Trump's Biggest Failure

[Music] somewhere more less close to you there's a prison and in that prison a business transaction took place today with the currency use being anything from ramen noodles to cigarettes prison economies are frowned upon that justice systems mostly tried to destroy them they're also a testament to something else the power of one of our most basic instincts the drive to want stuff wanting stuff has been part of the human experience since as far back as we can tell and when people want other people's stuff there are two ways of doing so you can take their stuff or pay for their stuff and if you pay for their stuff that means that the money you spend will increase someone else's wealth which is why states throughout most of history decided to bring up strict trade barriers and criminalized to trade between competing empires all except for one because that one was the one everyone was buying from almost 2,000 years the world revolved around China and all those empires kingdoms and Republic's that banned trade amongst themselves all traded with China in Europe the Middle East and America our understanding of history is dominated by this hemisphere of the world with an emphasis in the last 200 years however you gain a lot of insight by viewing human history from a Eurasian perspective specifically the geopolitical maneuvering around China the Chinese market and Chinese products our dominated European Middle Eastern and even African economies form as 2,000 years the Chinese at the world's largest labor pool the world's most efficient state and the world's most wanted products silk tea salt sugar porcelain and spices were China's main export and the only payment they accepted or silver European Asian and African states fought wars over the control of these lucrative trade routes Greeks Romans Persians Byzantium Venetians Indians Mongols Arabs Turks many of the wars we know from our history books were fought to gain a more favorable position by conquering trade routes or ports in the world order the Eurasian World Order within which China was dominant economic power and doing those squabbles a big game changer happened during the 1300s the Ottomans who gained control of tray routes between Europe and China and didn't lose control over them for hundreds of years Europeans didn't like trading with Muslims let alone paying tariffs to them so they tried finding ways around the English and Dutch tried sailing around Russia where they only found more Russia the Spanish sailed west finding a place they had never heard of before and the Portuguese sailed around Africa all of them did this for one reason find new trade routes to China and only one of them succeeded this new trade route meant that the Portuguese had to pay no more tariffs and taxes as they would have through other trade routes and was so profitable that they tried to keep it secret from others which of course didn't work and others immediately tried taking it from them the Spaniards uncovered silver in the new world which they used in their transactions with China eventually even gaining a foothold in the Philippines to be closer to that trade route but it was the new world where all the silver was mined that ultimately would lead to a change in the world order settlers who started to grow crops on what turned out to be some of the most fertile lands in the world started producing surplus that could sustain a large population deber increasing the labor pool of the Western Hemisphere which through innovation spurned on to expand trade made products that decrease the reliance on those Feist and markets the English and Dutch noticed that you could just occupy India and Indonesia rather than buy their products through the Chinese which further decreased China's geopolitical dominance suddently china seemed far less important and so that the trade routes to it different trade routes to India the Caribbean Malacca the Gold Coast Brazil and North America became more important and by the time Europeans learned to make their own porcelain China's relevance in global trade and affairs was getting eroded with industrialization and increase in education the geopolitical center of the world shifted away from a Eurasian world order to a more euro American world order that shift completed itself in 1839 when the British Navy forced the Chinese to open its market and trade with them on their terms the predominant global powers from that moment on are to be found in the Western Hemisphere and engaged in squabbles and conflicts over which one of them was the most dominant with one of them eventually ending up on top there are many names for the time period starting in the 1800's to today Pax Britannica Pax Americana modern age space age information age atomic age machine age age of ideology contemporary age plastic age and more whatever we name it it's a result of European expansion innovation and exploration starting in the 1400s with the initial goal of finding new trade routes to China and it ended with Europeans not buying but taking their stuff and their geopolitical influence thereby ending an almost two thousand year long geopolitical world in which China stood at the center and whatever you may call the centuries of European global dominance you shouldn't forget one important aspect of it but we often tend to forget and many don't even know the Chinese also have a name for it you take a moment and look at everything on your desk your pockets are on your skin most of what you used to watch this video what you wear to stay warm and what you might eat drink or smoke as you watch this is important this is so normal to us that it never really stands out to us drinking Spanish wine with Brazilian grapes to complement the taste of Italian cheese it's a rare shirt made in Turkey with cotton produced in India you might then share this video with an app produced by an American on a firm assembled in China or plastic parts made of Saudi oil in a German chemical plant powered by batteries made of lithium mined in Chile and functioning due to various microchips made of aluminium mined from Australia cobalt from the Congo Russian nickel and Chilean copper our modern consumer existence is however only a recent reality and we can put an exact date on when it came to be April 26th 1956 if you remember from the previous chapter for centuries trade was a weapon empires who competed for trade routes strictly criminalized trade between empires attempting to gain monopolies and exploit the market needs of others foreign-made products were rare dif existent at all only came from colonies that's until a certain Scotsman observed the group of smugglers illegally entering England with products made in France he started asking himself why they did that why they risk their lives and punishment to import foreign goods and then had a realization sat down and wrote a series of books which many today mistakenly believed to be just one book in book four of systems of political economy he criticized the existent mercantile economic system that banned foreign imports trade with foreign powers and in foreign markets increases the wealth of domestic craftsmen and merchants increases productivity through the import of resources used in the domestic industry merchants and businessmen are never content with domestic markets but will continuously seek to expand both their markets and wealth the market should therefore be set free from the restraints of sovereign geopolitical concern and the wealth the manufacturers and merchants acquire will increase the wealth of the nation his works were well received but Britain clung on to a closed colonial preferential trading system the Dutch embrace his ideas but nowhere where his ideas as widely accepted studied and implemented as in the new world the American nation that was violently birthed from a British tax dispute Korean productivity for its ever increasing labor pool gradually over the course of a century changing the economic balance of the world and increasing its own dominance and the core tenant of that ever-increasing economic power was an urge to sell want that ever-increasing labor pool produced to as many as possible the Americans did so by breaking down trade barriers by forced negotiation or forceful negotiation Central America South America Japan Caribbean Philippines China while other empires went toward to take other people's stuff the Americans went to war to sell their stuff and their biggest triumph came when European imperial ambitions flared up so high they burnt themselves to the ground a condition for American entry into that Hall was a disbandment of all colonial preferential trading systems 1945 was the year of a global American triumph that would allow it to use its massive labor pool to sell its products to markets far and wide there was however a problem the structures of limited economic systems had engrained themselves within the logistics of whatever global trade had existed until then shipping was a tedious process in which everything from ready-made machines grain cars and coal was tightly packed into the hull of a ship entire Harbor industries and networks developed around this process and the loading of a ship could take up to a week until the 26th of April 1956 when the ideal X set sail across the Atlantic this doesn't look very special there's an old converted World War - Liberty Ship what made it special was its cargo containers the previous year the American businessman Malcolm McLean frustrated with the immense difficulties of loading and unloading goods on ships trucks and trains came up with the idea of a standard measure metal box specific for trade unified international dimensions and easy to transport the Americans would not adopt the metric system but they certainly knew how to use it this invention of the 26th of April 1956 a dates that will go down in human history of similar significance as the invention of the to press it completely revolutionized global trade suddenly everything could be transported quickly efficiently at low cost across the entire world America's goods fueled consumer economies around the world American industry could cheaply and compactly import anything from bananas to metals needed an industry an integral network of interdependent markets developed that created our modern world but the Americans also quickly learn something else Germans make damn good cars so do the Japanese and the Koreans Mexican label is cheaper than Michigan labor Swiss banks were better at hiding financial misdeeds than Wall Street firms French medical devices are excellent the German chemical industry efficient Chilean miners produce more copper at less of a cost the global free market the Americans championed meant that in this global economy the winners were determined by innovation and labor costs and for the most part despite all difficulties it still worked out for them for a time because across the ocean the Chinese were internationally isolated and busy trying to achieve communism through a famine imagine doing the same thing for three thousand years that's pretty much what China did for three thousand years it was ruled by an absolute monarch whose rule was legitimized by the Mandate of Heaven a way of saying he keeps harmony through godly grace if you have a problem seeing the significance compare these three thousand years to what happened in Europe crap at the same time China had a great starting position in the game of civilizations based around a fertile valley with a large labor pool resources everyone wanted a technology that produced products that everyone wanted and natural borders that made it unattractive to invasion so for three thousand years the worst had happened was a few invasions by Mongols and Regas who stayed and became Chinese thereby not really changing anything well the country is splitting up into warring States who couldn't agree or who should be Emperor of all it was a comfortable situation to be in and that's where China's problems began it was too comfortable they had everything they wanted and needed right at their doorstep ascribed to a state policy and philosophy of preserving the status quo and shunning outside influences innovations and reforms Outsiders was seen as mere barbarians who should be grateful that the Emperor dignified their existence by taking their silver while Arabs Turks and then the Europeans innovated and explored to find new ways and means to get to what the Chinese had the Chinese sat back and did nothing because they had all they wanted the result was a political culture of complacency arrogance and shunning of all things new modern and foreign the first British trading missions to China offered the Chinese the newest and most modern technological advances in deep water navigation naval technology military technology and education and the Chinese rejected their offer in Latin because that was the language with those Europeans they had the trade deals with the fact that the Romans had stopped existing over a thousand years ago didn't matter to them in their cultural mindset to dem the British were the same barbarians as the Romans those technologies which is barbarian trinkets and the British should be grateful that the Emperor would take their silver for a few tea leaves because from the perspective of an 18th century Chinese official the only thing that had continuity and merit was the Chinese Empire and it's heavenly mandate which had existed for thousands of years compared to that who are those British with their ships modern muskets modern army compared to 3,000 years of imperial continuity the end of the world order [Music] there are colonial legacies in many countries in few places does that legacy reverb the rate as heavily as it does here China entered a century of foreign domination and dictates and unlike its neighbors its Emperor's were unwilling to adapt and assimilate into a modern world resulting in a growing number of dissenters who concluded that the old world was indeed what had to be overthrown so ended the world's longest continuous social order and monarchy when China formed its first Republic in 1911 but strangely things continued as they did before just under new flags China split up into warring States as it had so many times before with strongmen weeding each other out until only the strongest were left with completely new mandates of heaven only this time it came with the intervention of a foreign force that under the guise of liberation brutally slaughtered its way through the country in acts of cruelty and barbarity the world had seldom seen before or since [Music] what China ended up with in the end was a Mandate of Heaven written by a German to establish heaven on earth and it tried to do so by adopting the same disdain for outsiders that the Empire had replaced her and by starving its people it had also lost all of the geopolitical influence at once had resulting in great isolation and its leader decided with the same wisdom that caused a famine to further that isolation even more from 1950 onward Communist China went to war and fought border skirmishes with every single one of its neighbors culminating in 1979 when a battered America of the fighting out of fear Vietnam becoming a Chinese puppet left Vietnam only to then see the Chinese invade Vietnam because it refused to be their puppet which ended about as well as it did for the Americans [Music] by the 1980s when the global economy was roaring and international trade boomed like it never had before China was one of the most isolated nations in the world before Nixon's visit it had more in common with North Korea than any other country a nation of indoctrinated almost starving peasants and boiler suits reciting the texts of the Dear Leader at every opportunity when China entered an era of economic restructuring on the den shopping it did so not as a geopolitical certainty not to amass the wealth and power it has now but a move out of desperation to break free from international isolation China had lost many things throughout the last decades its dignity brains global influence regional hegemony puppet States an entire generation several national treasures and the strategically important island all it had to show for it was a second hand RAM shacks a Viet nuclear-weapons program but it had still one very valuable asset the world's largest labor pool just as in the Soviet Union Chinese economy was stagnant and dysfunctional by the 1970s unlike the Soviet Union the Chinese Communist Party realized that continuing as if war was a right was a recipe for disaster therefore it introduced an economic reform program first they broke up the collectivized farms and gave the land back to the peasants communism would no longer be achieved through the fan then they permitted private enterprise and foreign investment China was to be turned into the world's factory for plastic rubbish the small independent peasants generated a reliable food supply lost more and more companies moved production of cheap plastic products to China by the late 1980s government price controls were abolished allowing people to sell produce and products at prices determined by the market state industries were privatized and the Shanghai Stock Exchange was reopened for the first time in 40 years the Chinese were now for the first time in decades themselves invested in the private economy political liberalisation was attempted but resulted in a series of events that the government insists never happened and large economic liberalisation didn't occur until the 2000s when the army was forced to give up its businesses Mao's large welfare state was cut down and large-scale privatization made percent of China's economy private this point at around 2005 is when our story in our lifetimes begins [Music] the scale and size of China's economic growth left most of the world baffled and bewildered for decades and the American leadership a policy of market liberalisation had been championed in what Reagan championed as a capitalist offensive it was believed that open markets free trade and individual prosperity and wealth would bring freedom and democracy the tyrannical regimes only need to open their economies to free trade and the resulting middle class would hastened the downfall of the regime by demanding political freedoms Reagan was wrong the world found itself confronted with authoritarian capitalism instead and even though some analysts believe this to be a new phenomenon the truth of the matter is that offer a terror and free market nations have existed throughout history and most authoritarian regimes collapsed through revolutions led by the impoverished and not a middle class demanding political privileges it would be wrong though this see China as a simple or fruitarian capitalist state or to conclude that it no longer is a communist country the years of the most exponentially economic growth coincided with the return of more conservative communist forces into power and the who Jintao he tightened the single party control of the state stopped privatization created a system of national champions in which state-owned industry and their managers and massive bonuses if they could run businesses that successfully competed with private enterprise communist power is not merely exercised from within the Politburo but stretches from the chat in the streets social media chat rooms to decisions made in the boardrooms of corporations who have to toe to the Communist Party line because here is an uncomfortable truth that we are only just starting to realize China's economic growth blinded us it prevented us from seeing how its society developed and what it developed into and how [Music] gee itching pins story is a story tied deeply to the great story the story of the country itself it's a story in stark contrast to the one of the current President of the United States she is a red prince the son of one of the founding revolutionaries of the Chinese communist state Gee's jongshin a hero of the civil wars against chinese nationalist forces and built a solid defensive war economy during the japanese invasion after the war he was a member of the central committee moving with his family into a wing of the Imperial Palace of Beijing this is where using pins spent his early childhood as famines ravaged the mainland Jie enjoyed a privileged life and education amongst the party elite living in what was once the emperor's palace until 1966 [Music] when the Cultural Revolution swept the land the G family lost everything his father was publicly denounced as a reactionary imprisoned and forced through humiliating rituals of self-deprecation and public humiliation the family like most other high-ranking communist officials were forced out of the inner circles of power and the son was stripped from his father and the privileges he wants had G had a choice denounce his own father or risk ostracization and even death G chose to denounce his father and was clustered into a re-education system in which he had to constantly recite Mao and denounce his own family over and over and over again at age 15 the former Red Prince was sent to agricultural re-education a program in which the Chinese urban youth were collected onto trucks shipped out to the barren wastes of the outermost Chinese countryside to perform dangerous hard farming labor G would spend the teenage years of his life digging ditches breaking stones and playing fields he would not be freed from this until MAOIs adorned finally died [Music] after which she went to study chemistry graduating with a degree in organic chemistry as the former communist party elites and red Prince's regained the power they had held before Mars def G through his father's influence received the job as the secretary of the Minister of Defence but it was then when he did something unexpected that separates him from other red Prince's but also from other world leaders he refused to play the game of his father's political influence and decided not to take advantage of family ties as other red Prince's had when she filed for membership of the Communist Party he purposefully removed his father from his membership application G removed himself from all influences father had and started out as a minor official in an insignificant backdrop district in the countryside of northern China he worked himself up to the position of governor and slowly gathered a reputation as a reliable and efficient party official gaining the position of governor of the important province of Shanghai and joining the Politburo in 2007 of which he would a few years later become the leader [Music] she is in many ways what Trump falsely claims to be a child of privilege who on purpose removed himself from that influence to build his own success why though because Mao's Cultural Revolution had left deep mark on the man while others sought to regain powerful positions of the past ji believed that the Maoist critique of party cliques had a truth to it the idea that an official could rise to power through family ties and that an almost hereditary system of governments in a communist state could establish itself or something she heavily disliked only those who prove themselves the most capable and loyal to the Communist cause should be those to lead in recent years in many a place in urban China statues of Marx and communist icons came down to be replaced with statues of Confucius Lao Tzu and Sun Tzu observers in the West interpreted this as a cultural shift away from revolutionary Marxist social doctrine gradually shifting back to traditional values as a market liberalisation took place that those disenfranchised by Mao came back to have their revenge but they couldn't have been further from the truth neither Confucius Lao Tzu or Sun Tzu when anyway free-market pioneers let alone Paragons of democracy but the founding philosophers of a social conservative Chinese Imperial doctrine of the preservation of a status quo through social harmony a harmony through obedience Authority and knowing where your place in society is values and standards that the Chinese could not only identify with through a more historic identity formed through a new nationalism that encourages its people to take pride in the nation's pre communist past but values that served the desire of the Chinese state a state whose priority is that in all policies harmony must always be preserved at home Zhi Jing pings bid for the Chinese presidency may have started by him conjuring up a self-image as a liberal reformer but doubt of the sincerity behind it was soon confirmed of the Politburo document leaked to the public a memo written she outlining his policy doctrine to all members of the Politburo known as document number nine its leaker dissident journalists was sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence for leaking state secrets the document is a list of what she considers to be the seven biggest enemies of the Chinese state constitutional democracy universal values individual rights economic liberalism free and independent journalism the spreading of historic truths about Mao Zedong and communist crimes and the critiquing of Chinese socialism G's vision of China is one of a society in order and prosperity obedient to its leadership this is a country in which the public shaming zuv the Cultural Revolution are still alive with exhibitions in town halls showing and shaming condemned people a country in which posting the wrong thing on social media can get you not only a prison sentence but to be publicly shamed on national television [Music] this is a country in which the president is welcomed by the new staff like a boss or colleague rather than being questioned this is a country with a surveillance system never before seen in human history in terms of how deep it can stare into the private lives of its citizens and the economic growth blinded many to see for the growing profits to realize that the society behind it was still very much an offer at Aryan communist state modern China merely ascribes to more pragmatic communism than other entities it doesn't wish to end up like North Korea so it engages in international organizations and diplomacy it doesn't want to end up like the Soviet Union so it partially liberalized its markets but geez China also seeks to legitimize its regime by attempting to tithe to the larger history and story of China a history it once shunned has been made though and figures once denounced have been resurrected as nationalist heroes of an independent China but most crucially to XI and G's main mission and agenda is to rebuild the geopolitical power that this past Empire once had key to that is a largely unknown politician she's chief foreign policy adviser Wang hooning who formulated she's foreign policy doctrine of prosperity through Authority known as the Chinese to him [Music] sanaya cessation it's a word you have probably never heard before it has a small Wikipedia article that doesn't do the term justice and even though I am not someone who likes to make predictions I will wager that this is a term you will be hearing a lot more from politicians demagogues and media outlets in the next 20 years it's similar to Islamization in that it is a word describing a real process definitely a historic event but is also a word easily abused by demagogues so what is Sina's ization what we called the Chinese are the Han Chinese in fact many of the stereotypes associated with China are not even Chinese these tight silk dresses as well as this hairstyle are not Han Chinese but Manchu who are an ethnic minority of northern China that came to rule the Empire throughout its last 200 years the Han Chinese originated from the fertile valleys of the Yellow River Basin so the question is how did they end up ruling all of this the answer is sinners ization when the Han conquered people who bordered them they didn't just levy taxes from them and establish a tributary as so many ancient empires did they engaged in an aggressive cultural assimilation and language and food and bureaucracy Han culture and festivities hand taxes Han administration Han laws Han marriages and everything until the once conquered peoples turned into Han once done you look at those who boarded a newly assimilated Han and repeat the process throughout thousands of years a small Kingdom at the basin of the Yellow River stretched its influence out from the deserts of Central Asia to the Himalayas to the steppes of Mongolia to the jungles of Southeast Asia from Turkic Horseman Russian migrants Koreans and Vietnamese ethnic groups the Han assimilated them all into one Empire and the language and culture only a few ethnic enclaves remain mostly in the outer border lands of the parent steppes of Inner Mongolia the isolated villages of the Himalayas the gobi desert small communities were in towns hidden in the labyrinthian plateaus of southern China to give you an idea of how effective this process is the indigenous people of what we now know as Taiwan while austronesians dark-skinned vote faring communities of fishermen and warriors who originated from Madagascar in language and culture they had more in common with the New Zealand Maori or Hawaiians who they were related to and when the Chinese arrived in the 1600s slowly over the course of four hundred years of Sina's ization they were turned into earth our chinese with segments of Austronesian culture intertwined in a largely Chinese people throughout the last centuries China has changed more so than many other nations yet some things seem to not have changed at all the assimilation of peoples is now more forceful but it is also worth pointing out that Muslims being force-fed pork or Tibetans having a communist clergy appointed by the state in many ways reflects the sinners ization of past Chinese states that's because every communist entity inherits the geopolitical struggles and ambitions of the entities it replaces the Soviet Union sought out warm ports and Eastern European Dominion just as the Russian Empire had East Germany sought out unification and global recognition just as previous German entities had Vietnam sought out independence and Poland sought out sovereignty Communist China not only inherited a revived populist nationalism and the desire to assimilate foreigners from its forebears of the same geopolitical ambitions to restore Chinese Dominion and power before the century of humiliation China was the unquestioned regional power with a vast tributary system under which many foreign kings bowed to them Korea bent its knee to the Emperor's will Persian Arab and even African Kings lined up to pay tribute the islands of Malaysia and Indonesia had kings and Sultan's bending to the Empress by far the biggest nuisance were the Mongols who at one point were pacified and the Vietnamese who refused to be Chinese puppets and basically rose up in rebellion once every 100 years in an endless cycle of Chinese invasion Vietnamese kicking them out followed by Chinese invasion and vice versa that lasted for almost 1500 years establishing almost a pattern of Vietnam spending its history kicking out foreign invaders this Chinese dominion over Asia however came with many resentments the Japanese who despite what Japanese nationalists will tell you were once a Chinese tributary were the first to tell the Chinese to sod off the Dutch snatched Indonesia when the Vietnamese kicked out the Chinese again in 1804 the gazillion 'the time the french took advantage and invaded Vietnam piece after piece Chinese spheres of influence were snatched by other powers and this came not only with a colonial legacy in these countries but with the backlash against ethnic Chinese in these regions as China's power waned Chinese minorities in Asia got the brunt from Vietnam to Malaysia culminating in 1966 and under the trumped-up justification of purging communists and Islamist Indonesian government massacred it's Chinese minority in a largely forgotten genocide the founding of Singapore in many ways was due to a city with a Chinese majority being unwilling to bow to a Muslim majority of Malayan state in Malaysia itself ethnic Chinese lived for decades as secondhand citizens in that state Vietnam despite being communist as well as North Korea shunned closer relations with their wants Imperial Overlord in favor to closer ties with the Soviet Union to their stay despite the fact that many of these East Asian Nations spent almost a century at each other's throats were at the throats of others many are united in distrust and suspicion over there big neighbor who once had held dominion over them all that distrust runs so deep that Vietnam when opening to the outside world again first opened to the United States before it did to China when rebuilding the sphere of influence China once had it faces an enormous set of challenges it operates in a sphere dominated by the Americans the states it used to command and control are not only independent but deeply distrustful of her but China is determined especially under she to rebuild what it once had and the best way of doing so is by observing how others had gained it in the 1850s the Chinese economy collapsed the reason was that its market was flooded with cheap products manufactured and imported from Europe and North America Chinese manufacturers simply couldn't compete giving foreign producers and countries power over the Chinese economy can return this concept around on its head check Britain gained hong kong in 1843 by leasing it from china for 99 years britain did so as part of war reparations that china had to pay how can we turn that around without all the costs of war the chinese dream policy of Xi Jinping built a large system of loans in which countries that had trouble receiving loans from Western financial institutions due to instability and the offer a tear in nature of their regime could easily receive such countries like Sri Lanka Sri Lanka went through a decades-long Civil War with many a human rights violation ethnic cleansing and other horrible deeds that made it unwelcome to many Western creditors Sri Lanka however also happens to sit on a linchpin of the global economy shipping between the Middle East Africa Europe and Asia goes fruit Sri Lanka Sri Lanka took a large loan to build a deepwater harbour to take part in global trade and profit from its geographically beneficial location however Sri Lanka couldn't pay that loan back to its creditors who were the Chinese government to which the Chinese had a simple solution just lease us this port for 99 years now China owns and controls a port at one of the world's most important locations with workers exclusively Chinese Sri Lankan workers protested but the Sri Lankan police were ordered to crackdown this process repeated itself throughout many a country Pakistan couldn't pay back the massive loan it had taken from China no problem just lease us this scrap of beach Gwadar which has a natural harboured a few hundred years ago used to be one of the main sea routes between Arabia Africa and Central Asia and sure enough the Chinese built a deepwater Harbor and populated it with Chinese workers this process repeated itself in Tanzania Djibouti Kenya Mozambique the Maldives Bangladesh and Burma in Malaysia the Chinese government gave the Malaysian government of investment to build a completely new city filled with financial and business centers massive apartment complexes and large educational facilities right next to Singapore to compete with and take away some of its business and influence on the Malacca Straits making free vast artificial islands and filling them with skyscrapers and properties far too late the Malaysian government find out where the vast majority of apartments and property were sold to the mainland Chinese and that this deepwater port and financial centre would essentially be a Chinese outpost in the Malacca Straits in the 1600s the Dutch and Portuguese built a vast trade empire for not conquering and colonizing vast lands but by establishing small trade ports and forts called factorio with which they could establish and guard exclusive trading routes around the world today's analysis --tz-- make all what the Chinese are doing the string of pearls strategy but looking at all the Chinese are doing it doesn't seem very new in fact it's almost like they spent the last century studying the histories of past empires to think of ways to copy them and what is going on here is very obvious it's a Chinese attempt to gain control over the trade networks of the Indian and East Asian Oceans what is less obvious is what you don't see when you connect the dots not a single path leads to India far from just a mere economic power play this geopolitical initiative seeks to isolate its main continental rival from the global trade networks that are being established in Papua New Guinea China is building a railroad network Fiji and Timor Leste all leased ports to the Chinese and some of them don't even make any sense why would you need a deepwater Harbor on an island in the middle of nowhere at the outer rim of the Pacific it has no economic value only strategic value if you were to say guard the asian-pacific against anything that might be coming from the American Pacific coastline we've saved some battle cruisers or some aircraft carriers the China had been secretly building however many insisted that there was nothing to worry about the Chinese government always insisted that it would never have foreign military bases it always criticized the Americans for having such and that it would never do what it called the American Way of geopolitics its harbors from Pakistan to Djibouti would never host Chinese troops and warships G even publicly stated this at a press conference with Obama at the White House just a few years later barely into a year of trumps election the Chinese Navy and Chinese Marines were stationed in Djibouti this is largely unknown to the public which was largely distracted at the time with news stories about the pedantic squabbling around Trump's election Djibouti is a key location in the world it lies at the Horn of Africa the French Americans British Italian Spanish and even the Germans of troops stationed there it's from we're all anti-piracy operations in the region are commanded it allows for quick access to most of the Middle East and suddenly out of the blue Chinese soldiers were there with the world distracted but Trump's first year office things suddenly moved quickly a Chinese military base popped up in Cambodia and Chinese troops set up base in the Afghan Highlands but most curious and surprising of all Chinese troops were stationed in Tajikistan for centuries since the Russians drove out the Mongols they seized control of Central Asia to ensure no Asians would ever surprise them again but in recent years so distracted with trying to interfere and gain power in the West Russia didn't even notice China slowly nibbling away at its backyard China became an expert at finding and taking advantage of opportunities finding moments when the world was distracted and turning what seemed at first to be disasters into an opportunity one of trumps first actions in office was to pull out of the trans-pacific partnership a free trade agreement between various Pacific nations but rather than just being a failure and defeat for China as Trump and his supporters expected it to be the Chinese turned it into opportunity that played exactly into their hands leading the negotiations for a new free trade agreement without the Americans within which day would be the dominant power the 15th of January 2017 are they that will go down in the history books is when China had one of its greatest triumphs at the World Economic Forum an event hosted by the elites of global capitalism the president of the Chinese communist state was the opening speaker lecturing the world on how to do proper and more free trade and how his nation would take a leading position in such America's president wasn't even present China has played an increasing role in opening markets and has through that increased its global power and influence but what is China's free trade Chinese dream outside from the ports it builds and trade routes it aims to control Africa has for decades being a continent plagued by stagnant economies and lack of Commerce the reason for this is to be found that the sheer enormity of barriers set up by individual countries only 17% of trade by African countries is done with other African countries take for example Cameroon moving goods from Cameroon to its neighbor Chad a one-day truck trip of 600 miles costs six times as much as moving goods from Cameroon over 7,500 miles to Hongkong the tariffs regulations and taxes in place were created in a post-colonial era a nationalist and socialist African leaders to create national economic self-sufficiency but in the end crippled many African economies incidentally African countries that have recently done well also the ones that did away with these archaic restrictions and this is where China saw an opportunity for its free trade concept that in the end isn't all that free very tall Yahoo descend in Germany anti-union food either football adisyl waitin waitin we're in detention ultra occupy changes the fate of multi-sheet Foucault automata trunk or Yahweh fate o to eat a tomorrow Jota so a Tron question simple boot Anita Newton Geeta a Pavan tree tree fatal dg2 tensor Christian gonna be the father paid intern charge Hongkong featuring sequency guys about resources in exchange for infrastructure consume in exchange for education China's move into Africa was predominantly to create one thing above all a source of material to make products and to create new markets to which to sell these products Africa is to be a new Chinese outlet market to buy Chinese goods but not for China to necessarily buy any African manufactured goods this is the concept China wishes to implement throughout its sphere of influence everyone should line up to buy Chinese goods and work to be able to buy those goods and in the end there is nothing new about it it's almost like a return to the old pre American world order a trading bloc and crucially for this trading bloc it is unified by one thing the offer at Aryan rulers of their states the Chinese want to sell to these countries far more than just phones for consumer economies what the DS Venezuelan riot police Kenyan troops in Somalia Ecuadorian police and sudden ease soldiers all have in common they all used Chinese equipment Chinese armed vehicles specifically built for riot control Chinese personnel carriers Chinese mass surveillance systems and Chinese rifles during the Cold War the Democratic world found itself confronted with an undemocratic bloc of Nations that restricted itself from full participation in global trade as well as from cooperation with all four returned regimes of differing ideologies China takes a more pragmatic approach an international Blanc bound in trade united by the leadership's desire to remain in power no matter what its ideologies may be China declared it four can trade blog to be United for a common experience as victims of Western imperialism yet also copies will doze old empires once implemented in preferential trading Blox and outlet markets [Music] [Applause] like in this rifle you have probably seen this rifle even before this video it's the standard-issue Chinese army assault rifle the type 95 it's an OK rifle by all accounts and one thing that makes it really great is that it's incredibly cheap to make and therefore to sell it's so cheap in fact that if it were to be on sale on the world's biggest private firearm market it is estimated most American firearm owners would get one but it isn't and won't be for a while after the way the Chinese government behaved during an event that the Chinese government denies ever happened the administration of Bush 41 banned all Chinese manufactured weapons from sale in the United States a ban every single president since has upheld the same way the Americans found themselves confronted with the problem that some free market countries are not free China found itself confronted with the problem of free market countries that are free and those free countries might limit their trade based on how your unfree government may behave they are accountable to the public for democracy and law the public in such countries might not approve of business with dictatorships or backdoor dealings with them so what do you do with these pesky democracies luckily right around the corner there's a testing ground [Music] big far from other democracies and their attention a place ideal to test things such as prison colony systems nuclear weapons or just to deport the Irish to ideal to test how the Chinese dream would go with democracy if you pick up one of the Chinese school books that millions of children's across China are educated with you will find within it what the Chinese state thinks of parliamentary democracy it's a mess of infighting interest groups that compete for power debbye undermining of people a system that serves discord and undermines social harmony a system easily undermined for interest groups corruption and populism are using a way to overrated ideal of free speech as well as money to undermined the well-being of the country competing interests sideline what should actually match the state itself you could as many do sit back and see this as nothing but the Chinese communist state giving justification to its people for their own existence but there's more to it than that it's party program and not a lie it's how the Politburo its soldiers its bureaucrats and its diplomats see the democracies of the world or democratic societies value as their strengths China sees as their inherent most vulnerable weaknesses weaknesses to be exploited and the mining boom was the perfect launching pad to start off coal mined in Australia and sold to China created Australian jobs dependent on a Chinese market it formed the backbone of ever greater business times from coal to milk to aluminium to beef a third of all Australian exports are banal shipped to China suddenly Chinese billionaires with ties to the Communist Party of you investing into Australian business donating to candidates and seeking ever closer ties into the inner circles of Australian Government's estroux of Australian politicians were forced to resign after taking large donations or just outright bribes from wealthy Chinese individuals with close ties to the Beijing Politburo China presented itself to Labour's fellow Social Democrats concerned with the welfare and well-being of the word young people while presenting itself to the Conservatives as savvy investors and job creators ensuring that no matter who may be in the Prime Minister's Office Beijing would get its slice of the cake anti racism social justice organizations with suspiciously close ties to Beijing set out to find shame and condemn those who dared speak of an ever encroaching Chinese influence meanwhile China started buying into valuable Australian assets sold off by conservative governments such as ever-increasing Chinese ownership of Australia's drinking water rights a crucial resource in a country like Australia Australian ministers forced into resignation over corruption probes hold speeches on and promote the ever-increasing economic interdependence between Australia and China which by and large goes unnoticed by the rest of the world China's portfolio in Australia is by now six point three billion dollars in size in assets such as gas called real estate water and railroads it is by now undeniable that Chinese influence over Australian politics has contributed to decisions the consequences of which Australia will have to struggle with in the future but for China this was just a test run [Music] the concept of Europe is a phrase referring to Europe before the first world Oh a delicate balance of powers amongst competing nations attempting to grow their influence without upsetting the balance to such an extent that others would come down on them adding another world war and the European powers conclude that sharing is caring however the European Union is in many ways still to this day a delicate balance of powers within which positions of power are still sought-after and exercised for more economic and institutional means Outsiders usually don't get involved in this because when they do it usually ends up with everyone hating them for the past decades European countries are more than willing to annoy each other but tend to rally together when Outsiders try to mess with them however in recent years that balance shifted dramatically the euro crisis and recession put Germany in a position of power upsetting European balances of power bailing out heavily indebted countries and forcing strict austerity measures upon them measures that increase more than anywhere else caused social discord resentments poverty and political instability and restructuring the French heavily suspicious of any German gain in power attempted for years to build new alliances of Mediterranean nations in an attempt to create a counterbalance to ever-increasing German power with weird inner European organizations that mostly failed due to the lack of financial economic and political credit to back any of this up but someone else watched all this and saw opportunity Piraeus is a harbour in southern Greece about six miles from Athens the harbor and shipbuilding industry was once the lifeblood of the Greek economy throughout the 70s and 80s little of it remained after the country's economic collapse when China rolled in to buy the port of Piraeus from a left-wing government there were some eyebrows raised but little protest the Chinese promised and worked on making Piraeus the largest Mediterranean and eventually European harbours connected with Chinese built railroads throughout the Balkans the intention is to make Piraeus the destination of all goods transported from Asia to Europe sparked by this China went on a barely noticed shopping to jeonhwa must say valencia bilbao not Lahav Dunkirk Antwerp huge ports bought by Chinese groups across the European coastline a 2018 10% of all European harbours were controlled by China agricultural logistics and Technology firms were bought up in Switzerland including China's biggest foreign asset the agricultural giant Syngenta acquired for forty three billion dollars major Chinese shopping tours were undertaken in Portugal and France such as the Chinese microchip manufacturer Lin sense where corporations once feared Chinese corporate espionage China now just buys them but no country was as eager to sell off as many of its assets as possible to the Chinese as the British even setting up its own British investment fund to manage and promote the sale of British business and assets to the Chinese run by the former British Prime Minister David Cameron by and large Chinese money goes into buying real estate and into the UK's energy sector the intention being to build Chinese nuclear power plants for the UK in the near future British governments seem little concerned in post brexit Britain China can easily present itself as a savvy investor and business partner who are the solution to Britain's future outside of a European market and the opposition doesn't care much either the SNP is just as willing to sell whatever it can sell in Scotland to China and the Labour Party is quite cozy and comfy with XI to the Greeks and Portuguese China presented itself as a fellow socialist concerned with the ever increasing Mediterranean poverty presenting itself as a savior from the ruthless capitalism of northern Europe in Eastern Europe China appeals to right-wing authoritarian populist with a common authoritarian less democratic zeal European suspicions didn't start to rise until the Chinese started buying into German car industries and Dutch harbours both of which are industry sectors vital to national economies so it was the Dutch and the Germans who were the first to sound the alarm and suspicion of ever-increasing Chinese economic and fiscal influence in Europe and it may be easy to look and not see much to be worried about but the impact this has had on Europe is nothing short of extraordinary every year the European Union publishes a report on the state of human rights in China a summary of the state of rights and liberties in the country nothing binding but still supposed to be a guideline for European leaders on who to do what kind of business with if any at all as well as the document the United Nations rely on for their overall report China never exactly received the most glamorous of ratings on these but not that it had to worry them because the reports stopped being made in 2018 vetoed by the Greek government one of the largest recipients of Chinese investments Hungary cancelled all commitment to improvement of the human rights situation abroad as part of the European Union its Prime Minister even openly praising China as a reliable system of governance for the future the former French Prime Minister Shah pyaara for her openly argues that with an increasingly volatile United States Europe's future is to abandon its alliance with the United States for deeper ties with China in June 2017 when the French president proposed a law that would bar foreign investors from buying up and taking over strategically important European industries and businesses and protect European workers from foreign practices his proposal backed by almost all of the European left was vetoed by the Socialist prime minister of Portugal who openly told the French president that it was China who had saved Portugal during the crisis and therefore Portugal will protect China in Europe you might find these examples to be too small to care about which they are not but even if you don't see the significance in the policies they represent something extraordinary the danger of which cannot be understated [Music] at the height of its power the Soviet Union was a truly terrifying entity an ideological Empire determined to spread its policies and doctrines as far and wide as possible ruthless and brutal with any and all dissidents owning the largest nuclear arsenal in the world fielding one of the world's most sophisticated and effective spy networks and more than able and willing to use its enormous military might to bully pressure and fight others into submission but the only thing the Soviet Union could do to attempt to influence the policies of European democracies was to threaten and hope it didn't backfire for all its military might and power the only measure the Soviets had to influence European democracies was the application of hard power which more often than not fails completely China accomplished something the Soviets couldn't even dream of soft power China is in Europe's democratic process it's in interest groups in economic and financial ties and can influence the policies of European democracies from inside it can sway political decisions in its favor silenced critique with mere finance push for agendas and cabinets that go in its favors and all of it without force in ways that would have made the KGB turn red and green with envy the architect of it a man barely anyone knows who you see at every state visit of the Chinese President every major political Chinese event and always close to the president Gee's chief foreign policy adviser Wang hooning [Music] the developments described in this video have taken place throughout the past four years and what none of them even illustrate is dean creasing brazenness with which china act in late 2015 book star owners who sold books critical of the Chinese president and government in Hong Kong were kidnapped dragged off to the mainland of China and forced into making confessions to sedition which they retracted once they were free the brazenness with which China had acted caused a stir throughout Hong Kong the resulting protest waves lasts to this day China doesn't even bother hiding the massive redeployment of troops around the protests in Hong Kong doing so while the world watches our memories of those events the government keeps denying our still somewhat fresh the number of political prisoners has increased by the hundreds of thousands set up to be mocked and ridiculed in a legal framework that made public shaming part of the justice system millions of minorities I arrested to be forcefully culturally assimilated in camps out in the borderlands the militarization of the South China Sea which was done with extraordinary speed transforming little reefs into air bases the sudden speed with which China set up foreign army and navy bases and the build-up of the Chinese armed forces itself which by now has reached a capacity of the French army an army that many analysts agreed is built not just for protection of the Chinese mainland but for foreign intervention China has not acted so aggressively on the international stage since the days of Mao and most of the world doesn't even seem to notice China in fact seems to rely on that a world distracted by a clownish American president given ample opportunity to go out and expand its influence in ways nobody predicted and the way Trump engaged China is almost comedic China [Applause] you go over to China China China China China China China China China you take charge China China a soundbite president he shoulda likes to do the talk providing ample sound bytes for Fox News and various online commentators about China this China that but what has actually been done under his leadership pulling out of the TPP gave China an opportunity to expand its influence of the Pacific by inserting itself to leading negotiations for new trade treaties without the Americans so a Trump policy that clearly backfired the Trump policy most celebrated by his supporters other tariffs on Chinese goods exporting made in China to the United States became more expensive so what do you think happened next well they just sold more to others at less of a cost yes after all they spent the recent years opening more markets sometimes you have to wonder what the Trump administration and its supporters fort would happen did they seriously believe that China would come begging for them to lift attacks it gets even better though the Chinese are selling the products that Trump put tariffs on to you the American consumer without tariffs how when the tariffs came up one of the first things the Chinese did was build and open factories in Vietnam and Malaysia take a who why phone what China does is assembled a phone to 90% completion in a Chinese factory then take the unfinished phones shipped them to the factories in Malaysia or Vietnam adds the final microchip get the made in Vietnam or made in Malaysia stamp and ship it off to the United States without paying the tariffs on Chinese goods this is one of the oldest tricks in the books American car manufacturers like to build cars to 90% completion in cheap Mexican factories shipped the slightly unfinished car to the United States add whatever is missing and suddenly the car is made in the USA that Dutch did this with pepper to avoid Danish tariffs in the 1700 s and we even have archaeological evidence of calf jingyan merchants doing this 2,400 years ago with wine this has been part and parcel of commerce long before a certain Scotsman observed it and wrote a book about it it's an outcome that should have been so obvious that I have no idea why the Trump administration thought this wouldn't happen and pass tariffs that essentially are worthless measures so this policy clearly backfired but this policy gets even worse Malaysia and Vietnam are two countries that have always stood in opposition or at the very least suspicion of Chinese influence in the region it's why both these countries so deeper ties with the United States over recent decades Trump turned China into job creators in those countries furthering an economic interdependence that strengthens China's regional power this more than just backfired and is a perfect example of something watching Trump on the international stage with China is like watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon he is consistently outwitted outmaneuvered and taken for a fool at every single opportunity by the Chinese the fundamental problem with Trump and his obnoxious stupid foreign policy is that he believes he is a businessman and drives his foreign policy on that belief the issue with China though is that it is not an economic challenge but the geopolitical challenge which leads Trump to such great political moves as imposing tariffs on China's biggest regional rival India thereby inadvertedly strengthening China any reasonable diplomat or leader with a bare minimum of strategic understanding would have sought out to strengthen ties with India and confronting the ever growing Chinese geopolitical dominance there were many attempts to use trade as a way to outfox China's ever-growing influence trade agreements like the TPP or Obama's failed attempt with a trade agreement with the EU what is essential to either is the existence of a coherent group of countries allied in a common purpose of furthering each other's economic growth and keeping out others but the random nature with which Trump imposes tariffs from goods such as Italian luxury foods to Indian aluminium makes the idea of any coherent bound interest group or alliance in trade evaporate into thin air instead krump seems to be more interested in deliberately berating American allies and partners who increasingly looked at China for a more calm collected predictable and mature partner in commerce he also don't open new markets or making friends by calling them shitholes another factor is simply Trump's clownish presidency itself the fact that this man's Twitter feed can fill up the evening news as China expands its military presence in the South Pacific Africa Central Asia builds more pores and redraws the entire global trading system to be more and more under its thumb speaks volumes of what this president's priorities are namely certainly not his country's role in the world China has taken full advantage of his presidency more so than anyone else to aggressively push further than any previous Chinese government and set its global ambitions into stone while everyone else was distracted with a funny-looking blond man because apparently his presidency is all about triggering the lips and no actual coherent policy he lacks any vision for the future of his country in the world in fact his isolationism the American first nationalism that he proposes is a policy of which he doesn't even seem to understand how much it plays into the hands of the Chinese Politburo China would love nothing more than to return to the old world order where it was the center of everything and everyone revolved their global ambitions around getting as beneficial a position as possible in relation to China the Chinese government would love nothing more than the United States that seals itself off from the world so it can take its place you 20 years from now we will find ourselves in the midst of a new Cold War a cold war that will be nothing like the last one we're simple limitations and trade crippled a communist bloc terminally because it was hell-bent on ideology and refused to give up on catastrophic economic concepts we will find ourselves instead confronted with a block of unfree nations united merely by authoritarian nature a set of states willing to engage in business a communist power for which pragmatic victories are more important than ideological stubbornness an effective leadership of the fishing ruthless and strategically minded leaders determined to make the best out of every opportunity that presents itself and the historians looking back to us will determined that it was this presidency which gave the Chinese enough power to kick it off Trump is China's President of the United States dealing with what will be the most important challenge of our time will require more strategic and sound minds than Trump but also a rethinking of the fundamentals of Western democratic foreign policy the old Cold War assumption that capitalism will bring liberty and democracy died on Tiananmen Square and the ruins of the deregulated free market that Bush created in Iraq or forit Aryan states can have free markets tyrants can prosper on the capitalism market forces can be used to further and spread tyranny Liberty is not inherently tied to Commerce and the new foreign policy to promotes Liberty and democracy above all is needed as is a reassertion of what the values of a free society truly are what makes one free isn't necessarily what makes one wealthy this video was largely inspired by two books the perfect dictatorship China in the 21st century by Steinhagen a Norwegian sociologist and professor of sociology at Oxford a book that will give you a more than sufficient overview of the more than Chinese communist state and the China dream but you Ming who looming who is a Chinese army colonel and member of the Chinese Communist Party the book is a Chinese that raishin on why democracy failed and why in his view there will be a post American Chinese era soon it gives you a great insight into the full process of the Chinese Communist Party and how its members see the world now if you wish to have more videos coming up remember to donate to PayPal or become a patron if you're a patron you will also get to vote on which video I should make next if you wish to give feedback and discuss the video you can join my discord community a link to which is in the description until the next time China

Channel: Kraut

Views: 1,738,388

Rating: 4.7477679 out of 5

Keywords: sinicization, history, China, tariff, trade war, USA, America, election, empire, Tibet, Uighurs, Qing, Mao, Communist, Xi Jingping, Africa, India, Sri lanka, army, Huwai, trade, Manchu, Globalization, geopolitics, Chinese Dream, censors, censorship, Hong Kong, Pakistan, silk road, dictatorship, Stein Ringen, Liu Mingfu, Greece, puppet, tributary, investment, Europe, financial crisis, Australia, corruption, coal, UK, Britain, century, humiliation, opium war, economy, 2020, Trump

Id: hhMAt3BluAU

Length: 69min 22sec (4162 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 16 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/markmywords1347]

Wow. Great watch. Very good insight.

[u/FreedomforHK2019]

You are right and thanks for posting this. Excellent! A MUST WATCH for anyone who wants a better understanding of what the hell is really going on in the minds of the CCP.

[u/Frothy-Water]

Kraut is always a good watch

[u/WhiteKraut]

This is one of the greatest pieces on CCP with context. A must watch