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Speaker 1: We're joined now by Isaac stone Fish. He's founder and

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Speaker 1: CEO at Strategy Risks here to talk about the latest

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Speaker 1: on China's COVID developments, and I just want to start off,

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Speaker 1: Isaac by getting your personal view on what's going on.

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Speaker 1: You've lived in Beijing for quite some time. Can you

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Speaker 1: give us a sense of what's happening on the street

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Speaker 1: and people's mood when it comes to exasperation, I guess

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Speaker 1: with COVID restrictions. Watching the protests this weekend was so

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Speaker 1: incredibly intense and seeing people gather in streets that years ago,

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Speaker 1: even weeks ago, you'd never dream of coming across a

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Speaker 1: massive people shouting slogans that were so critical to the party.

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Speaker 1: So it's really really a momentous move. Also, at the

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Speaker 1: same time, it does seem a lot more likely that

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Speaker 1: we have viewed the most exuberant part of the protests

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Speaker 1: and that the rest will be quiet crackdowns and again

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Speaker 1: difficult to predict, but this feels like that was the

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Speaker 1: biggest roar that will see so far. Does that necessarily

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Speaker 1: mean that the energy, the pressure that has been building

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Speaker 1: underneath the surface is going to dissipate or does it

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Speaker 1: potentially have the possibility of becoming magnified. So much depends

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Speaker 1: on how Beijing and how local governments react. If they

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Speaker 1: just quietly arrest people, if they're able to blame this

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Speaker 1: on local officials, then I think the anger could really dissipate.

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Speaker 1: If there's say a massacre of protesters, protesters violence against protesters,

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Speaker 1: If anyone becomes a martyr, then we can really see

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Speaker 1: this becoming a movement evil. Censorship and enforcement is really

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Speaker 1: on these effective as the sensors and the enforces, so

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Speaker 1: these people are also living under lockdown. How united is

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Speaker 1: the government and it's a sort of apparatus when it

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Speaker 1: comes to keeping the down going. That's an excellent point.

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Speaker 1: The technology is there for Biging to do a blanket

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Speaker 1: ban on all of these discussions. What they don't necessarily

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Speaker 1: have is the hearts and minds of the hundreds of

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Speaker 1: thousands of individuals involved in the censorship apparatus, who, like

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Speaker 1: you said, have also been living under lockdown and frustrations.

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Speaker 1: It's very difficult to know how divided the party may

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Speaker 1: or may not be, but it's a large, relatively diverse body,

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Speaker 1: and we can only expect that there are a lot

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Speaker 1: of people inside who are very very frustrated with the

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Speaker 1: way things have been going. So if more vaccination is

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Speaker 1: kind of one of the keys to kind of liberating

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Speaker 1: from this current state. Um, is there any chance in

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Speaker 1: your view that western m RNA vaccines could be introduced,

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Speaker 1: maybe for wider adoption than what is presently being approved

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Speaker 1: under emergency used for foreign next bats. It's certainly possible.

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Speaker 1: One imagines that Beijing is at the same time trying

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Speaker 1: to develop its own effective mr and A vaccine and

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Speaker 1: trying to figure out if there's a way that they can, say,

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Speaker 1: rebrand Western vaccines as Chinese vaccines so that they don't

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Speaker 1: have to say, well, this is coming from visor Maderina,

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Speaker 1: but this is coming from a Chinese source, And I

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Speaker 1: think they're having pretty serious conversations with the pharmaceutical company

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Speaker 1: majors about whether or not that's possibility. But as we've

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Speaker 1: read them, the reports those companies have been quite vague

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Speaker 1: about what the conversations are. We're getting used today that

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Speaker 1: China is also making a huge push to ramp up

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Speaker 1: vaccination of the elderly, But it does kind of beg

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Speaker 1: the question why wasn't this done years ago? Is trying

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Speaker 1: to really ready to lift COVID restrictions. The health system

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Speaker 1: might be coming under a bit appreciate too. Like the

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Speaker 1: United States, China has a pretty faulty health system you

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Speaker 1: and worse in a lot of ways. I think the

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Speaker 1: other thing we need to keep in mind is that

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Speaker 1: we're now getting pretty close to Spring Festival, which is

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Speaker 1: the Chinese holiday where hundreds of millions of Chinese will

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Speaker 1: go to or from their homes. And that's a super

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Speaker 1: spreader event, like something you can't even believe. And so

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Speaker 1: I think the question is both, are they going to

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Speaker 1: do a mass campaign before that, or is the idea

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Speaker 1: to keep things small, keep expectations modest, and then really

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Speaker 1: try to come up with a plan for opening up

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Speaker 1: in February or March or April. When you look at

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Speaker 1: the way that the market responded yesterday in Hong Kong,

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Speaker 1: a lot of enthusiasm and some of this I don't

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Speaker 1: want to get into the weeds here. You know, whether

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Speaker 1: people had been short assets related to China and they

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Speaker 1: had to cover the short positions. I mean, generally speaking,

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Speaker 1: do you think the world should be skeptical about a

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Speaker 1: meaningful recovery and some some economic juice to go with it,

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Speaker 1: or is there a real risk that the China his

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Speaker 1: economy could just languish for for quite some time. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: there is certainly a very large risk it could languish.

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Speaker 1: And I think one thing we really need to keep

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Speaker 1: in mind is that so many people talking about COVID

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Speaker 1: in China will quote government official numbers. The same thing

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Speaker 1: with economic numbers and productivity numbers, and we all know,

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Speaker 1: and the government is very explicit that those numbers are politicized,

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Speaker 1: those numbers are oftentimes very much not accurate. So those

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Speaker 1: who are trying to get a good concrete portrait of

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Speaker 1: how China's economy is actually doing need to use non

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Speaker 1: traditional sources of data and use official Chinese statistics as

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Speaker 1: just but one of many inputs in putting their models together.

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Speaker 1: It's interesting you make that point because later today we'll

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Speaker 1: get to the official Chinese p m I readings. Isaac,

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Speaker 1: thank you so much for being with us. Isaac stone Fish,

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Speaker 1: founder CEO of Strategy Risk, talking about the COVID situation

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Speaker 1: on the main line