Sinocism Podcast

Thank you Inês Carrières, LeftieProf, scott murphy, Andrew Polk, Dan Houghton, and many others for tuning into my live video with Tara Palmeri! 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

This is a recording of my November 20, 2025 discussion with Sheena Chestnut Greitens ( Sheena Chestnut Greitens), Isaac B. Kardon (CHINA: Threat or Menace on Substack), and Cameron Waltz about their excellent and important new paper China’s Foreign Police Training: A Global Footprint - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.I learned a lot from the paper and the conversation, and we had a good discussion at the end about whether or not China is using this security cooperation and training to export its governance model.From the summary of the paper:Global outreach by China’s internal security agencies is expanding. As China’s Global Security Initiative externalizes a concept of security focused on domestic stability and regime protection, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has increased its efforts to train and build capacity among foreign law enforcement and internal security forces around the world, including across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Foreign police training is one of the most concrete and measurable outcomes associated with the Global Security Initiative, as President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders have publicly committed to training thousands of foreign security officers in multiple high-profile appearances.This paper examines China’s foreign police, security, and paramilitary training from 2000 to 2025. It draws on an original new dataset of nearly 900 trainings provided to at least 138 countries and places these trainings in the wider context of Chinese soft power, foreign policy objectives and projects such as the Global Security Initiative, broader patterns of Chinese security engagement, and Beijing’s narratives about China’s role as a global security provider.You can read the whole paper here.Earlier this year they published A New World Cop on the Beat? China’s Internal Security Outreach Under the Global Security Initiative.If you prefer to consume the Sinocism Live episodes as a podcast, please add this URL to the podcast player of your choice:https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/2/s/7556.rssYou can also listen to it in the app:Thanks for watching/listening. 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

This is a recording of my October 30, 2025 conversation with Rush Doshi, the C.V. Starr senior fellow for Asia studies and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and an assistant professor in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service.Rush Doshi was deputy senior director for China and Taiwan on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council (NSC), where he served from 2021 to 2024 and helped manage the NSC’s first China directorate.During his time in the Biden Administration he worked on multiple Biden-Xi engagements, so I thought he would be a great guest to help us parse through the Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea and what it means for US-China relations. He did not disappoint.Rush is about to launch a new Substack called “The Great Changes 大变局. You can and should subscribe to it here.You can catch up with many of Rush’s recent writings and podcast appearances here on his CFR page.Thanks for watching/listening. 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

This is a recording of my October 16, 2025 conversation with Ambassador Mike Froman Mike Froman about recent developments in the US-China trade war and US-China relations in general. I learned a lot from this conversation and I think you will as well.Ambassador Froman is president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and has had a distinguished career in the private sector and in public service, including as the head of USTR from June 2013 to January 2017. He now writes a weekly newsletter called The World This Week, to which I encourage everyone to subscribe. We also discussed some of his recent writings, including:After the Trade War: Remaking Rules From the Ruins of the Rules-Based System - Foreign AffairsChina Has Already Remade the International System - Foreign AffairsChina, the United States, and the AI Race | Council on Foreign RelationsThanks to everyone who watched our chat live. 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

Thanks everyone for tuning into my live video with afra Wang and Jasmine Sun. We had a great conversation about their recent trip to China, the differing views of AI in the US and China, and the ongoing narrative/vibe shift about China. I highly recommend their newsletters, and specifically the two essays that prompted this discussion:Afra Wang - Topology of "China AI"Jasmine Sun - America Against China Against America 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

On July 22nd I spoke with Finbarr Bermingham, Brussels-based senior correspondent for the South China Morning Post whose beat includes EU-China relations. He has in a roll with scoops about EU-China relations, including China tells EU it does not want to see Russia lose its war in Ukraine earlier this month.He explains what to expect from the EU-China summit that convenes July 24th, and how EU-China relations have deteriorated over the last several months. Apologies, we had some technical difficulties at the start and briefly a few minutes in.He is active on Substack Notes Finbarr Bermingham 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

On Wednesday June 25th I hosted a discussion with Lisa Hanson and Daniel Ahmad of Niko Partners about the China video game market and how Chinese game firms are going global 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

I joined Jonathan V. Last on his show at The Bulwark to chat about China and the Trump Administration. 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

I had a good conversation this afternoon with Chris Cillizza about what may happen in the next few hours with TikTok Us, and how President-elect may try to undo the ban. we also chatted a bit about what US-China relations may look like in the Trump 2.0 Era.Join me for my next live video in the app. 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

In this episode of the Sinocism Podcast Bill speaks with Tu Le, Founder and Managing Director of Sino Auto Insights. Tu recently attended the Shanghai Auto Show. We discuss the rise of China EVs both inside China and increasingly in other countries, and especially of BYD, why the legacy foreign auto manufacturers are struggling and will continue to struggle in China, and how “China EV Inc” will win share in many overseas markets. We also discuss Tesla’s positioning in the PRC and some if its challenges ahead, especially from BYD, both inside the PRC and in other markets around the world.Links:Sino Auto InsightsSino Auto Insights newsletterDoug DeMuro reviews the BYD Han:The BYD Song L:Transcript:[00:00:00] Bill: Welcome back to the Sinocism podcast. Today we're very lucky to have Tu Le to talk about the PRC auto industry. Tu is the founder and managing director of Sino Auto Insights. Tu recently relocated to Detroit after many years in Beijing. Tu and his team at Sino Auto Insights do advisory and market research work for companies and investors who want to understand the PRC auto industry and especially the rise of Made in China EVs. He also writes an excellent weekly newsletter and does a podcast and occasional or weekly, I think, , Twitter spaces. I will put links to those in the show notes. Tu, welcome and thanks for joining the podcast. Great to see you again.[00:00:36] Tu Le: Bill first. , thanks for having me. Last time we saw each other, I think we were at Central Park having a coffee at Jamaica Blue. That quite a few years ago.[00:00:47] Bill: Tu and I are old friends from, from Beijing. , so, and, and it's, it's good to see you and, , nice to have you, , back in the US and Detroit. , Detroit is home, right. But it's also a great place to be if you're working on the auto industry.[00:00:59] Tu Le: Yeah. It's kind of ground zero for what's happening in the EV and mobility space. So, so it's, it's a great time to be back.[00:01:05] Bill: I've been really wanting to get you on the podcast for a while and I got finally motivated to do so after reading, what you were talking about from the Shanghai Auto Show, which you were, you, you just came back from China, I think, like a week ago, right? You're there for Tu or three weeks, , and nice to be able to travel again, right?[00:01:21] Tu Le: Oh, man. It was, , it was kind of, , surreal because the last time I traveled internationally from China, we were just, we had bags packed and everything, so a little bit different.[00:01:35] Bill: Yeah, no, much, much better. , and I think, you know, the Shanghai Auto Show clearly rocked a lot of people's worlds, and so Tu is going help us understand what's going on, and that's why, you know. So I wanna start though, first with, if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up in China, working in the audio industry and, and what your firm does.[00:01:54] Tu Le: Okay, sure. So, as you'd mentioned, I grew up in Detroit, actually in Pontiac, Michigan.. In my entire family, all eight of us have worked. In the automotive space, along with our significant others. And, my first job, actually out of undergrad at Michigan State University was working at GM where the recently canceled Bolt is manufactured.[00:02:16] Tu Le: After grad school I moved to Silicon Valley, worked there for about six, seven years., and I met a girl and chased her over to Beijing actually. So I quit my Silicon Valley job and what I thought was going be a three or four year commitment ended up being 13 years. I had moved to Shanghai, took a job with Ford in Lujiazui actually for about a year, and then moved back to Beijing due to some family stuff going on.[00:02:46] Tu Le: And, then I started freelance consulting and worked at a couple of Chinese e e e-commerce startups in Beijing. And then I got pulled over to do some freelance consulting because one of my, friends. Had found out that I had some automotive background and, you know, Mercedes, BMW and Audi, they're all located, and VW group are located in Beijing.[00:03:09] Tu Le: And so I started Sino Auto Insights because, you know, right around 2014, 2015, where, you know, at ParkView Green, Tesla had opened the first retail store for China. And so I really started seeing, a shift in what was going on in the space and, a lot of articles and a lot of bad takes. So I started the newsletter, started the consultancy, because of my experience in Detroit, Silicon Valley and China with startups.[00:03:37] Tu Le: It's been quite an adventure and we, what we do is we, , , , we're a management consultant consultancy that helps mobility companies enter markets, develop products, raise capital and build their brand and work with them to find customers. And so we were focused primarily in the China market, but now we've kind of expanded because China, EV Inc.[00:04:05] Tu Le: Has expanded. And with the Inflation Reduction Act, we've recently opened a Detroit office and are, are starting to help companies here expand into the EV space and the mobility space.[00:04:20] Bill: Oh, that's fascinating. And I just, just to your, like what you mentioned about the, Tesla dealership at, or the, the showroom at, at the phone call the Parkview Green. ,I actually, you know, we both, we lived near there. Our, my kids went to school next to it, I think years went to Fangcaido, right.[00:04:35] Tu Le: That's right, exactly. I live right next door,[00:04:37] Bill: you go.[00:04:38] Bill: Right. And so, and so I went there right after it opened with a friend with a, with a friend of mine from Henan who had like, he had a a, a couple of 730s and a BMW very, you know, had like cars had, could buy what he wanted. And it was really fascinating because he wanted to buy a model S right early on.[00:04:54] Bill: And he got in there and he's like, God, it's like, it's, it's just so bare bones that does not, you know, so he didn't buy it because he's just like, this is like, not this just, I wanted like a German luxury car.[00:05:06] Tu Le: and it was over $120,000[00:05:08] Bill: No, they were, they were quite expensive. I mean this was early, early days. Right. And obviously Tesla's done well since then, but it was just really interesting how when they entered the market, they were not at all focused on, I mean, they were, they were, they had a, a brand image, but actually inside the cars, the way they were appointed was not near what sort of Chinese luxury buyers were used[00:05:29] Tu Le: right, and, and I would venture to guess, your friend was probably a little bit older,[00:05:35] Bill: Hey. It was, it's like 40 at the time.[00:05:37] Tu Le: Okay. So he is pretty young because the digital natives, and, and we'll get into this a little bit later, but the digital natives are the ones that are really looking at the safety and the connected vehicle.[00:05:48] Bill: And the, and the screens that make it look like you're, like at a currency trading station, right.[00:05:52] Tu Le: oh, yo. Yeah.[00:05:53] Bill: I want to jump to something that you wrote in your, your latest, , newsletter, , which is excellent. Everyone subscribed to it. And I will link to it, as I said earlier.[00:06:04] Bill: , but the one, the one about the Shanghai Auto Show, so you wrote. In 20, 30, 50 years from now, we'll likely point to Aha Shanghai TW 2023 as that watershed moment. It's the moment most media outlets acknowledge that the foreign legacies that dominated the China auto market for the last 35 years or so have been overtaken and unable to compete with the EV products launched by China, EV, Inc.[00:06:31] Bill: Within just the last few years, the legacies haven't given up by any means, but the writing is on the wall. BYD overtook Volkswagen as China's best selling brand in, first quarter 2023, the first time it's ever happened, BYD has no plans of giving up that title for the foreseeable future and are likely only only going to pull away even further.[00:06:53] Bill: China will never be like it was again, where brand heritage and being foreign gave you an advantage.” So if you're a foreign auto manufacturer…the sense I got from talking to some people reading the media was the foreign, some of the foreign execs who went to the auto show were shocked.[00:07:16] Bill: And so like, like what do they do? And more importantly, how did they fall behind so quickly? Right? I mean, they have had massive operations in China for decades. Didn't they have a flow of information that helped them understand how the market was changing?[00:07:30] Tu Le: So there's a few different things going on here, Bill. I think that the fact that most executives outside of the top management haven't been able to travel to China in three and a half years really limited their ability to kind of see and feel the differences and the changes. I was in China for most of that three and a half years.[00:07:56] Tu Le: And I saw the proliferation of green plates over the last few years. ,[00:08:01] Bill: just to be clear green, green plates, or if you have an EV[00:08:05] Tu Le: Right. You and I lived in Beijing during the worst pollution days, and so it was kind of a necessary evil and what, what we'll likely see in India in the future, but that's another subject, and so for them to first be able to land in Shanghai as an international business, travel, see all the green plates from the fleet vehicles and the taxis and then all the way to the passenger vehicles when you get into Jing’An temple area and stuff like that, I think that really shocked them.[00:08:42] Tu Le: And then to go to the media days on Tuesday and Wednesday, the first days you could actually see, touch and feel the vehicles. You know, they, they close, they make that sound like German cars and the, the fit and finish is much, much better than it was 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago. And so you could always tell the European or German executives, because the uniform, they wear that suit with no tie, white shirt and[00:09:11] Bill: And tears streaking down their face.[00:09:14] Tu Le: So it was just an, it was an awestruck moment, but also what do we do? Like, how, how did they get so far ahead and, and how do we catch up? Because most executives, most automotive, traditional automotive executives have no idea about software and hardware, software integration. And so, and user experience, because most automotive companies, their products are product focused, whereas tech companies are user focused.[00:09:45] Tu Le: And in, in the high tech world, everything's an operating expense. In the traditional automotive sector, everything's a capital expense. And so how you think about financing your new products, it's completely different. And, you know, traditional automotive is just very slow, product life cycles of 5, 6, 7 years.[00:10:04] Tu Le: Whereas every tech product you get is new every 10 to 14 months. And so, , there, it's, it wasn't just that the products were higher quality, it, it was also the number of them and the number of competitors. And we've seen. a decline, a sharp decline over the last several years in GM sales in Volkswagen, group sales in Ford sales.[00:10:33] Tu Le: So they've seen this coming, but if we look at how Volkswagen and GM specifically, and Toyota, to a lesser extent have grown and become these global, number one, number Tu, number three automotive players. It's because of the China market. And, and they were making money hand over fist along with their JV partners.[00:10:56] Tu Le: So they, they had no incentive to disrupt themselves.[00:10:59] Bill: They were fat and happy,[00:11:01] Tu Le: Yeah. I want to give Tesla a decent amount of credit because you and I know about this catfish effect because in 2016, so, so Nio, Peng and Li Auto, those companies were established in about 2014, 2015. And they've been, they were struggling for quite some time.[00:11:21] Tu Le: Nio was close to bankruptcy.[00:11:23] Bill: they got rescued by that, provincial government. Right. Or[00:11:26] Tu Le: That's right. Hefei government. Yep. And so if you look at where the hockey stick starts, it's right around 2019. And guess what? Factory opened up in 2019. Exactly. It's exactly. So the first vehicle for the model three, the Made in China model three rolled off in December of 2019.[00:11:48] Tu Le: So Tesla should get a decent amount of credit for bringing a lot of attention to the Chinese EV sector, but also bringing the level of competition up. And that's where we're at currently. Because actually, if you look at the US and European markets, I would say Tesla is aggressively playing offense, but in the Chinese market, they're playing a little bit more defense with the price cuts.[00:12:11] Bill: Well, that, well, that's, so a couple things there. One is, , sort of, I guess the, the traditional carbon manufacturers were also, you know, a bit, been a bit to be, euphemistic behind the curve when it comes to Tesla outside of China. I just wonder though, I mean, I would imagine that the staff and the executives in China for these foreign firms would've been reporting about what was going on.[00:12:36] Bill: Is it just a case of like the, the foreign headquarters not wanting to listen to the local staff or not believing what they were being told, or they just couldn't do it culturally? They just couldn't, even if they understood intellectually, they just couldn't believe that this could be possible.[00:12:52] Tu Le: yes. You know, I think, I think all of the above. I think the speed at which everything changed and we're talking three and a half years effectively.[00:13:03] Bill: like one software update in an American car….[00:13:07] Tu Le: Yeah.[00:13:07] Bill: little facetious, but[00:13:09] Tu Le: And so, , you know, China's the largest, passenger vehicle market in the world. It has been since 2009. United States is a close, there's not, not a very close second, but their second place. But, again, if you are just printing money because of the brand logo on the front of your vehicle, you're not super incentivized to disrupt yourself.[00:13:38] Bill: So classic.[00:13:39] Tu Le: this came sneaking up. So, so I'd like to think that since I've been writing this newsletter for the last five or six years, I'd like to think I kind of saw it coming and I was kind of warning[00:13:51] Bill: and you did. And you, you did. And it was interesting because it just like, people really paying attention said this stuff is happening. But it's just now become this broader, like,oh my God, the Chinese EVs are like amazing. And they're going, they're dominating China and they're, they're coming overseas.[00:14:09] Tu Le: Yeah. And, if I'm being honest and frank, it is a lot of hubris. Like how could a Chinese EV company[00:14:16] Bill: arrogance. Just arrogance and, and, and no, and, and frankly just being patronizing, like you said. How, I mean, how could a Chinese company this, we saw this, right? I mean, you know, didn't we see this with Japanese and Korean cars too in the US[00:14:29] Tu Le: Yeah. Exactly. And you know that when we were living there in 20 10, 20 11, you got into a BYD car. You didn't feel safe. It wasn't very nice. And you're going talk about this later, but you know, there are western car reviewers, Sandy Munro, and Doug DeMuro. Two of them that really think that BYD is building quality products.[00:14:56] Tu Le: Can they be improved? Of course they can, but they're globally competitive right now. We can talk about that a little bit later. But BYD, the other thing that I think is really not given a lot of, of, of attention. Wang Chuanfu the BYD CEO, Li Shufu the Geely founder.[00:15:21] Tu Le: They're as ambitious as Elon[00:15:27] Bill: And as talented.[00:15:29] Tu Le: Yes, yes. Without question. Without question. Now they're not on Twitter or they're not doing these huge marketing, , you know, presentations for new product launches, but guess what? They're, they're out there getting it done.[00:15:43] Bill: Yeah. They're world class executives.[00:15:46] Tu Le: yeah. So, , and I think they're starting to shine a spotlight on some of what they're doing. But now it's now it might be too late. So,[00:15:56] Bill: Interesting. So, , you mentioned Tesla, a couple questions around Tesla, how are they doing now? You sort of said they're on the defensive and then also what, and I think it's related to Tesla and being on the defensive. What is going on with all these price cuts and this sort of, this price war among the EV manufacturers in China?[00:16:15] Tu Le: So let me start with the price cuts. Now, Tesla has never really acted like a traditional automotive company, and I think if we're looking at the media and, and the folks in the analysts that have covered the traditional automotive sector, That's why it's so surprising, but to me it's, it's kind of reacting to the market in an immediate sense.[00:16:37] Tu Le: Okay. Whereas traditional automotive, they would wait a year before they did any major changes, right? And price cuts, they know that in traditional automotive space, if you do a price cut, you're probably never going get that money back from the customer if you raise the price. And so they're very careful with that. With regards to how Tesla is doing.[00:16:59] Tu Le: So Elon has reiterated that. Tesla's goal is 20 million vehicles by 2030. To give you a good idea of how ambitious that is, Toyota was the number one automaker last year globally at around 10 million units. And so for Tesla to get to 20 million by 2030, we'll need to see many more Gigafactories opened up, all around the world.[00:17:26] Tu Le: And we know that the next Gigafactory is going to be in Mexico City. And so that portends a lower price vehicle because the Latin American market and the South American market are not going be able to afford in millions and millions of units a $40,000, $50,000 Tesla vehicle. And so Shanghai is always going be the most important hub for Tesla.[00:17:52] Tu Le: It's going be a domestic consumption hub, but also an export hub.[00:17:55] Bill: hub. Okay.[00:17:56] Tu Le: Export into, , Southeast Asia. They're, they're, they're looking at building in Southeast Asia too. But again, remember if they're getting to 20 million, they need factories all over the place and they need multiple factories all over the place.[00:18:10] Tu Le: And so, , . But if we get, again, if we look at 20 million units, and then this has less to do with Tesla in China, but more to do with Tesla globally, they'll probably need two or three or four products that are what we call in the automotive space, high runners that sell in the millions and millions of vehicles per year.[00:18:32] Tu Le: And the only way they get to that is if they build multiple cars at around 20 to $25,000 because that's when India will be able to get more vehicles, that's when Southeast Asia buys more vehicles because at the 30, 35,000 Southeast Asia can't really afford them in the mass quantities they need to to get to that 20 million units.[00:18:54] Tu Le: And so it'll be interesting to see because Tesla, in lieu of exporting to Europe because of Berlin Giga, now they've announced their most recent announcements they're going be shipping made in China, model 3s and Model Ys to Canada. And so what we'll likely see is unless they're able to get the Model 3 and model Y refreshes done in this year, we'll probably see some more price cuts.[00:19:21] Tu Le: But until they get to the model 2, model one and a half, where they're really, really going increase the sales volume , the excess capacity of Austin, of Berlin ofShanghai is going be a weight around their neck, I think.[00:19:40] Bill: And and interesting and won't, for the sort of emerging markets developing market strategy like Latin America, aren't they going run into BYD and some of these other Chinese firms?[00:19:50] Tu Le: They're kind of running into BYD in China because they've priced the model three so low because you could call them a premium automaker, although to your friend's point, there's not much to the vehicle.[00:20:04] Bill: Not in the model 3. I wouldn't, that's not a premium vehicle[00:20:06] Tu Le: Well, but, but they had pre priced it at, at a premium level initially, but now that it's three and a half years old, they have to price it much more aggressively.[00:20:16] Tu Le: And yes, they're going run into a buzz saw with BYD because one of the highlights of the Shanghai Auto Show was the BYD Seagull., It's a little hatchback, and so it's a smaller car, but it's starting at $12,000.[00:20:32] Bill: looked really cute.[00:20:33] Tu Le: Yeah. And it's going be one of their global vehicles. And so that's going sell in the millions,[00:20:40] Bill: And, and is it,[00:20:40] Tu Le: America and, and, and Southeast Asia, things like[00:20:43] Bill: is it a better vehicle than the model three?[00:20:46] Tu Le: , I haven't driven it yet, but, you know, sitting inside of it, the fit and finish was, was great. And the other thing about the seagull is that BYD was talking about before the end of this year, also utilizing sodium ion batteries in the seagull, which could bring the price down even further. And so if we're looking at a $10,000 legit electric vehicle, then by BYD's going to sell as many as they can make[00:21:19] Bill: Right. And, and other, like the Tesla and other foreign car manufacturers that they can't compete at that price point.[00:21:25] Tu Le: They can't. I, well, you know, , , I, I say this and I've gotten pushback for it, but Tesla or BYD is what Tesla wants to be because BYD builds, or, you know, fabs its own silicon, it builds its own batteries. They sell batteries in supply batteries to Tesla. They also sell supply batteries to Ford in China.[00:21:46] Tu Le: And so they're vertically integrated. Out of all the automakers building EVs, they have the most control over their costs and[00:21:58] Bill: I know the stock has done really well, but does it trade at the same multiple as Tesla does?[00:22:03] Tu Le: Oh, no. Oh no. , but Tesla and Elon have always had a reality distortion[00:22:12] Bill: Yeah. Yeah.[00:22:13] Tu Le: and part of that is Elon's aura for sure. the second part is that western analysts have been generally too lazy to fly to China to see what was really going on.[00:22:25] Bill: during the pandemic they couldn't go. Right. But, but, and now there's, there's, yeah. Now they should be on the ground and I assume they were, they were all over the auto show and, and so maybe they're all updating their models right now.[00:22:38] Tu Le: well, and, and this is another conversation, but if you were part of an American media group, you didn't have to be American. You could be from Hong Kong working at Bloomberg, or you're, you're going have difficulties or your, or Wall Street Journal reporter that wanted to go cover the Shanghai Auto Show.[00:22:58] Tu Le: It was a little bit more difficult for you to get a visa. So there were some challenges with Western, I won't say Western, with American media companies getting those visas. [00:23:10] Bill: , And then, and then onto the, I mean we've been seeing this, I think it started maybe in January timeframe or so, this, this, like these round of price cuts through the industry. Are we seeing the classic sort of evolution of a Chinese industry as it, as it matures where you, you really end up with a, a fighting, you know, margins, compressing, prices dropping, and you know, eventually you see a shakeout.[00:23:36] Bill: But I mean, cuz you know, there, there's no country, I don't think where the price wars can be as brutal as in China.[00:23:43] Tu Le: So competition in China, and you know this well, is[00:23:48] Bill: next level,[00:23:49] Tu Le: Across sectors. Yes. , there are so many brands and the factor that makes the China market different are the SOEs, because the SOEs will always go lower[00:24:02] Bill: because they have subsidies, right?[00:24:04] Tu Le: Yes. And their sole purpose, I won't say sole purpose, but their, one of their primary purposes is to keep people employed and not actually sell vehicles at a profit.[00:24:15] Tu Le: And so there's always that part of it. And every SOE has an EV brand. Okay, will those EV brands make it to international markets? Likely not, but there is going to be a shakeout. There's a lot of weakness in these companies and, there there's just not a lot of capital that from private enterprises that want to invest further into the EV space because it's pretty low margin right now.[00:24:44] Tu Le: There's probably going be six or seven or eight brands that do pretty well long term, and they're also going to. probably make an impact in Europe, BYD obviously being one of them. , and then I would say Zeekr, which is a Gelly brand, they also launched, , the Zeekr X at Shanghai Auto, and that's 190,000 RMB.[00:25:08] Tu Le: And it's about the size of a Volkswagen Golf,[00:25:11] Bill: Geely own Volvo right?[00:25:15] Tu Le: Yep. And so they own Volvo, they own Polestar, they own Lotus. There's going be a lot of Wolf and sheep's clothing that have European branding, but with Chinese characteristics that are going be entering, that have either already entered Europe or, or will be entering Europe this year or next year.[00:25:38] Bill: So that was one of, one of my questions for you was, was how quickly will, do you think these, the, the PRC EV manufacturers will gain shares overseas and in which markets and, and related..and which markets will probably be the most welcoming? It sounds like you think Europe will.[00:25:53] Bill: There'll be some traction in Europe, but also does the charging infrastructure exist for the surge in new EVs in these markets, or are the Chinese going be building out the charging networks?[00:26:05] Tu Le: So in Europe it's a little bit weird because the European Union has declared that in 2035 they will stop the sale of ICE and diesel fuel engine vehicles. Now the German government has pushed for a carve out for clean e-fules, and so you can still, they'll still be able to sell engines or petrol engine vehicles after 2035, but very few and far between. the UK even more aggressive by 2030.[00:26:37] Tu Le: And so if you look at the lineup of products that are supposed to be launched by foreign legacy, whether it's a French, automotive company, a German automotive company, or an Italian automotive company, there's just not a lot of product in the mass market segments currently in Europe. And guess who plays really well and dominates in the mass market price segment?[00:27:05] Tu Le: And we're probably talking sub 40,- 45,000 euro. That's where China Ev Inc lives.[00:27:11] Bill: And these little, and these smaller cars too, right? I mean, most of the world is not like America and SUV addicted.[00:27:18] Tu Le: Right, exactly. There's smaller battery packs, you know, 40, 60, 65 kilowatt hour battery packs that maybe go 250 miles, which is fine for for most driving. I think United States is definitely a different situation because of how much hauling we do. And you recently bought a big SUV because you like the room and space and so you know there's legitimate differences between use cases between Europe and the United States.[00:27:51] Tu Le: But because the walls are closing in on both sides in Europe because of this 2035 date, I think what we'll see is, A lot of Chinese exports. And I had, there was a Reuters article that I, I was just, quoted in this morning that I said The European market will be a pressure release valve for a lot of China, EV Inc.[00:28:12] Tu Le: Because many of those startups will likely see less competition in Europe than they do in China.[00:28:18] Bill: So it’s the classic over capacity release valve where, where they're, they, they're having a hard time competing in China, they're making too much, and then they can effectively push them out to these other markets.[00:28:28] Tu Le: And, and the crazy thing is, Bill, is that I had the, the pleasure of, , heading down to BYD and Shenzhen right before I left, , to come back here. And I test drove about four or five different, EVs or plug-in hybrids from them. And every single one of them were high quality, like would be competitive in the United States at the $25,000, at the $35,000 price point.[00:28:56] Tu Le: They're in 52 markets currently and in Thailand, they're the number one EV maker in Thailand and in Israel, they're the number one EV maker or EV product or EV brand. Their product resonates. And guess what? If you're China EV Inc you're going see BYD in almost every market you enter, which is probably not what you're , you're hoping for.[00:29:24] Bill: Right. No, and, and I mean, they're obviously well, well capitalized and they just have the massive scale now[00:29:32] Tu Le: Let me point to one thing that I think is really important. In 2022, every other brand, every other OEM had problems with supply chain, with covid, with chips. Who are the machines that built hundreds of thousands, , you know, Tesla with I think half a million, almost half a million units in China and BYD with over a million, million two or something like that.[00:29:57] Tu Le: , Tesla and BYD, they were machines. So they have this operational efficiency that even the GMs and, and the legacy autso, the Volkswagens still have problems building these EVs. And so that's another reason why BYD is just crushing it because they can build as many as they sell, whereas there are challenges ffor manufacturing for a lot of these other automakers.[00:30:25] Bill: Right. And so when it comes to Europe, and I think especially say Germany, I wonder if the, the, we aren't heading into a kind of a backlash towards some of the PRC EV makers, just because on the one hand that the German car makers have such a reliance on China and now they're running into problems.[00:30:47] Bill: And two, as you're talking about, we may be on the cusp of a significant, I mean, I think it's already happening, but it may be accelerating a real surge of PRC exports into the EU market and maybe Germany, where they're actually undercutting a lot of the existing German car manufacturers. It seems like that's the kind of mix that could lead, you know, the, the German car lobby's pretty powerful, it just seems like that's a kind of mix that could lead to a, a bit of a backlash. , and re sorry, and we're related to that, and this is, it's a related question, which is, , there've been reports, and I, I think you can say if they're actually accurate, but there've been reports that there have been occasions where notices have gone out that Tesla vehicles were banned from certain areas in China.[00:31:33] Bill: Say where, around where Xi Jinping was making inspection tour or around sensitive sites like military sites because of national security concerns that potentially the Tesla vehicles, their connected vehicles, they could be, , basically setting back, you know, record video or audio, whatever and, and or like other kinds of data that would threaten PRC national security.[00:31:55] Bill: , isn't that argent possibly something that will be used by other lobbying groups or governments that don't want to see Chinese EVs in their countries? They can point to that and say, well, why is your b y D different than a Tesla?[00:32:10] Tu Le: You're absolutely correct on that last statement, bill. The cameras and the sensors and the, the mapping. That's not a Tesla problem. That's a smart connected EV problem. And so they used Tesla as the example in China because they were the volume seller at that time, and they wanted to make an example and point out the American company.[00:32:35] Tu Le: So I think that's an important distinction. But yeah, all again, all of the above. CarlosTavares , who is the CEO of Stellantis he's already cried about some protectionism.[00:32:49] Bill: Lanis is pulling out, aren't they?[00:32:52] Tu Le: yeah, so , they are[00:32:54] Bill: so he can talk, he's speaking freely, or he's bitter. Or,[00:32:57] Tu Le: speaking openly.[00:32:58] Bill: or both. Right.[00:32:59] Tu Le: So this is, this is the conundrum, and this is the CEO's talking out of both sides of the mouths or, or the ones that are speaking openly and freely.[00:33:10] Tu Le: Now anyways, , you know, Carlos has said, it's much more difficult to do business in China, and that's fair, that's a fair statement. But before that, 35 years, you seem to be doing fine. And he has shareholders that he needs to explain their strategies to, but he, he doesn't acknowledge that, you know what, the competition got a lot better and our products didn't.[00:33:37] Tu Le: And so he doesn't point that out. So I think to, to be fair and, and kind of balanced, , we should acknowledge that China EV Inc. just really, really caught up really quickly.[00:33:48] Bill: No, and I mean, and, and there was, there, there was, there was government programs, government subsidies, you know, made in China, you know, 2025. I mean, they, they're, they, these, the Chinese EV makers got a lot of government support, but we all knew that was coming and especially the foreign automakers. They all knew it was happening years ago.[00:34:04] Tu Le: Yeah. And, and again, so these programs started in 2009. Electric vehicle subsidies, hydrogen fuel cell subsidies, and then R&D for battery cell, R&D subsidies came into place. And CATL was nothing, 5, 6, 7 years ago, but there was about a three or four year program where there was a white list of battery cell manufacturers that if you wanted to get the Chinese subsidy, you needed to buy from one of these 17.[00:34:37] Bill: All domestic suppliers[00:34:38] Tu Le: suppliers.[00:34:39] Tu Le: Y just happened to be, just happened[00:34:41] Bill: Coincidentally only PRC battery suppliers.[00:34:44] Tu Le: Just happened to be, but guess what? They saw the writing on the wall or the Chinese government saw the writing on the wall and said, we're going start exporting, so we need to get rid of this list. And this is one of the reasons BYD and CATL last year owned 50% of the market share for LFP batteries and for the foreseeable future Europe and the United States, those legacies, they're going need Chinese batteries to build sub 50,000 US dollars, sub 45,000 Euro EVs.[00:35:16] Tu Le:I'm saying through 2030 probably because to get those mines, the lithium mines or whatever they're trying to put, , in Europe and the United States, that's going take several years to get enough volume to make a difference and then refining capacity because not only does China own about 40% of the mining rights for lithium, they have about 70% of the capacity for refining it.[00:35:41] Tu Le: And so even if there were mines in the United States, that that sourced enough lithium to supply US legacies, it would need to be shipped to China to get refined.[00:35:54] Bill: not dissimilar from rare earths, which aren't rare, but it's the processing that's the challenge. And China dominates there. So on that, on that point about the batteries, can you talk about the deal that Ford cut to basically license CTL technology? It sounds from a corporate perspective like a really smart deal.[00:36:13] Bill: Obviously it has had some real political, , , it's caused a bit of a political fewer[00:36:19] Tu Le: right. So, so currently there are, there's Gotion who had made an announcement about a firm investment into, Michigan. So they're investing their own RMB into building a battery components factory and, and I think components equals battery cell factory. , And, and you probably remember because your next door neighbors with Virginia Youngkin had kind of said they don't want Chinese money investing in Virginia.[00:36:52] Tu Le: Right. , so I, my the, what I'd heard was the ror was that Youngen wanted a bigger investment from Gotion and he didn't get it. And so he tried to kill to birds with one stone by saying, yes, we're not taking Chinese money. And, you know, governor Whitmer, gladly took it because that means jobs for, for the United States.[00:37:12] Tu Le: And so what you're referring to with Ford is also a Tesla deal where Ford and Tesla are going to build battery cell factories. Ford’s going build it in Michigan. and Tesla, I'm not sure if they've announced where they're going be billed, but they basically are going license the, the IP from, from CATL.[00:37:33] Tu Le: So there are no CATL employees that build battery cells in the United States for on, on Ford's behalf. And so the lesson to me is that if you want American Jobs, don't use RMB to create them. It’s better to go around the Inflation Reduction Act than to try to get American jobs using Chinese capital.[00:38:00] Bill: And so the way that, that the sort of the licensing of the CATL technology, you're saying that's the way to get around the Inflation Reduction Act.[00:38:09] Tu Le: yeah, so I've been hearing that Manchin is going be pushing back on that as well, but currently to my understanding, the Gotion deal will go through CFIUS, but the Ford and the Tesla deal with CATL will not.[00:38:23] Bill: Okay. So, and,[00:38:24] Tu Le: not any money being invested in the US from CATL[00:38:28] Bill: and, and I guess the question, I mean, again, I looked at the sort of about that licensing, the CATL technology. I mean, I don't understand, is the national security risk that people talk about the fact that these, these, these firms will be relying on Chinese battery technology.[00:38:46] Bill: It's not like they're going be like slipping in secret code or like chips to transmit back in the technology they're licensing in the batteries. Are they, I'm just, I'm just curious like why it's such a seen as such a now security problem. It seems like a pretty clever solution to a problem. The problem being that the US doesn't make these things in any kind of the vole that these car companies need it for.[00:39:08] Tu Le: Right? I think the real risk Bill is that. We would get addicted to Chinese battery cells and the pricing that come with it, and never wanna move to domestic because CATL BYD, Gotion, they'll always go lower.[00:39:25] Bill: The US and again I do understand that, that there is pushback because they're able to price that way because of all the subsidies, because of the, you know, and so of course now the US is pursuing an, we're a little bit late, right? We're in like made in USA 2050 at this point, right?[00:39:44] Bill: I mean, it's a little, I mean, but No, but we are like, we've sort of, I mean, I think, you know, the National Security Advisor Sullivan's recent speech, which was really a sort of, this, this a real shift in looking at sort of economic policy, and in many ways it's, you know, they didn't come out and say it, but it's like, cause China's actually looks like they've been successful with some of this stuff, right?[00:40:03] Bill: And I think this is why, like the car industry is certainly one of those areas, right?[00:40:09] Tu Le: So, I have a European friend that told me you cannot call the EU a socialist region anymore because of the Inflation Reduction Act . But to me, as you know, as the Homer, if I'm putting my Homer Detroit in US hat on, it's better late than never.[00:40:28] Bill: right?[00:40:28] Tu Le: , Because I know, and I think you know, that, if we let them, they'll flood the market.[00:40:38] Tu Le: , with EVs, with batteries, , and Americans love, made in America, they love that story. They love that theme. It's the second most important thing to them. The first being price. And so if there's a quality product that a Chinese manufacturer is able to provide to an American consumer, You better believe that that American consumer will buy it.[00:41:04] Tu Le: And so, , there, there needs to be some sort of protectionism or the, the US legacies don't stand a chance[00:41:11] Bill: We saw this with Japan in the, in the early eighties, right? Ultimately the US cut a deal with the, with the Japanese and forced the Japanese effectively forced the Japanese to set up factories in the US and, you know like my wife has a BMW that was made in South Carolina.[00:41:29] Bill: Right. And, and, and, and so I mean, are we, are, should we expect to see like BYD trying to do a manufacturing facility in the US or is that just not politically possible?[00:41:39] Tu Le: I don't think there's any doubt that China, EV Inc. will build and set up a shop in Europe and in, in, I won't say the United States, I'll say North America because we have that free trade agreement[00:41:51] Bill: Right,[00:41:52] Tu Le: So, , if you think of. it from a strategic level. , if we believe that Tesla is going to eventually build a cheaper model 2, in Mexico City, for North America, for Latin America, for South America, there's going be a lot of suppliers in and around that area already.[00:42:12] Tu Le: And so if I was a BYD or an xPeng, I would consider opening in Mexico City because there's already their suppliers, it's free trade with the United States.[00:42:25] Bill: logistic networks are already set up and.[00:42:27] Tu Le: and the politics might not be as nuclear as if they opened up shop in the United States. But I will say this, Bill, if BYD approached the governor of Mississippi or Alabama or South Carolina and said, I'm going write you a 5 billion dollar check.[00:42:47] Tu Le: and I'm going hire a bunch of South Carolinians or Alabamans and Mississippians. You, you don't think that that governor would take that money? Of course he would. But again, this is one of those things we're, we're moving towards an election year, and I think China bashing is kind of en vogue on both sides of the aisle.[00:43:09] Tu Le: , but we have to separate that out with, you know, at the United States, you and I, we work hard for our money. And I want the best product regardless of, of where it's, where it's built or[00:43:22] Bill: and and cars are getting a lot more expensive in the US.[00:43:25] Tu Le: Oh yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, , , do I think that the United States can catch up or the US legacies, I do.[00:43:35] Tu Le: I do, but I think it's where the Europe might be the odd man out because here's a question I've posed to many German auto executives, you know, , I've asked them, okay, name me five globally relevant Chinese technology companies. No problem. We can do that, right? , US name me five globally relevant US technology companies.[00:44:00] Tu Le: Okay, no problem. We can do that now. Name me, five European , globally relevant technology companies. And so that software, that capability that Europe doesn't have, I think it's going create this buy situation. And you either gotta buy it in China, from Chinese technology companies, and then when you go outside China, there's a rest of the world strategy.[00:44:25] Tu Le: This is going really create a lot of anxiety and headaches and sleepless nights for the European leadership of these automotive[00:44:35] Bill: And what about the Japanese and Korean auto firms? I mean, the Japanese market is, is still even after all these years, right? US cars have very low share in Japan and Korea, right? I mean, they're fairly protected markets are the Chinese EVs can have much chance of breaking into those markets.[00:44:51] Tu Le: So, , I think so because again, they can produce these vehicles at such a cost that the Japanese, you know, Toyota doesn't want to play in the 10,000 US dollar price range, 13, 14 US thousand dollars price range.[00:45:12] Bill: In, in Japan, they, they do that in like Southeast Asia, don't they? Or in other markets.[00:45:16] Tu Le: they do, but, , their global strategy on product planning has really been slow. Just like in China and BYD there's a company called Neta. There's a couple of other companies Chinese EV companies that are, have started to export into Thailand, BYD just announced that they're going be building a factory in Vietnam as well now.[00:45:44] Tu Le: And so they have a kit factory in India, BYD does. And so these companies are already there. And what the Thailand and the Vietnams and the Indias…so I'll give you a good example. India became the fourth largest passenger vehicle market in the world last year,, behindChina, United States, Japan, and Germany or something like that, or surpassed Germany.[00:46:10] Tu Le: And so, , I think they're on almost 2 million units. But Modi, he knows he can't stay in power if. It's polluted like it is in, in those Indian cities. And so in order to get rid of that pollution, he's going have to get clean energy vehicles. Most of them are going be mopeds. But as the per capita income increases, people are going wanna buy cheaper passenger vehicles, right?[00:46:33] Tu Le: And so if Modi's to stay in power, he's going really have to get rid of that pollution eally quickly. And how do you do that? You do that through electric mopeds and electric passenger vehicles and commercial vehicles. And the only game in town at that price point is still going be China EV Inc.[00:46:51] Bill: It's really fascinating because I, I mean, so I, I would not be surprised then if we start seeing all many more governments pushing out subsidy programs. I have no in inside knowledge, but I will be shocked if we don't start seeing like a more of a concerted campaign in some of these markets from various.[00:47:14] Bill: Lobbyists, politicians around the national security implications of these connected cars.[00:47:18] Tu Le: Yeah, so,[00:47:19] Bill: I think that's going sort of be the, what, what a, what some people see as kind of the Trump card around sort of why, you know, why you can't, you know, and, and, and again, I think it's like we can, that's a much longer discussion, but, but it, it, it, because it, because from a sort of a, purely a actual product and price perspective, it sounds like this tsunami is coming that most markets and most car manufacturers just can't compete with.[00:47:45] Tu Le: so your point is valid because right now Chinese exports into Europe and the United or Europe are still fairly small, but, but BYD alone said they want to ship 800,000 vehicles to foreign markets this year. The United States last year bought a total of 800,000 EVs. So that gives you kind of ,[00:48:13] Bill: sense of the scale,[00:48:14] Tu Le: the context, right?[00:48:15] Tu Le: And so yeah, scale. So the EU and the United States have different takes on private data security, data privacy and, and, and where it needs to reside and all that stuff. This is their opportunity to get in front of it. Before this, like you said, tsunami arrives, right? But remember, MG is an SAIC brand, but with British heritage.[00:48:38] Tu Le: And so they're already, and, and the other thing that's really, , interesting, Bill, is that Volkswagen announced that they're going be shipping Chinese made Volkswagens into Europe, and Ford has announced that they're going be shipping Chinese made Lincoln Aviators into the United States. And so in these, in these instances Bill, the calls are coming from inside the house.[00:49:16] Tu Le: To me, the ev and we haven't even talked about autonomous vehicles because that's the real, you know, technical and data intensive sector that is going play a huge role in the, in the next 15, 18 years because there's a number of Chinese autonomous vehicle startups[00:49:40] Bill: they pretty good now?[00:49:42] Tu Le: man. I got into the Baidu and level four with, with Duncan, of course.[00:49:47] Tu Le: And, , yeah, there was no, no driver that. And so I've done that in San Francisco and I've done that in, in China. Now I'm probably one of, you know, , , the few people that have,[00:49:58] Bill: This is like the, the Baidu taxi.[00:50:01] Tu Le: yeah, in Yizhuang. So it's South Beijing and they have this, , this like zone where they're testing vehicles. And so I was lucky during my trip, my three week trip, I got into four robo taxis in China, just China.[00:50:15] Tu Le: So there's four of them, but we don't get any kind of coverage on these four. We only talk about Waymo. We only talk about Cruise, Motional to a lesser extent and or certain western companies. But this is going be a global showdown. And what China AV Inc and US AV Inc. are going do is likely going to compete for Europe, compete for Southeast Asia, compete for, the Middle East, from the standpoint of carving out where their autonomous vehicles are going be launched and pilots are going be,[00:50:50] Bill: It, it, it's interesting and I wonder if it'll be like, if, if the country already has the Huawei Telecom network, then the Chinese AVS will be welcome. And the ones that have basically pushed out Huawei, it'll be this big bifurcation. And the ones that don't allow Huawei probably won't allow the China AVs.[00:51:06] Tu Le: I don't think there's any doubt that there's going be some sort of bifurcation. I'll give you a quick example. Bill. , GM acquired Cruise, I want to say about seven years ago or six years ago for over a billion dollars. And you, you would think that for that type of investment they'd make Cruise their autonomous vehicle arm globally.[00:51:27] Tu Le: but last year they invested, I want to say 400 million US dollars in a Chinese autonomous vehicle company called, Menta. And so if they thought that they could use Cruise in China, why would they invest 400 million in the Chinese autonomous vehicle[00:51:49] Bill: They're smart. They, they get it right. They are. And so that way you play, you can play both market, you can play sort of the bifurcation of the of the global market.[00:51:58] Tu Le: yeah. And we'll let the politicians decide how,[00:52:01] Bill: We got our, we have our hedge, right? We, we we're going be able to, that's pretty smart actually.[00:52:07] Tu Le: Exactly. And so I think that as, so, so the, the one thing that's kind of the current wild card is that ADAS or advanced driving assist systems, level Tu, level three, where it's like that smart cruise control or where you can take your hands off the wheels for a little bit as long as you're looking at the,[00:52:27] Bill: or if you're a Tesla driver, think you can like watch a movie while you're driving and then,[00:52:31] Tu Le: Well, yeah. What? But that only[00:52:34] Bill: Don't do that at home, please.[00:52:35] Tu Le: That only happens in the US. That doesn't happen in China, as you know. But I think that's going really push that whole data thing, right? Because now vehicles come with radar, they come with sensors, to your point about the smart EV. So it's, it's coming faster than most governments think.[00:52:53] Tu Le: And so they really probably in the next 18 months, really need to get in front of regulatory, , or kind of regulations and how they want to deal with that stuff. So[00:53:03] Bill: That would require a thoughtful, methodical government regulation and political environment, which I'm, I'm not, maybe that'll happen in the EU. I don't know. I'm not super optimistic that we'll be there in the US, but I could be wrong. So a couple last, a couple final questions. I know, I know you're busy.[00:53:20] Bill: I'll let you go, but I, I, , , you know, I, I like watching the sort of the car review videos on YouTube. I'm a big fan of Doug DeMuro, who has like, I don't know, five and a half million subscribers, something. And so about a, a few weeks ago, or maybe a couple months ago, , BYD, which obviously has a very smart marketing department.[00:53:39] Bill: You know, they're, they're not for sale in the US but they got a BYD Han vehicle to California and he was one of the people they offered it to, to review and test drive. He test drives everything and he's pretty quirky, pretty funny, can be pretty critical and. The takeaway, like he, the car had some quirks, but I think from BYD’s perspective, they must have been ecstatic with this review because it was basically like, wow, this is a really good car.[00:54:09] Bill: There's a lot of potential here. Maybe we're going see a lot more Chinese cars because they actually can make really good cars. Which again, was sort of this eureka, not eureka moment, but like a, a real re it was really revelatory because it's like the old days where the assumption was, you know, the Korean cars were crappy and the Japanese cars were crappy, you know, way back in the day and they were for a while and then all of a sudden they just like rolled over the US auto manufacturers.[00:54:32] Bill: And so I think this review was sort of this wake up call for a lot of people, and especially for him that actually the Chinese, and of course people in China know this and like people like you know this. But this was a much sort of broader market messaging and kudos to BYD for really targeting the right people to review their cars.[00:54:49] Tu Le: and, and, , Sandy Monroe is also a, a very, he's, he's long China EVs as well. Sandy Monroe is famous for, breaking down or, or, , deconstructing vehicles and then selling that information for creating efficiencies and manufacturing to the OEMs. So they can save money. He’s old school. He's, he's here in Michigan and he's very well known in the industry.[00:55:16] Tu Le: He's, he's very, , very positive on Chinese EVs as well. So I think, , again, people are starting to wake up that these are competitive products, competitively priced, and it'll take time because there are two emotional buys in a person's life, a house and a car, and you, although an iPhone might cost you $1,200, ,if you lose it, you'll just go buy another one.[00:55:49] Tu Le: It takes hours of research before you actually go buy a car. And so the Chinese EV manufacturers know this and they'll be patient when it comes to kind of creating a brand, creating that awareness, determining what the positioning is in each of these markets. US market, German market, Italian market. And again, most won't be successful, but there will be 5, 6, 7 brands depending on the market that will be.[00:56:16] Tu Le: And I think the Chinese EV manufacturer, generally speaking, have nothing but patience because of the flexibility they're allowed by being successful in, in the Chinese market. Where Li Xiang, who's Li Auto’s founder. . He said by 2025 there should be an 80% take rate. And last year alone there were 22 million vehicles sold in China.[00:56:43] Tu Le: So 80%, if 80% of those by 2025 are EVs.[00:56:47] Bill: 17 million, 18 millions thereabouts.[00:56:49] Tu Le: So there's plenty of, of, of room.[00:56:51] Bill: more because the market will grow too. Yeah.[00:56:52] Tu Le: Exactly. So there's plenty of space to make money in China alone. So they'll have patience in Europe. And Nio has already said that they're going be entering the market by 2025. B Y D I don't think are going be waiting much longer than that either.[00:57:08] Tu Le: So we'll, we'll start to see them in the US for sure[00:57:11] Bill: Well, I'll just wait and see who does the first Super Bowl ad, right? No, I mean, I'm not joking though. Right. That'll be a real tell. I mean, cuz that'll be like they're here. Like this is the, this is that moment. And you know, in, in some ways, if you are, if you're like, you know, the car advertising industry in the US is, is huge.[00:57:27] Bill: A lot of media companies, you know, TV networks, they rely on, on car advertising. They'll love the Chinese companies coming into the market cuz they're going have to spend a huge amount of money building their brands.[00:57:40] Tu Le: Yeah. And, and I should , also mention, you probably already know this, is that Zeekr will be IPOing in the US later this year. So, or at least that's what they said. , so, so I think not only will there be Nio, xPeng and Li Auto, Zeekr should be joining them very soon[00:57:58] Bill: Interesting. And they, and they, they've had a good, some of them did well, they haven't done so well lately. I think the price cuts seem to be hurting the stock prices. Am I correct?[00:58:05] Tu Le: Yeah, yeah, they are. And you know, some of them are, are, xPenng and Nio have had some operational challenges. Li Auto has been crushing it in the China market, but they're solely focused on China for now. So I think that kind of shields them a little bit more. , and they have, they've, they've gotten some amazing products as well, so, so yeah.[00:58:24] Bill: right, so one last question. So while, while you're at the auto show, or Tu questions actually one. What was your favorite car that you saw? , three questions. Sorry. So what was your favorite car? Is the BYD Yangwang? Does it look exactly like the Land Rover defender? At least from the, on the outside.[00:58:41] Bill: , and then three is if money were no object, would you buy a Rolls Royce or would you buy the top of the line red flag hongqi[00:58:49] Tu Le: Oh[00:58:49] Bill: which look pretty badass these days, I gotta say,[00:58:53] Tu Le: So answer to number one, , and I'm, I'm going keep the exotics out of it because, you know, I'm a car guy and I love the, love the exotics cuz if I had a choice, I would just get a, you know, a an M%. But the car that I really thought. Looked really good was the BYD Song L and it was a concept car that that'll be launching, I think later this year.[00:59:20] Tu Le: I was super curious. It didn't get the, the, the, the windows were blacked out, so we didn't get to see the interior, but the Song L , was what I thought would look really, really good.[00:59:29] Bill: Is it, is it a sedan? What is it? Or is it like more of a sports[00:59:32] Tu Le: kind of like a small crossover. , little bit like an SUV, but not really. So kinda like, like, like a little hatchback.[00:59:42] Tu Le: And then your second question, , yes, the U9 looks exactly Well, I, I'll just say silhouettes. , just like the defender. And so they had two Yangwang cars, the U8 and U9, if I'm mixing them up, , my apologies. The U eight I believe is the, the sports car.[01:00:05] Bill: okay.[01:00:05] Tu Le: then the U9 is the SUV.[01:00:08] Tu Le: There was about five or six people deep on the, the SUV and there's like one or Tu people deep on the sports car. So everybody[01:00:17] Bill: I mean, it looks like a nice car, but, but it definitely looks inspired from the, , British now India owned, , land Rover line.[01:00:24] Tu Le: yes. And , well, and and you should know because you, you see, see it every day now. Right. , and, and I got to see a couple of, of those disguised mules of the SUV of the Yangwang SUV while I was in, in i d headquarters. , last question, I I, I love that home chi man.[01:00:45] Bill: thing look great, right,[01:00:46] Tu Le: end is just mean looking and oh man.[01:00:50] Tu Le: Now the interior's a little cheesy, but it is such a unique car and it just is really badass. Right.[01:00:57] Bill: be fun to drive around Detroit, wouldn't it?[01:01:00] Tu Le: yes. The, you would get so many stares, like this is the coolest thing ever. So that's one of my, one of my goals is to kinda like import a, like an old school. Not one of the new home[01:01:12] Bill: Although the old schools are Yeah, no, they're, they're, they're, , they're pretty impressive. So, ,[01:01:16] Tu Le: So[01:01:17] Bill: great. Well, thank you for your time. Any, anything else you want to add or, I mean, we've, we've talked about a lot.[01:01:21] Tu Le: Yeah, no, I Maybe, maybe we can make this a regular thing cuz you know that it's going be changing. Changing,[01:01:27] Bill: Yes, absolutely. Love[01:01:28] Tu Le: be talking about all this kind of stuff cuz , you know, Beijing auto show is just around the corner, man,[01:01:34] Bill: Are you going?[01:01:34] Tu Le:I'll be there for sure. I'll be there for sure. I plan on, you know, well, you know, we have family ties.[01:01:42] Bill: D the other auto shows around the world matter anymore?[01:01:47] Tu Le: not so much I think[01:01:49] Bill: Amazing.[01:01:50] Tu Le: because even, even in Europe, the, the Chinese brands dominated. . Right. And I went to Detroit last year, and it was just, okay, I mean, I, I, I wasn't that impressed, so, which is unfortunate, but maybe the IRA will make, , the Detroit Auto[01:02:10] Bill: protectionism, baby industrial policy. Right.[01:02:13] Tu Le: Yeah, man. It's a jobs program, right?[01:02:16] Bill: learn. Learn from the, learn from the PRC on. , well look, thank you. So Tu Lee, this has been great. He runs Sino Auto Insights. , I'll put some links in. He has a great newsletter, a great podcast. Your Twitter spaces is weekly or what is that?[01:02:29] Tu Le: It's weekly. Yep. So[01:02:31] Bill: And ,[01:02:31] Tu Le: can find me, you can find me at @SinoAutoInsight without an S so, , my Twitter handle.[01:02:36] Bill: And I'll put all this on the show notes. So thanks again for your time. This is really great and I've learned a lot about the auto industry. Really appreciate it.[01:02:42] Tu Le: thanks for having me, Bill. Let's, let's catch up soon.[01:02:45] Bill: Absolutely 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

Episode Notes: Tania Branigan and I discuss her excellent new book “Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution”. Tania writes editorials for the Guardian and spent seven years as its China correspondent, reporting on politics, the economy, and social changes. We overlapped in Beijing and became friends. I have also published an excerpt from the book here. You can purchase the book on bookshop.org or on Amazon. The audio edition will be available from Tantor starting 7/11/23 wherever audiobooks are sold.Links:China's Cultural Revolution remembered by artist Xu Weixin - video | The Guardian2012 - China's Cultural Revolution: portraits of accuser and accused | The GuardianXilin Wang: Music by a Survivor | Hamburg International Music Festival - YouTubeWang Xilin ( 王西麟 ): Yunnan Tone Poem (1963) - YouTubeTranscript:[00:00:00] Bill: Welcome back to the occasional Sinocism podcast. I know I've been absent for a while, and now that I do the Weekly Sharp China podcast, I've realized I like podcasting. So we'll be recording more Sinocism episodes with guests I think are really interesting.[00:00:11] Bill: Today. We are very lucky to have Tania Branigan to talk about her excellent new book Red Memory: The After Lives of China's Cultural Revolution. As Tania writes, it is impossible to understand China today without understanding the Cultural Revolution. That is something I agree with wholeheartedly. So much so that I even wrote my grad school thesis on Mao badges.[00:00:30] Bill: I will also be running an excerpt from her book in the coming days, which is released in the UK already and will come out on May 9th in the United States. Tania writes editorials for the Guardian and spent seven years as its China correspondent reporting on politics, the economy, and social changes.[00:00:45] Bill: She lives in London. Welcome Tania, and congratulations on this great book. [00:00:50] Tania: Thank you so much for having me on.[00:00:51] Bill: Oh, it's my pleasure. It's great to see you. It's been it's been a few years and I appreciate it. I got an advance read of the book last year and it [00:01:00] really is it really is, I think, an important book and an important contribution.[00:01:03] Bill: So can you, just for the listeners, can you just talk a bit about your background? So when you first started working in China and what you did when you were there. [00:01:12] Tania: So I came out to China in 2008 just ahead of the Olympics, right at the start of what turned out to be an incredibly news packed year, as you may recall, right?[00:01:22] Tania: And I had never particularly wanted to be a foreign correspondent per se, but I just felt that China was the story of our time, really. Which is only proof to be truer perhaps as time has gone on. And because it's a pretty small bureau there were never more than two of us, max. And quite often there was one of me, I was covering absolutely everything.[00:01:44] Tania: So from natural disasters through to politics, through to culture, business even very occasionally when I couldn't help hit sport. But I became particularly fascinated by this topic and by [00:02:00] China's more recent history, [00:02:02] Bill: one question on your time there. When you arrived, was it already past the Wenchuan earthquake?[00:02:07] Tania: No. And in fact that was one of the sort of formative moments, for me reporting on, yeah, [00:02:15] Bill: it's 15 years next in two weeks. It's crazy. [00:02:18] Tania: It's hard to believe it's gone past so fast. I still think about those parents who lost kids. [00:02:24] Bill: And that, no, it's terrible. Terrible [00:02:29] Bill: So what led you to this book?[00:02:33] Tania: You did actually, as I say in, as I say in the book, I probably wouldn't have written it without you. So I was obviously aware of the Cultural Revolution. I knew something about it. I'd read a little around it. But then it was just when I had that lunch with you and then over coffee, you started telling me about your father-in-law and about going to try to find his body, which I feel is probably a story actually [00:03:00] at this point, that you should.[00:03:00] Tania: Tell rather than me. [00:03:02] Bill: And just for listeners the, I actually tried to have my wife be a special guest but she didn't want to do it, but Tania has interviewed her. I'll put a link in, into the story. I think we you did that great story about the artist Xu Weixin 徐唯辛, which maybe we can talk about too.[00:03:20] Bill: But no, sadly, my. Like many Chinese families people had horrible experiences in the Cultural Revolution. My father-in-law killed himself in 1967 1968 when my wife was like a year old, a year and a half old. And it, it just, it was a, he did it in Miyun outside of Beijing and involved a train.[00:03:47] Bill: And so we went. We had a family member a brother of his who was dying, who came back to say goodbye, and the family went out to this train embankment with this idea that maybe they could dig up the [00:04:00] bones and no one could figure out remember where it happened. Someone went to the village and found an old lady who remembered, and the old lady's warning was just be careful because that time that year, a lot of people jumped in front of train.[00:04:15] Bill: So just make sure you get the right bones. It was just like, oh my God. It was just like this collective ..I mean it was just, it was quite chilling, but it was also like, this is what every so many people of a certain age in China bear these kinds of memories. [00:04:34] Tania: And so that I think was really what struck me.[00:04:37] Tania: Obviously the sort of the cruelty and the loss and the fact that so many people are still living with loss now. And then as you said, the fact that the villagers were matter of fact about it. I remember you saying, they were sympathetic in some ways, but just uncomprehending of your mission in another way.[00:04:59] Tania: And [00:05:00] I think in many ways it was the fact that it was so commonplace, really, that stuck with me because there were so many horror stories you hear from the Cultural Revolution, horrific atrocities that have taken place, but here was a loss, which in a way was sort of typical and that people were still living with the consequences of.[00:05:25] Tania: And so I remember Carol saying to me, You know that even though she was now a mother herself, she couldn't imagine what it would be like to have a father, that there was this kind of space in her life and she couldn't imagine it being filled. And I think that really said so much about the way that people are still living with the consequences all these years on.[00:05:50] Bill: And it really, I think, and it's how people process lost and process the anger and the grief and so much. A lot of it is repressed and we've [00:06:00] seen cycles over the years of expressions or people trying to express, we had right after Xi Jmi came into power, I think one of the, one of the earliest red guards trying to make an apology.[00:06:10] Bill: And, it angered Xi Jinping. It's one of those things where in many ways there were periods where there's been an allowance or it's been allowed to talk about it and then it gets pulled back and you can't really talk about it. And I think we're now one of those periods, but back to where we were talking about it, it was also really around that, around the artist Xu Weixin and what he was doing.[00:06:37] Tania: That's right. . And so you suggested I go off to see him, which was an extraordinary experience because he has this, or had this studio full of around a hundred paintings and they are just immense. It's, I think it's quite hard for people who haven't seen them to imagine them, isn't it?[00:06:53] Tania: Because they're. So daunting when you look at them, they're two and a half meters tall. They're monochrome. [00:07:00] [00:07:00] Bill: And you, I have you did a video for The Guardian. I'll put that in the show notes for people. We've been there. We took our kids cuz my wife's dad and her grandparents were in it.[00:07:10] Bill: So three, three of her family members are in it. And they are, you went there and then were you in Beijing for his show or you missed, you were, you came after? [00:07:17] Tania: No, I came after. And of course that was the only show that he had on the mainland. Of these works we should probably explain. Yes, go ahead.[00:07:25] Tania: It's a series of a hundred portraits of people who were caught up in the Cultural Revolution. And so some of them are obviously very famous figures, Mao himself and others from the era, but many of them are also ordinary people who were just Swept up in it all. And there are people who are clearly recognized as being perpetrators, people who are clearly recognized as being victims, but of course many people were both as well.[00:07:55] Bill: And it was interesting he found some of the more ordinary people because he put out a call on social [00:08:00] media. For people to, if you're interested, and that's actually one of my, one of my wife's cousins sent in a bunch of information and he picked, he said, oh, this is an interesting story, or this is a sad story.[00:08:11] Bill: And he did it. So I actually, we did go to his show. It was at the, today, if people lived in Beijing. Remember the Today Art Museum, museum down in the the Pinguo apartment complex down south of Guomao Qiao. And we went opening day and it was packed. And then it was like, that's it. There was a little bit of coverage and then it was gone.[00:08:34] Bill: And I don't think the show lasted very long. It was it, but it was really moving to be there because it was just packed with all these people who, it wasn't like your typical sort of Beijing art show back in the sort of go-go years. It was just, it was a really remarkably moving and disturbing show.[00:08:56] Tania: And I think that's what's so fascinating, isn't it? Because it shows that [00:09:00] there is that appetite for recalling, for looking back at this time. You see it again with the Cultural Revolution Museum that was set up on the outskirts of Shantou where when it first opened, there was actually quite an influx.[00:09:15] Tania: Of visitors and then there was obviously a bit of a panic and the ruling goes out no more coverage in such Chinese media. Thank you very much. And the signposts are taken down and so it slows down to a trickle. [00:09:28] Bill: And you visited that museum, right? Yes. [00:09:33] Tania: As best I could, because by the time I got up there, it had been hastily locked up.[00:09:38] Tania: But it's a very small museum with a very big sort of memorial. Garden around it with sort of statues and statues of victims and these very big sort of walls with pictures engraved on them and so forth which have now been covered up with propaganda posters and [00:10:00] so forth[00:10:00] Bill:. Ah, and I wonder what it looks like now, because it does seem, it not does seem, it is true.[00:10:06] Bill: Xi Jinping has very clearly. Has made it clear that, while he, everything he's doing is the opposite of a Cultural Revolution, mass movement. It's also very clear that. That part of the, that part of the PRC history, the to up the Mao era, including through cult through Cultural Revolution.[00:10:26] Bill: There is no reopening of the sort of official verdict on the Cultural Revolution and Mao's mistakes. Look forward, move on, don't look back. [00:10:36] Tania: Absolutely. Which obviously has always really been the Party’s belief. So even when the official verdict was drafted in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, in the aftermath of Mao's death Deng says very clearly to the people drafting it the point of this is to get people to unite and look ahead. In other words, it's not that kind of [00:11:00] memorialization where you say, Let's draw up a verdict on this that the nation can keep looking back to and remembering and using to make sure this doesn't happen again. It's about saying, let's draw a line under this and then we can all move on.[00:11:13] Tania: So the Party obviously hasn't changed that judgment, that it was a catastrophe that it was an error and so forth, but, it definitely doesn't want people to dwell on it. And as we've seen over time the subject's been more or less sensitive and I would say history generally has become both more important and more sensitive since 2012.[00:11:35] Bill: Yes. One of the things I hear people talk about culture evolution as It why it doesn't matter. It's in the past, and especially like, why do you foreigners keep bringing up? It doesn't matter. We have to look forward. You've talked to so many people. You did this amazing book. How do you react to that? I. [00:11:59] Tania: I understand where [00:12:00] that comes from and I think there is a sort of justified question in the eyes of some people, which is particularly when you saw this number of books following Wild Swans. It seems as if there were a lot of these books coming out in the west.[00:12:15] Tania: And I think people felt, what is this fascination with Maoist trauma when you are not willing to look at your own past and at the less savory aspects of that, whether that be the opium walls or slavery or whatever. So I understand where that comes from. And I was very conscious when I wrote the book that I didn't want it to be voyeuristic.[00:12:38] Tania: I didn't want it to be about trying to find the worst things that had happened. It was much more for me about exploring what it means to people within China. And I suppose that would be my response, which is that a lot of Chinese people as your account of the exhibition being packed out shows a lot of Chinese people do care about this, [00:13:00] even if they're often reluctant to talk about it and they are interested, they want to know, or they want to be able to reflect upon this.[00:13:09] Bill: Yeah. And it is also, I guess with the passage of time, the next generation, the folks in their sort of thirties, forties it does it. They don't even know in some ways unless there's some passing down in inside families. [00:13:27] Tania: Absolutely. And in fact, as you know people are often so reluctant to speak about it.[00:13:32] Tania: When I started. Looking at this, I thought it was more about political repression and about how people aren't allowed to talk about the past in, except in certain ways. And obviously that is a huge factor, but actually it just became clear to me how much the personal trauma had affected people and how much of it was about people being unwilling or simply feeling unable to speak.[00:13:56] Tania: And so I think for the people who do return to the past, and that's what sort of is striking about the people in red memory. They're all people who chose to look at that history in one way or another, or keep it alive in some way. That's a really unusual thing, and I think it's not necessarily that they want to hark back to the past, but that they feel they have to, or that it's inescapable in some way. And so I suppose part of my sort of response to why do people keep talking about this is that our pasts matter and they define us. And in the same way that it's really important for us, we are seeing people looking back upon slavery. And the fact that, particularly if you grew up in Britain, you grew up being told, it's all about the abolition of the slave trade and you don't really learn anything about how important Britain was in creating this right system of industrialized slavery.[00:14:54] Tania: So in the same way that we need to go back and revisit our past, if we are to understand ourselves and who we are as a nation I think that has to be done. And the silence in China has been so profound that's, that I think many people there feel this urge to address it, even if they sometimes don't quite know why.[00:15:16] Bill: That's the thing is there're just millions and millions of human tragedies, right? And so you can abstract it away into sort of this broader political question in history but as I think you bring out in the book, and as you just said, it's on an individual basis, it's just there's so many human tragedies and so much pain and so much grief and so much anger and so few ways to express it.Tania: Yeah, absolutely. Bill: And over time, I've, I. We see it on a daily basis because my mother-in-law lives with us. And you just, we've, anyway, just, you just see how people have to, you have to survive and you have to deal with stuff, and you have to internalize stuff. And it is a remarkable [00:16:00] I don't know.[00:16:02] Bill: It just it's just that generation had so much trauma. Lots of people are fine and deal with it, but they're just it's just a, I don't know. It's why, like I said earlier, I, when I was there in the early nineties I got into trying to understand the whole Mao Badge phenomenon because for me it was like, it was just a sort of an entry point into trying to understand this just collective insanity. And how does a society go to just become basically insane for several years? [00:16:34] Tania: I think you put your finger on something important there as well beause you talk about it as a collective insanity. And that's one of the issues one of the sort of Sinologists who's looked at this says, it's a collective trauma and therefore you need some kind of collective resolution.[00:16:51] Tania: And so even when people do address it as individuals, It's very hard to try and make any sense of it or come to terms with it without having any sort of broader social reckoning or even recognition really of what happened. [00:17:08] Bill: Yeah, and I don't think, clearly in the current trends, it's not gonna happen.Tania: Absolutely[00:17:14] Bill:And the Xi Jinping, his family had their own traumas individually and as a family in the Cultural Revolution and around the Cultural Revolution. And they've obviously, they've dealt with it and they're moving forward. And so it's in some ways I can't imagine he's that sympathetic.[00:17:33] Tania: look at all the. All the sort of the leadership of China over recent years who had all gone through it, endured it in some way or another. The Party elders who had devoted their lives and sacrificed so much to the cause of the revolution only to be devoured by it. And then somehow coming to terms with that and believing that the answer had to be to [00:18:00] maintain the system in some way or be in a radically transformed kind of way.[00:18:03] Bill: And that's one of the reasons why I, there is a kind of a cult of she underway, but I've been skeptical that, there'll be, people say, oh, it'll be a new culture evolution. It, I think everything, for example, that Xi's doing is the opposite.[00:18:19] Bill: It's all about centralizing power. It's about controlling the masses, not unleashing or harnessing the masses, which is what Mao seems to have done. [00:18:28] Tania: Yes. And in fact, there's a fantastic Economist podcast on this very subject drum tower, if anybody listens to it. Bill: Yes, it's a great podcast. Which has just dropped precisely about the differences.[00:18:38] Tania: But one of the things that's so striking is that so many people within China. Have clearly seen parallels. Yes. And see echoes. And I think what they see is firstly the sort of reinsertion of the Party and towards these spheres from which it had retreated like private life [00:19:00] and even things like sort of culture and arts and so forth.[00:19:04] Tania: And business obviously. But also this sort of arbitrariness in what’s done. And so if you look at the fact that some people during covid were talking about white guards all these people who were enforcing the covid policies, obviously harking back to the idea of red guards.[00:19:26] Tania: So people see these parallels and as you say, they're obviously dramatic differences and Xi is somebody who's so wedded to the idea of order and discipline. But it's really striking how many people have seen those parallels, and I think it's very different. It's partly very different because he's in charge of a very different nation. But there are some striking echoes, aren't there? [00:20:00] [00:20:00] Bill: And it was interesting, I think when we were together at the artist Xu Weixin’s studio you were interviewing him for that piece you did. Where you talked to several family members or people who are the of family members of people in the portraits.[00:20:16] Bill: Xu, who's now in the US, I remember him talking about how he wanted to lead because he thought Xi was gonna bring back the new Cultural Revolution. And it was very striking because it was very, it was a, it was just a very dark at the time, seemed to be a very extreme view, but it was from somebody who obviously was very, was very steeped in history and what had happened.[00:20:40] Bill: And I remember thinking like, wow, that's a pretty scary contemplation, but I think, it hasn't happened as extreme as he suggested, but to your point, I think the, especially under Covid, there were again this just how the system can [00:21:00] mobilize and just effectively the realization that when the system decides you have no rights, you have no rights.[00:21:08] Tania: Yes, absolutely. And the other thing of course is having a single figure with this sort of untrammeled power. And clearly not, again, not the full extent of power that Mao had but none or indeed the full sort of veneration, but nonetheless, somebody who's there indefinitely. Somebody who is definitely using Party institutions and strengthening Party institutions in many ways, but is also making them more and more his own, if you look at the personnel for example. [00:21:41] Bill: Yes. And who's somebody who, you know, when he was the the vice president was on the standing committee in the 17th Party Congress, he oversaw, one of the things he oversaw was Party history. He, his story too his father got in trouble [00:22:00] in the early 1960s because of a book that was written about a political case. There was a biography that Kang Sheng, like a really nasty, especially nasty guy, told Mao, oh, this book is actually, it's a sort of anti it's criticizing you and because it involved someone who would work with Xi Jinping's father. Xi’s father ended up getting in trouble and so you see like personally, he understands how history can be used and weaponized. And how it's, how important it is to control it. And if it's gonna be used as weaponized, you want to be the person who's doing it. [00:22:44] Tania: Yeah, absolutely. That control of the narrative. It's obviously got very long history in, within China, of history being a sort of a moral or political force as much as a, or more than a record. But, and we [00:23:00] see that sort of being amped up under the Party over time, but there's no doubt that under Xi, it's really. Taken on renewed strength [00:23:07] Bill: Yeah and in some ways Xi may only be getting started. Back to your book just what's your favorite part of the book, if you have one?[00:23:15] Bill: I know maybe I'm sure you love the whole book, but is there anything that really stands out or stood out for [00:23:21] Tania: you? I don't think any author loves the whole of this. You go back and think, why did I put that full stop there? I think talking to the psychotherapists for me was really interesting and maybe that's not one that sort of many readers will come away with.[00:23:42] Tania: But I think particularly having witnessed or having spoken to people at such length about the trauma that they had been through and about the impact it had upon them, it was also really important to [00:24:00] remember that there is hope that people did survive this and that they came through and were able, as deeply scarred as they were, people did manage to come through and show love to their children or take pleasure in things. Wang Xilian, who's the composer I interview, is just this kind of extraordinary force of nature. I've never met anyone like him really, in terms of just having this kind of determination to seize life that clearly comes from his experiences. And so as scarring and as grim as many of those experiences were, I felt it was really important to remember that humans are resilient, and they find strength in ways that we wouldn't anticipate, but also that, I guess we're all vulnerable and the importance of trying to understand people [00:25:00] rather than to sit in judgment upon them. [00:25:02] Bill: In, in terms of the psychiatrists, China has a vast shortage of mental health professionals, doesn't it?Tania: Yeah, absolutely[00:25:14] Bill:. And how there isn't any sort of special training for this sort of historical trauma. Is there h how do these psych, like how do the psycho psychiatrists know what to do or how to deal with it? [00:25:28] Tania: So they've definitely looked to examples elsewhere. For example, the work that's been done on Transgenerational trauma very much came out of the experiences of people, I think primarily in Israel and the US treating the children of Holocaust survivors, for example.[00:25:48] Tania: So they were certainly looking overseas. There are people from Europe who've worked with psychotherapists there because it's such a kind of [00:26:00] nascent discipline anyway within China. And then I think what was interesting to me as well was the fact that in some ways you'd think it was quite safe territory because it's taking this huge social trauma and it's confining it within a treatment room.[00:26:20] Tania: It turns it in a sense, into one person's problems or it treats as one person's problems. So you could think that from the authorities point of view, that might be quite welcome in some ways. But of course it also means speaking about what happened, and that's certainly why a lot of people find it too threatening to contemplate as potential patients, but I think that's also why it's been a very sensitive area as well and why Chinese psychotherapists haven't really spoken about it publicly.[00:26:54] Tania: The people I spoke to didn't want to be identified, and that's quite telling, isn't it? [00:26:59] Bill: I mean it, [00:27:00] yeah, obviously there’s patient confidentiality but again, I think to your point, there's also a political overlay too. So not, this book is not at all depressing.[00:27:15] Bill: It's an incredibly difficult topic, but actually I found it to be in many ways inspiring because there are some awful stories but they're also you, like you said earlier you see how people can survive.[00:27:28] Tania: Yes. And I didn't, you don't want to attack a, a false happy ending, onto this. So you really have to remember that a lot of people came away scarred and did not recover. And I talk in the psychotherapy chapter, you know the woman who says to me I. For us, the Cultural Revolution only ended last April because that's when my father died. And, his brain had basically stopped in 1966. He had a nervous breakdown after the [00:28:00] red guards persecuted him, and he never recovered. So I didn't want to create two rosy a vision, but I did want to reflect the complexity and the hope that exists. And the fact, I talk about the people who were in sort of red guard factions and turned upon each other and were trying to kill each other, and yet they have this sort of strange relationship now.[00:28:26] Tania: These guys I was talking to where I don't think they necessarily like each other particularly, but they've found a way to live with each other and coexist and even take care of the ultrazealous unrepentant, ultra Maoist guy, who still thinks that that the main problem with the Cultural Revolution is probably really that it didn't it didn't go far enough.[00:28:52] Tania: It didn't go, or yes, it didn't go on far enough or it didn't succeed. But, they've managed to find a way to live with him and they [00:29:00] give him cash and help support him. And I just, I think there is hope to be found there. [00:29:05] Bill: No, it is fascinating. When I, in the early nineties when I had a job in Beijing, I actually I was working as a translator at this at this now defunct publishing house called the Chinese Literature Press. And it, this was 91 to 92. And then I learned that actually, like you said, there were colleagues who were, we're only 15 at that point. It was only, it's crazy. It was only 15 plus years since the end of the Cultural Revolution. And there were colleagues who had been on either side, persecuted or persecutors. And you could tell there was tension there, but it was like they had to deal with each other in their little work unit…That was 15 years outta the Cultural Revolution is very different now.[00:29:50] Bill: We're much further along in history. And I guess, part of it I'm assuming is, the Party will just assume that they just effectively as people age out and die off that the memories will just fade away. And then it's all about moving forward. And so I wonder in some ways, if your book isn't, it's not going be picked up by a publish in the PRC, I assume. I'm curious how they would view your [00:30:15] Tania: book. I don't imagine it could be printed in the PRC, but also some of those I spoke to didn't want it then what? To be published there, which I completely understand. [00:30:24] Bill: So that's, so will you will you try and get it published in Taiwan? In the old days you probably could have published it in Hong Kong, but that obviously I don't think would happen now.[00:30:33] Tania: I felt in the interests of being true to the agreement, the spirit of the agreement I'd made with people that I didn't want to see it published in Chinese. And obviously, I said to them, I can't completely rule out somebody finding bits of it and choosing to translate bits of it on the internet because that can happen.But I won't be Party to it being translated.Sinocism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.[00:30:57] Bill: That makes sense. So I guess, we've talked about it, but I have, I have some questions. One. Really the other question is, what do you think, like if the memories fade away inside China, does that really matter? Or is it actually something that the Party, they just. The next generation, they move on and the top guys remember it and so they seem to be trying to prevent some of the worst excesses. I is there a way of approaching it actually going work or is it the right way to deal with all this trauma?[00:31:46] Tania: I think that's such a good question and I can understand not just from a political survival point of view, but also from a concern for sort of Chinese society point of view why the authorities are so reluctant for this to be addressed precisely because the issues are so raw and so painful and because people were turning on upon their workmates and so on, and I think their fear was partly, how the hell do you manage this if people start saying, you killed my father. Where the hell do you go from there? And it was so clear talking to people how rancorous it remains, even among people who I had broadly thought of as being what you might call on the same side in terms of them being people who want to remember the Cultural Revolution because they think it was a time where things went dreadfully wrong or we need to learn from that.[00:32:48] Tania: Even between them, there was so much bitterness and rancor at times about. What you should remember and how you should remember, and who you should hold responsible and how much blame you attached to individuals and so forth. So I think that was one real concern, but I don't think you can just bury it because I think these things just fester and make themselves felt in really dangerous ways. Certainly, I talked a bit earlier about transgenerational trauma. So there's a lot of evidence, as I said originally, coming from the families of Holocaust victims, but it's been well established across a range of countries of the effects of trauma being passed down between generations even, or perhaps especially where people aren't speaking about what happened. And so the psychological effects upon the children and grandchildren I think really are significant. And you do just think about how much pain. A huge number of people in China are [00:34:00] still walking around with, and that pain doesn't disappear when that generation dies, although it may ebb to some degree.[00:34:09] Tania: And I also do think because the Cultural Revolution is. I don't think the Cultural Revolution could happen again in that way, in that form, certainly. But I think that, as I said, we need to look back at our histories to understand who we are as people, and also to see how easily humans can go astray.[00:34:37] Tania: And in that sense, it's not just a story for China although, it could only have happened in that way within that particular sort of time and place, but it is something that has a sort of a wider resonance. So I don't think you can just bury it. And I think the final thing actually, which is sort of odd, is that for a long time the [00:35:00] Party has also relied on this unspoken memory of the Cultural Revolution to essentially send this message of either we keep very tight control of all of you or you are going to have to live with this chaos and devastation. Yes. In which anything could happen. And that has been very effective because a lot of people do remember the Cultural Revolution, but as you said, it's a diminishing asset for them in that sense because they don't want to talk about it directly and go into too much detail, and because the people who actually remember it are dying. So for younger people, it really doesn't have the same impact. [00:35:42] Bill: No. And of course the, this sort of the messaging around otherwise it's chaos leaves out that otherwise it's chaos like it was chaos caused by Mao. And that is the, that’s the, again, in the eighties, especially in, in, [00:36:00] they're maybe some more discussions about Mao and his role in history. And now of course it's, again, Xi made very clear soon after he became down secretary and there were these sort of the Pre-reform and opening sort of the founding of the PRC and the early years of the PRC and then there was reform and opening and, neither one of those basically were, you can't negate either one.[00:36:33] Bill: And then, since then he's added effectively this third era, this new era, right? So we're into the third era of the PRC history, and it's all about looking forward. The previous eras have their historical what's the right word? They they have their historical judgements in place and so those aren't gonna be overturned. And so anything that would open up the Cultural Revolution. In any way now. It [00:37:00] just it's a massive political problem, I think for Xi, and so I just don't think I think we're gonna see your book is really important, but I think ultimately we're not gonna see any sort of reopening of the Cultural Revolution in any and Xi's only, we look at his age, he's he's what's gonna turn 70 this year.[00:37:23] Bill: He could be with us for a long time. And so by the time he fades from the scene, most likely, most of the people who have a direct experience of the Cultural Revolution will also have faded from the scene. And it is, it is interesting too, like how, the formative experiences and how they inform his approach to governing and it just risk taking and decision making. And we may never know, and you can certainly speculate, but one of the other things that were quite damaging were that whole generation who lost their [00:38:00] education. Look at Xi he went he basically, Barely even got a high school education. [00:38:10] Tania: And this is, this is one of the things that's fascinating to me, which is that is the one part of the Cultural Revolution that the authorities are willing to talk about and even to celebrate because they managed to detach it entirely from its political context. So when they talk about these 17 million people who are sent off to the countryside. Thinking that they were going there forever. They’re not portraying that as being part of the Cultural Revolution or, part of Mao’s many sort of terrible failings of his people. It's become this sort of story of comradeship on his toil. This is where Xi Jinping learned to be a man of the people he grew up into [00:39:00] manhood. And, all of those things are very appealing, particularly in an age where we were seeing these sort of constant ca cases of hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions being racked up by high ranking Party officials. To be able to contrast it with, here's Xi Jinping, he went down to the countryside, he struggled, he knows what it is to labor. All of those message are very potentBill:. Yeah. He's a man of the people. No, and it really is like you said they've figured out how to separate out the trauma and actually turn it into this positive, constructive formative experience and I think, but to be honest, I think some people in retrospect do believe it was. [00:39:51] Tania: That's what's fascinating when you talked to them. And in a way, I think that's probably where it came from the Party, that there was already this sort of grassroots nostalgia [00:40:00] movement among the sent down youth which Guobin Yang has written about brilliantly, where people started meeting up, going to exhibitions, and there's this sort of fascination with that time, and it's a very bittersweet thing.[00:40:14] Tania: I sort of draw a comparison with the Waltons and the way that people have this slightly romantic impression of, depression era America. Everybody was terribly poor, but they all loved each other and worked hard, there is a kind of nostalgia for that time, for a sense of meaning and belief and purity. And so that was a very potent thing that was already there to tap into. I think. [00:40:42] Bill: Yeah it's one of those things that I dunno, this is why your book is just, it's a, it's an important contribution to trying to help understand and because it does, again, to the question I asked earlier and that other people have raised why should we [00:41:00] care? It isn't just about trauma, but it's also about it. It has just been so formative for the people running China now and trying to understand how this affected them really does have real implications for how they see the world and how they see ordering China. [00:41:19] Tania: Absolutely. And right across the spectrum as well, if you talk to business people so often they'll say, oh, it was my years as a sent down youth that were this kind of transformative moment that made me realize how hard I would have to struggle to get there and so forth.[00:41:36] Tania: So in so many ways, it shaped the culture, it shaped the politics, it shaped the economy. [00:41:41] And [00:41:41] Bill: I wonder, there, there certainly it was a shorter period, but I wonder if the sort of the covid, especially the last 2022 with dynamics here, COVID and just how hard it was for so many people and so many businesses. I wonder if, I think we're already gonna see this talk about, oh this was a really formative year. [00:42:00] This, we survived and then therefore we're able to do, we understand risk and we understand how to managed through really difficult periods, even though I don't think it was I mean it was obviously different than the Cultural Revolution, but it was also in certain places, clearly very traumatic for people.[00:42:20] Tania: Yes. I feel, I think even looking around the UK, it feels like people are only really starting to realize the impact that the pandemic. Yeah. Had upon them how much it's shaped individuals, how much it's shaped communities, politics, that sense that sort of several people said to me, seeing friends or relatives disappear down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories during the pandemic because they were suddenly locked at home with nothing else to look at. And the thing that's striking to me actually is how little we are talking all about all of that. And it does make me think when terrible things happen, people want to forget them [00:43:00] and move on.[00:43:01] Bill: move on. And it's also early, right? You people. I mean it and we'll thank you for writing the book.Is there anything else you'd like to say to the audience or, anything else I should have asked you? [00:43:16] Tania: No, in many ways, I think you probably know this subject as well, if not better than…Me, because you are, you've obviously lived with it at a family level as well. And I just hope, I think that people, it's clearly about China, as I say, and about how you can't understand China unless you understand this period. But I would also hope that people didn't see it as being a book about this kind of distant place that has nothing to do with them because it, for me, it raised so many questions, the parallels with our own society in terms of the way that we choose to [00:44:00] address our own history.[00:44:02] Tania: And particularly looking at what's happened with politics in the UK and especially in the us, Trump is clearly in some ways, a more, a much more Maoist figure, you might argue, than she is in terms of his sort of reveling in chaos and disorder, and particularly in this incitement of hatred. Adam Serwer talks about the cruelty being the purpose in the use of hatred and division for political purposes.[00:44:36] Bill: So one question if you're willing to to entertain it would be about politics in the West. You hear a lot of this, call it cancel culture, whatever, and people say, oh, it's just like the Cultural Revolution. How do you react when you hear someone compare, like people getting canceled on Twitter or just saying, how do you, when someone says, oh, that's like the Chinese Cultural Revolution how do you what do you think when you hear that? [00:45:09] Tania: I think it just speaks to how fundamentally people misunderstand the Cultural Revolution in the West. They either regard it as a sort of a punchline or something, a bit kitsch or they regard it as young people being very left wing and getting carried away essentially. And that's really not what the Cultural Revolution is, right? The Cultural Revolution is about a very powerful man exploiting and fomenting public sentiment for his own ends.[00:45:42] Bill: and violent and public violence.[00:45:43] Tania:. Indeed. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. So it's about the use of power and I just think that's fundamentally distinct from any of the kind of discussions that are going on now. It just speaks to a [00:46:00] really basic misunderstanding of what we're looking at.[00:46:01] Bill: Good. We agree. I have a, I've tried not to engage, but it drives me nuts because I find it to be incredibly facile and an incredibly shallow that portrays a real lack of understanding and appreciation for the horrors and the trauma of the Cultural Revolution in China.[00:46:22] Tania: Yeah, absolutely. [00:46:23] Bill: So how do we end on a happy note? What's a happy takeaway for the, from your book? [00:46:31] Tania: Oh, dear, that's tricky. I think it, unfortunately it was my day job as well involves writing on foreign policy. I do spend a lot more time looking at the the darker sides of things. As I said, I do think people have in many ways managed to move forward. I think there is a wealth of extraordinary and thoughtful work out there on the era, particularly done [00:47:00] by Chinese scholars officially or unofficially, within China and then especially outside it as it's become more difficult to work there.[00:47:12] Tania: I think there's such sort of richness there in terms of understanding the era better, but also in learning, as I said about human nature more generally and those things we can take away. So there's that. And then there is just the fact that people live through horrors and they manage to go on and lead meaningful and loving lives against all the odds, even if they've been deeply scarred as well sometimes…I was just gonna say incidentally, if anybody has the chance to go and look up Wong, she Lynn's work on YouTube. There's a sort of a bunch of his music out there. So he's the composer who nearly died in the Cultural Revolution. But as I said, is this octogenarian with an incredible appetite for life. Still working assiduously living in Germany now, and he would love people to hear his music. So I think if you want a sort of a blast of life in contrast to all the horror that we've been talking about then lease go and listen to you. [00:48:17] Bill: We'll, and I'll, we'll put some links in the in the show notes.[00:48:20] Bill: No, thank you. That's great. And the thing I would just add is, and why, again, I think your book is so important. Is it, as, especially from the US perspective, US China relations worsen, there's just lots of othering on both sides. And one of the things is, It's, we're all human and so much of the pain and suffering and experiences, the reactions are human and it's a reminder that people, even as they go through different experiences, different cultures, there's still some real, there's, we're all people.[00:48:54] And so in many ways your book is important in a way that, [00:49:00] again, it’s so easy to abstract a way what's going on in sort of US China or Chinese politics. You help humanize it in a way that I think is important for everyone to understand, that in many ways we're all the same.[00:49:16] Tania: Thank you. I did want this be, I wanted this to be a book that was about us rather than them, so that's really good to hear. [00:49:24] Bill: Thank you, Tania. It's, I really, I can't recommend Tania's book Red Memory enough like I said I will also be running an excerpt on Sinocism from one of her chapters. And thank you all for listening and thank you, Tania, for taking the time. [00:49:41] Tania: Thank you.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

Episode Notes:This episode's guest is David Rennie, the Beijing bureau chief for The Economist and author of the weekly Chaguan column. Our topic is online discourse, nationalism, the intensifying contest for global discourse power and US-China relations.Excerpts:I spoke to some very serious NGO people who've been in China a long time, Chinese and foreigners who said that this was the worst time for NGOs since 1989, and the kind of mentions of espionage and national security was a very serious thing. So then I had to make a decision, was I going to try and speak to someone like Sai Lei. Clearly he is an extremely aggressive nationalist, some would call him a troll and there are risks involved in talking to someone like him. But I felt, I'm one of the few English language media still in China, if I'm going to add value, I need to speak to these people.I had a very interesting conversation with a CGTN commentator…He said, I can't tell you how many Western diplomats, or Western journalists they whine. And they moan. And they say, how aggressive China is now and how upset all this Wolf warrior stuff is and how China is doing itself damage. And he goes, we're not, it's working. You in the Western media, used to routinely say that the national people's Congress was a rubber stamp parliament. And because we went after you again and again, you see news organizations no longer as quick to use that. Because we went after you calling us a dictatorship, you're now slower to use that term because we went after you about human rights and how it has different meanings in different countries. We think it's having an effect…One of the things I think is a value of being here is you have these conversations where the fact that we in the West think that China is inevitably making a mistake by being much more aggressive. I don't think that's how a big part of the machine here sees it. I think they think it worked….To simplify and exaggerate a bit, I think that China, and this is not just a guess, this is based on off the record conversations with some pretty senior Chinese figures, they believe that the Western world, but in particular, the United States is too ignorant and unimaginative and Western centric, and probably too racist to understand that China is going to succeed, that China is winning and that the West is in really decadent decline…I think that what they believe they are doing is delivering an educational dose of pain and I'm quoting a Chinese official with the word pain. And it is to shock us because we are too mule headed and thick to understand that China is winning and we are losing. And so they're going to keep delivering educational doses of pain until we get it…The fundamental message and I'm quoting a smart friend of mine in Beijing here is China's rise is inevitable. Resistance is futile…And if you accommodate us, we'll make it worth your while. It's the key message. And they think that some people are proving dimmer and slower and more reluctant to pick that message up and above all Americans and Anglo-Saxons.On US-China relations:The general trend of U.S. China relations. to be of optimistic about the trend of U.S. China relations I'd have to be more optimistic than I currently am about the state of U.S. Politics. And there's a kind of general observation, which is that I think that American democracy is in very bad shape right now. And I wish that some of the China hawks in Congress, particularly on the Republican side, who are also willing to imply, for example, that the 2020 election was stolen, that there was massive fraud every time they say that stuff, they're making an in-kind contribution to the budget of the Chinese propaganda department…You cannot be a patriotic American political leader and tell lies about the state of American democracy. And then say that you are concerned about China's rise…..their message about Joe Biden is that he is weak and old and lacks control of Congress. And that he is, this is from scholars rather than officials, I should say, but their view is, why would China spend political capital on the guy who's going to lose the next election?…The one thing that I will say about the U.S. China relationship, and I'm very, very pessimistic about the fact that the two sides, they don't share a vision of how this ends well.Links:China’s online nationalists turn paranoia into clickbait | The Economist 赛雷：我接受了英国《经济学人》采访，切身体验了深深的恶意 David Rennie on Twitter @DSORennieTranscript:You may notice a couple of choppy spots. We had some Beijing-VPN issues and so had to restart the discussion three times. Bill:Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the `Sinocism podcast. It's been a bit of a break, but we are back and we will continue going forward on a fairly regular schedule today. For the fourth episode, I'm really happy to be able to chat with David Rennie, the Beijing bureau chief for The Economist and author of the weekly Chaguan column. Our topic today is online discourse, nationalism, and the intensifying contest for global discourse power.Bill:I've long been a fan of David's work and the approximate cause for inviting him to join the podcast today was an article on the January 8th issue of The Economist on online nationalism. Welcome David.David:Hello.Bill:So just to start, could you tell us how you got to where you are today?David:I've been a foreign correspondent for frighteningly long time, 24 years. And it's my second China posting. I've been out there so long. I've done two Chinas, two Washingtons, five years in Brussels. I was here in the '90s and then I went off, spent a total of nine years in Washington, DC. And then I came back here in 2018 and I was asked to launch a new column about China called Chaguan, because previously I wrote our Lexington column and our Bagehot column about Britain and our Charlemagne column about Europe. They all have strange names, but that's what we do. And so this is my fourth column for The Economist.Bill:We last met, I think in 2018 in Beijing in what seems like before times in many ways at The Opposite House, I believe.David:And the days when we had visitors, people came from the outside world, all of those things.Bill:Yes. You are quite the survivor, as they say. Although there are advantages to not worry about walking outside and getting sick all the time. Although it's better here in DC now.David:It's a very safe bubble. It's a very large bubble, but it's a bubble.Bill:So let's talk about your article, the January 8th issue. It was titled “China's online nationalist turned paranoia into click bait”. And I thought it was a very good distillation of the surge in nationalists and anti foreign content that is really flooding or was flooded the internet in China. And you interviewed one of the people who's profiting from it because it turns out that not only is it good from a sort of a sentiment perspective, but it's also good from a business perspective.Bill:And that person Sai Lei, interestingly enough, then recorded your conversation and turned it into a whole new post and video about the whole experience of talking to a foreign correspondent. Can you tell us a little about the story and why you chose to write it and just to add the links to David's article and the Sai Lei article will be in the podcast notes.David:So I heard from friends and colleagues, a couple of things in two directions. One was that in the world of private sector media, a couple of reasonably well known explainer sites, popular science video companies had been taken out of business by nationalist attacks. One was called Paperclip, the other called Elephant Union. And their crime in the eyes of online nationalists had been to talk about things which are fairly uncontroversial in Western media, that eating beef from the Amazon or eating beef that is fed soy grown in the Amazon is potentially bad for the rainforest and maybe we should eat less meat.David:But because this was in the Chinese context, that China is the biggest buyer of soybeans, this explainer video was attacked as a plot to deny the Chinese people the protein that they need to be strong, that this was a race traitor attack on the Chinese. And it was outrageous because the West eats so much more meat than China. And so that was one element of it. And I heard that these companies had been shut down. The other was that I'd been picking up that this was an extremely bad time for NGOs, particularly Chinese NGOs that get money from overseas. And we'd seen some really nasty attacks, not just on the idea that they were getting money from overseas, but that they were somehow guilty of espionage.David:And there was an NGO that did incredibly benign work. Tracking maritime and Marine trash, as it floats around the coasts of China based in Shanghai, Rendu Ocean. I'd done a column on them the year before I'd been out with their volunteers. It was a bunch of pensioners and retirees and school kids picking up styrofoam and trash off beaches, weighing it, tracking where it came from and then uploading this data to try and track the fact that China is a big generator of the plastic and other trash in the oceans. They were accused of espionage and taking foreign money to track ocean currents that would help foreign militaries, attack China, that they were guilty of grave national security crimes.David:And they were attacked in a press conference, including at the national defense ministry. And they're basically now in a world of pain. They're still just about clinging on. And so these two things, you have these NGOs under really serious attack, and you also have this attack on online explainer videos. The common theme was that the nationalist attack, they were somehow portraying the country and its national security was a weird combination of not just the security forces, but also private sector, Chinese online nationalists. And in particularly I was told there was a guy called Sai Lei. That's his non to plume who was one of the people making videos taking on these people. He went after celebrities who talked about China should be more careful about eating seafood.David:This was again, sort of race traitors. And he was using this really horrible language about these celebrities who talked about eating more sustainable seafood that they were ‘er guizi”, which is this time about the collaborationist police officers who worked with the Japanese during the World War II. He calls them Hanjian, the s-called traitors to the Chinese race. Very, very loaded language. Went after a group that’s working with Africans down in the south of China, talking about how they faced discrimination. This got them attacked. They had talked also about the role of Chinese merchants in the illegal ivory trade that got them attacked by the nationalists.David:So I thought this question of whether the government is behind this or whether this is a private sector attack on that. There's the profits to be made from this online nationalism struck me something I should write about. So I talked to some of the people whose organizations and companies had been taken down, they were very clear that they thought that was a unholy nexus of profit, clickbait and things like the communist youth league really liking the way that they can turbocharge some of these attacks-Bill:Especially on bilibili, they use that a lot.David:Especially on... Yeah. And so there's this weird sort of sense that, and I spoke to some very serious NGO people who've been in China a long time, Chinese and foreigners who said that this was the worst time for NGOs since 1989, and the kind of mentions of espionage and national security was a very serious thing. So then I had to make a decision, was I going to try and speak to someone like Sai Lei. Clearly he is an extremely aggressive nationalist, some would call him a troll and there are risks involved in talking to someone like him. But I felt, I'm one of the few English language media still in China, if I'm going to add value, I need to speak to these people.David:Yes. And so I reached out to the founder of a big, well known nationalist website who I happen to know. And I said, do you know this guy Sai Lei? And he said, I do, I'll get in touch with him. Sai Lei was very, very anxious about speaking to the Western media. Thought I was going to misquote him. And so eventually we did this deal that he was going to record the whole thing. And that if he thought I had misquoted him, that he was going to run the entire transcript on full on this other very well known nationalist website that had made the introduction. So I said, okay, fine. I have nothing to hide. That's all good. I wrote the column. I quoted Sai Lei. I didn't quote a tremendous amount of Sai Lei because what he said was not especially revealing.David:He was just an extremely paranoid guy. And there was a lot of whataboutism and he was saying, well, how would the American public react if they were told that what they eat damages the Amazon rainforest? And I said, well, they're told that all the time-Bill:All the time.David:It was an incredibly familiar argument. It's on the front page of America newspapers all the time. And so he wasn't willing to engage. And so, I ran this. He then put out this attack on me. It's fair. Look, I make a living handing out my opinions. I knew he was recording me, was it a bit disappointing that he cut and edited it to make me sound as bad as possible rather than running the full transcript. I mean, I interviewed a troll and that was the thing. He attacked me on the basis of my family, which then triggered a whole bunch of stuff that was pretty familiar to me, a lot of wet and journalists get a lot of attacks and it was an unpleasant experience, but I feel that the added value of being here is to talk to people, who The Economist does not agree with.David:And his fundamental problem was that I was using online as a disapproving time. But my line with people like him, or with some of the very prominent nationalists online academics, media entrepreneurs, also with the Chinese foreign ministry, when I'm called in is my job in China is to try to explain how China sees the world. To speak to people in China to let their voices be heard in The Economist. And I absolutely undertake to try and reflect their views faithfully, but I do not promise to agree with them, because The Economist does not hide the fact that we are a Western liberal newspaper. We're not anti-China, we are liberal. And so, if we see illiberall things happening in Abu Ghraib or in Guantanamo Bay or-Bill:DC.David:Being done by Donald Trump or being done by Boris Johnson or Brexit, or Viktor Orbán or in China, we will criticize them because we are what we say we are. We are a liberal newspaper. We have been since 1843. And what's interesting is that online, the reaction was... For a while, I was trending on Bilibili. And that was new. And I take that on the chin. I mean, I'm here, I'm attacking nationalists. They're going to attack back. I think what's interesting is that the online of nationalist attacks were, I hope that the ministry of state security arrest this guy, he should be thrown out of China. Why is he in China? They should be expelled. This guy has no right to be in China.David:I think that at some level, some parts of the central government machinery do still see a value to having newspapers like The Economist, reasonably well read Western media in China. And it's this conversation I've had a lot with the foreign ministry, with the State Council Information Office, which is as you know, it's the front name plate for the propaganda bureau. And I say to them, we are liberals.David:We are not anti-China any more than we're anti-American because we criticize Donald Trump, but you know where we're coming from, but I do believe that if China is concerned about how it's covered, if they throw all of us out, they're not going to get better coverage. I mean, some of the most aggressive coverage about China in the states comes from journalists who never go to China and economists who never go to China. And I think that, that argument resonates with some parts of the machine, to the people whose job is to deal with people like me.David:What I worry about is that there are other parts of the machine, whether it's the Communist Youth League or whether it's the ministry of state security or some other elements in the machine who do also see a tremendous value in delegitimizing Western media full stop, because if you're being criticized and you don't enjoy it. Tactic number one, whether you are Donald Trump talking about fake news, or Vladimir Putin talking about hostile foreign forces, or the Chinese is to delegitimize your critics.David:And I do think that that is going on in a way that in the four years that I've been here this time. And if, I think back to my time here 20 years ago, I do think the attempts to go after and intimidate and delegitimize the Western media they're getting more aggressive and they're trying new tactics, which are pretty concerning.Bill:So that's a great segue into the next question. But first, I just want to ask the nationalist website that you said ran Sai Lei's piece that was Guancha.cn?David:Yeah. And so it's probably not secret, but so I know a bit, Eric Li, Li Shimo, the co-founder Guancha.Bill:Eric actually famous for his TED Talk, went to Stanford business school, venture capitalist. And now, I guess he's affiliated with Fudan, And is quite an active funder of all sorts of online discourse it seems among other things.David:That's right. And I would point out that The Economist, we have this by invitation online debate platform and we invite people to contribute. And we did in fact, run a piece by Eric Li, the co-founder of Guancha, the nationalist website a couple of weeks before this attack, that Guancha ran. And I actually had debate with some colleagues about this, about whether as liberals, we're the suckers that allow people who attack us to write, he wrote a very cogent, but fairly familiar argument about the performance legitimacy, the communist party and how that was superior to Western liberal democracy.David:And I think that it's the price of being a liberal newspaper. If we take that seriously, then we occasionally have to give a platform to people who will then turn around and attack us. And if I'm going to live in China and not see of my family for a very long period of time, and it's a privilege to live in China, but there are costs. If you are an expert, then I'm not ready to give up on the idea of talking to people who we strongly disagree with. If I'm going to commit to living here to me the only reason to do that is so you talk to people, not just liberals who we agree with, but people who strongly disagree with us.Bill:No. And I think that's right. And I think that also ties in for many years, predating Xi Jinping there's been this long stated goal for China to increase its global discourse power as they call it. And to spread more the tell the truth, tell the real story, spread more positive energy about China globally instead of having foreign and especially Western, or I think, and this ties into some of the national stuff increasing what we hear is called the Anglo-Saxons media dominate the global discourse about China. And to be fair, China has a point. I mean, there should be more Chinese voices talking about China globally.Bill:That's not an unreasonable desire, or request from a country as big and powerful as China is. One thing that seems like a problem is on the one hand you've got, the policy makers are pushing to improve and better control discourse about China globally. At the same time, they're increasing their control over the domestic discourse inside the PRC about the rest of the world. And so in some ways, yes, there's an imbalance globally, but there's also a massive imbalance domestically, which seems to fit into what you just went through with Sai Lei and where the trends are. I don't know. I mean, how does China tell a more convincing story to the world in a way that isn't just a constant struggle to use the term they actually use, but more of an actual fact based honest discussion, or is that something that we're just not going to see anytime soon?David:I think there's a couple of elements to that. I mean, you are absolutely right that China like any country has the right to want to draw the attention of the world to stuff that China does. That's impressive. And I do think, one of my arguments when I talk to Chinese officials as to why they should keep giving out visas to people like me is, when I think back to the beginning of the COVID pandemic, I've not left China for more than two years. I've not left since the pandemic began, you had a lot of media writing that this incredibly ferocious crackdown was going to be very unpopular with the Chinese public. And that's because of the very beginning you had people, there lots of stuff on Chinese social media, little videos of people being beaten up by some [inaudible 00:16:26] in a village or tied to a tree, or their doors being welded shot.David:And it did look unbelievably thuggish. And people playing Majiang being arrested. But actually about three weeks into the pandemic, and I was traveling outside Beijing and going to villages and then coming back and doing the quarantine, you'd go into these villages in the middle of Henan or Hunan. And you'd have the earth bomb at the entrance to the village and all the old guys in the red arm bands. And the pitchforks and the school desk, or the entrance to the village with a piece of paper, because you got to have paperwork as well. And you've realized that this incredibly strict grassroots control system that they'd put in motion, the grid management, the fact that the village loud speakers were back up and running and broadcasting propaganda was actually a source of comfort.David:That it gave people a sense that they could do something to keep this frightening disease at bay. And I think to me, that's an absolute example that it's in China's interest to have Western journalists in China because it was only being in China that made me realize that this strictness was actually welcomed by a lot of Chinese people. It made them feel safe and it made them feel that they were contributing to a national course by locking themselves indoors and obeying these sometimes very strange and arbitrary rules. In addition, I think you are absolutely right, China has the right to want the foreign media to report that stuff.David:Instead of looking at China through a Western lens and saying, this is draconian, this is ferocious, this is abuse of human rights. It's absolutely appropriate for China to say no, if you're doing your job properly, you will try and understand this place on China's own terms. You will allow Chinese voices into your reporting and let them tell the world that they're actually comforted by this extremely strict zero COVID policy, which is tremendously popular with the majority of the Chinese public. That is a completely legitimate ambition. And I never failed to take the chance to tell officials that's why they should give visas to have journalists in the country, because if you're not in the country, you can't think that stuff up.David:What I think is much more problematic is that there is alongside that legitimate desire to have China understood on China's own terms, there is a very conscious strategy underway, which is talked about by some of the academics at Fudan who work for Eric Li at Guancha as a discourse war, a narrative war, or to redefine certain key terms.Bill:And the term and the term is really is like struggle. I mean, they see it as a public opinion war globally. I mean, that the language is very martial in Chinese.David:Absolutely. Yeah. And do not say that we are not a democracy. If you say that we are not a democracy, you are ignoring our tremendous success in handling COVID. We are a whole society democracy, which it's basically a performance legitimacy argument, or a collective utilitarian, the maximizing the benefits for the largest number of argument. It's not particularly new, but the aggression with which it's being pushed is new and the extraordinary resources they put into going after Western media for the language that we use of our China. And I had a very interesting conversation with a CGTN commentator who attacked me online, on Twitter and said that I was a... It was sort of like you scratch an English when you'll find a drug dealer or a pirate.David:Now there's a lot of Opium War rhetoric around if you're a British journalist in China. You're never too far from Opium War reference. And for the record, I don't approve of the war, but it was also before my time. So I actually, the guy attacked me fairly aggressively on Twitter. So I said, can you try and be professional? I'm being professional here why won't you be professional. He invited me with coffee. So we had coffee. And we talked about his work for CGTN and for Chaguan and his view of his interactions to Western media. And he said, this very revealing thing. He said, the reason we do this stuff is because it works.David:He said, I can't tell you how many Western diplomats, or Western journalists they whine. And they moan. And they say, how aggressive China is now and how upset all this Wolf warrior stuff is and how China is doing itself damage. And he goes, we're not, it's working. You in the Western media, used to routinely say that the national people's Congress was a rubber stamp parliament. And because we went after you again and again, you see news organizations no longer as quick to use that. Because we went after you calling us a dictatorship, you're now slower to use that term because we went after you about human rights and how it has different meanings in different countries. We think it's having an effect.David:And so I think that this attempt to grind us down is working, although in their view, it's working. And I think that, that ties in with a broader conversation that I have a lot in Beijing with foreign ambassadors or foreign diplomats who they get called into the foreign ministry, treated politically aggressively and shouted at and humiliated. And they say, how does the Chinese side not see that this causes them problems? And I think that in this moment of, as you say, an era of struggle, this phrase that we see from speeches, from leaders, including Xi, about an era of change, not seen in 100 years.David:They really do feel that as the West, particularly America is in decline and as China is rising, that it's almost like there's a turbulence in the sky where these two the two axis are crossing. And that China has to just push through that turbulence. To use a story that I had kept secret for a long time, that I put in a column when Michael Kovrig was released. So, listeners will remember Michael Kovrig was one of the two Canadians who was held cover couple of years, basically as a hostage by the Chinese state security. And fairly early on, I had heard from some diplomats in Beijing from another Western embassy, not the UK, I should say, that the fact that Michael Kovrig in detention was being questioned, not just about his work for an NGO, the international crisis group that he was doing when he was picked up.David:But he was also being questioned about work he'd been doing for the Canadian embassy when he had diplomatic immunity. The fact that that was going on was frightening to Western diplomats in Beijing. And soon after that conversation, I was sitting there talking to this guy, reasonably senior official. And I said to him, I explained this conversation to him. And I said, I've just been having a conversation with these diplomats. And they said, the word that they used was frightened about what you are doing to Michael Kovrig. And I said, how does it help China to frighten people from that country?David:And he'd been pretty cheerful up till then. He switched to English so that he could be sure that I understood everything he wanted to say to me. And he said, this absolute glacial tone. He said, Canada needs to feel pain. So that the next time America asks an ally to help attack China, that ally will think twice. And that's it.Bill:That's it. And it probably works.David:It works. And yeah. So I think that, again, one of the things I think is a value of being here is you have these conversations where the fact that we in the West think that China is inevitably making a mistake by being much more aggressive. I don't think that's how a big part of the machine here sees it. I think they think it worked.Bill:No. I agree. And I'm not actually sure that they're making a mistake because if you look at so far, what have the cost been? As you said, I mean, behavior is shift, but I think it's definitely open for question. I mean, it's like the assumptions you still see this week, multiple columns about how China's COVID policy is inevitably going to fail. And I'm sitting here in DC, we're about to cross a million people dead in this country, and I'm thinking what's failure. It's a very interesting time.Bill:I mean, to that point about this attitude and the way that there seem to be prosecuting a very top down or top level design communication strategy, Zhang Weiwei, who's at Fudan University. And also I think Eric Li is a closer associate of his, he actually was the, discussant at a Politburo study session. One of the monthly study sessions a few months ago, where I think the theme was on improving international communication. And talking about, again, how to better tell China's story, how to increase the global discourse power.Bill:Some people saw that as, oh, they're going to be nicer because they want to have a more lovable China image. I’m very skeptical because I think that this more aggressive tone, the shorthand is “Wolf warriors. wolf-warriorism”, I think really that seems to me to be more of a fundamental tenant of Xi Jinping being thought on diplomacy, about how China communicates to the world. I mean, how do you see it and how does this get better, or does it not get better for a while?David:It's a really important question. So I think, what do they think they're up to? To simplify and exaggerate a bit, I think that China, and this is not just a guess, this is based on off the record conversations with some pretty senior Chinese figures, they believe that the Western world, but in particular, the United States is too ignorant and unimaginative and Western centric, and probably too racist to understand that China is going to succeed, that China is winning and that the West is in really decadent decline.David:And so I think that these aggressive acts like detaining the two Michaels or their diplomatic an economic coercion of countries like Australia or Lithuania. They hear all the Pearl clutching dismay from high officials in Brussels, or in Washington DC-Bill:And the op-eds in big papers about how awful this is and-David:And the op-eds and yeah, self-defeating, and all those things. But I think that what they believe they are doing is delivering an educational dose of pain and I'm quoting a Chinese official with the word pain. And it is to shock us because we are too mule headed and thick to understand that China is winning and we are losing. And so they're going to keep delivering educational doses of pain until we get it. I think they think that's what they're up to-Bill:And by getting it basically stepping a side in certain areas and letting the Chinese pursue some of their key goals, the core interests, whatever you want to call it, that we, yeah.David:That we accommodate. Yeah. The fundamental message I'm quoting a smart friend of mine in Beijing here is China's rise is inevitable. Resistance is futile.Bill:Right. Resistance is futile.David:And if you accommodate us, we'll make it worth your while. It's the key message. And they think that some people are proving dimer and slower and more reluctant to pick that message up and above all Americans and Anglo Saxons. And so they're giving us the touch, the whip. Now, do I think that, that is inevitably going to be great for them? And you ask how does this end well? I mean, I guess my reason for thinking that they may yet pay some price, not a total price, is that they are engaged in a giant experiment. The Chinese government and party are engaged in a giant experiment, that it didn't matter that much, that the Western world was permissive and open to engagement with China.David:That, That wasn't really integral to their economic rise for the last 40 years that China basically did it by itself. And that if the Western world becomes more suspicious and more hostile, that China will not pay a very substantial price because its market power and its own manufacturing, industrial strength, we'll push on through. And so there'll be a period of turbulence and then we'll realized that we have to accommodate. And I think that in many cases they will be right. There will be sectors where industries don't leave China. They in fact, double down and reinvest and we're seeing that right now, but I do worry that there are going to be real costs paid.David:I mean, when I think back to... I did a special report for The Economists in May, 2019 about us generations. And one of the parts of that was the extraordinary number of Chinese students in us colleges. And I went to the University of Iowa and I spoke to Chinese students and you know that now, the levels of nationalism and hostility on both sides and the fear in American campuses, that's a real cost. I mean, I think if you imagine China's relationship with the Western world, particularly the U.S. as a fork in the road with two forks, one total engagement, one total decoupling, then absolutely China is right. There's not going to be total decoupling because we are as dependent as we were on China's, it's just-Bill:Right. Not realistic.David:China is an enormous market and also the best place to get a lot of stuff made. But I wonder, and it's an image I've used in a column, I think. I think that the relationship is not a fork in the road with two forks. It's a tree with a million branches. And each of those branches is a decision. Does this Western university sign a partnership with that Chinese university? Does this Western company get bought by a Chinese company? Does the government approve of that? Does this Western media organization sign a partnership with a Chinese media organization?David:Does this Western country buy a 5g network or an airline or a data cloud service or autonomous vehicles from China that are products and services with very high value added where China wants to be a dominant player. And that's an entirely reasonable ambition, because China's a big high tech power now. But a lot of these very high value added services or these relationships between universities, or businesses, or governments in the absence of trust, they don't make a bunch of sense because if you don't trust the company, who's cloud is holding your data or the company who's made you the autonomous car, which is filled with microphones and sensors and knows where you were last night and what you said in your car last night, if you don't trust that company or the country that made that, none of that makes sense.David:And I think that China's willingness to show its teeth and to use economic coercion and to go to European governments and say, if you don't take a fine Chinese 5g network we're going to hurt you. If you boil that down to a bumper sticker, that's China saying to the world, or certainly to the Western world stay open to China, or China will hurt you. Trust China or China will hurt you. That's the core message for a lot of these Wolf warrior ambassadors. And that's the core message to people like me, a guy who writes a column living in Beijing. And a lot of the time China's market power will make that okay. But I think that's, if you look at that tree with a million decisions, maybe more of those than China was expecting will click from a yes to a no.David:If you're a Western university, do you now open that campus in Shanghai? Do you trust your local Chinese partner when they say that your academics are going to have freedom of speech? And what's heartbreaking about that is that the victims of that are not going to be the politic bureau it's going to be people on the ground, it's going to be researchers and students and consumers and-Bill:On both sides. I mean, that's-David:On both sides. Yeah.Bill:Yeah. That's the problem.David:Yeah.Bill:So that's uplifting. No, I mean, I-David:I've got worse.Bill:Wait until the next question. I think I really appreciate your time and it'd be respective but I just have two more questions. One is really about just being a foreign correspondent in China and the Foreign correspondents' Club of China put out its annual report, I think earlier this week. And it's depressing you read as it's been in years and every year is extremely depressing, but one of the backdrops is really the first foreign ministry press conference of the last year of 2021. It really struck me that Hua Chunying, who is... She's now I think assistant foreign minister, vice foreign minister at the time, she was the head of the information office in I think the one of the spokespeople, she made a statement about how it was kicking off the 100th anniversary year.Bill:And I'm just going to read her couple sentences to get a sense of the language. So she said, and this was on the, I think it was January 4th, 2021, "In the 1930s and 1940s when the Guangdong government sealed off Yunnan and spared, no efforts to demonize the CPC foreign journalists like Americans, Edgar Snow, Anna Louise Strong and Agnes Smedley, curious about who and what the CPC is, chose to blend in with the CPC members in Yunnan and wrote many objective reports as well as works like the famous Red star over China, giving the world, the first clip of the CPC and its endeavor in uniting and leading the Chinese people in pursuing national independence and liberation."Bill:And then went on with more stuff about how basically wanting foreign correspondents to be like Snow, Strong or Smedley. How did that go over? And I mean, is that just part of the, your welcome as long as you're telling the right story message?David:So there was a certain amount of... Yeah. I mean, we also got this from our handlers at the MFA, why couldn't it be more like Edgar Snow? And I fear the first time I had that line in the meeting, I was like, well, he was a communist, if that's the bar, then I'm probably going to meet that one. Edgar Snow went to Yan’an he spent a tremendous amount of time in Mao hours interviewing Mao. If Xi Jinping wants to let me interview him for hours, I'd be up for that. But I would point out that Edgar Snow, after interviewing Mao for hours, then handed the transcripts over to Mao and had them edited and then handed back to him. And that probably would not be-Bill:But doesn't work at The Economist.David:That wouldn't fly with my editors. No. So I think we may have an inseparable problem there. Look, isn't it the phrase that Trump people used to talk about working the refs? I mean, what government doesn't want to work the refs. So, that's part of it. And I'm a big boy, I've been at Trump rallies and had people scream at me and tell me, I'm fake news. And it was still a good thing to meet. I've interviewed Afghan warlords who had happily killed me, but at that precise moment, they wanted the Americans to drop a bomb on the mountain opposite.David:And so they were willing to have me in their encampment. So, the worker of being a journalist, you need to go and talk to people who don't necessarily agree with you or like you and that's the deal. So I'm not particularly upset by that. What is worrying and I think this is shown in the FCC annual server, which is based on asking journalists in China how their job goes at the moment is there is a sense that the Chinese machine and in particular things like the communist youth league have been very effective at whipping up low public opinion.David:So when we saw the floods in Hunan Province in the summer of 2021, where in fact, we recently just found out that central government punished a whole bunch of officials who had covered up the death doll there, journalists who went down there to report this perfectly legitimate, large news story, the communist youth league among other organizations put out notices on their social media feeds telling people they're a hostile foreign journalists trying to make China look bad, to not talk to them, if you see them, tell us where they are. And you've got these very angry crowds chasing journalists around Hunan in a fairly worry way.David:And again, if you're a foreign correspondent in another country, we are guests in China. So, the Chinese people, they don't have to love me. I hope that they will answer my questions, because I think I'm trying to report this place fairly, but I'm not demanding red carpet treatment, but there is a sense that the very powerful propaganda machine here is whipping up very deliberately something that goes beyond just be careful about talking to foreign journalists. And I think in particular, one thing that I should say is that as a middle aged English guy with gray hair, I still have an easier time of it by far because some of the nastiest attacks, including from the nastiest online nationalist trolls.David:They're not just nationalists, but they're also sexist and chauvinist and the people who I think really deserve far more sympathy than some like me is Chinese American, or Chinese Australian, or Chinese Canadian journalists, particularly young women journalists.Bill:I know Emily Feng at NPR was just the subject of a really nasty spate of attacks online about some of her reporting.David:And it's not just Emily, there's a whole-Bill:Right. There's a whole bunch.David:There's a whole bunch of them. And they get called you know er guizi all sorts of [crosstalk 00:37:15]. And this idea and all this horrible stuff about being race traitors and again, one of the conversations I've had with Chinese officials is, if you keep this up, someone is going to get physically hurt. And I don't think that's what you want. David:And again, I fall back on the fact that I'm a Western liberal. What I say to them is if you tell me that a Chinese-British journalist is not as British as me, then you are to my mind, that's racial prejudice. And if some right wing Western white politician said to me that a Chinese immigrant wasn't fully American, or wasn't fully British, that's racism, right?Bill:That's racism. Yeah.David:And I think that is the really troubling element to this level of nationalism. China is a very big country that does some very impressive things that does some less impressive things and does some very wicked things, but we have every reason to give it credit for the things it does well. And it is not that surprising when any government tries to work the refs.David:And get the best coverage they can by intimidating us and calling us out. I've interviewed Donald Trump and he asked me, when are you going to write something nice about me? I mean, we're grownups, this is how it works, but if they are making it toxic for young women journalists to work in China, or if they are driving foreign correspondent out of China, because their families they're under such intimidation that they can't even go on holiday without their children being followed around by secret police. I think there will be a cost.Bill:But that may be a what the Chinese side sees as a benefit, because then it opens the field for them controlling how the story's told. And then you can bring in a bunch of people or pull a bunch of people out of the foreigners working for state media, hey, the new Edgar Snow, the new Agnes Smedley. I mean, that is one of the things that I think potentially is what they're trying to do, which seems self-defeating, but as we've been discussing, what we think is self-defeating the policy makers, or some of them may see as a success.David:So what I think they're confident of is that being aggressive and making us much more jumpy is a win, but throwing all of us out, I think the people at the top get that, that's not a win because the New York times and the BBC and the Washington post, they're still going to cover China, even if they can't have people in China. And a bunch of that coverage is not going to be stuff that China likes, North Korea doesn't have any resident foreign correspondent, but it doesn't get a great press.Bill:And the other group, of course, but beyond the foreign journalists is all the PRC national journalists working for the foreign correspondent as researchers and, I mean, many of them journalists in all but name because they can't legally be that I've certainly, been hearing some pretty distressing stories about how much pressure they're under. And I think they're in almost an impossible situation it seems like right now.David:Now they're amazingly brave people. They're completely integral to our coverage. And many of them, as you say, they're journalists who in any other country, we would be getting to write stuff with their own bylines. I mean, in incredibly cautious about what we have our Chinese colleagues do now, because they are under tremendous pressure. I mean, not naming news organizations, but the just the level of harassment of them and their families and is really bad. And it's the most cynical attempt to make it difficult for us to do our jobs and to divide Chinese people from the Western media.David:But fundamentally at some level, this does not end well because, and this is not me just talking up the role of the Western media, because I think we're magnificently important people, but at some level there's a big problem under way with this level of nationalism in modern China. I was in China in the '90s, you were in China in the '90s, I think. We remember it was-Bill:'80s, '90s, 2000s. Yeah.David:Yeah. You were there before me, but it was not a Jeffersonian democracy. It was a dictatorship, but this level of nationalism is much more serious now. Why does that matter? Well, because I think that for a lot of particularly young Chinese, the gap between their self perception and the outside world's perception of China has become unbearably wide. They think this country has never been so impressive and admirable. And yet I keep seeing foreign media questioning us and criticizing us. And that just enrages them. They can't conceive of any sincere principle on our part that would make us criticize China that way.David:And going back to my conversation with the online nationalist Sai Lei, when he was saying, well, how would the Americans take it if they were told that eating avocados was bad for the environment? When I said to him, but they are told that. There are lots of environmental NGOs that talk about sustainable fisheries, or the cost, the carbon footprint of crops and things in the West. The two countries are pulling apart and the pandemic has just accelerated that process. And so if you are a Chinese nationalist, not only are you angry about being criticized, but you don't believe that the West is ever critical about itself. You think that the West is only bent on criticizing China. And that gap in perceptions is just really dangerously wide.Bill:And widening, it seems like. I mean, I'm not there now, but it certainly, from everything I can see outside of China, it feels like that's what's happening too.David:Yeah. We need to know more about China.Bill:I agree.David:And report more about China. And I don't just say that because that's how I earn my living. I think it's really, really dangerous for us to think that the solution is less reporting about China.Bill:Well, and certainly, I mean, and all sorts of avenues, not just media, but all sorts of avenues, we're seeing a constriction of information getting out of China. And on the one hand China's growing in importance globally and power globally. And on the other hand, our ability to understand the place seems to be getting harder. And it goes back to, I mean, we just, I think it'll be a mistake if we just get forced into accepting the official version of what China is. That's disseminated through the officially allowed and sanctioned outlets in China. Maybe that'll help China, but I'm not sure it helps the rest of the world.David:And it's not compatible with China's ambitions to be a high tech superpower. China wants to be a country that doesn't just-Bill:That's a very fundamental contradiction.David:Yeah. China wants to sell us vaccines and wants the Western world to buy Chinese vaccines and approve Chinese vaccines. Why has the FDA not yet approved Chinese vaccines? Well, one reason is because China hasn't released the data. You can't play this secretive defensive hermit state and be a global high tech superpower. And China is a very, very big country with a lot of good universities, a lot of smart people. It has every right to compete at the highest levels in global high tech. But you can't do that, if you are not willing to earn trust by sharing the data, or by letting your companies be audited, when they list overseas. They need to decide.Bill:Or being able to handle legitimate criticism. I mean, certainly there has been illegitimate criticism and the attacks on the Western media, I mean, I know the BBC was a frequent target last year. And I think they were able to pull out some errors of the reporting and then magnify it. I mean, it is a struggle. And I think one of the things I think is on the Chinese side, they're very much geared up for this ongoing global opinion struggle. And we're not and we're never going to be, because it's just not how our systems are structured. So it's going to be an interesting few years.David:It is. And it's a tremendous privilege to still be here. And as long as I'm allowed, I'm going to keep letting Chinese people, letting their voices be heard in my column. That's what I think I'm here for.Bill:Okay. Last question. Just given your experience in living in DC and writing for The Economist from here, where do you see us, China relations going? And there is a one direct connection to what we just talked about, the foreign journalists where there theoretically has been some sort of an improvement or a deal around allowing more journalists from each side to go to other country. Although what I've heard is that the Chinese side was been very clear that some of the folks who were forced to leave or were experienced are not going to be welcome back. It's going to have to be a whole new crop of people who go in for these places, which again, seems to be, we don't want people who have priors or longer time on the ground, potentially.David:We think that each of the big American news organizations just going to get at least one visa, initially. And that Is going to be this deal done and it's high time. And you're right, as far as we can tell the people who were expelled or forced to leave are not going to come back. And that's a real tragedy because I have Chinese officials say to me, we wish that the Western media sent people who speak good Chinese and who understand China. And I was like Ian Johnson and Chris Buckley, these people lived for, their depth of knowledge and their love for China was absolutely unrivaled. So, if you're going to throw those people out, you can't complain about journalists who don't like China.Bill:Exactly.David:The general trend of U.S. China relations. to be of optimistic about the trend of U.S. China relations I'd have to be more optimistic than I currently am about the state of U.S. Politics. And there's a kind of general observation, which is that I think that American democracy is in very bad shape right now. And I wish that some of the China hawks in Congress, particularly on the Republican side, who are also willing to imply, for example, that the 2020 election was stolen, that there was massive fraud every time they say that stuff, they're making an in-kind contribution to the budget of the Chinese propaganda department.Bill:I agree completely there. It's not a joke because it's too serious, but it's just ludicrous, hypocrisy and shortsightedness. It's disgusting.David:You cannot be a patriotic American political leader and tell lies about the state of American democracy. And then say that you are concerned about China's rise. So there's a general observation about, if dysfunction continues at this level, then-Bill:No wonder the Chinese are so confident.David:Yeah. I mean, the Chinese line on president Biden is interesting. One of the big things about my first couple of years here when president Trump was still in office was, I'd any number of people in the states saying confidently that Donald Trump was a tremendous China hawk. I never believed. And I've interviewed Trump a few times and spoken to him about China and spoken to his China people. I never believed that Donald Trump himself was a China hawk. If you define a China hawk, as someone who has principled objections to the way that China runs itself. I think that Donald Trump couldn't care less about the Uighurs and Xinjiang. In fact, we know he approved to what they were doing.David:Couldn't care less about Hong Kong couldn't care less frankly, about Taiwan. His objection to the China relationship was that I think he thinks the American economy is the big piece of real estate, and you should pay rent to access it. And he thought China wasn't paying enough rent. So he was having a rent review. I mean, that's what the guy. It was about, they needed to pay more and then he was going to be happy. So he was not a China hawk. What was really interesting was that here in China, officials would be pretty open by the end, took them time to get their heads around Trump. For a long time they thought he was New York business guy. Then they realized that was, he wasn't actually like the other New York business guy they knew.David:And then they thought he was like a super China hawk. And then they realized that that wasn't true. By the end, they had a nail. They thought he was a very transactional guy. And the deal that they could do with him was one that they were happy to do, because it didn't really involve structural change on the Chinese side. Then their message about Joe Biden is that he is weak and old and lacks control of Congress. And that he is, this is from scholars rather than officials, I should say, but their view is, why would China spend political capital on the guy who's going to lose the next election?Bill:And not only the next election but is probably going to lose control of the House, at least in nine, what is it? Nine months or 10 months. So why worry? And that they do and I think, I mean, one of the big milestones will be the national security strategy, the national defense strategy, which in the Trump administration they came out in the December of the first year and then January for the NDS. It's February, we still haven't seen those here. I think certainly as you said, but certainly from Chinese interlock is the sense of, is that they can't come to an agreement on what it should be, the U.S. China policy.David:Yeah. And China has some legitimate concerns. I mean, for example, if you are Xi Jinping and you're trying to work out how ambitious your climate change timetables going to be. How much pain are you going to ask co-producing provinces in the Northeast to take to get out to carbon neutrality as quickly as say, the Europeans are pushing you to do. And part of the equation is America going to take some pain too, or are we going to end up being uncompetitive? Because America's not actually going to do the right thing? Well, Joe Biden can talk a good game on climate as an area for cooperation with China. But if he loses the next election and Donald Trump or someone like Donald Trump wins the White House then if you're shooting pink, why would you kind of strike a painful deal with America if you don't think it's going to last beyond 2024?Bill:Right. You'll do what makes sense for your country and not offer anything up to America because we already have a record of backing out of these deals. That's the problem.David:So that has real world consequences. The one thing that I will say about the U.S. China relationship, and I'm very, very pessimistic about the fact that the two sides, they don't share a vision of how this ends well. There is no end game that I think makes both sides happy, because I think the Chinese vision is America sucks it up and accommodates.Bill:Right. Resistance is futile.David:Yeah, exactly. And the American vision, I think, is that China stumbles, that China is making mistakes, that the state is getting involved in the economy too much. That Xi Jinping is centralizing power too much. And that somehow China's going to make so many mistakes that it ends up to feed defeating itself. I think that's one of the arguments you here in DC.Bill:Yes. It's wishful thinking it's not necessarily based on a rigid rigorous analysis. It seems like it's much more wishful thinking.David:So, that is a reason to be pessimistic about the medium and the long-term. The one thing that I will say based here in China is that when I write really specific color about things like what does China think of the idea of Russia invading Ukraine? And I talk to really serious scholars who spent their lives studying things like Russia policy or foreign policy or international relations, or if I talk to really senior tech people, Chinese tech companies, they do take America's power very seriously. Even though there is absolutely sincere disdain for American political dysfunction.David:I think that America's innovation power, the areas of technology, whether it's semiconductors or some forms of AI algorithms where America just really is still ahead by a long way, the really serious people, when you talk to them off the record, they still take America seriously. And on that Ukraine example, what was really interesting, the prompt for that was seeing commentators in the U.S. saying that Xi Jinping would like Putin to invade Ukraine because this was going to be a test that Biden was going to fail and America was going to look weak. And maybe that would lead Xi Jinping to then invade Taiwan.David:And when I spoke to Chinese scholars, really serious Chinese scholars of Russia, their Irish, it's like, no, no, no. Russia is an economy, the size of Guangdong and they sell us oil and gas, which is nice. But our trade to them is not enough to sacrifice our relationship with America.Bill:Thank you, David Rennie. That was a really good conversation. I think very useful, very illuminating. The links, some of the articles we talked about, the links will be in the show notes. And just a note on the schedule for the sinocism podcast. It is not, I think going to be weekly or biweekly as I thought originally, I'm still working it out, but it will be every, at least once a month. I hope it's the plan, if not, a little more frequent depending on the guests.Bill:So thanks for your patience and look forward to hearing from you. I love your feedback. The transcript will be on the website when it goes live. So please let me know what you think. And as always, you can sign up for sinocism at sinocism.com, S-I-N-O-C-I-S-M.com. Thank you. 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