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00:05Hello!
00:06Teleset English presents a new episode of China Now.
00:09A web media production that showcases the culture, technology and politics of the Asian giant.
00:15In this first segment, China Currents take a deep dive into the week's top stories,
00:19from China's head sitting defense minister with personal sanctions
00:23to a Chinese cargo ship pulled 41 people out of the Mediterranean after five days adrift.
00:29Let's see.
00:36Hello everyone and welcome to China Currents.
00:39This week, China hits a sitting defense minister with personal sanctions
00:44and is making headlines for a reason.
00:47The World Cup is underway.
00:49China isn't on the pitch, but it's pretty much everywhere else.
00:53A Chinese cargo ship pulled 41 people out of the Mediterranean after five days adrift.
00:59A tiny dialect film made for about $2 million has somehow made over $200 million,
01:05and it's heading to cinemas around the world.
01:09Chinese AI just blew the doors open on pricing,
01:12while the US quietly shuts its models off from foreign users.
01:16Let's get into it.
01:18On June 11th, China's foreign ministry announced sanctions against Philippine Defense Secretary Teodoro,
01:24him, his spouse and his children.
01:27The entire family is now barred from entering mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau.
01:32And every Chinese company and institution is prohibited from doing any business with them.
01:38Going after a sitting foreign defense minister by name and including his family,
01:43that's not something China does often.
01:46Not at all.
01:47The signal here is deliberate and direct.
01:50On territorial sovereignty, there is no room for negotiation.
01:54And this wasn't sudden.
01:55It's been building for a while.
01:56It started on May 28th, when the Philippines teamed up with Japan
02:01to push forward maritime boundary talks in waters China considers its own, unilaterally.
02:07Bringing in outside forces to meddle in the South China Sea.
02:11Then from late May on, Manila kept escalating at Huangyan Island.
02:16The Chinese Academy of Sciences had set up temporary civilian facilities there.
02:22Coral reef monitoring, marine sampling, basic scientific work.
02:26The Philippines reframed those facilities as permanent offshore military structures.
02:32Philippine military officials went on record threatening to retake Huangyan Island,
02:38deliberately stoking nationalist sentiment back home.
02:41And here's the part that really takes the cake.
02:44China had provided free aid to the Philippines.
02:47Fertilizer, fuel, everyday supplies that went directly to ordinary people.
02:53Goodwill in very practical terms.
02:56Manila turned around and labeled that aid a geopolitical manipulation tool.
03:01After the sanctions landed, the US and Japan, Manila's usual backers, stayed completely silent.
03:08No public statements, no show of support.
03:11That speaks volumes.
03:12A scholar speaking to the Global Times put it this way.
03:16China's patience has limits.
03:20Repeated provocations and bad faith tests will no longer just be absorbed.
03:24Those who choose to collude with outside forces, challenge Chinese sovereignty,
03:29and stir up regional instability will face consequences.
03:33Now, let's talk about the biggest sporting event happening right now.
03:38The 2026 World Cup is officially underway.
03:42China's national team didn't make it.
03:44And that surprises no one.
03:46But China's presence at this World Cup?
03:48It's everywhere.
03:50Four of the 16 global sponsors are Chinese companies.
03:53And they're not just buying ad space around the pitch anymore.
03:57Lenovo is the first-ever Chinese official technology partner of the World Cup, providing AI-based off-site detection systems
04:05at every venue.
04:06Hisense is sponsoring the tournament for the third time in a row.
04:10And its display equipment is running the VAR systems throughout.
04:14Then there's Yiwu, the manufacturing city in Zhejiang.
04:18Over 70% of all World Cup merchandise was made there.
04:22Scarves, jerseys, trophy replicas, shipped worldwide before the opening whistle.
04:29Pot Mart's La Bu Bu even made an appearance.
04:32A special World Cup collaboration edition has become a must-have for fans at home and abroad.
04:38Apparently, some people are putting one on their coffee tables for good luck during matches.
04:43And yes, there's a Chinese referee on the officiating list too.
04:48Chinese netizens have been joking that he's the only referee at this tournament with no conflict of interest.
04:54Because he has no home team to protect.
04:57Honestly, that's full participation, just in a different way.
05:03In other news, Egypt's Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre recently sent a formal letter of commendation to China.
05:10The letter praised the crew of a Chinese cargo ship for a rescue operation in the Mediterranean.
05:16The ship is called Xinhaitong 801.
05:20A Hong Kong-flagged vessel operated by China's Fujian Haitong Development Company.
05:25An inflatable life raft carrying 41 people had been drifting at sea for nearly five days.
05:31The raft was taking on water. Food and water was running out.
05:35The situation was becoming critical.
05:38The Xinhaitong 801 received the rescue order and changed course immediately.
05:44In difficult sea conditions, the crew brought all 41 people safely on board.
05:49They later sailed to Port Said, Egypt, and handed everyone over to local authorities.
05:55In its letter, Egypt praised the crew's professionalism and humanitarian spirit,
06:00specifically noting that the ship's operators chose human life over commercial interests.
06:06China's Consulate General in Alexandria personally went on board to visit the crew.
06:11Up next, a low-budget Chinese dialect film has become the year's most unexpected box office dark horse.
06:18The film is called Dear You.
06:21It's entirely in Teochu, a regional dialect from China's Chaoshan area.
06:27Most of the cast are ordinary people, not professional actors.
06:31The budget was around 10 million yuan, just over 1 million US dollars.
06:35It has now earned 1.6 billion yuan at the box office.
06:40That's more than 160 times its production cost.
06:44No massive marketing campaign, just people telling other people to go see it.
06:50The film is now rolling out to cinemas in more than 10 countries and regions worldwide.
06:54So why did it resonate?
06:57The story draws on the history of Chinese emigration to Southeast Asia,
07:02the generation of overseas Chinese who left home to build lives abroad.
07:07It centers on xiao pi, letters and remittance slips sent back to families in China.
07:13A man from Chaoshan travels to Southeast Asia and dies there.
07:18His foreign friend keeps a promise, sending money and letters home to the man's wife for 18 years.
07:23No sweeping national narrative, just a promise that was kept.
07:27Love that crossed oceans.
07:30The pull of home.
07:31These themes run deep in Chinese culture.
07:34That's why the film struck such a chord.
07:37As the film heads overseas, it's drawn a bit of pushback.
07:40A media outlet in Singapore suggested it could affect the identity of ethnic Chinese communities there,
07:46even though the story has nothing to do with Singapore.
07:50That's a stretch.
07:51Western films about roots, family and belonging are almost always treated as universal human stories.
07:57A Chinese dialect film exploring the same ideas get framed as political.
08:02That double standard is worth calling out.
08:05For people in any diaspora community, caring about where you came from and feeling at home where you live,
08:11those things have never been in conflict.
08:13This film is about loyalty and love.
08:17That's it.
08:17No agenda.
08:18Just a carefully told piece of immigrant memory.
08:22And when tickets went on sale in Singapore on June 16th, the website completely crashed.
08:28All tickets sold out within 90 minutes.
08:31It found its audience in China, and it'll find its audience out there too.
08:35We hope you'll give it a watch.
08:38And finally, let's talk about AI.
08:41On June 13th, Zhipu AI's GLM 5.2 opened up to all users.
08:48It's going fully open source under the MIT license.
08:53Developers anywhere in the world can use it, build on it and commercialize it for free.
08:58It supports a context window of 1 million tokens.
09:02Now, compare that with what happened the day before.
09:06The US Commerce Department ordered Anthropic to cut off all foreign users from two of its frontier models,
09:12Fable 5 and Mythos 5, citing export controls.
09:16One side opening the door, the other closing it.
09:20That contrast speaks for itself.
09:22But zoom out for a moment, because a bigger story has been building over the past month.
09:28Chinese AI companies have been slashing API prices, in some cases by as much as 99%.
09:35At comparable performance levels, Chinese models now cost between 1 tenth and 1 thirtieth of similar Western models.
09:42And cheaper hasn't meant worse.
09:44China's top models are performing at around 80 to 90% of the very best global systems overall.
09:51And in areas like cogeneration and long context handling, some are actually ahead.
09:56The numbers back this up.
09:59On major global developer platforms, Chinese AI models now account for over 60% of all API calls.
10:06Nearly half of those users are American developers, saving millions of dollars a year in compute costs alone.
10:13Open source, low prices, strong performance.
10:17Chinese AI isn't shifting the global landscape by talking about it.
10:21It's doing it by making the economics impossible to ignore.
10:26And that's five stories for this week.
10:28Thanks for watching China Currents.
10:29We'll see you next time.
10:38We have a short break now, but don't go away because we'll be right back.
11:12Transcription by CastingWords
11:43Transcription by CastingWords
11:53Transcription by CastingWords
11:54What the Japanese did was so barbaric and of course recently in the mainland there have been some popular movies
12:01that have tried to disclose some of these atrocities done by you know like the the medical experimentation by the
12:10Japanese Empire on Chinese people.
12:13So whitewashing that and trying to portray the Japanese colonizers as like these benevolent forces trying to bring prosperity.
12:22Even seriously using that term of like the co-prosperity sphere that is literal propaganda of the Japanese Empire.
12:31It's like yeah, it's like it's like using Hitler's speeches and favorably quoting them as like something positive.
12:39It is absolutely outrageous.
13:09On this issue that everyone seems so confident about and we are very happy to have Mr. Ben Norton on
13:16our podcast today.
13:17If you're living in Iraq, you wouldn't know him but otherwise you would.
13:21But just for the audience then tell us who you are what you do and where you are at this
13:25moment.
13:25Well, thank you for the very generous introduction.
13:28My name is Ben Norton.
13:30I'm a journalist and a political economist.
13:32I am the founder of the independent news outlet geopolitical economy report and people can find it, you know, all
13:39over social media.
13:40Just look up geopolitical economy.
13:43Awesome.
13:43And you are not calling in from just any place in the world, right, Ben?
13:49Where are you?
13:49Yeah, I am.
13:50I'm calling in from Beijing, from China.
13:52I've been here about three years now and I would never call myself a China expert because I don't like
13:59the foreigners who call themselves China experts.
14:00But I'm very interested in the politics and the political economy of China.
14:05And I think it has it plays a very important role in the world today.
14:09And we have a very, we're living in a watershed moment in history where the kind of global political economic
14:16order is shifting in some profound ways and China is at the heart of that.
14:19So that's why I decided to come here.
14:21And it's been a very rewarding experience.
14:23Okay.
14:24And we are going to ask you to look at some of the memes Mimi found.
14:28But before that, just want to like set the stage for our listeners.
14:31How did you get involved in doing like political commentary?
14:34How did you get involved in being political?
14:37Yeah, so I got interested in journalism when I was an undergrad in college.
14:43Actually, I should go back even before that.
14:45I got interested in politics because when I was a teenager, the U.S. government invaded Iraq in an illegal
14:51war of aggression.
14:52And even to me at the time, it was so clear that this was obviously criminal.
14:57It was, it violated every international law.
15:00It was an outrage.
15:01The first protest I ever went to was against the Iraq war.
15:04And then by the time I got to high school, I was already interested in politics.
15:09When I was in college, like many young people, I was a student activist.
15:13And I started writing for the student newspaper and getting interested in the media.
15:18And I realized that, you know, I personally, I'm not an organizer.
15:22I'm not, you have to be like a very charismatic, social, extroverted person.
15:26I'm not like that.
15:27I did find that I was very interested in research and in writing and analyzing.
15:33And I got interested in journalism.
15:35So I decided to start doing journalism.
15:38And as soon as I graduated, I worked as a journalist for several years.
15:42And fortunately, I had the opportunity to travel to many different countries, especially in Latin America, which is really where
15:48my heart is.
15:49I mean, I also love China, but I spent several years in Latin America and I lived in multiple countries
15:55in the region.
15:56And I got more interested in international politics and I decided to come to China a few years ago to
16:03try to better understand this country because it's, again, I said it's so important in the shifting geopolitical landscape today.
16:09And I also found that, you know, I am a PhD candidate and that's technically what I'm doing here in
16:17China, but I'm not super interested in academia.
16:20I'm more interested in kind of public engagement.
16:23And that's another reason why I'm interested in kind of the media.
16:26I'm not really a traditional journalist, but I'm interested in public engagement.
16:31One issue that I have with academia is I think it's a little different in China, but in many Western
16:36countries, academics kind of live in an ivory tower.
16:39And they're kind of separate from the rest of society.
16:42There are some Chinese academics who are very politically engaged.
16:46And, you know, that's what I try to do as well.
16:48Okay.
16:49I think you're being too humble when you said you're not charismatic because tens of thousands of people following your
16:55YouTube would definitely disagree.
16:57And I, for one, would take an analytical mind over and run-of-the-mill, extrovert, charismatic one any day.
17:03Yeah, definitely.
17:05And Ben, we are such big fans of your work.
17:09And also, I would say that doing the kind of popular education that you do is really important because so
17:14many people actually ask me as well about whether I've met you, you know, and like how much of a,
17:21how they get the source of news from you, which I think is really important because we increasingly cannot trust
17:27a lot of, especially Western news platforms because they lead to a very specific agenda.
17:34That kind of leads into what I was going to pull up in terms of our memes or in terms
17:40of our headlines.
17:41So I actually didn't find that many memes this week.
17:44Oh, what a surprise.
17:45No, I didn't go deep enough into the trolls of the internet, but I actually do feel like sometimes these
17:52headlines can serve as memes as well because they can be so ridiculous and so just illustrative of the times,
18:00you know?
18:00And so I actually have this BBC article that came out a few days ago where the headline is US
18:07Navy chief says $14 billion on sale to Taiwan paused due to Iran war.
18:16This is, you know, this is, you know, a latest update and obviously it's no coincidence that it follows the
18:22recent Trump visits to China.
18:25But Ben, I wanted to ask you your opinion on this.
18:28And, you know, as we know, China and President Xi Jinping have been extremely busy, extremely busy the last few
18:35months, you know, after the visit from the KMT leader as well.
18:41Trump, Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, there's been so much.
18:45Serbian president.
18:47So we're not going to get into all of that, but I just want to zoom in on this article
18:51and get your thoughts.
18:52Yeah, well, there's so much I can say.
18:54I'll give a brief response and then we can get more into the details.
18:58But I think you're absolutely right to point out that there are these two very important visits.
19:03There are multiple visits.
19:04But in terms of the Taiwan issue, first, there was the visit by the new chairwoman of the Kuomintang, known
19:11in English as the KMT, or I guess actually better would be GMD.
19:17And this is the Chinese Nationalist Party.
19:20And the new leader, Zheng Li-wen, visited the mainland.
19:23And this is a historic visit for people who didn't follow.
19:26I think this was truly historic because it's a step toward peace.
19:29And this is very important because Zheng Li-wen could potentially be the next leader of Taiwan in the upcoming
19:37elections.
19:38And the current leader, Lai Tsing-de, is not very popular.
19:42He has an approval rating of around 30 percent.
19:44And he's from the separatist party, the DPP.
19:48So that was a very important meeting, which is part of the context.
19:51And then, as you mentioned, Trump came this May, and the Taiwan issue was discussed.
19:58And the Chinese leadership made it clear that this is a red line, the reddest of all red lines.
20:03And the U.S. has to stop supporting separatist forces.
20:07And in particular, the Trump administration, the first Trump administration, especially when Mike Pompeo was the secretary of state, was
20:15very supportive of these separatist forces.
20:17The second Trump administration has been forced to be a little more pragmatic because the trade war failed and backfired
20:25so badly.
20:26And they recognized that China has so much leverage, including things like critical minerals in the supply chain, including things
20:33like rare earth elements that China restricted the export of.
20:37So this has forced the U.S. to take a step back.
20:40And this is why Trump has been a little more cautious on the Taiwan issue.
20:46And last December, the Trump administration approved the largest ever arms sale to Taiwan.
20:54And it's part of this sale that we're talking about here in this headline.
20:58And it's clear that the reason that this was paused is because of this larger geopolitical context here.
21:04They say it's because of the Iran war.
21:06I don't think that's true.
21:08There might be an element of truth, especially in the sense that the U.S. has actually been running out
21:13of some important air defense system missiles and interceptors and such.
21:18So it's possible that some of the sale was impacted by the war in Iran, that the U.S. launched
21:26this war of aggression.
21:27But I don't think that's the main reason.
21:28I think you're absolutely right to point out that what's actually happening is that the U.S. has been forced
21:34to pause this temporarily.
21:36And we'll see what happens.
21:37Yeah, I was going to say, you know, is it really, according to the BBC article headline, is it really
21:42because of the war on Iran?
21:44Or is there a deeper political context that is not being mentioned, again, strategically and with the agenda, that doesn't
21:52want to acknowledge the failures of the positionings that Donald Trump had, especially during the future?
22:01Yeah.
22:02I got to be honest with you.
22:04I never really get how big of a leverage these arms cells really are in the Taiwan negotiation.
22:10Because, I mean, especially after the Iran war, but even before that, I think many people have already seen that
22:17it's just impracticable to depend on the U.S., to engage China militarily over a potential military conflict over the
22:24Taiwan Strait, let alone defeat the PLA over a conflict in Taiwan.
22:29So when that's been the consensus in the military establishment in America for so long, and when the policy of
22:37arms cells, at least using arms cells as a negotiation tool against the mainland, has also been a longstanding policy,
22:44how do you square those seemingly incomprehensible paradoxes there?
22:52Yeah, it's a great point.
22:53Yeah, it's a great point.
22:53When I'm asked about this, I've recently been saying that I think there are three kind of main factors here
22:58influencing the U.S. government's behavior.
23:01One is the military aspect, as you mentioned, and I'll get to that in a moment.
23:06The DPP, the current ruling party in Taiwan, is more associated with the Democratic Party.
23:14And let's not forget that when Joe Biden was president, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, who's
23:21from the Democratic Party, she visited Taiwan and did not visit the Chinese mainland, which was an extremely provocative act
23:28that violated the spirit of the one China principle.
23:31Because technically, the U.S. government recognizes the one China principle, which is the very foundations of U.S.-China relations
23:39in the three communiques that were signed in 1972, 1979 and 1982 that are the foundation of U.S.-China relations
23:47that are it's from the very beginning.
23:50It was always based on the one China principle.
23:52But when the Biden administration backed this trip by Pelosi to meet with the previous DPP leader, that was very
23:59provocative.
24:00Trump, of course, hates the Democrats.
24:03He especially hates Biden.
24:04He always mentions in every speech about how Biden was the worst president, blah, blah, blah.
24:09And in U.S. politics, which is very sectarian, very partisan, very polarized, the Republicans see the DPP in Taiwan
24:20as much more associated with the Democrats.
24:22So that's another reason why Trump is not as interested in this issue, even though it is bipartisan.
24:28But then getting back to the military issue, as you mentioned, this is a very important factor.
24:34And there have been many war games that have been done by the Pentagon and by think tanks in Washington,
24:40D.C.
24:41And in almost all scenarios, the outcome is a total disaster.
24:46The U.S. either loses or comes to a stalemate in pretty much all of the war games.
24:52And in most of the scenarios, Taiwan is completely destroyed.
24:55And the role that Taiwan plays in the global supply chain, especially for advanced technology.
25:03And this is another reason why you mentioned the military issue.
25:07Obviously, it would be catastrophic and crazy for the U.S. to try to start a war over Taiwan.
25:12But more so, the U.S. government and especially the Trump administration, which is very closely linked to Silicon Valley.
25:20And there are many representatives of big tech corporations in the government.
25:24Previously, Elon Musk had a top role in the government.
25:28And Silicon Valley is very concerned about Taiwan because the most important company that manufactures advanced chips is located in
25:37Taiwan.
25:37It's TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
25:42The U.S. under Biden and Trump has been trying to pressure TSMC to move its facilities over to the
25:49U.S.
25:50The U.S. has offered billions of dollars of loans and subsidies to make a factory in Arizona.
25:56But even that has not been very successful.
26:00It was delayed.
26:01It was over budget.
26:02Because manufacturing these advanced chips is so complex, TSMC is the only company in the world that actually can manufacture
26:11these tiny, tiny chips.
26:14The Chinese mainland has been catching up.
26:17The Chinese mainland has companies like SMIC.
26:19But they're not quite at the same level yet as TSMC.
26:23And given that NVIDIA, which is now one of the most important companies in the world, it's the largest company
26:31on Earth by market capitalization.
26:32It has a market cap of $5.5 trillion.
26:36And this is a U.S. company.
26:37And in fact, when Trump visited Beijing, he was joined by Jensen Huang, who is the CEO of NVIDIA.
26:45He's an American of Chinese descent.
26:48And Jensen Huang has visited China multiple times in the past few years because he really wants access to the
26:54Chinese market.
26:55And we can get into that issue, the geopolitics of what they call the chip war and stuff.
27:00But anyway, the point is, is that NVIDIA designs these advanced chips that are needed to train AI.
27:05But the actual manufacturing, the fabs, as they're known, that are the manufacturing equipment that are used to make these
27:14chips that are designed by NVIDIA, that's all in Taiwan.
27:18So there are a variety of reasons why the U.S. has been forced to kind of back off on
27:23this issue, because they recognize that for the Chinese mainland, this is an extremely red, red line.
27:29The trade war backfired and the U.S. has to back off because they know China has all this leverage.
27:36Domestic politics and partisan issues and the military issue.
27:40I mean, all of those factors explain why, you know, on this on this issue, the U.S. has been
27:46forced to become much more cautious.
27:48You know, it's funny that you mentioned the TSMC, because I recently saw another headline, the other headline that I
27:59had.
27:59It was where Lai actually gave a copy of the TSMC founder's autobiography to be passed to Donald Trump.
28:10So it was during a U.S. Independence Day reception in Taipei.
28:15And I don't know if you've seen this story, Ben, but I wanted to know, what are your thoughts on
28:19that?
28:20What do you think Lai is trying to say by gifting this two-volume autobiography of TSMC to try to
28:27give it to Trump?
28:28By the way, he didn't hand it to Trump specifically.
28:31He handed it to, I think, Ray Blaney.
28:32The reception.
28:33Yeah, to then pass it to Trump.
28:36Who knows if it'll...
28:38Clearly, he's not expecting him to actually read it.
28:41I don't know what he's expecting from that.
28:44I don't think he's ever read the U.S. Constitution, let alone a biography of some random capitalist in Taiwan.
28:51Yeah.
28:51So, yeah, Ben, what do you think that means?
28:55Donald Trump does not read books.
28:56In fact, there are many reports he doesn't even read the intelligence briefing that the U.S. president gets every
29:01morning.
29:02He watches Fox News and now he watches News...
29:05Everything he says is based on what he sees on TV.
29:09Right.
29:10But anyway, in terms of this question, it's a good question.
29:13One, I mentioned that the DPP, because it's associated with the Democrats, and of course, Lai Tsing De is from
29:20the DPP.
29:21This is one of his ways to try to develop this personal relationship with Trump.
29:26He knows that Trump doesn't like him very much.
29:29And also, it's kind of his way of reminding the U.S. that this is a contribution that Taiwan has
29:36made.
29:36You know, I mentioned Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, is of Chinese descent.
29:41He has family from Taiwan.
29:42I mean, he is American, but he has family from Taiwan.
29:45So, you know, this is the this Taiwanese leader who is trying to tell the U.S. president, don't forget
29:53how important we are.
29:54And this is one of the most important corporate executives in the world and this company and all of this.
30:00And then, of course, you know, TSMC is now it is a Taiwanese company and TSMC is now kind of
30:08an American company.
30:09And Trump wants to make it an American company.
30:11So what we see is that Lai Tsing De is trying to make this direct link between Taiwan and the
30:16U.S.
30:17It's also ironic that why is he celebrating the independence of the U.S.?
30:21I mean, it's outrageous.
30:22This is a foreign country.
30:23Like, this is ridiculous.
30:24So he's basically just trying to point out that, like, the role that Taiwan plays in TSMC, in NVIDIA, like,
30:33in the global high tech industry, you know, he's emphasizing that to Trump symbolically.
30:39I mean, Mimi and I talked about this, but I've always wondered, like, at this day and age, first of
30:44all, like, that giving a book through a third party to be passed on to the person you're ultimately trying
30:51to gift it to, that's just pathetic, right?
30:54Like, let's not just, like, stop talking about politics on a personal level.
30:58If you have to do that to get to someone you're trying to get to, that's just a pathetic attempt
31:02of trying to influence someone.
31:04But the political question I have is, like, in this day and age, how do Taiwanese politicians actually influence American
31:13politics, right?
31:14Because historically, it's always been the Taiwan lobby.
31:17There's, like, established chains of communication between U.S. lawmakers, at least, like, a segment of U.S. lawmakers with
31:24the KMT that goes back to all the way to 1930s, 1940s.
31:28But those politicians, first of all, a lot of them have long been dead.
31:33And although there are still some U.S. politicians who kept, like, this ethos up to talk about it, but
31:40that connection, like, that connection that used to be very personal to a lot of U.S. policymakers, it's gone
31:45now.
31:46And you mentioned TSMC, Ben, and that's definitely still there.
31:49But as you've discussed, like, the fab factories in Arizona and Nevada, I think, it's not going very well.
31:56So, like, how exactly are the Taiwanese politicians trying to influence the U.S. politics?
32:01Like, how does it work mechanically?
32:03Well, there still are these kind of personal connections.
32:06I agree with you that it's not the same as it used to be.
32:08But, you know, I mentioned people like Jensen Huang, one of the most famous corporate executives.
32:13I mean, he was born in Taiwan.
32:14His family is from Taiwan.
32:16So, in the U.S. itself, there are a lot of people of, you know, Chinese descent whose family are
32:23from Taiwan.
32:24Like, that's pretty common in the U.S.
32:26And especially if you go back several decades, you know, to the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949,
32:32when the Communist Party won the war,
32:35and the Kuomintang forces at that time led by Chiang Kai-shek, or Jiang Jie-she, as is known in
32:41Chinese,
32:41when they fled to Taiwan, there were a lot of wealthy people from the Kuomintang, you know, these anti-communist
32:49Chinese capitalists and stuff.
32:51They went to the U.S.
32:53Right.
32:53And, you know, during the Cold War, there definitely was, you talked about this idea of the Taiwan lobby.
32:59There were very wealthy Chinese capitalists.
33:03I mean, like, they were Chinese.
33:05They were not Taiwanese.
33:06This construct of being Taiwanese is a very new modern construct that was done, you know, by these political forces.
33:13They were Chinese.
33:14Chinese, and their political allies lost the Civil War, and some of them went to the U.S., and they
33:21kind of created this lobby.
33:22I think, you know, there certainly is an influence of the lobby, but I think it's a bit exaggerated.
33:29I think it's more for domestic U.S. reasons, political reasons.
33:33It's like, you know, this is also similar to the discussion about Israel and the other lobbies, the Saudi lobby
33:39and the Turkish lobby.
33:40It's like, in Washington, you do have different political factions, and, you know, they don't always have the exact same
33:47interests.
33:48But in general, for decades, in the U.S., there's been a strong anti-China current.
33:55Now, in the 90s and the 2000s, relations did improve, largely because many U.S. companies invested in the Chinese
34:04mainland and also Taiwan and Hong Kong.
34:07They made factories, and, you know, they had a lot of trade with China.
34:12Now, obviously, since the trade war started in 2018, and even before that, you can go back to the Obama
34:18administration's declaration of the pivot to Asia and all of this,
34:22it's clear that the U.S. has been trying to contain China and prevent China from innovating and developing.
34:29The Commerce Secretary under Biden, Gina Raimondo, openly said that the U.S. wants to prevent China from technologically innovating.
34:38That's a form of containment, trying to prevent China from developing.
34:42So, obviously, that has really hurt relations.
34:45But, so, you know, there was a period there where this, you know, like the Taiwan issue was not brought
34:51up as much.
34:52But let's not forget, I mean, if you go back to the 50s, 60s, and even in the 70s, this
34:58issue was very, very popular in U.S. politics.
35:02And during the second Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1958, we now know that, actually, the U.S. military came close
35:10to bombing the Chinese mainland and even using nuclear bombs.
35:15Right.
35:15This was revealed by Daniel Ellsberg, who was a whistleblower from the, he worked with the think tank that worked
35:23closely with the Pentagon.
35:24And Daniel Ellsberg was famous in the U.S. for disclosing what were known as the Pentagon Papers, revealing all
35:30of the atrocities committed by the U.S. during the Vietnam War.
35:33But he also disclosed that during the second Taiwanese Strait, Taiwan Strait Crisis, that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs
35:41of Staff, the head of the U.S. military, were pressuring Eisenhower, who was the U.S. president at the
35:46time, to use nuclear bombs against the Chinese mainland.
35:51And at that time, the U.S. had a military base on Taiwan Island, and the U.S. had nuclear
35:57weapons stored there.
35:58This is, of course, a key reason why the Chinese mainland sees Taiwan as such a crucial security issue.
36:06It's not just about rectifying, unifying the Chinese nation and territorially unifying China.
36:14Taiwan has been part of China for hundreds of years.
36:16It was colonized by the Japanese Empire.
36:19So, you know, those are those historical reasons, but also it's a security issue.
36:24Now, getting back to this issue of, you know, the Taiwan lobby and this idea, in the 50s and 60s,
36:32you know, the U.S. was very supportive of the Kuomintang, then led by an English whom we call Chiang
36:39Kai-shek.
36:40And, in fact, I'm sure you both heard about this.
36:44There's this saying that some right-wing politicians in the U.S. still use.
36:49Marco Rubio recently said it.
36:51He said, unleash Chiang, which is a reference to Chiang Kai-shek.
36:56And it actually goes back to the Cold War when there was this idea that, like, these really right-wing
37:03anti-communists in the U.S. said,
37:05we need to unleash Chiang Kai-shek against the Chinese mainland.
37:10And, like, two months ago, Marco Rubio said this in an interview.
37:14He said, unleash Chiang.
37:16Did you see it, like, metaphorically or, like, literally, that he forgot that Chiang has been dead for, like, 60
37:23years?
37:23No, metaphorically.
37:24They know that he's dead.
37:25Just checking there.
37:28But the point is, is that, like, this kind of, it all goes back to this deep anti-communism.
37:33And you have to remember that, you know, this was still China in the Mao era.
37:36And the association that the U.S. had of China was the China of the Cultural Revolution.
37:41This is before the reform went opening up, before Deng Xiaoping took power in 1978.
37:46Before, I mean, you know, even before the normalization of relations between the U.S. and China.
37:51So, I could keep going on and on.
37:53But the main point I'm getting at here, in a nutshell, is that every few years or every few decades,
37:59this issue becomes prominent, and then it kind of disappears a bit, and then it comes back.
38:06It's like Xinjiang.
38:07It's like Tibet, or known in Chinese as Xizang.
38:10Like, every few years, when it's convenient politically in U.S. politics, they'll bring back this issue in order to
38:19try to exploit it, right?
38:20In order to spread disinformation or put pressure on China or something.
38:25But then when it's no longer that convenient, they kind of move on to other things.
38:29Yes, you can really see that.
38:32And I really appreciate you pointing out that wave.
38:34Because also, whenever I'm on social media or whatever, I get to see these very specific organizations that are having
38:42these same talking points, right?
38:44It's all about Taiwan's democracy.
38:46Or it's about these specific so-called liberation movements of Xinjiang or Xinjiang.
38:52But they always kind of come at once.
38:54And it's always kind of like a bombardment in your face.
38:57And you always have to trace back the money.
38:59Where is the support of these movements coming from?
39:02And what is the intention there, right?
39:04What is the political agenda there?
39:06Because like you said, it always aligns with something or a convenience of timing.
39:11Or a specific agenda that the U.S. government kind of plants some seeds to cause some havoc and chaos.
39:17And I think, you know, they really try as hard as they can, as creatively as they can, especially with
39:23the separatist movement, with Taiwan at the moment.
39:27But I wanted to kind of go back to something you were saying at the beginning then.
39:30And I know that you're coming from-
39:31Can I make one quick note?
39:33Please, yeah.
39:33I'm sorry to cut you off.
39:34Yeah.
39:34I just want to make one quick note.
39:36I mean, you're absolutely right to point out that, you know, when there are these moments where the U.S.
39:41media is talking all about this issue, you know, whether it's Hong Kong or Taiwan or whatever,
39:46it's clear that, you know, there's been this surge of money and the U.S. government is, you know, these
39:51U.S. intelligence sources are leaking information to the press and telling them to say things.
39:56That's certainly a good point.
39:58But I want to briefly respond to this idea of, like, democracy in scare quotes.
40:02I mean, obviously, even the U.S. is not a democracy.
40:04It's an oligarchy.
40:05We see that, you know, in the House of Representatives and the Senate, more than 80 percent of candidates with
40:10more money win.
40:12I mean, in the U.S., there's no limit on the amount of money big corporations can spend to buy
40:17politicians.
40:19Lobbying in most countries is illegal.
40:21It's considered bribery and corruption.
40:24In the U.S., every politician is lobbied by tons of corporations.
40:29And anyway, but even aside from that, even this, like, narrow conception of democracy in scare quotes, China has its
40:36own unique form of democracy.
40:37Many countries have their own unique form.
40:39But even if we use this narrow idea of Western-style liberal capitalist democracy, even if we consider that to
40:46be, you know, the definition of democracy, Taiwan has not been a democracy for most of the past century.
40:53Taiwan's first direct presidential election was in 1996.
40:59Ninety-six.
41:00Ninety-six.
41:01So, and the U.S. has been supporting these separatist forces in Taiwan ever since the end of the Civil
41:07War in 1949.
41:08And before that, during the Civil War, the U.S. was supporting the Kuomintang against the Communist Party.
41:13And for most of that history, since 1949, Taiwan was a one-party dictatorship ruled by Chiang Kai-shek and
41:22the Kuomintang.
41:23And, of course, the Kuomintang has changed as a party.
41:25The Kuomintang today is different from the old-school Kuomintang during the Cold War.
41:29But the U.S. strongly supported the brutal dictatorship of Taiwan, of Chiang Kai-shek, and had no problem with
41:38never talking about so-called democracy.
41:40By the way, the same was true in South Korea, which also was a military dictatorship until the 80s.
41:47And also Japan has been a one-party system.
41:50You know, the West loves to criticize China for being ruled by one major party.
41:55There are some smaller parties, but, of course, the Communist Party is the main party.
41:58But Japan has been, almost without exception, also a one-party state since 1955.
42:03Yeah, there have been two changes of power in the entire post-war history of Japanese parliamentary elections.
42:08Very briefly, for less than five years.
42:10Yeah.
42:11Since 1955.
42:12So, I mean, this whole narrative that, like, the West has to support Taiwan because it's a democracy, it's nonsense.
42:20Because most of the time when the West, when primarily the U.S. was supporting these separatists in Taiwan, it
42:27was a military dictatorship.
42:28Hmm, yeah.
42:30Really, really important points to bring up.
42:32I actually, I was going to say before, if we could go back to what you were mentioning at the
42:38beginning about Zheng Li-wen's visit to China and the historical significance of that, right?
42:43Because you also mentioned that Zheng Li-wen might actually be voted.
42:47So, this whole, like, air quote, so-called democracy that they're talking about in Taiwan, people in Taiwan don't even
42:54want to keep it in charge anymore, right?
42:57Like, it's looking not very good for Mr. Lai.
43:00So, I wanted to ask you about your thoughts on that historical visit and why you think it was so
43:05historical and what you think the impacts on the voters in Taiwan could be.
43:09Yeah, well, even if you look at polling by groups in Taiwan, they say very clearly that Lai Qingde is
43:18very unpopular.
43:18His approval rating is a bit over 30 percent.
43:21And especially on economic issues, he's very unpopular and the DPP is unpopular.
43:27And it's easy to explain why.
43:28The issues in Taiwan are being faced by people in many countries.
43:32I mean, Taiwan is part of China.
43:33It's not a country, according to international law, but other countries, I mean, other economies around the world, which is
43:40that, you know, in Taiwan, there are massive housing costs.
43:45Wages are stagnant.
43:47The cost of living is very high.
43:49Energy prices have skyrocketed because, like many economies in East Asia and Southeast Asia,
43:56Taiwan imports so much of its oil from the West Asia, from the Persian Gulf, which is now on fire.
44:04The U.S. has been waging a war, which has caused the largest oil crisis in history.
44:08So, economically, the situation in Taiwan is very bad.
44:11So, it makes sense why Lai Qingde is very unpopular.
44:15And then on this issue of separatism, you know, Lai is, he represents a kind of extremism in politics in
44:23Taiwan.
44:23Because if you look at polls in Taiwan, only a very small percentage of people, like 6 to 8 percent,
44:31actually say that they want independence now.
44:34They want independence.
44:36The vast majority of people in Taiwan want the status quo.
44:41So, then there becomes a fight.
44:43What does that mean?
44:45Because to some people, status quo means something different than it means to someone else, right?
44:49Basically, what people in Taiwan do not want is a war.
44:53They do not want a conflict with the Chinese mainland.
44:55There are so many people in the mainland and in Taiwan who have family members and friends on both sides.
45:01There are people going back and forth.
45:03So, they don't want a war.
45:06They don't want any kind of conflicts.
45:07And this idea that Lai Qingde has, he constantly says in his speeches that Taiwan is supposedly an independent nation
45:15and all this nonsense.
45:16I mean, it's not popular in Taiwan.
45:19Polls show that.
45:20It's a small percentage of the population that actually supports this.
45:23Although, in Washington, it has support, which is the main reason that he does it.
45:27But also, it's important to point out that, according to international law, it's simply not true.
45:31The United Nations itself has clearly said that there is one China, the People's Republic of China.
45:38According to the UN, if you read UN reports, it refers to Taiwan as a province of China.
45:42If you go to the International Monetary Fund website, the IMF, which is based in Washington, the U.S. is
45:49the only country with veto power in the IMF.
45:52This is basically a U.S.-dominated organization.
45:55Go to their website.
45:56It says, Taiwan, province of China.
45:58So, according to international law, Taiwan is part of China.
46:02Now, that separatism is not popular.
46:06Economically, he's not popular.
46:08So, this gets back to your question about Zhang Liwan and the Kuomintang.
46:12I think it's quite likely in the upcoming election that if Zhang Liwan is the candidate, which is likely as
46:18well, I think she could be the next leader of Taiwan, which would be very important, given that she explicitly
46:27opposes separatism.
46:29And her rhetoric has been very interesting.
46:32And there was a viral video of her on a TV channel in Taiwan, where she said, we do not
46:40want to be the next Ukraine.
46:42Now, even the Ukraine issue, it is useful to compare this.
46:45But, of course, the Ukraine issue is different because, according to international law, Ukraine is not part of Russia.
46:51So, you know, that is a war between two countries.
46:54And, of course, the U.S. and NATO are involved.
46:56But, according to international law, Taiwan is part of China.
46:59So, even comparing it to Ukraine can be a bit misleading.
47:03But, regardless of that, I think her rhetoric was very interesting.
47:06She said, look, look what happened to Ukraine.
47:09The West has been supporting Ukraine in this proxy war against Russia.
47:15Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died.
47:17Ukraine has been destroyed.
47:19Its economy is in rubble.
47:21And has Russia been weakened?
47:23Has Russia been defeated?
47:25And then she said, is China weaker than Russia?
47:28No, it's way stronger than Russia.
47:30So, this idea that, you know, Taiwan should be this proxy for the U.S.,
47:35this battering ram against the Chinese mainland is absurd.
47:39And all it would do would lead to the destruction of Taiwan.
47:43The fact that she said that on a TV channel in Taiwan is quite impressive.
47:48Because it demonstrates that the Kuomintang, the new leadership, recognizes that if they pursue this, if they continue down this
47:57path of separatism, it will lead to the destruction of Taiwan.
48:00No one wants that.
48:01And so, when she took this trip to the mainland, it was very important because she met with President Xi.
48:08And then there were other acts that were extremely important.
48:12Beijing announced 10 new policies to promote exchange across the Taiwan Strait.
48:17You know, this included trade and technology and research and academia and culture and communication in many different areas.
48:26And then also, there were several other things that were important.
48:29And I think this kind of represents symbolically the new leadership of the Kuomintang.
48:33Because I mentioned that during the Cold War, the Kuomintang was, of course, very anti-communist, very right-wing, and
48:41especially under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek.
48:43During the first united front, which was after, with the creation of the Republic of China, by Sun Yat-sen,
48:50who was, you know, the founding father, who led, he was one of the symbolic leaders of the revolution that
48:56overthrew the Qing dynasty, feudalism, in China, and tried to have a modern republic before the People's Republic.
49:03And at that time, you know, he was the leader of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party, and they had
49:10an alliance, and Sun represented the left wing of the Kuomintang.
49:15However, after his death, Jiang took power, and Jiang represented the very right wing, the fascist, you know, right wing
49:23of the Kuomintang.
49:24And then he immediately betrayed the communists.
49:27He famously massacred the communists in Shanghai, which led to the end of the first united front.
49:33And in a kind of a fight, and the Communist Party had to go underground.
49:37And then there was the second united front against the Japanese.
49:40And but anyway, the point is, is that what the new leadership of the Kuomintang is doing is trying to
49:47revive that history before Jiang, which is very significant, because what they're saying is that China is one, there's one
49:57Chinese nation across the Taiwanese Strait.
49:59We're all Chinese, and in our common history goes back to Sun and the overthrow of feudalism and the the
50:10united front between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.
50:13And why do I mention this?
50:15Because when Zhengli won, the new chairwoman of the Kuomintang, when she visited the mainland, she went to the mausoleum
50:24of Sun Zhengshan, Sun Yat-sen, which was very symbolic.
50:29And again, I think this represents that there's this kind of new leadership in the Kuomintang.
50:34Now, one of the reasons that the Kuomintang was not very popular is they're kind of from what I know
50:39from talking to people in Taiwan, there are a few reasons.
50:41One, there was definitely a lot of corruption.
50:44There was also corruption in the Chinese mainland.
50:46And obviously, China in China's presidency has made that a big priority and has really cracked down on corruption and
50:52have been very successful in fighting corruption.
50:55So there was a lot of corruption in the Kuomintang.
50:57But then also another reason that they were unpopular is because they were just seen as so out of touch.
51:04And, you know, in English, we use this term gerontocracy, which in the US, more and more people talk about
51:09how there's a gerontocracy.
51:11You see, Biden was obviously like a walking zombie.
51:14Trump is also very old.
51:16I mean, many US politicians are in the 70s, even their 80s.
51:21So the Kuomintang was run by these guys who were like, you know, in their 70s and 80s.
51:27And people were like, we need young blood.
51:29We need kind of a new spirit.
51:31And Zhang Liyuan represents this relatively younger generation who is also they're not they're not children of the Cold War.
51:39However, when they think of China today, they're not thinking of the Cold War and then the civil war between
51:45the communists and the Kuomintang.
51:47They recognize that the Chinese mainland today has developed so much.
51:51And economically, it's the largest trading partner.
51:55And it's the future.
51:56I mean, is Taiwan going to trade with the US?
51:58The US is a declining power, especially economically.
52:01So it's just so obvious that for so many reasons that people in Taiwan recognize that they're going to, over
52:08time, reunify with the Chinese mainland.
52:11And I think now this new, relatively younger leadership of the Kuomintang recognizes that it's inevitable.
52:17So they want to make sure that it's done on favorable terms.
52:22What a tour de force.
52:24I can't believe people are getting this for free.
52:26Ben, you should definitely do a whole class on this and charge people for it.
52:30That's that's a lot of gold in there.
52:32And I'll never charge for it.
52:35You're too good of an anti-imperialist to do that.
52:39I'm an inherently cynical person.
52:41And I, from the bottom of my heart, I hope that what Zheng Li-wen is doing is to establish
52:46a united front, just like what Sun Yen-sen did in the 1920s and early 1930s.
52:51But I also think, to some degree, the old guards in the party, Julie Luen's, the Huang Shuyus, their party
52:58is still there.
52:58And they're going to curb her whenever she wants to do a real peaceful negotiation, a peaceful reunification type negotiation.
53:05But hope, God, that you're right and I'm wrong.
53:08And I will go ahead.
53:10You could be right.
53:11But what leverage do they have?
53:13The other big factor here is that, you know, the previous leverage they had was the U.S. support.
53:19Right.
53:19But we already talked about why, for several reasons, the U.S. has had to back off on this issue
53:24because of the threat of war, which would be catastrophic, because of the importance of companies like TSMC, because of,
53:31you know, the ability of the Chinese mainland to retaliate with export restrictions and controlling rare earths and all of
53:37this.
53:38Like the Kuomintang doesn't have many options, which is why, like I said, Zhang Li-wen recognizes that they want
53:44to broker some kind of deal that gives them still an advantage.
53:49Because otherwise they won't have, you know, those concessions that are made by the mainland.
53:54And they recognize this is an inevitability at this point.
53:57And I should point out that Zhang Li-wen, when she was young, she was a separatist when she first
54:03got involved in politics.
54:04And as she's matured politically, she's now recognized that that ship sailed long ago.
54:09It's just not realistic at this point.
54:11Yeah.
54:11You see, Ben, I think that's the difference between me and I.
54:13I see Zhang Li-wen's policy shift as an opportunist.
54:17I say, wow, this person just a couple of years ago were saying stuff like that, and now she's doing
54:22stuff like this.
54:23And you see him, you see her as a person who's transformed by a more mature political outlook.
54:28And I applaud you for that.
54:29And, you know, Mimi just-
54:31She's just responding to the change in the geopolitics in the world.
54:35Like, you have to.
54:36This is- it's like all these European leaders and even Canada's prime minister who have all been visiting Beijing
54:43in the past few months.
54:44It's not because they all suddenly love China.
54:50And this was another episode of China Now, a show that opens a window to the present and future of
54:56the Asian giant.
54:57And hope you enjoy it.
54:58See you next time.
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