Why the World Needs China | Cyrus Janssen | Thompson Rivers University

cyrus do you need to give up your american citizenship cyrus will your apartment in shanghai have electricity cyrus how far is the drive from orlando florida to shanghai china now these three questions were asked to me in december 2006 let me set the setting for you so i was in my home in my parents home in orlando florida and my parents had organized a party of close friends and family and we're sitting there and i'm about two weeks removed from from heading to shanghai china to begin my career i just graduated university and these were the three most common questions that people had asked me again the first question do you need to give up your american citizenship you see many people in america just were unfamiliar with the concept that i would go to china and that i would actually be an expat of course i don't have to give up my american citizenship i can go and get a work permit in china maybe it was because the fact that china is a communist country they thought i had to relinquish my american passport when somebody asked me cyrus will your apartment in shanghai have electricity well the only thing i could do will show him a picture of pudong this is in shanghai circa october 2006 and i said well look at these beautiful buildings there surely if they can build skyscrapers like this they're going to be filled with electricity and the last question can you drive from florida to china well i don't need to bring up a graph here to show you that obviously we all know there's a pacific ocean in the middle it's impossible to drive from florida to china but again the reason why i bring i open this presentation up today is to show you 14 years ago not many people really understood china and i think it's very important that today that many more people understand china because moving forward china is always going to play a pivotal role in our society and in our world now i believe that many people around the world fear china but the basis for that fear is a lack of understanding so it is the goal today you know to hopefully be able to allow more people to really understand to fill that gap allow more people to understand this country of china now let me introduce myself and give you a little bit of history about what what i've done and who i am my name is cyrus janssen i'm an american expat i've been living around the world for the past 14 years i was very fortunate to spend 10 years in greater china first in the chinese city of shanghai and then hong kong it was an amazing time and again i went to china directly after i graduated university here's a picture of me circa january 2007 you can still see that i'm representing my university florida state university very proudly just a couple weeks into my china adventure i was down in hong kong to get my official work permit to work in china again i didn't have to relinquish my american passport as some of my friends thought i would had to now i excelled at a sport called golf and this is what i did i went to china to become a golf professional and i spent the first seven years teaching golf to thousands upon thousands of chinese it was an amazing experience for me because i was able to travel around the country i was traveling around doing amazing corporate clinics for some very big clients like mercedes-benz icbc dow chemical we were traveled to over 50 cities teaching thousands of people how to grow the game and it was an amazing time for me to be in china because it was really the birth and really the start of a golf revolution in china so and as an american golf professional i was there contributing to china but it was also a great time to be in china because in 2007 that's when china was really starting to turn things up their economy was really starting to rev up the country was developing of course in 2008 the country hosted the a beautiful summer olympics in beijing and i had a phenomenal time learning about the culture the language the people and spending so much time in that country i went on to then moved to hong kong after seven years i had an opportunity to go and be the general manager of a sports marketing company and again we started working with international clients doing events all over mainland china in total i spent 10 years in china and it was one of the best times of my life an amazing experience and what i've realized is is that along the way there's been a lot of misconceptions about china many people do not understand china and i stumbled upon this quote and i want to share with you when it comes to china there are two types of foreigners those that dislike china and those that have been to china now i'll say that this quote i believe is it's not a hundred percent accurate but i do believe there is some truth into this okay some of the people that dislike china the most that really even hate china have never spent much time in the country at all they've done very little to actually research about china or try to get to know it and unfortunately our world in the western media is filled with so many misconceptions and stereotypes and just flat out bias reporting now there was a point where i've become so frustrated with this that i wanted to actually make my voice be heard it was about a year ago that i decided to make a video and i put it on youtube this was my first youtube video lebron james in china about a year ago lebron james got in a lot of heat because he said this he said as an american we have the freedom of speech but we have to realize that freedom of speech potentially can have consequences now many people saw that as lebron james selling out to china but the reality is like i said earlier in the slide is that when you travel around the world it's important to open your mind and learn about other cultures we're always taught to as children to never judge a book by its cover okay it's really important that you start learning about these other cultures in this video i make reference to for instance if you wanted to travel to india and you want to say hey i've got this brilliant idea on how to serve starvation in india why don't you start eating beef you have the freedom of speech to say that but culturally that's not going to translate because in the hindu culture the cow is a sacred animal it's just having these very basic cultural understandings that is very important today i went on to continue making more youtube videos and the youtube channel has continued to grow i've been amazed by the amazed and humbled by the support from people around the world on people really wanting to understand more about china and this has become a passion for me because my wife is chinese we have three beautiful mixed-race children i am forever going to be connected to china and i want more people to really know the truth about this amazing country now when we start talking specifically about china there's actually a three-step process on how many western governments and how many westerners in general are viewing china and let me let me explain that to you the first step is that china is communist okay this is something that all of us know but the word communist or communism is a word that is feared very much in western society now again i'm from america and when you say communism many people automatically think that it is one of the worst things in the world for instance when they think of communism they think totalitarian dictator okay they think of a people that are completely repressed have absolutely no human rights no personal freedom completely cut off from the outside world this is what people are thinking of when they hear the word communism but the country that i've just described is not china maybe you're thinking of north korea and unfortunately this is what happens for china is that they often get lumped in with the same boat as north korea now north korea is exactly what i've just described there's not personal freedoms you don't see north korean expats you don't see north korean tourists north koreans cannot leave their country they are cut off from the outside world there is one person that is dominating everything that happens in that country that's north korea yes that's a form of communism but that doesn't mean every single communist country is like that but that's a hard concept for people to understand so the second point is that many people assume that communist is evil and again this is one of the things as an american that we that i grow up hearing as an american i'm a product of the american school system again we are always taught that democracy is king democracy is the most important value and it's something that everybody in this world should have but the reality is when you've traveled around the world as i've been very fortunate to do you start to realize that the world is too unique and too diverse for only one type of government to exist it doesn't make sense that only democracy is the only way forward simply can't be unfortunately we know this three-step process look at this three-step process the first is china is communist number two is communist is evil so it's very simple what point number three is and that is of course that china is evil and unfortunately this is what many people believe and again this is what western media says this is what western media says is that china is the greatest threat in the world right now china is trying to take over america china china china china is always in our spotlight unfortunately so many people are quick to judge china without ever really understanding anything about it now i want to give a little bit of insight into the chinese government and how it works and this is a very famous quote that really portrays the difference between my american government and china in america you can change the party but it's very difficult to change the policy in contrast in china you cannot change the party it is a one-party state but it's much easier to change the policy okay now we know that this is true in america for instance we just got through the 2020 election it was a monumental event for america also for the world you know the presidential election in america is a worldwide event because america's role in the world i mean it impacts everybody this is why everybody around the world globe is tuning in to see the election results and we just decided to change parties for the last four years we had donald trump in the republican party we have now switched to the democrat party and joe biden but it's interesting enough like i said it's very difficult to change that policy in 2008 barack obama the democratic president came out with obamacare or the affordable health care act affordable care act and it's been a long process to get this affordable aircraft going as soon as donald trump comes in he wants to get rid of it now joe biden's coming in he wants to bring it back you know we've been dealing with this affordable hair health care act for over a decade now and it's very difficult to get these past because again you have these two parties that are constantly battling each other and it's very difficult and the reason for that is again i'm here in canada the beautiful kamloops and it's amazing because here in canada we have socialized medicine okay it's not it's not a privilege it's a right but you talk about socialized medicine in america oh no that's communism that's socialism let's go back to that three-step process that is evil no socialism allowed even though when you look at most developed western countries you know a lot of them have socialized medicine it's not it shouldn't be a privilege it should be a right now in china again you can't change the party it is impossible it is a one-party state that is not going to change the interesting thing though is that china's one-party state changes policies all the time and they're very quick to adapt into certain situations and i'm going to give you a couple examples of what i've experienced in my years in china i'm going to take you back to january 2007. this is a picture of me with my colleagues this is my second night in china i'm there in the back wearing the red sweater and you can see we're having one of a delicious meal this is a hot pot meal one of the best meals experiences that you can have in china you can see the empty glasses of beer on the table the whiskey bottles we had an amazing night okay it was my i was the last team member to arrive i just arrived from from america we had a big celebration the team was finally together and you can see the gentleman there in the front left the chinese man he was our general manager now that evening all of us had a lot to drink i would say seven eight nine beers whatever it was we had a great celebration and at the end of the night the chinese general manager said cyrus welcome to the team jump in my car i'll drive you home and of course for me i said what do you mean we've just had eight nine beers you can't can't possibly drive me home and i quickly realized that that was the culture in 2007 2008 drunk driving was an epidemic in china everybody did it everybody went to the park it went to your dinner you got drank a lot and you simply drove home that was the culture now of course this led to extremely high you know fatal accidents there was a tremendous number of accidents in china the problem was as well is that the system was corrupt if you got caught by a police officer well it's very easy you could just pay them off no fine no problem at all but china had a really difficult situation because this event was happening expo 2010 the world expo was coming to shanghai and notice that tagline on there better city better life how could the chinese government be promoting a better city and a better life when citizens are being killed every single night because people are drinking and driving all over the place this really was a huge problem in china and china's one party state realized that and overnight they changed the law and there's no long complicated process on you know let's pass this law pass this law what does this party think no we're changing the law starting tomorrow what happened was is overnight they changed the law to say that if you're caught drunk driving you're immediately arrested in the car two weeks in jail if you're caught the second time six months in jail you'll lose your license for life you want to know what happened to drunk driving in china almost down to nothing almost overnight it was a systematic change what was amazing was at that time we would routinely be going out with clients for dinner and drinking a ton literally the next day we would go out and all of us are drinking tea now because we knew the law you're not allowed to drink and drive anymore it's as simple as that we saw a similar law passed with smoking in beijing when they passed that a few years ago saying that you're not allowed to smoke now in public restaurants and public spaces again bringing up the china to the international standards the drunk driving laws now same as international standard smoking laws the same when i got my driver's license in shanghai back in 2007 you could literally go inside and you could pay somebody a couple hundred mmb to sit down and take the test for you it was blatant corruption it was absolutely easy you could just pay somebody and you could essentially get a driver's license but when i had to renew it a few years later everything changed now i had to actually passed a hundred point test i had to get 90 in order to pass that i had to study for months in order to renew my license because they said no we need to come up to the international standards and this is how china has been progressing and has been changing now there's never been a greater example for this than we saw earlier this year when the coronavirus came to wuhan and china's government reacted and they said we need to tackle this problem head on they did something unprecedented in human history they locked down wuhan a city the population three times that of los angeles and a city five times the size of london they locked it down for 76 days they locked down the entire country what china did is they in the span of 10 days they built these hospitals 10 days now the amazing thing about that this time is is that in america during the same time that china was building these two hospitals donald trump was standing impeachment okay it took the united states government 20 days to have an impeachment trial on donald trump now the interesting thing was is that we knew that donald trump would be acquitted because the republicans controlled the senate so there was no way that even if they said okay he's guilty we're going to impeach him you knew that he was going to get acquitted so there was actually really no point in having this impeachment trial it was just show so in 20 days america has a trial that results in nothing and half that time china takes 10 days to build this hospital they relocate doctors from every single province in china all centralized back to wuhan they send every single resource they can to that city to tackle it head-on and i don't know if everybody knows this but basically china has been pretty much controlled covered for the past few months life in china is almost back to normal wuhan is exactly like it was before it's incredible but again it's a concentrated move nobody and no government in the world can move as fast and efficiently as china's government and it is again that one party state now i often say that probably one of china's greatest political advantages over the united states is that they're not subject to every four years of political turmoil you saw what happened again i'm american i'm a proud american but you see what has happened in our country over these past 12 months when it's donald trump first joe biden the amount of division the chaos that has ensued even after this election result well technically we still don't even know if we have a result yet joe biden is president-elect donald trump refuses to concede there's still so much confusion going on this is really showing how divided our nation is and i believe this is a real problem in america because with a nation so divided how can our nation move forward now for the rest of so what i'm going to transition to in this speech now is i want to talk a little bit a little bit about some of the most common myths that i often hear about china i want to talk about these myths because i want people to have a better understanding of china i want to try to relinquish some of these fears that people have about china because if i fear i feel that if you can understand china more you're not going to be scared of it and then to close this off we're going to talk about why china is such an important market now let's begin with myth number one there is no freedom in china now many people tell me this they say cyrus i know that you like china but the reality is is that the chinese people have no freedom there's no human rights in china there's no freedom of speech i mean i can't even access western social media sites like this how are the chinese people going to live now the interesting thing is is we look at yes facebook twitter instagram all of these things are blocked in china there is the great firewall in china china's government does censor content 100 true not going to argue that but the interesting thing is is that freedom means different things to different people for example americans often tell me cyrus you know what's great about america we can go on the streets and i can simply say i don't like the president i think he's an idiot i can say whatever i want i have that freedom of speech in america we do it pretty good right this is saturday night live right we get great actors like alec baldwin playing trump shout out to jim carrey the canadian playing a great joe biden it's funny in america that we value so much that we can make fun of our leaders but it's interesting from a cultural perspective in china chinese people say well it's not really something that we want to do i think it's actually better for us that we have a leader that we can entrust in that we trust in and that we can respect the ability to make fun of our leader is not something that we're really craving yes you have the freedom of speech but we don't really care to have that particular freedom of speech now it was interesting a lot of people like to you know argue me on points on youtube or you know they know that i'm a content creator i make these videos to help people understand china somebody said something to me really interesting they said cyrus it's amazing that you make these content videos on youtube okay it's amazing that you talk about china on youtube but the reality is is that chinese people are cut off from the outside world you have 1.4 billion people cut off they have no idea what's going on outside of china because if they did if they got a taste of western democracy and how we live in the west they'd be leaving china in a heartbeat i think it's quite interesting i think we should look at some data this is a graph of annual overseas visits by the chinese now in 2000 the chinese made around 10 million trips in 2018 that was close to 150 million trips who would have ever thought that china's number one export would actually be tourists but actually the chinese people it's incredible actually this this growth represents a 1 300 increase in the span of 18 years china chinese are now the number one tourists in the world and it's amazing because look at the cash that they're spending okay they're almost double the amount of what america the second biggest tourists are spending they have the spending power their quality of life is getting better okay they're traveling the world and the amazing thing is is when those 150 million people travel abroad to experience all these things they go back to china because the reality is that in china the quality of life now is just as good as anywhere else in the world chinese people love living in china i mean this is where we go back to the one party state you have to look at it in this perspective is that over the last 30 years china's one party state has produced 80 percent of the world's poverty alleviation 80 percent of the world's poverty aviation has come directly from china to put this in perspective if you take out china's contribution from the worldwide poverty alleviation over these past 30 years the result would be a negative figure more people would have gotten into poverty than gotten out if it wasn't for china's efforts and again over the last 30 years 800 million people have now gone from the lower to the middle class that's an incredible number and this shows why so many people in china respect the government and are optimistic about the future harvard university did a landmark study from 2003 to 2016. it studied all aspects of chinese life and it found that over 90 percent of chinese look at their government in a favorable way they support the one-party state in china because they can see the tangible results of their country i would venture to say that the united states or even many other western countries would be nowhere close to that 90 percent nowhere close but now let's go to the next myth that i often hear is that there's no safety in china and probably one of the graphs that scares a lot of people is this this is looking at this top cities in the world that has the most cctv cameras cctv cameras and you can see on this list it's dominated by chinese cities there's no doubt about it there are cct cameras all over china in fact the only city on this list that is not chinese is london it also has a lot of these closed circuit television cameras that are monitoring everything that happens now in china you're never going to see a police officer pulling somebody over to give a ticket that's all done automatically by cameras okay the reason that people actually like this is the fact that all of these additional cameras provide an incredible amount of safety in the city you see even petty crimes like pickpocketing have almost now been eliminated because of the amount of cameras everywhere even pickpocketers as soon as they pickpocket that somebody can call up the police and say i was just pickpocketed here they can tap into the camera they can use facial recognition and immediately find the criminal now in western countries we're thinking whoa whoa whoa that's way much that's an invasion of my privacy and yeah it is i mean you are living you know connected the government is watching you but for chinese nationals they say well it ensures my safety i'm actually happy to give up some personal freedom knowing that i live in a country that we don't have these massive problems for example a lot of americans say cyrus we have the second amendment we have the right to bear arms and a lot of people think that that is what equals safety now this is a picture from the michigan courthouse earlier this year when protesters in america rushed the courthouse to say we don't agree with these coveted lockdowns we want our freedom now it's very important when you show this to chinese people chinese people are not looking at that and saying that's not they're saying that's not safety i don't want anything to do with that i'm very happy to live in a society where we don't have guns because we don't need them i lived in china for 10 years is one of the safest countries in the world absolutely i mean i come from florida again where we were rocked by one of the most tragic school shootings in history we have mass shootings every single day in america tremendous problem china doesn't have that it is incredibly safe and chinese people are willing to give up a little bit of that personal freedom to ensure that safety that's not a sacrifice but again this is why it's important to travel and to understand that freedom and these values mean different things to different people having a gun is a very important thing for an american and i get it i understand american culture but for chinese it's just not the same so if you look at it from american perspective you're not going to be able to understand that now the third myth i want to tackle is china is the biggest threat to democracy and this is a touchy subject i get it and one of the and one of the videos that i made on my youtube channel that's been my best video to date is this one the truth about michael pompeo in china and in this one i opened the video by saying this statement every time michael pompeo opens his mouth the chinese people love their country more that quote really signifies what a lot of youth in china are feeling because the problem is is that michael pompeo is continuously saying false statements about china he's wanting the american public and western countries around the world to recognize that china is this huge threat when the reality is is that they're not you know china is not the greatest threat to democracy in america like michael kompany wants you to believe the reality is is that china really doesn't care if anybody in the world has a democracy the only country that they care about is china itself so when people say china is the biggest threat to democracy in america i say no china has no influence in america but china is the biggest threat to democracy in china and the reason for that is simple they have proven to the world that they have a unique system that works for them and has also been proven successful but in order to really understand this you must go back and learn about chinese history i'm going to take you back 122 years this is a cartoon this is a french cartoon that was published and on this you can see the respective leaders of england russia germany france and japan all looking down at this pie called china all with their knives out looking at how can we divide this country how can we conquer this country what peace am i going to get from my country meanwhile the china the chinese man in the backdrop can do nothing about it western countries have been trying to influence and trying to gain access to china for centuries but this is one of the amazing things about china when you talk to chinese people they're very proud and will immediately say we have 5 000 years of history they're very proud of that they're one of the the oldest civilization in the world they're very proud of that history and they're very proud that throughout their history they've had to really endure a lot a lot of humiliation a lot of foreign interference go look up the boxster's rebellion when they had all of these different countries going into the capital city trying to overthrow the government trying to take over china this is why chinese people have become more nationalistic and they do not want foreign countries to come in this is why when michael pompeo says we need to bring democracy to china chinese people say you don't understand us you don't understand our culture who are you to say who are you to come into our country to tell us what we need i've even had people tell me cyrus you will never know what chinese people want unless you give them the right to vote so here's what we do we go into china and we establish democracy we then have a national vote and what we can say is why don't you vote on whether you should keep democracy or go back to your communist way if you do that then we'll truly know what they want it's interesting because the problem is these people don't go talk to chinese people if you're on the ground in china you talk to the vast majority of people again the harvard study from 2003 to 2016. 90 of the people in china support the government they support what they're doing this is not a chinese study this is harvard university that had put out this study okay if you talk to the people you will realize that the chinese people they don't value these things they have a unique system and they are going to be very resistant to foreign interference and that is what's causing a tremendous amount of conflict between china and the united states right now now the next myth that i'm going to tackle is china is trying to take over the world and i think when many people talk about this point they refer to this the belt and road initiative now this is a graph showing china with all of the different countries built on the belt and road initiative and what this belt and road initiative is it is a series of investments made by china to start building infrastructure and increase trade amongst a huge amount of countries around the world this is the new silk road and what china is doing is they're going to continents like africa they're going throughout southeast asia they're building new airports new roads new bridges new ports new everything to be able to help these countries improve their economics in order to help the local communities get out of poverty now of course this is going to bet china is going to benefit china in the long run like any investor if you're going to invest in something you want to return on that investment but the reality is as you look at the difference of china compared to western countries china is not doing this through military force they're coming in and they're building this infrastructure they're going to help out local economies okay they give you know 25 30 40-year loans even when coveted 19 happened you know and debt payments became due they said we don't have to worry about it right now we're going in a pandemic you don't have to worry about those debt payments right now let's focus on getting back to the world you look at the amount of aid that jack ma alibaba and china's government has been sending across the world whether it's personal protection equipment you know whatever supplies they need they've done an amazing job in helping the world out now i think when you look at how china is developing infrastructure it potentially could change so many of these different countries again you look at the continent of africa there's not another country in the world that is doing as much benefit to africa as the country of china now let's take a look at a case study on what potentially this infrastructure development could actually bring i'm going to take you back to a small little fishing village this is the fishing village of shenzhen this is shenzhen in the 1970s when it was a city not even a city it was a village of 20 000 people and this little fishing village in 1979 was named a special economic zone by the chinese government it was going to receive this special status to receive extra infrastructure development and to potentially be it's going to be the future city of china this little fishing village well now let's take a look at what shenzhen looks like now 40 years later this city of 20 000 people is now a city of 13 million for the last 40 years shenzhen has been the fastest growing city on the planet this is now the silicon valley of china and its companies are rivaling that of america's silicon valley when you look at how china is developing when you look at for instance the term investing of a unicorn a unicorn is a privately held company worth at least a 1 billion us dollars the city with the most unicorns in the world is beijing right now china is developing new companies they're moving forward they're building infrastructure they're creating jobs they're improving the lives of the people but china is a very important market i believe for the entire world as well and i'm going to tell you exactly why and to do this i'm going to take you back 15 years ago to 2005. when i was very similar to what's going on in this room i was in an auditorium at my university and what's amazing was we had an executive from this company come and give us a speech starbucks the great american coffee house now in 2005 i was a junior at university and we had an alumni of my home of my school florida state university come back to the business school and she gave an amazing speech and what she said is she said the future of starbucks is so great and the future for this is because we are going to be focusing on international expansion the speech was so amazing that that afternoon i went home and i decided to buy my very first stocks about 20 shares of starbucks stock that afternoon because i was so inspired by her speech and i said i see the vision i see the vision that starbucks wants to create i want to be a part of that vision now i still own those starbucks shares to this day 15 days 15 years later and this has been an incredible investment not because starbucks is dominating you know coffee in america it certainly has an amazing market share in america and it's doing very well but again the reason why for me as an american investor why investing in this american company has become so important and it is such a good investment for me is because of its international expansion most specifically in china where it is its second largest market this is why a few years ago when starbucks decided to open the world's largest starbucks they did it in shanghai this is a picture of that starbucks on the second floor it's amazing experience this is walking down the stairs in that starbucks and then here is actually a coffee museum that they built inside this going to this starbucks is actually an experience you can go there for a couple hours learn all about coffee drink some drinks just have the experience of going to the world's largest starbucks at one point starbucks was expanding so fast in china that they were opening a new store every 15 hours 15 hours a new starbucks was opening up in china they have completely capitalized on the market starbucks remains a tremendously popular coffee chain in china today and again starbucks continued growth is because of its international play let's look at another company company we all know of course and that's apple now apple is one of the most valuable companies in the world valued at over 2 trillion u.s dollars market cap now apple has been made such a valuable company specifically because of its relationship with china you see on one end apple does this is they manufacture all of their products within china and this is incredible because we know that this iphone cost a thousand dollars in the store but we know that they make it for pennies on the dollar in china they save a substantial amount of cost by manufacturing in china then what they do is they ship it back to california where they then assemble it and then sell it to the domestic market but the interesting thing about apple's relationship with china is not so much just the manufacturing because surely you could find other countries in the world to manufacture what makes this such a lucrative venture for for apple is the fact that they get to then go ahead and turn around and take these manufactured iphones and ship them from california back into china and because china's domestic economy is growing and there's a huge need for these consumer products and people have the discretionary income to buy things like these thousand dollar phones apple's market share boomed also in china so it's a two-way street it's a double win for apple they get the great manufacturing at a great price plus they get to establish their presence in china and they also get to sell an amazing amount of products in china every time every time the iphone launches in china it is a huge event now we look at other companies this is the gigafactory from tesla that's been just opened in shanghai there's a reason why elon musk one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time who's the founder of tesla decided to go to shanghai to open this because he wanted his factory in china he likes dealing with the communist party of china because he knows that one party state is going to make fast decisions he likes selling his cars in china because he knows there is a growing consumer base for products exactly like his super sporty amazing electric car of tesla this is why a company like disney decided to open the world's largest disneyland in shanghai now disney already had a presence disney was already in hong kong they've had that for many years but they still wanted to have another location in shanghai because the market's there disney profits tremendously from a relationship with china now interesting enough earlier this year in april many people actually thought that because of kovan 19 and because of the trade war between the united states and china there was an article that came out that said up to a thousand american factories we're going to relocate from china everybody's leaving china and they're going to take all these factories out and that of course is what donald trump and the american administration has been moving towards they want to see american factories leave china come back to america go somewhere else don't support china it's actually a one complete 180 what china is trying to do again going back to that map china is doing the belt and road initiative trying to build bridges trying to do trade with countries around the world to help everybody however america is actually doing the opposite they're saying no let's cut off these bridges let's just manufacture in america make america great again only in america which strategy is going to work out the long and for the long term i personally think that working with more countries around the world is beneficial to a local economy now interesting enough again when many people said there's going to be up to a thousand factories leaving china and where they're going to go well many people thought they're going to go to india it makes sense right american factories why don't we go to another democratic country india india has democracy it would make sense let's start building factories in india but there's actually a really interesting thing what happened when you start looking at why these factories did not end up going to india the first reason is is when you look at opening a new company in india the registration process takes about 18 days to do in india in china it's nine now that's not really a huge difference nine days not a big deal but when you're talking about relocating a factory you need to get land you need to get water you need to get electricity and you need to get a construction permit although india is a democratic country there's a tremendous amount of red tape involved in dealing through that government there's a lot of political turmoil that happens in india even though there's democracy when governments change sometimes the transition in power is not a smooth transition there's a lot of uncertainty political uncertainty economic uncertainty a lot of uncertainty in india again we're going back to that one-party state that's stability that's been very important now the interesting thing here is when you start looking at this logistics of getting all the permits you know you're now looking at six to 12 months in order to just to get the permits to start doing the work you wanted to do in india that represents a tremendous opportunity cost now in addition to that we have to look at other factors number one is currency okay for american companies going into a foreign company from a foreign country you need to have a stable currency well the indian rupee is a much more volatile currency than the chinese yen and that plays a very big role because if a currency is extremely volatile that could completely wipe out your profit margin in addition to that we know that india does not have the infrastructure that china does so we're talking about these roads these bridges these airports these ports all of these things that china is building around the world most specifically building within china china is set up logistically to handle the infrastructure india is not so if you're manufacturing there you're going to have to have added expenses to perform all of these logistical operations but the real reason the big reason is going back to that marketplace that marketplace of china that's the real lucrative thing that's why these american companies want a presence in china and in india right now there's 800 million people that are living in the lower class that do not have the money to be purchasing these products and for an american company you're wanting to establish yourself in the domestic market okay on the flip side china has 800 million people again in the middle class the average chinese person has five times the buying power of the average indian and this is why what we saw happen with general motors general motors initially went to india and they established a car factory there because they realized that in india there was a tremendous opportunity to build up market share and the potentially there was going to be a tremendous amount of indians buying general motor cars but in 2017 gm decided to pull out of india even with a long-term look they realized that the investment simply was not making sense for them they pulled out because simply there wasn't enough local demand they weren't getting that two-way relationship that we talked about earlier of manufacturing for a better price and selling back to that domestic economy and this is why china is still such an important place to manufacture still an important place for american companies to build their presence now i've had somebody ask me before they said cyrus i don't want to invest in china i just want to invest in american companies so here you go here's the dow 30. 30 amazing american companies everybody from nike apple mcdonald's okay disney dow chemical microsoft all of these great companies now let's go through the list and just imagine how many of these companies are connected to china in some sort and we just talked about apple okay mcdonald's has over 4 000 outlets there nike huge presence in china the drug companies they do a lot of manufacturing there visa of course i mean all of these we can go one by one boeing i mean come on china buys a tremendous amount of jet engines if you look at all of these companies you're going to be able to find that all of them are connected to china all of them are increasing their bottom lines and their revenue and are driving shareholder value because of a relationship with china so the reality is is that if you don't want to invest in china or you want nothing to do with it then please don't invest in any of these companies this is what my main point is is that our worlds are so connected the other thing about it is when you say i want to bring back all of the jobs from all the manufacturing jobs from china you have to think about it american companies and not just american but companies around the world they have literally spent tens of billions of dollars if not hundreds of billions of dollars you know investing into these companies into these factories building the logistics this is not something that you can just pull out of china very easily our economies are so interconnected that the easiest way forward is we have to learn that there's going to be differences but we must work together now the other reason why the world needs china is because china is developing the technology that has the potential to change the world as we know it and there's no greater example than 5g now here in canada in north america we're still waiting for 5g but in china 5g is everywhere okay huawei the chinese company has developed 5g and there are so far ahead of anybody else in the world that it actually started to scare america because they realized wow we are not even close to competing with huawei on this scale but the reality is is that this 5g technology is so important because it powers so many different things when you have 5g you can have amazing things happen in your city it can save costs and improve the lives of your city and of your life of your people for example going back to shenzhen that tiny little fishing village that's now transformed into china's special economic zone this is a fleet of their electronic buses 16 000 buses in their fleet every single one of them electric they're now experimenting with driverless bus systems all powered by the 5g technology shenzhen just opened a metro line not long ago that's powered by 5g okay you have to have this 5g technology to bring you to the front so again in china we have a saying if you want to see china's past you go to beijing if you want to see the present of china you go to shanghai but if you want to see the future you go to that fishing village that's now china's third largest city you go to shenzhen that's the future of china but i say it's not the future of china it's the future of our world that's the future city in china today it's almost a cashless society okay people are using their cell phones and mobile payments like alipay wechat pay to completely transform their lives okay ninety percent of transactions done in china today are done via mobile payments i was back in china last year on a business trip and i actually had some rem b that i had to use i wanted to get rid of it and it was so difficult to use that because everywhere you go everyone is so used to using your mobile phone cash was an inconvenience but this shows the future china recently launched its first digital currency and what they did is they experimented again in the city of shenzhen and they started giving out a few million dollars worth of this digital currency and they did an event they wanted to see how locals would spend it and so they did is they said if you want to register for this event we're going to give you some digital currency and then you can go to these vendors and you can try it out again the future of the world is being tested right now in shenzhen all of this future technology that is leaps and bounds ahead is all being developed in china so this is why it's important for us to develop a relationship with china because again china's showing the way they're experimenting with stuff that is so far you know unimaginable that you know we can't even imagine it here in the west it's unbelievable what they're doing in china this is a picture of a countryside in china completely surrounded by solar grids china is the largest producer of renewable energy in the world and this is amazing because obviously china with its population and the growing amount of infrastructure in cities they need a tremendous amount of energy it's very important for china to develop this renewable energy one because again they need it but two they need to start reducing their carbon footprint now one of the interesting things that i saw over this past week was during the presidential election of joe biden i don't know if you saw this but this was a sign that was shown when he was announced as president-elect notice what it says there on the sides the people have chosen science now donald trump has continuously said that he does not believe in climate change he does not believe in global warming as a result what he did is he pulled america out of the paris agreement china has remained committed to being in the paris agreement okay the paris agreement is this global effort to get our to get global warming under control to bring us to carbon neutral china has stayed committed to that and what china has said is that by 2060 they will be carbon neutral but joe biden came out and he said that america under a joe biden presidency will be carbon neutral by 2050. now i don't know about you but that's the type of battle that i want to see china and america get into the race to carbon neutrality that would be incredible and in fact i think that if china and america could learn to work together i think they could do it even faster maybe even by 2040 who knows but the reality is is that when you have the two greatest countries in the world the two greatest superpowers i should say china and america working together the entire world wins and that's something that i often say on all of my youtube videos and my messages when i give speeches like this is that i'm a passionate american i love my home country but i want to see us develop a better relationship with china because i know that if we do it's going to have a ripple down effect and benefit every single person in the world now we're coming up to the end of this speech and i want to just basically tell say one major point and that is the thing that not only has china developing all of these great technologies but similar to that graph of sending these overseas visits china is also sending a very precious resource abroad and that is chinese international students chinese international students is a tremendous resource and again it's why i'm here at the beautiful thompson rivers university so big shout out to carlos cong and the entire organization here at the chinese student and scholars association i want to thank you very much for bringing me out here to kamloops it's my first time in this beautiful city first time at this university and i'm so honored to be speaking in front of all of you and especially everybody on youtube that has taken time out of your day to join us wherever you are wherever you are in the world thank you for joining but chinese students chinese international students are a tremendous resource this is something that's been really that's really undervalued and underlooked chinese students started going abroad let's say in 1970s in the 1980s and you have to imagine if you were a chinese national that went abroad at that time you had to have incredible grades in the in the university to get out and to be able to actually qualify to attend a university abroad the reality is is that for decades china was sending its brightest minds out of china to go study abroad and the reality is is that most of those students when they went abroad they never came back they if they went to america they became american citizens they settled down in america okay it's not until recently that now china has had all of this economic growth that now we've seen the opposite we're now seeing that chinese international students are going back to china but again many chinese students around the world again name a major city in the world right now that doesn't have a vibrant chinese community chinese are everywhere again it goes back to that point the chinese are cut off from the outside world well how can they be there's chinese people everywhere you don't think they're talking back with their relatives back home but the reality is is that many chinese students still do end up settling in beautiful countries like here in canada they're eventually going to become a canadian national settling down here you know establishing their life a great example of this that i can give is a man by the name of eric yuen now eric young was born in shandong province he applied eight times for a visa to the united states but was rejected all eight times because his english was too poor finally on the ninth time he became he was successful he finally got the visa and he came to california okay he eventually went on to earn an mba from stanford university and then he started his company in 2011 called zoom communications all of us know zoom now because of cover 19. eric is now in 2007 eric became a naturalized american citizen his three children were born in america they're all american citizens his company zoom american company he's employing americans everything is benefited because america welcomed this chinese immigrant student into their country eric yuen is worth 16 billion dollars now because of zoom communications he has a tremendous impact into america he's paying a lot of tax pay he's doing a lot he's creating a lot of jobs he's really helping the american economy so it really breaks my heart when i see american senators saying we need to come out we need to ban chinese international students i had comments on my youtube channel saying you know what we need to do better than that let's ban all international students why do we even need them here in america to me that is such a short-minded mindset that's not how you get your your country stronger and that's one of the lessons that i learned here in canada canada is built on diversity it's literally written into the constitution here in canada and this is why canada is such a vibrant community of cultures from around the world but again we need to learn about these other cultures we need to bring them in okay we need to learn to work together i'm going to close it with this i'm going to take you to beijing to the most important building in all of china's history this is the forbidden city many of you know it has the picture the chair the picture of chairman mao front and center and i want to take you in and examine the words that are written on the outside of this building most specifically the words written on the right side long live the unity of the people of the world this is the message that china is sending to the world again this is the message that the chinese government is putting on the outside of its most important cultural building long live the unity of the people of the world china is willing to work with countries around the world but it's very important what we need to do is we have to realize that china is not this third world country that is now developing china has to be given the same amount of respect as other western countries and this is something very difficult for you know country like my home america for the for in a few years china will overpass america to become the number one superpower the number one economic force and this is very difficult for western countries to really conceive and really to you know comprehend okay for the last 200 years we've always had a western country be the number one in the world and now it's china's turn this century is now an asian century the future is in asia i don't think this is a bad thing but i think what we need to do is we really need to recognize the fact that there are going to be differences we need to we need to accept that fact but we need to build on our similarities and i'll end it with this again this comment when the united states and canada the uk western countries when we can learn to work with china it's going to benefit everybody in the entire world thank you

Channel: Cyrus Janssen

Views: 570,535

Keywords: china, china movie, china travel, china vlogger, chinatown, why the world needs china, cyrus janssen china, cyrus janssen, thompson rivers university, China news, china us tension, us china war, us and china relationship today, china coronavirus, future of china economy, future of china 2020, future of china documentary, china us relationship today, china us relations documentary, why is china investing billions in africa, why is china so powerful, why is china growing so fast

Id: 3seXF5Cuy6Q

Length: 57min 9sec (3429 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 21 2020