"What the West Should Learn from China"

0:05Jacob Shapiro Hello, listeners.

0:05 Welcome to another episode of the Jacob Shapiro podcast. Joining me is somebody who I've wanted to have on the podcast for quite some time. His name is Kaiser Quo. He's the host of the Seneca Podcast, which is a weekly discussion of current affairs in China. He's also a guitarist in a rock band and has done lots of other things besides, he has a rich biography that I encourage you to check out.

0:24 he wrote an absolutely excellent piece entitled The Great Reckoning, what The West Should Learn From China. we're including a link to that piece. in the show notes, I even say when I'm at, when I'm beginning my conversation with Kaiser, that I'm gonna assume, at least that the listeners have taken a glance at it because it's that good an essay.

0:40 And I wanted to jump off, from the essay and ask Kaiser questions rather than ask him to, recap it, I'd highly recommend, you read it. we had Jeffrey Neuman on the podcast a couple of weeks ago. He wrote an incredible piece about artificial intelligence, which I said was one of the best things I've read all year.

0:56 This essay from Kaiser is right up there with it. it'll be on my Mount Rushmore of res for 2025. I really wanna thank Kaiser for taking the time, to come on the show. It was a tremendous conversation. Listeners, if you want to hear more about any of this, you can email me at jacob@jacobshapiro.com. Otherwise.

1:14 Take care of the people that you love. Cheers, and see you at. All right, Kaiser, it's, so great to finally have you on the podcast. And I told this to you in, an email, but I'll tell the story also just for the benefit of, the guy who's listening, who works at the coworking space that I work in here in New Orleans, in this very office, I was at the, I was at the coffee station with him last week, and he was like, I've been listening to your podcast.

1:48 Have you heard of Kaiser Quo? Are you gonna have him on? I was like, funny, you should mention that. I would love to get him on. And he wants, he literally wants to like, take you around New Orleans, and give you like a Manhattan tour of New Orleans, because apparently you love Manhattans because he went down that deep with you.

2:01 but anyways, you No, it was

2:02Kaiser Kuo Cex actually.

2:03 Oh, CAX.

2:04Jacob Shapiro Sorry.

2:05 My

2:05Kaiser Kuo bad, You live in New Orleans.

2:07 come on. it's like the drink of your town. It's that your official cocktail. Yeah. I'm partially good Cach. I'm known to make, them my own, my on my own pretty well,

2:18Jacob Shapiro in, in my defense, I grew up an hour outside Atlanta, Georgia.

2:21 My wife is the one who is from this region and kidnapped me, okay. I'm a lonely falcon in a sea of saints and I have stuck to my guns, but I,

2:29Kaiser Kuo we'll, tell 'em, I, I'd be really, I'd be more than happy to take

2:31 him off on the offer if it comes with a, a round trip ticket, that's even better. But,

2:36Jacob Shapiro I might be able to work, I might be able to work on that for you.

2:39 But that's something we could talk about with the mics off. 'cause I'd love to collaborate on things. Listen listeners, the, the thing that got me off my butt to finally reach out and insist that you come on the podcast was this great essay that you wrote. the title is The Great Reckoning, what The West Should Learn From China.

2:54 We will have a link, in the show notes. I'm not gonna, I'm gonna assume that my listeners are, have enough gumption to read the article themselves. I'm gonna springboard questions off that, that come off of the article. If you really want to get the full value of this, this episode, I would suggest, you read it very strongly.

3:09 It's one of the best things I've read all year. It's

3:11Kaiser Kuo rather dauntingly long, so I apologize in advance for that.

3:16 I don't know.

3:16Jacob Shapiro Is it, I did not find it dauntingly long, but then you knows

3:20Kaiser Kuo Yeah, these days people read what a tweet, right?

3:22 no, it's, 5,500 words I think.

3:25Jacob Shapiro Yeah, I think we can handle it.

3:28 The, listeners who come to this podcast can handle, more than a tweet length. but the question that I wanted to start off with and we'll jump around a little bit, part of, the conceit of your essay is you're arguing that the West needs to engage with a kind of reckoning with China to not just understand China's rise, but what it reveals about our own blind spots.

3:48 And I wanted to flip the mirror both ways, 'cause I wanted to ask you explicitly, what do you think the West should genuinely earn from China? But then I also wanted to flip it around and ask you, and what do you think China should learn from the West? And I asked that question also from the, point of view of, I think China is going through now maybe what the West and particularly the United States went through in the early 19 hundreds.

4:10 So whereas the West might learn something about its future from China, maybe China can learn something about its future from the West past. I, don't know. I'm, grappling in the dark there with it, but I wanted to turn that question on its head for you and allow you to play with both ends of the question.

4:24Kaiser Kuo let's start with the other end, the adverse end.

4:27 And, I, would have to say, China has been learning, pretty fastidiously from the west this whole time since, the reform and opening happened. In fact, it, it even learned Marxism from a notional west, Marxism itself. But, speaking less, less maybe facetiously here, since reform and opening began in the late seventies, there has been a, very deliberate effort to, learn from Western expertise in all manner of things.

4:54 And if you look, I don't know how much time you spent Jacob in China, so many of the institutions, there are so many of the norms, so many of the way that things are done are cribbed directly from the west. So that pretty much any American who goes there now will find it very familiar. There's a lot that's very familiar about it.

5:14 Everything from the way that sort of traffic is organized to the way that the banking systems work, to, you know, just every, everything that you do. Processes are, remarkably similar. and so yeah, I don't, I think that there's been no shortage of that. I, it's, weird. I, didn't think of the essay in terms of what China can learn.

5:36 that was a title that was given to it by the editors. I didn't object to it. But that's really not the upshot of the essay. It's not really all about, about, in fact, I'm, critical of this idea that the United States ought to simply just cut and paste, copy, paste, things that it sees, that, may or may not have led to China's successes.

5:57 I, that's not something I particularly advocate. I, it's more about just Reflection and recognition. it's a psychological thing. It's not, Hey, here's a thing that China is doing well. In fact, I'm, actually critical about that in some ways, and I point out what I think are ironies about that, about some of the things that, that the US does seem now to be desperately adopting from China that I don't think is necessarily a good fit.

6:28Jacob Shapiro I guess the way I meant it was, 'cause I think you're right and

6:31 I think your, essay is sharper than that, and I think it really actually forces us to wrestle with what it means to be modern and what progress means and what different types of political structures can lead to different political outcomes. But the, question I was circling in on, I, did a little research comparing the US in the 1870s to the 19 hundreds to what China is going through right now.

6:51 And just, a couple figures to throw at you. from the founding of the United States until 1880, there were 118,000 roughly inventions registered at patent offices in the United States between 1880 and 1920. That increased by 20 x. in 1870, the United States is producing 77,000. tons of steel by 1900, it's 11.2 million.

7:13 They're factories over that, 30 year period. Four x from a hundred thousand to 500,000 per capita, GNP up 133%. just absolutely mind boggling numbers in terms of growth during that 30 year period. Yeah, absolutely. In US history and in some ways it sets the rest of us history on right down to the rise of progressivism and the rise of a US political culture for everything from bowling leagues to Rotary Club, like the number of organizations that are founded in the United States that are still around today.

7:43 The Boy Scouts, American Farm Bureau. It's all as a reaction to that incredible growth. And it seems to me that China. Has just done that and maybe is still in the process of doing that and is doing that with a political system, which yes, takes some things from the west, but is also like very different in how it's structured.

8:01 And just trying to think through like what that means for China going, maybe there are no lessons from the US or the Western experience from that position of growth going forward. but I like that, was the question I was trying to circle in.

8:13Kaiser Kuo Sure.

8:13 No, I, get it. And I think, and that's a, really admirable bunch of stats that you rounded up and there's no arguing that there are similarities in terms of just the dynamism. Just the, vitality, the growth. But I think that it's maybe as important to point out the, very big differences in the way that these two states have, grown during that time.

8:35 I think not for just the United States during the Gilded Age, but For the West in general, in the entire 300 years now, close on 300 years since the, for stirrings of what we now call the Enlightenment, right? there has just always been this idea. it's the century before that. In the time of Locke. There's, who's really the sort of foundational thinker for so many of these ideas.

9:01 and of course, Adam Smith, who comes later, but all these ideas are about, they center on an emancipatory narrative. the idea of, of, the accrual, of wealth, of, the, of progress and prosperity and, and political progress in, fact, all being about. Individual emancipation from the state. That's, been the central theme of this entire Western modernization experience.

9:37 I think that contrasts very sharply with what we've seen in China. I think that the state plays a very different role, in, the Chinese context. and that's one of the things I think that we really need to think seriously about, that China's, ability to, like you said, replicate a lot of those same miraculous growth numbers.

9:59 all that innovation is that's, that has not happened, in spite of the state as, as much as people would like to say. arguments all the time. People objecting to this idea that China lifted. 800 million or however many people out of poverty, they, say, oh, no, All the party did was get out of the way and allow the, the entrepreneurial energies of Chinese people themselves.

10:21 I think that's incredibly naive. I think that they, that, really, undersells massively and I think, distorts the role that actually, the state played in creating a regulatory environment and creating, in, in, directing investment in the way that it did, into the things that actually did allow, a massive increase in, in productivity, a massive, just the creation of so much wealth.

10:52 yeah, I, think that's, the big difference now. there's been, there's a great book by Yuen Ang about, China's Gilded age that sort of looked at these two gilded ages. and there are a lot of other comparisons. these are both times of, really extensive. Of really, pervasive corruption, different forms of corruption.

11:16 I think that, in China you have this sort of access corruption that the union talks about, really well, which in some senses greases the wheels. Although as she's very, very quick to point out, short term kind of way, we have seen a massive drop in the amount of corruption in China just because of, in the last what close getting on 15 years now of, the anti-corruption drive that, Xi Jinping launched in, 2013, as soon as he came into office.

11:49 yeah, I, think that there, there's the big differences in, in all sorts of ways, especially on, in the role of the state.

11:56Jacob Shapiro Yeah, I can't tell you how often I still get that.

11:59 Really provincial perspective that you're talking about. When I go in front of audiences or I speak to clients and they're thinking that China is never going to be fundamentally innovative because of, it's an authoritarian system that is led by a communist dictatorship and everything else, and how much padding ourselves on the back and how much complacency there is, which is, oh, there's no chance that China's ever going to ascend to these global heights, even though it's, literally doing it, in front of us in many ways has already ascended some of those heights.

12:27 Like the US capacity for self delusion in that sense, is relatively deep. And I think that's one of the things you're really challenging.

12:34Kaiser Kuo Yeah.

12:34 Yeah. It's that self-soothing, it's that copia thing that, But yeah, the innovation thing, it, one of the things that I, didn't write about this in the piece, but it's always puzzled me why this was the case. I was working in the Chinese internet since, the, late 1990s. And even then. Even at a time when China's per capita GDP was lower than Mexico's or Venezuela's or Argentinas, or Brazil's or turkeys, much lower by the way.

13:02 There was this weird expectation, that you, could discern from the formulation of haha, China can only imitate its incapable of innovating. What you see in there is that somehow China should be imitate, should be innovating, right? There was this expectation that it would be, but we never heard where is Turkey's innovation?

13:24 Where is Brazil's innovation? Where is the Mexican innovation? Haha, Mexico's only capable of, no, we didn't hear that. I, so I'm always, I was always puzzled as to where did this expectation that China, should be imitate, in innovating at that, point in its development. Where did that come from? Why was it, that it Know, didn't meet our expectation and therefore was worthy of, derision.

13:53 WI I'm, curious what your thoughts are on that because

13:57Jacob Shapiro it's,

13:57Kaiser Kuo a weird

13:57Jacob Shapiro Yeah, I think you actually signpost it in the essay

14:00 and it makes me think of, we had Van Jackson on a couple months ago and he talked about, yeah, I just, even

14:06Kaiser Kuo the other day, I love that guy, man.

14:07 I love that guy.

14:08Jacob Shapiro I love him too.

14:09 I've loved him since I was like a lonely analyst. and I even when we had him on, I told him like, I feel like I'm talking to a legend. 'cause there were a bunch of us at this sort of more conservative leaning private intelligence group, but we all just used to love, van stuff. So it was best for me to have him on.

14:24 But he talked about, this element of white nationalism that is in US foreign policy that might rub some listeners the wrong way. But I, think it's demonstrably there and I think there's a much longer history of that racial component with how the United States and how Americans in general have thought about China.

14:40 And the Chinese going back quite some time. just go back to the beginning of the Korean War. The entire reason the Korean War goes off the rails is that Douglas MacArthur has an extremely low estimation from a racial perspective of China as a fighting people and as a race. And that's why he thinks, oh, I'm just gonna go for it.

14:56 And I think that, I think you could map that onto just about anything. there is some portion of the American psyche that sees China and has seen China for over a hundred years as, oh, they're the far off competitor if they ever woke up also like this, touching this great historical past and yet like also this deep sense of inferiority and that they will never be able.

15:18 to rise up to that level. And maybe there's an insecurity to it because the thing that has allowed the United States to punch above its weight when it comes to China, it's not demographics. Like when the United States competed against Germany or Japan or Germany and Japan at the same time, or the Soviet Union, the United States was always the bigger country with better demographics, with better human capital, with better resources, everything else.

15:38 And for the first time in American history, the US is now rubbing shoulders with a power that outclass it in all those ways. So the only thing the US has left, maybe the demographics,

15:49Kaiser Kuo I don't, we could have that argument.

15:51 short term at least. Yeah, sure. China at this point has a much larger population, but yeah, it's not looking good. but no, it's interesting that you raised this. the, sort of white nationalist element of it, the race thing, because it really cuts both ways as you just may maybe just suggested, on the one hand.

16:08 You have the kind of what Andy Lou wrote, about this in a great piece that he did about, how he thought about the pandemic. But there are these sort of two competing stereotypes. There is what he calls the Oriental stereotype. They're, poor and mired in poverty. they're, backward, historically backward.

16:27 And then there's the, a Asiatic. The Asiatic is, that sort of, soulless, but really hyper competent, technologically advanced one, the, automaton, right? the machine that it's, that, you know, that kid who plays violin better than your kid and all that stuff. And, but, somehow plays it soullessly. and then we have both of these things competing.

16:50 and I think we saw that in, in the whole, how we've thought about Chinese innovation, right? we lurched from this. China will never innovate anything, because, they're, Pedagogical system and whatever, and to, oh, China's a 10 foot tall, like unstoppable juggernaut, and it's going to eat our lunch, and they're out innovating us.

17:08 And it's just nuts how we think about these things.

17:12Jacob Shapiro Yeah.

17:12 And it, doesn't even really reflect like the strengths that the US had. louis gov posted a piece, recently, I'll, put this in the show notes too, where he was talking about, he was basically positing a truce in the US China trade war in the emergence of a G two world. I won't step on that question 'cause that's something I wanna get your take on as well.

17:29 But he goes back to raising the same question that you just said, like, when did we start talking about, oh, like we innovate better? And he talked about, how, at the end of, or in the middle of World War ii, it was clear that German tiger tanks were technologically superior to us Sherman tanks. they were just better.

17:46 What was different was America's sheer production power. He even quotes this German tank commander as saying, one of our tigers is worth four of their Shermans, but the Americans always bring five. which if you apply that to today. it's the Chinese that are bringing five, if you wanna get to that, like sure.

18:02 Maybe the best chip or something like that is made in the United States. It's funny,

18:05Kaiser Kuo you, say this is, it fits perfectly into a meme

18:08 that's going round in China. The, phrase is chin. so chin means the swarm, the masses. they win over the titan, and it, comes from that Japanese anime attack on Titan. This, which, you know, from the, Chinese dubs and subs of, that. but this idea that the swarm beats the titan, it's very much the Shermans beat the tiger.

18:37Jacob Shapiro which actually backs into one, one part that I wanted to ask you

18:40 about because I was struck in your essay, 'cause you're talking in some sense about how, the examples of China's success and redefining modernity are about, con it's, or you can find these signs and confidence in the intelligentsia in their building. Massive amounts of infrastructure, their technological advancement, the quality of life, the deployment of renewable energy, lifting people out of poverty, everything else.

19:04 but I thought, and maybe this was just because you didn't have space, 'cause it was already 5,000 plus words and all of us, I guess have to. Have to keep our readers in mind. but there wasn't a whole lot of talk necessarily about Chinese society itself or about how that mapped onto Chinese society. And I wanna bring a, bring us back to that because if you go back again to that period and after the Gilded Age, like in some sense, the most interesting part of the Gilded Age to me is what it leads to.

19:27 Afterwards. You talked about how it was the individual over the state, but in some sense it was also the state over nature. And you get this rise in the United States of both a government that is imposing, this enlightenment writ over nature. Like literal, literally physically remaking the geography of the country, whether it's down here in the Mississippi River, to all sorts of other examples.

19:47 but then also just thinking in those terms and creating these social groups within it that were willing to withstand all of that change. Is there something analogous in your opinion, in terms of China, is there some level at which society in China has also reformed or is going to reform in. As a result of that growth.

20:06 I'm groping for the question there. Hopefully you can pull, it out of me.

20:09Kaiser Kuo Yeah, no, I think let's, more literally to, to talk about your,

20:15 very interesting observation about the way that that, the relationship between man and nature seem to have changed after that, period. and, we do enter into that kind of high modernist idea. China's had that for a very long time. I think it has the advantage of having seen how that can go off the rails and how bad it can go.

20:34 I lived in Beijing during, the, smoggy years, the, we had airpocalypse in 2012 and 2013. And, it's, just one of the, things that strikes anyone who used to live there and who's gone back recently is just how much better the air is. there is a, much deeper now environmental consciousness in, China. There is this, and, they, claim, that it.

20:59 Plays into very old Chinese ideas, a about, harmony and balance between humanity and nature. I don't know how much that really is the case, but it certainly, it helps the communication of the message. and yeah, it, I think there's, it's, the, fact that China still remains, it just, it went through just such a, phase of just horrifying.

21:31 Horrifying abuse of the natural environment. and it, that it is rebounding from this, nicely is I think a really, good thing. but again, it had the advantage of having watched what the rest of the industrial world went through. What, it knows not, just what London looked like in, the era of Dickens, but it also saw, what, the United States looked like, and the brown pa Paul hungover Los Angeles every day in the eighties.

22:01 and yeah, it's just, I think, really rethinking this, it's very much built into the language. They talk constantly. this ecological civilization idea. it's just really built into the KPIs of, all the officials now. there are, decarbonization has become something of religion. I think they really do believe that the whole, the organizing principle of what they're doing right now is it is shifting onto a, found a decarbonized industrial foundation.

22:33 That's, what they believe that China is, aiming at. and that's, why they're so sensitive about criticisms about, over capacity and in photovoltaics and, Wind and things like that. And in EVs, I think we're doing the right thing here. And why are people criticizing us?

22:51Jacob Shapiro Yeah.

22:53 before, before we leave history, and maybe getting to some of the vibe shift and some of the other things, that bring us to the present day. there, there was one other sort of comparison that I wanted to make or get your take on, which is if you go back to, US history around this time period that we're talking about, it was not part of us political culture that the US was going to be a global hegemon.

23:13 That it was gonna have alliance networks all over the world. actually precisely the opposite, right? Washington left the Republic with, we should have no permanent friends, allies. And it took, it took Japan bombing Pearl Harbor to get. Americans into the war. FDR wanted to be into World War ii much sooner than that.

23:30 And, we talked about the copia and the innovation question. The second question I always get, which I'm sure you get as well, is when is China gonna invade Taiwan? And how is that gonna affect me? And I always roll my eyes at that question and give my flippant response. the US didn't want to be an empire either.

23:44 And there is some part of me that is a little bit chased in thinking about, do geopolitical realities force a country like the United States and the 19 hundreds? Does it force China today to behave in an imperial way that is not necessarily coded into the DNA of the state or, of the people itself? Do you think that's a, is it a cautionary tale for China?

24:03 Is it a path in front of it? Is it an inevitability? I, just wanted to get your take on, how China's interacting with that portion of modernity. Because the West very clearly went off and conquered a bunch of people and subjugated them in order to continue its lease on, Power China being one of those countries in some sense.

24:19 So it had a front row seat for it.

24:21Kaiser Kuo Yeah, I, it's a really terrific question.

24:24 I don't know if you've read Stephen Word Times' book on the subject. he, really talks about, how the United States in, the, immediate aftermath, during the Second World War, it made a very deliberate decision to become, to pursue hegemony, to become, all the things that it is, the indispensable nation, the arsenal of democracy, all the things, the shining city on the hill.

24:47 It, decided to do that. this was not in historical inevitability. It was not compelled in any sort of, sense that would strip it of agency. It was, a, willful decision to take up the mantle. I would argue that there are definitely identifiable strands in, the American sort of political culture in our DNA that.

25:14 Already were there, that would've made that an easier decision to make. But I don't, I, again, I would agree with wartime. I don't think it was historical inevitability. There are people who deny that China has those strands in its DNA, I don't deny it. I think that those are, present probably in, in the Chinese DNA too.

25:36 I think that there, there has been, there have been times when the worldview has been extraordinarily sinus centric where it really does have, a belief in its, a moral calling. I think that China, in recent years, the form that its exceptionalism takes is very particular. It isn't expansive, it isn't universalizing, it's, in fact it's the opposite of, it's slapping the label Chinese characteristics on everything and, suggesting, Hey, look.

26:10 this is a Chinese thing y'all wouldn't understand. this is sure we have this alternative path that we have, tread toward modernity, but this doesn't mean that you, you, Mr. Sub-Saharan African country or you South Asian or Southeast Asian nation, would be similarly equipped. Maybe some of the things that we've done, are replicable, like maybe a real big emphasis on, on, construction of infrastructure would be a, good approach.

26:42 But we don't think this is necessarily a replicable now. I don't think that's immutable. I don't think that, that, that is an essential characteristic of China or the Chinese. I think this, these things change over time and I can easily envision a moment where, historical circumstance would conspire to empower the forces that do want to transcend that particularism and do go universalist.

27:08 do I think that is the likely trajectory right now? Not, no. No, not at all. Not in the short term. I think that China has very limited power projection ambitions. I think it is still primarily defensive. it just wants to be able to do its own thing without being hectored and browbeat and criticized.

27:27 And, it, it is not interested in taking the place of the United States as some sort of global hedge fund. Does it want serious influence? It denies that it does, but that's. It's pretty clear that it, that's what it wants. does it want, to, to, make a world that is safe for autocracy, a more multi polar world?

27:50 Yeah, I think that's, the, size of it right now. again, subject to change.

27:58Jacob Shapiro Yeah.

27:58 I just hope we're never talking about hegemony with Chinese characteristics. 'cause I happen to agree with you. I don't think that's gonna happen, but I also have enough self-awareness to know that if I was an analyst in 1890s United States, I'd probably be writing the exact same papers that there's, there is no American hegemony and, not being able to predict things going from there.

28:17 but what you talked about is a perfect segue, I think, into the vibe shift. and it is absolutely a vibe shift. let me just give you, give the listeners a couple. Quotes to show you. So this is President Trump on Truth Social. The G two will be convening shortly. this meeting will lead to everlasting peace and success.

28:33 God bless both China and the USAI joked on x. I don't know how Lee Greenwood's gonna fit that into the song, but they're gonna have to figure it out somehow. Marco Rubio says that US China ties are entering a new phase of strategic stability. Pete Hegseth, I love that this, he was talking about how President Trump had set the tone for everlasting peace and success and depart.

28:53 The Department of War will do the same. So love the Department of War, setting the tone for everlasting peace and success. That's great.

29:00Kaiser Kuo Peace through shrink baby.

29:02Jacob Shapiro I guess so.

29:03 But even Xi Jin Pig, at the meeting, at the opening remarks of the Trump XI meeting. We talked about how it's normal for two leading economies to have friction in the waste, in the, face of winds and waves and challenges. We should, ensure the steady sailing forth of the giant ship of China US relations.

29:19 So you've been on the vibe shift earlier, I think, than most I want to ask you, is it, more than a vibe shift? Is it really about, moving towards a US China G two world? The way that Trump has suggested is it, we're really in a multipolar world and China views this as a part of it. what do you think the implications are of the vibe shift is?

29:39 Is it anything more than rhetorical? Are we just gonna be here in a year's time when all of the agreements that they made and sold, basically, expire? 'cause most of these things are just kicking the can down the road to 26. how do you approach that

29:51Kaiser Kuo question?

29:51 Yeah. No, I, don't think that it's permanent or even necessarily enduring. I think it'll, we're still, We haven't hit the, apogee of it. I think things will continue to warm for a little while before they don't. look, there's, we have the most changeable person ever, most mutable persona in the, Oval Office that we've had in memory.

30:13 So one thing I would not impute to him is any sort of enduring or permanent nature. It could, it, it's changeable as him. it's, it, things could go, very, differently, but, they've trended this way. I think there are things that will endure a little more. I think I draw attention to how the youth demographics, in most of the polling that we've, seen, the younger folk, they, their attitudes toward China have shifted the furthest.

30:43 And because this is the case, because this is happening in relatively formative. Times of their lives. These are likely to be ideas that stay with them when they are, at the peak of their earning potential and the peak of their political influence and the peak of their importance in the American body politic.

31:02 that is to say, 20 years from now, these people might still have with them relatively congenial attitudes toward China. the other thing about it is that, that I, think that I recognize that you've just cited a bunch of, Republican politicians who have said very warm things about China. I would add that, that, the, Chicago Council poll that just came out at the, end of October shows pretty clearly that, that it is even more pronounced among Democrats.

31:34 Democrats are much, much less likely to have hawkish attitudes toward China. We're seeing something interesting happening. I, don't think that it will necessarily endure. I hope that it will as long as, as, we can make it, there are a lot of secular changes that are happening that militate against it, but, I'll take it for now.

31:58Jacob Shapiro how do you we have things like the Chicago Council poll and, Pew

32:01 data and things like that for Americans. And it's been inter it's, interesting if you watch Americans over the last 10 years, young Americans were fairly optimistic about China into the middle of Obama's second turn, and then starts to go really American views of China starts to nose dive into that second portion of the second part of Obama's, second term.

32:21 And then, Donald Trump, even Joe Biden. And then it, you're right, it has been coming around. Do you. How, do you gauge how like the sort of average Chinese person is thinking about that? Is, there a way for you to

32:32Kaiser Kuo Yeah.

32:33 Test

32:33Jacob Shapiro that?

32:33Kaiser Kuo There, there are analogous polls that are conducted,

32:36 to, try to survey Chinese attitudes toward the United States. And, I don't have them in front of me right now. I can't quote, but, I, the upshot is there's still considerable warmth, of feeling toward the notional American people. but I think there's, this idea that it's pretty hardened now in, in, among not just strategic elites in China, but among ordinary people that irrespective of what party is in the White House or dominates in Congress, there, the American, government notionally, Is hell bent on keeping China on its knees, does not want to see China's rise.

33:17 Is does, wants to slow China's progress, wants to stymie it and is implacably hostile. there, there's the, mirror image of what you often hear from, Americans mostly is a fig leaf, but I love the Chinese people. I just can't stand the Chinese Communist Party. but anyway, you hear the same sort of thing.

33:39 Same thing from, Chinese. I, again, I haven't, I don't have the pulse in front of you, but, if I recall correctly, there, things blow hot and cold. there's, probably a corresponding change right now in, in Chinese attitudes toward the United States.

34:00Jacob Shapiro Do you think there's also a sense of chi the sort of

34:02 G two versus multipolar thesis? 'cause I recognize that, president Trump has ideas. That just flash across his brain and probably G two came across and he decided he was gonna tweet it. 'cause it was a, it was the moment for it. There was probably no strategic intent in it. But, for somebody who studies policy, like you see G two in the, in a tweet from the president of the United States, you stop a little bit.

34:24 That's different, right? You do than the things that came before. And the administration has really dropped, talk of the Indo-Pacific. It's more Asia Pacific or it's, it's been much nicer with China than it has been arguably with reasonable ally, with regional allies and allies that are closer to home.

34:40 I thought the Chinese messaging was much more, yeah, it's fine to have a G two conversation amidst a multipolar world, which is where we're headed, which is that spheres of influence thing, that you were speaking about earlier. do you, yeah, I just wanted to give you a chance to Yeah, I,

34:52Kaiser Kuo think obviously it's flattering both through the American ego

34:55 and to the Chinese ego to think that, these are the two nations that will decide, bilaterally the fate of the world. That's, of course, that's nonsense. And, yeah, China, as you say, it. The world that it wants is a very much a multipolar one. it's one where, American hegemony is tamed, America is still one of the important poll.

35:14 That's the, they're realistic enough to recognize that America is not going into eclipse anytime soon. no, I, think that, the, G two framing, insofar as he took it up, it's because he, just wants to go along to get along. He doesn't believe in it. Of course, it is a very flattering thing, but you never hear that talk come out of, China.

35:38 Now you don't hear that talk come out of China. But it must be said that, the. The way that so many issues in the world are end up being framed. Everything behind everything. Lu l is lurks the shadow of the United States. So that, that's the Paul that hangs over every conversation about any geopolitical issue is this sort of The bilateral relationship between China and the us.

36:04 So while they would never come out and pronounce G two, it, does infuse a lot of their thinking.

36:11Jacob Shapiro this is this next question you'll probably have to

36:13 answer on two if not more levels. but it's a question of trying to get to just how, I don't know, core Marxism is to Chinese thought on this particular question because if we, were being good Marxists, I think the point of view would be that the US is going to be eclipse, that the capitalist world is beset with internal conflicts that Donald Trump is a manifestation of late stage capitalism, that those internal conflicts will generate wars and that China itself is probably living through in an age of, capitalistic encirclement until it gets to when all the capitalist countries gang up on each other and have those internal wars.

36:51 to, to what extent do you think that. That Marxist view of the world is in, a Chinese leadership, those top echelons, and then b the average Chinese person on the street. Do you think they're thinking in terms of that inevitable decline of the capitalist world? Or am I using, the language of yester years that really isn't there?

37:08 That the, form might be there in terms of Chinese politics, but the content is completely changed?

37:12Kaiser Kuo Yeah, it's not there.

37:14 that's not how they think. That's absolutely not, how they structure their, approach to questions like this. I think that, there are. Elements in Marxism, just dialect, dialectical materialism is still there, to some extent. But you have just exhibited a, more sophisticated knowledge of Marxism than just about any ordinary Chinese person.

37:39 seriously, there's, very little, it's, what, reigns in China? there, there are, it's a lot more Leninist than it is actually Marxist. There's, Marxism is conveniently used and this whole entire project of reform is justified in the language of Marxism. they're doing this act of historical infill when the bourgeois mode of production, when, the, the, capitalist mode of production was supposed to.

38:09 Create a material abundance. And in 1949, arguably China did not have anything close to material abundance when its communist revolution took hold. D'S Hall re reason reasoning for, wanting to pursue this a hundred plus years of capitalism was that, Ostensibly, this would make up for what capitalism failed to do in the earlier go round.

38:38 But this time, with a little bit of control from the state ma making sure that it didn't, work its excesses too badly. So yeah, it's, when it's convenient, they'll invoke Marxism. I, think that, we just have to not think in binary categories, either Marxism or not Marxism. I think that, when it comes to China, it's so syncretic.

39:00 There are so many. Weird little things that have entered in, into the, functioning Chinese state ideology right now. you can rattle off a really long list of what they are, foremost among them. Yeah, of course, the Leninist political structure that remains very much in place. But I, I would say that just as importantly, it is a kind of Singaporean style technocratic authoritarian state.

39:24 it's obviously as, huge elements of state capitalism, but also of neoliberalism itself. it very much understands the dynamism of minimally regulated. Laissez-faire kind of, market forces. it definitely appreciates that there's a huge layer of, Confucian, patriarchal, kind of social harmony and all that stuff that goes in the, emphasis on the Confucian family system and on, on harmonious social relations that hardly seems compatible with, Marxism with, its, emphasis on class struggle there.

40:07 There's a whole bunch and, I think that, none of it makes sense. if you are a, rigid kind of ideological purist. None of it. Is compatible. and that's what makes it work.

40:22Jacob Shapiro Yeah.

40:23 you've actually just given, I've thought this in general, but you've actually just given the ideological, background for why there isn't gonna be a second us or why there isn't gonna be a second cold war between the US and China, because to your point, Marxism, taken in its purest form is universalizing.

40:40 It has to be universalizing. It's a completely universalizing sense of the word. And you've talked eloquently about how that's not. That's not, we're talking about Leninism with Chinese characteristics. That's right. It's a much more specific thing, so it's not gonna get there. And to your point about, economics, I was joking on a podcast the other day.

40:56 if Ronald Reagan came back, today, he'd probably find more in, in Xi Jinping's supply side reforms than he does in Donald Trump's protectionism in terms of things that he could, hang his hat on. Although we should

41:06Kaiser Kuo be careful.

41:07 the confusing terminology supply side, what he's not talking about when she talks about supply side reform, he, has nothing to do with Arthur Laffer. And the idea that, tax receipts will actually go up if tax rates go down because, high taxes are crowding out, investment. And that's not, what he's talking about at all.

41:28 when the Chinese talk about supply side, they talk about basically, improving the ability to cre to make more attractive consumer goods. And that's what you know, as a stimulus for consumption rather than handouts. Rather than stimulating the demand side.

41:46Jacob Shapiro Yeah, that, that's actually you, said that in a thread on X, and

41:49 I'm sure you've said it in other places. I think that's also an incredibly sharp critique because when you get the Western point of view in the pages of the Economist or the Wall Street Journal, it's so strange to me. They will. They will land base China for being fiscally irresponsible and all the debt that China carries around the debt of the provinces.

42:06 And this is a, house of cars that's waiting to fall in on itself. And yet they're also banging on the table for, and you have to stimulate now 'cause you have to have more consumption now. 'cause otherwise the Chinese economy is gonna collapse. and to your point, that's not the way that China is thinking about it.

42:19 It's not the policies that they're voting through.

42:21Kaiser Kuo That's right.

42:22Jacob Shapiro That's right.

42:22 And I, and they're doing the more responsible thing. They're letting a real estate bubble pop because they are trying to do the thing that if you were just thinking about, fastidious, fiscally conservative policy, like what they're doing probably is much more at home than just helicoptering cash all over the place.

42:36Kaiser Kuo there are all sorts of reasons why they're not able

42:39 simply to deliver gigantic con. But first of all, it's almost played out. They've had this sort of, cash for clunkers deal with, you can take your, old energy inefficient refrigerator and turn it in and get a, a new one, at, with at, huge discount or your car, whatever, trade in your, old internal combustion vehicle, get a huge discount on an, on a, any, a shiny new ev.

43:05 but yeah, that's run its course pretty much. Lizzie Lee has pointed out that, a lot of the people for whom that kind of stimulus would, actually be effective, that would translate directly into consumption, are unbanked. So it's hard to just even affect the actual transfers. nobody has checking accounts in, China.

43:26 When they have accounts at all. You know what I mean? they would just, they're all electronic. the other, thing about this is I think, and this is something that, it came from a conversation I had with, and I've talked about this before, but it just sticks with me. And I think it's just such an important thing to get out, is like, if one of the big things that people buy that's a huge marker of consumption, is automobiles, right?

43:52 a, along with your, housing, of course your car is, one of the big expenditures, right? And not nobody buys a car every year, but you buy a car, What if you live in a city with fantastically good urban transit systems, where it's basically frictionless for you to go from home to the office. You get on, a a, bike share bike, which is reliably to be found right outside the door of your, apartment building.

44:23 You ride the kilometer and a half to the subway station, it's not much further ever. You jump in the subway, it costs you basically nothing to, ride the thing. it's going to suppress consumption. It's gonna suppress consumption of an automobile. So where does the fact that the government, the municipal government or paid for this very expensive, sometimes even loss making subway system, where does that show up in, in GDP accounting?

44:52 and, so I, I think sometimes the, emphasis on consumption is misplaced. And, yeah, to your point, we, why do we always bang on about that? and, at the same, in the same breath, criticize China for its, really, high debt to GDP ratio.

45:11Jacob Shapiro Yeah.

45:14 the, one thing I wanted to ask you also that I, don't think came through in the, or, I was wondering about this, in the context of reading, what you recently wrote was about the role of Xi Jinping himself. he's concentrated power. we can argue is it since d is it since Mao? Is he something completely new?

45:30 But like he's concentrated a significant amount of power in his person to the point that he at least seems to me like a single point of failure in China's political system. like it's hard for me to imagine if he slipped on a banana peel tomorrow, or if something happened and he was incapacitated and could not, fulfill his role.

45:49 I, have serious questions about whether China's political culture, its political machinery. Could it absorb that shock? What does, that actually look like inside the Chinese Communist Party? maybe it's a question that nobody can answer, but I wanted to get your, especially in the, in what you were talking about in terms of the context of China and modernity and, the politics that they've created.

46:09 Am I being too simplistic? Do you think Xi Jinping is that single point of failure? Do you think that China's political logic can outlive him if something were to happen to him or, is this in some ways a big threat for China? The brittleness of, succession planning for after the person who is authored these huge changes?

46:25Kaiser Kuo So I guess it's a matter of principle.

46:27 I think that anything that we as relatively uninformed outsiders can think of as like a potential gigantic threat to the system threat they have thought of. It's not like there's, just because we don't see the process, just because we don't know what it's outcomes have been, doesn't mean that process is not happening.

46:50 if there is one thing that we can rely on with China, it's that they've thought through a lot of this shit that they've thought through a lot of it, I do not think that there, there's nobody. Thinking about succession, there's nobody not thinking, there's that. There's, I don't think there's, Not a single person in Beijing thinking about that banana peel.

47:15 it's there. so that said, look, we don't know. We don't know anything about it. he's, they play that extremely close to their chest. they don't want us to know. and the reason they don't want to is, there's obvious reasons. They, don't want rival power centers. they, they see historically what's happened when there are anointed successors.

47:37 she entered into a office in, in, in a very complicated situation. Where, there had been rival power centers that had been building up, not just, his own, but, they had the knives out when he came into office. there they were quite entrenched interest groups that were very, powerful, including somebody who had the entire security portfolio who out for him.

48:03 so I guess it makes a lot of sense that they would be a little more paranoid about that, that they would not be, Telegraphing their intentions on the issue of succession all the time. So the, point of single point of failure. I think there are a little, again there I want to credit Lizzie for, bringing up this idea, but I, heard it again from, a very smart analyst named Jonathan Zinn, who I interviewed.

48:27 and he'd written about this and there have been others who've talked about this single point of failure idea. I actually think that A him surrounding himself with what, many Western analysts have dismissed as mere Yes men. you could read it another way, as John Zin did, as Lizzie Lee does. She's thinks, actually he's surrounded himself with people who he's worked with long enough that there's a degree of trust there, that he's, they're able to say the uncomfortable truths that other people might not, because, they are close enough to him.

49:00 and, they can both point to two instances of, learning. on that, of course reversal. the, there's an awful lot of path dependency and this as assumption of a lot of inertia on the part of, China, and there's reason to, see that, to, to, believe that. There's also periods of quite remarkable reversal that are possible just as we've seen in the United States with somebody like Trump, that can overcome institutional inertia pretty quickly.

49:29 The other thing is and again, this is something that, that now I'm starting to hear other people say, but I've been saying for quite some time, is that the fact of sea having irrigated to himself so much power and being that single point of failure also means that he is, there's nobody who the buck stops with him.

49:47 He can't blame anyone else. when something goes horribly, catastrophically wrong. Let's say he decides he wants to take Taiwan back by force tomorrow. What happens when, Taiwanese missile defense systems start bringing down Chinese fighters? What happens when, Chinese amphibious landing crafts are, blown up in the strait and thousands, hundreds of tons of thousands die.

50:12 that. Is something he would not accept. I think the, risk of that, I think, it's, more of a curb on any adventurism than it is a God. I think the assumption that his irrigation of power is a God to adventurism is probably wrong. That's probably something we need to rethink.

50:32Jacob Shapiro Yeah, that's a, very good and sharp corrective.

50:37 and I take it and I'll now turn the question and ask you in this sense, and this is a question I grapple with constantly, not just in terms of China, in terms of, you could ask this question literally about any country or political system in the world, which is to say, to what extent is Xi Jinping. Representative a symptom of what, of the changes that are happening in China in general versus how much of what China has done over the last 10, 12 years.

51:04 Would you ascribe to him pushing China in a particular direction? I, shy away from the great man theory, but he does seem to be like an incredibly important figure. but is he again, is, he, a symptom? Is he a representative in the same way that Donald Trump is a representative of something that is happening in the United States?

51:22 Or is he somebody who is rising above and say no, like we were off course and I, through force of personality and all other things will shift the ship. Even if it's just a little bit like if you can do it, like it's, such a shift. How do you think about what he's accomplished, and his role in that sense?

51:38Kaiser Kuo Yeah.

51:38 The thing about Great Man theory. my, my instinct is always to, to like the great tol story question in the appendix is to war and peace, right? I, tend to like you, I'm shy, I shy away from it. But the thing about it is that often the people who are these political actors about whom we are asking these questions, they very much do believe in it.

52:02 They do see themselves as this sort of, Carlisle and great man figure, historical figure who is capable through, a force of will to enact, enduring political change. I have no doubt that she seems, sees himself in that mode. He does not wake up every morning and think, yeah, it's interesting the confluence of historical forces that have pushed me.

52:22 he doesn't think that at all. he thinks that he, acts, with under the belief that his will, has a, an outsized impact on the direction of the country. and Yeah. it's one of those, it's one of those weird things, right? it might not have been there, but for the fact that people believe that it's there.

52:48 and no, he, I, can look at all sorts of reasons, why I would've predicted the rise of a c like figure, prior to him coming into power. I think a lot of great minds have really looked at the decade, that began in, after, say, 2001, and, recognized that this deliberate, collective leadership that they created did a lot of good things, but it also created a lot of really bad problems.

53:21 And that by the, as the decade near, near its end, there was a real consensus that it, that. Had run its course that was no longer good work, that we needed more consolidation of leadership. That, that, that it was inevitably, in a sense, going to go into a, direction that was way more centralized, that was way more internally repressive, that was probably going to be way more internationally assertive.

53:46 and so I think a, c would have happened irrespective if it hadn't been him, if it had been Boise lie. I think the, policies might have been, there would've been slightly different melodies, but it would've been in the same key and time signature.

54:03Jacob Shapiro do you think that a leader like that, I mean if we're thinking

54:05 out 10, 15, 20 years down the road and thinking about where China is now and trying to extrapolate what future Chinese leadership looks like, do you think that the function of a, XI or a BGI I figure is to, in a sense course correct, and then hand the baton back off to a reformed more collective system of governance?

54:22 Or do you think that, that she represents an early stage in centralization and consolidation and that he will hand a baton off to somebody who will have to centralize more in order to deal with what's coming?

54:32Kaiser Kuo Yeah, it's a great question, but I think there's one gigantic exogenous

54:36 variable that gets overlooked a lot. And I think that it is really decisive in what kind of flavor of leadership we, we have in China at any given time. I don't know that it is a determining factor, but it's certainly one that we should not ignore it 'cause it's there in the balance and it weighs some, and that is, how China perceives its external environment.

54:58 And what, how it perceives this external environment often has to do with the behavior of external players, especially the United States. there's a fantastic paper that I would direct anyone toward. I think it's from the winter quarter of 2023. it's written by Thomas Fingar, F-I-N-G-A-R. And David Lampton goes by Mike, Lampton, who is just one of the great scholars of, China from Johns Hopkins se now emeritus.

55:28 But, they wrote a paper in Washington Quarterly that basically argued that, what I'm saying right now, this is something I've thought for a very long time. They just articulated it so well that China basically has these kind of two modes that it toggles between one that really emphasizes national security, and one that re really.

55:48 Emphasizes economic development. And that, while there's always a shade between the two, that these are the two basic modes, the basic, polls in this dyad, the one when it, it does, emphasize national security. It tends to be, again, more internally repressive, more externally aggressive. it tends to, clamp down on descent, on, minority ethnicities and, their activities.

56:17 it tends to be, more status, more nativist, a lot of these things that I think a lot of us, certainly me, I don't necessarily we like that other kind of China, right? That kind, that emphasizes economic development and tends to be looser. It tends to be more tolerant, more deliberative, a little more participatory.

56:38 It's not, it doesn't turn into a full-fledged, electoral democracy. Obviously. It never has. But it is governed more loosely, it's more collective in that mode. and, this isn't just, I, think what's interesting is that this isn't, not, I, again, we don't want to be totally essentialist here, but you could take this story back into, quite early days in imperial times and look at dynastic periods where China was tolerant and open and cosmopolitan and flourishing, where the genders enjoyed relative equality and all this, and, it does correspond to its sense of external threat.

57:21 So What they're suggesting is that, when China believes that it is in the crosshairs, as it did really in, in the late, I think this is what people don't understand is that, con contemporary with China's decision to become a more, I mean it was a driving factor in this to become a, more centralized. Polity to, to clamp down on some of the wayward, Leaders during the collective era who had really ensconced themselves in these powerful, they had interest groups and industries behind them.

58:03 They had these little fiefdoms, no more of that. But part of the reason was, is because they perceived that to be a source of vulnerability to foreign influence. The big thing was of course, the internet. in that, period after the great financial crisis, if you'll recall, Jacob, let me think back. you couldn't open.

58:22 The, to any op-ed section of any newspaper and not see in, editorial in America, basically saying, yeah, to bring down authoritarian regimes, the world over, all we need to do is open the internet. So we were like merrily, appending the names of various American social media products to all the leader color revolutions, Moldova in, 2009 and the Green Revolution in Tehran in, in, in 2009 after Akima de Nijad reelection in, the, Arab Spring.

58:52 it was like the Twitter uprising, the YouTube revolution, the Facebook revolution. oh, China felt very, threatened by, this, it really felt like the external environment had turned really hostile. And we Americans tend not to think that or to believe it because, that was Obama. George Bush was out of office at that George, h George W.

59:15 Bush was no longer in office. The neo neoconservatives were gone. And it was, China actually felt more threatened by what it called the sort of liberal interventionists by these, interventionist talks. people like Samantha Powers, who was the, the, UN. Ambassador and Susan Rice, who's National Security advisor, and of course Hillary Rod Clinton, who, they really believe was the arch interventionist, the real architect of liberal interventionism.

59:48 And they were really threatened by this. So I think that's, an important thing to understand about how China, so when you, to get back to this question that you asked, where's China going to go? It depends very much on what the United States does. I, am somebody who really believes that if we want China to be the kind of country we, would like it to be as Americans, that is, looser, more tolerant, more open, more cosmopolitan, and more participatory, and more deliberative and more plural, all those good things, then I think we can do more by doing less.

1:00:24 I think that, the, less we, fixate on China. The more likely it is to let, its hackles down to, to let its guard down and to, relax into a state that I think, we'd all be happier with.

1:00:41Jacob Shapiro It is an incredibly useful framework.

1:00:43 And it has so many different analogs. when you think about, we were talking earlier about the United States and its transformation until the US comes into the crosshairs of Japan, there's really no US political will for a lot of the things that the United States has done since then. So to your point about, exogenous threats and how they change how governments and how peoples consider their views in the world, I'm also, I forget who came up with this, but, it's a recurring theme at, at different, Shabbat dinner tables when I'm doing that, where you have Passover Jews and you have Purim Jews, and you have Passover Jews who are thinking about universal themes of freedom and liberation from slavery and everything else.

1:01:17 Then you have Purim Jews who are, they're out to kill us again. And you can mark yourself on the spectrum for where you are in terms of your attachment to Judaism, which is a very silly way of saying of course these exogenous threats like affect how different states, are gonna go at it. I gotta lay on the plane here 'cause we only have about eight to 10 minutes left.

1:01:36 And I wanna start a little bit meta, 'cause you asked me earlier, how much I've been in China and the answer to that question is not a whole heck of a lot. And it's caused, I don't, a fair amount of imposter syndrome for me to, to date you. I came of age in the US educational system immediately after post nine 11.

1:01:53 So my linguistic training was Arabic. My sense of the world was, hey, we need to understand the Middle East and this is the great next thing for, the United States. And I often wish I could go back in time and shift, some of those decisions. I've become much more interested in China and I think I've, read a lot of its history.

1:02:09 I've read a lot of its. a lot of analysis on it, but I'm not Chinese. I don't speak Chinese, I don't pretend to be any sort of China analyst. I'm now somebody who works in investment and I have a sort of globalist generalist perspective. I don't have the luxury of focusing on one country, but I will say when I do focus on one country, I, try to focus on China.

1:02:28 and I'm cognizant what a generalist perspective can teach you about China. At the same time, at the same time that I'm cognizant of, there is so much about China that someone like me will just never have access to. And so to the extent that I'm going to be able to access it, I have to find people like you who can explain it to me and integrate it into my worldview.

1:02:46 So I say all that to say. The last question I wanted to ask you is different than anything else we've talked about, because I can get a lot of the economics and the politics or at least a good flavor of it from a lot of things, but I find the thing that I am. I'm least capable of, wrapping my arms around.

1:03:01 And you've probably already felt it in some of the questions that I've asked you is Chinese culture, and how Chinese culture and language are changing both in China and around the world. So the question I wanted to close on and just let you cook on, 'cause you talked about how China and its conceptions of modernity and politics and how that's changing the world.

1:03:16 I wanted to ask you if and how you think Chinese culture is changing the world and give you free reign to whether you wanna talk about movies or art, or music or whether it's about, science and technology, all these other things. But to just to give you the platform and tell me if, I'm trying to think about the cultural strength of China, the soft power of China in this multipolar world that we're entering.

1:03:36 Where should I be focused and what should people be looking for, seeing that?

1:03:40Kaiser Kuo Yeah, I guess the first thing I would say is that don't

1:03:42 focus just on the developed west. I think that you would get the wrong impression if all you looked at was the cultural impact of the uptake of, cultural output. In Western Europe and North America. that, that wouldn't give you a very clear indication. we're used to thinking of it in that way and we maybe can't be blamed for it, but we would, we should, widen the lens and look at China's impact in the global south.

1:04:08 Now that said, if we do just look at that narrowly, if we only limit ourselves to looking at, Chinese cultural impact in the developed West food aside, and, food's been here forever, there, there isn't a lot to point to. There's not a lot of, films making, big box office in the United States, even relative to say French film or things like that.

1:04:30 there's not a lot of, look, today we all use. Consumer electronics that were made in China, but very few of us know their names. Whereas like when you were a kid, when I was, like a, college student and buying all my consumer electronics to fit out my dorm room, they were all Japanese and we could all just rattle off the names of all these Paul Loic Japanese names, these brand names.

1:04:54 They were very good at that. I keep thinking back to it. I, again, again, I'm not a Marxist necessarily here, but I, think of it in terms of a material framing. I just did this thought experiment to myself. I said, just Hey, I wonder when, like in, in the 1980s, I remember when suddenly all we could talk about was a, AWA movies, and we all knew the names of all the Japanese sushi fish, and suddenly you were an idiot if you didn't know what wasabi was.

1:05:21 And you, we all knew. Suddenly we knew everything about, a lot of stuff. We, we, There wasn't a ton of it back then, but the anime and the manga that, that we were already aware of for sure. Japan was cool. What was the relative, per capita GDP of Japan to the United States. Then it had crested it, by 85 or so at 75% of the United States DP and I thought, wait, what about Korea?

1:05:49 When like, when we all were all knew Gangnam style and we were all watching, winter sonata and, there was this, like this how do you phenomenon that was sweeping over everyone was into, south Korean culture. we, and then this is still before BTS and Squid game, but what was the, Korean GDP as a percentage of, American GD capita and it was like 72%.

1:06:15 Then I think about China, it's still languishing at less than 25%. Maybe that is, that, that's the, salient variable. I think that's reflected in the part that, China right now, look, I lament the fact, I work in culture in China, right? I play in a rock band, and I hate that, that most people, I, don't meet a lot of Chinese people who did what I did when I was in college, which is, like I blow a bong hit and sit down, with the speakers like right next to my ears and listen in rapture to the dark side of the moon, right?

1:06:50 music had this transformative power for me. Or I would get so into film, I would like, you don't see that really happening that much in China. It's not a mainstream thing. It's not like every college student. They don't, have these, musical subcultures that lead their whole ideology the way that we, did.

1:07:11 I, think that a lot of it is just because, we're at this stage right now where most people are just I'm gonna keep my nose to the grindstone and work really hard and save up money. And music, insofar as it's important at all, is wallpaper, it's window dressing. It's, it's entertainment, it's not art.

1:07:29 So we haven't reached that phase yet. it's not, we haven't there, it's in pockets. We have in China, in, in small pockets, but it's not mainstream yet. And only when that happens, I think, will, China then start to export. The other thing is, you know, there's a cultural divergence, right? China has a big enough.

1:07:49 Domestic market so that its cultural product is still going to be mainly created for a Chinese market, which has markedly different tastes than the West. You look at the Chinese films that have hit in recent years, none of them are intelligible outside of a western, out of a Chinese milieu. The, the whole aesthetic divergence that's happened in the last couple of decades.

1:08:11 It's just, it's, incredible. They're not, the filmmakers no longer are thinking about those festival audiences in Rotterdam or Toronto or, whatever, Sundance, right? it's no longer that. yeah.

1:08:29Jacob Shapiro Yeah.

1:08:30 No, it's, well said. there's a reason, blade Runner. it's Japanese that's in, in Blade Runner, it's not really That's right. A Chinese cultural influence. That, is in it. alright. Kaiser, thank you for taking the time. you, that was

1:08:42Kaiser Kuo a lot of fun, man.

1:08:43 You ask fantastically good questions.

1:08:45Jacob Shapiro I try.

1:08:46 I try, I'm, particularly excited about this episode because you're someone, that I want to be in dialogue with. Yeah. I think you have access, to a portion of information that I think is absolutely critical for what people like me are doing in the world. But I don't think enough of us are actually listening and talking to you.

1:09:01 So I try and talk you up all the time and I'm, really grateful for you, taking some time and coming up

1:09:05Kaiser Kuo right back at you, man.

1:09:06 Thank you. I look forward to this.