What Now? with Trevor Noah｜Alice Han: Chinamaxxing

If you watch videos on Chinese TikTok, there's a lot of... Is that Weibo?

It's Douyin, like Douyin and Xiaohongshu, which is red note.

That last part?

Xiaohongshu.

Xiaohongshu?

Because sometimes I feel like you are Xiaohongshu.

Xiaohongshu?

I can roll like that.

Thank you, Eugene.

Thank you.

Oh my God, you have such a good accent.

Oh, thank you very much.

Yeah, no, seriously.

Seriously, you could go on to Chinese TV.

Okay.

Oh, damn, damn.

Oh, Eugene.

Excuse me.

A wise man once said, compliments are best when they are shared with others.

So please, Alice, please carry on.

Carry on.

Sorry.

This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

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We're coming to you from a boot room sponsored by Febreze, which if you know anything about soccer, is usually the last place you'd want to hang out.

Because this is where all the gear lives.

The cleats, the jerseys, the socks, the bags, everything that probably never sees a washing machine until it's too late.

But right now...

It actually smells fresh in here.

That's because Febreze fabric is built for exactly this kind of odor.

The stuff trapped in fabrics that you can't just throw in the wash.

It doesn't just cover it up.

It actually fights the odor.

And I have to say, this is one of the more confident sponsorships I've ever seen.

Usually brands want to put their names on the nicest room in the building the VIP lounge, the luxury suite, the hospitality area.

Febreze looked at the boot room and said, no, no, no.

Put us in there.

And honestly, I respect that.

Because this room contains decades of bad decisions.

Wet cleats, forgotten gym bags, socks that should have retired years ago.

The kind of smells that don't just enter a room.

They sign a long-term lease.

And yet somehow it smells fresh.

Yeah.

Can you smell that, Joe?

Smell what?

Exactly!

That's what is so impressive about this.

Because a lot of the things in here are exactly the things that you can't throw in the wash.

None of it.

The cleats, the bag, the car seat, after practice.

That's the whole point.

Febreze fabric is for the things the game touches that the washing machine can't.

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Ellis was telling me an interesting story, but I didn't want to come and repeat it back here.

Because also, there's one thing about compliments.

They are better when they are shared.

Just like conspiracy theories.

Yeah.

Or sometimes charges when they're being pressed against you.

Him too, he was there.

Oh my God.

I've never heard that one.

Compliments are like conspiracy theories.

I made it up.

No, that's what I'm saying.

I've never heard that.

I like that.

I like that's a fresh one.

Alice, go ahead, tell him.

Oh, so I got the email from you guys two weeks ago, and I legitimately thought it was a scam.

I was thinking why the heck is Trevor Noah A interested in China and B?

Why is his team emailing me?

And so I sat on it for two days, thinking this is probably another one of those AI scam artists that are just creating random emails out there for people.

Okay, you've made me realize something.

I think you are not the first, second, nor third, nor fourth person who said this.

I need to find a different way to reach out to people then.

Because many people think that when we're reaching out, it's a scam.

Yeah, but DMs are the original authenticator.

Okay.

If someone DMs you, you know it's true, right?

Unless if you had gotten a DM from him, would you have thought it was a scam?

And he's got the blue tick verified.

Yeah.

On Instagram.

Yeah.

Well, I'm glad you didn't think it was a scam, or I'm glad that you were naive enough to fall for the scam.

I did due diligence.

So I went and LinkedIn profiled the guy.

Yeah, but this is too much.

And then the team working, you know, your team.

Yeah, this is too much work.

This is way too much work.

And I apologize.

No, not at all.

I mean, this is so fun to get to come here.

I'm just really a huge fan of both of you.

I mean, I'm a huge fan of your work because, you know, as you said, you're an expert in probably one of the most complicated topics that the world has ever dealt with.

Not relationships, but that is one of them, Eugene.

But in many ways, actually, Alice is a relationship expert.

It's just a different type of relationship.

Yeah, geopolitical relationship.

No, but you are considered an expert on China, which is am I correct in saying it is one of the most complicated countries to actually be an expert in, because of how multi-layered it is?

I completely agree.

And we were just talking earlier how my pet peeve is the amount of white people that write about China without having ever gone or lived there.

That is hilarious.

And they have a framework by which they analyze China.

They think it's the next Soviet Union.

They think it's the next Imperial Germany.

And my real shtick is you've got to and you probably understand this better than most people you've got to understand the culture from the ground up to really understand what the country is about.

And it's a very complicated, diverse history and culture environment.

It's entirely relevant in this new technological geopolitical age.

But I think you're completely right.

It's one of the hardest countries to get right, and increasingly so in the last decade, because A people aren't traveling in the way that they used to.

B, Western journalists aren't living there.

Some were kicked out.

And C.

Just in general, people have this ideological frameworking and fear-mongering about China without really trying to understand it.

Did you see that trip recently where a few US I don't know if they were senators or just congresspeople went to China?

It was their first time, which also shocked me, by the way.

It shocked you that Americans left America?

Don't do that, bro.

That they have a passport.

Don't do that, bro.

You, both of you, don't do that.

Don't do that.

Hey.

I had a bento box for lunch.

I don't know what that means.

That's how close I am.

To another country.

You had a Korean meal and now you're close to China.

You're part of the problem, buddy.

No, I was shocked that lawmakers could go to China for the first time.

And I mean, like deep into their tenure, like deep, deep.

These people have been serving in Congress forever.

This was their first trip to China.

And then while they were there, they were just mesmerized by everything.

And they came back saying, yeah, well, I mean, China wasn't, I didn't expect it.

And I couldn't believe what they're doing out there.

And, you know, I mean, there's a lot of things.

I've got a new perspective on China.

And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I understand if an idiot like me is living at home and has an opinion on China.

That's fine.

It's not great, but it's fine.

If you are making laws and you're deciding policies between yourself and China and you know nothing about China, Like what are we doing?

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, 100%.

I love that imagery of Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, marvelling at the ceiling as he goes into Beijing during the Trump-Xi summit.

But that really sums it up.

I think since COVID, people haven't really been travelling to China in the same way.

Now that's changed in the last year or two because there's now visa-free travel policies and now it's trending China maxing to go to China again.

Did that really happen because of I Show Speed?

Yeah, I think he's a huge star, by the way, in China, and I love that.

That's insane that that happened.

But he's not the only one.

There's a ton of American vloggers.

You can see this across YouTube who, in the last 18 months, have been going to China getting huge views.

Just showing, because China, compared to Japan, is way cheaper and it's one of those underdog tourism destinations.

It's been so developed since COVID the internal domestic tourism industry, the logistics, the transport.

So when people go there, they're so shocked that China's not the China of the 2010s.

You know, remember the Beijing Olympics and people were talking about pollution and it was still...

There was so much smog that people were saying they were afraid that the athletes wouldn't be able to run.

Yeah.

So it's changed a huge amount, even the last 10 years.

But to add to your point Trevor, my problem is that they, A don't go there and, B they don't really do the hard work of trying to understand athletes, both the intentions and capabilities of the Chinese government and the people.

We'll give you a really good example.

So the semiconductor policy that the Trump administration and the Biden administration put in.

They thought it would be very, very easy to just cut off the hardware side of the AI development, meaning the chips, and that China would be behind.

China would have no hope of ever catching up.

Fast forward a decade and China's only a couple months lagging behind the frontier models in America.

Huawei just announced that in the next couple of years it will do under two nanometer chip production, which is as competitive as TSMC.

That, I think, is so different from what people would have expected, because they're not going to China.

They're not understanding that what's actually happening at the government level, but also in the companies.

The companies like Huawei, like SMIC, which is another chip company, Alibaba ByteDance.

They're hugely innovative companies, not just the kind of imitative China that we're so used to.

Well, I think it's because people keep an idea of a place or a people as they first learned of them.

And I think we're all guilty of this in some way, shape or form.

Like in South Africa.

One of the main things people would think about when they think about China is fake goods.

You know what I mean?

Fong Kong.

I'm a Fong Kong.

No, no, no.

I would have thought... What would you have thought?

Bruce Lee.

I mean, fine.

But carry on.

No, but I'm serious.

You're not wrong.

It was Kung Fu movies.

It was Kung Fu, yes.

Kung Fu movies.

Drunken Master.

Yeah, Drunken Master.

Jackie Chan.

Jackie Chan, of course.

Jackie Chan came later though.

But yeah, but I mean, for us it was... Bruce Lee was first.

Bruce Lee and then Jackie Chan.

And then, yeah, all of this.

I mean, this was like our world.

Yes.

Then later on.

Yeah.

Then it became fake goods.

And not even like a negative word.

It was just like, they're just the best at making fake goods.

But I think a lot of the world sort of stopped there.

And they were like, oh, China, the place that makes things, cheap things, toys, and fake goods.

And that's where China's identity stopped.

And to your point.

It feels like either just in silence or when nobody was paying attention.

China just leapfrogged.

I was watching a video, I was showing you, I was telling you about this.

I was watching a video about some guy who lives in Shenzhen and this is a white American guy who grew up in Colorado and he lived in like a small town and he's just.

He's not even like showing off the place.

He's just like hey, I just want to show you guys, like how I live and my vibe out here and the technology that he's showing the lifestyle-, The cost of living.

Yeah, the cost of living, the style of living, like how people are.

And he doesn't like flower over things.

He's like, oh, certain things are really strict.

And then he's like other things, people are riding scooters, like mopeds, wherever they want.

So he's being, from what I could see, relatively honest about his experience, but I won't lie.

Even watching that, I was like, oh man, I didn't know that about China.

And I didn't know that about China.

I didn't know that about China.

And I was just like, have we been living in like a dark ages of China information?

I like the way you said that.

I think so.

But it's starting to change.

Haven't you noticed on your TikTok Instagram feed?

There's a lot of discussion about I'm living in a very Chinese time in my life China maxing.

People are drinking warm beverages.

China is living in 2030.

Living in the future, you know, that it's safe and clean.

It's starting to pivot.

And what's interesting in some of the polling data that came out from Pew is is that in particular on both sides of the aisle, Dems and Republicans, Gen Z are way more favorable than the boomers.

That makes sense.

But that's starting to change, in the sense that they are getting over time more favorable towards China.

That's pretty interesting to me.

I don't know how much of that is social media content driven by the stuff you see on YouTube Instagram, TikTok.

But certainly I feel like in particular in the last year or two, we've had a change in opinion just at the popular level about China.

And that's across the board in Europe too.

China's unfavorable readings were really high during COVID, because obviously a lot of people blame China for it.

China seemed to be screwing up the process, the response to COVID.

But since then, it's rebounded remarkably in terms of favorability.

Yeah, you know, that is probably the strangest thing about China.

Like when I try and read about it and try and understand it.

On the one hand, it seems like China runs.

You know the way the Chinese government runs.

The country is really structured and rigid.

That's how it feels for me when I see it.

I'm like, okay, they have an idea of where they're trying to go.

It's multi-generational.

It isn't constrained by the next election or democracy or like a thing that's going to like throw it off course.

There's no campaigning or election season.

Yeah, they're like, no, no, no.

This is our long-term plan.

It's going to last longer than we're even alive.

And this is where we're trying to get to.

But it seems very rigid.

It's like strict parents.

That's how I feel like.

I feel like China's government is like strict parents.

But then at the same time I'll see things that China's doing where I'm like that seems fun and rock and roll.

And it doesn't match up with the idea that I have of a homogenous, strict parent, if that makes sense.

And I don't know, how should we be thinking of China?

Which China is the real one?

Is it the place where everyone's building everything and they're moving forward and there's just a boom happening in terms of manufacturing, et cetera, et cetera.

Or is it the China that has the strict government that defines how people live their lives every day?

Yeah, it's honestly a cop-out answer, but both.

This is going to sound very wonky.

There was a great paper by a Chinese economist over a decade ago in which he has a framework that China is a regionally distributed authoritarian regime.

And what he means by that is that yes, you have the central government, which historically in China has been the emperor.

There's a phrase in Chinese, which is that the mountains are high, but the emperor is far away.

Wait, say that again?

The mountains are high?

The mountains are high, but the emperor is far away.

I would love that on my bio.

The mountains are high...

And what it means by that is yes, you have central command and the emperor or, in this case, the central government, says you should do this.

These are the targets for semiconductor output.

This is what growth we want.

But local governments have a degree of latitude to interpret what that means.

And at the same time, they are also experimenting.

So China, from the 80s onwards had, as you probably know, these special economic zones, in particular the eastern provinces like Shanghai, Shenzhen.

They are experimenting with innovating, being pro-business, bringing more private market entrance into the economy.

And that was really the responsible driver for growth in China.

That cannot exist without a central government, is willing to give a degree of latitude to the local government.

So yes, China is like a strict Asian parent.

And I know this from my own personal experience, but there's a degree of... You have Asian parents?

I do have Asian parents.

You see, my friend Eugene here... We can trauma bond if you want.

Eugene doesn't see color.

That's what I love about Eugene.

Eugene doesn't say, yes, Ellis is Asian, Eugene.

So...

Because also I was raised by my TV and it was a Sony.

So we have a lot in common.

Japanese parents.

Asian parents.

Yeah.

But yeah, so it's... And this is my thing with a lot of Western analysis.

It has a very formulaic and sometimes ideological approach to China, which is oh it's communist.

It's Marxist-Leninist.

You see this in the language.

This is what they say.

But really you know there's so much to your point innovation and chaos and diversity.

Even you know the number of ethnic groups in China, the different cuisines, the different dress codes.

People in Shanghai behave very differently from people in Yunnan, which tends to be a more hippie kind of area where people wearing you know A lot of linen and drinking tea and eating mushrooms.

How do you spell Yunnan?

And not drug mushrooms, but actual mushrooms.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's the most biodiverse place in the world for mushrooms.

Wait, really?

How can you explain that?

Yunnan.

Wait, how do you spell that?

It literally means south of the clouds.

Yunnan.

Is that H-U-I?

No, Y-U-N-N-A-N.

Okay, Y-U-N-N-A-N.

And it borders Vietnam, Cambodia.

And it's a totally different vibe.

Totally different vibe.

And it has the densest amount of minority groups in China, including Muslims.

So I think people have this kind of idea that China is very homogenous.

And yes, most people look like me and they have the dark hair and this kind of skin color.

But people come from different religious backgrounds.

They practice different traditions.

They eat different foods.

It's interesting because when you talk about China, or when I read about China because I'm consuming Western media the criticisms of China will always be yeah, China seems to be doing well.

And yes, they've built a lot of cities.

And yes, they've built a lot of infrastructure.

And yes, they're doing really well in technology.

And yes, they basically run the world's manufacturing.

Yes, yes, yes.

But remember there are still parts of China that are experiencing a lot of poverty and people are not moving out of the middle class and there's no boom, et cetera.

Then what I find myself struggling with is I go.

It's just interesting to me that that framing is used to label China's entire system as a failure.

But the same thing is not levied in Western countries, especially in America.

So they'll go, the US, you'll be like, yeah, but people live here paycheck to paycheck.

Most people are one paycheck away from poverty.

It's like the number, like the percentage of people in the US.

One paycheck away from poverty, people who cannot afford their standard of living even with a full-time job, is like one of the highest.

But then people here will make it seem like when the media writes about it.

They'll make it seem like people have failed.

They don't make it seem like the system has failed.

So they go like yeah well, I guess you know some people I guess have chosen the wrong jobs or I guess they've got the wrong degree or they've got the

I want to know how China views its problems, and where does it diverge from the way the West portrays China's issues or problems?

Well, the West, insofar as I understand, portrays it a lot.

As you know, this is the problem of authoritarianism.

It's a massive struggle between democracy and authoritarian regimes.

I still see that little red book.

Yeah, exactly.

They have this kind of Maoist, Marxist-Leninist framework.

Whereas in China, they're thinking about structural issues.

So what I have called the four Ds are the real problems in China that policymakers understand.

And those four Ds are number one, debt.

You've got debt north of 300% of GDP.

That's just a little bit lower than Japan, but that's a huge amount of debt, more than the US.

Why does that matter?

It matters because it crowds out investment in more efficient areas of the economy and it crowds out domestic demand, which is the second D Consumption has really underwhelmed and actually is underwhelming relative to pre-COVID trend.

Because household savings rates have gone up, households are less keen to spend like Americans, for instance.

Interesting.

There's no sort of tradition of using credit cards.

People are more conservative when it comes to spending of durable goods, for instance.

And that has obviously got knock-on effects for the rest of the world, because it means that if China wants to keep growing at 5 of GDP, then it needs to export even more to the rest of the world to maintain that growth.

So it's the other side of this demand and debt problem.

So if China's population is not bearing the brunt because it's not spending as much, it's not creating as much for China's economy, then China has to get that spending outside of China.

Exactly.

And the strength of the American economy is that it is consumption and services based.

You guys spend so much.

So the policymakers?

They want to get to some version of America where they want to be more consumer services led, but they're not willing to see a massive slowdown in growth, meaning winding down exports, in order to achieve that rebalancing in the economy, to be more like the American model.

So it's a very difficult balancing act for the policymakers.

And then the third one is one of the, I think, most challenging issues is aging population, demography.

The third D is demography.

The fact that you know now we have the lowest birth rate since 1949 on record, since the communists came to power.

That's why I think you moving back home would be good.

Fertility.

Increase fertility.

You're a nice young man.

Settle down.

Leave the 4Ds alone.

I didn't know this was going to be this kind of podcast.

Too many tech bros that are talking about pro-natalist policies.

Oh, wow.

Speaking of, there is this one guy in China who's fascinating.

Just a side note.

It's all in our podcast.

It's a side note.

Yes.

Feel free.

Good.

So there's a demography professor who is also the chairman and founder of Ctrip, which is China's big trip booking platform.

And he is now paying his employees 50000 per baby because he's so worried about the demographic issue in China.

China's replacement rate is now about one, meaning that the population is shrinking.

By 2040, one in three people will be above 60.

Just think about- Because Germany's is currently like 1.4.

It's slightly higher than China.

Yeah.

And then like Japan is low.

Japan's lower.

Isn't it below one?

Below one, yeah.

Yeah, so Japan is not replacing people.

So China is at one.

At about close to one, exactly.

And that's a huge implication for growth, because if you have an increasing number of the economy above 60 one in three by 2040 then who's going to pay for the healthcare?

Yeah, your social services goes apart.

Yeah, exactly.

And who's going to drive productivity when you have ever shrinking labor force and ever shrinking youth population?

So that's the demographic challenge.

And they're trying to subsidize by giving people more money to have babies.

But women, this is the thing that's understated, I think, in Western media.

And this is why it's actually, if you watch videos on Chinese TikTok, there's a lot of.

Is that Weibo?

It's Douyin, like Douyin and Xiaohongshu, which is red note.

That last part?

Xiaohongshu.

Xiaohongshu?

Yeah.

Because sometimes I feel like you like, you are Xiaohongshu.

Xiaohongshu?

I can roll like that.

Thank you, Eugene.

Oh my God, you have such a good accent.

Oh, thank you very much.

Seriously, you could go on to Chinese TV.

Oh, damn, damn.

Excuse me, a wise man once said, compliments are best when they are shared with others.

So please, Alice, please carry on, carry on.

What was I saying?

It was demography.

Yeah, you're talking about demography and you're talking about Chinese TikTok.

Oh, okay.

So girl bossing is a huge trend on Chinese TikTok.

Okay.

So women telling other women, don't go and get married and have kids.

Find a younger man and just enjoy your life and focus on your career.

Really?

This, you know, this is the funny thing about like, the world- No, it is, you know why?

Second system effects, you know I love them, right?

The concept that we never know what the effect of something will be.

The second effect of something will be okay.

So we know that we're gonna make a computer.

We don't know that the computer will lead to the internet.

We know that we'll have the internet.

We don't know that the internet will lead to e-commerce.

We don't know that e-commerce will lead to, we don't know, we don't know, we don't.

You can do anything in life, but you don't know what the second system effect will be.

You can't always predict it.

One of the things I think we've taken for granted with choice in general for men and women contraception, all of these things that we've come up in society is people now can choose whether or not they want to have kids.

And we're basically living in like the first sort of generation where that's a possibility.

Yeah.

If you think about like the last, maybe 100 years, maybe even less, it's the first time where people can like choose how they want to live their lives.

Before, life just happened to you.

And now if people choose how they live their lives, it might not go well is what we are learning.

But we don't know how it's going to end.

Do you know what I mean?

Thank you.

What?

How do you say like, I get it.

So, but you are part of the problem.

Or you could say that the men may be a part of it.

Take some ownership.

You're at your prime.

You're doing this incredible work.

Eugene was sent here by your parents, by the way.

The thought of settling down here now, where are we at with it?

Because I'm sure if they see someone who's in your position doing what you're doing, doing it, you can influence some people into having kids for 50000.

You mean be an Asian trad wife?

Well.

The Asian version of Secret Life Mormons.

But why is it not fashionable anymore for young women who are successful and professional in China to aspire to having a partner and having children?

There's a couple of reasons.

You see this as a global phenomenon.

Once you get to a certain degree of per capita GDP or economic outcomes in a country, and that translates to education outcomes for women, they decide that the trade-off of having babies versus incremental growth in their career becomes not an attractive prospect.

So they focus on their career as opposed to having more babies.

But in the China context, I have the hypothesis, which is that...

The one-child policy back to your point about unintended consequences meant that you had, for the first time in Chinese history because China is a country I'm sure you guys are familiar with.

This concept of having many children is a fortuitous thing, especially boys.

The more boys you have, the more lucky the family is.

Yes.

They changed that with the one-child policy, which is government intervention.

And then I don't think of any other country in history where you have mass concentration of parental time, energy and resources on one kid.

And if that's a girl, then you were expecting that girl to go out and conquer and get a PhD.

Run companies do incredible things.

Oh, because now she became...

She's incentivized to be successful financially.

Yes, she's the one child.

All resources are pulled towards her.

As opposed to a brother, you know.

That's something we take for granted as well, is when we live in a world where everything has become hyper-competitive getting into a school, getting a job, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

It means that it's safer for you to put all your resources into one child than to disperse your resources amongst many.

Because if you have one child, you can afford their tutor, you can afford their extracurricular activities, you can afford their piano lessons.

But if you have many children you now risk having a wonderful Brady Bunch who just like, plays with toys and has fun.

But they may not be elites.

You can't afford to make them all elites.

You know what I mean?

I see it happening in South Africa and if you look at Mostly female users of TikTok and Instagram and not Twitter, that much in South Africa is.

It's usually professional women in their late 20s or early 30s who do not have children, who maybe on weekends are running doing some cooking, content and decorating.

And you think to yourself this was a generation that was raised by two parents working a government job or maybe sometimes even in retail in the township.

And they mostly are the first generation to leave the township, be in the suburbs, become an accountant, a doctor.

But it's so rare that they use...

Five times of what their parents used to earn combined, to just facilitate their lifestyle of hobbies.

Oh, interesting.

So I usually do this experiment.

When my daughter was younger, I would look at race.

I would go Afrikaans people versus black people.

So black people in a private school, you'd see them driving one child in a fancy car.

Afrikaans people, Afrikaans women would drive four kids in a crappier car.

So they will spend most of their money educating the kids that they have.

And then the black people on the other end, you would see spending most of their money in a lifestyle for one child.

So we're seeing that happening over and over again.

There's more single affluent black women than there are in the other way around.

And it's becoming more and more trendy for people to climb the corporate ladder instead of prioritizing families.

And I find it weird in our country because I'm like us in our early 40s we are products of those women.

Yeah, we are.

Who are earning very little but managed to have more than one child that went to a public school and managed to find their way in the world.

And I'm thinking to myself, where did it all go wrong?

Actually, what is the breakdown?

While we're still talking about demographics in China, we're seeing this trend around the world.

Is it the same in China, where the men are now becoming less favored in the workplace, or are finding themselves in a hyper-competitive world where they're actually losing a bit of the race?

Is that also seen in China or is it different?

Not to the same degree, and it's not talked about as much as it is in the West.

And certainly not as much as Korea, where I know there is a right-wing incel movement that is anti-women because, to your point, they feel as though the deck is increasingly stacked against them.

That hasn't quite happened as of yet.

But I think more importantly is this kind of, You know consternation, especially amongst men, that they can't find women.

Because one of the other unintended consequences although you could have easily predicted this based on human nature is we've got a massive skew towards the male population as opposed to female.

So there are way more men. in my generation in China than there are women.

Because of the one child policy.

Because of the one child policy and people favored.

They would rather have one son rather than a daughter.

Oh boy.

And as a result, dating is just really tough.

The barrier to entry to date as a Chinese man historically and still is present today, is you've got to have your own apartment, your own car, a really stable job.

And that's really, really tough.

And that's why we were talking about this earlier.

There's been a trend on social media in terms of vloggers, but it's been happening really since Russia, Ukraine of Chinese men going out and finding Ukrainian women and bringing them back to China.

No ways.

And the Ukrainian women have really popular vlogs saying how great China is compared to Russia or Ukraine and how great Chinese men are compared to Russian men because they're responsible financially.

They take care of the kids.

They take care of their women.

It's a fascinating thing.

One last data point.

I was in Shanghai a couple of weeks ago And in Tomorrow Square, which is right in the central Shanghai, there are now these matchmakers that just sit out there.

And I literally saw hundreds of them in the square.

In the park.

I've seen this.

Yes.

With posters of their children.

170 men.

I like this.

I've seen this.

Yeah.

But not even a picture of them.

It's just that.

Just the data.

The data.

Yeah.

Wait.

So they said I saw this and I thought like- It's like they're bartering, that people are like- Yeah, someone comes in and goes, I've got a- Yeah, I've got this guy.

It's sort of like an auction as well, right?

Like people are like, I'll pay you this for this.

No, I'll give you this much.

I'll give you this much.

And it's like a whole.

I didn't know there was a real thing, but now you made me realize maybe the solution to the world's problems is- Dating.

We just need to figure out yes that, but also we just need to figure out where everybody's polar opposite answer lies.

In arranged marriages.

Maybe, but what I mean is this.

Who would have thought the perfect companion for Ukrainian women was Chinese men?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

All along.

So I'm saying, wherever you are out there, you are a Chinese man or whatever you are, you are a Ukrainian woman or whatever you are, and you might be struggling in your market.

As you say, little do you know, there's a market out there that is pining for you and is more perfect for you.

What a business opportunity.

Do you get what I'm saying?

Yeah, 100%.

We could start this, the three of us.

Where would South Africans go?

Would you pair with them?

I'll leave those ones.

They're banning us.

What we need to focus on is the auntie in the park auction.

No, but you know, what's actually funny is, I actually think South Africans are lucky in this regard because we have such a melting pot.

So if you look at South Africans now, I would argue our generation, more than our parents' generation, has intermingled.

So, like our parents' generation was more likely to be.

Your mother was Xhosa, your father was Xhosa, your mother, And there were a few outliers here and there.

But I think over the years it's become more common for people to cross-pollinate and say oh, I like those men from that culture because they're actually more like this.

And I like those women from that culture because they're more like that.

And so people will find themselves, you know Zulu Tswana Tsonga, wherever they just find themselves mixing in a different way.

This weird phenomenon that happened when apartheid ended and the world opened up a little bit is when South African white men started traveling to Eastern Europe, like Bosnia and Chechnya after the war, and then there would be in hotels, and then this hot blonde would just come in and they were like wait wait wait wait wait wait, You work here.

And the person would be like, yeah, that's what I do.

Yeah, they didn't know that was a thing.

You're coming home with me.

Yeah, they didn't know that was a thing at all.

And then they would be now.

Most of them are the owners of these BBs and these fancy neighborhoods that obviously got gentrified and acquired so much value.

And when you ask most of them where they came from, they're like I met my husband on a business trip when South Africa opened up and they came to South Africa and were like I appreciate all of what you're doing.

You work hard, but a woman from here would have never seen your value.

But I think that's what's happening now in China, right?

When...

Chinese men go out there, they're like, yo, you don't know how hot I am in Ukraine.

I'm changing all day long.

Good for them.

I love that, actually.

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How easy is it to move to China?

Because from what I've read, China is not necessarily like an immigration country.

No, no.

But I think Japan is less of it.

Well, Japan is starting to change now.

When I was in Japan, sorry to cut you off.

When I was in Japan, there were newspaper articles.

It was interesting because our tour guide was translating it for us.

But there were whole newspapers.

You made your tour guide translate newspaper articles?

We didn't make articles pleased.

I didn't make anyone do anything.

Eugene here's the tour guide was.

I was just saying what's in the news today and then he was telling me some of the stories and then he said not much, no.

And then he said no really, what's in the news today?

Yeah, i was just asking because i'm curious.

I wanted to know what's happening in tokyo while we're there right, and one of the big stories in the newspaper was a continuing discussion where they would.

Essentially the headline was should Japanese people be less xenophobic?

Because they're fully like, we don't want anyone who's not Japanese here.

Don't bring them into our country.

We're not mixing cultures.

But then the article is like, it was weird because the article was basically like, we agree.

We shouldn't let anyone in.

But it's not working.

Yeah.

But we agree we shouldn't let anyone in.

But what are we going to do about this?

Should we maybe bring?

Maybe we should start bringing people in who want to learn Japanese and want to learn Japanese culture and they want to become Japanese.

Maybe we start with them.

And then we were out having sushi at a.

You know those tiny tiny, tiny little place.

Like beautiful sushi places can only seat six.

And I was there with a Japanese man and his wife who had offered to take me with them.

And while we were there, wait, wait, what?

You were there in a six-seater Japanese restaurant.

Yes.

In Japan.

Because it's just a restaurant.

It's not a Japanese restaurant.

This is true.

You're right.

Yes.

And this couple wanted to take you out for dinner.

Yes.

And where did you meet this couple?

I'd met the husband in San Francisco.

And so he said, if you ever come to Japan, look me up.

You did.

I don't think he meant it, but I looked him up.

And then he was like, wow, you're here.

And I was like, yes, I would love to go and have sushi.

So he took me.

We went to this place.

The chef is making the food.

It's amazing.

Some of the best sushi I've ever had.

And then I think they were Americans.

Yeah, but an American couple walked in and then the chef was like, no, we're closed.

And then they're like, oh, and they looked at us and we're guilty with our chopsticks.

You know, you're like mid-

And they're like, we're closed.

And they looked at us like, you can't be closed.

And I was like, yo, I'm not trying to not get the sushi.

I was like, yeah, I mean, whatever's happening here.

They left.

And then the chef said to them, yeah, I don't allow non-Japanese people into the restaurant.

But it was interesting why he said because I do not believe that I can provide the best level of service to people who do not understand me and I don't understand them.

And so if I don't speak their language, this is not gonna be the experience it needs to be.

And so I don't allow them in here.

And there were many places like that in Japan.

But then I asked, I was like, yeah, but how does that do for business?

And he said well, we're actually struggling because of that, because there are many sushi spots that are allowing foreigners in.

And I can only rely on the locals and we're struggling.

And so it's interesting to see how this thing is like all over the world.

It's like how much immigration do you allow?

Because without it, you can't replace your population.

Maybe robots.

But I think this is where cultures really... Cultures are table robots in a second.

We're definitely not going to forget robots.

Especially not sex robots in Japan.

Hey, hey, hey!

Why don't you just lead with that?

Geopolitical economist.

Sex robot.

Advocate, Nazo.

Trevor, bring the loop.

We're going to China, my friend.

They produce the most robots in the world.

Sorry, guys.

So this is where culture is really important.

So Japan, historically, you had the Meiji Restoration, this closing off of Western influence because they feel very fearful of that and very strong and convicted, and they should in their traditions and culture.

But I think, if I compare it to China, which is by no means perfect China has culturally more curiosity and open-mindedness towards the West.

This is why it was able to invite a lot of foreign investment in the 80s and 90s.

Obviously, copycat it, imitate it and then iterate on it and make it better.

But you also see it in terms of an anecdotal level.

Like I go to a bookstore in China and And I see Elon Musk and his mother's face everywhere, May Musk.

Like she's a freaking star in China.

They are obsessed with the family.

But that goes to show you the reason I cite that.

And apparently he was offered a green card by the then premier a couple of years ago, before COVID, because they just loved him so much in China when he started building the Shanghai Gigafactory.

Right, right.

But that shows you that Chinese culturally have a very pragmatic, utilitarian approach to foreigners which is like oh, you're going to bring me money and business.

You could come, I'll serve you.

And oh, by the way, I'm going to try to make it better than you so that in a couple years time I won't need you.

But please come so we can learn from what you're doing and then build EVs.

China now builds 70% of the world's EV production.

And this is only in the last five years, which is insane that they've really ramped up that level of production.

So that was wait, so I'm just trying to make sure we don't.

It was the, so the.

I think we're on the third D right.

Yes.

This is the third D And then the fourth D, actually really quickly before.

The fourth D is the robot question.

Yes.

Is whether or not robots can fill up some of the gaps in productivity that will be caused by aging.

We can discuss that later, but that's a huge question.

China is the biggest producer of robots in the world.

80% of robotic installations are made in China.

80%?

80%.

That's bigger than the next four countries combined.

So that's really dominating.

And I just heard recently in China that they have over 100,000 robotics companies in China.

That's again, that misconception people have is that China's not super competitive.

It is a super competitive ecosystem where companies are very cutthroat.

They scale very quickly because there's a huge market.

This is 1.4 trillion people compared to the 300 billion or so in say the US.

It's like a huge market that they can.

So maybe robots.

I'm a little bit doubtful, but that's another kind of- Oh, we'll table robots.

And then fourth D is destruction, which is the other challenge.

It's related to Taiwan.

Are we going to have, in the next couple of years, a big showdown over Taiwan?

How real is that though?

Because it feels like that's been on everyone's lips.

For the longest time.

It's in the same way.

And not to flatten these topics down, but in the same way, the world has been warned about Iranian missiles for decades.

Iran's going to make a nuke.

And it's like, here we are decades later and they still haven't made a nuke.

How real is the threat of China invading Taiwan?

Because to me, it seems imminent.

But I remember, even when I was like on The Daily Show and we were covering it, it felt like it was weeks away.

And then weeks later, it felt like it was weeks away.

And then it was like, oh, it's been years and still weeks away.

And then even now, when I read the news, they're like, I think it's happening.

I think it's happening next week.

And then I remember watching videos of people who live in Taiwan, and then they were just like chilled.

But the media that I was consuming in America was going, oh man, it's very stressful.

It's about to happen.

So like, how real is the threat?

I certainly don't think it's real in the next two years.

There's a lot of internal politics that I can get into in just a bit in China.

In the next two years, I think it's highly unlikely.

But fast forward 10 years or more, I think the probabilities go up mainly because the Chinese will start to have superiority in terms of the military balance of power, especially if the US doesn't do more to really invest in military defense capabilities.

And certainly you've seen in the last couple of years that the spending on debt has outpaced the spending on the military.

This is a law in history coined by my boss, Neil Ferguson, called Ferguson Law.

So shout out to him, which is that he looked at empires through history.

And whenever an empire was spending more on repaying its debt, its debt interest payment growth was outpacing how much it was spending on the military.

That was the number one signal. a red signal that they were in decline.

And this happened in the British Empire, the Dutch Empire, the Spanish Empire.

So you can go back and trace an empire.

Go back in time.

As soon as they're paying more.

On this, they're paying their debt.

Than they are for their military.

They're in decline.

What is the correlation?

Why are they in decline?

Because they are spending more on repaying how much they owe to their creditors instead of building up their military capabilities.

Forgive me, I don't understand why the military is the key signifier.

Why not, like they're spending more on their debt versus more on I don't know infrastructure and manufacturing?

Why military specifically?

So in historical periods and it's questionable whether or not it's relevant today you know, empires were overtaken by other powers through military campaigns.

So seeing things like the British win against the Spanish and the Spanish sorry, the Spanish Armada in 1588,

You know, these military campaigns oftentimes spell war, a decline in the economic power of a country, because if Britain has more ships and is more powerful than Spain, then Spain's not able to get more control of the seas and trade goes down.

They can't get the same amount of silver from Latin America.

And meanwhile Britain, because it has more ships out there, it can develop trade routes and control those trade routes, via the British East India Company, for instance.

So there you have the mix of both the military and the commerce.

So the question is, is that relevant today?

I do think it is because ultimately, the Taiwan question is both a political and a military question.

The military question is will the balance of power shift in the region, in Asia Pacific, in favor of the Chinese?

Right now, the Americans still have supremacy when it comes to naval equipment, nuclear submarines, air denial systems as well.

China's massively catching up though, and the next couple of years may have more PLA ships than the Americans.

But also related to that, America has more operational experience doing combat and amphibious.

It's been fighting.

America's been fighting.

America stays in the gym, bro.

Don't play with America.

It does.

Don't play.

You know what I learned?

I saw this with Russia, Ukraine.

Russia has just been talking.

And then when it came down to it, you're like, ah, ah, ah.

You haven't been.

Yo, America stays match ready all the time.

You want to go to war?

America's fighting one right now.

Where?

Doesn't matter.

It's ready, baby.

Those jujitsu guys we meet in the elevator going down.

But it's like those guys on steroids.

Because then you question whether or not they have the will to keep fighting.

That's the big question.

That's why you're single.

You question too much.

That's the problem with the US.

I love your brain.

Oh man, that was so funny.

I have the will to keep fighting.

It's like wrestling where it's a lot of show.

The question is, why did they lose Vietnam?

Because they didn't have the political will to keep fighting.

Oh, that's interesting.

And that's the second domain, which is the politics.

Like Taiwan is way more important to China than it is to the median US voter.

Most Americans don't know what it is or why it's important.

In fact, they can't even separate.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Because to your point, you even see it like now with Iran.

The appetite that the American, the average American person, has for the war in Iran.

First of all, even before it started, they didn't want it.

But people are like, I don't know why we're doing this.

And I don't want us to be doing this, right?

But to your point, they have more leverage in America's politics than the Chinese media would in China's expansion if they went into China, into Taiwan.

Yeah.

That's an interesting way to think about it.

Yeah.

And then Xi Jinping, the president, has time on his side.

He's 72 this year.

He's still a young man.

He's still relatively young.

Still a young man.

Compared to American presidents.

A fresh young lotus.

That's what he is.

Living his dream, Xi Jinping.

Are we saying it right when we say Xi Jinping or is it backwards?

Yeah.

Oh, no, it's right.

Xi Jinping.

It's the last name first.

Okay, it is Xi Jinping.

Because I remember when we found out like Shinzo Abe, it was Abe Shinzo.

And we were basically saying his name backwards the whole time.

And then all of a sudden someone was like, no, it's wrong.

No, he's got it right.

Yeah, exactly.

What has made him so successful?

Like.

It seems like again when you read Western media, and this is something, by the way, that I think is interesting to your point.

I only realized the other day.

China is one of the few major countries where its news is also being written in its language.

So if you cannot read Chinese or Mandarin Cantonese, whichever one is being written in, you are missing out on a lot of the nuance and the actual reporting and storytelling that's happening in the car.

Does that make sense?

So you're just going like oh, we're looking at numbers, we're looking at data, we're looking at numbers, but we don't go there physically.

And we also don't read or listen to what the people are actually saying.

That's another thing that I was thinking about.

Again from what I read that is in English.

They'll say like Xi Jinping is.

He's just leagues ahead of his predecessors and he's got like an iron grip on the country and a focus that no one has ever really had in the modern age, at least.

How true is that, and why is it that he's being so successful in implementing his vision of what the party is trying to do?

Well, the fastest way to answer that is that he has elements of Mao.

And I don't say there's a form of criticism.

If you look back in history, what Mao understood and part of the reason why he was successful, even though he had a wilderness period in the 50s where he was out of the party for a bit or he's still in the party, but he was not in the elite party leadership.

He came back because he understood that power lived not in the elite leadership policymakers, the elite CCP apparatchiks, but in the people.

So he had this concept of the mess line where it's like from the people to the people.

Interesting.

And this obviously led to some of the bad parts of history, like the Red Guard, the Cultural Revolution, because he wanted to stir up political fervor and nationalism.

He understood that if the people love you, And they see you as this charismatic leader.

That's the only thing that matters.

And part of what Xi has been successful in doing relative to his two previous successes is to build up this sort of cult of personality and to build up this nationalist fervor.

He calls it the great Chinese dream.

And he even said it in the summit, that state banquet when Trump was there.

That he said, make America great again can coexist with his own slogan, which is the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

So he has these very patriotic, jingoistic language which to some extent other authoritarian leaders like Putin and Modi have as well.

But he's been able to leverage that to have a mass appeal.

And obviously, what's helped him is that he has now this external aggressor in traditional Chinese communist terms, this paper tiger or imperialist power, which is America.

And only a strong man like Xi, who has the will of the people, who can see the future.

He calls himself the great helmsman.

He can help course, chart the course in these very choppy, difficult geopolitical waters.

And then the last bit which I think has made him successful is that, like Deng Xiaoping, he understands politics, the game of politics, and he has been leading these anti-corruption campaigns and promoting his own people in order to again consolidate his power through all arms, whether it's not just the party, it's also the PLA, it's the intelligence system,

It's really all levels of the party.

He has been raising a lot of loyalists and that, again, consolidates his power within the party.

So in some respects he's a combination of both leaders, but I think he's been very successful in building himself up ultimately as a charismatic leader.

I mean, I wouldn't say, do they see it, because I guess they do, but it feels like America is withdrawing from the world And in that withdrawal it feels like China is filling in the void.

So many Americans, I think, sometimes will take for granted that part of the reason America is as powerful as it is, and has been as powerful as it has been, is primarily because of its soft power.

America didn't go around the world blowing up the world to get the power it had.

It went to Africa with things like USAID.

It helped European governments build themselves up after World War II.

It gave low interest loans.

It really became the benefactor of the world.

It helped with trade.

It inspired people.

The sugar daddy.

Yeah, it was really the sugar daddy of the world.

And that made the world like America and aspire to America.

Over the past few years, we've seen America take a step back and go, hey-

America is America.

We don't want anything to do with the rest of the world.

Don't involve us and that's that.

And then you see it in Africa, like China, has gone in and has built ports and built roads and railways and airports and created these interesting agreements where, like the Chinese, will never lose in the deal.

So it's like either they get their money back or they now own infrastructure in Africa.

We've seen the Chinese reach out to like Brazil and create new deals that never existed for, like soy exports, et cetera.

Within China, what do you think they are seeing with America pulling back, and what do you think they're trying to do?

Like.

Is there a concerted effort to fill the gap, or is it just them creating another version of a Silk Road?

Yeah.

Lots of people talk about policymakers in China as being majority engineers in the way that is different from the US, where they're majority lawyers.

But the other thing that I think is interesting about policymakers is that they are very keen historians.

A lot of them read history.

And they have looked at American history and gone.

Actually, it's not that great to be everyone's enabler and sugar daddy.

You know, there's just a lot of these commitments that you have to make.

Obligations.

And obligations.

Expectations.

You know.

It's far better if you know.

Actually we have trade with all these different countries and we help them build infrastructure that actually accelerates trades.

They buy more of our products.

And we can get more commodities like cobalt and lithium from Africa, so that we don't have any supply chain problems like the Americans and Europeans have had.

So we can really dominate across technologies and supply chains.

That is the thinking, which is let's have more influence globally, but maybe more preeminence regionally.

In Asia, where we're looked to as within a tributary system, we're looked to as the center.

But I don't think policymakers have this view that it's worthwhile or worth their while to become the next global policeman, the next sugar daddy, because they've seen what that means costly battles, increasing deficit spending in the American context.

And they increasingly look at the model in America and see a lot of problems.

But one last thing I'll say which I think is underappreciated.

So in the 1990s the G7 countries comprised about 70 of global GDP.

Okay.

Today, that's only 40% G7 countries.

And the Global South now represents about 40% of global GDP and rising, the Global South.

So countries like South Africa, Brazil, India, China.

And the population is 85%, which is crazy.

85% of the world lives in the Global South.

And China's big bet is the Global South.

Back to the demographic thing.

Yeah, that's where growth lies.

That is where there's a young labor force.

That's where economies are still growing.

And that's where you have markets that could still grow to buy your goods.

So I don't think that's understood enough in the West, where we have a very naval gazing approach which is like the only game in town is a G7.

It's increasingly not true.

The balance of power is shifting.

Don't press anything.

We've got more What Now? after this.

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How do people on the ground feel in China?

Because again, that's another one of those things where, if you just like read the media, they'll always make it seem like Western media, makes it seem like people in China are clamoring to get out.

Yeah, not having a good time.

Clamoring.

They're like you.

Thank your lucky stars that you don't live in China because oh, they would dream to live in a country where there's 600 TV channels and 15 kinds of nut milk.

You don't understand how tough it is.

You don't understand.

That exists already in China.

That's hilarious.

But that's, yeah.

There's more variety actually in certain foods in China.

Just so you know.

So what is the average Chinese?

I know you're not speaking for everyone, but like what is the average Chinese person experiencing of China?

And what are they like?

Do you know what I mean?

How are they viewing China?

So there's a good side and the bad side.

The good side is everyone else is having a worse time.

They have this narrative okay.

There's just so much crime and guns in America and racism increasingly.

They don't want people like us.

And Trump has just put in this new green card policy that makes it harder for people to stay while they're getting their green cards.

Oh, yes.

Now you have to go, you have to leave the country, which seems like a trap.

Yeah, exactly.

But the flip side of it is people do feel like the economy is slowing down.

There's this concept you always hear in the media in the West, this concept of lying flat, Tangping.

Which is why would you be in the rat race and work super hard when you can only get so much money and deflation is happening in the economy and there's not as many jobs.

Youth unemployment's still close to 20.

So young people in China feel a little bit depressed about the economy and where it's heading, relative to their parents' generation, which was in the boom years.

But they still look at the rest of the world and go well, I'd rather this than unsafe, unstable systems where you don't know if you have a very right-wing government that comes in or a left-wing government that changes all the policies.

Right.

And trains don't run on time.

That's the social contract, which is they'd, much rather an efficient stable, safe system than just, to put it very simply, the kinds of democratic, liberal freedoms that people in the West say are of prime importance.

I mean yeah look, a simple example is you look at California has been saying they're going to build a high-speed rail system for more than a decade now.

They still haven't gotten it done.

Hyperloop.

Yeah, not even Hyperloop.

Hyperloop was Elon.

Okay.

They were saying they're going to build one.

I guess it was going like all the way up to like San Francisco.

So I was supposed to.

And this project was supposed to happen and it's just money and nothing's going on.

And then, in the meantime, China has interconnected, like all of its cities, with insanely fast maglev rail.

But again, is that an accurate, because I haven't been there.

Is this an accurate depiction of it?

Yeah, then the gigantic structures in Chongqing, they just had the world's biggest elevator.

It's the longest elevator in the world.

It takes, sorry, escalator, not elevator.

Oh, escalator.

It takes about 20, 25 minutes to go from bottom to top.

25 minutes on an escalator.

Yo, bruh.

Imagine you drop your bag on that escalator.

Have you ever dropped a bag on an escalator?

Drop yourself.

You cheat.

After 15 minutes, you're like, ah, ah, ah.

Yuchi.

Because the elevator goes up and you go down and you go nowhere.

You know, you fall in for so long that people have time to process their grief.

Yuchi.

Ah.

I mean, we lived a good life with Eugene, if we're honest.

I mean, it was a good one.

He was a great guy.

Yeah, man.

20 minutes on a man.

30, right?

No, 20 to 25 minutes.

I can't remember the exact distance, but you should look it up.

It goes from the base to the top of the mountain.

Oh my God.

Yeah, it feels like China's just doing like impossible things most of the time.

Like in every, I was reading about BYD the other day.

Oh, maybe this is, yeah, this is, you're the perfect person to ask this.

Why?

Why was I reading about BYD?

No, why is she the perfect person to ask?

Because she knows about China and she knows about economics.

And you know none of these things.

Even though I ask you about them every day.

You don't try and learn shit. out here telling me about beard oil.

That's the real PYD.

So, beard your dreams.

So BYD for a long time was considered the laughing stock of car manufacturers, right?

There's like one video of Elon Musk in particular, like laughing in an interview.

They go, what about BYD?

And he's like, well, have you seen their cars?

And then you fast forward a few decades And BYD.

You see, not only do they have one of the most successful cars, one of the best electric cars, they've got superior battery technology in terms of range, in terms of charging speed, in terms of how they use it in the car.

Then you see even the pipeline they've created, where they've got their own ships shipping the cars to Brazil, to Canada, et cetera, et cetera.

And then I was reading this really interesting story about like, how they were saying oh, it's not gonna last.

BYD is not gonna last like this because right now they're being subsidized by the government.

And the Chinese government is doing a good job of propping up many of its industries to make it seem like they're doing better than they actually are.

Now, I'm not an economist, but the first thought that came to my mind was like yeah, but many countries subsidize their industries.

So I couldn't really understand what the issue was, but I wondered if there's any truth to the house of cards-ness in China's economy or if this is being overblown.

So to unpack that, you can't deny the fact that BYD is now the biggest producer and exporter of EVs.

It's overtaken Tesla in the last couple of months.

And if you've been in one, you understand why it's so appealing.

It's cheaper.

My first one was in Singapore.

It's insane.

It's a great user experience, both as a driver and a passenger.

Yes, there are huge subsidies that have been put in place to support the EV sector.

That has been part of the ability for the EV sector, and in particular BYD, to scale so quickly, but they are starting to walk that back.

So in the last couple of months in particular, they're trying to get rid of some of the subsidies, the export tax rebates.

They're again trying to make it a bit more competitive domestically and globally, because they now understand Hey, the Europeans and Brazilians don't like the fact that we're giving them cheap EVs.

We would have thought they would like it because this is great for green technology.

But now they're starting to understand it's not just about green technology and market competition.

It's also about a lot of these countries fearing the flooding of Chinese goods.

And so now you're starting to see them unwind some of these subsidies for the sector.

But in general, I think the problem is that the subsidies are so large.

This is the subsidies that China puts on, whether it's solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, batteries.

Much larger than say, even the Europeans or other countries put on to support this sector, that it is no longer seen as fair competition by a lot of these other countries.

Because China is still acting in the framework of a developing economy, even though, in many respects, because of its technology boom, it's no longer a developing economy.

It uses that as an excuse to have the massive subsidies that it has for the green technology sector.

Okay, got it.

And that's the problem that the Europeans and Brussels have, I'll say the Brazilians or the G7 countries like Canada or Australia have, about sort of the flood of cheap electric vehicles, is that the government has historically done huge amounts of subsidies to support its local industry.

It's such a fascinating time because China always seems to be looming, but you never know when the threat will ever be realized, or if it is even a threat.

Because sometimes people talk about China as if it is waiting to take over the world.

But then, whenever I listen to what Chinese politicians will say publicly, at least they're like China has no interest in taking over the world.

China's interest is in making China the best in China.

And they'll always say like, we've been around for 5,000 years.

We have no interest in going anywhere.

Look at how big we are.

Our goal is just to make this the shining beacon in the world.

And it's interesting to see how different those two viewpoints are.

You know, the one viewpoint for most of the West is when a country is that big and that powerful, it's inevitable that it goes out.

And then the Chinese leaders will be like, no, no, no, you go out.

We don't go out.

We are going in and we're trying to extend our tentacles to grow this thing as big as possible.

Where does the truth lie as you see it?

Historically, it's control the home base.

And now more in the last couple of decades, it's about having influence globally.

We talked about commodity supply chains, even to some extent geopolitics.

But I look to history.

So the last time China went out to Africa- in imperial history was in the Ming dynasty in the 1500s.

There was this Muslim eunuch captain who was an amazing figure in Chinese history, who went out all the way to Africa and brought back a giraffe to the emperor's court.

And that was the last time.

After that, they decided, hey, why are we going to Africa?

It's too expensive.

We should just focus on our own great culture and economy and system.

And the other thing that I would say is that I don't think this is understood enough.

Historically, China has been controlled, if you go to imperial history, by non-Han people.

So the Han Chinese are the majority of the Chinese.

I think close to 90% of the population.

But if you look at the Qing Empire, which is the last empire in China, that was the Manchurians.

That area that is border is the Korean Peninsula and northeast China.

They are not ethnically the same as the Han people.

They were basically foreigners who invaded and took over the country and imposed things like the Q.

You know that in Chinese you've got the shaved head and the long braid.

That is not a Han Chinese.

That is a complete Qing Manchurian culture.

And then you also know that the Mongols took over centuries before that and founded their own dynasty.

So China doesn't have that same historical legacy of going out and wanting to invade other countries and have an empire?

In fact, it has more of a historical experience of other countries wanting to try to take it over.

The British tried, obviously, and to some extent failed.

In the 1800s, but they did manage to take Hong Kong, for instance.

So it's just a different, it's a different frameworking, a different historical legacy.

But I think in the last two decades the Chinese understand and I think this has really been borne out by the Iran crisis.

Yeah, is that you need to have influence a little bit everywhere, like with the Gulfies, with the Africans, with the Russians.

Have negotiations and deals everywhere so that if there's a Strait of Hormuz crisis and 50 of hydrocarbons gets destroyed, taken off the table for a period of time, then you can find resources to replenish your stockpiles and import from other places around the world.

So that's the way that I look at it is it's less of an empire and it's more of a network of influence on trade, on geopolitics, on supply chains.

So do you think China is going to look to the robots?

Is that a conversation that they're having?

Oh yeah, for sure.

Is that robots are going to help with the demographic challenge and robots are going to be the next major export.

Like EVs and solar panels and batteries were a decade ago.

But...

Help me understand what solutions or what problems the robots are actually going to be fixing.

Because, I understand okay, there's the decline in terms of people's age and their ability to do things.

So I guess robots taking care of people, is that one aspect of it?

Taking care of elderly people.

Okay, so robots taking care of elderly people.

Yeah.

And then you have more task-specific robotic installations already happening in factories.

So dark factories that are completely devoid of humans basically, and it's just machines, robotic machines.

Then you have certain hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that use again robotic arms to pick out somebody's orders or prescriptions without a human as well that's happening.

And then some really interesting stuff that is more in the brain chip interface.

That's happening both invasively and non-invasively.

So on the non-invasively front, they have this device that sits on the skin that basically is able to control the brain, so that you can control an arm, robotic arm, an external arm.

So if you have an amputee, there's a company called BrainCo that's doing it.

If you're an amputee, then your brain is able to.

It's able to pick up electric signals from your brain, this chip device that sits on the skin.

And infer intention.

And then move your fingers and infer intention.

And there's another one that's more invasive, which is a chip into the brain that is helping people who have spine injuries can't walk to walk again.

That's more in the blended environment, not purely robotics.

But I suspect that we're going to see not just the humanoid robots that Elon wants to see, but different task-specific robotic installations, the stuff that I mentioned, the arms that are picking up orders.

Right, right, right.

Just doing one specific task and just moving forward with that.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So for instance, I was just in Beijing.

I don't know if you guys have it here, Haidilao, which is the hot pot.

It's the Chinese hot pot chain.

No, I don't know Haidilao.

Okay.

I highly recommend it if you guys go.

Really, really great hot pot chain.

The most successful hot pot chain in the world.

And run by a Chinese woman as well.

So it's, you know, it's a great story.

Is she single?

Sorry, sorry.

I'm asking for a friend.

She might be too old for you.

I can eat.

Eugene, this is not your Ukraine.

Relax, Eugene.

Ukraine is Ukraine.

Is they have these robots that are picking up on people's orders.

So whatever, they know exactly what people's orders are, and then they will put it on a tray and deliver it.

And then I was just touring Alibaba last year and they have this sort of logistics wing of their company because they started off as e-commerce.

Right where the robot is already able to sense the optimal and I wish I had the skill the optimal way to arrange packing so that you use the least amount of paper, you use the least amount of product.

So like the robot has already figured out the machine and then the robot have figured out, how do I kind of like

So you can optimize your wastage, minimize wastage essentially.

Exactly.

Because they can like 3D optimize space and figure out, okay, so this is how I put it all.

And this is the smallest box that I can use for this order.

So you see everything you're saying.

There is what's terrifying most people around the world, because they go.

I work in a factory where I pack boxes, and I work in a pharmacy where I get people's medication, and I work in a logistics company and I and I and I and I, And in America, what they're being told is well look, we'll figure it out in the future.

And the truth is, the robots are taking your jobs and AI is taking your job, and there's nothing you can do about it.

But hey, man, we'll figure it out.

Let's do it and we'll figure it out.

The other day I read an article where they said the Chinese government put forward a law saying that companies cannot fire people, only to replace them with AI.

Which, again now you want to talk about, like the perspectives that people have or perceptions that they have of other.

I saw many Americans, British people were going like, oh my God.

Yeah, why is the Chinese government doing this for its people?

But our government, you can do this.

You can just make a law.

And the Chinese government was just like yeah, you cannot replace people, You cannot fire them just because of AI.

Yeah, because they know that they're going to be dead in 30 years anyway.

Yeah, but what I'm saying is though, like They're not trying to depress them while they're going up a 25-minute escalator to the great beyond.

It would be crazy if the escalator just went to heaven.

And then you get there and you're like... It's like...

Robots everywhere.

I am the robot.

Yeah.

But.

But you see, like is that?

Again to me seems like.

It seems like the Chinese government, again pragmatically looking at a situation, saying on the one hand, we have to modernize.

But on the other hand, if the people are completely left behind, then this thing falls apart.

Is that like how they think about everything?

Is that even how they think about this situation?

Exactly.

And there were two court rulings which you were referencing in the last year or so, one in Beijing and one in Hangzhou, in which the court ruled On both accounts it was illegal to fire someone on the basis of AI.

And China in the last couple of years has been at the forefront of AI regulation in terms of data protection, but also in terms of deep fake technologies, where I don't think we're getting enough attention.

You can't just copy somebody else's voice or use somebody else's image and impersonate them uh, and monetize off of that.

There's regulations against that, and i don't know if that's the case in the us as of yet, but there's a few states that have imposed a few laws, but they they, obviously they apply to pornography and then other, but they but it's not like a federal thing yet.

Yeah, so the, the chinese government, look at technology uh, with a kind of, i would say, more balanced approach, but also they have the power to do that in the way that I, as I understand it.

In America they don't, because there's a lot of, you know, vested interests.

PACs get funded, there's lobbying.

Is that not a thing in China?

No, if you lobby the government uh, if you're lobbying an official, you will.

That official will probably be ousted for anti-corruption.

Oh, yeah.

Because in most of the world, what they call lobbying in America, we call it bribery.

Here it's legal.

You can lobby people with gifts and trips and everything.

And that's just normal.

And it's so funny because when I was growing up, I always used to think Africa was the most corrupt continent, because that's what we were told.

They'd be like, Africa is corrupt.

There's so much corruption, so much corruption.

And then when I moved to America, I was like, oh, yes, you are right.

There is way more corruption in Africa because we didn't think of calling it lobbying.

You are completely correct.

You got us on that one.

You've got us.

You know how you get rid of crime.

You just stop saying it's a crime.

That's the number one way to get rid of crime.

You just say it's not a crime.

And then now your crime has gone down.

I'm more interested in the future use of...

Robots to fill in the gaps.

We've spoken about industry.

We've spoken about how they can be useful in healthcare.

When one shoulder of Eugene goes up, it means sex is on his mind.

That's a tip I'll teach you about my friend.

As soon as one shoulder goes up like this, you're like, oh yeah, Eugene is stepping into the romantic sphere.

Oh yeah, here's Eugene.

Sorry, my friend.

Maybe I was wrong.

Please ask your question.

Ask your question, Eugene.

Let me not... Let me not tarnish you.

You know what Trevor's like?

He's like that friend at the bar.

You're talking to a girl and he's like, oh, your wife tried to call you.

He's the opposite of a wingman.

The opposite.

He's a tumor man.

You're going to...

You were going to tell us about relationship robots.

Is that a big thing?

It's not big.

Japan is more big, right?

Yeah, Japan is big.

So AI boyfriends.

Companions, yeah, the AI companions.

Companions is a big thing.

It's happening in China.

So this is another thing that's stopping women from both sides, but women in particular, because now they have these amazing AI thoughtful AI boyfriends.

Damn it.

We're being replaced.

Yeah, replaced by AI boyfriends that will check in with you and know exactly what to say.

Damn.

And make you feel good about yourself.

That's already happening in China.

Yeah.

You know what?

I will say this.

We are quick to say that it's a bad thing.

But maybe this is the future that we should be living in.

A world where everyone has their AI perfect partner.

Men don't want an AI perfect partner.

You speak for yourself.

And then all we do is we'll just create like sperm banks and like embryo banks.

And then people can just have kids.

But your AI perfect partner is just there with you.

Men don't want an AI perfect partner.

Why don't men want an AI perfect partner?

You think we want to talk some more?

You think that's what we wanna be doing?

Yeah, but your AI partner won't make you talk more.

Cause it's a perfect partner.

It'll do whatever you want it to do.

Then it's not a partner.

No, it will be the partner you want it to be.

Picture your perfect partner.

That's how the AI will be.

Yeah, but men want companionship, not partnership.

It will also be.

Partnership means we have an equal say in what we're doing, in what we're thinking, in what we're not doing.

It can be that as well.

Companionship means there's something or someone next to you.

So I'm glad you said there's something, because Alice and I will like to introduce you to a little robot that we call Companiobot.

We'll be shipping it to your house, Eugene.

And it's got a great host of features.

It's got a soft outer shell.

One.

Right.

It's got all the knowledge of you that you need.

Two.

And most importantly, it knows how to read your shoulder cues.

Let me ask you a question.

Because I realize this when talking to an expert like yourself, sometimes we don't know what questions we should be asking because we don't have the expertise to know what the questions are.

What are the questions you think people should be asking about China that they're not asking?

I love that question.

I think that people should do that more in general.

I would say, especially in the AI realm, talent flows really matter.

And I don't think people because they're in such a haste to focus.

This is my other pet peeve on compute.

Everyone's saying, oh, US compute is the biggest in the world.

We have an advantage in the frontier models.

But at the end of the day, what really matters is having top tier AI talent.

And the fact that the plurality and actually, in some respects, the majority of top tier AI talent is Chinese nationals in the US is astounding.

So 39% of top tier AI talent in Silicon Valley is Chinese nationals.

They're not even American born Chinese.

There's Chinese nationals and 38% are American born engineers.

And then there's the rest of the world.

So if you think about that alone, and then you couple that with the fact that China has 40% of graduates every year in STEM, as opposed to in the US, it's 20% of graduates every year is in STEM.

5 million of STEM graduates graduate almost every year in China. and enter the workforce.

I don't think people understand enough how important that just scale, but also the talent of these top tier researchers are for AI development, for technological development.

I think that's really understated and not really captured in economic models, but super important when we think about innovation in the next frontier.

Yeah.

And what do you think some of the questions are that we're not asking about, like China's vision and its demographics and its sort of future plans as a whole, beyond the space of AI and technology.

So, beyond AI and technology, I think the big question is what is going to happen to and again it's tied to youths is like what is going to happen to the Gen Z in China.

Because the boomers and the millennials kind of really got to write the coattails of China's economic rise.

And in the next couple of years I believe there'll be upwards to 5 trillion US dollars of intergenerational wealth transfer from the boomers to Gen Z in China.

So that's a lot of change that is going to be transferred over.

And the question is, how are they going to invest it?

What are they going to do with the money?

Are they going to decide to work as hard as their parents?

Will it affect their work ethic?

Yeah.

Are they going to be motivated to get married or not?

How are they going to think about their economic development in a slowing China?

I think that is the big question.

We haven't figured it out yet because both narratives of the youth are checked out and mailing it in, but also the youth are really hardworking and excited about AI.

Both realities coexist.

And then the big question is, which pathway do we take?

Will Chinese youths and the industry get super excited about AI and will China be And not just a near peer competitor with the US, but a leader, because maybe it's not just LLMs that matter.

And maybe there are other innovations that young Chinese people can design.

Because they've already shown Chinese companies have already shown that they're not just good at iteration, but also good at innovation and making very viral stuff.

Like.

Who would have thought a couple of years ago that the most viral videos and content AI generated would come out of China, from TikTok?

Yeah.

No one would have thought that.

And that gave birth to a whole rise of content creators and influencers.

Damn.

It really is going to be exciting.

Very exciting.

It's like yeah, I mean to see the China that we grew up with, the China that we're living with now.

The China that we've been told about.

Yeah, the China we've been told about and the China that is.

If we go to China, where should we go first?

I'm super biased because I'm from Shanghai.

So you have to go there.

It's like the Paris of China.

Oh, Shanghai is like the Paris of China.

People are irritated that you're there when you're not.

Well, they're kind of arrogant.

They think they're the best people in China.

Okay, I like that.

Yeah, they look down on everyone else.

Yeah, people are just like, what are you doing here?

They dress better.

They look down on everyone else in China.

Okay.

And they just think that they're culturally superior.

Okay, cool.

But I think you get some of the best restaurants.

It's super cosmopolitan for a mainland city in China.

And there are some areas historically where there's like beautiful art deco, Spanish revival buildings.

Because remember in the Republican era, so the early 1900s, in China, there were a lot of Westerners who were living there.

They had different concession areas or zones.

So there's a French concession zone.

Oh, so they could like build their own.

Architecture and they did their own thing.

It's the opposite of Chinatown, ironically.

Yeah, Chinatown.

It's a European French town, American town, British town.

That's wild.

I want to go there.

And where they had their own laws.

They had their own laws.

So the Chinese government couldn't interfere with them.

Damn.

Like in Hanoi, it's more French influence, right?

In Vietnam, yeah.

Yeah, that was the French.

So it's all these like places in the world where... Huh, their own laws.

Your extra territorial laws in the 1900s, which is crazy.

Yeah.

And then the other place I would definitely go.

Do you like spicy food?

Do I like spicy food?

Finish with your list.

I've got my list for Alice.

Do I like spicy food?

Does he like spicy food?

Cosmopolitan snobs.

He doesn't like spicy food.

No, he does.

He does?

Does he?

I can't tell.

You think you got those pink ears by mistake?

It's chili.

Let me tell you something.

If you can find me.

Yes.

Eugene will always tell me not to call it this, but pig feet.

I just call them pig feet.

Pig trotters.

And Eugene is going to say pork trotters.

I call them pig feet.

Pig feet.

Yeah.

Like, is it, am I pronouncing it correctly?

Is it Hunanese cuisine?

Yeah, Hunanese.

Yeah, yeah.

It's very spicy.

Very spicy.

The pepper that like makes your mouth feel like it's flipped upside down.

Yeah, that's a good way of describing mala.

That's like... The Sichuan peppercorns.

Yeah, the Sichuan peppercorn, where it flips everything and then hot is cold and cold is hot and sweet is sour.

Have you ever had it?

Your dating history.

As you can see, I love space.

You know, in Chinese, to describe a sexy woman is she's spicy.

Oh, look at that.

Okay.

And women in Sichuan are particularly spicy.

Oh, okay.

But I used to go to panda.

If you're not into women, you've got pandas there.

Eugene, I guess your list is now being dealt with.

As you see, my list with women was done.

Alice moved on to... You see what you've done now?

Alice moved on to the panda bears.

So sorry, Eugene, you can go with your list.

I'm more of a koala guy myself.

Fairy is fairy.

Oh, man.

Okay, wait, wait.

No, no, but my cities.

Okay, Shanghai.

And then where else should I go?

Chongqing, which is in Sichuan province.

Okay, there I'm going to get all my spicy food.

And then if you go very close to that is Chengdu, which is also in the same province.

That's where the pandas are.

Okay.

I do love pandas at conference.

Amazing.

And then I think that- All pandas in the world are owned by China.

Did you know that?

All of them?

All of them.

There's no panda in the world that is not owned by China.

No way.

They don't allow anyone to own a panda bear.

You can have it and look after it, sort of lease it from them.

But the Chinese government goes, this thing represents us and it is our animal.

We're not going to let you, you're not allowed to breed it anyway.

You're not allowed, not that you sort of can, because you know they're notorious for not wanting to smash, but um so but panda bears are all owned by the chinese government, just fun fact.

I love panda bears.

That's crazy xenophobia.

I love panda bears.

I really, really love panda.

I'll show you my, my whatsapp.

Um, is it a panda bear?

This is that's my see my whatsapp profile picture.

So i love panda bears, but okay, so early in the morning.

And then one other city.

Well, this might be underrated, because most people go to Xi'an and Beijing, but I love Yunnan, which is the one I mentioned.

Where they wear linen pants?

Where they wear linen pants and they're super hippie.

They have amazing cafes.

It's like the hippie cafe central part of China, where people love just sitting out and having coffee.

How long does it take you to get around when you're in China?

Like if you're in Shanghai, how quick is it to go somewhere else?

Are we taking the train?

Get at the high speed.

So Shanghai to Beijing high speed is around four and a half hours.

That's amazing.

And that's with a high speed.

It's a high speed train.

Yeah, but what is that distance though?

That's huge.

How far was it before the high speed?

Days, my brother.

No wonder Genghis Khan gave up.

No, it's days, my man.

But what is the distance?

It's huge.

I think I want to butcher it, but it's like, it's definitely bigger than New York to Boston.

Yeah, it's way, way further.

It's way more.

I need to look it up.

I'm not really sure.

Okay, that's me.

That's your list.

Yeah, any questions you have?

Alice, if you could, for an intrepid traveler such as myself, and a humanitarian at most, where I could assist the Chinese population the most given my you know acquired skills over time.

Where would you?

Eugene wants to know where he can earn $50,000.

That's what Eugene wants to know.

There are a lot of African influencers in China that are doing really, really well.

No, no, no.

Remember you said someone pays $50,000 for a specific act.

Go and work for Ctrip.

He'll pay you $50,000 per baby.

I resignations. has now officially been tendered.

See you.

Alice, this was amazing.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think one of the biggest things you've left us with and I hope everyone will walk away with this is take everything you get, not with a grain of salt, but with the understanding that it is limited by the fact that it's not made from the place or by the place.

It's not the language of the country.

It is not the news of the country.

It's not the people of the country.

And you've never been there.

I even say this as a South African.

The amount of times I've had to like correct people's perceptions on South Africa because they have an idea from the media which most people will have.

So you know, I'm not saying it's a sinister thing, that people form is a good reminder.

But man, we've got to go to China and just see this for ourselves escalators, spicy food and robots.

And the fact that you'll be walking the talk by being there.

Yeah, no, for sure.

And living there now.

For sure.

Oh, man, all the best.

You guys really should go.

Do a comedy show.

It's getting popular again in China.

You spoke to the wrong guys.

We're there.

We're there like a panda bear now underway.

I thought you forgot that rhyme.

My friend, there's nothing panda bear related I've ever forgotten, you cheat.

Ever.

But the one with the smear?

Alice, this was so much fun.

Thank you.

It was so fun to be here.

Thanks, guys.

No, this was great, man.

Thank you very much.

What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM.

The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin, and Jess Hackle.

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Our development researcher is Marcia Robiu.

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Thank you so much for listening.

Join me next week for another episode of What Now.

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[超越刻板印象：解码真实中国的复杂性与未来]-[Alice Han: Chinamaxxing]

📋 Summary

破除西方视角的迷雾：重新认识真实的中国

“四个 D"：中国经济的真实挑战

独特的治理逻辑：严父与实验场的结合

结语：从想象走向实地

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[超越刻板印象：解码真实中国的复杂性与未来]-[Alice Han: Chinamaxxing]

📋 Summary

破除西方视角的迷雾：重新认识真实的中国

“四个 D"：中国经济的真实挑战

独特的治理逻辑：严父与实验场的结合

结语：从想象走向实地

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