What I’ve learned about China

There is one country that if you are interested in the world or really interested in any topic at all, comes up over and over again. China. It comes up when you talk about the economy, about science and technology, about war and peace, about the future of the human race. I have been writing and reporting on China for a long time, and there is maybe no topic that I find more interesting to learn about. And I think I'm not alone because I get questions about China all the time. Big questions. What does China want? Where is it headed? What does its rise mean for the rest of us? I love these sorts of big questions because they cut right through the misconceptions and media stereotypes and assumptions that keep us from understanding this big, complicated, fascinating country. Well, today I want to do things a little differently. I'm going to answer your biggest questions, your deepest questions about China. Rapid fire and head on. It's part of a series we are calling No Dumb Questions, where we take on the biggest questions, the biggest assumptions, the biggest myths about the world, starting with a topic where there are a lot of myths and misconceptions, but also so much fascinating stuff to dive into. So, let's get into it. Okay, so yes, we've got our old pal, our trusty cork board up here. And I'm going to use it as a kind of table of contents. Each of these is a question that we are going to answer over the course of this video. And this is going to help us keep track of where we are, what we've answered so far, and what's coming up. And just to give you a preview of these questions, we are going to talk about what China wants as a great power. A day in the life of each of China's economic classes, like their middle class, their working class. Something I'm calling the Siberia question. That's kind of a fun one. We'll get to what that is in a second. Whether the world sees China or the United States as the bigger threat. Whether it's true that China is really on its way to becoming a green country, powered by green energy. I get this one a lot. And if you're wondering where these questions come from, I will explain that. And how you can get your own question up here for the next video. But I wanted to get us moving first on what you're actually here for, which is answers. So, first question. Great questions. I'm going to answer Amir's framing specifically. Does China actually want to replace the United States as number one? Because this is a, I think maybe surprisingly simple answer, which is no. They absolutely do not want to replace the United States in the number one spot in the world. They are very clear about this. You see in action in their foreign policy that they don't want this. They want to be number two. And the reason that they don't want to be number one and they want to be number two, I think tells you a lot about China and how it sees its role in the world. The thing is, is they understand that the United States as number one plays this role as the like guarantor of global free trade and prosperity and upholding the wealth and the size of the middle class of the Western world and the developed and democratic world. And China knows that they need that and rely on that because their economy is built on exporting stuff to not just those countries, but mainly those countries. It's built on relying on that free trade. And their political system is built on that economic model. So for China, everything rests on the United States continuing to play this role as the global guarantor of order and free trade. And that's very expensive. Why would China want to do that when the United States is already playing this enormously valuable role for them for free? Now they don't love every U.S. decision. There is a lot about American global hegemony that they obviously object to, but they still prefer the United States doing it to having to take on the burden of being the world's global policemen themselves. Now they do want, and the questions I think got to this well, they do absolutely want the United States out of their neighborhood. They don't want to be the number one globally, but they want to be number one in their immediate neighborhood. And it's also because they eventually want to, and they're again very clear about this, invade and, depending on your perspective, either conquer or reconquer Taiwan. And they can't do that as long as the United States is number one, not just globally, so in Southeast Asia. So China's endgame is to stay number two, but to be in charge and the big boss in their kind of immediate neighborhood. Great question. We could obviously spend a lot of time on this. I'm giving kind of quick surface level answers because I want to be able to answer all these questions because there's so many great questions. Okay, so we're going to mark that first question answered. Okay, moving on to number two. Emerson Delius, my viewers have the best names. Emerson Delius asks, how does a day in the life of each economic class compare in China to the USA? I am obsessed with this question. This is such a great question. Emerson goes on, living conditions, education, social life, and overall wealth. How proportional are the economic classes in each country? All of this will reveal which country's way of doing things is truly better in a very summarized and dumbed down way. Okay, Emerson, amazing question. This is such a great way to try to understand China by looking at it relative to a country that whether you live in the United States or not, you know a lot about. I would push back on your premise very slightly that this will reveal which system or which country's way of doing things is better. China and the United States started in very, very different places, literally whenever you start the clock, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 300 years ago. So the fact that China has come up in a lot of ways since then but may still be behind the United States in certain ways that we will get into here doesn't mean the Chinese system is worse. It just means they have different start points. So just think of this as a snapshot in time that tells us what life is like in China now, not necessarily which system is better. Let's start with the middle class because that is by far the most similar between China and any Western or developed democratic country. And just to give you a sense for what middle class means, if you do an email job, you are middle class. If you went to college, you are middle class. There's lots of different ways to define middle class. Just go with that as a shorthand. I think you would be shocked at how similar life looks for middle class people in China as it does in the United States, Europe, Japan, Korea, whatever. If you go back to the video we did a couple of months ago on China's demographic crisis, we watched some Chinese soap operas. I thought it was really fun. I really love watching them. They're on Netflix. If you look at those soap operas, which are of regular middle class lives in China, those look like my life. Those look almost identical to the things that I care about, what I do with my week. People with email jobs, they go to the luxury gym, they follow food trends, they go with their friends on weekend, they worry about their career, taking care of their parents. It's just the values, the concerns, and the level of wealth and prosperity are very, very similar. China's middle class is not as large proportionally as it is in, say, the United States. It's relatively quite new. It barely existed even 40 or 50 years ago, but it's very, very rapidly growing as a share of China's population, and it's getting much, much more important to the country's economy, to its political system. If you travel to China, which I highly recommend, going to China is awesome. If you go to any of the big, quote-unquote, tier one cities, these are the cities that you have heard of, Beijing, Shanghai, that's what you will see. You will see middle class life. You'll see people going out to cool, hip ramen shops, and you'll be like, oh, this looks very familiar. So that's the middle class. The next most similar is, I think, the rich. The rich in China are similar to the rich in the United States in the fact that they are ultra wealthy. There's a huge gap between the rich and everybody else in China just like in the United States, in the sense that they are very powerful and very involved in politics and trying to pull political strings in order to protect and grow their wealth. The similarities between the rich and Chinese United States are actually growing all the time, not because China's rich are getting more American, but because America's rich are getting more Chinese. If you look at Jeff Bezos buddying up to Trump and firing people from the Washington Post to try to appease Trump, that's very Chinese. That level of involvement between the ultra wealthy and Chinese. Another way that they're similar is they're weird. America's billionaires are weird guys, right? Mostly guys. And the same is true in China. They're also similar in that they're very Davos-y and very international. Again, you would kind of recognize this lifestyle and cultural milieu that they come from. So, okay, now let's get into where it's really different. And I think not the biggest difference, but really close, is the working class. The working class, the life for the working class and the concerns for the working class in China are very, very different from those in the United States. Life is really tough if you are working class in China. It's very precarious. It's much more kind of like the old China. These jobs are very industrial. Workers in China, despite what you might think, given its, let's say, flag and political system, have very few rights and protections. Genuine labor unions are illegal in China. They technically have labor unions, but they're controlled by the state and used as a tool to suppress workers. There's very little social safety net in China for members of the working class. It's actually very American that way, and maybe even more so. You know what? If you want to know what life is like for the working class in China, do not take it from me. Watch a fantastic Chinese movie made by a Chinese filmmaker named Jia Zhangge called A Touch of Sin. You've probably heard of this movie. You've maybe seen it around. It's fantastic. It's really good. It's a series of vignettes that are kind of reflective of modern life in China. A lot of them are from the perspective of working class Chinese people and the kind of hardships and struggles they face, but it's also just really crackling and entertaining. It's an amazing movie. I just love this filmmaker. The reason I would say watch this movie instead of listening to me is it's a movie made by a Chinese filmmaker who's very in touch with the concerns of real everyday Chinese people really celebrated in China. It's made by a Chinese crew, so it's real Chinese perspective by actual Chinese people instead of a Westerner describing it, which I understand maybe you're skeptical of. So the next, the only remaining class and the one that is most different from life in the United States or a lot of other countries is China's rural poor. China still has a very large population of people who live in rural poverty, and by poverty, there's different standards for it, but generally means under $10 a day. So when we say poverty, we really mean it. And this looks like what you would imagine. It's not modern housing. Typically running water might be an issue. Basic amenities are an issue. And again, I'm not bringing this up to like knock China because one of China's greatest successes and maybe one of the greatest successes in like human history is how much of the rural poor China has lifted out of poverty into the working class and even the middle class in one generation, which is amazing. I mean, we're talking hundreds of millions of people who were lifted out of rural poor villages into skyscrapers, which is awesome. China is very proud of this accomplishment, and they should be. There is still a very meaningful population of rural poverty in China. I have seen it. I've been there. It's tough, but they're working on it, I guess. So, okay, amazing question. My favorite question I've maybe ever gotten. Marking it answered, and thank you, Emerson. Okay, number three, the Siberia question. I'm excited for this one. Michael B. Johnson asks, is a more expansionist approach likely in China's relationship with Siberian Russia as Moscow struggles with NATO? So the reason I love this question, and I laughed when I saw it, is because if you go to Russia, spend any time in Russia, every time I've reported in Russia, this question comes up constantly. People in Russia, in my experience, are obsessed with this belief that it's not just a possibility, but an agreed-upon fact of life that sooner or later, China is going to invade Russia to conquer and annex Siberia because it's very rich in resources, and China will take all those resources from Russia. And I will get to why that question makes me laugh, because I understand. I'm not laughing at you, Michael. I understand as an outsider, like maybe you look at that. It's a reasonable place to get to. I was reporting in Russia once, and I was talking to this guy who was a judge. He was actually kind of famous as the last independent judge in Russia. Very smart guy. You know, he's a lawyer. He's very educated, very international, having this very interesting, high-level conversation about the legal system in Russia. And in the middle of this conversation, he is talking about, like, yeah, all of these problems are really tough. They're really going to be a challenge for Russia, and it's going to get so much harder when China annexes Siberia. And I was like, what? Where did that come from? What are you talking about? But just go to show that, like, how widespread this belief is, which is partly just a, like, people are very conspiratorial in Russia, because that's what happens when you live under an authoritarian system like that. So the reason that if you talk to, say, a China expert, they will always laugh at this question, and not at you, but just, like, laugh at the idea of this question. It just wouldn't make sense for China to fight a war to take Siberia to get its resources, because they already get all of those resources through trade. So it's kind of like that, like, why would you buy the cow if you get the milk for free? But it's like, why would you fight a war with the cow if you get the milk for free, and also the cow has nuclear weapons? So I thank you for asking that question, because I'm really happy that I got to, like, give you this little slice into the Russian-Chinese relationship. But it comes up a lot. So thank you, Michael, marking that one answered. So before we do the next question, I want to show you something that's actually on the opposite side of the board here. Hold on. Okay. This logo here is Incogni. They are today's sponsors. And because sponsors are how we're able to make videos like this one, we're going to do a little mini corkboard here to tell you what they do. So all the way on the left, that right there is your personal data, your data, your address, your phone number, your financial history, your shopping habits, all of it. And on the right, all of these are some of the bad actors who want to use that data. We've got hackers. We've got snoopers, stalkers, everybody's favorite, phishing scammers, health insurance companies who can raise your rates based on personal data that they find. Awesome stuff. And of course, who could forget marketers? But how did these guys over here get that personal data over there? Like, I am reasonably careful and secure online, and maybe you are too. But it turns out that there's something missing from this picture that explains how they do it. Something called data brokers. And what is that? These are web databases that compile huge amounts of your personal data, often legally. So they get your data, and then everybody else gets your data from the data brokers. And this, this equation, this is where Incogni comes in by cutting off all those data brokers from your data. Incogni actually tracks down and actively removes your data from these data brokers. Here's what that looks like. And they actually do this repeatedly, continuously, handling the whole process for you to keep your data yours. Some plans include custom removals. You see your data online somewhere, you send Incogni the link, and they will handle the rest. So go to incogni.com slash maxfisher or follow the link in the description for 60% off a one-year plan, which comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. That's incogni.com slash maxfisher. Now let's flip this around and get back to the questions. Okay, question number four from Lily Guerrero. Should people worry more about China than the U.S. in terms of militarism and spying? Also, is China on its way to really becoming a green country? So Lily, you took two questions, and it was one question per person. But I'm going to let you get away with it because they're both great questions. So we're going to answer the first one first. Should people worry more about China than the U.S. in terms of militarism and spying? And you encounter versions of this question a lot as a kind of way of getting to a moral judgment for like, which country is more of a threat to the world? Which country is better? Which country is worse? And partly that's a reaction to the rhetoric from the United States, right? The United States holds itself up as the responsible global power as opposed to China, the dangerous threat to the world toward it. I think a more direct line kind of through the complexities of this question is just to ask, how do the other countries, the 180 other countries in the world, treat this question? Do they treat China or the United States as a greater threat? And the answer is that, of course, it depends a lot on the country. I will say that countries on China's periphery that border China treat it as far and away the bigger threat. They treat China as not a threat in the way that the United States is a threat for like launching the Iraq War. Obviously, China is not doing Iraq-style wars, although they have been very clear they want to do one in Taiwan. But it's more of a threat of spying, like you said, you know, bullying in their foreign policy, sending the Chinese Navy into these countries' waters to chase off fishing ships to try to claim international waters as their own. And these countries treat the United States as a protector against China. That does not mean that they have like looked at the global ledger of these two countries' behavior and determined that the United States is more moral and more on the side of the angels than China is. It's just a strategic question. And if you tick through the world, you kind of see similar, like, what is in my interest strategic calculus. Like, if you go to Europe, they treat the United States as a protector on net, but more against Russia than against China. So they're kind of hedging and they want to be friendly with both. In the Middle East, it really depends country to country. All of which is to say that I think if you on net look at the behavior of the countries in the world, the answer is it really depends on that country's circumstances, that country's relationships. Great powers do bad things. They also will sometimes be really helpful to smaller countries. It's not because they are so virtuous and kind, but because every country acts in its interests as it perceives them. Chinese foreign policy tends to be very bullying in its neighborhood and more about economic relationships outside of that. Make of that what you will. In terms of which country is more responsible steward of the global order. Great question. Market answered. Okay. Lily's other question that she snuck in is China on its way to really becoming a green country. This one comes up all the time because we hear so much about China's wind farms, its green tech, its electric vehicles. And the answer is like, sort of, but not in the way that you have probably been led to believe. It is true that China is, in like absolute terms, absolutely the world leader in producing green energy and green tech. But the thing is, is that China is also rapidly expanding and increasing its use and burning of fossil fuels, of things that contribute to putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And how can it be both things at once? How can it be both becoming greener while also becoming more and more of a polluter and a contributor of carbon? The way to square the circle and understand this is to understand that China's development of green energy and green tech, like electric cars, is not primarily because they care about climate change. It's because they care about energy security. They have been doing everything they can, including green tech, like solar panels, and including burning lots, lots more coal to rely less on oil and gas that comes from outside of China. And that's because they want to be shielded from if the United States ever tried to cut off their access to oil in the case of, let's say, a war over Taiwan. If they ever had some sort of economic shock that's outside of their control, like what happened with Iran, they want to be shielded from it. So that's how you can see them both getting greener and less green at the same time. Okay, great question. Thank you. Okay, before we go to the next question, I said I would explain where these come from, so let's do that now. These are all from members of a club that I run with a few other creators called NewPress. NewPress is where smart, curious people get a deeper version of what we do across our channels. In-depth interviews, conversations between creators, and the ability to connect directly with other members. And we occasionally invite those members to challenge me with their biggest, broadest questions on a given topic like we are doing with this video on China. And you can see from these questions just how smart and curious that community is. They're a lot of fun to chat with. So if you want to hit me with your big questions for the next video in this series, and I'm not sure what that'll be on. Maybe it'll be on the US election, maybe Ukraine and Russia, maybe Israel and Palestine. I don't know, maybe Kazakhstan? Kazakhstan is a fascinating topic. I would love to do questions about it. Consider signing up for NewPress. Right now, it's 60 bucks a year to become a founding member. Check it out at newpress.com slash questions. The link is in the description. Okay, now let's get back to these great questions. Let's go on to question number six. Nathan Fretz asks, I'm genuinely curious about the organization of their government system. How have they made communist socialist ideologies work when the rest of the world has failed? I get a bunch of variations of this question like I do a lot, honestly. Bella asks, just to remind, it is no stupid question, so please excuse my ignorance on the subject. Bella, you never have to apologize for asking a question here because there are, that's right, no dumb questions. Bella Goldzahn, I've heard China referred to as socialist, communist, and capitalist, but which ideology are they actually following or most aligned with? Great questions, guys. So I think what all of these are asking is, is China really communist or are they actually capitalist because they claim to be one, but it kind of seems like the other, and it's all very confusing. And I think the honest answer is that neither of these terms is the best way to describe China's system. And there is another word that I think is a much better way to describe their system. I will come back to it, but first let's tack on like, to what degree are they communist or capitalist and what does that even mean? And I will just say upfront that like, China has always said that they are breaking with communism as it is kind of always been defined and described outside of China. They've always said that they are doing communism with Chinese characteristics. That is their phrase for it. Actually, just to super quickly define communism, its main two features, I would say to super oversimplify are one, a centrally planned economy. So that means everything from production, how much is produced, who works on what, all of which is meant to build towards a end state of total equality. And the second piece of it is something called Leninism named after, of course, Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. What Leninism means is a super strong party, a communist party that controls every aspect of life in the country that is meant to bring about this gradual revolution to total communist equality. China does not really have the centrally planned economy. They have pieces of it. They started with it a lot. What they really have now from communism is Leninism, is state party, communist party that has total control over the state. They have the final say in everything. There are pieces of centrally planned economy, but what there's a lot more of is capitalism. And I think we all know about this. They are very about trade, private enterprise, startups, companies competing in the free market, people getting richer or poorer, Deng Xiaoping, who is the second leader of China after Mao. He took over in 1978. Actually, arguably, China's most important leader of the last hundred years. You could actually make the case he's one of the maybe three most important world leaders at all of the last hundred years. Absolutely fascinating guy. Deng Xiaoping has this quote about like, are we capitalist? Are we communist? Where he said, it doesn't matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice. And what that means is like, who cares if we call it capitalist or communist as long as the system works at doing what we want it to do. And he's like, that has really carried the way for China ever since. And the kind of official line is that like, yes, we still want to get to this communist end state of total economic equality, but we think that's hundreds of years away. For many generations is the phrase that they used. So that gets to, okay, is it communist? Is it capitalist? Which better describes China? And I said, there's actually a third thing that better describes it. And that is a party-based political system. What do I mean with that? Think of it in contrast with a country like Russia, where there's one person, Vladimir Putin, who sits at the top and is the final authority. Like, he kind of is the state. The way it works as China is instead of one person is the state, it is super bureaucratic. It's a huge party apparatus that is like a state within the state. And actually part of it being party-based and part of it being super bureaucratic and these huge institutions is the provincial governments, which are run by these like other party committees, have a ton of power and autonomy. This is what they mean when they say Chinese characteristics. Excellent, excellent question. Okay, question number seven. Shamsuddin Ismail V asks, will the emergence of China as a world superpower set the blueprint for modern communism? Will more countries seeing the success of this communist nation be motivated to turn communist and will China give them that support against the US as the USSR did during the Cold War? And this, again, it's a great question because if you know anything about the Cold War, of course you would expect that is China going to do the same thing that the Soviet Union tried to do, which is export its system all around the world, only deal with countries that are ideologically aligned with it. And I'm so glad you asked this question because the answer could not be a clearer no. China has said that unlike the Soviet Union, they don't want to export their system. China actually says, we think our system only works for us and only we can make it work. And this is, and your question gets at this, completely different from how the Soviet Union thought about communism. The Soviet Union had what's called a universalist political system or a universalist ideology, which means that they believed that their political system was the pinnacle of human political achievement and therefore it was their duty and their responsibility and their right to spread that system to the entire world. And the United States believed the exact same thing and still believes that about their system, about democratic capitalism. So you can see why they fought a Cold War. But China not only doesn't want this, is not interested in this, does not think this would be a good idea, but also is very happy to work with countries that have very, very different political systems. Like one of China's closest allies in Asia is Pakistan, which is a like Islamist, quasi-democratic military dictatorship. Like could not be more different from China. They don't care. They work with a bunch of democratic countries. For them it's really just all about like, yeah, you guys do whatever you want politically. We just want to find countries that we can like work with in a way that will work for us. The other aspect of your question is like, are other countries trying to copy China? Which is obviously very different than whether China wants to spread their system. And the answer is sort of, but mostly not. A lot of countries look at China's obvious successes over the last 50, 60, 70 years, and they look for pieces to copy. Ethiopia is a country that looked at China's political and economic development and not so much right now, but in the recent past has tried to copy it. There have been a lot of moments in Iran's history when some of the reform and opening movements and some other movements that like predated that saw China as a model for how to emerge in the world, how to like grow their system economically. One country that has found a very specific aspect of the Chinese experience that they are working very hard to mimic is North Korea. We talked about this in our North Korea video. The thing that North Korea is trying to copy from China is not their economic system, definitely not their economic opening or their political system, which is very different, but their foreign policy. And North Korea really sees itself as being a miniature China and what China did in the 1970s in terms of like standing up to the United States using nuclear weapons in order to then reach a grand bargain with it and to become have like friendlier relations with it. Great question. Thank you, Shamsuddin. Okay, next question comes from viewer Felt Poopenfarten. Felt, I just want to say it's always a joy to hear from our Dutch viewers. Hello in the Netherlands. Hope you're enjoying your waffles. Felt Poopenfarten asks two questions. Why does a certain... Again, you guys are cheating with your two questions, but I'm too soft on you. Two questions. Why does a certain portion of the British and presumably more broadly Western leftists idealize China so much, ignoring its authoritarianism and abysmal human rights record despite holding all other states to account? And my second question is how does China get things built so quickly? Okay, so again, I'm going to take these questions one by one. You might notice I did not actually put the first question up on the board and that's because I didn't want people to see it and then fast forward to it to try to like check whether I give an answer that is ideologically in line with their beliefs because I want to kind of try to sidestep the ideological side taking that is maybe a little bit implied by this question. Sorry, Felt. And I want to try to just like answer it diagnostically 10,000 foot view. So I think what this question is asking is why is it that some people who maybe identify as leftist, maybe identify as something else, doesn't matter, why do some people hold up China as an ideal despite China doing things that they criticize in other countries and that would seem to contradict their case that China is the ideal? And there is actually a name for this. It's called campism. People who do this are called campus. This emerged during the Cold War and it's called campism because it's a way of approaching the world by dividing into two camps, you know, the West and the East, the capitalists, the communists, whatever it is, and dividing it with a mission of arguing that one camp is superior to the other. And when people do this now, like there are some streamers who do this a lot, specifically with China, I think what they would say is that this is towards a noble goal of highlighting the problems in the West. I think this can come across to people as simplistic or as hypocritical. You know, people see you holding up China as this obviously superior ideal, including on human rights grounds, and you go, but wait, China does so many incredibly severe human rights abuses that you criticize when Western countries are doing it, so it seems like you're not actually motivated by caring about human rights or whatever. It seems like you're motivated by wanting to win this made-up team sport of arguing which side is better. Some people also like it because they feel that the West is false in its asserted superiority, and it's a way to knock that down a peg, or it's a way to reveal the hypocrisy of the West. I don't engage in it personally because I do think that it can come across as a little overly simplistic, and also because I don't see my mission as making an ideological argument for which side is better. I see my mission as finding the world fascinating, loving, learning about it, and wanting to help you all learn about it, and I think that means acknowledging good and bad all over the place. Countries are complicated. I don't know that we are helping anybody by hiding or downplaying some of them in order to win an argument on the internet, but if some people want to win that argument, God bless. Good for you. Okay. Wait. It's not on the board, so we're not marking an answer. Okay. On to Felt's next question. My next question is, how does China get things built so quickly? That one is on the board. You can see the little dam over there. People ask this all the time. I'm very curious about it. People see China building these wind farms and solar panel farms and high-speed trains, and I think what's behind this question is looking at that and asking, why can't we have that? There are a couple answers to this question. One is that China just has incredible internal infrastructure, everything from manufacturing to transportation, because that was what they built their economy around. They built their economy around manufacturing and exporting complicated physical products, mechanical products, machines, cars, parts, and that, coincidentally, is really, really helpful if you want to build trains internally, if you want to build dams internally, if you want to build solar panels. You've kind of already set up for it in a way that other countries that have different economies like, say, the United States or any other country have not. Another, and this gets to China's political system, is total central government control. Central government wants to build the solar panel farm. They do it. It's done. Nobody's going to talk back to them about it, or they could talk back, but it's not going to make any difference. And it's an important thing that I would highlight about this. You only ever hear about them doing this for the solar panel farms and the high-speed trains, because those are the things that get highlighted in the viral Instagram I went to China and it blew my mind. But the thing is, the thing you don't see on those videos is that for every high-speed train or solar panel farm that the Chinese government puts in with no accountability and no dissent, they are also putting in 10 chemical factories or 10 coal plants. And because there's no accountability, they're very often built with very low or insufficient health or environmental standards, which is a huge issue in China. There are constantly protests in China about this. It is a huge deal that if you are within China, you are like, I'm not hyper-aware of, but doesn't make it outside of China as much. I think it's important to hold that China is both of those things at once. I'm not saying that to invalidate the incredible things that they do, but I'm saying that this is a system like any system where the strengths also come with some meaningful downsides. A great example of this is the Three Gorges Dam, which is this huge dam complex. It's an incredible engineering achievement. China is one of the only countries in the world that could have done this, but when they put this in because they're China, they went to a lot of these villages and towns that were going to be sunk underwater. They went to all these towns and they just said, you know what, you don't live here anymore because we need this dam more than we need your town, so it's time for you to move. That was a huge deal. There's another great movie by that Chinese director I mentioned, called Ash is Purest White, an amazing movie. It follows this Chinese couple over like 20, 25 years and over the course of China's transformation and it's not taking a political position on it, whether it's good or bad, it's just showing what it was like. There's a great sequence in it late in the movie where the main character actually sails in a boat up the lake created by the Three Gorges Dam and reflects on how the country is changing and the nature of that change. It's a great movie to get a sense of what it means to live in that kind of system. Okay, question number nine, we are speeding through from Karsten Pernotta who asks, could the yuan, which is China's currency, there he is, there's our boy, could the yuan actually exchange the US dollar in market currency? Is there a possibility? What would happen if it happens? Okay, just to explain what Karsten is referring to here, the US dollar is the global standard currency of exchange. And what that means is that it's the currency that every country keeps in a ton of reserves. It's the currency that every country use for a ton of international trade. A lot of goods and products that are traded internationally like oil are traded in the US dollar. And this gives the United States a ton of power because the fact that every country in the world relies on their currency in order to engage in the global economy means that the US has all of these levers to pull to use that currency against countries that they want to pressure or coerce or don't like or want to punish. And people sometimes get mad about that and how the US uses that power. So they start to think about could there ever be another currency that would take the place of the US dollar and therefore deprive the US of that power. So that's what's behind that question. It's a great question. It comes up. If you ever see references to de-dollarization, that's what this is referring to. But the answer to this question again is very simple. No. Absolutely not. And the reason is that China does not want this to happen. China does not want the Yuan to replace the United States dollar. And in order to turn your currency into a global reserve currency like the US dollar is, there is a bunch of stuff you have to do very deliberately that China is absolutely not willing to do. Things like you have to run a permanent trade deficit. That means you import more than you export. Use the US as an example. The US has a permanent trade deficit. It's always importing more than it exports. Every time it imports something, it pays for it in dollars. As a result, there are all of these dollars out in the world. The fact that all of these dollars are out in the world means it can be a global reserve currency. This is the opposite of what China wants to do. China wants to be constantly exporting more than it's importing because like we said, their entire economy is built on exporting and therefore their political system. So this is a total non-starter for them. Even if they could do this or wanted to do this, you also have to do these technical things with your currency called a free floating exchange rate. That means that the free market determines what your currency is worth relative to other currencies. The dollar does this. China absolutely doesn't want to do it. You need to give up something called capital controls. These are set of government controls over how your currency is used. China absolutely doesn't want to do it. I'm also not interested in having a global currency like the dollar. So this is a great question. I'm really glad you asked this question, in part because this gets brought up sometimes in a way that I think is kind of misleading because it's just never going to happen. They want someone else to take on this responsibility of having this currency because this system works for them. So great question. Okay, last question from Kareem Dawalibi. Why is China considered an adversary of the United States? And Kareem goes on with lots of explanations about why this is weird. It makes lots of great points about how it's kind of weird that they're considered adversaries. For example, they are each other's largest trading partners by far, and that typically leads to very friendly relations because those countries rely on each other, they are economically integrated, so isn't it kind of weird that they're considered adversaries? Kareem, great question, and I really agree with your premise that when you look at the relationship between these two countries, there are lots of things about this relationship that make it seem strange that they would become adversaries, or make you ask, like, is that even the right word to use to describe them? And the thing is, I don't think that it is. I mean, there are certain ways that it is, but I think if you look at it in totality, that's not the best way to describe it. Like, look at how often the leaders of these two countries meet, look at how often they have summits, look at the range of things that they talk about. They talk about trade, they talk about tourism, they're constantly signing all of these agreements. Like, this is very, very different than the Cold War, where the two leaders would occasionally have summits, but the summits would be like, how can we moderately reduce the risk of us fighting a world-destroying nuclear war? They were not meeting to talk about, let's give each other 10-year tourist visas, which China and the U.S. been doing long time, and they were meeting about reduce the fighting a world- war. So, it's fascinating to me to watch the way that they will silo out the ways that they are competitors and rivals and adversaries from the ways that they are partners and, like, joint stewards of the global order and definitely not allies, but, I don't know, there are ways that the U.S. and China, you know, narrow ways that they are closer than the U.S. is closer than a lot of its actual allies. And they know they need each other. I think, bottom line, they know that even more important to them than any mutual threat is the mutual need that they have for one another. So, it is a fascinating, complicated relationship that I endlessly love following because I think it's so interesting and it's so important for everything that happens in our world. So, great question. Thank you. Okay, we did it. 10 questions. We went through a lot. I feel like we kind of have a podcast together. Like, you and I are like co-hosts in this podcast. So, this has been a ton of fun for me. Let me know in the comments what you think. If you like this format, what you liked about it, if you'd like to see more like it, and if so, what topics you want us to do. You know, could be the Iran War, U.S. elections, could be Kazakhstan. I really want to try to get you guys interested in Kazakhstan. But, whatever it is, I really enjoyed this, so hopefully we'll get to do this together again soon. Thanks, guys.