China Is In Trouble… Which Means So Are We

Say what you might about the

AngloAmerican sphere of influence, it's

by no means self-evident that either

China, Russia, or Iran stand out as

shining moral lights to emulate as an

alternative. I mean, China is a

desperately terrible totalitarian

communist state. Iran is basically a

Islam fascist regime. And well, Russia

seems to be the outlier to some degree,

but um you know, because at least

nominally, it could be allied with the

West, but it certainly uh proved

extremely problematic in new ways since

the end of the cold war. So, I mean, on

what grounds can countries like China

and Iran, for example, offer anything

even remotely like an alternative to the

sphere of Anglo-American domination?

Let's start with China,

>> right? Well, you know, China offers what

China offers countries or at least did

offer because its offering has gotten

less attractive uh with between the

mounting totalitarianism,

the economic trouble that they're in and

the reaction to co they were saying,

look, you don't have to buy the western

package in order to become rich and

powerful. And furthermore, they were

saying to somebody like uh the ruler of

a of a country like Zimbabwe or other

countries, we'll give you money. We'll

give you tech. We won't ask you any

questions about how much money your

brother-in-law is making out of the

deal. No pesky auditors. We will, you

know, we're not like the

Anglo-Americans. We won't try to make

you behave. We'll let you do as we'll

empower you to do exactly as you like.

Now that is not a positive agenda for an

alternative world order but it is an

offer that a lot of governments or a lot

of powerful individuals might find

attractive.

>> Yeah. Powerful and powerful and corrupt

individuals. I mean it's for okay so

let's take that apart a little bit. So

the first part of that is the

proposition that you can actually be

wealthy or let's say have abundant

resources and a reasonable standard of

living living for your citizens not for

you without adopting something like the

underlying metaphysics of the western

moral code. And that proposition strikes

me as highly improbable given that the

only reason that China's rich at all is

because it managed to integrate itself

with the West and essentially adopt

quasi capitalist principles without

actually adopting the underlying

metaphysic. And I don't think their

system is stable. I don't think they're

going to be able to propagate that

well-being into the future. I mean, you

said yourself that China has tilted very

heavily under Xi towards an increasing

totalitarianism and that's pretty much

self-evident. And the fact that they can

only pedal their wares with regards to

um what would you say the their

profitability on the dictator front to

corrupt governments also indicates the

moral bankruptcy of their offerings. So

if what if what China has to offer is

the ability to bring together you know

the corrupt dictators of the world that

doesn't seem like a very plausible or

sustainable alternative to

Anglo-American domination. Right.

>> So, and and and I mean China seems to be

facing a whole host of problems now too,

including demographic problems that are

deadly serious.

>> Right. Well, you know, Jordan, this this

Anglo-American order is 300 years old

and a lot of people have tried to shake

it over the centuries. You know, you can

go back to Louis the 14th in France who

said, "I'm going to have this

centralized powerful planned economy.

we're going to be a we're going to have

all the economic and military power of

the British, but we're not going to have

all that messy political liberalism. And

it didn't work. But he put up a good

fight that convulsed the world for many

years. Napoleon really exactly the same,

>> challenging that AngloAmerican, still at

that time ang British world order and

saying, "My dictatorship, my enlightened

dictatorship can create a powerful

economy that the the stupid British

cannot match and an army that they can't

defeat." And he rampaged for quite a

while. He did ultimately fall apart and

rightly so. I think Kaiser Wilhelm II, I

think uh Hitler, Tojo and Stalin all in

their different ways had the same idea

that the sort of technocratic

dictatorship, centralized power and

planning could ch create an economy and

a society that could challenge this

Anglo-American hijgemony this call the

liberal world system

and they've they all failed. But that,

you know, no, they all thought, okay,

I'll learn from the past, now I'll win.

And I think China is thinking along

those lines, too.

>> Yeah. Well, I think I think there's a a

fallacy at the bottom of that

presumption

that basically is biological in nature.

I mean, one of the things I've observed

as a consequence of watching the United

States as an outsider, let's say, for 50

years, 50 conscious years, let's say, is

that

diversity of approach beats efficiency

of monolithic view. And so what I always

see happening in the United States is,

well, you guys are crazy about 80% of

the time and going off the rails in five

different directions, but there's always

someone in the United States doing

something crazily, innovative, insane,

always. And so what seems to happen is

that the US washes up against the shores

of various forms of political idiocy.

But there's so much diversity of

approach in the US, especially given its

massive population and its federated

system and its and its genuine freedoms

that someone somewhere is doing the next

right thing. And then America is what

would you call it? Um open-minded enough

and adaptive enough so that if someone

is doing the right thing, then they

spawn imitators extremely rapidly. And

Americans just capitalize on that like

mad. And you get this situation where

you could imagine, and I think the

Japanese managed this for a while, you

could imagine that if you just happened

to stumble on the right vision, if you

were an efficient and benevolent

totalitarian, you could be more

effective over like a 5-year period. But

you're going to have a hell of a time

with power transitions. That's a deadly

problem. And then if the world shifts on

you that's not in in a in a way that

isn't commensurate with your ideological

vision, then you have no alternative

approaches to rely on. And my

observation has been that just scuttles

all these countries that try to compete

with this distributed and creative free

Anglo-American ethos. And I do think

there's a biological reason for that is

that you know one of the ways that

biological systems compute adaptation is

by producing a very large variety of

mutations right of of variant offspring

and most of those offspring perish but

the only solution to that problem of

excess mortality let's say on the

biological front is the provision of

multiple variants and the Anglo-American

system because it's distributed And

because it places a substantial amount

of power in the hands of of individuals

and subsidiary organizations, it's

medium to long-term creativity simply

can't be beat. And it is inefficient in

that it's, you know, a lot of the

variants that the US produces, a lot of

businesses and so forth fail. But those

that succeed can succeed spectacularly

and that happens continually. And that

seems like an unstoppable force. And you

know, you just outlined 300 years of

history showing that these monolithic

centralists who believe that central

planning and efficiency will defeat

distributed creativity. They just

they're just wrong one after the other.

You'd think eventually we'd learn that

that was just wrong. And maybe we have

to some degree. Yeah. Well, I think the

the circle is spreading of countries or

cultures and individuals who do see this

advantage. But as a again as a student

of history rather than biology or or uh

psychology, what I see is that we keep

having these wars. And so, you know, I

can say I actually do believe the

Chinese system, the Russian system in

its own way, the Iranian system

certainly cannot really continue as as

they wish and will fail in the

competition. I look at the devastation

that we've seen, the Napoleonic Wars,

the World Wars. And so our problem on

our side is not simply to wait for the

time when our diversity and our

innovation will will clearly triumph,

but we have to try to manage or work in

foreign policy and and security policy

to to try to prevent new sort of new

catastrophic wars on this scale. Even

though the chances are pretty good that

we will prevail in the end.

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>> Right. Right. Right. Well, it looks to

me right now on the Chinese front, I

mean, they're they're experiencing a

level of domestic unrest that for China

appears to be somewhat unprecedented.

And it seems to me that it's perhaps

clearly in the interest of the Chinese

authorities to do something like saber

rattle extremely hard over Taiwan to

divert their populace's attention from

their domestic failures. And so that

strikes me as a I mean maybe I'm being

pessimistic about it although obviously

lots of people are concerned about China

and Taiwan. I mean Xi seems to be

attempting to consolidate power in the

same manner as people like Mao. He's

turned out to be a real a real

totalitarian dictator rather than

someone who's you know moving China

maybe like Dao like um the the the

Chinese leader who modernized was it Dao

what's his name um

>> Dang Xiaoping

>> Dang Xiaoping yes exactly he doesn't

seem like another Dang Xiaoping he seems

to me more like another Mao and that

that's very worrisome on the Taiwan

front so what do you what do you think's

in the on the horizon on the China front

and what do you think the west should do

about it?

>> Right. No, it's it's it's really

interesting because from the Chinese

point of view, first of all, we have to

understand that the people that people

like I and and you would talk to from

China are not aren't representative of

the mass of the Chinese in China. the

average chi Chinese person has never

left China, didn't study for years in a

in the English-speaking world at an

American or Canadian university or what

have you. Um, you know, and for them it

it looks very frustrating. They see

China as this great nation with a

growing economy, largest population in

the world, at least until India catches

up. And then they look and they see,

look at Iran, a tiny country backwards

in many ways compared to China, which

has been running the table in the Middle

East. You know, it's in Syria, it's in

Lebanon, it's in Yemen, it's causing

problems everywhere you look. Even

Russia has gotten Crimea, and it's

achieved things. Where has the Chinese

government gotten? You know, what has it

done? The answer is it's done less than

Iran, done less than China, sorry, than

Russia in terms of expanding. So I think

the there's pressure on the Chinese

government from a lot of Chinese public

opinion. Why aren't you more effective?

If we're as great as you're telling us,

why don't the foreigners see that and

give ground to us? So there's a clash

between what a lot of Chinese people

think China's place in the world should

be and what they actually see. And the

government, as you say, at this time of

huge stress, the COVID policy, they

locked them down for years. And now

they're still having a massive epidemic,

they um the the housing market, which is

where most Chinese have their savings

and investment. House prices have been

going down for almost three years.

There's a major crisis building

financially in China and so the

government is in a real pickle as to

what does it do next and that makes it

obviously that makes it a little bit

unpredictable internationally.

>> Well, so well I was just curious as to

your evaluation of the Biden

administration's response to the

situation in Taiwan. Do you what

opinions do you have about the Biden

formulation of chi of foreign policy in

relationship to China? Look, I think um

the Biden administration has done a

reasonably good job so far in terms of

its messaging on Taiwan and on the

USChina relations, the chip act and

it's, you know, it's putting economic

pressure. It it it is trying to stop the

penetration. You know, so much of

Chinese growth has really come from the

theft of IP and from intellectual

property from uh Chinese state subsidies

to corporations, you know, in key

sectors that are able to use those

subsidies to compete unfairly in the

rest of the world. And I think we are

beginning to see and this, you know, it

started in the Trump years and even

President Obama talked about a pivot to

Asia. So there's been a growing

awareness in the US on a need to focus

more on China and not just sort of sit

here and wait for capitalism to turn

China democratic which is what we were

maybe doing 20 years ago. So we're

definitely ahead on that front.

>> So since I was a young person, what's

happened in China? Well, first of all,

when I started to become politically

aware, let's say back in the 1970s, I

remember going to a trade fair in

Edmonton, Alberta, um it was one of the

first trade fairs that the Chinese

participated in that probably is about

1974, something like that. And we went

and looked at uh the Chinese had a a

display there of their industrial

products and it looked like stuff that

had been manufactured in the West right

after the Second World War. Like it

looked like stuff that was built in the

1950s. But that was the first time in my

lifetime that we saw anything at all of

China. And then of course when I was

very young uh the threat of famine was

still something that we associated with

China. And what I've seen happen in my

lifetime is that China has become an

economic powerhouse. That the threat of

famine has receded substantially. That

the Chinese had been integrated at least

to some degree into the world economy.

that the West had benefited arguably

from an influx of unbelievably

inexpensive consumer goods as Chinese

manufacturing quality improved as it did

in Japan. And for a good while it looked

like the Chinese were going to settle in

beside us in lock step even though as

competitors and cooperators and move us

all towards a relatively integrated

capitalist future. And of course the

presumption was that as that happened

that the state would liberalize not

least because there'd be all sorts of

individuals in China who now had a

certain degree of economic power and you

know that the Chinese would

incrementally transform into essentially

into allies playing under the same

system. And I think that really was

happening in a pretty damn optimistic

way for a number of decades till Xi

decided to centralize control and turn

himself into another Mao. And it isn't

obvious that the optimism that the West

had in relationship to China was exactly

misplaced. I mean, I think the Western

working class paid a big price for

integrating China, but other than that,

you know, the Chinese aren't starving

anymore, which is certainly a big plus.

And like there were a lot of positives

to attempting to integrate the Chinese

into the world economy. The downside was

we seemed to become more dependent on

their laress and goodwill than we needed

to. And then of course China as a

totalitarian model is a destabilizing

force in the international order. Well,

you're absolutely right and I I would

agree with you completely that well,

look, you know, until a few years ago, I

would travel pretty freely in China and

a couple of my books have been

translated into Chinese and I would

speak at Chinese universities and talk

with professors and and officials and

the view that you just expressed is was

very common. This is what they felt

China was doing and should do was move

toward this kind of integration to

become what some Chinese used to tell me

a normal country is what they wanted

China to become and I think there are a

lot of people there who still hope that

obviously they're they're not going to

say so right now that would that would

not be good for you or your family if

you started talking that way but there I

think The what happened in some ways is

we we tended to forget that the Chinese

Communist Party is a real thing and it

wants to hold power,

>> you know, and there are lots of people

who see, you know, they look at Chinese

history. Yes, the Communist Party has

killed more Chinese than anything ever

in the history of the world. have died

as a result of mouse famines and other

things far eclipsing the death toll say

in their war against Japan even uh but

that said as you've pointed out the the

economic growth of the last 30 35 years

in China is one of the great miracles of

human history.

>> Yeah. And you would you would have to

have a heart of stone not to be glad

that hundreds of millions of people have

come out of poverty

>> that new new ways of life are opening up

new access to culture to education. It's

it's what life what we should all be

doing. It's it's progress and it's good,

>> right?

>> But that very progress of the society I

think terrified the communist party.

because they could see themselves losing

control. They could see, you know, and

and there is in Chinese history and

culture, you know, it's a it's a country

of a billion four people. That's like

what four times the population of the

European Union. And it's not so easy to

Chinese history is a story of the

balance between central and local

governments. They've had periods of

division and war and weakness when

others have taken advantage when the

central government was weak. So instead

of in a way relaxing and liberalizing

more as their economic policy succeeded,

many in the Chinese Communist Party

became, you know, really worried that

things were things were going to get out

of control. And for a number of years

even before we saw the um you know the

international hostility what we saw was

gradually in sector after sector they

were tightening up the control of this

central communist elite and more and

more under one man Xiinping. They were

tightening every using every lever they

could to impose uniform uniformity in

China to reassert even in companies now

every company has to have a a communist

party cell in it. So the part we're

we're back to the kind of communist

party dominance.

>> Yes. Exactly. And obviously as a western

investor that's a tough thing when

you've got the communist party cell

running your company. you do you really

own the company etc. So it's a uh so so

they're they're moving from a good

period into a much more difficult one I

think.

>> Right. Well, I think also that people

were optimistic and rightly so after

1989 because once the Soviets gave up

the ghost, it looked for a pretty long

period of time that you couldn't beat

the communist drum very hard anymore.

that the internal contradictions that

were part and parcel of the ethos had

made themselves manifest in a manner

that was utterly unmistakable. And just

as the Soviet Union collapsed under the

weight of its own internal idiocy, so

was the Chinese Communist Party doomed

to eventual failure. And it's certainly

and now but I guess part of the problem

is that even in the west you know we we

don't seem to be of one mind when we

look at the contradiction between

western productivity and generosity

let's say and general well-being at the

level of the citizen and the

contradictions between that and a

radical leftist view of the world right

I mean our own our own society is rife

with this culture or predicated at least

on the part that capitalism is

inherently oppressive and well and so is

western culture in general. And of

course the Chinese communists believe

that in spades and if we can't get our

own house in order with regards to the

pathology of these ideas in the west in

some sense it's not that surprising that

the Chinese remain dominated by them.

But

>> but the long-term consequences of that

can't be good. I mean, what I see

happening, I think, in in the West, in

the US in particular, is that people are

losing faith in China as a trading

partner, and we're starting to pull back

a tremendous amount of manufacturing

capacity and decreasing investment and

pulling away from China as a trading

partner. And of course, that'll just

make things more desperate in China,

which is not a good thing.

>> Yeah, it's it's a tricky thing. We in

the west we read 1989 and the events in

the Soviet Union as a you know a

glorious victory. But in China and and

Putin is is on their wavelength here.

They saw it very differently. What they

saw is it look at the Soviet Union.

Gorbatro tried to to liberalize and to

introduce some democratic elements into

the Soviet Union and look what happened.

The Soviet Union fell apart. Russia was

impoverished for a decade. It lost its

great power status in the world and you

know and the west as they saw it in

Russia and in China just you know sort

of walked all over them and did whatever

it wanted and so and the Iranians saw

this too. So the message for these

leaders is don't liberalize.

Liberalism is a poison and even a little

bit of it can begin to corrode and

destroy your society and if you let it

in it will wreck your power and

devastate everything. So they're they

actually became they they did not say oh

how enchanting western democracy is they

said how dangerous it is. And we've

heard Putin complain and talk about the

color revolutions, different

liberalizing revolutions in post-siet

countries. And they see us, they see the

West as leading this kind of subversion.

And that Western ideas and Western

freedoms are a fundamental threat to

their own power and given the uses some

of them have made of that power, made to

their personal survival.

>> Right. Right. Well, though that seems

like a reasonable concern for

totalitarian for ideologically motivated

totalitarian dictators. It's definitely

the case that Western liberal ideals

>> will not provide an environment where

their kind of psychopathic power playing

is going to be successful. So, they have

every reason to be intimidated by that.

>> Right? And I think our mistake was not

to realize that, you know, we were

saying, "Hey, we're not, you know, we're

going to wait patiently for China to

evolve." But on the side of the Chinese

Communist Party, they were saying,

"Well, we're not just going to wait

patiently until liberalism comes in and

wrecks us. We're going to preemptively

do what we need to do to maintain our

power." So, I think,

>> right, well, maybe we should have known

that because they never wavered in their

support for North Korea.

>> That's right. And they were also very

careful always to say, "We want economic

liberalization, not political

liberalization.

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