Speaker 1: Like this Chinese run hotel. The owner estimates there are
Speaker 1: as many as one hundred hotels in Quito that like hers,
Speaker 1: host Chinese migrants headed to the US. They've got essentially
Speaker 1: a how to guide to go from here and to
Speaker 1: continue north, and they tell you here how many days
Speaker 1: you should be preparing, the vaccinations you might need, other
Speaker 1: documents you should carry with you. They even mentioned bringing
Speaker 1: three hundred dollars and hiding that amount of money because
Speaker 1: of presumably being robbed at some point and eating cash
Speaker 1: as a backup.
Speaker 2: We're about to talk a little bit about China. I
Speaker 2: thought it'd slide in that story about the Chinese that
Speaker 2: are coming to the United States through Ecuador, and the
Speaker 2: Chinese have actually set up a hotel in the capital
Speaker 2: in Ecuador with a guide on getting Chinese nationals into
Speaker 2: the country.
Speaker 3: Sounds like a pretty good travel agent too. It covers,
Speaker 3: you know, vaccinations and everything, how much cash to have
Speaker 3: on head our most potent and dangerous for an adversary
Speaker 3: getting their nationals into our country sneaking across the board.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't worry about that at all. Speaking of kin,
Speaker 3: the most excellent Josh Rogan Global Opinions columnists for The
Speaker 3: Washington Post and author of Chaos under Heaven, Trump she
Speaker 3: in the Battle for the twenty first Century, joins us
Speaker 3: to talk about matters reach China. Josh, how are you, sir.
Speaker 4: Great, Happy to year, Happy new year to you.
Speaker 3: Thank you so far, so good. I guess ah, So,
Speaker 3: I was so intrigued by something you wrote recently about
Speaker 3: anti Semitism in Chinese media and social media. Just on
Speaker 3: its face, it's pretty interesting. But why it's important to
Speaker 3: the West and what it shows. Can you just start
Speaker 3: with telling us what's going on, what you've observed.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, it's kind of crazy actually, because you know,
Speaker 4: we sort of saw ever since the October seventh terrorist
Speaker 4: attacks on Israel that the Chinese government has been pretty
Speaker 4: much pro Palestinian. That's not really that like surprising, you
Speaker 4: might say. They have, you know, Chijing being hosted the
Speaker 4: Palestinian authority just a couple months earlier. They see the
Speaker 4: Palaestiny struggle is a great way to screw with our
Speaker 4: ally Israel and thereby screw with us and promote their
Speaker 4: anti anti imperialist, anti West autocratic agenda. So they make
Speaker 4: common cause with a lot of these you know groups,
Speaker 4: But What was really crazy when a lot of my
Speaker 4: you know, Chinese friends especially notice, is that on the
Speaker 4: Chinese Internet, especially on their social media, it wasn't just
Speaker 4: like criticizing Natanyahu. It was Jews or Nazis and the
Speaker 4: Jews control of the media and the Jews control of
Speaker 4: the world, and all of this really sort of old
Speaker 4: school anti Semitic garbage.
Speaker 2: If I might, if I, if I may jump in,
Speaker 2: if I may jump in quickly, Jews are Nazis indicates
Speaker 2: a lack of understanding of some terms.
Speaker 3: Well, and it's not like there's a ton of Jewish
Speaker 3: folks kicking around in Beijing either, But go on, John.
Speaker 4: Well, that's the thing. I mean, I've traveled in China
Speaker 4: many times, and usually it's like a philo Semitism. It's like, oh,
Speaker 4: Jews are so smart, you must have so much money,
Speaker 4: and you know, oh you know, how did you know?
Speaker 4: But they now it's like really like, oh, you guys
Speaker 4: are genocidal maniac and you're right, a cabal running the
Speaker 4: world behind the scenes, and it's really nasty. And because
Speaker 4: we know the Chinese Internet is controlled by the Chinese government,
Speaker 4: it necessarily means that they're fueling this and then all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, here comes to the state TV with
Speaker 4: clips about how you know, uh, you know, the Jews
Speaker 4: control of the American election, so democracy doesn't work. And
Speaker 4: you realize that what they're doing is they're trying to
Speaker 4: say that democracy is a sham. Therefore, did everybody want
Speaker 4: like an emperor? Isn't that a much better deal? And
Speaker 4: that comes to the cost of like a lot of
Speaker 4: anti semitism and hatred. And once you stir up all
Speaker 4: of those things in China, they don't just go away.
Speaker 4: You're training all these people who have no choice really
Speaker 4: but to read the heavily sister Chinese Internet to hate,
Speaker 4: and it's really messed up. I just thought it was
Speaker 4: really messed up, saying, well.
Speaker 3: The first thing my mind jumps to is is TikTok
Speaker 3: and how the Chinese government has been so successful in
Speaker 3: piping ideas into the heads of our young people. Have
Speaker 3: you seen that same sort of anti semitism on TikTok
Speaker 3: for instance?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, My whole TikTok feed is anti semitism and
Speaker 4: Chinese propaganda. Now maybe that's because I click on those
Speaker 4: things and I watch them because it's like from my
Speaker 4: professional research, But somehow. You know, it seems like TikTok
Speaker 4: is a wash which like really viral, and every time
Speaker 4: I report the anti semitism, it never gets taken down,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean? And then the Chinese propaganda
Speaker 4: so sophisticated, it's so savvy in a way, because what
Speaker 4: is more and more through American voices. It's like that
Speaker 4: Osama bin Laden thing, Like how did forty thousand you know,
Speaker 4: American teenagers all decide on the exact same day that
Speaker 4: Osama bin Laden was right about, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Like that doesn't happen organically. That's what the algorithm does.
Speaker 4: And that's not to say that I don't have a
Speaker 4: problem with Facebook or x or Instagram or threat whatever.
Speaker 4: Their algorithms also need to be more transparent. We need
Speaker 4: to know how they're manipulating what we see and how
Speaker 4: that affects what our children's minds perceive as the reality.
Speaker 4: But if they're not the genocidal, mass murdering dictatorship that
Speaker 4: they out to get us, And I think that's what
Speaker 4: people don't realize is that TikTok is run by the genocidal,
Speaker 4: mass murdering dictatorship. That's that teachs us harm. That's trying
Speaker 4: to influence our society to come to theirs. And that's
Speaker 4: really an order of magnitude worse than Facebook. It's worse
Speaker 4: worse than Instagram all put together.
Speaker 3: And here's where we must point out that the move
Speaker 3: to get TikTok banned or more heavily regulated has completely
Speaker 3: died because they're so successful in spreading bribes around the
Speaker 3: political spectrum. Nobody has any interest in the topic anymore.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, that's exactly right. Well, first they had that
Speaker 4: horrible hearing where like the guy who you know, you
Speaker 4: had that one center who was like, how come I
Speaker 4: keep just doing dancing men on my TikTok? And they
Speaker 4: build that CEO was like, I don't know, should I
Speaker 4: tell you know what? Like that was like the level
Speaker 4: of investigation that we got from you know, then I
Speaker 4: understand have no idea what they're talking about. And then
Speaker 4: of course here comes the lobbying. And it's not just
Speaker 4: the Chinese companies with millions of the American companies like
Speaker 4: Oracle and who are making money off of the making
Speaker 4: the money and who want, you know, to have their
Speaker 4: own politicians in their pockets, and the Wall Street guys,
Speaker 4: because you know, all these Chinese companies are using Wall
Speaker 4: Street money, that means private equity. That's big power in Washington.
Speaker 4: So of course it's nothing happens and everybody pounds the
Speaker 4: table and then we go back to business. But you know,
Speaker 4: if you just think about how, like, you know, what's
Speaker 4: going on in our so sitey, how much it's driven
Speaker 4: by the content that people see on social media. Putting
Speaker 4: that in the hands of our greatest adversary is is
Speaker 4: it's crazy, it's stupid, and you know something's got to
Speaker 4: be done.
Speaker 2: It makes the Trojan Horse seem like, you know, a
Speaker 2: minor incident in world history. It's one of the most
Speaker 2: amazing things that's ever happened. Historians will look back on
Speaker 2: this someday if historians are allowed to print anything when
Speaker 2: China takes over the world and think, how did any
Speaker 2: superpower allow all their young people to be educated by
Speaker 2: their number one adversary?
Speaker 4: Right, And it's sort of like, you know, it's good
Speaker 4: that you point out's on a new tactic, right, So
Speaker 4: they've been doing it since Trojan times. But if you
Speaker 4: just think about, like just the difference between twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: no matter what you thought about the Russian interference. In
Speaker 4: the end, it was a bunch of Facebook pages. This
Speaker 4: is like a heavily organized, artificial intelligence driven thing. It
Speaker 4: makes the Russian interference look like like child's play by comparison.
Speaker 4: And that's what you don't realize about the Chinese is
Speaker 4: that they don't do it in the clumsy way. They
Speaker 4: do it in the smart way, which is to make
Speaker 4: it have their messages come through American phones with American
Speaker 4: voices and American influencers. And we're not savvy enough as
Speaker 4: a democracy to have in suspicious that can even understand
Speaker 4: that much less regulated. But essentially in the end, that's
Speaker 4: exactly what's gonna have to happen.
Speaker 3: Good Little Herd is discouraging. Yeah, it's like the Trojan
Speaker 3: Horse was a moving sidewalk in the Greeks or the
Speaker 3: Spartans or the Irish or whoever got Trojan Horse didn't bother.
Speaker 2: Shutting down the sidewalk.
Speaker 3: They just left it open.
Speaker 4: Good lord.
Speaker 3: Josh Rogan, Global Opinion's columnist for The Washington Post, is
Speaker 3: online speaking of China taking over the world. Josh, there
Speaker 3: have been a number of headlines in the business papers, especially,
Speaker 3: but China's run into some serious, serious economic stumbles, haven't they.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, these two things going on. One is that
Speaker 4: the Chinese economy has been slowing for over a decade.
Speaker 4: All right, that's like structural when it's the bigger it gets,
Speaker 4: the lower the growth rate is going to be. It's
Speaker 4: just natural that it was going to slow. And then
Speaker 4: you add on the extra things that's usually thing has
Speaker 4: done wrong. And you know, there's two ways to analyze it.
Speaker 4: There's the Wall streetway and then there's the honest way. Right.
Speaker 4: The Wall Street way is to say, oh, well, this
Speaker 4: is a good time to invest in China because all
Speaker 4: the stocks are down and oh you know, everything's going
Speaker 4: to be fine and they're going to bounce back, so
Speaker 4: you know, or some people will even say, well that
Speaker 4: this means they're not that powerful, so we don't really
Speaker 4: have to do anything to compete with them. But the
Speaker 4: honest way didn't out analyze it, is to say that
Speaker 4: the reason in that China's economy is in the toilet
Speaker 4: is because Jijen King has destroyed private business in China
Speaker 4: because he's nationalized the education, the gaming, everything, it's all
Speaker 4: becoming the technology. He put people falling out of windows,
Speaker 4: putting people in prison, the executives dying all the time.
Speaker 4: This is a scary scenario. This is an environment where
Speaker 4: American businesses are getting scooped up and shut down. And
Speaker 4: what that really should tell us is that China is
Speaker 4: becoming more dangerous as it gets weaker.
Speaker 3: Not less interesting. Josh Rogan Global Opinions columns for the
Speaker 3: Washington Post. Excellent follow on X as well. Josh, thanks
Speaker 3: a million for the time. Good to talk to you anytime.