The Best Weekend Talk Show in America 3.8

Joe brings us a series of stories about China.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Shock Stow. We decided to call this the best weekend
talk show in America. And if you like it, download
Armstrong you Getty on demand. So we've made the point
many times. You probably recognized it yourself. Journalists are pack animals.
If a story is hot and it's getting clicks or
or subscriptions or views or whatever, you'll find more and

(00:21):
more stories about that. One of the very few advantages
of getting older, as you tend to see these patterns
a couple of times to start to recognize them. Like
back back in the day, the narrative was that it
was a Japanese future, the Japanese economy, Japan would soon
surpass the United States become the biggest economy on earth.
That's a story that's unbelievable. Blah blah blah. US is stupid.

(00:43):
And then of course Japan has sputtered out for demographic
reasons and banking reasons and all sorts of stuff, and
they've hardly had any economic growth now for for decades.
It's a really quite an interesting story. Well, the whole
Chinese century, the Chinese century is coming, China will soon
surpass through, and I just China will ruled. It's all

(01:04):
over hyped. Now, China is a huge country. It's a
huge significance. But the idea that there's some sort of
juggernaut that's gonna rule the world ignored several fundamental facts
which I've been talking about now for years. And you
thought I was like crackpot, didn't you trio stories about China.
Number One, the Chinese economy had one of its worst
performances in decades. Last year's growth was dragged down by

(01:26):
numerous COVID lockdowns, followed by a deadly outbreak in December, etcetera, etcetera.
China allegedly grew three percent for the year. Never trust
the Chinese statistics, never much less than one short of
Beijing's target of five and a half percent um other
than twenty was the most disappointing showing since nineteen seventy six,
when Maltz Dong died in the economy declined. Uh And

(01:51):
then this article in the New York Times goes into
some detail about how a lot of the COVID shutdown
stuff is going to be difficult to undo and it
caused a lot of damage. Number two, and probably more significant,
Perhaps you've heard this, the world's most Populoux country has
reached a pivotal moment. China's population has already begun to shrink.

(02:14):
Years long decline its birth rate that experts say is irreversible.
For the first time, they think since the Great Leap Forward,
in which Mouths Dong starved so many people with his
idiotic ideas about agriculture. China has lost population. Now it's
only about a million people last year. But the thing

(02:34):
about population decline caused by the sort of demographic problems.
China has incredibly low birth rates and an aging population.
Unless you do something like important tens of millions, hundreds
of millions of people in China's case, Unless you do that,
that will not be a steady decline. That will be

(02:55):
faster and faster and faster until you go off a cliff.
Demographic to it's it's the definition of exponential um Ian
Bremer said, there's no chance they're going to allow immigration.
So that's right in our fascinating interview with him, which
is an armstrong and getting extra large podcast, get it
wherever you're like to get podcast. Uh so they mentioned,

(03:16):
and this applies to all sorts of countries, and this
is one of the primary reasons both parties tolerate rampant
illegal immigration in this country. Chinese officials have tried for
years to slow the arrival of this moment, loosening a
one child policy, then the two child policy, and offering
incentives to encourage families to have children. None of these
policies worked, and to China's emergence, as the globes factory

(03:40):
floor is going to be changing rapidly, it is shocking
their birth rate problems. Uh Wang Fang Produce, a professor
of sociology University of California, Irvine, specializes Chinese demographics. Quote.
In the long run, we are going to see a
China the world has never seen. It will no longer
be the young, growing population. We will start to appreciate

(04:02):
China in terms of its population as an old and
shrinking population. And it's a good point because even when
they were a third world country with most people living
in huts, as Jack is so charmingly put it, for
many years, uh, they were a young and vibrant and
up and coming. Clearly not anymore. I think this is fascinating.
So they announced over the weekend that they've had sixty

(04:24):
thousand COVID deaths since December their number they were going
with before. So they're they're claiming that since they uh
lightened up on the zero COVID policy of the shutdown. Okay,
we lightened up. You protested in the streets. You wanted
us to stop. We stopped. Sixty dead since December. Their
number prior to that was five thousand. They said that

(04:46):
they're in a country of one point three billion or
whatever it is where COVID started, that they'd had with
horrible healthcare out in the country and that sort of
stuff and no vaccine, like they'd had five thousand total
deaths Obby Slee is a lie, but are stupid? Stupid
media regularly touted China handled it better than the United States,
United States, blah blah blah. Um. So what is the

(05:10):
speculation is that they're going to try to get up
to the real number, oh by lying and claiming it's
post COVID or whatever, but ratcheted up bit by bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Well they ratcheted up quite a bit. It went from
five thousand to sixty thousand over the weekend. Speaking at
the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Vice Premier of

(05:31):
China came out and said, hey, we're open for investment,
we're friendly to foreigners. Come on, in China is all
about capitalism. That's Panic communist style. This is the best
weekend talk shows in America.