Workers Protest in Modern China, Part 2

Mia finishes her conversation with Cornell professor Eli Friedman and talks about the recent protests

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome, Dick. It happened here the podcast that you're listening
to right now. It's your host, Christopher Long, and we
are back with part two of our interview with Eli
Friedman about the reason protests in China. I want to
go back and talk about lying flat and that whole
kind of I don't know movement discourse that was happening

(00:26):
last year, because it seems like the kind of I
don't know if nihilism is the right word, but this
kind of like collective understanding that the whole sort of
bargain of the Chinese social system of you know, and
this was to some extent extended to everyone, right, like
the bargain of the Chinese social system of everyone everyone,
keep your head down, will get rich together. It suddenly

(00:47):
became clear that this wasn't gonna happen, And you know,
I mean, I think like in some sense it's possible
to sort of like, you know, you can you can
put on your sort of like hard materialist hat and
you can like look at the number of hammers banging
out and you can just look at the chirp of
Chinese GDP graph of the last decade and be like, Okay, well,
so eventually like what what what? What? It hit like

(01:08):
two percent? Eventually we were going to have protests. But yeah,
I guess, I guess I I wanted to talk a
bit about like, yeah, what line flat was? We covered
this on the show a long time ago when it
was happening, But and then also sort of how that
attitude shift was important or wasn't important. I don't know,
Maybe it wasn't. I think it was, but yeah, I

(01:30):
think it's very important. Right, So, yeah, you can't just
be a crude materialist and like mechanically read social protest
off of some chart of you know, following profitability or
something like that. Um. But there it is a cultural
expression of real fundamental changes in the organization of the
Chinese economy. Uh. You know where already talked about how

(01:51):
the post eighty nine generation was like you go to
college and like you come out and you know you'll
you'll be middle class right on average, And that's just
not at all the case anymore. And young people in
China and and older people, middle aged people you know,
who are who have children, who are who are going
through the system, um, feel immense pressure in like immense

(02:13):
competition in all spheres of life beginning from a young
age in elementary school, all the way up through high school,
through the super competitive and intense university admissions process, and
then after graduating university and getting a job, and then
getting a job that can you know, um uh, you
can earn enough money to be able to afford an apartment.
And so here we have to understand you know, the

(02:35):
cost of housing and all of the other costs associated
with social reproduction. So the like the cost of care workers. Right,
if middle class people in places like Shanghai and Beijing
expect to have domestic workers, um, you know, looking after
their children, they expect to be able to hire tutors
who can um, you know, and comtutor their children in
English or in math um. And so just people feel

(02:58):
under unbelievable sure, and this is in a situation that
part of the reason that the pressure has is really
ramped up is that there are fewer good paying jobs.
You know, youth unemployment now in China is around um
and so one of the responses to that is just
forget about it. We're you know, we're gonna lie flat,

(03:19):
We're gonna we're gonna reject all of this. There's different
expressions and I don't actually the sort of like you know,
sociologists and me is like, well, we don't actually have
numbers to know how many people are are lying flat
and like that is true, Like maybe most people are
still just going to work and you know, doing their job,
but there's enough you know, stories, and certainly in terms
of cultural residence of people just doing the bare minimum

(03:42):
at work or working for short periods of time, earning
just enough money to survive and not worrying about meeting
those kind of social expectations around buying a car, buying
an apartment and getting married, having kids, because people just
see it as as kind of it's kind of hopeless. Um.
And so I think that's a really important backdrop because
we have to understand that some level that these protests

(04:04):
are about a sense of hopelessness, right be at economic opportunities,
be at the political system where cigent being is going
to rain as long as he wants, or be at
zero COVID, where you know, at any given moment, you're
gonna be locked inside your apartment and you're not gonna
be able to see your friends or or do anything.
So um. Yeah, So I think it's very relevant. Yeah,
And I wanted to, I guess also to This is

(04:27):
something I talked about on this podcast a lot, but
I need to, like I don't like drill into people's heads,
like just the sheer amount that people in China are working,
just like like the number of hours, a number of
days a week, the the amount of effort that is
being put in is like it is, it is. It
is a level of Rowster plus value extraction that like

(04:50):
like like most places in the world haven't seen in
like a court like in like half a century. It
is like or even longer than that. Like it is,
it is a a truly stunning, like a truly stunning
level of exploitation in terms of things like nine six
in terms of the people who are working schedules in

(05:10):
a way worse than that, who don't really ever get
like talked about because they're not tech workers or they're
not people who have sort of like a platform Chinese society. Yeah,
it's it's extremely normalized, you know, I mean, like the
thing which which first of all, it is maybe worth
mentioning that China legally has a forty hour work week.

(05:33):
You're only allowed to work thirty six hours of overtime
on month, right, so probably you know, not more than
forty nine or fifty hours a week. That's that's like
the legal the legal standard. Nobody even remotely pretends like
that is a thing in any industry. There's legal debates
about like whether it applies to professional, white collar you know,
salaried workers or not. But um, you know, when the

(05:55):
thing came out and there was a pretty cool i
think movement based mostly online among tech workers, it was
it was great. It was very inspiring. And also every
single blue collar worker like we've been waking units six
for decades, you know, um, and so so it is

(06:16):
it is very normal across these these different kinds of
of stratum for sure. Um, one of the cool things
about ninetight six is people were we're revolting against it
and saying like this is an unacceptable way to live.
And again it comes back to this whole thing of
like all of these feelings of you know, these enhanced
pressures right where it's just like how do I live

(06:37):
in this city? How do I find like decent housing?
Like if you know, if I want to have like
a social life, which is the thing that some people
in their twenties want to have, you know, like how
do I do that? It's impossible under those circumstances. Um
so so again, like you can't read these movements mechanically
off of these these uh, these structural changes. But like

(06:59):
that is a thing that has been happening that is unresolved.
It's not at least for the you know, the blank
paper protesters, the kind of the more elite students and stuff,
they haven't specifically articulated um, their grievances as labor demands, um.
But it's it's at least an important backdrop to what's
happening today. Yeah, and I think it's remember like how

(07:25):
I think I think this was like Mide twenty nine keeen.
I'm trying remember when I when I saw this specific video.
But there there there, there there was a video from
the Hong Kong protests that was like it's always it was.
It was like literally one of these classic like like
sort of Twitter things, but like what do you want out?
What do you want to do after the revolution? And
it was like most of it was like I want

(07:48):
to start a bakery, like I want to work in
a library. And it strikes me that there's these things
that get subsumed under you know, when when when when
you see a pro democracy movement, right when when you
see you know, like the sort of well, I guess
that there's something interesting to hear about the Like like
day one of the protests, there were a lot of

(08:09):
videos that we're talking about Iran, and that kind of
seemed to like like the very early videos were about
sort of solidarity with the protests in the room sheet
and then like it was like it was like specifically
tying that to Iran and then to sort of pro
democracy demands, and then later on you get the sort
of like like the Shanghai like down with the party denimping,

(08:32):
like we went to occracy and free speech stuff. But
it strikes me that like a lot of the times
when you see people making those demands, it's because they
think that like you know, it's like there there there's
a whole set of of like things that they like,
things that they believe about the future and about what
will happen in the future that are like not articulated
in the demands, but if you talked about if you

(08:53):
talk about them, like if you talk to people about
what they think is going to happen after that, there's
this whole sort of like opening up of stuff that
they think will be like the necessary results of like
the end of the one party state. And it's like,
you know, I don't want him, Like I don't know,
I had this debate a lot with like, like there's
kind of like Chinese international student you get in the
US who like comes to the US and it's like

(09:15):
immediately like enormously enamored with the US. It's it's it's
sort of the mirror image of how we have a
bunch of people who are like incredibly enamored with the
Chinese state, and then you get people who come here
and are like incredibly enamored the American state, and it's like, well, yeah, okay,
this politician will see you and they will talk to you. However, Comma,
in about two years they will be voting to throw

(09:35):
you in prison. So like, but obviously, like both people
in China understand the Chinese system sucks and that the
promises that people like in the US belief about it
are fake. And then people in the US understand that
you can get a multiparty democracy and things because they'll
be absolutely shit. But yeah, yeah, you know, it strikes
me that there's a lot of stuff sort of embedded

(09:55):
in in in these demands that are like not really
explod articulated until later. And then that's also, I guess
been a hard part about these protests that like I
don't know, it's hard to get information out. You can
get shortened views with people. Mostly what you're getting are
like thirty seconds of footage of people yelling at a cop, right, yeah, yeah,

(10:16):
I mean there's a lot going on. Like if you
have this one, this tiny little opening, and then instantly
you have protests in like all of these cities all
over the country, dozens of universities, protests among you know,
working class migrants, like middle class people in Shanghai, like,
you know, all all across the country. Like that suggests

(10:37):
that people have a variety of sets of grievances and
they're kind of funneling them through this this meta narrative
around ending the lockdown, which is not to diminish the
significance of the actual lockdowns, which are are called causing
real human suffering. But there's definitely a lot going on,
and you know, one of the big ones is what's
happening in Shinjong, Like it's we still don't really know

(11:00):
how Weakers are feeling about all of this. The fact
that like all of the all the Protestants in the
big Eastern cities are about commemorating what happened in ermchy
Uh in a fire that killed mostly, if not exclusively, Weaker.
It's like that that that deserves to be talked about. Um,
We don't really know how like the Han people on

(11:20):
the streets in the Eastern cities, like if they're thinking
about this this backdrop of you know, massive repression, surveillance
and mass internment of of Weakers and other Muslim minorities. Um.
But that's another thing. Uh And and I think the
same thing goes for the treatment of migrant workers in
in fox Con and these other um blue collar workers

(11:41):
who were put into the closed loop. Like to what
extent our urban um Han people still kind of willing
to go along with sacrificing migrant workers and treating them
as as as second class citizens, or is their possibility
of developing some real sense of of solidarity um with
ending not just the closed loop, but ending you know,
like kuko based discrimination, ending the camps in shin Jong.

(12:04):
You know, I mean, you can kind of spin out
from there, if if you are interested in thinking about
what it would mean to democratize China in like a
in a robust sense of the word, I think points

(12:24):
that are never thing about these protests that are complicated, right,
which is that like they are cross class in a
lot of ways, but I don't know, it seems to
me like the way they're manifesting is very much down
class lines. Like Okay, I genuinely don't understand what's going
on in Guangho. That like every single video I see
at Guangho is like seventy people throwing bottles at a cop,

(12:47):
and like every video I see out of like Shanghai
is like six people holding a piece of paper. But
it very much seems like, you know, like when when
when when when the cops are getting to like these
these sort of like these working class neighborhood these neighborhoods
that are like a informal housing, these neighborhoods that are
full of migrant workers. There were these really really intense
conflicts with the police in ways that like kind of

(13:08):
aren't happening. Well, I mean, okay, that's because the kind
of stuff seems to be happening in a room sheet.
And I think it's happening there partially because you know,
this is like well okay, I don't know off thought
in my head whether it's more militarized than Tibet, but
like one of the most militarized, like one of the
most heavily police places in China. And then also people
are just really like the the immediate and palpable anger

(13:30):
seems to be the highest there because you know, I
mean like like it you're you're going to be more
piste off when it's people in your city or like
you know, you you maybe were like three blocks away
from this fire. Yeah, like these people. But yeah, one
of one piece about about Urch is that they've been

(13:51):
in some form of lockdown for like a hundred days,
you know. Yeah, so that's not and and part of
that has to do with the fact that it is
this colonial setting where they feel like they can do
things to people that they can't do in Beijing and
Channg like people in San are not going to do that, right,
It's just like it's inconceivable. Um, there's obviously a lot
of Han people in Ear and she is actually a
majority Han. Now yeah, I think, yeah, um that that

(14:15):
sounds right to me, and shin Jong is increasingly Han
as well, although I believe we are still constitute a plurality.
So you know, there's just like each the lockdowns kind
of filtered down to these different localities and into different
communities with their different social and class compositions in different
kinds of ways and have different kinds of effects. Right,

(14:37):
So you can put people in lockdown in shin Jong
for a hundred days and they're going to be really
pissed when they get out. In the case of Guang Joe,
you know, this was also part of the sequence that
I think has been written out of the official narrative.
It's not it wasn't just fox Con. You had the
initial fox Con escape in late October early November, and
then you had these pretty intense riots that happened in

(14:58):
Guang Joe, but were in these urban villages, so called
urban villages largely informal housing, very densely populated, that are
overwhelmingly migrant workers. In this case, it was mostly people
from Hubei Um, which is which is where Wuhan is
and Um and so you know, just those migrant communities
were put into lockdown in Guangzho. So if you were

(15:20):
over in yeah, if you over in Tianaha District, which
is the sort of the the newer, like fancier part
of Guangho with lots of high rises, Um, you know,
those places were not under lockdown, and so they they
put the migrant communities, and I saw some like really
not nice stuff, you know, people just being like, oh yeah,
you know. The the local Guangjo people on the other

(15:41):
side of the river are just like going about their
life and and they're they're okay with what's happening to
the migrants. And the migrants were, as is the case
in some of these earlier lockdowns, actually facing real subsistence crisis,
like they didn't have enough food to eat, and they
couldn't leave to try to get food. Um. So that's
why you saw these super intense riots. And that's why

(16:02):
you see them confronting the police and you know, screaming
at them, throwing things at them. You see tear gas,
all of these things. I think. So I think that's
the only place I've seen tear gas so far, Like
maybe in a room sheet. I'm not there may have
been a video, I don't I don't remember specifically their
room sheet, but definitely like only place have seen that
level of repression. Yeah, yeah, no, it was, it was

(16:23):
I mean, you know the Jung Joe Fox con was
probably the most violent and the larger scale. Um, but
you know that was it was a little bit different.
I Gwang Joe. It's kind of like smaller streets they're fighting,
you know, street by street. So um yeah, so they
have a different experience of people in Shanghai. Again not
to minimize their demands, and I think it's it's important
for people to find points of commonality, um against this policy. Um,

(16:49):
but it's you know, it's not like that if if
you're if you're a middle class person Han person in Shanghai,
which is again not to minimize the very real difficulties
that those folks have been facing. Is well something this
kind of you know, I think that there there there's
there's like another group of people who should probably talk
about a little bit, which is like this sort of
downwardly mobile class a business owners who have been kind

(17:11):
of just getting annihlated by the lockdowns. And does that
that happen in the US too, Although the Chinese version
of it seems they're like less marginally less absolutely psychotic,
Like they haven't tried, but they haven't tried to like
kidnap a governor yet, Like they're not like they're not
as fascist as their American counterparts. Yeah, but it's it's

(17:37):
it seems it seems like there's a kind of interesting
I don't know, there's there's a class dynamic that kind
of reminds me of occupy and that you have this
sort of like kind of tenuous alliance between like some
some parts of the working class, these elite students, and
like this downwardly mobile middle class. But it strikes me that,

(17:58):
you know, I mean, that's the sort of a finding
thing about occupying. I think like the defining thing about
the whole sort of two thousand eleven doesn't thirteen wave
of protests was that like it was it was really
really easy to get people together into a physical space,
and when when you were in that single physical space,
it was like, you know, it's not it's not like
classes appeared, but it was like, you know, it was,

(18:18):
it was, it was. It was. It was a way
in which sort of like classes were mixing and you
could form this new kind of like identity based around
like what you're doing in this place, and it doesn't
really seem like that's possible here. It really seems like,
I don't know, like there's this huge like you know,
this this is a protest that is like happening in

(18:38):
a lot of different places at the same time. But
it's like it doesn't. Yeah, the segmented they don't and
they don't they don't really have a sort of like
cohesive social identity that in a way that you could
get out of a bunch of people being in the
same place. Yeah. No, I think that's right. I mean
they're spatially segmented. Um. Something someone pointed out out on Twitter.

(19:00):
I can't remember who, but they're drawing comparisons to the
protests and the kind of the physical arrangements where people
are living and so particularly given you know, the online censorship,
like that's been really important. So you have these worker
dormitories and fox con like you can organize by actually
talking to people with student dormitories, right, Um, and then
you have much smaller protests among the you know, the

(19:21):
middle class people who are able to circulate things online.
And so the consequence of that is is they are
pretty segmented and I think, you know, everyone has their
own grievance with zero COVID, but these grievances are actually
pretty different. Right, So the fox con workers don't like
the closed loop management system where you know, where they
can't leave, where, where they're subjected to unsafe conditions, etcetera. Um,

(19:43):
you know, the petty bourgeoise like they don't like the
fact that there's no foot traffic you know, coming into
their shops. Right. And um, I don't know if you
saw the video of the guy like kicking down the
wall with a soup latal and it specifically, yeah, I
mean it was it was very theatrical, dramatic and uh
a great video you know in terms of like the

(20:04):
class position and yeah, you can see how it can
kind of capsize into fash quickly. Um. And then like
the students, you know, they want to be able to
live normal student lives and like leave their dormitories. And
that's the thing that I think students anywhere can associate with.
So it's like, yeah, they're all against the zero COVID policy,
but then it's kind of like what are their politics

(20:25):
after that? And I think if if this is going
to open up, um, you know, some kind of more
expansive political vision, Like it's gonna be hard to maintain
that like that unity. Right, the students are already talking
about like you know, censorship, freedom of speech, those things
which I support, I think are very good. You're probably
not gonna get the petty boudgeoisie to like risk arrest

(20:46):
and violence with the cops, you know, over like holding
up a blank white piece of paper, um, you know.
And then the micrant workers have another whole set of things,
you know, around like basic like health infrastructure, like you know,
can they get access to decent healthcare in the places
where they're where they're living. And that's not going to
resonate to the same extent with the students. So yeah,
the one I think about a lot was like there's

(21:07):
a video going around it this guy being like I
don't care about politics. I just want to go to
the movies, and I was like, this is the most
American person in China, Like this is the one person
that I'm like, okay, like that, you know, and and
like that there is that kind of sort of like
I just I just want to live my normal life
like thing that's happening, and then that that I think
is a kind of recognizable American impulse. But then you

(21:28):
have the stuff that's like did you see did you
see those pictures that were going around of like the
hospitals they were putting megicant workers in were just like
the entire bathroom floor is just like covered in poop
and like awful. Yeah, it's like the whole whole bathroom
floors is just flooded. There's like just like the the
the you can't flush toilet paper down it, so there's

(21:49):
just these like mountains of toilet paper, and I think, like, yeah,
it's awful. Like that the difference between the people whose
things are like I want to go to the movies
and the people whose demand is like please stop locking
me in this, like like people like you know that
that was I guess. I guess. The other sort of
lost thing that seemed to be pretty big in Chinese
social media that I don't that wasn't talked about much

(22:11):
here was the uh there was this bus that capsized
that killed like twenty seven people who were being taken
like to a facility to specifically to hold like you know,
this is like what one of one of these sort
of like I don't I don't even really want to
dignify them by calling them hospitals, because they're like, yeah,
like just a complete disaster. Um. But where were people

(22:33):
were being held, like held because they had Yeah? Yeah,
And I don't know, it seems like that there's a
really big sort of like you know, I mean, I
guess it's like like the the protests are reflecting all
of all of the sort of like existing classified in
Chinese society in ways that I think are are pretty
obvious if you look at it, which I guess in

(22:57):
some sense like this this does strike me as the
most gentlemin esque thing. But look, the most unuminous thing
about it is the way that the media has been
like specifically covering the grievances of exactly like two groups
of people, which is like the students and like, and
then all of the labor stuff has just vanished after
about day two. Yeah yeah, yeah for sure. Um. And

(23:21):
I mean I don't have much optimism that that that
the coverage will change, um, But you know, there there
is an experience, um that middle class people I think
have had pretty acutely going back at least to the
Shanghai lockdown, of this realization that there actually are no

(23:42):
limits on state power, right, And that to them was
kind of like a shock. You know. They're like, oh,
like I thought I was just gonna be able to
go about my life like as long as I didn't
you know, demand to be able to vote for the president.
Like I can have a job. I can, um, you know,
go eat hot pot or you know, get whatever kind
of delicious food I want having in these big cities,
can travel internationally. You know, all of these things are

(24:05):
you know more or less okay, Um, there's been lots
of you know, there's lots of other people in training
society for him, that's never been the experience, right, most
importantly the minorities and the workers and the migrant workers
who have always you know, experienced that raw and unchecked
power of the state. And so, you know, does does

(24:25):
this have the capacity to kind of bring them together?
You know, it's going to be extremely difficult to do,
especially because there aren't like spaces for political organizing and
working through these differences in a constructive way. Yeah. I mean,
I will say that the one thing that kind of
that strikes me as something that like is just different
about this cycle is that, like I don't know, I don't, like,

(24:47):
I don't think I've ever seen in my lifetime outside
of like really tiny maoist sex like people openly calling
for the downfall of the government, like just in in
a kind of like large a stemic way, and like
it it seems like I don't know, maybe maybe the
censors will sort of get control back, but it really

(25:09):
seems like there's been this kind of floodgate that's opened
where suddenly like there's a there's a brief moment where
like it suddenly became possible to talk about things where
you know, like like two months ago, it was like
one guy laid aside on a bridge and like this
was this was like the biggest thing that had ever
happened in Chinese society whatever, etcet et cetera. And then suddenly,
like you know, you just have people on the streets

(25:31):
or Shanghai like just chanting stuff that wasn't even on
that banner, and like, I don't know, like it really
seems like like it's it's not like they've actually like
fully lost control of the country or anything, like they're
not even close to that, but it's it's like the
sort of like the sort of regime of terror and
fear that had been in place to keep people from

(25:52):
doing this kind of stuff has fallen off a little bit. Yeah,
I mean, I I'd be very curious to know what
the vibe is like in China, and obviously I have
not been there for a while. Um, but like, and
this is wildly speculative, and if you have any Chinese
listeners who want to correct me, I would be glad
to have some more information about this. But my feeling

(26:14):
from Hofar is that you know, like she Jinping is
just like you can't you can't say anything about him,
and that even in like private spaces, you know, people
just like don't feel like the ability to kind of
imagine something different and like that has been changed. Like
I don't think we're going to see a lot more

(26:34):
people on the streets chanting down with she be down
with the Communist Party, Like it's you know, it's a
risky it's a risky thing to do. But I do
think that like now at least people know that there's
other other people in the country that are thinking the
same things that they're thinking. And then at least within
you know, like you know, face to face interactions that
people might be a little bit more willing to kind

(26:56):
of say like, oh, like these protests happened, that was
pretty crazy, like let's talk about that, um and so
so so that to me is optimistic. UM. And I
do hope that more of this organizing can take place,
you know, offline, because I think that's the only safe
way to do it. Um. So, So yeah, I I
think something has changed significantly. And you see it here,

(27:17):
you know. I mean, I've been teaching Chinese students for
ten years. Um, there's no question that people are interested,
um in talking about things now in a in a
more open way than was the case a couple of
years ago. And like Herreck Cornell, we had we had
a little vigil for um F and G as well,
and people were chanting, you know, down with Ci Jin
ping um, which is kind of like okay, you're you know,

(27:40):
you're in the good New York, Like it's not dangerous. Well,
I think students feel it to be dangerous, and definitely
a month or two ago would have felt it to
be quite dangerous. So yeah, and I guess we probably
shouldn't like completely downplay the fact that like the CCP
has international networks in a way that's for sure, Like
the way tenden to get covered in the press is

(28:01):
very sort of like this kind of like right wing
fear mongering, but's like no, these people do exist, and like, yeah,
like it is possible for you to like tweet something
while you're in the US and then like someone in
China finds out about it and things start to go
very badly for you very quickly, and for sure, like
that's that's that's a real danger. That yeah, and regardless

(28:22):
of how many spies there are, how pervasive they are,
like it is a real experience, real fear. The Chinese
students here have, right, they don't feel comfortable, you know,
they might feel more comfortable speaking openly here than they
do actually within China, but they still don't feel totally free.
And and that is a very widespread sentiment, I guess

(28:52):
sort of enclosing, I don't know, might I don't think
anyone can really have much of an analysis that's better
than them guessing about what's going to happen next, because
this already was something that like two weeks ago, like
if you'd ask anyone, like anyone in China or outside
of China who wasn't like I don't know like in

(29:14):
the following Gong or something, whether whether they were suddenly
going to be large deal like protested China ever would
have been like are you nuts? But yeah, I'm wondering
how what you think is going to happen next? I
don't know. My my my sort of tentative read of
it was like it seems like I don't know. It's

(29:35):
it seems to me that for for a very very
long time, the Chinese political system was specifically set up
to stop this, like like this was this was the
exact thing it was. It was designed to make sure
there would never be another sort of like like that
there would never be a large well and you know,
we don't know how how long this is going to
go on, right, but there was There was never There
was never supposed to be another street movement that was

(29:56):
like coordinated between cities that was large and that had
real political to man's and you know, I like, I
I don't know, Maybe maybe I could, I could be
the most brog I've ever been, but I cannot imagine
this like this specific round of protests really like challenging
the government at all. Like I don't know, some something

(30:17):
something would have to like I don't know, like aliens
would have to like descend from the sky or something like.
I don't know, I don't like, I don't I don't
think they can do it. But the frequency at which
these kinds of things break out has been increasing steadily
for the past probably twenty or thirty years. I mean,
the nineties are sort of a low point for this stuff.
But you know, like if if you're if you're in

(30:39):
a country like Ecuador, right, you've seen like two pretty
large scale like mass street movements in like three years, right,
and you know, it's it's it's, it's, it's. It seems
to be sort of broadly the there's there, there's there's
been this sort of like the decaying economic condition to

(31:00):
combined with this like the general decaying ability of the
state to prevent like a subsequent movement from from unfolding.
And so I don't know, like I I my sense
is that this one's not gonna do anything, but we
might see another one of these in like three years
or something. Yeah, I don't think we're going to see

(31:20):
this movement in the in the weeks and months to
come to like cohere into this like massive politically potent
force that has the capacity to either continue to exert
demands on the central state or threatened state power. Like
I don't think that that's going to happen. Um, I
do think. I think I think the first thing is

(31:41):
to acknowledge and to chalk up the victories that have
already been Um. One, so Fox foxne workers got paid.
You know, they went out, they rioted something like Fox's like,
here's ten thousand you one for you to leave that
even for you to do your job right. So like
and those are workers that came in after the other
workers escaped, so they have been there in quarantine for
like a couple of days, rioted got ten thousand un

(32:03):
which is like almost U S dollars like they so
so they did really well. Um And but I think
more broadly, you know, around the zero COVID the government
has already made changes. They will never acknowledge we're doing
this because people protested, like that's not how they operate.
But um, you know, they said, Okay, we're actually gonna
get more serious about vaccinating people, which is what they

(32:26):
need to do in order to have sort of an
exit strategy. There have been some some signals, low key
ones about further loosening. I mean, I think that there's
a real question about how they go about doing this
because if they just let it rip tomorrow, like actually
hundreds of thousands and people will die. Yeah. So like
I think that what they need to do is they
need to vaccinate people, and they need to build a

(32:46):
real public health infrastructure that includes migrant workers. But you know,
that's we'll see if that happens. So so I think
that those are already victories like which which we should
which you know, we should take account of. And I
think moving forward, the ability to repress like the the
street demonstrations should not be under underestimated. Like the state

(33:08):
has immense resources at its capacity. I don't think that
we're going to continue to see people chanting, you know,
down with the Communist Party in the streets regularly. Um,
So I think that they'll be able to at least
push that down a little bit and maybe with some concessions,
people will be satisfied. You know, the guy who just
wants to be able to go to the movie, like
next year at this time, there's a good chance he
will just be able to go to the movies. To

(33:30):
kind of continue with my labor centric perspective, though, I
think it's going to be harder for for workers. I
think it's going to be harder for them to repress
that as long as the closed loop management systems are
in effect and lockdowns are happening. I mean, it just
puts insane demands on these workers. And there were revolts
against it when it first happened in Shanghai back in April. Uh,

(33:51):
and I think that those will continue to exist. UM.
But I think we'll probably see this kind of reversion
to what's existed for the last couple of decades, which
is lots of you know, small scale, somewhat manageable and
localized protests. The question is, like, does this kind of
open up, um, the possibility of politicization, which we have

(34:14):
not really seen since nine UM in a in a
robust way at least, And so does this kind of
open up some of those possibilities so those local protests
can begin to to speak to each other with some
sort of common language, UM, and and cohere some kind
of political force that's harder for the state to tame. UM.

(34:34):
We'll see, Yeah, And I guess and I guess the
other sort of X factor here is like can can
can the CCP get the growth rate above like five? No?
But yeah, like that's like yeah, I I I don't.
I don't know how they do it like that. I
don't know, like I I short of like short of
like actually just letting all of the sort of like

(34:57):
like all all of the sort of like slack and
excess capacity just get like you know, just just like
intentionally tanking the entire economy and just like running all
of these sort of unprofitable business in the ground. Like yeah,
I don't, I don't see how they do that. And
that does seem to me, like you know, to be
a kind of like the sort of like looming horizon over.
I mean this and this is really true of everyone,

(35:18):
like the the sort of looming horizon over, Like every
government in the world has been that the growth rate
has been collapsing for like the last forty years, and
China was, you know, trying to change the comedy was
like the last thing that was really driving it. And
that's like not really true anymore. It's it's a disaster.

(35:39):
I mean. And then even even without COVID, it was
sort of like not going great. I mean, it wasn't
like you know, I mean it hadn't reached like it
hadn't like reached like you know, like recession, or it
hadn't really reached like sort of post industrialized country levels
of like here's your two percent growth every year, be
happy with it, but like I it out. Yeah, but

(36:02):
but the growth, I mean this is maybe like another
whole conversation, but like the growth has become less effective, right.
It's it's this like investment led growth. It's there, there's
massive growth in debt, and they can, you know, build
another bridge, build another airport building. I mean, they're not
building the apartment blocks as much anymore, but they do

(36:23):
that they can prop up the growth a little bit, right,
But like the fundamental problem that they've been unable to
address is like increasing domestic consumption, you have a more
equitable model of growth. And the reason that they can't
do that is fundamentally a political problem. Like they can't
figure out a way to give working class people more
money and to give them some social protections, um and

(36:44):
like until they resolve that political problem, Like I just
don't see them being able to deal with with that
economic problem. So that means you are going to continue
to have this kind of ongoing forms of stagnation. Zero
COVID really hurts it a lot more. Of course, the
geo political conflict with the US and and Biden, you know,
trying to economically kneecap them like that doesn't help. And

(37:06):
then the demographics of you know, like all of these
things are making making their lives much more difficult. And
so one way to interpret what's happened, um under under
zero COVID is the expansion of a massive and terrifying
surveillance state that will allow them to weather whatever political
storms are coming in the future. Yeah, and I guess

(37:28):
I don't know. Well, well, well well we'll we'll, we'll see,
we'll see whether that works for them. I am somewhat
skeptical in that, like I don't know, like good luck,
actually terrible luck. I hope it goes badly for them,
the worst of luck. Yeah. So, Eli, thank you so
much for coming on the show. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Yeah.

(37:49):
And Okay, where where can people find you and find
the stuff that you do? Uh well, I'm on Twitter
as long as it's still there, um Eli D Friedman
And uh yeah, I'm on the Internet. I don't know,
that's that's the main place. Come if you're in Ithica,

(38:09):
come on by all right, yeah this this has make
it happen here, drag every government into perpetual and terminal
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(38:31):
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