nick Land could hardly be more different from Wang Huning. Wang rose to prominence by being dour, discreet, and composed, while Land rose to prominence by ranting about cyborg apocalypses while out of his mind on weed and speed. In the late 1990s Land moved into a house once owned by the Satanist libertine Aleister Crowley (half a mile from where I grew up), and there he apparently binged on drugs and scrawled occult diagrams on the walls. At nearby Warwick University where he taught, his lectures were often bizarre (one infamous “lesson” consisted of Land lying on the floor, croaking into a mic, while frenetic jungle music pulsed in the background.)   Land and Wang were not just polar opposites in personality; they also operated at opposite ends of the political spectrum. While Wang would go on to be the top ideological theorist of the Chinese Communist Party, Land would become the top theorist (with Curtis Yarvin) of the influential network of far-right bloggers, NRx. And yet, despite their opposite natures, Land and Wang would develop almost identical visions of liberal capitalism as an all-commodifying, all devouring force, driven by the insatiable hunger of blind market forces, and destined to finally eat Western civilization itself. Land viewed Western liberal capitalism as a kind of AI that's reached the singularity; in other words, an AI that's grown beyond the control of humans and is now unstoppably accelerating toward inhuman ends. As Land feverishly wrote in his 1995 essay, “Meltdown:” “The story goes like this: Earth is captured by a technocapital singularity as renaissance rationalitization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization take-off. Logistically accelerating techno-economic interactivity crumbles social order in auto-sophisticating machine runaway.” Land's drug-fueled prose is overwrought, so to simplify his point, Western capitalism can be compared to a “paperclip maximizer,” a hypothetical AI programmed by a paperclip business to produce as many paperclips as possible, which leads it to begin recycling everything on earth into paperclips (commodities). When the programmers panic and try to switch it off, the AI turns them into paperclips, since being switched off would stop it fulfilling its goal of creating as many paperclips as possible. Thus, the blind application of short term goals leads to long term ruin. Land believed that, since the runaway AI we call liberal capitalism commodifies everything, including even criticisms of it (which are necessarily published for profit), it cannot be opposed. Every attack on it becomes part of it. Thus, if one wishes to change it, the only way is to accelerate it along its trajectory. As Land stated in a later, more sober writing style: “The point of an analysis of capitalism, or of nihilism, is to do more of it. The process is not to be critiqued. The process is the critique, feeding back into itself, as it escalates. The only way forward is through, which means further in.” —A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism (2017) This view, that the current system must be accelerated to be transformed, has since become known as “accelerationism.” For Land, acceleration is not just a destructive force but also a creative one; he came to believe that all democracies accelerate toward ruin but a visionary despot unfettered by the concerns of the masses could accelerate a country to prosperity. Land's own life followed the same course he envisioned for the liberal West; following years of high productivity, he fell into nihilism and the decadence of rampant drug use, which drove him to a nervous breakdown. Upon recovering in 2002, he embraced authoritarianism, moved to Shanghai, and began writing for Chinese state media outlets like China Daily and the Shanghai Star. A few years after Land moved to China, talk of accelerationism began to emerge on the Chinese web, where it's become known by its Chinese name, jiasuzhuyi (加速主义). The term has caught on among Chinese democracy advocates, many of whom view the CCP as the runaway AI, hurtling toward greater tyranny; they even refer to Xi as “Accelerator-in-Chief” (总加速师). Domestically, Chinese democracy activists try to accelerate the CCP's authoritarianism ad absurdum; one tactic is to swamp official tip-off lines with reports of minor or made-up infractions, with the intent of breaking the Party by forcing it to enforce all of its own petty rules. As for the CCP itself, it's known to have viewed former US president Donald Trump as the “Accelerator-in-Chief,” or, more accurately, “Chuan Jianguo” (川建国: literally “Build China Trump”) because he was perceived as helping China by accelerating the West's decline. For this reason, support of him was encouraged. The CCP is also known to have engaged in jiasuzhuyi more directly; for instance, during the 2020 US race riots, China used Western social media platforms to douse accelerant over US racial tensions. But the use of TikTok as an accelerant is a whole new scale of accelerationism, one much closer to Land's original, apocalyptic vision. Liberal capitalism is about making people work in order to obtain pleasurable things, and for decades it's been moving toward shortening the delay between desire and gratification, because that's what consumers want. Over the past century the market has taken us toward ever shorter-form entertainment, from cinema in the early 1900s, to TV mid-century, to minutes-long YouTube videos, to seconds-long TikTok clips. With TikTok the delay between desire and gratification is almost instant; there's no longer any patience or effort needed to obtain the reward, so our mental faculties fall into disuse and disrepair. And this is why TikTok could prove such a devastating geopolitical weapon. Slowly but steadily it could turn the West's youth—its future—into perpetually distracted dopamine junkies ill-equipped to maintain the civilization built by their ancestors. We seem to be halfway there already: not only has there been gray matter shrinkage in smartphone-addicted individuals, but, since 1970 the Western average IQ has been steadily falling. Though the decline likely has several causes, it began with the first generation to grow up with widespread TVs in homes, and common sense suggests it's at least partly the result of technology making the attainment of satisfaction increasingly effortless, so that we spend ever more of our time in a passive, vegetative state. If you don't use it, you lose it. And even those still willing to use their brains are at risk of having their efforts foiled by social media, which seems to be affecting not just kids' abilities but also their aspirations; in a survey asking American and Chinese children what job they most wanted, the top answer among Chinese kids was “astronaut,” and the top answer among American kids was “influencer.” If we continue along our present course, the resulting loss of brainpower in key fields could, years from now, begin to harm the West economically. But, more importantly, if it did it would help discredit the very notion of Western liberalism itself, since there is no greater counterargument to a system than to see it destroy itself. And so the CCP would benefit doubly from this outcome: ruin the West and refute it; two birds with one stone (or as they say in China, 箭双雕: one arrow, two eagles.) So, the CCP has both the means and the motive to help the West defeat itself, and part of this could conceivably involve the use of TikTok to accelerate liberal capitalism by closing the gap between desire and gratification. Now, it could be argued that we have no hard evidence of the CCP's intentions, only a set of indications. However, ultimately the CCP's intentions are irrelevant. Accelerationism can't alter an outcome, only hasten it. And TikTok, whether or not it's actively intended as a weapon, is only moving the West further along the course it's long been headed: toward more effortless pleasure, and resulting cognitive decline. The problem, therefore, is not China, but us. America Against America. If TikTok is not a murder weapon, then it's a suicide weapon. China has given the West the means to kill itself, but the death wish is wholly the West's. After all, TikTok dominated our culture as a result of free market forces—the very thing we live by. Land and Wang are correct that the West being controlled by everyone means it's controlled by no one, and without brakes or a steering wheel we're at the market's mercy. Of course, democracies do have some regulatory power. Indian lawmakers banned TikTok in 2020, and US lawmakers are now considering the same. However, while this may stop the theft of our data, it won't stop the theft of our attention; if TikTok is banned then another short-form video site will just take its place. Effortless dopamine hits are what consumers want, and capitalism always tries to give consumers what they want. Anticipating the demand, YouTube has added its own TikTok-style “YouTube Shorts” format, and Twitter recently implemented its own version of TikTok's For You algorithm. The market is a greater accelerator than China could ever hope to be. So what's the solution? Land and Wang may be right about the illness, but they're wrong about the cure. It's true that we in the West have little left of the traditions that once tied us together, and in their absence all that unites us are our animal hungers. But Wang's belief that meaning and purpose can be miraculously imposed on us all by a strongman leader is just a fantasy that has littered history with failed experiments. Sure, democracies are vulnerable because there's no one controlling their advancement, but autocracies are vulnerable precisely for the opposite reason: they're controlled by people, which is to say, by woefully myopic apes. China is currently suffering from the myopia of Xi's zero-covid policy, which has ravaged the country's economy, and from the disastrous one-child policy that's led to China's current population crisis. For all our problems, we'd be unwise to exchange the soft tyranny of dopamine for the hard tyranny of despots. That leaves only one solution: the democratic one. In a democracy responsibility is also democratized, so parents must look out for their own kids. There's a market for this, too: various brands of parental controls can be set on devices to limit kids' access (though many of these, including TikTok's own controls, can be easily bypassed.) But ultimately these are short term measures. In the long term the only way to prevent digital dementia is to raise awareness of the neurological ruin wrought by apps like TikTok, exposing their ugliness so they fall out of fashion like cigarettes. If the weakness of liberalism is its openness, then this is also its strength; word can travel far in democracies. We'll surely sound like alarmists; TikTok destroys so gradually that it seems harmless. But if the app is a time-bomb that'll wreck a whole generation years from now, then we can't wait till its effects are apparent before acting, for then it will be too late. The clock is ticking. Tik. Tok…   I just shit and cum. FAQ What does this mean? The amount of shit (and cum) on my computer and floor has increased by one. Why did you do this? There are several reasons I may deem a comment to be worthy of feces or ejaculation. These include, but are not limited to: Being gay Dank copypasta bro, where'd you find it walter Am I going to shit and cum too? No - not yet. But you should refrain from shitposting and cumposting like this in the future. Otherwise I will be forced to shit and cum again, which may put your shitting and cumming privileges in jeopardy. I don't believe my comment deserved being shit and cum at. Can you un-cum it? Sure, mistakes happen. But only in exceedingly rare circumstances will I put shit back into my butt. If you would like to issue an appeal, shoot me a hot load explaining what I got wrong. I tend to respond to retaliatory ejaculation within several minutes. Do note, however, that over 99.9% of semen dies before it can fertilize the egg, and yours is likely no exception. How can I prevent this from happening in the future? Accept the goopy brown and white substance and move on. But learn from this mistake: your behavior will not be tolerated in my mom's basement. I will continue to shit and cum until you improve your conduct. Remember: ejaculation is privilege, not a right.   I just came in your asshole. I just came in your asshole. FAQ What does this mean? A large load of baby gravy has been transferred from my testicles into your rectum. Why did I do this? There are several reasons why I came in your ass. These include, but are not limited to: Your comment turned me on You are cute Your dad was too busy How did I do this? I rammed your rectum with my handsome hog until I turned you into a frosting factory. Why am I telling you about this? Your ass will be leaking cum for at least 36 hours and may be a slipping hazard. Also you might be gay. How can you avoid this in the future? Unless you stop looking so breedable in the near future, you can't. I will always find a way to fill your tight little boyhole

#china #socialism #xijinping #communism Socialism with Chinese characteristics is a phrase that comes up when discussing Chinese politics. It's a cornerstone of Chinese political theory and heavily relied on by leadership when formulating new internal policies and deciding the direction the country is headed.Socialism with Chinese characteristics is an evolving theory that encapsulates the thoughts of China's major leaders, and is the lens through which the country sees itself and the party sees its mission. It includes concepts like economic prosperity, territorial integrity, social stability, and the continued political leadership of the CCP.Link to the Youtube poll to vote for the next episode: https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkx_LM44S61UAXDi7zJT-X44KsO-je_K_EU?lc=Ugz2EJGLmmQ6YHZTcip4AaABAg&lc=Ugz2EJGLmmQ6YHZTcip4AaABAg The Zhao Ziyang biography that I mention is called Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Zhao ZiyangIntroDefinition 1:20Deng era (1980-1992) 7:52Jiang Zemin era (90s) 18:12Hu Jintao era (00s) 22:12Xi Jinping era (10s-20s) 24:30Policy application 33:10The 14th 5 year plan 40:22Outro 44:45*My voice changes noticeable at around 21:25. Had to stop recording and restart after a break after which point my cold was significantly worse. Apologies!-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sources2012 Full Text of Hu Jintao's Report at 18th Party Congress2018 Backgrounder_ Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era - Xinhua China's Plan for Economic and Social Development - Jun Yin and Jia XuChinese Economic Statecraft from 1978 to 1989 The First Decade of Deng Xiaoping's Reforms - Priscilla Roberts edsConstructing Political Economy with Chinese Characteristics - Fang Cai and Xiaojing ZhangSocialism with Chinese Characteristics - Roland BoerSupport the showSign up for Buzzsprout to launch your podcasting journey: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=162442Subscribe to the Sinobabble Newsletter: https://sinobabble.substack.com/Support Sinobabble on Buy me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Sinobabblepod

There's been a lot of speculation in the news recently over whether or not China will come to Russia's aid in the fight in Ukraine. Although many Western outlets are panicking about the likelihood, is it as straightforward as China jumping into the fray? The answer may lie in the recent history of the relationship of the two powers.Sources"China and Russia: Economic Unequals", Jonathan E. Hillman, 2020"China's Relations with Russia", Alexei D. Voskressenski (in China and the World, David Shambaugh eds.), 2020"FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS?: Russian-Chinese Relations After the Ukraine Crisis", Alexander Gabuev, 2016"The "Rise" of China in the Eyes of Russia: A Source of Threats or New Opportunities?", Anastasia Solomentseva, 2014"Russia: New Eastern Perspectives", Vladimir Putin, 2000"Will China rescue Russia", Sinobabble Substack Axis of authoritarians:  Implications of China-Russia Cooperation,  Richard J. Ellings and Robert Sutter, 2018 "China and Russia: united in opposition", Roderick Kefferpütz (text) and Vincent Brussee (data), 2022"Moscow's Failed Pivot to China", Thomas S. Eder and Mikko Huotari, 2016Chapters00:00: Intro02:07: Deng Xiaoping Era03:49: Jiang Zemin Era09:50: Hu Jintao Era17:43: Xi Jinping Era23:35: The Future of China-Russia Relations27:30: OutroSupport the showSign up for Buzzsprout to launch your podcasting journey: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=162442Subscribe to the Sinobabble Newsletter: https://sinobabble.substack.com/Support Sinobabble on Buy me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Sinobabblepod

Nous commenterons d'abord la déclaration de l'Iran selon laquelle la police des mœurs, qui est chargée de superviser l'application des normes morales, a été abolie. Cette décision intervient après plusieurs mois de manifestations dans le pays. Notre deuxième sujet sera consacré à l'ancien dirigeant chinois Jiang Zemin, qui vient de décéder à 96 ans. Ensuite, dans la partie scientifique, nous discuterons d'une déclaration de l'entrepreneur milliardaire Elon Musk, qui vient d'annoncer que sa société Neuralink devrait être en mesure de lancer les premiers essais d'un implant cérébral sur l'homme d'ici à six mois. Enfin, nous commenterons les critiques émises par Arsène Wenger, l'un des directeurs de la FIFA, envers les équipes européennes qui ont tenté de faire passer des messages politiques durant la Coupe du monde au Qatar.    Parlons maintenant de la deuxième partie de notre émission, «Trending in France ». Nous discuterons d'une lettre codée du 16ème siècle qui a été décryptée par des chercheurs français. Nous parlerons pour finir de la création d'un tribunal pénal national par les évêques français. - L'Iran annonce l'abolition de la police des mœurs - L'ancien dirigeant chinois Jiang Zemin est décédé à l'âge de 96 ans - Elon Musk promet des implants connectés d'ici à six mois - Un directeur de la FIFA critique les équipes de football européennes qui ont manifesté au Qatar - Une lettre codée de Charles Quint décryptée au bout de cinq siècles - Les évêques français créent un tribunal pénal national

Per prima cosa, commenteremo la dichiarazione dell'Iran secondo cui la polizia morale - il comitato che sovrintende all'applicazione dei valori morali - è stata abolita. La decisione arriva dopo diversi mesi di proteste nel Paese. In seguito, nella nostra seconda storia, parleremo dell'ex leader cinese Jiang Zemin, morto a 96 anni. Successivamente, nella parte scientifica, discuteremo dell'annuncio fatto dall'imprenditore miliardario Elon Musk: un dispositivo wireless creato dalla sua società di chip cerebrali, Neuralink, probabilmente potrà iniziare la sperimentazione umana entro sei mesi. Infine, commenteremo le critiche del funzionario della FIFA Arsène Wenger alle squadre europee della Coppa del Mondo che hanno cercato di fare dichiarazioni politiche in Qatar.    Continuiamo con la seconda parte del nostro programma, Trending in Italy. Parleremo della candidatura italiana del culto di San Gennaro a patrimonio immateriale dell'UNESCO. Parleremo infine della terribile frana che ha colpito l'isola di Ischia e del suo problema con l'abusivismo edilizio, ovvero di case costruite senza permesso in zone considerate ad alto rischio. - L'Iran annuncia l'abolizione della polizia morale - L'ex leader cinese Jiang Zemin è morto all'età di 96 anni - La promessa di Elon Musk: “Entro sei mesi i primi impianti cerebrali nell'uomo” - Il dirigente della FIFA critica le squadre di calcio europee per le proteste in Qatar - L'Italia candida il culto di San Gennaro come patrimonio dell'UNESCO - Le polemiche sugli abusi edilizi sull'isola di Ischia

Photo: No known restrictions on publication. @Batchelorshow #PRC: Jiang Zemin is dead. Jonathan Ward, author of China's Vision of Victory. @GordonGChang, Gatestone, Newsweek, The Hill  https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/06/china/china-jiang-zemin-memorial-service-intl-hnk/index.html

Comenzaremos comentando la declaración de Irán de que la policía moral —el comité que supervisa el cumplimiento de los valores morales— había sido abolida. La decisión llega tras varios meses de protestas en el país. Después, en la segunda noticia, hablaremos del exdirigente chino Jiang Zemin, que murió a los 96 años. A continuación, en la sección de ciencia, discutiremos el anuncio hecho por el multimillonario emprendedor Elon Musk de que un dispositivo inalámbrico creado por su empresa de chips cerebrales, Neuralink, probablemente comenzaría ensayos en humanos en seis meses. Y, finalmente, comentaremos las críticas del representante de la FIFA Arsène Wenger a los equipos europeos del mundial de fútbol que intentaron hacer declaraciones políticas en Catar. Continuemos con la segunda parte del programa, “Trending in Spain”. Esta semana, hablaremos de modernidad y tradición en el ámbito laboral. En la primera noticia, comentaremos, según un estudio reciente, las previsiones de empleo juvenil en España para los próximos años. En la segunda noticia, nos alegraremos, junto con los campaneros españoles, del reconocimiento que ha dado la Unesco al toque de campanas manual. ¡Una tradición que puede generar incluso nuevos empleos! rán anuncia la abolición de la policía moral Muere a los 96 años de edad el exdirigente chino Jiang Zemin Elon Musk promete implantes cerebrales humanos en seis meses Un directivo de la FIFA, crítico con los equipos europeos de fútbol por las protestas en Catar Previsión de necesidades laborales hasta 2030 Campanas, Patrimonio Cultural Inmaterial de la Humanidad

Chinese state-linked hackers made off with $20 million of pandemic relief funds, according to Secret Service. Youtube is accused of moderating content tied to anti-lockdown protests in China. A Youtuber shares his discovery. A mega semiconductor project in the United States is getting $40 billion from a Taiwanese company. The United States may be upping its weapons deal with Taiwan—valued at over $880 million with advanced missiles. China is holding a memorial for former communist leader Jiang Zemin. We look at the details of his time in power. ⭕️Watch in-depth videos based on Truth & Tradition at Epoch TV

Voters take to the polls in Georgia's Senate runoff election. U.S. Capitol Police receive highest civilian honor. China holds memorial for late leader Jiang Zemin.

New law also introduces tougher punishment for blasphemy. Also: China bids farewell to its former leader Jiang Zemin, and the actress Kirsty Alley has died at the age of 71.

The death on Wednesday of China's former leader Jiang Zemin has prompted an outpouring of nostalgia on the internet, with many tributes from young Chinese focusing on the contrast between Jiang's governing style and flamboyant personality and those of his successors.Click here to read the article by Zhao Yuanyuan.Narrated by Kaiser Kuo.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jiang Zemin was the leader of China from 1989 to 2002. In that time, he managed to foster a culture of corruption, violence and lawlessness that continues to this day. In this just us episode of China Unscripted, we discuss Jiang Zemin's legacy, how it's still impacting China, and how his life is being portrayed in the media.

Rare protests broke out across several cities in China in recent weeks. Demonstrators took to the streets to protest the government's extreme Zero Covid policy, which imposes harsh lockdowns in an effort to stamp out the virus. In some cases, the protests took aim at the government itself, calling for Xi Jinping to step down.  Protests of this kind are extremely rare, so this movement understandable caught the attention of the world. It also apparently caught the attention of the government which has since signaled an easing of its quarantine policies.  In this episode, we speak with Kaiser Kuo, host of The Sinica Podcast, from The China Project. We spoke just hours after it was announced that former president Jiang Zemin had passed away at the age of 96. We discuss Jiang Zemin's legacy on china today and how his death may serve as a catalyst for further protest in China. We then have an extended conversation about the rationale of Xi Jinpin's Zero Covid policy, and what may come next for this policy and the protest movement.

Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin died this week at 96. As WSJ's Charles Hutzler explains, Jiang was known for policies that guided China towards a market-oriented economy, but also for being uncompromising on challenges to the Communist Party. Further Reading: -Jiang Zemin, Who Steered China Into New Era, Dies at 96  Further Listening: -China's Biggest Protests in Decades  -How Xi Jinping's Dream Slowed China's Economy  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

China is forecast to break another trade record with Africa this year, potentially even crossing the $300 billion barrier. While that sounds great, the big number masks a distorted trading relationship that is mostly concentrated in extractives among a small handful of countries.African countries to date have failed to move up the value chain by processing more of their raw materials prior to export. And that, according to prominent Africa-Asia scholar Jean-Claude Maswana, an economics professor at Ritsumeikan University, is not China's fault.Jean-Claude joins Eric & Cobus from Kyoto, Japan to discuss what African countries need to do if they want a more balanced, equitable trading relationship with China.JOIN THE DISCUSSION:Twitter: @ChinaGSProject| @stadenesque | @eric_olander | @jcmaswanaFacebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAfricaProjectFOLLOW CAP IN FRENCH AND ARABIC:Français: www.projetafriquechine.com | @AfrikChineعربي: www.akhbaralsin-africia.com | @AkhbarAlSinAfrJOIN US ON PATREON!Become a CAP Patreon member and get all sorts of cool stuff, including our Week in Review report, an invitation to join monthly Zoom calls with Eric & Cobus, and even an awesome new CAP Podcast mug!www.patreon.com/chinaafricaprojectSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week we look at what happens when we go our own way...with Boney M, Fleetwood Mac, Youth Indoctrination, Sex education in schools,  the Bad Law Show, Belenciaga,  Cambridge Students, Shetland, The Day of the Dead Parade, The World Cup, Japan, Australia, Men at Work, Jiang Zemin, Hawaiian Volcano, Ukraine, Nick Fuentes, Anti-Semitism,  Church Attendance in England, Marie Curie Chaplain and Mary's Boy Child. 

The Chinese leader who took over a squabbling party following the Tiananmen Square massacre surprised the world by stifling dissent, overseeing a staggering economic awakening—and occasionally breaking into song. We examine the lessons to be drawn from his legacy. After scores of failures, a new Alzheimer's treatment shows real promise. And our annual ranking of the world's most expensive cities.Help us make the show better: take our listener survey at http://economist.com/intelligencesurvey. For full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, subscribe here www.economist.com/intelligenceoffer Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chinese leader who took over a squabbling party following the Tiananmen Square massacre surprised the world by stifling dissent, overseeing a staggering economic awakening—and occasionally breaking into song. We examine the lessons to be drawn from his legacy. After scores of failures, a new Alzheimer's treatment shows real promise. And our annual ranking of the world's most expensive cities.Help us make the show better: take our listener survey at http://economist.com/intelligencesurvey. For full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, subscribe here www.economist.com/intelligenceoffer Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin has died. How did the man use America to lay the stepping stones for Beijing's global ambitions? And how much blood is on his hands? “Free China! Xi Jinping Step Down!”—Demonstrators in the United States and Canada are showing support for protesters in China. Demonstrations in China are escalating, with riot police now deployed to quell the gatherings. To calm the crowds, authorities say they'll ease COVID-19 restrictions—slightly. South Dakota is taking action against TikTok. Its state employees are banned from using government devices to access the short video platform. The Pentagon responds to Beijing's nuclear ambition. ⭕️Watch in-depth videos based on Truth & Tradition at Epoch TV

Several Republican senators are using a tight Pentagon funding deadline to their advantage, demanding a vote to repeal military vaccine mandates. Four Democratic senators are pressing the Biden administration on border security—in particular, about ending a Trump-era policy. The House passes a bill to avert a looming rail strike, but President Joe Biden is coming under fire for backing a deal opposed by union members. Lockdowns and protests against them continue in China. An expert joins us to discuss the economic aspect of the events unfolding in China. The former head of the Chinese Communist Party has died. Jiang Zemin leaves behind a legacy of brutal killing and torture of millions of Chinese citizens. No more TikTok for South Dakota state employees. The governor issued an executive ban of the Chinese app on South Dakota state-owned devices. ⭕️Watch in-depth videos based on Truth & Tradition at Epoch TV

El BCE advierte contra el Bitcoin / Cómo funcionan los reembolsos de Stadia / El software mágico de Disney para cambiar caras / Facebook está eliminando el contenido basura / Sorpresa de OnePlus Patrocinador: En Carrefour han tenido una idea que me parece muy innovadora. Se llama Mi Abono Carrefour Plus, y es una suscripción de 5,99 euros al mes que te permitirá ahorrar el 15% de todos los productos frescos que compres: pescado, carne, fruta, verduras, charcutería, panadería, los platos preparados, sushi.. etc. — Saca la calculadora, que seguro que te interesa. El primer mes es gratis. El BCE advierte contra el Bitcoin / Cómo funcionan los reembolsos de Stadia / El software mágico de Disney para cambiar caras / Facebook está eliminando el contenido basura / Sorpresa de OnePlus

A revised GDP report from the Commerce Department shows nearly 3% growth. Private sector jobs grew as well, but fell way short of expectations. We dive in further with Susan Schmidt. Also, frozen Russian assets might come in handy in helping Ukraine. Finally, we report on the death of Jiang Zemin, the former president of China.

Researchers are heralding a breakthrough in the treatment of Alzheimer's: a drug that is the first to slow the destruction of the brain. But it only works in the early stages of Alzheimer's and many people aren't diagnosed until the disease has already advanced. And, one of the more successful mystics in Japan says he's a reincarnated alien from the planet Venus. He's now intent on recruiting more believers in the US. Also, the United Nations agency for culture added the French baguette to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Plus, we hear about Chinese leader Jiang Zemin's economic legacy. Our reporting is independent, inclusive and in-depth. Best of all, it's listener supported. In other words, we wouldn't exist if it weren't for you. Will you give today to support the tireless efforts of The World's reporters and producers?

A trial of a dementia drug has shown - for the first time - that the progression of early stage Alzheimer's disease can be slowed down. Also on the programme, women's rights in Afghanistan continue to erode. And, China's former leader Jiang Zemin has died. He was in power during an extraordinary period of growth from the late 1980s. (Photo: BBC)

A revised GDP report from the Commerce Department shows nearly 3% growth. Private sector jobs grew as well, but fell way short of expectations. We dive in further with Susan Schmidt. Also, frozen Russian assets might come in handy in helping Ukraine. Finally, we report on the death of Jiang Zemin, the former president of China.

The world is facing a diesel shortage, which will raise the prices of fuel in all countries and cause a potentially dangerous lack of supplies in some. The United States' reserves of diesel fuel have been cut down to only a month's worth, and the increases in demand are growing faster than the supply. Meanwhile, Canada is facing criticism for a commercial that promotes assisted suicide and that uses a “blue whale” symbol featured in suicide games that have victimized children in several countries, including the United States. While the commercial is from a private brand, it is raising concerns that suicide is being normalized and promoted. In this live Q&A with Crossroads host Joshua Philipp, we'll discuss these stories and others, and answer questions from the audience. ⭕️ Stay up-to-date with Josh with the Crossroads NEWSLETTER

Jiang Zemin, Former China Paramount Leader, Dies at 96. And the U.S. Senate passes a bill protecting same-sex marriage. Kate Bullivant hosts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

1 Former CCP Leader Jiang Zemin Dead at 962 Protests Escalate in China's Guangzhou3 China Rejects UK's Remarks on Protests4 IMF Chief Urges China to Drop Zero-COVID5 UN Supports Chinese People's Right to Protest6 Behind Foxconn Unrest: Lockdowns and Mistrust7 Chinese Regime Begins Tracking Protesters8 Desantis Warns Apple Against Twitter Removal9 Chicago Stands With Chinese Protesters10 2 Oathkeepers Guilty of Seditious Conspiracy11 Ruskin: Jury 'Took a Nuanced Approach'12 Defendants Testifying Was 'A Big Gamble'13 How Seditious Conspiracy Differs From Treason14 Atty: Conspiracy Doesn't Mean Detailed Plan15 Pentagon: China May Have 1,500 Nukes by 203516 Woman Pleads Guilty in Vanessa Guillen Case17 AZ Election Lawsuit Dismissed as Premature18 Biden Thanksgiving Trip Cars Catch Fire19 U.S. to Sell 1M Acres Off Alaskan Coast20 Hawaii's Mauna Loa Eruption Attracts Visitors21 Georgia Tech's Lunar Flashlight22 NATO Says Putin Using Cold as a 'weapon'23 Turkey Welcomes Sweden and Finland Progress24 Ukraine Media: Daily Russian Flights to China25 Statistician: Sedative Caused 6k Covid Deaths26 Irish Regulator Fines Meta $277 Million27 2 Crypto Platform Founders Die Unexpectedly28 2016 Brussels Bombings Trial Begins29 Comoros Ex-President Jailed for Passport Sale30 Dutch Cafe Repairs Broken Electronics31 London Air Raid Shelter Turned Into Farm32 Australian Homeowners Meet Energy Standards33 U.S. Defeats Iran in World Cup Showdown34 Blockbuster Pop-up Bar Opens in Los Angeles35 Cinema Offers 'All You Can Eat' Popcorn36 4 Ways to Burn More Fat While Sleeping37 New 'Flat Head' Species of Dinosaur Found38 Royal Navy Band Plays at Rome's Colosseum

Your daily news in under three minutes.

The death and legacy of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin. Ivor Gabor and Baria Alamuddin join Andrew Mueller to discuss Nato's reassurances to Russia's neighbours, the UK census and religion in politics, and long work lunches. Plus: Chris Lord is at Art Basel Miami Beach.

The one hundred and ninetieth episode of the DSR Daily Brief.   Stories Cited in the Episode China's former president Jiang Zemin dies, aged 96 China Covid: Unrest continues in Guangzhou as lockdown anger grows US tries to break EU deadlock over Russian oil price cap Colombia asks for legal status for its people already in US Pakistan: Deadly blast targets police at vaccination drive ‘No timeline' for restoring internet to Tigray: Ethiopia minister Bear attacks inflatable Rudolph in California yard Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode Notes:A discussion recently concluded 20th Party Congress and what to expect ahead in US China relations. I'm pleased to welcome back Chris Johnson, CEO of Consultancy China Strategies Group, Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute Center for China Analysis and former Senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. This is the 7th Party Congress that Chris has analyzed professionally.Links:John Culver: How We Would Know When China Is Preparing to Invade Taiwan - Carnegie Endowment for International PeaceTranscript:Bill: Welcome back to the very occasional Sinocism podcast. Today we are going to talk about the recently concluded 20th Party Congress and what to expect ahead in US China relations. I'm pleased to welcome back Chris Johnson, CEO of Consultancy China Strategies Group, Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute Center for China Analysis and former Senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. This is the 7th Party Congress that Chris has analyzed professionally. So we have a lot of experience here to help us understand what just happened. Chris, welcome back and thanks for taking the time.Chris: My pleasure. Always fun to be with you, Bill.Bill: Great. Well, why don't we jump right in. I'd like to talk about what you see as the most important outcomes from the Congress starting with personnel. What do you make of the leadership team from the central committee to the Politburo to the Standing Committee and what does that say about.Chris: Yeah, well, I, think clearly Xi Jinping had a massive win, you know, with personnel. I think we see this particularly in the Politburo Standing Committee, right, where on the key portfolios that really matter to him in terms of controlling the key levers of power inside the system. So we're talking propaganda, obviously, Uh, we're talking party bureaucracy, military less so, but security services, you know, these, these sort of areas all up and down the ballot he did very well.So that's obviously very important. And I think obviously then the dropping of the so-called Communist Youth League faction oriented people in Li Keqiang and Wang Yang and, and Hu Chunhua being  kind of unceremoniously kicked off the Politburo, that tells us that. He's not in the mood to compromise with any other  interest group.I prefer to call them rather than factions. Um, so that sort of suggests to us that, you know, models that rely on that kind of an analysis are dead. It has been kind of interesting in my mind to see how quickly though that, you know, analysts who tend to follow that framework already talking about the, uh, factional elements within Xi's faction, right?So, you know, it's gonna be the Shanghai people versus the Zhijiang Army versus the Fujian people. Bill: people say there's a Tsinghua factionChris: Right. The, the infamous, non infamous Tsinghua clique and, and and so on. But I think as we look more closely, I mean this is all kidding aside, if we look more closely at the individuals, what we see is obviously these people, you know, loyalty to Xi is, is sort of like necessary, but not necessarily sufficient in explaining who these people are. Also, I just always find it interesting, you know, somehow over. Wang Huning has become a Xi Jinping loyalist. I mean, obviously he plays an interesting role for Xj Jinping, but I don't think we should kid ourselves in noting that he's been kind of shunted aside Right by being pushed into the fourth position on the standing committee, which probably tells us that he will be going to oversee the Chinese People's Consultative Congress, which is, you know, kind of a do nothing body, you know, for the most part. And, um, you know, my sense has long been, One of Xi Jinping's, I think a couple factors there with Wang Huning.Sinocism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.One is, you know, yes, he is very talented at sort of taking their very, uh, expansive, um, theoretical ideas and coming up with snappy, um, snappy sort of catchphrases, right? This is clearly his, um, his sort of claim to fame. But, you know, we had that article last year from the magazine, Palladium that kind of painted him as some sort of an éminence grise or a Rasputin like figure, you know, in terms of his role.Uh, you know, my sense has always been, uh, as one contact, put it to me one time. You know, the issue is that such analyses tend to confuse the musician with the conductor. In other words,  Xi Jinping.  is pretty good at ideology, right? And party history and the other things that I think the others had relied on.I think the second thing with Wang Huning is, um, in a way XI can't look at him I don't think, without sort of seeing here's a guy who's changed flags, as they would say, right? He served three very different leaders, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and now Xi , um, and, and continued on and I think at some level, uh, and we look at the rest of the appointments where it appears that, uh, loyalty was much more important than merit.Um, where that's also a question mark. So there's those issues I think on the Politburo. You know, you mentioned the, the Tsinghua clique it was very interesting. You had shared with me, uh, Desmond Shum of Red Roulette fame's Twitter stream sort of debunking, you know, this, this Tsinghua clique and saying, well, it turns out in fact that the new Shanghai Municipal Party Secretary Chen Jining can't stand Chen Xi, even though, you know, they both went to Tsinghua and were there at the same time and so on.Um, you know, who knows with Desmond Shum, but I think he knows some things, right? And, and, and it just a reminder to us all, I think, how little we understand right, about these relationships, especially now, uh, with Xi's concentration of power. And also a situation where we've had nearly three years of covid isolationBill: Right. And so it's really hard to go talk to people, even the fewer and fewer numbers, people who, who know something and can talk. Back to the standing committee. I, I think certainly just from friends and contacts the biggest surprise you know, I think, uh was Li Keqiang and Wang Yang not sticking around. And as that long explainer said without naming them they were good comrades who steps aside for the good of the party in the country,Chris: Because that happens so often,Bill: whatever that means. Um, but really the, the bigger surprise was that, oh, Cai Qi showing up. Who I think when you look at the standing committee, I think the general sense is, okay, the, these people are all, you know, not, they're loyal, but they're also competent, like Li Qiang, Chris: Right, Bill: The likely new premier number two on the standing committee is pretty competent. The Shanghai lockdown, disaster aside, Cai Qi on the other hand, was just, looks more like, it's just straight up loyalty to Xi. I think he was not really on anybody's short list of who was gonna make it on there. And so, it does feel like something happened, right?Chris: Yeah. Well, um, a couple things there. I think, um, one, let's start with the. The issue you raised about the economic team cuz I think that's actually very important. Um, you know, I, at some level, sometimes I feel like I'm sort of tiring my, of my role as official narrative buster or a windmill tilter.Uh, whether, whether it's pushback from Li Keqiang or the myth of the savior premier as I was calling it, which, uh, we didn't see, or that these norms actually aren't very enduring and it's really about power politics. I, I think I'm kind of onto a new one now, which is, you know, Xi Jin ping's new team of incompetent sycophants.Right? That's kind of the label that's, uh, come out in a lot of the takes, uh, since the Congress. But to your point, I mean, you know, Li Qiang has run the three most important economic powerhouses on China's east coast, either as governor or as party chief. Right. He seems to have had a, a good relationship with both.Private sector businesses and, and foreign, you know, people forget that, you know, he got the Tesla plant built in Shanghai in a year basically. Right. And it's, uh, responsible for a very significant amount of, of Tesla's total input of vehicles. Output of vehicles. Excuse me. Um, likewise, I hear that Ding Xuexiang, even though we don't know a lot about him, uh, was rather instrumental in things.Breaking the log jam with the US uh, over the de-listing of Chinese ADRs, uh, that he had played an important role in convincing Xi Jinping it would not be a good idea, for example, to, uh, you know, we're already seeing, uh, sort of decoupling on the technology side. It would not be a good idea to encourage the Americans to decouple financially as well. So the point is I think we need to just all kind of calm down, right? And, and see how these people perform in office. He Lifeng, I think is perhaps, you know, maybe more of a question mark, but, But here too, I think it's important for us to think about how their system worksThe political report sets the frame, right? It tells us what. Okay, this is the ideological construct we're working off of, or our interpretation, our dialectical interpretation of what's going on. And that, I think the signal there was what I like to call this fortress economy, right? So self-sufficiency and technology and so on.And so then when we look at the Politburo appointments, you can see that they align pretty closely to that agenda, right? These people who've worked in state firms or scientists and you know, so on and forth.Bill: Aerospace, defenseChris: Yeah, Aerospace. Very close alignment with that agenda. I'm not saying this is the right choice for China or that it even will be successful, I'm just saying it makes sense, you know,Bill: And it is not just sycophants it is actually loyal but some expertise or experience in these key sectors Chris: Exactly.  Yeah, and, and, and, and of interest as well. You know, even people who have overlapped with Xi Jinping. How much overlap did they have? How much exposure did they have? You know, there's a lot of discussion, for example, about the new propaganda boss, Li Shulei being very close to Xi and likewise Shi Taifeng.Right? Uh, both of whom were vice presidents at the party school when, when Xi also was there. Um, but remember, you know, he was understudy to Hu Jintao at the time, you know, I mean, the party school thing was a very small part of his portfolio and they were ranked lower, you know, amongst the vice presidents of the party school.So how much actual interaction did he have? So there too, you know, I think, uh, obviously. , yes these people will do what Xi Jinping wants them to do, but that doesn't mean they're not competent. On Cai Qi, I agree with you. I think it's, it's, it's difficult. You know, my speculation would be a couple of things.One, proximity matters, right? He's been sitting in Beijing the last five years, so he is, had the opportunity to, uh, be close to the boss and, and impact that. I've heard some suggestions from contacts, which I think makes some. He was seen as more strictly enforcing the zero Covid policy. Right. In part because he is sitting in Beijing than say a Chen Min'er, right.Who arguably was a other stroke better, you know, candidate for that position on the Politburo standing committee. And there, you know, it will be interesting to see, you know, we're not sure the musical chairs have not yet finished. Right. The post party Congress for people getting new jobs. But you know, for example, if Chen Min'er stays out in Chongqing, that seems like a bit of a loss for him.Bill: Yeah, he needs to go somewhere else if he's got any hope of, um, sort of, But so one thing, sorry. One thing on the Politburo I thought was really interesting, and I know we've talked about offline, um, is that the first time the head of the Ministry State Security was, was. Promoted into the Politburo - Chen Wenqing.  And now he is the Secretary of the Central Political Legal Affairs Commission, the party body that oversees the entire security services system and legal system. and what do you think that says about priorities and, and, and where Xi sees things going?Chris: Well, I think it definitely aligns with this concept of Xi Jiping's of comprehensive national security. Right. We've, we've seen and heard and read a lot about that and it seems that the, uh, number of types of security endlessly proliferate, I think we're up to 13 or 14Bill: Everything is National Security in Xi's China.Chris: Yeah. Everything is, is national security. Uh, that's one thing I think it's interesting perhaps in the, in the frame of, you know, in an era where they are becoming a bigger power and therefore, uh, have more resources and so on. You know, is that role that's played by the Ministry of State Security, which is, you know, they have this unique role, don't they?They're in a way, they're sort of the US' Central Intelligence Agency and, and FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation combined, and that they do have that internal security role as well, but, They are the foreign civilian anyway, uh, foreign intelligence collection arm. So perhaps, you know, over time there's been some sense that they realized, yes, cyber was great for certain things, but you still need human intelligence.Uh, you know, we don't know how well or not Chen Wenqing has performed, but you know, obviously there, this has been a relentless campaign, you know, the search for spies and so on and so forth. Um, I also think it says something about what we seem to be seeing emerging here, which is an effort to take what previously were these, you know, warring, uh, administrative or ministerial factions, right, of the Ministry of Public Security MPS, the MSS, uh, and even the party's, uh, discipline watchdog, the, uh, Central Commission on Discipline inspection, you know, in an effort to sort of knit those guys into one whole.And you know, it is interesting.Chen wending has experience in all three of those. He started off, I think as a street cop. Um, he did serve on the discipline inspection commission under, uh, Wang Qishan when things were, you know, really going  in that department in the early part of, Xi's tenure and then he's headed, uh, the Ministry of State Security.I think, you know, even more interesting probably is. The, uh, formation of the new secretariat, right? Where we have both Chen Wenqing on there and also Wang Xiaohong as a minister of Public Security, but also as a deputy on the CPLAC, right? And a seat on the secretariat. And if we look at the, um, The gentleman who's number two in the discipline inspection, uh, space, he was a longtime police officer as well.So that's very unusual. You know, uh, his name's escaping me at the moment. But, um, you know, so in effect you have basically three people on the Secretariat with security backgrounds and, you know, that's important. It means other portfolios that might be on the secretariat that have been dumped, right? So it shows something about the prioritization, uh, of security.And I think it's interesting, you know, we've, we've often struggled to understand what is the National Security Commission, how does it function, You know, these sort of things. And it's, it's still, you know, absolutely clear as mud. But what was interesting was that, you know, from whatever that early design was that had some aspect at least of looking a bit like the US style, National Security Commission, they took on a much more sort of internal looking flavor.And it had always been my sort of thought that one of the reasons Xi Jinping created this thing was to break down, you know, those institutional rivalries and barriers and force, you know, coordination on these, on these institutions. So, you know, bottom line, I think what we're seeing is a real effort by Xi Jinping to You know, knit together a comprehensive, unified, and very effective, you know, stifling, really security apparatus. And, uh, I don't expect to see that change anytime soon. And then, you know, as you and I have been discussing recently, we also have, uh, another Xi loyalist Chen Yixin showing up as Chen Wenqing's successor right at the Ministry of State SecurityBill: And he remains Secretary General of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission too.Chris: Exactly. So, you know, from, from a, a sheet home where Xi Jinping five years ago arguably had very loose control, if at all, we now have a situation where he's totally dominant. Bill: I think the, the official on the Secretariat, I think it's Liu Jinguo.Chris: That's the one. Yes. Thank you. I'm getting old…Bill: He also has, has a long history of the Ministry of Public Security system. Um, but yeah, it does, it does seem like it's a, it's a real, I mean it, I I, I don't wanna use the word securitization, but it does like this is the indication of a, of a real, sort of, it just sort of fits with the, the general trend  towards much more focus on national security. I mean, what about on the, the Central Military Commission? Right? Because one of the surprises was, um, again, and this is where the norms were broken, where you have Zhang Youxia, who should have retired based on his age, but he's 72, he's on the Politburo he stays as a vice chair of the CMCChris: Yep. Yeah, no, at, at, at the rip old age of 72. It's a little hard, uh, to think of him, you know, mounting a tank or something  to go invade Taiwan or whatever the, you know, whatever the case may be. But, you know, I, I think here again, the narratives might be off base a little bit, you know, it's this issue of, you know, well he's just picked, you know, these sycophantic loyalists, He's a guy who has combat experience, right?And that's increasingly rare. Um, I don't think it's any surprise that. That himself. And, uh, the, uh, uh, gentleman on the CMC, uh, Li, who is now heading the, um, Joint Chiefs of Staff, he also has Vietnam combat experience, not from 79, but from the, uh, the border incursions that went on into the80s. Um, so it's not that surprising really.But, but obviously, you know, Zhang Youxia is very close to Xi Jinping, their father's fought together, right? Um, and they have that sort of, uh, blood tie and Xi is signaling, I want, uh, I. Political control and also technologically or, or, um, you know, operationally competent people. I think the other fascinating piece is we see once again no vice chairman from the political commissar iatside of the PLA.I think that's very interesting. You know, a lot of people, including myself, were betting that Miao HuaWould, would, would get the promotion. He didn't, you know, we can't know. But my sense is in a way, Xi Jiping is still punishing that side of the PLA for Xu Caihou's misdoings. Right. You know, and that's very interesting in and of itself.Also, it may be a signal that I don't need a political commissar vice chairman because I handle the politicsBill: And, and, and he, yeah. And in this, this new era that the, the next phase of the Xi era, it, it is, uh, everybody knows, right? It's, it's all about loyalty to Xi.Chris: we just saw right, uh, today, you know, uh, yet, yet more instructions about the CMC responsibilities, Chairman, responsibility systems. Bill: Unfortunately they didn't release the full text but it would be fascinating to see what's in there.Chris: And they never do on these things, which is, uh, which is tough. But, um, you know, I think we have a general sense of what would be in it, . But, but even that itself, right, you know, is a very major thing that people, you know, didn't really pick up. Certain scholars, certainly like James Mulvenon and other people who are really good on this stuff noticed it. But this shift under Hu Jintao was a CMC vice chairman responsibility system. In other words, he was subletting the operational matters certainly to his uniformed officers, Xi Jinping doesn't do thatBill: Well, this, and here we are, right where he can indeed I mean, I, I had written in the newsletter, um, you know, that she had, I thought, I think he ran the table in terms of personnel.Chris: Oh, completely. Yeah.Bill: And this is why it is interesting he kept around folks like Wang Huning, but we'll move on. The next question I had really was about Xi's report to the party Congress and we had talked, I think you'd also, um, you've talked about on our previous podcasts, I mean there, there seems to be a pretty significant shift in the way Xi is talking about the geopolitical environment and their assessment and how they see the world. Can you talk about a little bit?Chris: Yeah, I mean, I think definitely we saw some shifts there and, uh, you know, you and I have talked a lot about it. You know, there are problems with word counting, right? You know, and when you look at the thing and you just do a machine search, and it's like, okay, well security was mentioned 350 times or whatever, but, but the, you know, in what context?Right. Um, and, uh, our, uh, mutual admiration society, the, uh, the China Media project, uh, I thought they did an excellent piece on that sort of saying, Remember, it's the words that go around the buzzword that matter, you know, just as much. But what we can say unequivocally is that two very important touchstones that kind of explain their thinking on their perception of not only their external environment, but really kind of their internal environment, which had been in the last several political reports, now are gone. And those are this idea of China's enjoying a period of strategic opportunity and this idea that peace and development are the underlying trend of the times. And, you know, on the period of strategic opportunity, I think it's important for a couple reasons. One, just to kind of break that down for our listeners in a way that's not, you know, sort of, uh, CCP speak, , uh, the, the basic idea was that China judged that it's external security environment was sufficiently benign, that they could focus their energies on economic development.Right? So obviously that's very important. I also think it was an important governor, and I don't think I've seen anything out there talking about its absence in this, uh, political report on this topic, It was a, it was an important governor on sort of breakneck Chinese military development, sort of like the Soviet Union, right?In other words, as long as you were, you know, sort of judging that your external environment was largely benign, you. Didn't really have a justification to have a massive defense budget or to be pushy, you know, in the neighborhood, these sort of things. And people might poo poo that and sort of say, Well, you know, this is all just rhetoric and so on. No, they actually tend to Bill: Oh, that's interesting. Well, then that fits a little bit, right, Cuz they added the, the wording around strategic deterrence in the report as well  which is seen as a, you know, modernizing, expanding their nuclear forces, right?Chris: Exactly, right. So, you know, that's, uh, an important absence and the fact that, you know, the word, again, word searching, right. Um, strategic and opportunity are both in there, but they're separated and balanced by this risks and challenges, languages and, and so on. Bill: Right the language is very starkly different. Chris: Yeah. And then likewise on, on peace and development. This one, as you know, is, is even older, right? It goes back to the early eighties, I believe, uh, that it's been in, in these political reports. And, uh, you know, there again, the idea was sort of not only was this notion that peace and economic development were the dominant, you know, sort of trend internationally, globally, they would be an enduring one. You know, this idea of the trend of the times, right? Um, now that's missing. So what has replaced it in both these cases is this spirit of struggle, right? Um, and so that's a pretty stark departure and that in my mind just sort of is a real throwback to what you could call the period of maximum danger for the regime in the sixties, right? When they had just split off with the Soviets and they were still facing unremitting hostility from the west after the Korean War experience and, and so on. So, you know, there's definitely a, a decided effort there. I think also we should view the removal of these concepts as a culmination of a campaign that Xi Jinping has been on for a while.You know, as you and I have discussed many times before, from the minute he arrived, he began, I think, to paint this darker picture of the exterior environment. And he seems to have always wanted to create a sort of sense of urgency, certainly maybe even crisis. And I think a big part of that is to justifying the power grab, right? If the world outside is hostile, you need, you know, a strongman. Bill: Well that was a lot of the propaganda going into the Party of Congress about the need for sort of a navigator helmsman because know, we we're, we're closest we have ever been to the great rejuvenation, but it's gonna be really hard and we need sort of strong leadership right. It was, it was all building to that. This is why Ci needs to stay for as long as he wants to stay.Chris: and I think we saw that reflected again just the other day in this Long People's Daily piece by Ding Xuexing, right, Where he's talking again about the need for unity, the throwback, as you mentioned in your newsletter to Mao's commentary, there is not to be lost on any of us you know, the fact that the Politburo standing committee's. Uh, first field trip is out to Yan'an, right? I mean, you know, these are messages, right? The aren't coincidental.Bill: No, it, it is. The thing that's also about the report that's interesting is that while there was, speaking of word counts, there was no mention of the United States, but it certainly feels like that was the primary backdrop for this entire discussion around. So the, the shifting geopolitical, uh, assessments and this broader, you know, and I think one of the things that I, and I want to talk to as we get into this, a little bit about US China relations, but is it she has come to the conclusion that the US is implacably effectively hostile, and there is no way that they're gonna get through this without some sort of a broader struggle?Chris: I don't know if they, you know, feel that conflict is inevitable. In fact, I kind of assume they don't think that because that's pretty grim picture for them, you know? Um, but I, I do think there's this notion that. They've now had two years to observe the Biden administration. Right? And to some degree, I think it's fair to say that by certain parties in the US, Xi Jinping, maybe not Xi Jinping, but a Wang Qishan or some of these characters were sold a bit of a bag of goods, right?Oh, don't worry, he's not Trump, he's gonna, things will be calmer. We're gonna get back to dialogue and you know, so on and so forth. And that really hasn't happened. And when we look at. Um, when we look at measures like the recent, chip restrictions, which I'm sure we'll discuss at some point, you know, that would've been, you know, the, the wildest dream, right of certain members of the Trump administration to do something that, uh, that's that firm, right? So, um, I think the conclusion of the Politburo then must be, this is baked into the cake, right? It's bipartisan. Um, the earliest we'll see any kind of a turn here is 2024. I think they probably feel. Um, and therefore suddenly things like a no limits partnership with Russia, right, start to make more sense. Um, but would really makes sense in that if that is your framing, and I think it is, and you therefore see the Europeans as like a swing, right, in this equation. This should be a great visit, right, for Chancellor Scholz, uh, and uh, I can't remember if it was you I was reading or someone else here in the last day or so, but this idea that if the Chinese are smart, they would get rid of these sanctions on Bill: That was me. Well, that was in my newsletterChris: Yeah. Parliamentary leaders and you know, Absolutely. Right. You know, that's a no brainer, but. I don't think they're gonna do it , but, but you know, this idea definitely that, and, and when they talk in the political report, you know, it, it's, it's like, sir, not appearing in this film, right, from Money Python, but we know who the people who are doing the bullying, you know, uh, is and the long armed jurisdiction and , so on and so forth and all, I mean, all kidding aside, I think, you know, they will see something like the chip restrictions effectively as a declaration of economic war. I don't think that's going too far to say that.Bill: It goes to the heart of their sort of technological project around rejuvenation. I mean, it is, it is a significant. sort of set of really kind of a, I would think, from the Chinese perspective aggressive policies against them,Chris: Yeah, and I mean, enforcement will be key and we'll see if, you know, licenses are granted and how it's done. And we saw, you know, already some, some backing off there with regard to this US person, uh, restriction and so on. But, but you know, it's still pretty tough stuff. There's no two ways aboutBill: No, and I, I wonder, and I worry that here in DC. You know, where the mood is very hawkish. If, if people here really fully appreciate sort of the shift that's taking, that seems to be taking place in Beijing and how these actions are viewed.Chris: Well, I, I think that's a really, you put your hand on it really, really interesting way, Bill, because, you know, let's face it really since the Trump trade war started, right? We've all analysts, you know, pundits, uh, even businesses and government people have been sort of saying, you know, when are the Chinese gonna punch back? You know, when are they going to retaliate? Right? And we talk about rare earths and we talk about Apple and TeslaBill: They slapped some sanctions on people but they kind of a jokeChris:  And I guess what I'm saying is I kind of worry we're missing the forest from the trees. Right. You know, the, the, the work report tells us, the political report tells us how they're reacting. Right. And it is hardening the system, moving toward this fortress economy, you know, so on and so forth. And I wanna be real clear here, you know, they're not doing this just because they're reacting to the United States. Xi Jinping presumably wanted to do this all along, but I don't think we can say that the actions they perceive as hostile from the US aren't playing a pretty major role in allowing him to accelerate.Bill: Well, they called me. Great. You justifying great Accelerationist, right? Trump was called that as well, and, and that, that's what worries me too, is we're in. Kind of toxic spiral where, where they see us doing something and then they react. We see them do something and we react and, and it doesn't feel like sort of there's any sort of a governor or a break and I don't see how we figure that out.Chris: Well, I think, you know, and I'm sure we'll come to this later in our discussion, but you know, uh, yes, that's true, but you know, I'm always deeply skeptical of these inevitability memes, whether it's, you know, Thucydides trap or, you know, these other things. Last time I checked, there is something called political agency, right?In other words, leaders can make choices and they can lead if they want to, right? They have an opportunity to do so at in Bali, and you know, we'll have to see some of the, you know, early indications are perhaps they're looking at sort of a longer meeting. So that would suggest maybe there will be some discussion of some of these longstanding issues.Maybe we will see some of the usual, you know, deliverable type stuff. So there's an opportunity. I, I think one question is, can the domestic politics on either side allow for seizing that opportunity? You know, that's an open.Bill: Interesting. There's a couple things in the party constitution, which I think going into the Congress, you know, they told us they were gonna amend the Constitution. There were expectations that it, the amendments were gonna reflect an increase in Xi's power, uh, things like this, this idea of the two establishments, uh, which for listeners are * "To establish the status of Comrade Xi Jinping as the core of the Party's Central Committee and of the whole Party"* "To establish the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era"The thinking, and I, I certainly believe that, I thought that they would write that in. There was some talk that, uh, Xi Jinping Thought the longer version would be truncated to just Xi Jinping thought. that possibly he might get, a, a sort of another title like People's Leader. None of those happened. One thing that did happen, What's officially translated by the Chinese side in English as the two upholds- “Uphold the 'core' status of General Secretary Xi Jinping within the CC and “Uphold the centralized authority of the Party” those were written in. And so the question is, was there some kind of pushback or are we misreading we what mattered? And actually the two upholds are more important than the two of establishes.Chris: Well, I, and I think it, this may be a multiple choice answer, right? There might be elements of all the above in there. Uh, you know, I think it is important that he didn't get the truncation to Xi Jinping thought. You have to think that that was something he was keen on. In retrospect, it may be that it was something akin. I've always felt, you know, another thing that was on the table that didn't happen was reestablishing the party chairmanship. My view had always been he was using that largely as a bargaining chip. That, you know, in some ways it creates more trouble than it's worth you. If you're gonna have a chairman, you probably have to have vice chairman and what does that say about the succession? I mean, of course he could have, you know, a couple of geezers on there.  as vice chairman too. , But I, my view was always is he was holding that out there to trade away. Right. You know, at, at the last minute. Um, maybe that's what happened with Xi Jinping thought. I don't know.You know, uh, there have been some media articles, one of which, You and I were discussing yesterday from, uh, the Japanese, uh, publication Nikkei, you know, that suggested that, you know, the elders had, this was their last gasp, right? So the Jiang Zemins and the Zeng Qinghongs and Hu Jinataos, so on. Um, I'm a little skeptical of that. It is possible. Uh, but, um, I, I'd be a little skeptical of that. You know, it's, it's not at all clear that they had any kind of a role, you know, even at Beidaihe this year and so on, Jiang Zemin didn't even attend the Party Congress so clearly, you know, he must be pretty frail or he thought it was not with his time. You know, a little hard to say, but, you know, I kind of struggle with the notion that, you know, the 105 year old Song Ping gets up on a chair or something and starts,  starts making trouble. Right. You know, uh, the poor man's probably lucky if he stays awake during the meeting. Bill: One question, and again, because of the, just, you know, how much more opaque Chinese politics are than the really I think they've ever been. Um, but just one question. It mean, is it possible, for example, that you know, it's more important to get the personnel done. It's more, and then once you get your, you stack the central committee, you get the politburo, you get the standing committee, that these things are sort of a next phase.Chris: yeah, it's entirely possible and, and I think it, it, it does dovetail with this idea that, you know, another reflection from both the political report and the lineup in my mind, is Xi Jinping is a man in a hurry. Right? And he's kind of projected that, as you said, the great accelerator since he arrived.But I think he sees this next five years is really fundamental, right in terms of breaking through on these chokepoint technologies as they call them. You know, these sort of things. And so maybe therefore having the right people in place to handle, you know, uh, speedier policy, execution, you know, was more important.Likewise, I mean, he's sort of telegraphing, He's gonna be around for a while, right? No successor, no visible successor anywhere. Bill: A successor would need likely need five years on the standing committee. So we're looking at ten more years.Chris: Yes, exactly. And so there will be time. The other thing is, um, Xi Jinping is a, is a sort of determined fellow, right? You know, so of interest, even before the 19th Party Congress, I'd been hearing very strong rumors that the notion of lingxiu was out there, that he was contemplating it, right? And so then we see the buildup with, uh, Renmin lingxiu and so on and so forth.And, you know, it didn't happen clearly at the 19th. It didn't happen. But it doesn't mean it won't, you know, at some point. And I think it's really important also to think about, you know, We just saw a pretty serious, um, enterprise of the, you know, quote unquote norm busting, right? So what's to say that mid-course in this five years, he doesn't, uh, hold another sort of extraordinary conference of party delegates like them, Deng Xiaoping did in 1985, right, to push through some of these. You never know, right? In other words, these things don't necessarily have to happen. Just at Party Congresses. So my guess is, you know, this isn't over yet. Uh, but you know, at some level, given how the system was ramping up with those articles about Navigator and the people's leader stuff and so on, you know, that's usually a tell, and yet it didn't happen. And, and so something interesting there. Bill: now they're in the mode of, they're out with these sort of publicity, propaganda education teams where they go out throughout the country and talk about the spirit of the party Congress and push all the key messaging. Um, you know, so far none of those People's leader truncation have happened in that, which is I think an area where some people thought, Well, maybe that could sort of come after the Congress.Chris: What is interesting is it's all two establishments all the time in those discussions, so that's been very interesting since it didn't make it into the, uh, into the document. I guess the other thing is, At some level, is it sort of a distinction without a difference? You know, I, I haven't done the work on this to see, but my guess is short of, you know, the many times they've just junked the entire constitution and rewritten it, this is probably the most amendments there have been, you know, in the to at one time. You know, to the 1982 constitution, and most of them are his various buzzwords. Right. Um, and you know, I think you've been talking about this in the newsletter, there may very well be, uh, something to this issue of, you know, which is the superior thought two establishments or to upholds/safeguards?Bill: and even if the two establishes were superior and then it didn't go in, then somehow it will be theoretically flipped to what got in the ConstitutionChris: I mean, I guess the, the, the thing though where we, it's fair to say that maybe this wasn't his ideal outcome. To me, there's been a very clear and you know, structured stepwise approach on the ideology from the word go. Right? And the first was to create right out of the shoot, this notion of, you know, three eras, right?The, Mao period, Deng  and those other guys we don't talk about it anymore, period.  and Xi Jinping's new era, right? And then that was. You know, sort of crystallized right at the 19th Party Congress when you know, Xi Jinping thought for horribly long name went into the Constitution. And so, you know, the next step kind of seemed like that should be it.And as we've discussed before, you know, if he's able to get just Thought, it certainly enhances his ability to stay around for a very long time and it makes his diktats and so on even more unquestionable. But you know, you can say again, matter of prioritization. With a team where there's really no visible or other opposition, does it really matter? You know, in other words, no one's gonna be questioning his policy ideas anyway.Bill: Just an aside, but on  his inspection, the new standing committee will go on group trip right after the Party Congress and the first trip sends key messages. And group went to Yan'an, you know, they went, they went to the caves. Um, and you know, in the long readout or long CCTV report of the meeting, the visit, there was a section where the tour guide or the person introducing some of the exhibits talked about how the, the famous song, the East Is Red was,  by a person, written by the people sort of spontaneously, and it w it definitely caused some tittering about, well, what are they trying to signal for?You know, are we gonna be seeing some  Xi songs? there's some kind of really interesting signaling going on that I don't think we quite have figured out how to parse Chris: My takeaway on all this has been, I, I need to go back and do a little more book work on, you know, what was, what was the content of the seventh party Congress? What were the outcomes? I mean, I have the general sense, right? Like you, I immediately, you know, started brushing up on it. But, you know, Xi delivered a, an abridged work report. Right, A political report, which is exactly what Mao did then. I mean, in other words, they're not kidding around with the parallelism here. The question is what's the message?Bill: Just for background, at the visit last week to Yan'an, and the first spot that was in the propaganda was the, the, site of the seventh party Congress which is where…to be very simplistic, the seventh party was really moment, you know, as at the end of the Yan'am rectification came in, it was the moment where sort of Mao fully asserted his dominance throughout the system. Mao Thought etc. Right? The signaling, you could certainly, could certainly take a view that, you know, he doesn't do these things by coincidence, and this is. This is signaling both of, you know, can through anything because they, livedin caves and ended up beating the Japanese and then won the Civil War. You know this, and we can, and by the way, we have a dominant leader. I mean, there are ways, again, I'm being simplistic, but the symbolism was not, I think one that would, for example, give a lot of confidence to investors, which I think is, you know, one, one of the many reasons we've seen until the rumors earlier this week, a, pretty big selloff in the, in the Hong Kong and manland stock markets rightChris: most definitely. And I think, you know, this is the other thing about, about what I was trying to get at earlier with, uh, forest and trees, right? You know, in other words, . Um, he's been at this for a while too. You know, there's a reason why he declared a new long march right in depths of the trade war with Trump.Bill: And a new historical resolution, only the third in historyChris: Yeah. And they have been stepwise building since then. And this is the next building block.Bill: The last thought, I mean, he is 69. He's. 10 years younger than President Joe Biden. He could go, he could be around for a long timeBill: well just quickly, cause I know, uh, we don't have that much more time, but I, you say anything about your thoughts on Hu Jintao and what happened?My first take having had a father and a stepfather had dementia was, um, you know, maybe too sympathetic to the idea that, okay, he's having some sort of a senior cognitive moment. You know, you can get. easily agitated, and you can start a scene. And so therefore, was humiliating and symbolic at the end of the Communist Youth League faction, but maybe it was, it was benign as opposed to some of the other stuff going around. But I think might be wrong so I'd love your take on that.  Chris: Well, I, I think, you know, I, I kind of shared your view initially when I watched the, uh, I guess it was an AFP had the first, you know, sort of video that was out there and, you know, he appeared to be stumbling around a bit. He definitely looked confused and, you know, like, uh, what we were discussing earlier on another subject, this could be a multiple choice, you know, A and B or whatever type scenario as well.We don't know, I mean, it seems pretty well established that he has Parkinson's, I think the lead pipe pincher for me though, was that second longer one Singapore's channel, Channel News Asia put out. I mean, he is clearly tussling with Li Zhanshu about something, right. You know that that's. Yes, very clear. And you know, if he was having a moment, you know, when they finally get him up out of the chair and he seems to be kind of pulling back and so on, you know, he moves with some alacrity there,  for an 80 year old guy. Uh, I don't know if he was being helped to move quickly or he, you know, realized it was time to exit stage.Right. But I think, you know, as you said in your newsletter, I, we probably will never know. Um, but to me it looked an awful lot like an effort by Xi Jinping to humiliate him. You know, I mean, there was a reason why they brought the cameras back in at that moment, you know? Unless we believe that that just happened spontaneously in terms of Hu Jintao has his freak out just as those cameras were coming back in the stone faces of the other members of the senior leadership there on the rostrum and you know, Wand Hunting, pulling Li Zhanshu back down kind of saying basically, look buddy, this is politics, don't you don't wanna, that's not a good look for you trying to care for Hu Jintao. You know, I mean obviously something was going on, you know? No, no question. Bill: Right. And feeds into  the idea that Hu Chunhua, we all expected that he at least be on the Politburo again, and he's, he's off, so maybe something, something was going Chris: Well, I, I think what we know from observing Xi Jinping, right? We know that this is a guy who likes to keep people off balance, right? Who likes to keep the plate spinning. He, this is definitely the Maoist element of his personality, you know, whether it's strategic disappearances or this kind of stuff. And I think it's entirely plausible that he might have made some last minute switches right, to, uh, the various lists that were under consideration that caused alarm, you know, among those who thought they were on a certain list and  and no longer were.Bill: and then, and others who were smart enough to realize that if he made those switches, they better just go with it.Chris: Yeah, go along with it. Exactly. I mean, you know, in some ways the most, aside from what happened to Hu Jintao, the, the most, um, disturbing or compelling, depending on how you wanna look at it, part of that video is when Hu Jintao, you know, sort of very, um, delicately taps Li Keqiang on the shoulder. He doesn't even look at it, just keeps looking straight ahead. Uh, and that's tough. And as you pointed out in the newsletter and elsewhere, you know, how difficult must have that have been for Hu Jintao's son Hu Haifeng, who's in the audience watching this all go on? You know, it's, uh, it's tough. Bill: And then two two days later attends a meeting where he praises Xi to high heaven.Chris: Yeah, exactly. So, so if the darker narrative is accurate, I guess one thing that concerns me a bit is, as you know, well, I have never been a fan of these, uh, memes about comparing Xi Jinping to either Stalin or Mao in part because I don't see him as a whimsical guy. They were whimsical people. I think because of his tumultuous upbringing, he understands the problems with that kind of an approach to life, but this was a very ruthless act. If that more malign, you know, sort of definition is true and that I think that says something about his mentality that perhaps should concern us if that's the case. Bill: It has real implications, not just for domestic also potentially for its foreign policy.Chris: Absolutely. I mean, what it shows, right to some degree, again, man in a hurry, this is a tenacious individual, right?  if he's willing to do that. And so if you're gonna, you know, kick them in the face on chips and, you know, things like that, um, you should be taking that into consideration.Bill: And I think preparing for a more substantive response  that is more thought out and it's also, it happened, it wasn't very Confucian for all this talk Confucian definitely not. and values. One last question, and it is related is what do you make of this recent upsurge or talk in DC from various officials that PRC has accelerated its timeline to absorb Taiwan, because nothing in the public documents indicates any shift in that timeline.Chris: No. Uh, and well, first of all, do they, do they have a timeline? Right? You know, I mean, the whole idea of a timeline is kind of stupid, right? You don't, if you're gonna invade somewhere, you say, Hey, we're gonna do it on on this date. I mean, 2049. Okay. Bill: The only timeline that I think you can point to is is it the second centenary goal and, and Taiwan getting quote unquote, you know, returning Taiwan to the motherland's key to the great rejuvenation,Chris: Yeah, you can't have rejuvenation without it. Bill: So then it has to be done by 2049. 27 years, but they've never come out and specifically said 27 years or 2049. But that's what No. that's I think, is where the timeline idea comes from.Chris: Oh yes, definitely. And, and I think some confusion of. What Xi Jinping has clearly set out and reaffirmed in the political report as these important, um, operational benchmarks for the PLA, the People's Liberation Army to achieve by its hundredth anniversary in 2027. But that does not a go plan for Taiwan make, you know, And so it's been confusing to me trying to understand this. And of course, you know, I, I'm joking, but I'm not, you know, if we, if we listen now to the chief of naval operations of the US Navy, you know, like they're invading tomorrow, basically.My former colleague from the CIA, John Culver's, done some very, you know, useful public work on this for the Carnegie, where he sort his endowment, where he sort of said, you know, look, there's certain things we would have to see, forget about, you know, a D-day style invasion, any type of military action that, that you don't need intelligence methods to find out. Right. You know, uh, canceling, uh, conscription, demobilization cycles, you know, those, those sort of things. Um, we don't see that happening. So I've been trying to come to grips with why the administration seems fairly seized with this and and their public commentary and so on. What I'm confident of is there's no smoking gun you know, unlike, say the Russia piece where it appears, we had some pretty compelling intelligence. There doesn't seem to be anything that says Xi Jinping has ordered invasion plans for 2024, you know, or, or, or even 2027. Um, so I'm pretty confident that's not the case. And so then it becomes more about an analytic framework. And I, from what I can tell, it's seems to be largely based on what, uh, in, you know, the intelligence community we would call calendar-int.. calendar intelligence. In other words, you know, over the next 18 months, a lot of stuff's going to happen. We're gonna have our midterm elections next week. It's pretty likely the Republicans get at least one chamber of Congress, maybe both.That would suggest that things like the Taiwan Policy Act and, you know, really, uh, things that have, uh, Beijing's undies in a bunch, uh, you know, could really come back on, uh, the radar pretty forcibly and pretty quickly. Obviously Taiwan, nobody talks about it, but Taiwan's having municipal elections around the same time, and normally that would be a very inside Taiwan baseball affair, nobody would care. But the way that KMT ooks like they will not perform, I should say,  in those municipal elections. They could be effectively wiped out, you know, as a, as a sort of electable party in Taiwan. That's not a good news story for Beijing.And then of course we have our own presidential in 2024 and Taiwan has a presidential election in 24 in the US case.I mean, look, we could end up with a President Pompeo, right? Or a President DeSantis or others who. Been out there sort of talking openly about Taiwan independence and recognizing Taiwan. And similarly, I think whoever succeeds, uh, President Tsai in Taiwan, if we assume it will likely be a a, a Democratic Progressive party president, will almost by definition be more independence oriented.So I think the administration is saying there's a lot of stuff that's gonna get the Chinese pretty itchy, you know, over this next 18 month period. So therefore we need to be really loud in our signaling to deter. Right. And okay. But I think there's a risk with that as well, which they don't seem to be acknowledging, which is you might create a self-fulfilling prophecy.I mean, frankly, that's what really troubles me about the rhetoric. And so, for example, when Secretary Blinken last week or the before came out and said  Yeah, you know, the, the, the Chinese have given up on the status quo. I, I, I've seen nothing, you know, that would suggest that the political report doesn't suggest. Bill: They have called it a couple of times  so-called status quo.Chris: Well, Fair enough. Yeah. Okay. That's, that's fine. Um, but I think if we look at the reason why they're calling it the so-called status quo, it's because it's so called now because the US has been moving the goalposts on the status quo.Yeah. In terms of erosion of the commitment to the one China policy. And the administration can say all at once, they're not moving the goal post, but they are, I mean, let's just be honest.Bill: Now, and they have moved it more than the Trump administration did, don't you think?Chris: Absolutely. Yeah. Um, you know, no president has said previously we will defend Taiwan  multiple times. Right. You know, um, and things like, uh, you know, Democracy, someone, I mean, this comes back also to the, the framing, right, of one of the risks I think of framing the relationship as democracy versus autocracy is that it puts a very, uh, heavy incentive then for the Biden administration or any future US administration to, you know, quote unquote play the Taiwan card, right, as part of said competition.Whereas if you don't have that framing, I don't think that's necessarily as automatic. Right? In other words, if that's the framing, well Taiwan's a democracy, so we have to lean in. Right? You know? Whereas if it's a more say, you know, straight realist or national interest driven foreign policy, you might not feel that in every instance you've gotta do that,Bill: No, and and I it, that's an interesting point. And I also think too that, um, I really do wonder how much Americans care, right? And, and whether or not we're running the risk of setting something up or setting something in motion that, you know, again, it's easy to be rhetorical about it, but that we're frankly not ready to deal withChris: Well, and another thing that's interesting, right, is that, um, to that point, Some of the administration's actions, you know, that are clearly designed to show toughness, who are they out toughing? You know, in some cases it feels like they're out toughing themselves, right? I mean, obviously the Republicans are watching them and so on and all of that.Um, but you know, interesting, uh, something that came across my thought wave the other day that I hadn't really considered. We're seeing pretty clear indications that a Republican dominated Congress after the midterms may be less enthusiastic about support to Ukraine, we're all assuming that they're gonna be all Taiwan support all the time.Is that a wrong assumption? You know, I mean, in other words, Ukraine's a democracy, right? And yet there's this weird strain in the Trumpist Wing of the Republican party that doesn't wanna spend the money. Right. And would that be the case for Taiwan as well? I don't know, but you know, the point is, I wonder if the boogieman of looking soft is, is sort of in their own heads to some degree.And, and even if it isn't, you know, sometimes you have to lead. Bill: it's not clear the allies are listening. It doesn't sound like the Europeans would be on board withChris: I think very clearly they're not. I mean, you know, we're about to see a very uncomfortable bit of Kabuki theater here, aren't we? In the next couple of days with German Chancellor Sholz going over and, um, you know, if you, uh, read the op-ed he wrote in Politico, you know, it's, it's painful, right? You can see him trying to, uh, Trying to, uh, you know, straddle the fence and, and walk that line.And, and obviously there are deep, deep divisions in his own cabinet, right? You know, over this visit, the foreign minister is publicly criticizing him, you know, and so on. So I think this is another aspect that might be worrisome, which is the approach. You know, my line is always sort of a stool, if it's gonna be stable, needs three legs, right.And on US-China relations, I think that is, you know, making sure our own house is in order. Domestic strengthening, these guys call it, coordinating with allies and partners, certainly. But then there's this sort of talking to the Chinese aspect and through a policy, what I tend to call strategic avoidance, we don't.Talk to them that much. So that leg is missing. So then those other two legs need to be really strong. Right. Um, and on domestic strengthening, Okay. Chips act and so on, that's good stuff. On allies and partners, there seems to be a bit of an approach and I think the chip restrictions highlight this of, look, you're either for us or against us.Right? Whereas I think in, you know, the good old Cold War I, we seem to be able to understand that a West Germany could do certain things for us vis-a-vis the Soviets and certain things they couldn't and we didn't like it and we complained, but we kind of lived with it, right? If we look at these chip restrictions, it appears the administration sort of said, Look, we've been doing this multilateral diplomacy on this thing for a year now, it's not really delivering the goods. The chips for framework is a mess, so let's just get it over with and drag the allies with us, you know? Um, and we'll see what ramifications that will have.Bill: Well on that uplifting note, I, I think I'm outta questions. Is there anything else you'd like to add?Chris: Well, I think, you know, something just to consider is this idea, you know, and maybe this will help us close on a more optimistic note. Xi Jinping is telling us, you know, he's hardening the system, he's, he's doing this fortress economy thing and so on. But he also is telling us, I have a really difficult set of things I'm trying to accomplish in this five years.Right? And that may mean a desire to signal to the us let's stabilize things a bit, not because he's having a change of heart or wants a fundamental rapprochement, so on and so forth. I don't think that's the case, but might he want a bit of room, right? A breathing room. Bill: Buy some time, buy some spaceChris: Yeah, Might he want that? He might. You know, and so I think then a critical question is how does that get sorted out in the context of the negotiations over the meeting in Bali, if it is a longer meeting, I think, you know, so that's encouraging for that. Right. To some degree. I, I, I would say, you know, if we look at what's just happened with the 20th party Congress and we look at what's about to happen, it seems with our midterms here in the United States, Who's the guy who's gonna be more domestically, politically challenged going into this meeting, and therefore have less room to be able to seize that opportunity if it does exist.Exactly. Because I, I think, you know, the, the issue is, The way I've been framing it lately, you know, supposedly our position is the US position is strategic competition and China says, look, that's inappropriate, and we're not gonna sign onto it and forget it.You know, my own view is we kind of have blown past strategic competition where now in what I would call strategic rivalry, I think the chip restrictions, you know, are, are a giant exclamation point, uh, under that, you know, and so on. And my concern is we're kind of rapidly headed toward what I would call strategic enmity.And you know, that all sounds a bit pedantic, but I think that represents three distinct phases of the difficulty and the relationship. You know, strategic enmity is the cold, the old Cold War, what we had with the Soviets, right? So we are competing against them in a brass tax manner across all dimensions. And if it's a policy that, you know, hurts us, but it hurts them, you know, 2% more we do it, you know, kind of thing. I don't think we're there yet. And the meeting offers an opportunity to, you know, arrest the travel from strategic rivalry to strategic enmity. Let's see if there's something there/Bill: And if, and if we don't, if it doesn't arrest it, then I think the US government at least has to do a much better job of explaining to the American people why we're headed in this direction and needs  to do a much better job with the allies cuz because again, what I worry about is we're sort of heading down this path and it doesn't feel like we've really thought it through.You know, there are lots of reasons  be on this path, but there's also needs to be a much more of a comprehensive understanding of the, of the costs and the ramifications and the solutions and have have an actual sort of theory of the case about how we get out the other side of this in a, in a better way.Chris: Yeah, I think that's important. I want to be real, um, fair to the administration. You know, they're certainly more thoughtful and deliberative than their predecessor. Of course, the bar was low, but, um, you know, they, they seem to approach these things in a pretty. Dedicated and careful manner. And I think they really, you know, take, take things like, uh, looking at outbound investment restrictions, you know, my understanding is they have been, you know, seeking a lot of input about unintended consequences and so on. But then you look at something like the chips piece and it just seems to me that those in the administration who had been pushing for, you know, more there for some time, had a quick moment where they basically said, look, this thing's not working with multilaterally, Let's just do it, you know? And then, oh, now we're seeing the second and third and other order consequences of it. And the risk is that we wind up, our goal is to telegraph unity to Beijing and shaping their environment around them as the administration calls it. We might be signaling our disunity, I don't know, with the allies, and obviously that would not be a good thingBill: That's definitely a risk. Well, thanks Chris. It's always great to talk to you and Thank you for listening to the occasional Sinocism podcast. Thank you, Chris.Chris: My pleasure. Sinocism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sinocism.com/subscribe