Speaker 1: Come on, man, they can't even figure out how to
Speaker 1: deal with they the fact that they have this great
Speaker 1: division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east,
Speaker 1: I mean, in the west. They can't figure out how
Speaker 1: they're gonna deal with the corruption that exists within the system.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, they're not bad folks. Folks, but
Speaker 1: guess what they're not. They're they're not not not competition
Speaker 1: for us. I could get hung up on that astounding
Speaker 1: mishmash of half formed thoughts from a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: but I won't. It's a nice little introduction to the
Speaker 1: topic of China, the US, our relationship, et cetera, and
Speaker 1: to discuss that who could be better than Josh Rogan,
Speaker 1: Global Opinions columnists with The Washington Post, author of Chaos
Speaker 1: under Heaven, Trump she in the Battle for the twenty Century. Josh,
Speaker 1: how are you great? Joe, great to be back with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Yeah, it's always terrific when we
Speaker 1: get a chance to talk to you. Hey, before we
Speaker 1: get into some of the Biden administration versus China stuff
Speaker 1: that you've been writing about lately, what are your impressions
Speaker 1: of how the Olympics have unfolded thus far going into them,
Speaker 1: Jack and I were discussing is this going to glorify China?
Speaker 1: And and you know in the way the nine Olympics
Speaker 1: really bought Hitler time. Um, is she going to get
Speaker 1: what he wants out of these Olympics or will it
Speaker 1: more focus on the horrors and evil of China. What's
Speaker 1: your impression so far? Well, I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but what I've seen is a lot of actually good coverage,
Speaker 1: not by NBC, particularly of the fact that China is
Speaker 1: becoming a genocidal police state that operates like a mafia
Speaker 1: organization and is trying to silence everyone, both in China
Speaker 1: and around the world. Right to the ges thing thought
Speaker 1: this was gonna be his best, you know, world stage,
Speaker 1: that he thought this was going to be the chance
Speaker 1: for him to burnish China's image. And from what I
Speaker 1: can tell, all he's done is piste off countries all
Speaker 1: over the world. There was the thing with the Indian UH.
Speaker 1: Remember the Indian UM diplomatic team Withdrew the day before,
Speaker 1: because they actually put an Indian UH Chinese military officer
Speaker 1: who killed Indians into the Torch ceremony, and you know,
Speaker 1: they piste off the Indian just for no reason the
Speaker 1: day before the Olympics. Then they had a weaker like
Speaker 1: the torch at the opening ceremony and everybody was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's really passed up. That's a that's just a sociopathic
Speaker 1: thing to do, you know. And then there was the
Speaker 1: punk Shue mysterious interview where she pops out in the
Speaker 1: middle of the first week of the Olympics and everyone's like,
Speaker 1: oh wait, she's in a lot of trouble. This is
Speaker 1: really creepy, and one by one by one, China's effort
Speaker 1: to sort of show their best put their best foot
Speaker 1: forward backfire. In my opinion, I don't know if if
Speaker 1: that is that time everyone else happen. To me, it
Speaker 1: seems like a total disaster for the Chinese Communist Party, um,
Speaker 1: because this is their best behavior. This is when they're
Speaker 1: trying to show us that they're not a horrible, you know,
Speaker 1: human rights abuser, and every single step of the way
Speaker 1: they just seemed to be reinforcing that for you. Well,
Speaker 1: and there's snow sucks according to everybody participating in the Olympics.
Speaker 1: So there's that and their treatment of the Olympic athletes,
Speaker 1: and they're they're making them download an app that monitors
Speaker 1: all of their speech, and then you know, forget about
Speaker 1: like the fact that they put the the some of
Speaker 1: the events in the middle of what looks like a
Speaker 1: dystopian nuclear waste land, and you know, and then in
Speaker 1: the lockdowns and the repression and the silencing of all
Speaker 1: the journalists and the threatening of all the dissidents. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty ugly picture. I think that, at least
Speaker 1: that's what I see. I don't know about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've been rooting for it to be as ugly as possible,
Speaker 1: just because to whatever extent Americans and people around the
Speaker 1: world can recognize the evil and the power of the
Speaker 1: Chinese regime, all the better for humanity. I just I
Speaker 1: was scared to hear your take, because you know, we've
Speaker 1: been rooting so fervently for that. I didn't want to,
Speaker 1: you know, assume that my wishes were being the father
Speaker 1: of my thoughts. H you know, not to completely, you know,
Speaker 1: spoil your enjoyment. But it does seem that the actual
Speaker 1: corporations don't actually give a crap one where or the other,
Speaker 1: and none of the sponsors have done anything to stand
Speaker 1: up for human rights. The International Olympic Committee helped the
Speaker 1: Chinese Communist Party make a hostage video with punc Hua
Speaker 1: and then they, you know, refused to even meet with
Speaker 1: the human rights groups. You know, I've been dealing with
Speaker 1: a lot of these debanton groups. We grow groups. Hong
Speaker 1: Konger's Taiwan needs a lot of Chinese discident groups, and
Speaker 1: they say that the corporations won't even give them the
Speaker 1: time and day. So I think there's an awakening in
Speaker 1: the public space right and regular ordinary people realize we've
Speaker 1: got a problem here. But for right now, the lure
Speaker 1: of the Chinese market is still forcing all these corporations,
Speaker 1: especially American corporations, to shut up in self center. And
Speaker 1: that's like sort of the other side of that coin.
Speaker 1: Josh Rogan of The Washington Post is on the line, Josh,
Speaker 1: I wish I could remember who wrote the piece. I
Speaker 1: read it over the weekend. It was going through some
Speaker 1: of the challenges that the Chinese Communists are gonna face
Speaker 1: going forward, and she's pain specifically as he tries to
Speaker 1: recommunize China. Turns out the guys an actual communist and
Speaker 1: that combined because that's gonna choke off the engine of
Speaker 1: the Chinese rise to the extent that he gets it
Speaker 1: to go forward. You combine that with demographic problems with
Speaker 1: UH you know, some dissident problems a A, a ceasing
Speaker 1: of the rapid rise of standards of living in China UM,
Speaker 1: and that he really faces some serious headwinds in the
Speaker 1: next five ten years. I realize it's tough to see
Speaker 1: inside the Chinese Communist Party, But do you agree with
Speaker 1: that or do you think he's pretty solid at this point? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: I I think that's right. I think two is gonna
Speaker 1: be a very tough year, fugiating thing if you think
Speaker 1: about it, because he's gonna get his coronation UH to be,
Speaker 1: to get his third term, to make himself the emperor,
Speaker 1: to make himself bizarre. At the end of the year,
Speaker 1: it comes to November at the party conference, so he
Speaker 1: really can't afford to mess up from now until November.
Speaker 1: So he isn't a tough ut for this immediate near term. Now,
Speaker 1: the biggest problem he has is that he's got the
Speaker 1: zero COVID policy, which seemed like a good idea with Delta,
Speaker 1: it is actually a terrible idea when it comes to
Speaker 1: Omicron because they can't open up their economy. So how
Speaker 1: are they supposed to recover if everyone's lockdown forever because
Speaker 1: they don't want even one case of COVID, which is insane.
Speaker 1: And then if he opens up, he's gonna have a
Speaker 1: billion people who are gonna get O Macron in two weeks.
Speaker 1: That's also gonna be a problem. So there, he's got
Speaker 1: a lot of troubles. But what that says to me
Speaker 1: is that he's actually even more dangerous because he's actually
Speaker 1: got more incentive to do do so, you know, to consolidate power,
Speaker 1: to crack down on his rivals, to murder anyone who
Speaker 1: stands in his way, and of course that's what he's doing.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about the Biden administration
Speaker 1: their China policy. I don't want to label you as anything.
Speaker 1: You're a journalist and a writer. We can fairly be
Speaker 1: labeled pretty hardcore China hawks around here, and we tend
Speaker 1: to agree with you a lot. Um. I've been reasonably
Speaker 1: impressed with the Biden administrations dance towards China. What do
Speaker 1: you think about that? Yeah? No, I mean I've been
Speaker 1: called hawf. I like to think I'm a realist, but
Speaker 1: I guess everyone thinks they're a realist, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: the bottom line is I believe that the Chinese Communist
Speaker 1: Party is increasingly aggressive and repressive and expansionist and interfering
Speaker 1: in our free and open societies, and we need to
Speaker 1: do more. That's my view. That's what I wrote my
Speaker 1: book about. Right, we need to do more to confront
Speaker 1: this problem that we all have. And you know, the
Speaker 1: Biden team came in. The people who are actually working
Speaker 1: on this agree with that. That's the That's what I
Speaker 1: wrote yesterday in the Washington Post that there's a team
Speaker 1: of people inside the Biden administration who agree with that
Speaker 1: that we need to do more. They don't they don't
Speaker 1: like to be called Trump Light or whatever you name
Speaker 1: you want to put on it, but the fact is
Speaker 1: that they agree that the China problem is getting worse. Okay,
Speaker 1: The problem is they don't run everything, and they don't
Speaker 1: run like the West Wing, and they don't run the
Speaker 1: Treasury Department that are run the Commerce Department, and it's
Speaker 1: too slow. So I feel like it's like a you know,
Speaker 1: Trump actually did something really good that he doesn't get
Speaker 1: credit for, which is he changed our approach to China
Speaker 1: in a fundamental way, and that by an administration agrees
Speaker 1: with that. They looked at the same set of facts
Speaker 1: that came to the same set of conclusions. So they're
Speaker 1: keeping that direction. They're just going too slow. So final question,
Speaker 1: and you can go on as long as you like
Speaker 1: on this topic. Because as I was boring friends to
Speaker 1: death at the dinner the other night, I said, the
Speaker 1: story of the next fifty years is the United States
Speaker 1: of America. Heroin addict. If you will giving up the
Speaker 1: China habit. Commercially, our corporations are economy, are cheap underwear
Speaker 1: at Walmart, etcetera. Because unless there's a serious change in
Speaker 1: Chinese leadership and culture, which I think is highly unlikely,
Speaker 1: we are going to slowly realize that we are in
Speaker 1: We are enslaved to a brutal, cruel drug dealer. Now,
Speaker 1: if you accept that metaphor at all, are we at
Speaker 1: the like I gotta stop doing drug state? Are we
Speaker 1: starting our rehab? Are we are we barely even aware
Speaker 1: we have a problem? Where are we? You know? That's
Speaker 1: the interest brain there, Joe. You know, I like to
Speaker 1: think the Chinese. I like to think of the Chinese
Speaker 1: Communist Party as a mafia organization okay, because it operates
Speaker 1: like one. It's basically a big extortion ring. If they
Speaker 1: go around the world and they say the countries, hey,
Speaker 1: nice country got the would be a shame or something
Speaker 1: happened to it. Okay, pay up, and that's what they do,
Speaker 1: and they do that inside China. To now, what we
Speaker 1: are is we are the mafia organizations, lawyers and financers
Speaker 1: and accountants and business partners, and we are pumping money
Speaker 1: and technology and know how into this system which they
Speaker 1: are of course using to advance their criminal enterprise, which
Speaker 1: in the end is in dat us, which in the
Speaker 1: in the end means us harm. Okay. And in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, when the idea was that China could be
Speaker 1: part of our system and if we just gave them
Speaker 1: all the money and took all their money and integrated
Speaker 1: them as much as possible, that they would company like us,
Speaker 1: that they would turn into us. That was the idea
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two. Two, that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: We just have to see them for what they are.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean we have to go to war, doesn't
Speaker 1: mean we have to decouple all the way. But we
Speaker 1: have to realize that we're dealing with a criminal organization.
Speaker 1: It's like if the Gambinos, you know, ran a country
Speaker 1: and it was the richest country in the world. That's
Speaker 1: what it is. So what that says to me is
Speaker 1: that we have to treat it like a law enforcement problem,
Speaker 1: which means we have to punish the people who are
Speaker 1: helping the drug deals. Okay, the drug dealers, lawyers, the
Speaker 1: drug dealers, accountants, and they are dealing drugs because they
Speaker 1: are actually sending tons offense at all into our country.
Speaker 1: And that's just one of the problems right. More broadly,
Speaker 1: we just have to stop helping our adversary build the
Speaker 1: machine that's pointed at us, because it's crazy, okay. And
Speaker 1: the reason that Americans are doing that is because they're
Speaker 1: getting paid on both sides of the Pacific. So until
Speaker 1: we change those incentives, we're not going to change our
Speaker 1: corporations and our Wall Street firms, and our schools and
Speaker 1: our Hollywood theaters who are all seeing it as better
Speaker 1: for them to work with our enemy instead of protecting
Speaker 1: us from our enemy. And that's the big change that
Speaker 1: has to happen, right. And you have a better metaphor
Speaker 1: than I do, uh that I love the mob betaphor,
Speaker 1: because they don't just want to sell drugs, they want
Speaker 1: to own everything. They want to own all the businesses,
Speaker 1: and own all the towns and own all the people. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, final thought and reading your stuff in Michael
Speaker 1: Pillsbury's hundred Dear Marathon and stuff like I've been, I've
Speaker 1: become aware of and this is an illustration of how
Speaker 1: dopey and naive Americans can be. From ninety two to recently,
Speaker 1: um that deception is is celebrated in China. Fooling your
Speaker 1: adversary into thinking you're not an adversary, feigning weakness, feigning friendship.
Speaker 1: Those are not seen as despicable, they're they're enshrined in
Speaker 1: some of the greatest values in Chinese society, the thirty
Speaker 1: six Strategies, which is an ancient text, and the rest
Speaker 1: of it. Who knew, you know, Joe. I don't think
Speaker 1: any one culture or anyone's society as the cornerstone on deception,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I think it's part of diplomacy.
Speaker 1: It's part and I wouldn't want to single out China
Speaker 1: in society is being responsed because again, you wouldn't blame
Speaker 1: the Chinese people. The Italian people for the mafia, right,
Speaker 1: So you wouldn't blame the Chinese people for the CCP. Right.
Speaker 1: The CCP is a unique thing. And it's not really
Speaker 1: about Chinese culture. It's not really about the Chinese nation.
Speaker 1: It's about this party, which is a criminal organization in
Speaker 1: and of itself, and that's the problem. And you know,
Speaker 1: we have to focus on that, okay. And you know
Speaker 1: what I say to that is like, yeah, of course
Speaker 1: they don't want us to focus on that. That's what
Speaker 1: That's how they're different from Putin. Putin wants everyone to
Speaker 1: focus on putin Jing thing, wants everyone to focus on
Speaker 1: anything but jing Ping because in order for them to
Speaker 1: build a machine that's pointed at us, we need to
Speaker 1: be looking the other way. So that's that is of
Speaker 1: course a forum of deception. But I don't blame China.
Speaker 1: I blame the c yeah, and fair enough. And and
Speaker 1: it's funny because I don't see it in moral terms.
Speaker 1: I see it in strategic terms. Um. And And if
Speaker 1: it came off as like a moral judgment, I didn't
Speaker 1: mean it that way because I'm just aware of negotiating
Speaker 1: styles across different cultures are very different. Um. If you're
Speaker 1: negotiating with somebody from Iran, say a Persian person is
Speaker 1: sometimes they refer to themselves. They have a different view
Speaker 1: of honesty and call it cleverness than some other cultures do.
Speaker 1: But I'm afraid we're crazy up against a break, Josh
Speaker 1: Rogan to The Washington Post. Josh, it's always stimulating. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for the time. We appreciate it. Never on
Speaker 1: any time, and I hope we can talk against soon. Josh,
Speaker 1: the author of Chaos under Heaven Trump she in the
Speaker 1: Battle for the twenty one Century Great Book