Shifting Perspectives on Inequality in China

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dive deep into the alarming trends shaping China's future. This eye-opening discussion covers:

* Shocking statistics revealing Chinese citizens' growing disillusionment with their economic system

* The rise of "lying flat" and "last generation" movements in China

* How the CCP is desperately trying to maintain control through surveillance and intimidation

* The potential collapse of China as a global superpower

* Implications for U.S. foreign policy, especially regarding Taiwan

* The unexpected cultural shifts occurring in Chinese society

This video provides crucial insights for anyone interested in geopolitics, economics, or the future of global power dynamics. With exclusive data and expert analysis, you'll gain a deeper understanding of the challenges facing China and how they might reshape our world.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Simone! Today we're going to be doing a stats heavy episode that I know our fans always love, where I can find some interesting and counterintuitive stats to tell us about where the world is going. Okay. Episode is going to be on internal Chinese politics the economic situation in China and how the Chinese population is becoming more and more You know, we use the title woke here, but it's not exactly woke because they're not exactly split among the types of of, uh, political demographics that we have in the U S there isn't the same like Republican Democrat party that you would have in the U S.

But the views of the Chinese people are definitely changing and in a way that should make the Chinese government very, very nervous.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: So let's start with a quote here. These are the clear findings that emerged from quantitative research by Stanford professors Jennifer Pan [00:01:00] and Ying Qing Xu. Survey data collected through a variety of channels and methodologies by Pan and Xu over several years show that Chinese urban residents are more liberal than expected and more liberal than the official positions of the government.

Moreover, the political views of respondents remained relatively stable over time and were correlated. across issues in ways comparable to those in democratic countries. It is important to note, however, that policy views in China do not align neatly along pro slash anti regime spectrums, or what might be considered a typical left right divide as they do in the United States and many other democracies.

Instead, they cluster around preferences for market versus state intervention in the economy more versus less democracy in the government and more versus less nationalism. So, one faction wants less nationalism and less government intervention in the markets and more democracy. And another group wants more [00:02:00] intervention, less democracy and more nationalism, which makes sense as natural clusters.

Using surveys conducted from 2012 and 2014 and separately at 2018 and 2019, Pan and Zhu show that Chinese correspondents have coherent policy preferences that are bunded in predictable ways. For example, those that hold politically liberal views are more likely to also support free markets and oppose nationalist foreign policy.

Those who support authoritarian political institutions are instead more likely to support state intervention in the economy and a nationalistic foreign policy. And I'll put a figure on screen here. So that's actually really interesting because that's different than the, at least older historic political alignment that we had here in the U.

S. Which is the more free market people are also the more politically or socially progressive people

Torsten: and

Malcolm Collins: the less free market people are the so you have a true tanky faction there that is very you know, pro nationalism, pro state control but also [00:03:00] pro more socially illiberal views. Do you have any thoughts on that before I go further?

Simone Collins: No, tell me more. I just want to dig into this.

Malcolm Collins: All right. So , the surveys carried out between 2004 and 2014 indicate that most respondents had positive views on the system's ability to deliver opportunities in the future, and that effort and hard work were rewarded.

So now we're going to look at some graphs. These findings were notable because, as I mentioned, below, And note I'm pulling from several different articles here. So these aren't all from the same article. These findings were notable because as mentioned above inequality increased rapidly after 1978 and has remained stubbornly high since the two thousands in China.

Perceptions as to the drivers of inequality are Are central to the population sense of fairness and belief in the efficacy of China's economic and political systems. The latest round of surveys, which were conducted over the course of 2023 through an online app. So this is all just important to note when you're looking at this data are so recent that the Whitney team has yet to publish them in [00:04:00] related academic articles.

So you are getting this stuff first. It's clear that there have been significant changes in how people view inequality and opportunities in China economy signaling. Less and less responsibility to themselves and more and more to the economic system. So now we're going to talk about some of these results and I'm going to put some on screen.

So, do you want me to share these with you Simone or do you want me to just describe them to you?

Simone Collins: Describe them.

Malcolm Collins: All right. So here I have put a graph on screen today. It shows in 2004 attribution of why people in China are poor. So this is why are some people in China poor? The number one reason that people gave in 2004 was lack of ability.

In 2023, that has fallen to the number six reason. The, the number one reason in 2023 that people said so was unequal opportunity. That was six back in 2004.

Simone Collins: Oh, so we're moving from an internal to an external locus of control [00:05:00] here, which is kind of scary.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. You look at 2004, you had high ranked things like lack of effort.

However, lack of effort is ranked fairly low in 2003.

Simone Collins: But

Malcolm Collins: if you look at an unfair economic system, that was all the way down at eight in 2004, that was ranked at number three. Keep in mind, number three in China, where you can get unalive for saying things like this. So there is a cost to signaling these sorts of things.

Then they asked why are people in China rich? And it used to be in 2004 people would say ability and talent was the number one reason that some people were rich in China.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: In 2023 that had moved down to number four. What was number three back in 2004 connections that was ranked number one in 2023.

That was, so it used to be, they said ability and talent now it's connections. And, and you had a drop across the board in things like high education used to be number two as to why some people were rich. Now it's ranked all the way down at number [00:06:00] seven below even an unfair economic system. Hard work also dropped.

Simone Collins: You would think that the CCP, I mean, especially in a nation where there's more control over media and what people were, people are allowed to see, I, as a government official would have worked harder to make sure that memes like this. That switch people toward an external locus of control. Don't spread.

How is this, how is this happening in a nation that should be able to head this off?

Malcolm Collins: So we're going to talk about that after we get through all the statistics.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Because we're going to talk about the people's, how people shared this information and how the government tried to prevent them from sharing this information.

By the way, you want to know the number two reason that people said people are rich in 2023. It was all the way down to number six before grew up in a rich family. Okay.

They just don't believe the system is fair or that it's possible to move up anymore.

Now I'm going to put another graph on the screen that looks at explanations for why people in China are rich over [00:07:00] time.

That looks at things like, you know, connections, higher education, hard work, ability and talent. Basically if you're watching this instead of just reading all the statistics to you, people should be afraid. Now I'm going to put another graph, the government should be afraid, I should say perceptions of causes of wealth in China and selected post socialist countries.

So here you see other post socialist countries. You can see is what's happening in China normal?

and it has two bars, one for China in 2004 and one for China in 2023. And as we can see. , the trend is getting worse. , and now China is at the same level as other post socialist countries. , in terms of the public's belief, that ability or hard work helps them get ahead. , but what is interesting is that China is still nowhere near other post socialist countries. In terms of a perception of how unfair their economic system is. However, if you have a [00:08:00] similar increase. Over the next decade that we've had from 2004 to 2023, it may catch up.

Malcolm Collins: But again we're looking at lots of stats here and I want to make sure I get through them all. Explanations of why people in China are poor. Again we are looking at different dates here on this graph. What you see is It for a while it went up. So like things were good in China for a while.

So you look at something like lack of ability, it was going up from 2004, 58% to 2014, 64%. But then if you go to 2023 all the way down to 31%, you look at something like lack of effort. 51 percent in 2004. 2009, 61%. 2014, 63%. Oh, great trend. 2023, 33%. Lower than it's ever been. It is the same when you're looking at things like unequal opportunity or unfair economic systems.

2023 is the worst year from the perspective of the government. in their data.

Now we're looking at a figure that looks at attribution of variation in opportunities. [00:09:00] Whether a person becomes rich or remains poor is their own responsibility.

That's what was being asked. Agree, neutral, disagree. Again, here you see the steps moving in the wrong direction from what the government would want. Here you look at the question, opportunity for people to succeed is the same for everyone. Again in this one you actually see more growth in the neutral category and growth in the negative category with only 20 percent in 2023 saying that they believed.

That the opportunities to success were the same for everyone. And keep in mind, this is a government where you could be unalive for these sorts of opinions, which we will talk about shortly. In our country, effort is always rewarded. Only 28 percent said that in 2023. Oh boy. Gosh. So, Yikes. Now let's look at something like, given the current domestic situation, there is still great opportunity for people like you to improve their standard of living.

Only 28 percent of Chinese people believe this anymore. And you wonder why no one's having kids. No one has hope anymore in this country. Yeah, this is

Simone Collins: definitely [00:10:00] like, this explains lying flat. This explains we are the last generation. This is what lying

Malcolm Collins: flat is. And we are the last generation is before we go further.

Simone Collins: Right. Lying flat is a philosophy that sort of started to Arise around the pandemic in China, from my understanding basically the concept being that. You can do sort of the bare minimum yeah, you'll work, yeah, you'll do what you're supposed to do for the government, but you're not going to do a, a bit more than that because you're not going to be rewarded for it, what's the point?

Well, it's, it's,

Malcolm Collins: it's more than that it, it got its name from a guy who made money by, acting roles as dead people for a few months a year and the rest of the year lived on as little as possible. So the idea of lying flat is doing literally the minimum you have to, to survive. Take on some part time job maybe for three months and try to live off that money for as long as you can.

Often in like group houses or, or with a SO who you don't plan to have kids with because you don't want to do an ounce more than you actually need to do to survive. And you can see with these numbers why people would feel this [00:11:00] way. Remember I mentioned that like, Oh, do you have opportunity to increase your standard of living?

And I said only 28 people said that in 2023, 2014, it was 62%. These numbers are dropping precipitously and quickly. Then you talk about the, we are the last generation movement. This came from a viral video in China of CCP officers going to a family and berating them for not following COVID restrictions.

And they said, this will affect you in the next three generations of your family. And they go, that's okay because we are the last generation. I'm in a lot of Chinese people feel that way. It is part of why the government pressuring people to have kids doesn't work because people feel like it's just some wealthy class trying to pressure people to have.

Kids to live lives without opportunity. So this wealthy class can maintain their power and status. It's an act of subversive resistance, unarmed power and status. So, explanations of family wealth. So here we get a share of respondents who said their family [00:12:00] economic situation had gotten worse compared to five years ago by income group.

So, if you look at 2014, it was only 7%, 2023, 32%. Like more than, I think it's probably about four times higher. In, in, in, in, in, that's for people making under 50k a year. If we look at middle income people in China, okay, how is the middle income group 50 to a hundred K a year? How are they doing in 2014?

3 percent said that it hadn't gotten worse. And in 2009 it was only 1 percent said it hadn't gotten worse. 24 percent are now saying their situation is worse.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Well,

Malcolm Collins: 3 percent versus 24 percent things are breaking. If you look at the hundred K plus in 2009, literally 0 percent felt that in, in, in 2014, it was 1 percent felt that way.

So very small in 2023, 19 percent people are falling off an economic cliff in [00:13:00] China right now. And how is the government responding to this? Okay. They are trying to whip up nationalist fervor and it is in part working. In China, a form of wokeism expresses itself as blind nationalism. So let's talk about how this has affected some international companies.

So we can understand what it's like to do business in China these days. You know, not just having ports randomly closed, not having them just close a random part of your supply chain during COVID, which keep in mind affects companies in a huge way because now the rest of their supply chain stops working.

You know, Oh, I just make one part of the chip in China, well, now you can't make the phone, even if it was only 1 percent of the manufacturing process. If you can't find an alternate supplier, you're screwed. But what happens if you're selling into China, the German luxury car maker This is about Mercedes Benz.

The German luxury car maker posted an Instagram photo of a white coupe parked on a beach with the quote, quote, [00:14:00] look at situations from all angles and you will become more open in quote. The seemingly benign ad irritated China's internet users and state media alike because the quote was attributed to someone they consider a dangerous separatist, the Dalai Lama.

The, the Mercedes Benz quickly responded to the online outrage by deleting the ad and posting an apology on Weibo, a Chinese Twitter esque micro blogging site. We fully understand the incident has hurt feelings of Chinese people, including our employees in China, wrote the Weibo senten Statement in light of this, we will immediately take measures to deepen our understandings of Chinese culture and values, including our overseas colleagues to ensure this won't happen again.

Now, for people who don't know what happened as a result of this, people were burning Mercedes Benz cars. Mercedes were burning their own cars in the streets.

Note, uh, the clip I'm about to show you is actually about a different freak out about a [00:15:00] luxury car company in China, but it gives you an idea.

What you're seeing is a BMW showroom in China. This was taken today. And what you can see there is it says, you know, this basically says, um, get the, it's like BMW, get the hell back to Germany. Get out of China. And it's like spray painted, smashed on the winds, windshield. Um, and we've got another clip for you here, which is maybe even a little more extreme.

We've got a guy throwing gasoline all inside his BMW,

setting it on fire. Okay. So. You might be wondering, what's going on?

Malcolm Collins: This But that's the way the Chinese government works. It's in a nationalist direction.

They don't mind how much they whip off fervor, but I think this is going to bite them [00:16:00] in the butt one day. Now let's look at something else where this happened in a Chinese language survey sent out by customers in January. Marriott international listed Tibet, Hong Kong, Manchu, and Taiwan as options on a question, asking customers, their countries of residence.

Obviously this caused China to absolutely freak out and start banning people from going to Marriott. And I will look to the right back and find some crazy responses to this, but, but this shows that even the most benign things can cause freak outs because the government will attempt to whip people up and you can say, well, why aren't.

people reacting as strongly. Let's talk about some of the crazy things the government has done to try to prevent protests. So a lot of people are like, why would you do zero COVID? Remember I was talking about how it affected supply chains and stuff like that. It seems insane, but if you know that there's going to be an economic collapse coming and you can't do anything about it and you're a totalitarian government, well, what's the number one thing you want to do?

You want to restrict people. They never rolled back a most of the COVID for example. Tracking apps that [00:17:00] track where you are and can lock you down in location. And we saw in instances, there was an instance, for example, where the government was afraid of a bank run because a government somewhat supported bank had basically stolen everyone's money.

And so people of course wanted to go and withdraw their money. And. To prevent them from doing this, to prevent the bank run or even protests outside of the bank, because then people were saying, Oh, I'm going to go protest. The government would lock the apps, basically assign people as having COVID who had money in that bank or who had recently.

About potentially protesting.

Torsten: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And then they would start locking the apps of people who had come into contact with those people. They were using the contagion metrics that they had previously worked into their social media apps for social contagion. For social contagion. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Wow. I mean, it works.

It's elegant in that way, isn't it?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Now let's talk about to push back and what the government has done to these sorts of people before we [00:18:00] go full on. I'm going to, I'm going to give the stage to you. The white paper protests also known as the A4 revolution were a series of demonstration that took place across China on November, 2020.

So why were they protesting with pieces of blank A4 paper? Because they knew if they protested against anything specific, the government could it. That's what the government historically did to protesters. It would use these tracking apps to not just round up the protesters in the middle of the night.

That's typically what they would do. They'd say, okay, well, you're not allowed to say X or you're not allowed to say Y. And anyone who has says that, well, they get rounded up in the middle of the night. And so does anyone they've come in contact with. And so the people thought, well, let's just protest with white pieces of paper.

Okay. Seems fair, right? And they were primarily response to zero COVID. Now key aspects of the protests include the protests were sparked by a deadly apartment fire on November 24th, 2022, where at least 10 people died. Many people believe the victims were unable to escape [00:19:00] due to COVID restrictions.

Specifically, they had been welded inside the apartment and the doors had been blocked. And the fire happened because of like bad government oversight. You know, a lot of Places in China, I'll show videos of like, you pick up a fire hydrant and you learn that just due to bureaucratic incompetence and, and people trying to scam each other because there's so many scams being run there they'll be empty or full of silly string or something like that.

Right.

A woman can be seen trying to extinguish a fire pile with the extinguisher, but to no avail. At a construction site, workers were testing a fire extinguisher, and discovered it could not put out a fire, then switched to another one and still the same. Many swindlers impersonate firefighters to perform fake fire prevention inspections on businesses, only to peddle overpriced firefighting equipment.

, A fire broke out on the 18th floor of a residential building in Buji Street, Longgang District, Shenzhen. Firefighters responding to the incident found that fire hydrants in the building's corridor were dry. [00:20:00] Residents revealed that in this large residential area the fire hydrants had been dry for many years.

Last year in Guangdong, a woman accidentally damaged a fire hydrant it led to the revelation that the fire hydrant was a mere facade with no connecting water supply. This situation is common in residential communities in China. In a residential community in Bozhou, Anhui, a person filming a video demonstrated that the fire hydrant was simply buried in the ground, with nothing connected below.

A similar situation was discovered in a neighborhood in Qiannan Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province.

Malcolm Collins: The protest demonstration spread to major cities across China, including Shanghai, Beijing, Shandong and Wuhan. They at first were focused on COVID restrictions, but then they began to call on things like we want freedom and step down Xi Jinping, step down Communist Party.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: And how did the government respond to this?

They began to disappear people. That was generally what happened. [00:21:00] And since then, the protests have largely disappeared. So the way the government typically reacts to protests like this is they'll, Loosen whatever was being complained about and they'll disappear anyone who was involved in the protest.

And if they were more severe or more prominent, they'll disappear anyone who they had contact with. And in terms of there's ads in China. I'm gonna see if I can find one to like put on screen here where they have unaliving vans now. For criminals where they don't even take time to take you to prison.

They just drive, drive by in a van. They take you to the van and, and, and they let the public know that these exist and they just put you down. In the van. In the van. Yeah, they have the whole straps and everything and everything like that in the van.

When I was living in China for 10 years, I mean, I KNEW that there were death vans in China, but it was always one of those dark things that lived in conversation, not necessarily in real life.

But China's death vans, or execution vans, these cars that just show up and execute you, [00:22:00] for stuff that I'll explain to you later, and they take you away forever, they're real. They're very real. Very real the crazy thing is that they want their citizens to know about the vans, and they really, really want them to feel scared. I'm not kidding. Not only does this death van pull up and take your life, it's being promoted and promoted.

Before I go any further, , If you don't know this channel that I'm playing this content from strongly suggested. , these guy does well, there's sort of like three channels at the network of channels. There's a serpent debt. That a, yeah. Why 80?

And China fact chasers, China fact chasers as a channel they do together.

And that someone I strongly suggest if you're just checking out any of them, but a good way to stay up to date with what's really going on in China these days. [00:23:00] That's actually true. You will be taken out to be cremated, but you'll just be put into another van. I kid you not. They have cremation vans. They really love this whole mobile death thing in China.

You see how this is framed? It's like, how would you be executed? This is going to happen to you. You are supposed to enter this as like a POV. This is from your perspective.

in fact, just back in 2001, they were still bringing people to stadiums to execute them in public to make people feel like, wow, the government does stuff about criminals and I better not be like that.

Malcolm Collins: It is honestly more dystopian in China now than a lot of dystopian books.

When people are like, they wouldn't really begin forced insemination in China. I'm like, they have drive by murder vans [00:24:00] that they tell you about. Yeah, they would. And why are they becoming so totalitarian? Because they're getting scared. There is in China something called the mandate of heaven. Right. Which says that if the gods don't approve of whoever is in power, they will send natural disasters.

Well, there have been since zero COVID, a number of major floods across major cities in China. And the government has been unable to really do anything meaningful about these. The country is falling apart. Buildings are falling over. Because they. You know, cut corners when they were building out infrastructure, people feel like even now, if you go to their apps, even mentioning this historic concept in Chinese, the mandate of heaven is banned across most of their social media because they are afraid of people beginning to, to realize this.

And so you're like, how did these ideas spread? They're spreading through family networks mostly right now. And China has very tight knit family networks.

Simone Collins: Probably this would [00:25:00] have to be also like offline in conversations behind closed doors with all the electronics turned off. Like the amount of care that would have to be put into these discussions spreading.

And yet despite all this, it's happening

Malcolm Collins: or you'll we'll do things like the government, you know, like the Winnie the Pooh thing, right? Like they'll know that the government will say that something innocuous offends them like Winnie the Pooh and then people think they're safe posting that because it's Not the government itself.

It's just I think they've

Simone Collins: gotten past that. I mean at this point, it's it's clear that even just you know protesting with the white people

Malcolm Collins: Another place where this happened is there was some song that people saw And As the title could be seen as an indication of the government. So people in short had hit number one on charts,

You know, but again, the government, you know, as soon as it realizes this, there is no compromise.

Torsten: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And a lot of people are like, why are we so unafraid of China as a geopolitical power? And why I might. Encourage even some, I mean, I think we should protect Taiwan, but not get in full scale war with China because it's [00:26:00] not worth it. They're not going to exist as a major power in 15 years or 20 years.

Don't you, we don't need to play this game. Their fertility rate is so low and everything they've done shows a complete inability to get it up. And they have had this one child policy going for a long time. So they are affected by this much longer than we are. People are like, Oh, the fertility because of the one child policy.

No, it's been crashing. Since the one child policy was lifted. It is much lower now than it ever was during the one child policy. It's lower now than it was even during the Great Famine. This is catastrophic, the situation they're in. And they are doing everything they can. They're banning vasectomies.

They're banning blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. None of it's working.

Simone Collins: Gosh, that's scary.

Malcolm Collins: So they are a country on the verge of collapse in every sense of the word.

Simone Collins: So I guess your, your stance is just when it comes to us policy. Okay. Yes. Maybe some protections for Taiwan, but aside from that. [00:27:00] The focus should be on disentangling trade relations from China as quickly as possible, because from a, from an economic perspective, the bigger liability is any dependency on Chinese industry, which is probably going to start falling apart even more sooner rather than later, we don't even need to really worry about trade embargoes.

We need to worry about literally our businesses not being able to. You know, get the products and basic components. They need. Plus, we also need to be worried about China and AI because it is going to be very strongly motivated to steal whatever superintelligence development we're doing.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Well, and I would also say with China.

And this is a policy change I've had recently, actually inspired by the changing of the policy positions of the new right and beginning to think about foreign policy more pragmatically. Historically, I would have been a hard liner on defending Taiwan just out of national pride reasons and stuff like that and being the good guy and we are Americans.[00:28:00]

Now I don't think it's pragmatically in our best interest and people might be shocked by that given the chip manufacturing that's done there and they'd say, why? I would put a condition on defending Taiwan. We will defend Taiwan if they can get their fertility rate up. But right now, Taiwan has such a low fertility rate that people who we waste defending them, we're doing it for nothing.

Their population at their current fertility rate, especially if it keeps dropping at the rate it has historically is going to be like, I think if you project forwards, like two or one Taiwanese person for every hundred Taiwanese people in terms of great grandchildren, it's just not a relevant player in the future and its current fertility rates.

Why are we. Wasting our children's lives and putting our country at risk to defend a country that can't even motivate itself to reproduce

Torsten: But I

Malcolm Collins: actually think that if we made this ultimatum with them, it would help them in the long run as well, because they'd realize, Oh shoot, we actually do have to reproduce.

However, I do think that we should have a plan for the Taiwanese [00:29:00] people. And by that, what I mean is if we are not fully defending them, we need to have a plan for evacuating them and acculturating them. I am open to, I mean, Taiwan produces is the key manufacturer of semiconductors for the world. I would not mind the U S being the key manufacturer of semiconductors for the world.

We have tried to build our own plants as advanced as Taiwanese. Plants, but culturally we're not as good at rule following and procedure and bureaucracy as them. And we have struggled. By the way, many people can ask why are Taiwanese so good at that stuff? Is it some Chinese thing? Is it some genetic thing?

It's a genetic thing, but it's not a Chinese thing. Exactly. Taiwan is like an entire country of America's Cuban immigrant population. You have communist upbringings. What often happens is the competent, smart, industrialist people who are Prone to enjoying competing in meritocracies and free markets leave the, you know, in America, you're like, well, what do you, what do you think of Cubans?

What's the Cuban stereotype? Well, they're like, well, they're, they're [00:30:00] capitalistic, they're Republican and they're successful at business. And it's like, is that a broader Cuban stereotype? No, it's the, it's the American Cubans. Same with the Chinese who fled the revolution and went to Taiwan. And if we can make use of that, especially if we can help create, build a stable population, I think people are like, well, aren't you worried about them not assimilating in the U S and changing American culture?

It's like, look, their fertility rate is so low. No, I'm not. At this rate, they're going to go extinct pretty much no matter what we do. We might as well get some semiconductor plants out of it. And and, and some years of economic productivity out of it. And hey, Koreans who immigrate to the US, their fertility rate bumps 50%.

It's still very low. It's like 1. 2 or something like that. Basically halving of regeneration. But it's not as low as it is in South Korea. I suspect we see a similar thing with the Taiwanese population, meaning that in the end it would also help them.

Simone Collins: Well. I [00:31:00] don't imagine we'll ever be that practical, but we'll see what happens.

We're in for a wild ride regardless. I had no idea things had gotten so dire, so terrifying, so quickly.

Malcolm Collins: So. And the people are like, what about the economic effects of taking a bunch of Taiwanese people and wouldn't they want to maintain their own stable communities? Well, why not have the government buy some land in like Alaska or something like that and develop it as a new separate community?

I don't mind doing that. Then you also don't have the cultural bleed effects and we get the economic benefits from it. And we get to develop real estate and land that's currently not developed or fully utilized. I don't mind that at all. Anyway, there are

Simone Collins: lots of ways to do things, but oh my gosh. Yeah.

I just,

Malcolm Collins: I hope everyone's okay. Well, I, I'm trying to, might genuinely attack to remove, like if they attack, I don't think they're doing it for any reason other than to distract their general public and to test and mobilize their military to make sure it can respond to threats from the general public.

I could

Simone Collins: see

Malcolm Collins: that. Yeah. Because that is the existential threat to China right now. [00:32:00] But and I should also note another problem China has right now is they don't have a play for after Xi Jinping leaves. He's done a very good job of like taking everyone out of the government who is a competitor to him, who is competent, who is ambitious.

I'll come in a second. Hold on. I'll bring Octavian on to say bye to you guys. Okay.

I want you to say hi to people. Octavian, come here. Tell them about your toys.

Octavian: I just brought the toys. Okay. So, that, I just brought toys. They're, I just, I just got the toys in the box from Stacey and John's

Malcolm Collins: house. What do you think about China?

Octavian: And, and then I got a box with toys to our house.

Stacy, Stacy does not need many more toys anymore.

Malcolm Collins: [00:33:00] Okay, but what do you think of China?

Octavian: Good.

Malcolm Collins: China's good? Are they, are, do you think that they could be our friends one day?

Octavian: Yes!

Malcolm Collins: What do you think of a bunch of Taiwanese people immigrating to the U. S.? I think a lot of our audience isn't going to like that.

Octavian: Yes, and you know, I just brought it right there at that door.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, but do you think that we have enough toys for them? What if, what if other kids came and started playing with your toys? Would that be good or bad?

So the more kids playing with your toys, the better?

Octavian: Yeah. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Especially if we can use those kids in an economic fight against other people. What do you think of that? What? What do you think of, do you think the kids would fight for you? No, they would not. Oh, they wouldn't? Well, then why would you want them to play with your choice?

Because.

Because it's a nice thing to do? Hold

Octavian: on a second.

Can you bring this? I'll bring, hold on a second. I'll be right, I'll be right here. I gotta get [00:34:00] this. I gotta get the toys. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I love you, Octavian. I love you, Simone. Bye. Why don't you finish up with Octavian? He's gonna talk to you a little bit. Octavian, hold the mic.

And Malcolm, you get the kids.

Simone Collins: Octavian, come let me interview you. Come take a seat. Okay.

Octavian: Okay.

Simone Collins: All right. Tell me, Octavian, what do you know about the country, China?

Octavian: It's good.

Simone Collins: You love them. Do you think that, that the Chinese people. Have a hope for the future.

Octavian: Yeah. And where was Daddy going?

Simone Collins: Daddy's going to get your brother and sister 'cause it's time for dinner.

Well, where

Octavian: was Daddy's wife into when I was at Station? Dawn House.

Simone Collins: Oh, we were going to pick up some groceries for you because guess what, tonight you're having corn for kids. Corn on the cob.

Octavian: Thank you.

Simone Collins: You're welcome. Do you like corn on the cob? Do you put butter on it or do you eat it plain? Eat

Octavian: it with [00:35:00] plain.

Simone Collins: You want to eat it plain? Okay. Would you share your corn on the cob with kids who came over from China?

Octavian: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Good. It's good to share, right?

Octavian: Yeah, sharing is caring, right?

Simone Collins: Sharing is caring. That's right, Octavian. Are you going to share your corn with your brother and sister? Yes. That's really nice. Okay.

What do you think? So there, there's a lot of people in China right now who are sad. What do you think that they should do to be happy?

Octavian: Okay. Yes.

Simone Collins: What, what should we do to cheer up the people in China? Because they're very sad right now.

Octavian: Who, what makes them so sad?

Simone Collins: They feel like there's no hope for the future.

Like they'll never get toys again.

You'll get them toys. How will you get them toys? What will you do to get them toys?

Octavian: I'll get them. I'll get them a tiny teddy bear. A

Simone Collins: tiny teddy bear.

Octavian: Yeah. [00:36:00] So they come sleep and take a wreck and I, and I can, and I can get them all in the way. Five toys,

Simone Collins: only. Five toys. I think there are more than five people in China, though.

I think there's a lot of people in China.

Octavian: Oh, so I said them.

Simone Collins: I think you're gonna need to get more toys. But do you think that's going to be enough to cheer them up, Octavian?

Octavian: Yeah.

Simone Collins: You think so?

Octavian: Yeah, well, if all the toys are gone right at our house, I'm safe in our house, and we gotta get toys from the toy store.

Simone Collins: Oh, so you think this is a opportunity to cheer up the people in China because you get to go shopping?

Octavian: Yes!

Simone Collins: Huh. Okay. Okay. And how are you going to get all these toys to China? You know how when you look at the, at the globe, right? When you look at the world map, China is very far away. It's across the Pacific Ocean.

Octavian: What the? Oh yes, so I should go on the [00:37:00] boat.

Simone Collins: Oh, you're going to go on a boat to deliver the toys to China, to cheer up the people of China. Is that right?

Octavian: Yeah, I'm going to deliver the boats. I'm a great delivery man. I deliver everything. For everybody else who is sad.

Simone Collins: Okay, so you're one solution here.

Octavian: What?

Why think that's like a paddle? What's that thing there?

Simone Collins: It's a paddle. That's exactly what you think it is. It's a paddle for the boat.

Octavian: For for the boat that's in our house.

Simone Collins: That's right. Yeah, for the bumper bug is gonna

Octavian: be, is it gonna be for me?

Simone Collins: You can use it as long as you promise not to drop it.

Octavian: Okay.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. I'll put

Octavian: it right. I'll put it right here, right now.

Simone Collins: Okay. That sounds good.

Octavian: I just, so Oct.

Simone Collins: You know, here's a really important part of, oh, you got the teddy bear. That's good. So really important part of making toys is special microchips that make the toys work, right? Oh, okay. And there's a place called [00:38:00] Taiwan that makes all these really important chips and they're in danger.

What would you do to protect Taiwan?

Octavian: To kill them. I just had to kill them. Well,

Simone Collins: specifically So you kill whoever's attacking

Malcolm Collins: Taiwan?

Simone Collins: And how will you how will you protect Taiwan from China attacking because they might want to stop them from making the chips They might want to I don't know. Would

Malcolm Collins: you want to go

Simone Collins: yourself

Malcolm Collins: to kill them or would you send missiles?

Would you want to use a gun or a missile?

Octavian: That's not heff, that's not heffy.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so you want a light gun, okay. That makes sense, because you don't

Octavian: I want it! I want it!

Malcolm Collins: Let Torsten hold it, buddy. He wants to hold it.

Simone Collins: Torsten, how do you spell your name?

Octavian: Torsten. I want to hold it. I want to hold it. I don't know.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you do, buddy. Look, our kids don't like being on camera and don't like speaking into the microphone.

So, this [00:39:00] is clearly against their consent. You can see that we have not, hello, hello, hello, Torsten, let Torsten talk. He wants it. Can you ask, ask Octavian, ask Torsten an interview question. Ask Torsten an interview question. Ask him about China.

Octavian: I cannot have the microphone. The microphone

Malcolm Collins: can hear you from over there.

Just ask him a question. Thank you.

Simone Collins: Okay, Torsten. Torsten, how do we cheer up China? How do we make China happy?

Malcolm Collins: I'll give you the microphone. Next time we'll have a microphone for everyone. Awww. Okay.

Simone Collins: Torsten, the people of China need to be cheered up. How can you make them happy?

Malcolm Collins: How are you going to make them happy?

Torsten: I don't know how to get them happy.

Simone Collins: Oh, I don't think China knows how to either. The CCP is having trouble.

Oh, the mic just disconnected.

Malcolm Collins: No, he turned it off.

Simone Collins: What will you do if they [00:40:00] hurt somebody?

Torsten: I just got to turn it on.

Simone Collins: Oh, it's okay, Torsten. What would, if Chyna does something naughty, what will happen?

Octavian: Want

Malcolm Collins: to be the attention? Octavia, if Chyna hurt somebody, what would you do?

Octavian: Microphone!

Malcolm Collins: Okay, everybody wants the microphone.

Well, you know what that means, like, nobody gets to hold the microphone. I love you, Simone. I love you

Simone Collins: too,

Torsten: Malcolm. Oh,

Simone Collins: I love Toasty's voice on the microphone, though.

Malcolm Collins: I just want Toasty to say something on the

Simone Collins: microphone so bad, his little voice.

Malcolm Collins: I got the microphone!

Oh gosh, I, I've got it for now. Oh,

Torsten: oh gosh. Yes. Oh boy.

Simone Collins: All right. I'll come down. I'm making corn for Octavian. What do you want?

Malcolm Collins: What's hurting? [00:41:00]

Simone Collins: Would you like Malcolm, would you like your Tortellini?

Malcolm Collins: Fight or flight? Is that what you said? Would you like Tortellini? I reheat. Fried rice and reheat slow cooked meat for the fried rice. Okay.

Simone Collins: That sounds good.

Okay. Toasty. Tell me something interesting.

Oh yeah. Okay. Toasty.

Malcolm Collins: Octavian, are you China and Toasty's Taiwan?

Torsten: It's no

Simone Collins: tickles.

All right. I'll, I'll hit. And I love you, [00:42:00] Malcolm. This is, looks pretty dire. See you downstairs in a sec.

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