July 8, 2025 • 21 mins
Please welcome PatrickJenevein, founder of Point Bello and author of Dancing with the Dragon, a story about his company's journey partnering with Chinese firms, then litigating and winning in court for IP theft and fraud.
Patrick Jenevein:https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Jenevein_bio012617.pdf
Book: https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/dancing-with-the-dragon/
Pointe Bello: https://www.pointebello.com/
@pointebello
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to the Once CA podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines.
Once CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and
brings in people who are currentor former military diplomats,
development officers, and field agents to discuss their
experiences on ground with a partner nation's people and
leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone
interested in working the last three feet of Foreign Relations.
(00:23):
To contact the show, e-mail us at ca.podcasting@gmail.com or
look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at
www.civilaffairsasos.org. I'll have those in the show
notes. Please welcome Patrick Jenovan,
founder of Point Bellow and author of Dancing with the
Dragon, a story about his company's journey partnering
(00:44):
with Chinese firms, then later litigating and winning in court
for IP theft and fraud. So let's get started.
We're trying to go up to the Communist Party's access to cash
and their appearance on legitimacy.
We've got work for DoD since 2017.
Right now we're doing some work for the Office of Strategic
Capital, but there's so much more to do.
(01:07):
Commercial interests just get slapped around by Communist
Party. Lack of concern for law.
I've heard some of your commentsabout like due diligence,
putting the onerous on the foreign company so that there's
less exposure to the US company when it comes to mergers and
(01:30):
acquisitions. I would love to get white papers
on some of these policy changes that you'd recommend.
Now, if the US government recognizes that an SOE state
owned enterprise from China is really reporting to the PLA or
the People's Liberation Army, that's really good for the US
(01:52):
company to know. And then if it turns out that
that SOE is in fact a sovereign entity that's taking advantage
of our laws, their defenses are made easier for the US company
if that fact has been observed publicly by U.S. government
agency. Right.
(02:14):
The challenges expecting people like Cepheus over Treasury to be
able to do that type of diligence on every company, I
don't see them having that kind of bandwidth.
They don't have it. I've seen it happen and they
don't have the bandwidth. But there are U.S. companies
that can help. Cepheus anticipate what
(02:34):
companies may seek a merger longbefore they happen.
That may involve a foreign company, and so we can build a
library of facts that actually help Cepheus make a rational,
informed decision as quickly as they seek to.
Sure. Have they been open to a
(02:57):
checklist that helps them kind of do better due diligence on
foreign purchases of U.S. companies?
We have tried to work with Sophia's or to help Sophia's
over time. One of our challenges is that we
deal with a revolving Dora people and we'll make progress
with somebody understanding and then it'll change and that's a
(03:18):
challenge for us. Absolutely.
In a lot of ways, it's kind of odd.
A lot of government folks, I don't need to pick anybody in
particular or criticize commercial outfits as having a
quarterly orientation. Well, we're actually in it for a
lot longer run than many of the people we work with in
government. And businesses actually look at
(03:42):
winning a marathon and their quarterly reports are like mile
split. If you ran the first mile in 6
minutes, you're behind. You're not going to win the
marathon. Whereas people in those
government offices are there for2-3 years and then they rotate
out to a new position. Yeah, and and there's a lot of
good in that, but the the mismatch of government positions
(04:06):
and commercial positions makes ongoing coordination and
effective communication more difficult.
And you find that as you work inthe middle between companies
that are in the merger process and the government.
Agency, yes, absolutely and brought up a paper we had done
on Huawei and Kay Bailey Hutchison happened to be in the
(04:29):
room, small breakfast, you know,eight or nine of us and she said
I use that report to great effect that NATO, well that's
cool, but we did the report six years ago, but it's great to
find out that we had a really positive effect way back when,
but we didn't know about him. Part of that's because we do the
(04:52):
report and where it goes throughgovernment is very difficult to
follow. So point bellow helps other
firms as they engage a market, they talk to you and you give
them a little bit of the insighton what's going on.
We do do that. We have been more helpful for
(05:12):
companies that are actually in litigation with a Congress party
trying to control outfit. We want to provide observations
that create points of leverage for U.S. companies to prevail
against Communist Party and China control companies now and
in litigation. Just to highlight the point U.S.
(05:34):
companies face foes who have access to China's treasury.
China's probably lying about thesize of their treasury, but
folks have often estimated that at one point it was $3 trillion
of foreign currency reserves. So when AUS company is in
litigation with an SOE, it helpsto know how that outfits
(05:55):
organized, who has decision making authority and what's
going on inside the company. With that insight, you can make
a whole lot better plan to win. You want to try and spot if that
company has hidden assets or target leadership so that you
can get compliance from the other side and negotiate a
settlement, Yes. Things like that and if we can
(06:17):
come up with other pressure points, we will.
Hidden bank accounts like that. Yeah, OK, Yeah, interesting.
So you had a couple of recommendations.
Absolutely little things that government can do that make a
big difference. Winning litigation or changes of
law that can have a huge effect that we can start with would be
(06:39):
rather than using the CMC or Chinese military company
designation that's called for under the National Defense
Authorization Act, it's recognized.
Just state what the obvious is that a lot of the enterprises
from China are single entity andit's not that they're even
separate from one another through the military civil
(07:00):
fusion strategy and through state owned asset supervision
administration Commission Chinese SO ES and it is a single
BLOB. It is a single entity, a single
force that US commercial interests have to face.
And our litigation against China's biggest defense
(07:21):
contractor, we know that we flatlined the aviation industry
corporation of China's strategicacquisitions in the United
States even though it continued to rise around the world.
We are sure that the Communist Party didn't stop strategic
acquisitions of aviation assets or companies in the United
(07:43):
States. We're sure that they shifted
that to another Communist Party controlled outfit.
So recognizing that for the Aviation Industry Corporation of
China is related to perhaps the Shanghai Kutong Science and
Technology Development Fund would be critical to defending
U.S. companies from financial orcommercial attacks from the PRC.
(08:08):
It actually erode US National Security.
That's just one area. Another.
We find that there are 150 million Americans that want to
keep using TikTok. We don't have the political will
or political determination to say Tik Tok's bad.
Even the Communist Party in China says it's illegal to use
(08:30):
TikTok inside China. So if we can't say that, then we
come up with the idea, well, let's force it.
Sale. Well, that won't do deadly
squat. The Communist Party has this
notion that control confers. Control.
Americans have the notion that ownership confers control.
Well, the Communists find that idea quaint.
(08:52):
So even if we enforce the sale of TikTok, that just creates the
pathway for naive Americans to invest in TikTok and enrich the
previous owners of TikTok. And it doesn't change Tik Tok's
nefarious capabilities one iota.Instead, Congress could say,
(09:13):
hey, we're not going to force a sale.
We don't have the political willto get rid of it.
Let's just impose a user fee. So TikTok, if you've got 150
users, you got to pay us a dollar every month for every
user you have. But put a number on it to
actually impose costs on the Communist Party for operating
(09:36):
the machine that warps American thinking every day.
The other thing to do is rather than absolutely bar investments
in PRC based companies, require a deposit with U.S.
Treasury that if somebody wants to invest $1,000,000 in a
Chinese company that they've gotto put 10,000 with the treasury.
(09:59):
Again, there's that's another percentage you could set, but
that way you start to build a reserve banks have to pay into
the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have a similar
requirement for investing in Chinese companies.
And on the Chinese company that wants to partner with U.S.
company, they have to put in a deposit of some type 10% of the
(10:21):
contractor or something. We should do that too.
Those are mutually complementary.
That way, when it gets through arbitration or litigation, at
least there's some money to find.
You know, we know that China's military civil fusion strategy
and its ASACAC implementation ineffect makes all SO ES part of
(10:43):
the same unitary construct. Well, that's what you brought up
in your book Dancing with the Dragon.
As you got deeper in with Avic, you started finding that they
had more ties than you originally knew and it it seemed
like they had a lot of influenceagainst them with different
levels of government. You're talking about building
energy plants and suddenly therewere fingers from the party mean
(11:07):
and through the partnerships forenergy plants.
So it's as if they allow. People to freely.
Get into these businesses and then they insert themselves as
they wish as the profits come along.
All that's true, but a case in point is when, you know, we had
a joint venture with Havoc in Texas to develop wind farms, and
(11:30):
they hired our general manager, among other bad things.
And he went on to help Rawls Corporation, which was a
creation of a big Chinese company that that made wind
turbines. And it was trying to develop
wind farms in the Pacific Northwest that went before
(11:51):
Sophia's. Sophia said no, you can't build
a wind farm overlooking U.S. military installations.
How about that for practicality?Yeah, The Chinese company sued.
Cepheus say you reached that conclusion arbitrarily and
forced Cepheus to give a clear answer.
(12:14):
But the guy that they hired, a guy named Paul Thompson, told me
later, if I had known everythingabout that deal, I would have
had to take in a shower. So Paul is from your group in
Lubbock, TX. He just tells like it is.
That's his background. That's how we were talking.
You know when he says that, it'sa pretty good indictment of how
(12:36):
nasty it really was. Now, he saw that because he'd
been hired to be the president of one of Alex subordinate
units, and he saw it from the inside.
I doubt that Sophia saw all thathe did.
Do you see a lot of US businesses still trying to build
partnerships and work with Chinese company?
(12:57):
I mean, Sam's Club is still there.
Costco is still there I believe too.
Yeah, I still see it. Level has dropped off,
understandably, because more people ought to know what the
Communist Party is really up to.But for decades, our government
gave commercial outfits confidence that they'd be all
(13:17):
right. But some are stuck, you know,
like Apple, have huge investments in manufacturing
facilities. Others are stuck in the middle
of construction. And Americans are stuck wanting
to protect their time. You know, if I can work an hour
and buy a pair of blue jeans, great.
(13:38):
If the people in China weren't working for as cheaply as a
worker, I might have to work an hour and a half to buy that same
pair of blue jeans. We have to work more time to buy
what we want if China isn't willing to crush their people
into working for much, much lower wages.
(13:59):
Now, there's the other side to that and that Chinese people
were used to living in abject poverty.
So starting with Deng Xiaoping, that was actually a good trade
for everybody because it actually brought Chinese
people's lives to a higher standard of living.
And it's actually what presents Xi Jinping with his existential
(14:23):
threat. And the young people in China
that grew up with access to the Internet grew up as a coddled
single child and two parents andsingle grandchild of four
grandparents. They're used to having their
lives get better and better. That will be a hard thing for XI
Jinping's successor to deal with.
I remember in your book you talked about China needing
(14:45):
energy. Do you still see that as a
struggle for China? Do you think that they've
balanced their energy needs by now or they still struggling
with capacity and growth? Well, they've helped balance it
by destroying their economy. So as their economy drops and
their quality of living drops, they use less energy.
(15:10):
If they want to return to improving people's lives,
they'll need more energy. But China's going to have the
same problem if they want to grow their economy again.
OK. So it is definitely something
they have to balance against their growth.
Absolutely. OK.
The other thing I wanted to bring up was Guanchi.
I read your book about Guanchi and I thought, wow, that is the
(15:31):
rule of law in China. That is their contract for
making things happen. And I thought to myself, if we
really wanted to cause trouble in China, if we started
targeting people's Guanchi and disrupting that agreement
system, it would cause a lot of trouble.
And then I started bumping into people and they've been saying
the same thing. It's just that the US have
(15:51):
refrained from applying tactics against Guanchi to disrupt PRC
social economic system. But.
It's always there. And I was surprised at how
valuable it was. It is extremely important.
And to your point, it replaces law in a way.
If I'm going to buy your house, we'll sign an agreement and we
(16:13):
know that the courts will enforce the agreement we signed.
If you know, both in China and Iwanted to buy your house, we
might sign an agreement, but we would not have confidence that
the courts in China would upholdour agreement.
We would each know that one of us has better 1C with the judge
that will rule on the case. And so that one C becomes a
(16:38):
surrogate for a legal system. But it is vulnerable to
manipulation. And if you were to affect
leadership or if you wanted to, leadership disruption 1C would
be a fertile path. One example that we use for our
own business in China, when we were getting ready to make war
(17:00):
in the courtroom with the Aviation Industry Corporation of
China, did write a letter to thechairman of China at the time
saying, sure, you'll be shocked to know there's corruption in
your outfit. And we knew that the Central
Committee for Discipline and Inspection would get the letter.
We made sure that they did. Yeah.
But here we went after the top of a Gwansi pyramid and that
(17:25):
affected the whole pyramid. We weren't around to see all the
effects. Let me put the dancing music on
and everyone started hustling. Way to put it, especially since
the title book is Dancing with the Dragon.
But yes, absolutely the poor fella, Leansville mean was his
(17:45):
name, had already walked himselftowards the precipice and our my
letter. I don't know how hard it was a
push on the back, but it certainly wasn't a lifeline to
pulling back. You know when you're already on
the precipice so bad that a piece of paper is going to throw
you over the edge? You've done wrong.
Yeah, yeah, you set yourself up.And one thing that caught my eye
(18:08):
was the strategic purchase of USland by the PRC through these
companies as fronts, because as you're saying, they're always in
very strategic places, either near critical infrastructure or
military bases or places where they can do observation or can
be staging points. One example that I know better
(18:30):
than many others was Quangla America's purchase of 200 square
miles of Texas ranch land in Verde County, Texas, near
Laughlin Air Force Base. Cepheus looked at and said
rattlesnakes and cactus. There's not a whole lot of
strategic value to that. Go ahead.
It's no scores of miles from Laughlin Air Force Base.
(18:53):
And that was an easy, quick decision for Cepheus to make.
What they didn't think about that tried dusty, somewhat
windless Texas ranch land was right underneath Laughlin Air
Force Base airspace. And if you know what goes on
with training at a Laughlin Air Force Base, somebody would be
(19:14):
able to occupy 200 square miles of viewing position.
You'd be scared. And if you thought about the
Chinese company electrifying that 200 square miles, which
they sought to do by proposing awind farm, that would connect to
the Ability Council Texas grid. And you can start to imagine the
(19:38):
arrays of whatever sensors they wanted to put out there to, in
effect, help defeat Celtic qualities of our war birds.
I actually told that to the Texas Legislature in Austin.
And they said, doesn't Washington protect us from this?
A lady estimate said, no, ma'am.Texans got to take care of
(19:59):
themselves and in doing so, willtake care of Americans.
And within 10 weeks, Texas passed a bill that said Chinese,
North Korean, Russian and Iranian companies cannot connect
to the Texas grid. That's a partial win.
It buys us some time, but there's still much more.
(20:21):
China control companies are buying American properties, just
like you said. But we've got it.
We've got to get in front of it.Right.
I know you got to get going, so I'm going to close it there.
That's all right. Thank you, Jack.
Thanks for listening. If you get a chance, please like
and subscribe and rate the show on your favorite podcast
platform. Also, if you're interested in
(20:43):
coming on the show or hosting anepisode, e-mail us at
ca.podcasting@gmail.com. I'll have the e-mail and CA
Association website in the show notes.
And now, most importantly, to those currently out in the
field, working with a partner nation's people or leadership to
forward US relations. Thank you all for what you're
doing. This is Jack, your host.
(21:06):
Stay tuned for more great episodes. 1 California podcast.
Welcome to the Once CA podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines.
Once CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and
brings in people who are currentor former military diplomats,
development officers, and field agents to discuss their
experiences on ground with a partner nation's people and
leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone
interested in working the last three feet of Foreign Relations.
(00:23):
To contact the show, e-mail us at ca.podcasting@gmail.com or
look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at
www.civilaffairsasos.org. I'll have those in the show
notes. Please welcome Patrick Jenovan,
founder of Point Bellow and author of Dancing with the
Dragon, a story about his company's journey partnering
(00:44):
with Chinese firms, then later litigating and winning in court
for IP theft and fraud. So let's get started.
We're trying to go up to the Communist Party's access to cash
and their appearance on legitimacy.
We've got work for DoD since 2017.
Right now we're doing some work for the Office of Strategic
Capital, but there's so much more to do.
(01:07):
Commercial interests just get slapped around by Communist
Party. Lack of concern for law.
I've heard some of your commentsabout like due diligence,
putting the onerous on the foreign company so that there's
less exposure to the US company when it comes to mergers and
(01:30):
acquisitions. I would love to get white papers
on some of these policy changes that you'd recommend.
Now, if the US government recognizes that an SOE state
owned enterprise from China is really reporting to the PLA or
the People's Liberation Army, that's really good for the US
(01:52):
company to know. And then if it turns out that
that SOE is in fact a sovereign entity that's taking advantage
of our laws, their defenses are made easier for the US company
if that fact has been observed publicly by U.S. government
agency. Right.
(02:14):
The challenges expecting people like Cepheus over Treasury to be
able to do that type of diligence on every company, I
don't see them having that kind of bandwidth.
They don't have it. I've seen it happen and they
don't have the bandwidth. But there are U.S. companies
that can help. Cepheus anticipate what
(02:34):
companies may seek a merger longbefore they happen.
That may involve a foreign company, and so we can build a
library of facts that actually help Cepheus make a rational,
informed decision as quickly as they seek to.
Sure. Have they been open to a
(02:57):
checklist that helps them kind of do better due diligence on
foreign purchases of U.S. companies?
We have tried to work with Sophia's or to help Sophia's
over time. One of our challenges is that we
deal with a revolving Dora people and we'll make progress
with somebody understanding and then it'll change and that's a
(03:18):
challenge for us. Absolutely.
In a lot of ways, it's kind of odd.
A lot of government folks, I don't need to pick anybody in
particular or criticize commercial outfits as having a
quarterly orientation. Well, we're actually in it for a
lot longer run than many of the people we work with in
government. And businesses actually look at
(03:42):
winning a marathon and their quarterly reports are like mile
split. If you ran the first mile in 6
minutes, you're behind. You're not going to win the
marathon. Whereas people in those
government offices are there for2-3 years and then they rotate
out to a new position. Yeah, and and there's a lot of
good in that, but the the mismatch of government positions
(04:06):
and commercial positions makes ongoing coordination and
effective communication more difficult.
And you find that as you work inthe middle between companies
that are in the merger process and the government.
Agency, yes, absolutely and brought up a paper we had done
on Huawei and Kay Bailey Hutchison happened to be in the
(04:29):
room, small breakfast, you know,eight or nine of us and she said
I use that report to great effect that NATO, well that's
cool, but we did the report six years ago, but it's great to
find out that we had a really positive effect way back when,
but we didn't know about him. Part of that's because we do the
(04:52):
report and where it goes throughgovernment is very difficult to
follow. So point bellow helps other
firms as they engage a market, they talk to you and you give
them a little bit of the insighton what's going on.
We do do that. We have been more helpful for
(05:12):
companies that are actually in litigation with a Congress party
trying to control outfit. We want to provide observations
that create points of leverage for U.S. companies to prevail
against Communist Party and China control companies now and
in litigation. Just to highlight the point U.S.
(05:34):
companies face foes who have access to China's treasury.
China's probably lying about thesize of their treasury, but
folks have often estimated that at one point it was $3 trillion
of foreign currency reserves. So when AUS company is in
litigation with an SOE, it helpsto know how that outfits
(05:55):
organized, who has decision making authority and what's
going on inside the company. With that insight, you can make
a whole lot better plan to win. You want to try and spot if that
company has hidden assets or target leadership so that you
can get compliance from the other side and negotiate a
settlement, Yes. Things like that and if we can
(06:17):
come up with other pressure points, we will.
Hidden bank accounts like that. Yeah, OK, Yeah, interesting.
So you had a couple of recommendations.
Absolutely little things that government can do that make a
big difference. Winning litigation or changes of
law that can have a huge effect that we can start with would be
(06:39):
rather than using the CMC or Chinese military company
designation that's called for under the National Defense
Authorization Act, it's recognized.
Just state what the obvious is that a lot of the enterprises
from China are single entity andit's not that they're even
separate from one another through the military civil
(07:00):
fusion strategy and through state owned asset supervision
administration Commission Chinese SO ES and it is a single
BLOB. It is a single entity, a single
force that US commercial interests have to face.
And our litigation against China's biggest defense
(07:21):
contractor, we know that we flatlined the aviation industry
corporation of China's strategicacquisitions in the United
States even though it continued to rise around the world.
We are sure that the Communist Party didn't stop strategic
acquisitions of aviation assets or companies in the United
(07:43):
States. We're sure that they shifted
that to another Communist Party controlled outfit.
So recognizing that for the Aviation Industry Corporation of
China is related to perhaps the Shanghai Kutong Science and
Technology Development Fund would be critical to defending
U.S. companies from financial orcommercial attacks from the PRC.
(08:08):
It actually erode US National Security.
That's just one area. Another.
We find that there are 150 million Americans that want to
keep using TikTok. We don't have the political will
or political determination to say Tik Tok's bad.
Even the Communist Party in China says it's illegal to use
(08:30):
TikTok inside China. So if we can't say that, then we
come up with the idea, well, let's force it.
Sale. Well, that won't do deadly
squat. The Communist Party has this
notion that control confers. Control.
Americans have the notion that ownership confers control.
Well, the Communists find that idea quaint.
(08:52):
So even if we enforce the sale of TikTok, that just creates the
pathway for naive Americans to invest in TikTok and enrich the
previous owners of TikTok. And it doesn't change Tik Tok's
nefarious capabilities one iota.Instead, Congress could say,
(09:13):
hey, we're not going to force a sale.
We don't have the political willto get rid of it.
Let's just impose a user fee. So TikTok, if you've got 150
users, you got to pay us a dollar every month for every
user you have. But put a number on it to
actually impose costs on the Communist Party for operating
(09:36):
the machine that warps American thinking every day.
The other thing to do is rather than absolutely bar investments
in PRC based companies, require a deposit with U.S.
Treasury that if somebody wants to invest $1,000,000 in a
Chinese company that they've gotto put 10,000 with the treasury.
(09:59):
Again, there's that's another percentage you could set, but
that way you start to build a reserve banks have to pay into
the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have a similar
requirement for investing in Chinese companies.
And on the Chinese company that wants to partner with U.S.
company, they have to put in a deposit of some type 10% of the
(10:21):
contractor or something. We should do that too.
Those are mutually complementary.
That way, when it gets through arbitration or litigation, at
least there's some money to find.
You know, we know that China's military civil fusion strategy
and its ASACAC implementation ineffect makes all SO ES part of
(10:43):
the same unitary construct. Well, that's what you brought up
in your book Dancing with the Dragon.
As you got deeper in with Avic, you started finding that they
had more ties than you originally knew and it it seemed
like they had a lot of influenceagainst them with different
levels of government. You're talking about building
energy plants and suddenly therewere fingers from the party mean
(11:07):
and through the partnerships forenergy plants.
So it's as if they allow. People to freely.
Get into these businesses and then they insert themselves as
they wish as the profits come along.
All that's true, but a case in point is when, you know, we had
a joint venture with Havoc in Texas to develop wind farms, and
(11:30):
they hired our general manager, among other bad things.
And he went on to help Rawls Corporation, which was a
creation of a big Chinese company that that made wind
turbines. And it was trying to develop
wind farms in the Pacific Northwest that went before
(11:51):
Sophia's. Sophia said no, you can't build
a wind farm overlooking U.S. military installations.
How about that for practicality?Yeah, The Chinese company sued.
Cepheus say you reached that conclusion arbitrarily and
forced Cepheus to give a clear answer.
(12:14):
But the guy that they hired, a guy named Paul Thompson, told me
later, if I had known everythingabout that deal, I would have
had to take in a shower. So Paul is from your group in
Lubbock, TX. He just tells like it is.
That's his background. That's how we were talking.
You know when he says that, it'sa pretty good indictment of how
(12:36):
nasty it really was. Now, he saw that because he'd
been hired to be the president of one of Alex subordinate
units, and he saw it from the inside.
I doubt that Sophia saw all thathe did.
Do you see a lot of US businesses still trying to build
partnerships and work with Chinese company?
(12:57):
I mean, Sam's Club is still there.
Costco is still there I believe too.
Yeah, I still see it. Level has dropped off,
understandably, because more people ought to know what the
Communist Party is really up to.But for decades, our government
gave commercial outfits confidence that they'd be all
(13:17):
right. But some are stuck, you know,
like Apple, have huge investments in manufacturing
facilities. Others are stuck in the middle
of construction. And Americans are stuck wanting
to protect their time. You know, if I can work an hour
and buy a pair of blue jeans, great.
(13:38):
If the people in China weren't working for as cheaply as a
worker, I might have to work an hour and a half to buy that same
pair of blue jeans. We have to work more time to buy
what we want if China isn't willing to crush their people
into working for much, much lower wages.
(13:59):
Now, there's the other side to that and that Chinese people
were used to living in abject poverty.
So starting with Deng Xiaoping, that was actually a good trade
for everybody because it actually brought Chinese
people's lives to a higher standard of living.
And it's actually what presents Xi Jinping with his existential
(14:23):
threat. And the young people in China
that grew up with access to the Internet grew up as a coddled
single child and two parents andsingle grandchild of four
grandparents. They're used to having their
lives get better and better. That will be a hard thing for XI
Jinping's successor to deal with.
I remember in your book you talked about China needing
(14:45):
energy. Do you still see that as a
struggle for China? Do you think that they've
balanced their energy needs by now or they still struggling
with capacity and growth? Well, they've helped balance it
by destroying their economy. So as their economy drops and
their quality of living drops, they use less energy.
(15:10):
If they want to return to improving people's lives,
they'll need more energy. But China's going to have the
same problem if they want to grow their economy again.
OK. So it is definitely something
they have to balance against their growth.
Absolutely. OK.
The other thing I wanted to bring up was Guanchi.
I read your book about Guanchi and I thought, wow, that is the
(15:31):
rule of law in China. That is their contract for
making things happen. And I thought to myself, if we
really wanted to cause trouble in China, if we started
targeting people's Guanchi and disrupting that agreement
system, it would cause a lot of trouble.
And then I started bumping into people and they've been saying
the same thing. It's just that the US have
(15:51):
refrained from applying tactics against Guanchi to disrupt PRC
social economic system. But.
It's always there. And I was surprised at how
valuable it was. It is extremely important.
And to your point, it replaces law in a way.
If I'm going to buy your house, we'll sign an agreement and we
(16:13):
know that the courts will enforce the agreement we signed.
If you know, both in China and Iwanted to buy your house, we
might sign an agreement, but we would not have confidence that
the courts in China would upholdour agreement.
We would each know that one of us has better 1C with the judge
that will rule on the case. And so that one C becomes a
(16:38):
surrogate for a legal system. But it is vulnerable to
manipulation. And if you were to affect
leadership or if you wanted to, leadership disruption 1C would
be a fertile path. One example that we use for our
own business in China, when we were getting ready to make war
(17:00):
in the courtroom with the Aviation Industry Corporation of
China, did write a letter to thechairman of China at the time
saying, sure, you'll be shocked to know there's corruption in
your outfit. And we knew that the Central
Committee for Discipline and Inspection would get the letter.
We made sure that they did. Yeah.
But here we went after the top of a Gwansi pyramid and that
(17:25):
affected the whole pyramid. We weren't around to see all the
effects. Let me put the dancing music on
and everyone started hustling. Way to put it, especially since
the title book is Dancing with the Dragon.
But yes, absolutely the poor fella, Leansville mean was his
(17:45):
name, had already walked himselftowards the precipice and our my
letter. I don't know how hard it was a
push on the back, but it certainly wasn't a lifeline to
pulling back. You know when you're already on
the precipice so bad that a piece of paper is going to throw
you over the edge? You've done wrong.
Yeah, yeah, you set yourself up.And one thing that caught my eye
(18:08):
was the strategic purchase of USland by the PRC through these
companies as fronts, because as you're saying, they're always in
very strategic places, either near critical infrastructure or
military bases or places where they can do observation or can
be staging points. One example that I know better
(18:30):
than many others was Quangla America's purchase of 200 square
miles of Texas ranch land in Verde County, Texas, near
Laughlin Air Force Base. Cepheus looked at and said
rattlesnakes and cactus. There's not a whole lot of
strategic value to that. Go ahead.
It's no scores of miles from Laughlin Air Force Base.
(18:53):
And that was an easy, quick decision for Cepheus to make.
What they didn't think about that tried dusty, somewhat
windless Texas ranch land was right underneath Laughlin Air
Force Base airspace. And if you know what goes on
with training at a Laughlin Air Force Base, somebody would be
(19:14):
able to occupy 200 square miles of viewing position.
You'd be scared. And if you thought about the
Chinese company electrifying that 200 square miles, which
they sought to do by proposing awind farm, that would connect to
the Ability Council Texas grid. And you can start to imagine the
(19:38):
arrays of whatever sensors they wanted to put out there to, in
effect, help defeat Celtic qualities of our war birds.
I actually told that to the Texas Legislature in Austin.
And they said, doesn't Washington protect us from this?
A lady estimate said, no, ma'am.Texans got to take care of
(19:59):
themselves and in doing so, willtake care of Americans.
And within 10 weeks, Texas passed a bill that said Chinese,
North Korean, Russian and Iranian companies cannot connect
to the Texas grid. That's a partial win.
It buys us some time, but there's still much more.
(20:21):
China control companies are buying American properties, just
like you said. But we've got it.
We've got to get in front of it.Right.
I know you got to get going, so I'm going to close it there.
That's all right. Thank you, Jack.
Thanks for listening. If you get a chance, please like
and subscribe and rate the show on your favorite podcast
platform. Also, if you're interested in
(20:43):
coming on the show or hosting anepisode, e-mail us at
ca.podcasting@gmail.com. I'll have the e-mail and CA
Association website in the show notes.
And now, most importantly, to those currently out in the
field, working with a partner nation's people or leadership to
forward US relations. Thank you all for what you're
doing. This is Jack, your host.
(21:06):
Stay tuned for more great episodes. 1 California podcast.
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