Speaker 1: Welcome, Dick. It happened here the podcast that you're listening
Speaker 1: to right now. It's your host, Christopher Long, and we
Speaker 1: are back with part two of our interview with Eli
Speaker 1: Friedman about the reason protests in China. I want to
Speaker 1: go back and talk about lying flat and that whole
Speaker 1: kind of I don't know movement discourse that was happening
Speaker 1: last year, because it seems like the kind of I
Speaker 1: don't know if nihilism is the right word, but this
Speaker 1: kind of like collective understanding that the whole sort of
Speaker 1: bargain of the Chinese social system of you know, and
Speaker 1: this was to some extent extended to everyone, right, like
Speaker 1: the bargain of the Chinese social system of everyone everyone,
Speaker 1: keep your head down, will get rich together. It suddenly
Speaker 1: became clear that this wasn't gonna happen, And you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think like in some sense it's possible
Speaker 1: to sort of like, you know, you can you can
Speaker 1: put on your sort of like hard materialist hat and
Speaker 1: you can like look at the number of hammers banging
Speaker 1: out and you can just look at the chirp of
Speaker 1: Chinese GDP graph of the last decade and be like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: so eventually like what what what? What? It hit like
Speaker 1: two percent? Eventually we were going to have protests. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess I I wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: bit about like, yeah, what line flat was? We covered
Speaker 1: this on the show a long time ago when it
Speaker 1: was happening, But and then also sort of how that
Speaker 1: attitude shift was important or wasn't important. I don't know,
Speaker 1: Maybe it wasn't. I think it was, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's very important. Right, So, yeah, you can't just
Speaker 1: be a crude materialist and like mechanically read social protest
Speaker 1: off of some chart of you know, following profitability or
Speaker 1: something like that. Um. But there it is a cultural
Speaker 1: expression of real fundamental changes in the organization of the
Speaker 1: Chinese economy. Uh. You know where already talked about how
Speaker 1: the post eighty nine generation was like you go to
Speaker 1: college and like you come out and you know you'll
Speaker 1: you'll be middle class right on average, And that's just
Speaker 1: not at all the case anymore. And young people in
Speaker 1: China and and older people, middle aged people you know,
Speaker 1: who are who have children, who are who are going
Speaker 1: through the system, um, feel immense pressure in like immense
Speaker 1: competition in all spheres of life beginning from a young
Speaker 1: age in elementary school, all the way up through high school,
Speaker 1: through the super competitive and intense university admissions process, and
Speaker 1: then after graduating university and getting a job, and then
Speaker 1: getting a job that can you know, um uh, you
Speaker 1: can earn enough money to be able to afford an apartment.
Speaker 1: And so here we have to understand you know, the
Speaker 1: cost of housing and all of the other costs associated
Speaker 1: with social reproduction. So the like the cost of care workers. Right,
Speaker 1: if middle class people in places like Shanghai and Beijing
Speaker 1: expect to have domestic workers, um, you know, looking after
Speaker 1: their children, they expect to be able to hire tutors
Speaker 1: who can um, you know, and comtutor their children in
Speaker 1: English or in math um. And so just people feel
Speaker 1: under unbelievable sure, and this is in a situation that
Speaker 1: part of the reason that the pressure has is really
Speaker 1: ramped up is that there are fewer good paying jobs.
Speaker 1: You know, youth unemployment now in China is around um
Speaker 1: and so one of the responses to that is just
Speaker 1: forget about it. We're you know, we're gonna lie flat,
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna reject all of this. There's different
Speaker 1: expressions and I don't actually the sort of like you know,
Speaker 1: sociologists and me is like, well, we don't actually have
Speaker 1: numbers to know how many people are are lying flat
Speaker 1: and like that is true, Like maybe most people are
Speaker 1: still just going to work and you know, doing their job,
Speaker 1: but there's enough you know, stories, and certainly in terms
Speaker 1: of cultural residence of people just doing the bare minimum
Speaker 1: at work or working for short periods of time, earning
Speaker 1: just enough money to survive and not worrying about meeting
Speaker 1: those kind of social expectations around buying a car, buying
Speaker 1: an apartment and getting married, having kids, because people just
Speaker 1: see it as as kind of it's kind of hopeless. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's a really important backdrop because
Speaker 1: we have to understand that some level that these protests
Speaker 1: are about a sense of hopelessness, right be at economic opportunities,
Speaker 1: be at the political system where cigent being is going
Speaker 1: to rain as long as he wants, or be at
Speaker 1: zero COVID, where you know, at any given moment, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be locked inside your apartment and you're not gonna
Speaker 1: be able to see your friends or or do anything.
Speaker 1: So um. Yeah, So I think it's very relevant. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I wanted to, I guess also to This is
Speaker 1: something I talked about on this podcast a lot, but
Speaker 1: I need to, like I don't like drill into people's heads,
Speaker 1: like just the sheer amount that people in China are working,
Speaker 1: just like like the number of hours, a number of
Speaker 1: days a week, the the amount of effort that is
Speaker 1: being put in is like it is, it is. It
Speaker 1: is a level of Rowster plus value extraction that like
Speaker 1: like like most places in the world haven't seen in
Speaker 1: like a court like in like half a century. It
Speaker 1: is like or even longer than that. Like it is,
Speaker 1: it is a a truly stunning, like a truly stunning
Speaker 1: level of exploitation in terms of things like nine six
Speaker 1: in terms of the people who are working schedules in
Speaker 1: a way worse than that, who don't really ever get
Speaker 1: like talked about because they're not tech workers or they're
Speaker 1: not people who have sort of like a platform Chinese society. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's extremely normalized, you know, I mean, like the
Speaker 1: thing which which first of all, it is maybe worth
Speaker 1: mentioning that China legally has a forty hour work week.
Speaker 1: You're only allowed to work thirty six hours of overtime
Speaker 1: on month, right, so probably you know, not more than
Speaker 1: forty nine or fifty hours a week. That's that's like
Speaker 1: the legal the legal standard. Nobody even remotely pretends like
Speaker 1: that is a thing in any industry. There's legal debates
Speaker 1: about like whether it applies to professional, white collar you know,
Speaker 1: salaried workers or not. But um, you know, when the
Speaker 1: thing came out and there was a pretty cool i
Speaker 1: think movement based mostly online among tech workers, it was
Speaker 1: it was great. It was very inspiring. And also every
Speaker 1: single blue collar worker like we've been waking units six
Speaker 1: for decades, you know, um, and so so it is
Speaker 1: it is very normal across these these different kinds of
Speaker 1: of stratum for sure. Um, one of the cool things
Speaker 1: about ninetight six is people were we're revolting against it
Speaker 1: and saying like this is an unacceptable way to live.
Speaker 1: And again it comes back to this whole thing of
Speaker 1: like all of these feelings of you know, these enhanced
Speaker 1: pressures right where it's just like how do I live
Speaker 1: in this city? How do I find like decent housing?
Speaker 1: Like if you know, if I want to have like
Speaker 1: a social life, which is the thing that some people
Speaker 1: in their twenties want to have, you know, like how
Speaker 1: do I do that? It's impossible under those circumstances. Um
Speaker 1: so so again, like you can't read these movements mechanically
Speaker 1: off of these these uh, these structural changes. But like
Speaker 1: that is a thing that has been happening that is unresolved.
Speaker 1: It's not at least for the you know, the blank
Speaker 1: paper protesters, the kind of the more elite students and stuff,
Speaker 1: they haven't specifically articulated um, their grievances as labor demands, um.
Speaker 1: But it's it's at least an important backdrop to what's
Speaker 1: happening today. Yeah, and I think it's remember like how
Speaker 1: I think I think this was like Mide twenty nine keeen.
Speaker 1: I'm trying remember when I when I saw this specific video.
Speaker 1: But there there there, there there was a video from
Speaker 1: the Hong Kong protests that was like it's always it was.
Speaker 1: It was like literally one of these classic like like
Speaker 1: sort of Twitter things, but like what do you want out?
Speaker 1: What do you want to do after the revolution? And
Speaker 1: it was like most of it was like I want
Speaker 1: to start a bakery, like I want to work in
Speaker 1: a library. And it strikes me that there's these things
Speaker 1: that get subsumed under you know, when when when when
Speaker 1: you see a pro democracy movement, right when when you
Speaker 1: see you know, like the sort of well, I guess
Speaker 1: that there's something interesting to hear about the Like like
Speaker 1: day one of the protests, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: videos that we're talking about Iran, and that kind of
Speaker 1: seemed to like like the very early videos were about
Speaker 1: sort of solidarity with the protests in the room sheet
Speaker 1: and then like it was like it was like specifically
Speaker 1: tying that to Iran and then to sort of pro
Speaker 1: democracy demands, and then later on you get the sort
Speaker 1: of like like the Shanghai like down with the party denimping,
Speaker 1: like we went to occracy and free speech stuff. But
Speaker 1: it strikes me that like a lot of the times
Speaker 1: when you see people making those demands, it's because they
Speaker 1: think that like you know, it's like there there there's
Speaker 1: a whole set of of like things that they like,
Speaker 1: things that they believe about the future and about what
Speaker 1: will happen in the future that are like not articulated
Speaker 1: in the demands, but if you talked about if you
Speaker 1: talk about them, like if you talk to people about
Speaker 1: what they think is going to happen after that, there's
Speaker 1: this whole sort of like opening up of stuff that
Speaker 1: they think will be like the necessary results of like
Speaker 1: the end of the one party state. And it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want him, Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I had this debate a lot with like, like there's
Speaker 1: kind of like Chinese international student you get in the
Speaker 1: US who like comes to the US and it's like
Speaker 1: immediately like enormously enamored with the US. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: sort of the mirror image of how we have a
Speaker 1: bunch of people who are like incredibly enamored with the
Speaker 1: Chinese state, and then you get people who come here
Speaker 1: and are like incredibly enamored the American state, and it's like, well, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: this politician will see you and they will talk to you. However, Comma,
Speaker 1: in about two years they will be voting to throw
Speaker 1: you in prison. So like, but obviously, like both people
Speaker 1: in China understand the Chinese system sucks and that the
Speaker 1: promises that people like in the US belief about it
Speaker 1: are fake. And then people in the US understand that
Speaker 1: you can get a multiparty democracy and things because they'll
Speaker 1: be absolutely shit. But yeah, yeah, you know, it strikes
Speaker 1: me that there's a lot of stuff sort of embedded
Speaker 1: in in in these demands that are like not really
Speaker 1: explod articulated until later. And then that's also, I guess
Speaker 1: been a hard part about these protests that like I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's hard to get information out. You can
Speaker 1: get shortened views with people. Mostly what you're getting are
Speaker 1: like thirty seconds of footage of people yelling at a cop, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot going on. Like if you
Speaker 1: have this one, this tiny little opening, and then instantly
Speaker 1: you have protests in like all of these cities all
Speaker 1: over the country, dozens of universities, protests among you know,
Speaker 1: working class migrants, like middle class people in Shanghai, like,
Speaker 1: you know, all all across the country. Like that suggests
Speaker 1: that people have a variety of sets of grievances and
Speaker 1: they're kind of funneling them through this this meta narrative
Speaker 1: around ending the lockdown, which is not to diminish the
Speaker 1: significance of the actual lockdowns, which are are called causing
Speaker 1: real human suffering. But there's definitely a lot going on,
Speaker 1: and you know, one of the big ones is what's
Speaker 1: happening in Shinjong, Like it's we still don't really know
Speaker 1: how Weakers are feeling about all of this. The fact
Speaker 1: that like all of the all the Protestants in the
Speaker 1: big Eastern cities are about commemorating what happened in ermchy
Speaker 1: Uh in a fire that killed mostly, if not exclusively, Weaker.
Speaker 1: It's like that that that deserves to be talked about. Um,
Speaker 1: We don't really know how like the Han people on
Speaker 1: the streets in the Eastern cities, like if they're thinking
Speaker 1: about this this backdrop of you know, massive repression, surveillance
Speaker 1: and mass internment of of Weakers and other Muslim minorities. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's another thing. Uh And and I think the
Speaker 1: same thing goes for the treatment of migrant workers in
Speaker 1: in fox Con and these other um blue collar workers
Speaker 1: who were put into the closed loop. Like to what
Speaker 1: extent our urban um Han people still kind of willing
Speaker 1: to go along with sacrificing migrant workers and treating them
Speaker 1: as as as second class citizens, or is their possibility
Speaker 1: of developing some real sense of of solidarity um with
Speaker 1: ending not just the closed loop, but ending you know,
Speaker 1: like kuko based discrimination, ending the camps in shin Jong.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, you can kind of spin out
Speaker 1: from there, if if you are interested in thinking about
Speaker 1: what it would mean to democratize China in like a
Speaker 1: in a robust sense of the word, I think points
Speaker 1: that are never thing about these protests that are complicated, right,
Speaker 1: which is that like they are cross class in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, but I don't know, it seems to
Speaker 1: me like the way they're manifesting is very much down
Speaker 1: class lines. Like Okay, I genuinely don't understand what's going
Speaker 1: on in Guangho. That like every single video I see
Speaker 1: at Guangho is like seventy people throwing bottles at a cop,
Speaker 1: and like every video I see out of like Shanghai
Speaker 1: is like six people holding a piece of paper. But
Speaker 1: it very much seems like, you know, like when when
Speaker 1: when when when the cops are getting to like these
Speaker 1: these sort of like these working class neighborhood these neighborhoods
Speaker 1: that are like a informal housing, these neighborhoods that are
Speaker 1: full of migrant workers. There were these really really intense
Speaker 1: conflicts with the police in ways that like kind of
Speaker 1: aren't happening. Well, I mean, okay, that's because the kind
Speaker 1: of stuff seems to be happening in a room sheet.
Speaker 1: And I think it's happening there partially because you know,
Speaker 1: this is like well okay, I don't know off thought
Speaker 1: in my head whether it's more militarized than Tibet, but
Speaker 1: like one of the most militarized, like one of the
Speaker 1: most heavily police places in China. And then also people
Speaker 1: are just really like the the immediate and palpable anger
Speaker 1: seems to be the highest there because you know, I
Speaker 1: mean like like it you're you're going to be more
Speaker 1: piste off when it's people in your city or like
Speaker 1: you know, you you maybe were like three blocks away
Speaker 1: from this fire. Yeah, like these people. But yeah, one
Speaker 1: of one piece about about Urch is that they've been
Speaker 1: in some form of lockdown for like a hundred days,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, so that's not and and part of
Speaker 1: that has to do with the fact that it is
Speaker 1: this colonial setting where they feel like they can do
Speaker 1: things to people that they can't do in Beijing and
Speaker 1: Channg like people in San are not going to do that, right,
Speaker 1: It's just like it's inconceivable. Um, there's obviously a lot
Speaker 1: of Han people in Ear and she is actually a
Speaker 1: majority Han. Now yeah, I think, yeah, um that that
Speaker 1: sounds right to me, and shin Jong is increasingly Han
Speaker 1: as well, although I believe we are still constitute a plurality.
Speaker 1: So you know, there's just like each the lockdowns kind
Speaker 1: of filtered down to these different localities and into different
Speaker 1: communities with their different social and class compositions in different
Speaker 1: kinds of ways and have different kinds of effects. Right,
Speaker 1: So you can put people in lockdown in shin Jong
Speaker 1: for a hundred days and they're going to be really
Speaker 1: pissed when they get out. In the case of Guang Joe,
Speaker 1: you know, this was also part of the sequence that
Speaker 1: I think has been written out of the official narrative.
Speaker 1: It's not it wasn't just fox Con. You had the
Speaker 1: initial fox Con escape in late October early November, and
Speaker 1: then you had these pretty intense riots that happened in
Speaker 1: Guang Joe, but were in these urban villages, so called
Speaker 1: urban villages largely informal housing, very densely populated, that are
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly migrant workers. In this case, it was mostly people
Speaker 1: from Hubei Um, which is which is where Wuhan is
Speaker 1: and Um and so you know, just those migrant communities
Speaker 1: were put into lockdown in Guangzho. So if you were
Speaker 1: over in yeah, if you over in Tianaha District, which
Speaker 1: is the sort of the the newer, like fancier part
Speaker 1: of Guangho with lots of high rises, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: those places were not under lockdown, and so they they
Speaker 1: put the migrant communities, and I saw some like really
Speaker 1: not nice stuff, you know, people just being like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. The the local Guangjo people on the other
Speaker 1: side of the river are just like going about their
Speaker 1: life and and they're they're okay with what's happening to
Speaker 1: the migrants. And the migrants were, as is the case
Speaker 1: in some of these earlier lockdowns, actually facing real subsistence crisis,
Speaker 1: like they didn't have enough food to eat, and they
Speaker 1: couldn't leave to try to get food. Um. So that's
Speaker 1: why you saw these super intense riots. And that's why
Speaker 1: you see them confronting the police and you know, screaming
Speaker 1: at them, throwing things at them. You see tear gas,
Speaker 1: all of these things. I think. So I think that's
Speaker 1: the only place I've seen tear gas so far, Like
Speaker 1: maybe in a room sheet. I'm not there may have
Speaker 1: been a video, I don't I don't remember specifically their
Speaker 1: room sheet, but definitely like only place have seen that
Speaker 1: level of repression. Yeah, yeah, no, it was, it was
Speaker 1: I mean, you know the Jung Joe Fox con was
Speaker 1: probably the most violent and the larger scale. Um, but
Speaker 1: you know that was it was a little bit different.
Speaker 1: I Gwang Joe. It's kind of like smaller streets they're fighting,
Speaker 1: you know, street by street. So um yeah, so they
Speaker 1: have a different experience of people in Shanghai. Again not
Speaker 1: to minimize their demands, and I think it's it's important
Speaker 1: for people to find points of commonality, um against this policy. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, it's not like that if if
Speaker 1: you're if you're a middle class person Han person in Shanghai,
Speaker 1: which is again not to minimize the very real difficulties
Speaker 1: that those folks have been facing. Is well something this
Speaker 1: kind of you know, I think that there there there's
Speaker 1: there's like another group of people who should probably talk
Speaker 1: about a little bit, which is like this sort of
Speaker 1: downwardly mobile class a business owners who have been kind
Speaker 1: of just getting annihlated by the lockdowns. And does that
Speaker 1: that happen in the US too, Although the Chinese version
Speaker 1: of it seems they're like less marginally less absolutely psychotic,
Speaker 1: Like they haven't tried, but they haven't tried to like
Speaker 1: kidnap a governor yet, Like they're not like they're not
Speaker 1: as fascist as their American counterparts. Yeah, but it's it's
Speaker 1: it seems it seems like there's a kind of interesting
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's there's a class dynamic that kind
Speaker 1: of reminds me of occupy and that you have this
Speaker 1: sort of like kind of tenuous alliance between like some
Speaker 1: some parts of the working class, these elite students, and
Speaker 1: like this downwardly mobile middle class. But it strikes me that,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, that's the sort of a finding
Speaker 1: thing about occupying. I think like the defining thing about
Speaker 1: the whole sort of two thousand eleven doesn't thirteen wave
Speaker 1: of protests was that like it was it was really
Speaker 1: really easy to get people together into a physical space,
Speaker 1: and when when you were in that single physical space,
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, it's not it's not like
Speaker 1: classes appeared, but it was like, you know, it was,
Speaker 1: it was, it was. It was. It was a way
Speaker 1: in which sort of like classes were mixing and you
Speaker 1: could form this new kind of like identity based around
Speaker 1: like what you're doing in this place, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: really seem like that's possible here. It really seems like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like there's this huge like you know,
Speaker 1: this this is a protest that is like happening in
Speaker 1: a lot of different places at the same time. But
Speaker 1: it's like it doesn't. Yeah, the segmented they don't and
Speaker 1: they don't they don't really have a sort of like
Speaker 1: cohesive social identity that in a way that you could
Speaker 1: get out of a bunch of people being in the
Speaker 1: same place. Yeah. No, I think that's right. I mean
Speaker 1: they're spatially segmented. Um. Something someone pointed out out on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I can't remember who, but they're drawing comparisons to the
Speaker 1: protests and the kind of the physical arrangements where people
Speaker 1: are living and so particularly given you know, the online censorship,
Speaker 1: like that's been really important. So you have these worker
Speaker 1: dormitories and fox con like you can organize by actually
Speaker 1: talking to people with student dormitories, right, Um, and then
Speaker 1: you have much smaller protests among the you know, the
Speaker 1: middle class people who are able to circulate things online.
Speaker 1: And so the consequence of that is is they are
Speaker 1: pretty segmented and I think, you know, everyone has their
Speaker 1: own grievance with zero COVID, but these grievances are actually
Speaker 1: pretty different. Right, So the fox con workers don't like
Speaker 1: the closed loop management system where you know, where they
Speaker 1: can't leave, where, where they're subjected to unsafe conditions, etcetera. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the petty bourgeoise like they don't like the
Speaker 1: fact that there's no foot traffic you know, coming into
Speaker 1: their shops. Right. And um, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: saw the video of the guy like kicking down the
Speaker 1: wall with a soup latal and it specifically, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was it was very theatrical, dramatic and uh
Speaker 1: a great video you know in terms of like the
Speaker 1: class position and yeah, you can see how it can
Speaker 1: kind of capsize into fash quickly. Um. And then like
Speaker 1: the students, you know, they want to be able to
Speaker 1: live normal student lives and like leave their dormitories. And
Speaker 1: that's the thing that I think students anywhere can associate with.
Speaker 1: So it's like, yeah, they're all against the zero COVID policy,
Speaker 1: but then it's kind of like what are their politics
Speaker 1: after that? And I think if if this is going
Speaker 1: to open up, um, you know, some kind of more
Speaker 1: expansive political vision, Like it's gonna be hard to maintain
Speaker 1: that like that unity. Right, the students are already talking
Speaker 1: about like you know, censorship, freedom of speech, those things
Speaker 1: which I support, I think are very good. You're probably
Speaker 1: not gonna get the petty boudgeoisie to like risk arrest
Speaker 1: and violence with the cops, you know, over like holding
Speaker 1: up a blank white piece of paper, um, you know.
Speaker 1: And then the micrant workers have another whole set of things,
Speaker 1: you know, around like basic like health infrastructure, like you know,
Speaker 1: can they get access to decent healthcare in the places
Speaker 1: where they're where they're living. And that's not going to
Speaker 1: resonate to the same extent with the students. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the one I think about a lot was like there's
Speaker 1: a video going around it this guy being like I
Speaker 1: don't care about politics. I just want to go to
Speaker 1: the movies, and I was like, this is the most
Speaker 1: American person in China, Like this is the one person
Speaker 1: that I'm like, okay, like that, you know, and and
Speaker 1: like that there is that kind of sort of like
Speaker 1: I just I just want to live my normal life
Speaker 1: like thing that's happening, and then that that I think
Speaker 1: is a kind of recognizable American impulse. But then you
Speaker 1: have the stuff that's like did you see did you
Speaker 1: see those pictures that were going around of like the
Speaker 1: hospitals they were putting megicant workers in were just like
Speaker 1: the entire bathroom floor is just like covered in poop
Speaker 1: and like awful. Yeah, it's like the whole whole bathroom
Speaker 1: floors is just flooded. There's like just like the the
Speaker 1: the you can't flush toilet paper down it, so there's
Speaker 1: just these like mountains of toilet paper, and I think, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's awful. Like that the difference between the people whose
Speaker 1: things are like I want to go to the movies
Speaker 1: and the people whose demand is like please stop locking
Speaker 1: me in this, like like people like you know that
Speaker 1: that was I guess. I guess. The other sort of
Speaker 1: lost thing that seemed to be pretty big in Chinese
Speaker 1: social media that I don't that wasn't talked about much
Speaker 1: here was the uh there was this bus that capsized
Speaker 1: that killed like twenty seven people who were being taken
Speaker 1: like to a facility to specifically to hold like you know,
Speaker 1: this is like what one of one of these sort
Speaker 1: of like I don't I don't even really want to
Speaker 1: dignify them by calling them hospitals, because they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like just a complete disaster. Um. But where were people
Speaker 1: were being held, like held because they had Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't know, it seems like that there's a
Speaker 1: really big sort of like you know, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess it's like like the the protests are reflecting all
Speaker 1: of all of the sort of like existing classified in
Speaker 1: Chinese society in ways that I think are are pretty
Speaker 1: obvious if you look at it, which I guess in
Speaker 1: some sense like this this does strike me as the
Speaker 1: most gentlemin esque thing. But look, the most unuminous thing
Speaker 1: about it is the way that the media has been
Speaker 1: like specifically covering the grievances of exactly like two groups
Speaker 1: of people, which is like the students and like, and
Speaker 1: then all of the labor stuff has just vanished after
Speaker 1: about day two. Yeah yeah, yeah for sure. Um. And
Speaker 1: I mean I don't have much optimism that that that
Speaker 1: the coverage will change, um, But you know, there there
Speaker 1: is an experience, um that middle class people I think
Speaker 1: have had pretty acutely going back at least to the
Speaker 1: Shanghai lockdown, of this realization that there actually are no
Speaker 1: limits on state power, right, And that to them was
Speaker 1: kind of like a shock. You know. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: like I thought I was just gonna be able to
Speaker 1: go about my life like as long as I didn't
Speaker 1: you know, demand to be able to vote for the president.
Speaker 1: Like I can have a job. I can, um, you know,
Speaker 1: go eat hot pot or you know, get whatever kind
Speaker 1: of delicious food I want having in these big cities,
Speaker 1: can travel internationally. You know, all of these things are
Speaker 1: you know more or less okay, Um, there's been lots
Speaker 1: of you know, there's lots of other people in training
Speaker 1: society for him, that's never been the experience, right, most
Speaker 1: importantly the minorities and the workers and the migrant workers
Speaker 1: who have always you know, experienced that raw and unchecked
Speaker 1: power of the state. And so, you know, does does
Speaker 1: this have the capacity to kind of bring them together?
Speaker 1: You know, it's going to be extremely difficult to do,
Speaker 1: especially because there aren't like spaces for political organizing and
Speaker 1: working through these differences in a constructive way. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I will say that the one thing that kind of
Speaker 1: that strikes me as something that like is just different
Speaker 1: about this cycle is that, like I don't know, I don't, like,
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen in my lifetime outside
Speaker 1: of like really tiny maoist sex like people openly calling
Speaker 1: for the downfall of the government, like just in in
Speaker 1: a kind of like large a stemic way, and like
Speaker 1: it it seems like I don't know, maybe maybe the
Speaker 1: censors will sort of get control back, but it really
Speaker 1: seems like there's been this kind of floodgate that's opened
Speaker 1: where suddenly like there's a there's a brief moment where
Speaker 1: like it suddenly became possible to talk about things where
Speaker 1: you know, like like two months ago, it was like
Speaker 1: one guy laid aside on a bridge and like this
Speaker 1: was this was like the biggest thing that had ever
Speaker 1: happened in Chinese society whatever, etcet et cetera. And then suddenly,
Speaker 1: like you know, you just have people on the streets
Speaker 1: or Shanghai like just chanting stuff that wasn't even on
Speaker 1: that banner, and like, I don't know, like it really
Speaker 1: seems like like it's it's not like they've actually like
Speaker 1: fully lost control of the country or anything, like they're
Speaker 1: not even close to that, but it's it's like the
Speaker 1: sort of like the sort of regime of terror and
Speaker 1: fear that had been in place to keep people from
Speaker 1: doing this kind of stuff has fallen off a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I I'd be very curious to know what
Speaker 1: the vibe is like in China, and obviously I have
Speaker 1: not been there for a while. Um, but like, and
Speaker 1: this is wildly speculative, and if you have any Chinese
Speaker 1: listeners who want to correct me, I would be glad
Speaker 1: to have some more information about this. But my feeling
Speaker 1: from Hofar is that you know, like she Jinping is
Speaker 1: just like you can't you can't say anything about him,
Speaker 1: and that even in like private spaces, you know, people
Speaker 1: just like don't feel like the ability to kind of
Speaker 1: imagine something different and like that has been changed. Like
Speaker 1: I don't think we're going to see a lot more
Speaker 1: people on the streets chanting down with she be down
Speaker 1: with the Communist Party, Like it's you know, it's a
Speaker 1: risky it's a risky thing to do. But I do
Speaker 1: think that like now at least people know that there's
Speaker 1: other other people in the country that are thinking the
Speaker 1: same things that they're thinking. And then at least within
Speaker 1: you know, like you know, face to face interactions that
Speaker 1: people might be a little bit more willing to kind
Speaker 1: of say like, oh, like these protests happened, that was
Speaker 1: pretty crazy, like let's talk about that, um and so
Speaker 1: so so that to me is optimistic. UM. And I
Speaker 1: do hope that more of this organizing can take place,
Speaker 1: you know, offline, because I think that's the only safe
Speaker 1: way to do it. Um. So, So yeah, I I
Speaker 1: think something has changed significantly. And you see it here,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I've been teaching Chinese students for
Speaker 1: ten years. Um, there's no question that people are interested,
Speaker 1: um in talking about things now in a in a
Speaker 1: more open way than was the case a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. And like Herreck Cornell, we had we had
Speaker 1: a little vigil for um F and G as well,
Speaker 1: and people were chanting, you know, down with Ci Jin
Speaker 1: ping um, which is kind of like okay, you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're in the good New York, Like it's not dangerous. Well,
Speaker 1: I think students feel it to be dangerous, and definitely
Speaker 1: a month or two ago would have felt it to
Speaker 1: be quite dangerous. So yeah, and I guess we probably
Speaker 1: shouldn't like completely downplay the fact that like the CCP
Speaker 1: has international networks in a way that's for sure, Like
Speaker 1: the way tenden to get covered in the press is
Speaker 1: very sort of like this kind of like right wing
Speaker 1: fear mongering, but's like no, these people do exist, and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like it is possible for you to like tweet something
Speaker 1: while you're in the US and then like someone in
Speaker 1: China finds out about it and things start to go
Speaker 1: very badly for you very quickly, and for sure, like
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a real danger. That yeah, and regardless
Speaker 1: of how many spies there are, how pervasive they are,
Speaker 1: like it is a real experience, real fear. The Chinese
Speaker 1: students here have, right, they don't feel comfortable, you know,
Speaker 1: they might feel more comfortable speaking openly here than they
Speaker 1: do actually within China, but they still don't feel totally free.
Speaker 1: And and that is a very widespread sentiment, I guess
Speaker 1: sort of enclosing, I don't know, might I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone can really have much of an analysis that's better
Speaker 1: than them guessing about what's going to happen next, because
Speaker 1: this already was something that like two weeks ago, like
Speaker 1: if you'd ask anyone, like anyone in China or outside
Speaker 1: of China who wasn't like I don't know like in
Speaker 1: the following Gong or something, whether whether they were suddenly
Speaker 1: going to be large deal like protested China ever would
Speaker 1: have been like are you nuts? But yeah, I'm wondering
Speaker 1: how what you think is going to happen next? I
Speaker 1: don't know. My my my sort of tentative read of
Speaker 1: it was like it seems like I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: it seems to me that for for a very very
Speaker 1: long time, the Chinese political system was specifically set up
Speaker 1: to stop this, like like this was this was the
Speaker 1: exact thing it was. It was designed to make sure
Speaker 1: there would never be another sort of like like that
Speaker 1: there would never be a large well and you know,
Speaker 1: we don't know how how long this is going to
Speaker 1: go on, right, but there was There was never There
Speaker 1: was never supposed to be another street movement that was
Speaker 1: like coordinated between cities that was large and that had
Speaker 1: real political to man's and you know, I like, I
Speaker 1: I don't know, Maybe maybe I could, I could be
Speaker 1: the most brog I've ever been, but I cannot imagine
Speaker 1: this like this specific round of protests really like challenging
Speaker 1: the government at all. Like I don't know, some something
Speaker 1: something would have to like I don't know, like aliens
Speaker 1: would have to like descend from the sky or something like.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't like, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: think they can do it. But the frequency at which
Speaker 1: these kinds of things break out has been increasing steadily
Speaker 1: for the past probably twenty or thirty years. I mean,
Speaker 1: the nineties are sort of a low point for this stuff.
Speaker 1: But you know, like if if you're if you're in
Speaker 1: a country like Ecuador, right, you've seen like two pretty
Speaker 1: large scale like mass street movements in like three years, right,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's it's it's, it's, it's. It seems
Speaker 1: to be sort of broadly the there's there, there's there's
Speaker 1: been this sort of like the decaying economic condition to
Speaker 1: combined with this like the general decaying ability of the
Speaker 1: state to prevent like a subsequent movement from from unfolding.
Speaker 1: And so I don't know, like I I my sense
Speaker 1: is that this one's not gonna do anything, but we
Speaker 1: might see another one of these in like three years
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, I don't think we're going to see
Speaker 1: this movement in the in the weeks and months to
Speaker 1: come to like cohere into this like massive politically potent
Speaker 1: force that has the capacity to either continue to exert
Speaker 1: demands on the central state or threatened state power. Like
Speaker 1: I don't think that that's going to happen. Um, I
Speaker 1: do think. I think I think the first thing is
Speaker 1: to acknowledge and to chalk up the victories that have
Speaker 1: already been Um. One, so Fox foxne workers got paid.
Speaker 1: You know, they went out, they rioted something like Fox's like,
Speaker 1: here's ten thousand you one for you to leave that
Speaker 1: even for you to do your job right. So like
Speaker 1: and those are workers that came in after the other
Speaker 1: workers escaped, so they have been there in quarantine for
Speaker 1: like a couple of days, rioted got ten thousand un
Speaker 1: which is like almost U S dollars like they so
Speaker 1: so they did really well. Um And but I think
Speaker 1: more broadly, you know, around the zero COVID the government
Speaker 1: has already made changes. They will never acknowledge we're doing
Speaker 1: this because people protested, like that's not how they operate.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, they said, Okay, we're actually gonna
Speaker 1: get more serious about vaccinating people, which is what they
Speaker 1: need to do in order to have sort of an
Speaker 1: exit strategy. There have been some some signals, low key
Speaker 1: ones about further loosening. I mean, I think that there's
Speaker 1: a real question about how they go about doing this
Speaker 1: because if they just let it rip tomorrow, like actually
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands and people will die. Yeah. So like
Speaker 1: I think that what they need to do is they
Speaker 1: need to vaccinate people, and they need to build a
Speaker 1: real public health infrastructure that includes migrant workers. But you know,
Speaker 1: that's we'll see if that happens. So so I think
Speaker 1: that those are already victories like which which we should
Speaker 1: which you know, we should take account of. And I
Speaker 1: think moving forward, the ability to repress like the the
Speaker 1: street demonstrations should not be under underestimated. Like the state
Speaker 1: has immense resources at its capacity. I don't think that
Speaker 1: we're going to continue to see people chanting, you know,
Speaker 1: down with the Communist Party in the streets regularly. Um,
Speaker 1: So I think that they'll be able to at least
Speaker 1: push that down a little bit and maybe with some concessions,
Speaker 1: people will be satisfied. You know, the guy who just
Speaker 1: wants to be able to go to the movie, like
Speaker 1: next year at this time, there's a good chance he
Speaker 1: will just be able to go to the movies. To
Speaker 1: kind of continue with my labor centric perspective, though, I
Speaker 1: think it's going to be harder for for workers. I
Speaker 1: think it's going to be harder for them to repress
Speaker 1: that as long as the closed loop management systems are
Speaker 1: in effect and lockdowns are happening. I mean, it just
Speaker 1: puts insane demands on these workers. And there were revolts
Speaker 1: against it when it first happened in Shanghai back in April. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I think that those will continue to exist. UM.
Speaker 1: But I think we'll probably see this kind of reversion
Speaker 1: to what's existed for the last couple of decades, which
Speaker 1: is lots of you know, small scale, somewhat manageable and
Speaker 1: localized protests. The question is, like, does this kind of
Speaker 1: open up, um, the possibility of politicization, which we have
Speaker 1: not really seen since nine UM in a in a
Speaker 1: robust way at least, And so does this kind of
Speaker 1: open up some of those possibilities so those local protests
Speaker 1: can begin to to speak to each other with some
Speaker 1: sort of common language, UM, and and cohere some kind
Speaker 1: of political force that's harder for the state to tame. UM.
Speaker 1: We'll see, Yeah, And I guess and I guess the
Speaker 1: other sort of X factor here is like can can
Speaker 1: can the CCP get the growth rate above like five? No?
Speaker 1: But yeah, like that's like yeah, I I I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know how they do it like that. I
Speaker 1: don't know, like I I short of like short of
Speaker 1: like actually just letting all of the sort of like
Speaker 1: like all all of the sort of like slack and
Speaker 1: excess capacity just get like you know, just just like
Speaker 1: intentionally tanking the entire economy and just like running all
Speaker 1: of these sort of unprofitable business in the ground. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't see how they do that. And
Speaker 1: that does seem to me, like you know, to be
Speaker 1: a kind of like the sort of like looming horizon over.
Speaker 1: I mean this and this is really true of everyone,
Speaker 1: like the the sort of looming horizon over, Like every
Speaker 1: government in the world has been that the growth rate
Speaker 1: has been collapsing for like the last forty years, and
Speaker 1: China was, you know, trying to change the comedy was
Speaker 1: like the last thing that was really driving it. And
Speaker 1: that's like not really true anymore. It's it's a disaster.
Speaker 1: I mean. And then even even without COVID, it was
Speaker 1: sort of like not going great. I mean, it wasn't
Speaker 1: like you know, I mean it hadn't reached like it
Speaker 1: hadn't like reached like you know, like recession, or it
Speaker 1: hadn't really reached like sort of post industrialized country levels
Speaker 1: of like here's your two percent growth every year, be
Speaker 1: happy with it, but like I it out. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but the growth, I mean this is maybe like another
Speaker 1: whole conversation, but like the growth has become less effective, right.
Speaker 1: It's it's this like investment led growth. It's there, there's
Speaker 1: massive growth in debt, and they can, you know, build
Speaker 1: another bridge, build another airport building. I mean, they're not
Speaker 1: building the apartment blocks as much anymore, but they do
Speaker 1: that they can prop up the growth a little bit, right,
Speaker 1: But like the fundamental problem that they've been unable to
Speaker 1: address is like increasing domestic consumption, you have a more
Speaker 1: equitable model of growth. And the reason that they can't
Speaker 1: do that is fundamentally a political problem. Like they can't
Speaker 1: figure out a way to give working class people more
Speaker 1: money and to give them some social protections, um and
Speaker 1: like until they resolve that political problem, Like I just
Speaker 1: don't see them being able to deal with with that
Speaker 1: economic problem. So that means you are going to continue
Speaker 1: to have this kind of ongoing forms of stagnation. Zero
Speaker 1: COVID really hurts it a lot more. Of course, the
Speaker 1: geo political conflict with the US and and Biden, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to economically kneecap them like that doesn't help. And
Speaker 1: then the demographics of you know, like all of these
Speaker 1: things are making making their lives much more difficult. And
Speaker 1: so one way to interpret what's happened, um under under
Speaker 1: zero COVID is the expansion of a massive and terrifying
Speaker 1: surveillance state that will allow them to weather whatever political
Speaker 1: storms are coming in the future. Yeah, and I guess
Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, well, well well we'll we'll, we'll see,
Speaker 1: we'll see whether that works for them. I am somewhat
Speaker 1: skeptical in that, like I don't know, like good luck,
Speaker 1: actually terrible luck. I hope it goes badly for them,
Speaker 1: the worst of luck. Yeah. So, Eli, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on the show. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Okay, where where can people find you and find
Speaker 1: the stuff that you do? Uh well, I'm on Twitter
Speaker 1: as long as it's still there, um Eli D Friedman
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, I'm on the Internet. I don't know,
Speaker 1: that's that's the main place. Come if you're in Ithica,
Speaker 1: come on by all right, yeah this this has make
Speaker 1: it happen here, drag every government into perpetual and terminal
Speaker 1: crisis until it's ops existing. It could Happen here as
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