WEBVTT - The Balloon Wars and US China Relations 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:09.719 Hot fucking Moses. Welcome to it could happen here. The 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:15.000 podcast that is sometimes introduced by me Robert Evans, other 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:18.880 times it's introduced by James Stout or Mia Wong, who 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:22.200 are both on the call today. How's everybody doing pretty good? 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:26.439 We've we've we've declared victory over the balloon. Yeah we 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:29.240 we Finally the f twenty two gets its first air 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:35.320 to air kill. Yeah yeah yeah later we we we 0:00:35.400 --> 0:00:38.839 did it. Guys, we did it. We really killed. Like 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:41.880 the FAY two is like God's perfect killing machine. Yeah, 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:44.080 and it's thus it is like it is a six 0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:48.159 was like seven billion dollar aircraft. Completely, it is a 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:52.879 it is afect air. It is a perfect air superiority craft, 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:56.880 which in modern warfare makes it slightly less useful than 0:00:56.920 --> 0:00:59.280 an eight hundred and fifty dollar d J i'd drone 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:07.080 with hand grenades. Yea fairly express. I cannot think of 0:01:07.120 --> 0:01:09.440 like a better metaphor to understand how the U. S. 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:12.360 Army works than shooting using using a sixties seven billion 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:14.760 dollar aircraft to shoot a three hundred and sixty one 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:21.680 dollar missile at a balloon, just like listen several balloons 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:23.880 in his life. A really not this high up. It 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:28.640 is extremely entertaining. And yeah, I can't fault that pilot. 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:33.560 I am deeply disappointed in rural America that no crazy 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:35.920 rich guy with a cessna flew his friend with a 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:41.040 fifty cow up to like drop that why the seventeen 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:45.200 incinerator was invented for this specific instance. And yeah, we've 0:01:45.200 --> 0:01:48.320 been let down again. Anyway, what are we talking about today? Mia? 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:51.800 Obviously we're talking about the balloon a little bit, and 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:53.760 then we're going to talk about something more interesting, which 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:55.920 is the sort of history of US China relations and 0:01:55.960 --> 0:01:58.800 how it's not what everyone thinks it is. I've been 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:00.640 led to believe by the media that there is nothing 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:02.600 more interesting than the balloon and that we should be 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:05.080 focusing all our coverage on the balloon. That's true. There 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:07.840 have been other balloons. There are now a fifth balloon. 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:14.840 Has it towers? Okay? So yeah, let's let's go Yeah. 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:16.360 So okay, So I want to start off by, like, 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:19.360 I want to talk a little bit about the balloon, 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:23.440 which is that Okay, So we have the American Army's claim, 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:25.280 but this is a surveillance balloon. There's a there's a 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:28.600 chance it which just was a random balloon, Like I 0:02:28.600 --> 0:02:30.840 don't know. I I don't want to completely discount the 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:32.239 fact that it was a balloon. I do want to 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:34.600 talk a little bit about sort of balloon surveillance stuff though, 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:37.040 because I've seen a lot of people both on the 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:38.720 left and also on the right who are just like, 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:41.200 why would anyone ever have a spy balloon? It's like, okay, 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:44.520 so it's talk a little bit. In order to do this, 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:46.520 we need to talk a little bit about surveillance satellites, 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:49.680 which I come from a family of astronomers, and one 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:51.600 of the sort of dark secrets of astronomy is that 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:54.040 the stuff you point up also be pointed back down again. 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:57.240 And yeah, yeah, so and you know, one of the 0:02:57.240 --> 0:02:59.160 other things about this is a lot of the companies 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:01.280 that make telescopes to make the lenses for that are 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:03.400 companies that work heavily with the n r O, which 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:07.239 is the National Reconnaissance Office, which is a genuinely terrifying 0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:10.120 organization with an unfathomable black budget to dedicated to just 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:13.080 like spying on people from aircrafts and from space and 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:15.000 more people. More people should be like, we we have 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:16.840 a lot of like people are scared of the n 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:18.960 s A. People are scared of the CIA, but more 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:20.680 people should be scared of the n r O because 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:25.519 Jesus Christ, that stuff is who but on the other head. Okay, 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:27.200 so the n ROW has a bunch of satellites, right. 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:30.680 But the thing about satellites that they move. Okay, you 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:33.600 can't prove that. I will, I will prove I will, 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:35.480 I will, I will, I will do a war thunder, 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:41.040 I will post classic live underneath of dome. And satellites 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:46.320 are stationary. The dome rotates in a clockwise direction around them, 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:54.360 and that's responsible for the illusion of motion in the heavens. Sure, yes, 0:03:56.120 --> 0:04:02.520 there's no competing response today owned so okay, all right, 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:05.920 So the satellite satellites move. They move in stable, addictable orbits, 0:04:05.960 --> 0:04:07.680 and this means a few things, right. One of the 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:10.480 things that it means is that a satellite is only 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:12.560 over the area you wanted to cover for a limited 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:14.760 amount of time because it's you know, the satellites moving 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:17.880 around the Earth, right, um. And this means that you know, 0:04:18.160 --> 0:04:20.200 you can you can calculate their orbits, and you can 0:04:20.240 --> 0:04:22.359 calculate when they're going to be in range of whatever 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:24.720 they want to look at, and you know, and this 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:26.880 means you can do things like, for example, figuring out 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:28.680 where the satellite is going to be in hiding whatever 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:30.440 you're working out when they pass this. This is how 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:33.760 the CIA, that's how the CIA completely missed India's nuclear 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:35.960 weapons program. Is that they do when that they didn't 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:37.640 do when the flies the Spice satellites you're flying over, 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:39.440 they just hid all their weapons equipment and the CIA 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:42.440 never figured out they were building dukes. Well actually not 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:48.599 based bad, but but yeah, it's very funny. Yeah, yeah, 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:50.600 but what do they do? Did they just painted like 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:52.760 a hot dog o something and just be like they 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:56.920 just like put torps over it. The satellite came around, 0:04:57.080 --> 0:04:59.440 and then they build things under ground. It's very funny. 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:02.000 I passioning the world's biggest hot dog eyed day in 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:04.880 case someone else does. Yeah, I think Jamie Loftus actually 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:07.280 might if you beat to that. Don't have to do 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:10.640 all to the deaths and think we're not supposed to 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:13.080 talk about in the podcast. Well, look, it's it's it's 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:15.400 it's like the Israeli secret Arsenal. It's it's an open 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.840 secret and not a closed secret. So okay, you can 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:23.200 solve this problem of of sort of telescope go move um, 0:05:23.760 --> 0:05:26.799 either by having just a bunch of satellites going constantly, 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:29.880 or by having a geosynchronous satellite, which is in which 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:31.400 is in an orbit where it's like basically over the 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:33.240 same spot of the Earth at one time. The problem 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:38.320 is that both of these are like unfathomably expensive. And 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:41.560 that doesn't mean that governments don't do that, Like the 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:43.919 US is a multi spy satellites, like lots of countries 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:47.920 by satellites, but you know, it's really really expensive, and 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:49.800 that there's there's you know, there's a few other reasons 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:52.080 why you would use a balloon um, which are you 0:05:52.120 --> 0:05:53.440 know some of the reasons the US uses that use 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:56.640 them in Afghanistan. One is that you have really limited 0:05:56.680 --> 0:05:59.280 space on a satellite, which means that there's the you know, 0:05:59.360 --> 0:06:01.960 you can only fit certain kinds of equipment onto each satellite. 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:06.880 There's another issue, which is that okay, um, if you're 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:09.080 putting spy stuff on a satellite that has to work 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:13.520 in space and it turns out that space sucks, and 0:06:14.440 --> 0:06:17.960 I mean wanting to kill you, I didn't like it. 0:06:18.120 --> 0:06:20.280 It's a it's a mark of how like bad people 0:06:20.360 --> 0:06:22.520 are at strategic thinking that they would ever ask why 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:26.280 would you put spy stuff on the balloon, especially like 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:28.360 it's a little weirder to float it over the US 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:30.960 if that's what happened. But like if you are the 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:33.920 US or China or Russia engaging in most of the 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:36.640 conflicts those countries engage in where they're not dealing with 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:41.200 state level actors, a balloon provides perfect surveillance, very cheaply, 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:44.960 it doesn't require refueling, Like, it's an incredibly reasonable platform 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:47.320 to spy on people with. Yeah, and I think that 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:49.560 there's another thing which I think has been less talked about, 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:53.360 which is that, Okay, there's an equipment gap basically between 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:55.920 when you design a camera for a satellite and when 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:58.240 the satellite goes up. And this means that whatever you 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:00.400 whatever kind of cameras and technology you're putting in a 0:07:00.440 --> 0:07:02.680 satellite are going to be by definition a few years 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:04.640 out of date, because that's just how long it takes 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:06.160 a design the equipment and putting it and put it 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:08.960 into the air. But you know, for a balloon, you 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:10.720 could you can you could use sulf that's more modern 0:07:10.760 --> 0:07:12.680 than what you would have on a spy satellite. Now, 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:14.920 you know, and and also like you can you can 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:17.120 also just put other stuff on the balloon that's not 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:19.640 a cameras, like you can do sig and stuff you 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:23.280 can use. So okay, the moral of this story is that, like, 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.480 the spy balloon is not like a completely implausible thing. 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:30.520 If if you like put a gun to my head 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:32.880 and said, Mia, what happened here, my guests would be 0:07:32.920 --> 0:07:35.280 it was like the spy balloon went off course, so 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:38.400 ship and they's lost control of it. Now, yeah, it 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:42.920 probably was not meant for the continentally United States, because 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:47.760 that's a weird move. But it's happening. So Hi, this 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:50.360 is Mia in post. So. But back when we recorded 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:53.080 this episode in the heavy days of early February, there 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:56.160 had been but two balloons. There have now been so 0:07:56.640 --> 0:07:59.520 so many more balloons. Oh my god. There the US 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:02.800 just has balloon mania. We we now know a little 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:05.760 bit more about the sort of suspected Chinese balloon. It 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:08.760 does that that balloon seems to be an actual balloon 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:11.720 at the very least. The U. S Government claims that 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:16.480 they've recovered an enormous amounts of sort of technical and 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:19.520 observational equipment from it. They said it was, well, what 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:22.920 was the exact line, the size of three school buses, 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:26.120 a bunch of signals intelligence stuff, which is something we 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:28.920 didn't mention an enormous amount, but yeah, like that, that's 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:31.400 an Everything you can use the balloon for is intercepting 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:35.640 phone communications, at radio communications, etcetera, etcetera. Okay, so, like 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:37.800 it seems like they're like they're the first balloon may 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:40.880 have been an actual balloon. Every subsequent balloon, however, we 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:45.160 have learned more so at least one, and my my 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:48.400 assumption is this is every single subsequent balloon after the 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:51.000 first balloon. Um, we have confirmation that so one of 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:53.319 the balloons is shot down over for Canada by n 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:55.360 F twenty two and this seems to be a Pico 0:08:55.480 --> 0:08:59.400 balloon from the Northern Illinois Bottle Cap Balloon Brigade. Uh, 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:01.520 these are just like these are these just like tiny 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:04.960 balloons that people send out so they can serve can 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:07.560 navigate the globecause these people are just like balloon hobbyists. 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:10.440 They just they just like balloons, and you know, it's 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:13.360 just honestly really sad, like these are just people who 0:09:13.480 --> 0:09:15.360 like they just like putting balloons up and watching them 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:18.160 go around the world and they were met with the 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:22.640 entire aerial bite of the world's greatest superpower, which spent 0:09:23.200 --> 0:09:25.120 literally more money than I have ever seen in my 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:30.040 entire life to annihilate literally like about a hundred or 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:35.240 two hundred dollars worth of essentially foil and some GPS equipment. Uh. 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:37.480 These people apparently tried to contact the U. S Government 0:09:37.520 --> 0:09:38.800 and tell them what was going on. In the US 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:44.560 government was like, so, yeah, congratulations to the US government 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:47.440 which has uh, it has one, it has one an 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:52.720 important geo strategic victory over the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade. Uh. 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:55.840 This is this has been this has been breaking news 0:09:56.000 --> 0:10:00.400 from me uh in in in the in the balloon War. Yeah, 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:02.400 enjoy the rest of the episode. But you know, I 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:04.680 wanted to use this to talk about something more interesting, 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:07.760 which is again like the sort of arc of of U. S. 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:11.040 China relations and what actually drives it, because I think 0:10:11.040 --> 0:10:13.800 people have a really really not very good understanding of 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:17.000 how it works and why. Okay, I think it's reasonable 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:18.400 to ask you, why why are you talking about the 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:21.280 arc of US China relations. Aren't US shininga relations always bad? 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:23.480 And the answer is no, In fact, you have shad 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:26.240 a relations to sometimes actually quite good U. S. China 0:10:26.320 --> 0:10:28.800 relations are driven by these two sort of interlocking forces. 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:31.640 Right on the one hand, you have the internal domestic 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:34.400 and also kind of global balance of class forces inside 0:10:34.440 --> 0:10:36.920 the country, and that plays a huge role in a 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:39.079 lot of the things that are going to happen in 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:41.400 the US Hina relations. And the other thing that happens 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:44.640 is what you, I guess would call geopolitics. And we're 0:10:44.640 --> 0:10:46.559 going to kind of start with the geopolitics sign and 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:49.120 then move back and forth between that and the sort 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:51.040 of class angle on it. You can get get get 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:53.400 a kind of understanding of how how this suff actually 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:57.280 works and how to think about it in ways that 0:10:57.320 --> 0:11:01.600 are just sort of incredibly simplastic and useless. So, all right, 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:04.679 I'm not gonna go all the way back to the 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:07.920 US or whatever, because there are US China relations with 0:11:08.040 --> 0:11:10.120 we we actually invaded China at one point in like 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.719 the eight hundreds for some fucking reason. Uh, then we 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:17.000 actually we did again the next hundred two. Yeah, But okay, 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:20.760 So but in terms of dealing with modern China, dealing 0:11:20.800 --> 0:11:22.679 with the U. S U and modern US China relations 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:26.800 is about the US's relationship with the CCP and weirdly 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:29.199 dream world War two it was the relations were actually 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:32.839 really good. Um, you know because obviously China, China is 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:35.160 the U s IS ally and World War two I 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:39.200 were there were also allies with China's nationalist party, the KMT. 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:41.760 But you know what, what what's interesting about this is 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:44.400 that there's a faction of the U s RM that 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:47.560 is anti KMT and pro CCP. And they're not pro 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:51.400 CCP because they're communists. Uh, they're pro CCP because a 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:54.520 they're kind of racist and they really don't like the 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:57.880 KMT kind of out of racism. And the second thing 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:00.320 that that's going on is that the k m teed 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:02.600 as we've talked about elsewhere, it's just like incredibly corrupt 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:06.400 esquad party. And that means that, you know, some of 0:12:06.440 --> 0:12:07.760 the people who have to like the people who have 0:12:07.800 --> 0:12:09.000 to work with them on the ground to World War 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:10.839 two or like, these are literally the worst people who 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:12.360 have ever lived. Why on earth are we doing this? 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:16.079 That means that when when the civil war starts, right like, 0:12:16.160 --> 0:12:18.880 the US takes the nationalist side but like nowhere near 0:12:18.920 --> 0:12:22.959 as strongly as they could have, and this creates this 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:24.839 sort of like this myth around like the loss of 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:28.280 China that becomes this massive thing in the US is 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:29.640 because this is one of the things that triggers somelth 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:32.760 McCarthy ism, etceentric cera is like everyone becomes convinced it 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:34.880 was like oh my God, like Truman, like like they 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:37.720 lost China, Like we could have kept China for the communists, 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:39.400 but like they lost it, and it's like wow, okay. 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:42.679 But this has another massive impact, which is that it 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:45.400 creates this thing called the China Lobby. And the China 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:47.959 Lobby is this is this sort of bank of these 0:12:48.000 --> 0:12:52.880 like incredibly psychopathic right wing like anti communist gouls and 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:55.960 some also people who had some also people who were 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:58.679 like had been rich in China and then got owned 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:02.679 by this ec P, and they start pushing incredibly aggressively 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:06.800 for like regime change in China for just the US 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:09.640 and trying to not have a diplomatic relations and this 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:12.640 this start starts to sort of like tank relations between 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:15.240 the US and China. And then obviously like so we 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:17.640 we we fought, we fought a war with China and Korea, 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:21.280 a thing that I feel like doesn't get talked about 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:24.400 as much as you would think it would. The Korean 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:27.920 War is the memory hold war in yeah, and in 0:13:27.960 --> 0:13:29.720 the UK. It's when I was America. But it's still 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:32.959 war that I mean, the Forgotten War is literally like 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:36.120 it's it's most common nickname. There's a pretty good book 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:38.520 by that title too. Yeah, but you know, like like 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:40.199 that war, like there there are there are U s 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:42.040 and Chinese troops like shooting the ship out of each other, 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:44.400 like oh yeah, yeah, like across the entire peninsula, like 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:47.120 there are there there are Chinese troops doing bayonet charges 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:51.719 through the road artillery the American lines. My my, the 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:54.360 last before I bought my place, my last landlord was 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:56.920 a Chinese citizen um living in the US on a 0:13:56.960 --> 0:14:01.000 green card, and during a pandemic condre station over some wine, 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:03.920 we kind of figured out that both of our grandfathers 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:08.080 wound up at the same battles and made very shooting 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:13.719 each other. Yeah, so that's the melting pot, buddy, she 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.480 became a landlord. Mm hmm. Well, I mean, I mean 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:22.640 that's a dream the you like there there was a 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:24.840 reasonable argument that they were and back again. A landlord 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:27.840 story is the entire course of the of the sort 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:32.720 of like Chinese Chinese politics in the twenty century any 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:35.600 respect to the United States. Yeah, well, and also trying 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:38.160 to writ because lead landlords are back now it sucks. 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:40.760 Oh yeah, yeah, land yet not all Chinese people have 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:45.200 become landlords, but yeah, many a subject to landlord ship. Yeah, 0:14:45.280 --> 0:14:47.640 you know, Okay, So like obviously it's really interesting too 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:50.760 because when people like when people write about US China relations, 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:52.360 they normally like the thing that they think they picked 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:54.800 from this period tends to be like the Twiny Straight crisis, 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:57.120 and it's like, okay, yeah, there was there was this 0:14:57.240 --> 0:14:58.920 race crisis, but again, like the U. S And China 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:01.400 were like shooting at each other like before this, like 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:03.080 why why is this that? Why is this the thing 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:05.880 that you pick for the downturn of your China relations 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:09.400 like we were at war? Okay, but baffling stuff, right, 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:12.600 But you know, and relations are not good to like 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:16.040 the sixties either, like sort of sort of based on 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:19.960 very very similar sort of lines that you've seen in 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:23.600 the fifties, Like this is a period where people sort 0:15:23.640 --> 0:15:26.880 of take communism anti communism seriously. Uh, that stops being 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:29.920 true very quickly. On the other hands, these these sort 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:33.720 of geopolitics things have real material consequences. Right. You can 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.440 look at this in the American side, where, for example, 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:38.920 the industrial build up of the Japanese and Korean economies, 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:41.160 and also the industrial build up like the industrial build 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:44.640 of California, right, has to do with these sort of 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:46.520 trade linkuages that are that are being set up in 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:48.800 order for us to run the war in Korean, run 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:52.080 the war in Vietnam. And China has its own sort 0:15:52.120 --> 0:15:54.840 of version of this, where which which starts getting more 0:15:54.880 --> 0:15:57.000 and more apparent by it starts around the mid sixties. 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:00.600 They have this thing called the Third Front, which is okay, So, 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:04.680 having having now been through like I don't know how literally, 0:16:04.680 --> 0:16:06.480 I don't even know how many wars since the start 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:09.200 of this century, the CCP goes, okay, we need to 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:11.280 shift ourt we need to shift our production away from 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:13.440 sort of the coast and into the middle of the 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:15.120 country so that they can't be attacked by the Soviets 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:18.120 and they can't be attacked by the Americans. And this 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:21.800 this has, this has a really major effect in terms 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:24.440 of what sort of Chinese industriization looks like. Over the 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:27.040 course of the mid twentieth centuries. You get, you get 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:28.640 this industrial belt that's built up and that is going 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:31.720 to be destroyed later on, and it and it's destroyed 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:36.880 in part because of of what starts happening in the seventies, 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:38.880 which is the sort of warm up between the US 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:43.680 and China based on sort of Nick Nixon and Kissinger's 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:45.360 attempts to sort of peel the Chinese away from the 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:47.800 Soviet Union. And you know, like Robert, you've you've talked 0:16:47.800 --> 0:16:51.760 about this ambassadors before. Um, but you know, part part 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:54.080 of part of what's going on here is that China 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:57.960 like basically gets into a war with the Soviet Union 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:00.440 at nine. It's not called that, it's setting just called 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:03.280 the border dispute, but like like there are troops like 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:05.960 shooting at each other, like all across the border. People 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:08.359 are beating each other the death with sticks like people 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:10.920 and people are shooting borders at each other. It's it's 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:14.160 it's it's a real war. And it's in a grand 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:18.360 British tradition of course, calling like massive conflicts and emergency 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:22.840 or the troubles. Yeah, yeah, okay, you know, but this 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:27.120 but this, this, this really sort of this this really 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:30.480 sort of drives Chinese sort of international like relations to 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:34.080 the point where they're like Okay, so I know we're 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:36.400 supposed to be communists, but also like the other communist 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:38.880 power next door might like marching army across the border 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:42.159 at any point. So you know, you get you you 0:17:42.320 --> 0:17:44.320 get the sort of trying to triangle diplomacy of of 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:47.600 of because when you're trying to sort of bring China 0:17:47.680 --> 0:17:49.840 into the at least away from the Soviet spirit and 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:52.520 then closer into the U. S bear And you know, 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:55.200 this starts to work, right, and you can ask you know, 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:58.080 there's other there's other things going on here, right, It's 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:01.720 China's not just playing pure Jeo Paul politics. Um there 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:04.119 there there, there's there's another factor involved, which is that 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:08.880 part of the sort of conditions for US and Chinese 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:11.720 sort of like as she called by ladder relations or 0:18:11.760 --> 0:18:15.280 whatever sort of geopolitical can't bullshit you want to say, 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:19.720 for like getting along closer is the US starts sending 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:22.159 these technology transfers over to China, like I mean literally 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:25.680 like like like taking like sometimes like taking factories basically 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:27.920 and like taking them apart and then putting them in 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:32.880 boxes and shipping them over to China. And you know, okay, 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:34.880 and this is this is this is a huge deal 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:38.879 for the CCP, because like, the Chinese economy in this 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:42.320 period has been really bad. And part of this is just, 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:45.560 you know, is what happens when you bow. But a 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:50.280 secondary part of this is that China's has has had 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:54.280 a real basically it's it's try. China's been dealing with 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:58.560 this sort of economic crisis sense like like literally since 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:00.879 since they came out of World War Two, which is 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:05.280 that Okay, so, most of China's industrial capacity was completely 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:08.440 destroying the war. The parchment that weren't were like there's 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:09.879 this belt in Macharia that had stuff, and then the 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:12.280 Soviets literally loaded loaded the factories on trains and ship 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:14.760 them back and ship them back east or back west. 0:19:15.240 --> 0:19:16.879 So bye bye bye. By the by the time, by 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:18.600 the time that the CCP takes over, like China has 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:21.840 less industrial capacity than like Russia did at the beginning 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:26.520 in nineteen seventeen, Jesus, So situations really bleak, right, And 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:29.440 the other the other thing that's bleak about it is that, Okay, so, 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:31.640 in order to build an industrial base, right, We've talked 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:32.680 about this a bit on the show. In order to 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:35.440 build industrial base, you need food. But in order to 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:39.160 get like increase your agriculture productivity. You need like mechanical goods, 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:41.760 but you can't get those mechanical goods unless you can 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:46.520 increase yourdustrial capacities. You have this bottleneck, and this winds 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:49.080 up being one of the solutions to the bottleneck is 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:53.159 getting technology chansfers from the US. And you know, the 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:55.879 sort of product of this is that now all of 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:58.480 our products and services which we are about to talk 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:03.280 about which you should buy, are made in China. So yeah, 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:05.239 go go, go, bug go buy those things that are 0:20:05.280 --> 0:20:09.040 the product of all of this. That's no problem. Don't 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:11.960 don't question it. Just purchase. Go to Ali Baba and 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:16.440 just find the Express Express and just wire them seven 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:19.440 hundred dollars. Within I'm going to say two weeks to 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:24.640