Speaker 1: This meeting yesterday actually delivered results for the American people
Speaker 1: and quite frankly, the people of China and people around
Speaker 1: the world. But the American people benefited from this sit
Speaker 1: down together between President She and President Biden's.
Speaker 2: I realize politics gets involved in all this stuff. Like
Speaker 2: Nicki Haley just said, Biden's meeting with President She was embarrassing.
Speaker 2: You know, you have to the praiseier side or beat
Speaker 2: down the other side. But these meetings with evil dictators
Speaker 2: and the breathy coverage of them, like look at they've
Speaker 2: become friends, and this is paving the way for How
Speaker 2: do you know what are you talking about? Do you
Speaker 2: remember when George Bush said he looked into Putin's soul
Speaker 2: or whatever and saw a good man. How did that
Speaker 2: turn out? President She smiling at Joe Biden's calling him
Speaker 2: old friend is not an indication of anything and all.
Speaker 2: The guy has a million slaves. He took over Hong
Speaker 2: Kong and beat people down in the streets. I'm hearing
Speaker 2: cynicism and anti Chinese bias personally, But perhaps we can
Speaker 2: ask Josh Rogan, global opinions calumnists for The Washington Post
Speaker 2: and author of Chaos Under having Trump sheet in the
Speaker 2: Battle for the twenty first century. Josh, I'm excited about
Speaker 2: this new era of friendship and cooperation, aren't you.
Speaker 3: Man. I hate to be the spoiler. I hate to
Speaker 3: dash all your newly found excitement and you're newly found
Speaker 3: enthusiasm about this new era of great power relations is
Speaker 3: in China, and you know, I think frankly for like,
Speaker 3: you know, think, the problem with being a journalist who
Speaker 3: covers China all the time is that, like every once
Speaker 3: in a while, they'll be this moment where ten thousand
Speaker 3: journalists want to write about China and then nine and
Speaker 3: ninety of them have no idea what they're talking about,
Speaker 3: and then you know, they'll so they come up with
Speaker 3: two things like, oh, China good, China bad. And that's
Speaker 3: like as far as you could get. Now, you guys
Speaker 3: are way past that because you've been having me on
Speaker 3: your show for the last five years, so you are
Speaker 3: clued in along with your listeners, by the way, to
Speaker 3: the fact that the truth is that this relationship is
Speaker 3: going one way and that way is down. And that's
Speaker 3: not because there's China Hawks in Washington, and it's not
Speaker 3: because Nikky Haley or Mike POMPEII or even Donald Trump
Speaker 3: or even Joe Biden. It's because Jijingping. It is on
Speaker 3: the order of one of the worst mass murdering totalitarian
Speaker 3: dictators we've seen. And he's doing what they call the
Speaker 3: Great Leap backwards, which is not an opening up, and
Speaker 3: it's just not a reform, which is not a lot
Speaker 3: of the bs that he says that assembled. Did you
Speaker 3: see that dinner with like man like, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: you have to pay forty thousand dollars to hear Jijingping
Speaker 3: tell you that everything's okay. And Elon Musk was there,
Speaker 3: and Tim Cook and all these guys just like lining
Speaker 3: up to kiss the emperor's ring. It's gross. It's disgusting
Speaker 3: on a moral and a human level. But it's also
Speaker 3: really stupid because the fact is that you know what's
Speaker 3: going on in China, although we can't really know for sure,
Speaker 3: it doesn't look good.
Speaker 2: But Josh, didn't you hear he said he might give
Speaker 2: us some more pandas. I just feel like you're overlooking
Speaker 2: the important parts.
Speaker 3: Well, here's the thing about the pandas, And don't get
Speaker 3: me started on the pandas. Go ahead, I cripe about
Speaker 3: the Pandas. Now, okay, listen those First of all, do
Speaker 3: you know what happened with the pandas. They spread all
Speaker 3: these propaganda and China that we were mistreating the pandas.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: So there's this whole For months, there was a one
Speaker 3: of the pandas was sick, not the ones in Washington,
Speaker 3: but in the US. And you know he was getting
Speaker 3: the best care that pandas could possibly get, but he
Speaker 3: still he looked thick, you know. So they spread this
Speaker 3: picture around China, and they convinced the billion Chinese people
Speaker 3: that we were mistreating the pandas. That's why they took
Speaker 3: back the pan They created a crisis inside their own country.
Speaker 3: So that should tell you all you need to know
Speaker 3: about what's going on in Beijing. It's not about us.
Speaker 3: It's not where like where Americans were so solid sistic.
Speaker 3: We think we just have the right policy, if we
Speaker 3: just say the right thing, everything's fine with China. But
Speaker 3: it's really not about us. What's going on in China
Speaker 3: is about China, and it doesn't look good. And this guy,
Speaker 3: she is getting worse and worse. I just think in
Speaker 3: the last months, right, the Farm Minister disappeared, the Defense
Speaker 3: minister disappeared, the former premier drop dead. You know, you've
Speaker 3: got CEOs of major conglomerates falling out of windows an
Speaker 3: unprecedented rate. You know, none of that has anything to
Speaker 3: do with us. That's what happens inside of a crime organization,
Speaker 3: inside of a mafia organization, you're constantly purging the compos
Speaker 3: and you're constantly getting rid of all the rivals, or
Speaker 3: you get murdered. That's how this that's what the CP
Speaker 3: DCP is. It's a it's a crime family, and he's
Speaker 3: the Don Jijing Ping WHI should call him Don Jijing Okay,
Speaker 3: so what do you do with that? Okay? Well, I
Speaker 3: think to be honest about administration is that are not
Speaker 3: crazy the theory of it, which is sort of like,
Speaker 3: you know, you try to talk to them and then
Speaker 3: you do a lot of stuff with the allies, which
Speaker 3: makes perfect sense. But then when Joe Biden gets you know,
Speaker 3: in Toronto, to me, just can't help himself be like, oh,
Speaker 3: he's my friend. I spent eighty six hours traveling with him.
Speaker 3: Is not true, by the way he always says this,
Speaker 3: He's like, oh, we he spent seventeen thousand miles. It
Speaker 3: was like a thousand miles. He's like ninety one hours
Speaker 3: we spent together. It's like five. There's this famous story
Speaker 3: that Joe Biden always tells about him as usually, he
Speaker 3: told it again this week. He was like, we were
Speaker 3: standing on the edge of the Tibetan plata. Joe Biden's
Speaker 3: never been to the Tibetan plato.
Speaker 2: Okay, wow, all right, you know before you go any further,
Speaker 2: because we read your recent column and it's terrific as usual.
Speaker 2: But I can accept, having been into this sort of
Speaker 2: thing for like my entire adult life, that there is
Speaker 2: a certain naivete and almost Stockholm syndrome me battered spouse
Speaker 2: syndrome among the American people. We're convinced if we just
Speaker 2: are good to them or nice to them or generous
Speaker 2: to them, they'll stop hitting us, essentially, or they'll become
Speaker 2: a good cooperative country. I get that. I can accept
Speaker 2: that people have their lives, they're not up on this stuff.
Speaker 2: But if the president in the United States actually believes
Speaker 2: his own bull crap, like the stories you're just describing,
Speaker 2: that's awful. Do you have any sense of is that
Speaker 2: just old Jo Scranton Joe spinning yarns or do you
Speaker 2: think he believes that stuff?
Speaker 3: A little and a little from Columbee? You know, I
Speaker 3: think you know. But here's the thing, here's the crazy thing.
Speaker 3: Every president does that. Every president I've been a journalist
Speaker 3: for twenty years, every single one, George H. W. Bush,
Speaker 3: Bill Clinton, Obama, Trump, Biden, they all thought they could
Speaker 3: charm the dictators. Okay, they all think they're dictator charmers.
Speaker 3: With Putin too, by the way, Obama did the reset
Speaker 3: and Trump wanted to meet with Putin, and Biden was
Speaker 3: trying to do a reset. But then they invented Ukraine.
Speaker 3: So there's this. You're right, it's like a nice thing
Speaker 3: about Americans that we think, if we're just charmed these dictators,
Speaker 3: we're gonna convince them that they shouldn't be dictators anymore.
Speaker 3: And it's like Lucy in the football, you know, and
Speaker 3: we just keep going, We just keep falling for it.
Speaker 3: We just keep falling for it, you know. Esventually we've
Speaker 3: got to realize that, you know, psychopathic, genocidal, murder as murdering, totalitarian,
Speaker 3: aggressive dictators probably not going to change their stripes. They've
Speaker 3: made their call on what they're going to be you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, And we just have to deal
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 2: Where are you on the likelihood? Because if I'm president,
Speaker 2: she and I actually am planning to invade Taiwan at
Speaker 2: some point, I'm going to do it while Joe Biden
Speaker 2: is still president because he's an old man with a
Speaker 2: party with a lot of problems. Why wouldn't you do
Speaker 2: it now?
Speaker 3: Well, he's not ready now, so that's one problem. You know,
Speaker 3: you need to keep preparing, you know. That's why people
Speaker 3: say twenty twenty seven. And I don't think that's like
Speaker 3: any sort of magical date. I just think that's like
Speaker 3: kind of around when he'll be ready. Needs the invasion
Speaker 3: for us, needs the economic independence. You know, there's stockpiling food.
Speaker 3: Why are they doing that? There's stockpiling food and fuel
Speaker 3: all over China. And then he needs the nuclear deterrent
Speaker 3: to keep US at bay, which they're building a thousand
Speaker 3: nuclear weapons. Why are they doing that? I thought we
Speaker 3: just had a nice meeting. You're still building a thousand
Speaker 3: of nuclear weapons. Didn't we have a nice meeting? You know?
Speaker 3: So one thing is they're not ready. Second thing is
Speaker 3: there's something going on in Taiwan. We'd ever talk about,
Speaker 3: which is that, Like they're going to have this big
Speaker 3: election in January. You know, if they elect the pro
Speaker 3: Chinese side, which could happen, by the way, then that
Speaker 3: could change his calculus. He's gonna wait to see what
Speaker 3: happens in Ukraine, if we have the sticking power there
Speaker 3: or not. So I mean, I think like invasion is
Speaker 3: like probably his last resort. Maybe he could take Taiwan
Speaker 3: without invading. Wouldn't you rather do that if you were him?
Speaker 3: So you know, I think he's going to take Taiwan
Speaker 3: one way or the other. But if you can get
Speaker 3: it without the war, I think he's going to try
Speaker 3: that first, to be honest.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Yeah, honestly, I've been reading a bit about the
Speaker 2: opposition party and how warned they are to China and
Speaker 2: how they're ahead in the polls, and so we'll have
Speaker 2: to watch that. But China is also facing some pretty
Speaker 2: serious economic headwinds, not all of a sudden, but that
Speaker 2: nobody was talking about a year or two ago. Josh,
Speaker 2: how signif do you think that is right?
Speaker 3: No, I think it's really significant, and I think but
Speaker 3: I think people draw the wrong conclusion. You know, people
Speaker 3: in Washington they're like, oh, China's having problems economically, that
Speaker 3: means we don't have to do anything. They can go
Speaker 3: back to sleep. They're just going to collapse under their
Speaker 3: own weight. That's what you you know, the pro China
Speaker 3: people and watching that say, they're like, oh, they're not
Speaker 3: ten feet tall, they're only six feet tall, so we
Speaker 3: can all go back to sleep. It's fine. And what
Speaker 3: I say is that, no, actually, when Jijingping it doesn't
Speaker 3: have that economic you know, benefit to show his people
Speaker 3: to bolster his legitimacy, that's when he is going to
Speaker 3: get more aggressive externally. He's got to blame that on
Speaker 3: somebody that's us. So actually he gets more dangerous the
Speaker 3: worst their economy, that's not less dangerous. That's what I
Speaker 3: think again, based on everything we know about every dictator. Ever.
Speaker 2: So I'm watching some of the coverage on the cable
Speaker 2: news and they're talking about as you see Joe Biden
Speaker 2: and Jijingping walking through the garden looks like the beginning
Speaker 2: of a friendship and a thawing. I mean, how do
Speaker 2: you react to that sort of commentary?
Speaker 3: It's really I mean, it's really good for choosing thing.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what he needed, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: He's like, you know, facing a lot of trouble at home.
Speaker 3: Imagine you're inside the Chinese system and you're looking at
Speaker 3: this mass economic mass COVID all of that stuff. You're
Speaker 3: looking at Using Thing like, dude, you know, you better
Speaker 3: get your act together. So then he's like, you know
Speaker 3: what would really be good is oh, maybe I can
Speaker 3: get like, you know, some really great pictures of all
Speaker 3: of the world's leaders, you know, telling me I'm the
Speaker 3: cast me out. That's exactly what he got. So we
Speaker 3: know what Using Thing got from this. Meaning I don't
Speaker 3: know what we got. Resumption of communication is really not
Speaker 3: a thing that we should be like, you know, really celebrating.
Speaker 3: That's that should be like the minimum. I think, I
Speaker 3: don't know, maybe I'm crity.
Speaker 2: No, I saw you write that, and I agreed. Touting
Speaker 2: the fact that they're now willing to take our phone calls. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that is like the minimum requirement of a friendship. And
Speaker 2: they then they and then and then they haven't done
Speaker 2: it yet. They've just said they would in the future,
Speaker 2: So no guarantee they will still take our phone calls.
Speaker 2: Josh Rogan's The Global Opinions calling this for The Washington Post.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, Josh, if.
Speaker 3: You were my best friend for twenty five years, I
Speaker 3: would hope you would take my phone call, but you
Speaker 3: didn't answer by his phone call for a year. A friend?
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 3: Friends like that these enemies? Yeah.
Speaker 2: So my final question, it's a sprawling one, and you
Speaker 2: could write not one, but to multiple books on the topic,
Speaker 2: is how goes the great decoupling or disentangling of the economies?
Speaker 3: You know it goes? You know, I think, like you know,
Speaker 3: in the end, we're gonna have to figure out what
Speaker 3: we have to decouple and what we don't have to
Speaker 3: you know, like if you want to talk about like
Speaker 3: toys and bicycles, I don't think we need to decouple
Speaker 3: from toys and bicycles, you know, if they want to.
Speaker 3: You know, Manu put a bunch of Mariotte hotels in China.
Speaker 3: I'm okay with that. But when it comes to the AI,
Speaker 3: to the nuclear secrets and to the top silicon chips
Speaker 3: into the things that make our missiles, you know, missiles, no,
Speaker 3: we're gonna have to decouple from that. When it comes
Speaker 3: to masks, I guess we're going to need our own
Speaker 3: masks because it's give me another pandemic. And then what
Speaker 3: we really need to de couple of guys is the money.
Speaker 3: We need to stop having our Wall Street firms send
Speaker 3: our retirement funds, our pension funds into the hands of
Speaker 3: the companies that are building the machines that's pointed against us.
Speaker 3: That's the crazy part of the decoupling that we can't
Speaker 3: get around to, which is the fact that Wall Street
Speaker 3: firms and their bosses, who were all paid forty thousand
Speaker 3: dollars to clap and do standing ovations for Jiji thing
Speaker 3: last night, they're all taking your money, your savings, your
Speaker 3: retirement and they're investigating companies that are committing atrocities and
Speaker 3: building the military. That's we're pointed right at us, and
Speaker 3: that seems crazy. So, I mean, you know, you're right,
Speaker 3: that's going to have to build another book, if not
Speaker 3: a whole nother show.
Speaker 2: And we could be talking about TikTok as well. We
Speaker 2: were earlier on the show. The fact that we let
Speaker 2: the communists Chinese at least in some measure, control the
Speaker 2: number one news source for our young it's a suicidal,
Speaker 2: you know thing. We're engaged, but it's unbelievable we'll talk
Speaker 2: about that more another time, Josh, I hope you can
Speaker 2: come on and chat again soon anytime. All right, thanks
Speaker 2: a million. How good was that? Armstrong and Yetty