December 4, 2025 • 33 mins
China is in an age of rapid technology development with AI, robots and drones - and many fear this relentless progress, and Xi Jinping’s desire to reabsorb Taiwan, will bring it into direct conflict with the United States.
But is China’s rise as inevitable and smooth as its leaders want it to be?
Our International Editor Lindsey Hilsum has returned from a trip to China where she was Channel 4 News' correspondent for years.
She was wowed by technological progress - but also found a younger generation exhausted and overwhelmed by political pressure, depression and burnout.
On this episode of The Fourcast, Lindsey and Matt Frei were joined by economist Dan Wang, author of Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future, who argues that China’s system has unique strengths - and dangerous weaknesses - in the race for technological supremacy.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The weaponry that the Americans are developing is more advanced,
but of course the People's Liberation Army is massive and
the Chinese are building up a huge fleet.
That is the next thing we are going to get into and that I
think is really scary because we're into high tech warfare.
Given that China is building up militarily in the way that
Germany did, you know, at the end of the 19th century, is this
(00:21):
a military buildup with the ideathat that military power will be
used at some stage or just, you know, this is Our Calling card.
We are powerful. We're here to be reckoned with.
Well, calling cards only work ifyou're willing to play it.
Hello and welcome to the forecast.
China is in an age of breakneck technological development.
(00:42):
AI, robots, drones, electrical vehicles, you name it.
But at the same time, the young people are resisting
progression, or many of them at least.
They call it tongue ping lying flat.
Our international editor, Lindsay Hilsum, has returned
from her first China trip since she was Channel 4 News
correspondent there in the late 2000s.
But also she was there again in 2013.
(01:03):
She was wowed by technological progress, but also found a
generation exhausted and overwhelmed by overwork,
depression and, of course, political pressure.
Joining Lindsay me to discuss today's China is economist Dan
Wong, author of Breakneck, who argues that China's system has
unique strengths and dangerous weaknesses in the race for
technological supremacy. Welcome to you both.
(01:25):
Hi, Lindsay, Let me start with you.
So you hadn't been there for over a decade?
Yep. What was the thing that
surprised you most? Well, obviously going up in a
pilotless drone, an air taxi above Guangzhou by myself alone
in this in this vehicle looking down on the the city.
(01:46):
Terrified or overjoyed? I wasn't that scared because I
thought they wouldn't let me do it if it was really dangerous,
but it was impressive. I mean, and they they talk about
the low altitude economy, the idea that these air taxes will
take people to the airport and obviously that is impressive.
I suppose also the air is much cleaner.
(02:06):
All these electric vehicles, EVsthat weren't around when I was
there, and high speed rail. I went from Hangzhou to Beijing,
that's 1200 kilometres in 4 1/2 hours.
So all of those things, I had tobe impressed by that.
But then also, you know, all those shopping malls, the sort
(02:27):
of Japanification of China. And I had to really look for the
China which I had grown to love when I was there, a sort of old
China. I wondered if they were ripping
the soul out of the planet. Is that you speaking as a
nostalgia kind of obsessed foreigner?
Maybe. Or is it you know, Or is it, are
(02:48):
you genuine about the soul beingripped out of China?
I'm genuine about the soul because as you know, you've just
said, you know, a lot of young people are are depressed and
don't feel that this progress necessarily is going to to
benefit them. There's a sort of lackadaisical
generation. But I think that if everything
is about progress, technology, you know, the white speed of it
(03:13):
all, then I wonder, you know, what is left of identity.
I don't know what what do you think that?
I agree with you very much aboutthe soul.
I describe China in part as a the modern Beijing, as engineers
of the soul, which is a term from Marshall Joseph Stalin that
Xi Jinping decided to repeat a few years ago.
(03:34):
And so I think that China is absolutely losing a lot.
At the same time, it is gaining a lot when you have new bridges,
being able to connect people to bigger markets, at the same time
as you're getting new subway systems as well as new parks,
while many people are creativelyexhausted by everything
happening undersea. Before we talk about the social
engineering and the exhaustion, I just want to, you know, home
(03:55):
in on the, the technological progress because we in the West
like to think of China as the world's factory, but it turns
out it's the world's factory andthe world's laboratory, isn't
it? I mean, they're, they're just
inventing stuff that might be invented in Silicon Valley on
parts of the US, but probably not in Europe anymore.
So tell us about that transitionfrom a country that makes stuff
(04:16):
to a country that invents stuff.I think that China is very much
both a laboratory and a factory at this point.
So if we think about something that the US invented, something
like solar photovoltaic panels or even something like
semiconductors, that is something that was created by
the Americans that the Americansare no longer very good at
making. And when I'm in Silicon Valley,
when I'm in the United States, I'm constantly challenging
(04:38):
Americans to ask them, but what is the greater glory to be able
to claim in the history books that you invented something like
the first solar photovoltaic cell or to actually own the
industry in the present day? And so China has very much
blurred these practices because factories are often cutting edge
laboratories and themselves people are able to work on
cutting edge things. They're on the bleeding edge and
(04:59):
they're able to figure out wherethe technology is going next.
And the people who invent this stuff, I guess many of whom were
educated in the United States, are they inventing this stuff in
order to make money for the greater good of China or maybe a
little bit of both to beat the United States at their at their
own game? I think the answer is yes, that
(05:19):
it is an element of both, that Ithink that what is really
distinguishing Chinese entrepreneurs as well as
American entrepreneurs is that they have a lot of appetite to
make doughnuts now. They're really big hustlers.
They're really interested in making a big bucks.
At the same time, I think there is an element of nationalism
that exists more within Chinese society for having felt that
(05:40):
they were behind for too long, that they really want to catch
up, and now they want to surpassthe US as well as the UKI.
Think also one of the things which really struck me when I
was in Shenzhen is about, you know, the supply chain and the
system. So if you take E VS electric
vehicles. So yes, China controls the rare
earths and the rare earths go into the batteries and the
(06:02):
batteries are in the electric vehicles and a company like BYD,
they, they're controlling all ofthat supply chain.
There's none of that kind of fragmentation which you get in
Western capitalism now. And you know, I went to, I was,
you know, you go around Shenzhenwith it's nice clean air and you
look at all the, the green number plates on the cars.
And then I was in a charging station and battery change
(06:25):
station. You drive in, you go to the
place where it's like a carport and the ground open up beneath
you. The battery drops out.
It's taken away on one side, thenew battery comes in, up it is
and off you go. So in 3 minutes you have changed
the battery in your car and the largest BYD vehicle that goes
(06:46):
620 kilometres on one charge or you can charge it up, you know,
and that takes you an hour. And so the system actually works
because it's tied up together. Whereas when it comes to
electric vehicles, certainly in the UK and I think in America as
well, it isn't all tied up together like that.
And so it's much harder to make it work.
One of the interesting things I read up on recently was that in
(07:08):
America in the early noughties, they had rare earth metals
mines, I think in New Mexico andArizona.
And basically these mines kept going bust.
So they decided to, it was much easier just to buy the stuff
from China. In China, What is the thinking?
Is it that industrial policy kicks in and the Chinese
government says we need rare earth mines, we need the best
batteries in the world for our cars.
(07:29):
You know, we need the best AI and we're going to basically
help the companies to get there.And the ones that fail, they can
fail. And the ones that succeed, we
shall support. And we want some of that money
for ourselves. Like how does it work?
They simply have the hunger to make a lot of these things.
You know, Matt, I was the. Government and the engineers.
The government and the engineers, the entire civil
society, the entire system. A month ago I visited America's
(07:51):
only rare earth magnet factory in Fort Worth, TX, and it is
coming up with new batteries as well as the the rare earth
magnets themselves. They have access to a mine in
around Nevada and California's border, a little bit outside of
Las Vegas, which really feels like one of the most naturally
blessed mines in the world. It's just all of the rare earths
(08:12):
are really on the surface. But what do the Chinese bring to
the table? Well, they had a hunger to make
a lot of these minerals which they own in on the home soil,
but also these red mining rare earths is so energy intensive
and so polluting that only the Chinese have the stomach for
doing something like this. And so they have they're willing
to pay these costs in order to win technological supremacy.
(08:33):
And if we go down and look throughout the supply chain, as
Lindsay says, it's not just one thing.
They really think about everything.
It's so much more systems wide thinking over there.
Also, can I just add because I went to a rare earth mine in
Inner Mongolia in 2011 and it was unbelievably polluting.
It was horrendous and I presume that the processes have improved
since then. But what struck me then was
again, this long term thinking. So back then they were already
(08:57):
thinking, right, we are going todominate the rare earth market
worldwide. And they set about doing that.
And you can talk about they and they is the government.
So the government will, you know, sponsor and support the
companies which are going to to do that.
Whereas in America, you know, the rarer thing, as you said,
(09:17):
Matt, you know, it sort of comesand goes.
Molly Corp in California, it goes bust, doesn't get
government support. This.
The system in China is designed to make everything work
together. Right.
But one of the other reasons why, you know, rare earth metal
mines fail in America is becausethere are lawsuits from
environmentalists that shut themdown or, or the the cost is too
expensive to keep them open. So, you know, in in your book,
(09:40):
you have this wonderful analogy,you know, a country of lawyers,
America versus a country of engineers, China.
I mean, there's a reason why America is a country of lawyers
because it's, it was founded by,you know, a bunch of lawyers and
philosophers and it was founded on ideas.
And the idea of America, I guess, is that you start from
the bottom and you go up. Whereas in China, it seems to be
the other way around. And I mean, this is we should
(10:01):
really ask this at the end of the podcast.
I'll ask it now, which is the more durable system do you
think? I think both are durable, both
have strengths and weaknesses. I will say a word of defence for
the lawyers I'm coming from that's.
That's a rare thing to hear. That the lawyerly society has
some. For the lawyers, come on.
Dad, you got you got you got me on the record saying this now,
but there is something special about the United States.
(10:22):
I'm coming to you from the West Coast.
And the West Coast is the only region in the world that has not
only created a company worth over a trillion dollars, has
created several companies worth over several trillions of
dollars. The rich feel comfortable to
create their businesses in America.
They feel protected to do something like that.
And that is not something that the Chinese have been able to do
very well either. But so the rich feel comfortable
(10:42):
to invent stuff and make money from it in America?
How does it work in China then? I think that there is still
quite a lot of hunger to be rich.
You can see this sort of pulsingthrough everywhere.
There's a lot of petty entrepreneurialism.
People really want to make doughnuts, and that is true for
both the Americans as well as the Chinese.
But there is kind of this overbearing hand at the
government that sometimes helps out, that sometimes offers very
(11:03):
useful industrial subsidies, which sometimes decides to smack
around a lot of tech founders like Jack Ma, who got a little
bit big for his speeches. And so that is kind of this
precarity of living in the engineering state.
Things might go very well if thegovernment decides to build your
factory, but what if they decideto take it all away?
Yeah. Well, Donald Trump is trying to
do something rather similar. You could argue that if you get
(11:23):
too big for your boots or you don't kiss his ring, you might
also be in trouble. Absolutely.
But you know what, it's baked into the system in China.
And certainly, I mean, Dan wouldknow much more about this than I
would in China, that some of themost senior and the richest
people have ended up, they've sort of gone abroad, haven't
they, because. They to London.
Yeah, because they don't feel secure.
(11:44):
But having said that, I did meetquite a lot of entrepreneurs,
particularly in Hangzhou, which is like the sort of seen as the
Silicon Valley of of China, a lot of young people who had AI
startups. And you have the six little
Dragons there, including DeepSeek, which is of course the
the AI large language model, which surprised the world back
(12:06):
in January. By making something really great
for very little money compared to its American competition.
Exactly. And then there's, you know,
video, you know, computer games,game sciences there with a very,
very popular game based on Chinese myth and legend and one
which had AI glasses, which I, which I tried on.
And what was interesting to me was quite a few of the people I
(12:26):
met were Chinese who had been inSilicon Valley, didn't feel that
they had had enough opportunity there and had gone back to China
and were getting government support or looking for
government support, but found a conducive environment there for
their startups and said that they could be creative there.
And they felt that there was more opportunity there than they
(12:46):
had found in America. Do you think that the market is
more cruel than the Chinese government?
The American market is more cruel than the Chinese
government when it comes to supporting new.
Businesses certainly there is competition red in tooth and
claw over in China that there isthe, I think the, the, the rule
of thumb that we have is that a Japanese, German, American
automaker takes about 6 years toconceptualize a new auto model
(13:09):
and then release it in the market.
In China it's much closer to 18 months or two years, which is.
Astonishing isn't? It they're moving three times
faster and no one is hypnotizingthe Americans to just move very
slowly, that is because the Chinese are just so darn
competitive. It is a ruthless market logic
over there. And describe that
competitiveness. And I want to hear from you
what, you know, whether you say that, because we're going to
talk about the lying down generation, but that
(13:30):
competitiveness, what does it look like at, you know, the
university level, at the professional level?
One of the core facts about China is that you are sorted in
all of these quite challenging competitions starting from a
very young age. Many Chinese students will have
awful memories of being labeled at the bottom half the bottom
quintile of class, and some people might still be very proud
(13:51):
of having the. Opposite to We're all winners.
Yes, that's right. All shall have prizes.
All shall have prizes. And in China it is very clear
that the top five people have prizes and everyone else is not
going to be very well regarded by the parents.
And so this sort of ruthless logic exists throughout the
formal system in China. But then the business logic is
if anything far more demanding because if you release products,
if you release taxis and in the air that collapse pretty quickly
(14:13):
afterwards, you're not going to be very competitive in the
market for very long and. You can make that money.
You can write to to the top of that tree and you can thrive and
keep your money and live a beautiful lifestyle as long as
you don't challenge the government.
And that is very challenging because you don't know where
what might be challenging the government.
Jack Moss certainly didn't know where all the lines were at the
time that he would try to move things around.
(14:35):
And so things are always shifting.
The winds are always changing inChina.
But I think there's can I come up with something here?
Because I think the other thing about, you know, going from
conception to manufacture in 18 months, that's also about the
seamlessness of the system. So in Shenzhen, you go to that
huge electronics market in the middle of the city, which you
will know very well. So if you, you know, if I have
(14:57):
an idea for some kind of widget or AI something and I, and I, I
try, it doesn't quite work. I can just go to that market and
I can find 10 different parts and I can try each of them and
within a day or a week I can work out this works and this
doesn't work and so on. But if I'm American, I probably
have to order those parts from China.
And so there's there's a very practical way in which you can
(15:20):
do trial and error and see whether your product is going to
work. And that speeds up the whole
process. Which is extraordinary.
So just to describe this a little bit more.
So there's literally like a shopping now for.
It's a shopping mall. It's five, it's five stories.
I can't remember. It's you know, it's more than AI
think. It's three square kilometres.
It's absolutely. Like an industrial park.
(15:41):
Yes, it's absolutely massive andyou can find people there who
are just, you know, trying to buy a new pair of Airpods or a
knock off pair of Airpods or youcan find all sorts of
semiconductors. But then that's the thing,
because of course on semiconductors, America still
has the edge on chips. America and obviously Taiwan,
(16:01):
TSMC, which is the, the big semiconductor manufacturer in
the world and their chips are far in advance of the Chinese
chips. Now I was told that, you know,
you could find the very advancedNVIDIA chips there, that they're
smuggled in via Japan and Hong Kong.
And of course, a chip is a very small thing.
(16:22):
So, you know, under the, under the, the, the counter you, you
can find them. So you can buy almost anything
there, but when it comes to thatvery, very high tech, the
Americans still are ahead. When I was walking through some
of that market about almost a decade ago now, and I went to
buy a little cell phone case with a white whale because my
(16:44):
favorite novel is Moby Dick. Yes, the people ask me, do you
want one or 1000? How about 1000?
And I said one is enough. Thank you.
And why is NVIDIA still able to produce better microchips than
any Chinese equivalent company? I think that the Chinese are
still relatively weak on two bigtechnological sectors.
The first is semiconductors, thesecond is aviation.
And so there is still something quite challenging about the
(17:06):
integration of many different scientific disciplines when it
comes to semiconductors. That's the integration of
computer science and chemistry and electrical engineering.
When it comes to aviation, the reason that Rolls Royce still
has this edge is that it is really good at integrating
mechanical engineering and aerodynamics, material science.
The Chinese are still catching up in anything where the science
is relatively mature but the manufacturing is quite settled.
(17:29):
The Chinese are by measure ahead, but where the science is
still challenged, I think they're still quite behind.
So to Lindsays point, right, So it's the integration of a new
idea and the way that it's manufactured and then the kind
of various, you know, manufacturing lines and and
distribution lines that you needaround it.
That's right. But they are getting better.
And so Chinese universities are rising through the ranks in all
sorts of ways. China is doing more science and
(17:51):
I expect that they will be doinggetting more Nobel Prizes as
well as other recognition sometime soon.
And do the Chinese have a bankruptcy law that if you try
something out and it doesn't work, that you didn't get bailed
out? I mean it it rather like in
America you can do Chapter 11 and have another life.
And there is still some of that,although it is much less
forgiving. If you get into personal
bankruptcy, it's possible that you can't book and fancy a
hotel, you can't take vacations anymore, You can't really go on
(18:15):
the airplane. Sometimes you have to go on the
trains instead. And so and.
You can't go shocking forward. The high.
Speed train. Listen, going on the high speed
train, I'd choose out over the plane any day.
I mean, you know, I'm sure the words bus replacement service I
never heard in China. They're very common in this
country. So, OK, let's go to the social
side of this then. So with all this competition
that you've described down from an early age on, and as you
(18:39):
know, your excellent piece from China, Lindsay, you know, one of
them was all about those people who decided to do a bit of Tan
Ping or just they just, they kind of checked out.
Is that a, is that their form ofrebellion?
They can't do politics, but whatthey can do is apathy.
Well, it's so interesting because when I lived in China in
the mid 2000s, you know, the theyounger generation were very
aware of being privileged, you know, that their grandparents
(19:00):
had survived the Great Leap Forward, their parents had
survived the Cultural Revolution.
And now they were a very lucky generation and they were going
for it. But this next generation, Gen.
Z, which seems to have problems all over the world, they're like
Nah. And so one of the concepts which
I learnt when I was there. Was their generation.
Yeah, it was, it was this American concept of garbage
(19:20):
time. So garbage time is the end of an
American football or basketball game when it's it's a foregone
conclusion which side is going to win.
And So what is the point of the last five or 10 minutes?
And so it was a young woman who I met in a cafe.
I just learnt about this concept.
And I, yeah, I just asked her a completely different question.
She said, oh, have you heard about garbage time?
(19:41):
She said. I said, yes.
She said, this is garbage time in Chinese history.
And what they feel is that there's no point in trying.
And there's a huge graduate unemployment problem.
You've got 12 million graduates every year.
And you know if you if you orderyour meal from May Twin, which
is the equivalent to Deliveroo. Chances are it's going to be a
(20:02):
graduate delivering it. At least 30% of the people
working there are graduates because they just aren't
graduate level jobs. And this is causing a huge
amount of of disillusion. And so, you know, there's a sort
of mental, I suppose you could call it a mental health crisis.
I don't know, Dan, how would yousee it?
A. Civilizational crisis, perhaps
civilization. I would go that this is that it
(20:24):
is. I think it is an indictment that
people in China, as well as mostof the rest of East Asia, don't
want to have kids, not in part because their TFR is so low, in
part because there is. They're living through this
garbage time. They don't have great hopes for
the future and I think that thisis an indictment for them.
And this is despite, you know, supposedly family values, you
know, all these sort of traditional Chinese values which
(20:45):
may or may not still exist or. May or may not still exist,
because I think a lot of women in particular are a little bit
distressed about being told and being asked all the time when
they plan to have children. I think that's something like a
Lunar New Year is a distressing time for many women because
there's only one question they can expect from their extended
aunts and uncles and grandmothers, which is when are
(21:05):
you going to marry to the singleand when are you having kids to
the childless? And that seems like that is all
their value. And there's more than that
because of course, you had the one child policy.
And so Chinese women were told one child only for all of these
years. And then suddenly the party
says, actually, you're supposed to have two children.
And now suddenly you're supposedto have three children.
Excuse me, Is this not our business?
Well, apparently not. I was told a young Chinese woman
(21:28):
who I met there said, oh, you know, sometimes the party, you
know, the local party authorities will ring you up and
ask, have you had your period this month?
Seriously. I mean, yes, that level of
intrusion into women's lives. And you know what?
Women don't like that. Yeah.
And are they rebelling against it?
They're not picking up the phoneor they're lying or they're,
well, they're giving the wrong answer.
Whatever. They're not having children, No,
because they're because they're not interested and they don't
(21:50):
see why they should be pushed into it, either by their parents
or by their aunties or by the local party secretary.
So these are the limits of social engineering.
Yeah, I can't imagine what's more scary, the the aunties or
the local party secretaries. Both are pretty frightening,
aren't they? Does the does the party know,
does the government know that it's got a problem with social
engineering or do they not get it?
I think they get it and they're willing to pay the costs.
(22:10):
I think that they have consistently decided that's the
one child policy was something that they needed to pursue that
0 COVID was something that they needed to pursue.
Look at these plans, the numbersright there in the name.
There's no ambiguity about what these things could possibly
mean. And they're thinking that by
pressuring women that they are able to produce some sort of
coerced copulation. Now, I don't believe that is the
(22:31):
sort of thing that makes more children, but I think that they
they feel like this the only thing they can do.
And I mean, what are they going to do?
What's the government going to do about the lying down?
How will they infuse people again?
Well, I think that by inciting alot of Xi Jinping thought at
them, which I also believe is not going to that's.
Going to make you fall fast asleep isn't?
It that that makes me fall fast asleep.
Very, very much so. You know, Xi Jinping is not a
(22:53):
very humorous guy. I don't love listening to him.
And so when he denounces the people for we're not going to
give them too much more money, that might create welfarism,
that might make them be very lazy.
That's something that's those are words that he has used.
He sounds a little bit like Ronald Reagan to me.
But I think there is another thing though, and this one I
found very interesting, which isthat there was a survey done
recently, which is that that between 83 and 87% of Chinese
(23:17):
people are very enthusiastic about artificial intelligence,
about AI, which is very different from here in the West
where we're rather afraid of it.And I did find in Liangju, which
was a kind of sort of Silicon Valley area.
I mean, my young woman who, you know, told me about garbage
time. She was developing an AI app for
depressed young people. And then I found these other
(23:39):
young entrepreneurs. One of them had a new app, which
was called Second Me, where yourAI avatar meets somebody else's
AI avatar. I mean for.
People, how is that working? I'm not quite.
Sure, maybe they'll have kids, but I don't think they'll have
real kids. Exactly.
That's right. They'll have Avatar kids.
But but there, there is an interest in technology and
(23:59):
particularly in AI amongst youngpeople, even those who are a bit
apathetic. And so I think that there is
some hope in the party that thisis a technology which might
infuse young people. I don't know whether that's
likely or not. Well, I think that's something
that is unites both the Chinese as well as the Americans is that
at least the broader population are interested in growth.
I think that they have an interest in making doughnuts and
(24:22):
I think that the elites are alsovery interested.
Interesting growth. When I look across at much of
the European Union, much of Europe, much of the UK, it
doesn't even seem like people aren't necessarily very
interested in growth anymore. And so that is something that
it's pretty similar about. But it's a difference between,
you know, our young generation and Chinese young generation is
that in, you know, here we worryabout or young people worry
(24:44):
about AI replacing the jobs thatthey thought they were going to
do. Is the case in China that AI
might do all these jobs. And young Chinese people are
saying, go for it, go for a computer, do that job for me,
and I'll do something else. I'll play a video game or watch
a movie. Well, one of the things that's
very challenging for US manufacturing is that might hope
that AI and automation is going to solve all of America's
manufacturing problems. The challenge is that the
(25:06):
Chinese are much more automated already.
They're much better at the algorithms.
They're much better at using robots.
And so it doesn't even seem likethey are that much against using
AI to do all their critical tasks.
And, and just do you think thinkthat this lying down generation
phenomena will continue or will there be a kind of natural
entrance at some stage when evenyoung people get bored of lying
(25:27):
down and they will just panic And now that there'll be a
political eruption or there'll be, or they'll try and get back
into the job market. I think it's hard.
Obviously, you know, I can't predict the future.
One of the things I think is really interesting to see, you
cannot oppose the government politically.
You know, if you talk about human rights, LGBTQ rights,
women's rights, then you're in prison.
You know, your head's chopped off.
(25:47):
That's it. It's not going to happen.
But if you talk about mental health and happiness, well,
that's a different thing. And the Chinese Communist Party
has said it is by us to seek happiness for the Chinese
people. So in that sense, you know,
saying that you're unhappy is a is a form of, of rebellion and
the language of human rights, I think has morphed into the
(26:08):
language of well-being and, and mental health.
So I think the real question is when and if the party sees this
generation as a new kind of challenge or threat.
I mean, Gentlemen Square is quite obvious.
There's a bloke standing there with his plastic bag in front of
a tank lying down is its own form of resistance.
And at some point I fear that the the Chinese government will
(26:31):
try and do something about it. And that of course could be more
repression, that could be even more repressive.
I don't know. What do you?
Think I wonder the how about thethe opportunities available to
young people. There's no job opportunities,
but there are excellent phone opportunities for them to keep
themselves very entertained. When Xi Jinping denounced TikTok
as spiritual opium a couple of years ago, I think he's right.
(26:53):
He's absolutely right. These things are spiritual
opium. And if all of us are going to be
hanging out with our AI friends because they always text you
back and they will always provide you some cheer, I'm a
little bit worried that many of them will just choose to lie
forever. Dan, do you think the Chinese
government is more afraid of itsown people than it is of
anything else? I think that is the scariest
thing to the Chinese government,and This is why you can see that
(27:16):
China's domestic budget for security spending is even
greater than its military spending for the People's
Liberation Army, that there is so much constructed in China to
make sure that the people don't rebel and that there is still so
much repressiveness, really to try to keep a lid on social
tensions. I.
Remember when I was in Beijing when they got the Olympics in
the year 2000, They celebrated and there were armored vehicles
(27:38):
on the streets of Beijing. And I said to my Chinese, fix a
minder, what's going on here? He said the government is afraid
of people even when they're, youknow, in the spirit of
jubilation, you know, for the greater good of the nation, They
just distrust large numbers of people showing up with any kind
of show of emotion. This is something that they feel
they have to control right now. China is in a big tiff with the
(27:59):
country of Japan, which they arespend this kind of totally
insane spat that the two countries are going.
And I think that they have to bea little bit nervous about the
sort of nationalism that they release because if they fan up
the national flames against Tokyo, who knows if that might
spread someday to Beijing. OK, couple.
Of things to end on getting backto the kind of race between the
state of engineers and the stateof lawyers, Who is winning that
(28:22):
race at the moment? No one is winning and I think
that the race will not be won. There is no gold medal at the
end that there is no because we don't know what it's like to
win. That it's not going to be quite
like the Cold War, in which, as President George HW Bush
declared, the end state is that we win, they lose.
And I think we don't know what winning the AI race will look
like. I think that we don't know what
(28:43):
winning the broader race will look like.
What I want is for the US and China just to be the best
versions of themselves, the level more for the people.
To me, that is winning. But when Chinese, you know,
government officials, scholars, students, engineers are looking
over the water to America, they see a government that is taking
down the the great institutions of American learning is cutting
the funding, you know, of technological, you know,
(29:05):
citadels of excellence. I mean, what are they thinking
is happening? You know, are they saying this
can't be true? The Chinese are helping us out
here. I mean, the Americans are doing
the, you know, our work for them.
To some extent, yes, And I thinkthat is a viewpoint from
Beijing. But I think also the young
people are seeing that the Americans are still building up
all sorts of great tech companies, that there is still
tremendous liberty available to people in the US And that is
(29:29):
still why many young Chinese want to move away, that they
want to move to the US, they want to move to the UK, they
want to move to Chiang Mai to smoke trucks that would be legal
in the state of California because they find that there's
still a little bit too much exhaustion in XI Jinping's
China. Did you find young people who
said to you any chance of comingback with you to the UK or or
moving to America? No, I didn't.
The young people I saw were the ones who tended to be the ones
(29:51):
who had gone from America back to to China.
But on the race, I think that there's two things.
I mean, obviously the Donald Trump is sort of obsessed with
manufacture and he's not in timeentirely wrong.
You know when you. Look, but he's a century out
you. Could say he's a century out,
but I think that where he he hasa point is on the issue of
robotics. You know, I went to a car
factory, a Gili factory in Ningbo, which is pretty much
(30:14):
automated now that's not going to something like that will not
bring jobs back to America. But you know that kind of
manufacture you know it is important for a country to to do
that. It's important for China, and I
can see why you would want that,why America would.
I can see why this country wouldwant that too.
I mean, we're always trying to get car factories here from the
Japanese or whatever. But the real issue, I think on
(30:36):
tech is going to be when it comes to the military.
And this is where, you know, thethe very advanced chips are
important because those are usedin precision weapons.
And that means that the weaponrythat the Americans are
developing is more advanced. But of course, the People's
Liberation Army is massive and the Chinese are building up a
huge fleet of, you know, for their, their naval fleet.
(31:01):
And so that is the next thing weare going to get into.
And that I think is really scarybecause we're into high tech
warfare. And.
Reluctant to quote Stalin again,but quantity is a quality all
its own, is something that Stalin said.
And this is something that, you know, when the Chinese are
building right now around 1500 ships, the Americans are
building something like 3. We get these giant disparities.
(31:23):
And I think that that is going to be benefiting the engineering
state. But this is the final question
then. You know, given that China's
building up militarily in the way that, you know, Germany did,
you know, the end of the 19th century, the way that Britain
did just before that, the way that America's done, you know,
right about the Second World War, You know, is this a
military buildup with the idea that that military power will be
(31:45):
used kinetically, as they like to say, in the Pentagon at some
stage? Or just, you know, this is Our
Calling card, We are powerful. We had to be reckoned with.
Well, calling cards only work ifyou're willing to play it.
And so I think that they are they want to be able to deter
the Americans from doing anything they don't like around
the island of Taiwan. And so I think that this is
something that the Americans also had to feel like they
(32:05):
developed their own calling cards to be able to deter the
Chinese. And let's just hope that things
do not go kinetic and on neithercountry place they're calling
cards. Lindsay, when you were there,
did you did Did anyone, whether they were young or old, did
they, did you get the impressionthat they thought they were on a
kind of path towards some kind of civilizational clash with the
West, with America? I got the feeling that they
(32:27):
thought that they were on a technological roll.
But you know that in the Politburo, you know the decline
and fall of the Roman Empire. Everybody has to read it, and
certainly in the party. Is that true?
They. Yeah, they always read that.
They always, they're always fascinated by the decline of
they're. Not reading it in Trump's white.
House. No, they're not they.
Should be maybe? And that's the point because
(32:49):
certainly within the party, theybelieve that there is an
inevitability that America is indecline and China is on the rise
again, as it was, you know, centuries ago.
And that is how they see historyunfolding.
I suspect that it will take longenough that, well, maybe Dan
(33:09):
will be here to see it. I don't know if you and I will.
Be but never underestimate lawyers.
No. OK.
Dan Lindsay Hilson, thank you very much to both of you for
coming in. That's it for the forecast.
I hope you enjoyed it. We'll see you next time.
The weaponry that the Americans are developing is more advanced,
but of course the People's Liberation Army is massive and
the Chinese are building up a huge fleet.
That is the next thing we are going to get into and that I
think is really scary because we're into high tech warfare.
Given that China is building up militarily in the way that
Germany did, you know, at the end of the 19th century, is this
(00:21):
a military buildup with the ideathat that military power will be
used at some stage or just, you know, this is Our Calling card.
We are powerful. We're here to be reckoned with.
Well, calling cards only work ifyou're willing to play it.
Hello and welcome to the forecast.
China is in an age of breakneck technological development.
(00:42):
AI, robots, drones, electrical vehicles, you name it.
But at the same time, the young people are resisting
progression, or many of them at least.
They call it tongue ping lying flat.
Our international editor, Lindsay Hilsum, has returned
from her first China trip since she was Channel 4 News
correspondent there in the late 2000s.
But also she was there again in 2013.
(01:03):
She was wowed by technological progress, but also found a
generation exhausted and overwhelmed by overwork,
depression and, of course, political pressure.
Joining Lindsay me to discuss today's China is economist Dan
Wong, author of Breakneck, who argues that China's system has
unique strengths and dangerous weaknesses in the race for
technological supremacy. Welcome to you both.
(01:25):
Hi, Lindsay, Let me start with you.
So you hadn't been there for over a decade?
Yep. What was the thing that
surprised you most? Well, obviously going up in a
pilotless drone, an air taxi above Guangzhou by myself alone
in this in this vehicle looking down on the the city.
(01:46):
Terrified or overjoyed? I wasn't that scared because I
thought they wouldn't let me do it if it was really dangerous,
but it was impressive. I mean, and they they talk about
the low altitude economy, the idea that these air taxes will
take people to the airport and obviously that is impressive.
I suppose also the air is much cleaner.
(02:06):
All these electric vehicles, EVsthat weren't around when I was
there, and high speed rail. I went from Hangzhou to Beijing,
that's 1200 kilometres in 4 1/2 hours.
So all of those things, I had tobe impressed by that.
But then also, you know, all those shopping malls, the sort
(02:27):
of Japanification of China. And I had to really look for the
China which I had grown to love when I was there, a sort of old
China. I wondered if they were ripping
the soul out of the planet. Is that you speaking as a
nostalgia kind of obsessed foreigner?
Maybe. Or is it you know, Or is it, are
(02:48):
you genuine about the soul beingripped out of China?
I'm genuine about the soul because as you know, you've just
said, you know, a lot of young people are are depressed and
don't feel that this progress necessarily is going to to
benefit them. There's a sort of lackadaisical
generation. But I think that if everything
is about progress, technology, you know, the white speed of it
(03:13):
all, then I wonder, you know, what is left of identity.
I don't know what what do you think that?
I agree with you very much aboutthe soul.
I describe China in part as a the modern Beijing, as engineers
of the soul, which is a term from Marshall Joseph Stalin that
Xi Jinping decided to repeat a few years ago.
(03:34):
And so I think that China is absolutely losing a lot.
At the same time, it is gaining a lot when you have new bridges,
being able to connect people to bigger markets, at the same time
as you're getting new subway systems as well as new parks,
while many people are creativelyexhausted by everything
happening undersea. Before we talk about the social
engineering and the exhaustion, I just want to, you know, home
(03:55):
in on the, the technological progress because we in the West
like to think of China as the world's factory, but it turns
out it's the world's factory andthe world's laboratory, isn't
it? I mean, they're, they're just
inventing stuff that might be invented in Silicon Valley on
parts of the US, but probably not in Europe anymore.
So tell us about that transitionfrom a country that makes stuff
(04:16):
to a country that invents stuff.I think that China is very much
both a laboratory and a factory at this point.
So if we think about something that the US invented, something
like solar photovoltaic panels or even something like
semiconductors, that is something that was created by
the Americans that the Americansare no longer very good at
making. And when I'm in Silicon Valley,
when I'm in the United States, I'm constantly challenging
(04:38):
Americans to ask them, but what is the greater glory to be able
to claim in the history books that you invented something like
the first solar photovoltaic cell or to actually own the
industry in the present day? And so China has very much
blurred these practices because factories are often cutting edge
laboratories and themselves people are able to work on
cutting edge things. They're on the bleeding edge and
(04:59):
they're able to figure out wherethe technology is going next.
And the people who invent this stuff, I guess many of whom were
educated in the United States, are they inventing this stuff in
order to make money for the greater good of China or maybe a
little bit of both to beat the United States at their at their
own game? I think the answer is yes, that
(05:19):
it is an element of both, that Ithink that what is really
distinguishing Chinese entrepreneurs as well as
American entrepreneurs is that they have a lot of appetite to
make doughnuts now. They're really big hustlers.
They're really interested in making a big bucks.
At the same time, I think there is an element of nationalism
that exists more within Chinese society for having felt that
(05:40):
they were behind for too long, that they really want to catch
up, and now they want to surpassthe US as well as the UKI.
Think also one of the things which really struck me when I
was in Shenzhen is about, you know, the supply chain and the
system. So if you take E VS electric
vehicles. So yes, China controls the rare
earths and the rare earths go into the batteries and the
(06:02):
batteries are in the electric vehicles and a company like BYD,
they, they're controlling all ofthat supply chain.
There's none of that kind of fragmentation which you get in
Western capitalism now. And you know, I went to, I was,
you know, you go around Shenzhenwith it's nice clean air and you
look at all the, the green number plates on the cars.
And then I was in a charging station and battery change
(06:25):
station. You drive in, you go to the
place where it's like a carport and the ground open up beneath
you. The battery drops out.
It's taken away on one side, thenew battery comes in, up it is
and off you go. So in 3 minutes you have changed
the battery in your car and the largest BYD vehicle that goes
(06:46):
620 kilometres on one charge or you can charge it up, you know,
and that takes you an hour. And so the system actually works
because it's tied up together. Whereas when it comes to
electric vehicles, certainly in the UK and I think in America as
well, it isn't all tied up together like that.
And so it's much harder to make it work.
One of the interesting things I read up on recently was that in
(07:08):
America in the early noughties, they had rare earth metals
mines, I think in New Mexico andArizona.
And basically these mines kept going bust.
So they decided to, it was much easier just to buy the stuff
from China. In China, What is the thinking?
Is it that industrial policy kicks in and the Chinese
government says we need rare earth mines, we need the best
batteries in the world for our cars.
(07:29):
You know, we need the best AI and we're going to basically
help the companies to get there.And the ones that fail, they can
fail. And the ones that succeed, we
shall support. And we want some of that money
for ourselves. Like how does it work?
They simply have the hunger to make a lot of these things.
You know, Matt, I was the. Government and the engineers.
The government and the engineers, the entire civil
society, the entire system. A month ago I visited America's
(07:51):
only rare earth magnet factory in Fort Worth, TX, and it is
coming up with new batteries as well as the the rare earth
magnets themselves. They have access to a mine in
around Nevada and California's border, a little bit outside of
Las Vegas, which really feels like one of the most naturally
blessed mines in the world. It's just all of the rare earths
(08:12):
are really on the surface. But what do the Chinese bring to
the table? Well, they had a hunger to make
a lot of these minerals which they own in on the home soil,
but also these red mining rare earths is so energy intensive
and so polluting that only the Chinese have the stomach for
doing something like this. And so they have they're willing
to pay these costs in order to win technological supremacy.
(08:33):
And if we go down and look throughout the supply chain, as
Lindsay says, it's not just one thing.
They really think about everything.
It's so much more systems wide thinking over there.
Also, can I just add because I went to a rare earth mine in
Inner Mongolia in 2011 and it was unbelievably polluting.
It was horrendous and I presume that the processes have improved
since then. But what struck me then was
again, this long term thinking. So back then they were already
(08:57):
thinking, right, we are going todominate the rare earth market
worldwide. And they set about doing that.
And you can talk about they and they is the government.
So the government will, you know, sponsor and support the
companies which are going to to do that.
Whereas in America, you know, the rarer thing, as you said,
(09:17):
Matt, you know, it sort of comesand goes.
Molly Corp in California, it goes bust, doesn't get
government support. This.
The system in China is designed to make everything work
together. Right.
But one of the other reasons why, you know, rare earth metal
mines fail in America is becausethere are lawsuits from
environmentalists that shut themdown or, or the the cost is too
expensive to keep them open. So, you know, in in your book,
(09:40):
you have this wonderful analogy,you know, a country of lawyers,
America versus a country of engineers, China.
I mean, there's a reason why America is a country of lawyers
because it's, it was founded by,you know, a bunch of lawyers and
philosophers and it was founded on ideas.
And the idea of America, I guess, is that you start from
the bottom and you go up. Whereas in China, it seems to be
the other way around. And I mean, this is we should
(10:01):
really ask this at the end of the podcast.
I'll ask it now, which is the more durable system do you
think? I think both are durable, both
have strengths and weaknesses. I will say a word of defence for
the lawyers I'm coming from that's.
That's a rare thing to hear. That the lawyerly society has
some. For the lawyers, come on.
Dad, you got you got you got me on the record saying this now,
but there is something special about the United States.
(10:22):
I'm coming to you from the West Coast.
And the West Coast is the only region in the world that has not
only created a company worth over a trillion dollars, has
created several companies worth over several trillions of
dollars. The rich feel comfortable to
create their businesses in America.
They feel protected to do something like that.
And that is not something that the Chinese have been able to do
very well either. But so the rich feel comfortable
(10:42):
to invent stuff and make money from it in America?
How does it work in China then? I think that there is still
quite a lot of hunger to be rich.
You can see this sort of pulsingthrough everywhere.
There's a lot of petty entrepreneurialism.
People really want to make doughnuts, and that is true for
both the Americans as well as the Chinese.
But there is kind of this overbearing hand at the
government that sometimes helps out, that sometimes offers very
(11:03):
useful industrial subsidies, which sometimes decides to smack
around a lot of tech founders like Jack Ma, who got a little
bit big for his speeches. And so that is kind of this
precarity of living in the engineering state.
Things might go very well if thegovernment decides to build your
factory, but what if they decideto take it all away?
Yeah. Well, Donald Trump is trying to
do something rather similar. You could argue that if you get
(11:23):
too big for your boots or you don't kiss his ring, you might
also be in trouble. Absolutely.
But you know what, it's baked into the system in China.
And certainly, I mean, Dan wouldknow much more about this than I
would in China, that some of themost senior and the richest
people have ended up, they've sort of gone abroad, haven't
they, because. They to London.
Yeah, because they don't feel secure.
(11:44):
But having said that, I did meetquite a lot of entrepreneurs,
particularly in Hangzhou, which is like the sort of seen as the
Silicon Valley of of China, a lot of young people who had AI
startups. And you have the six little
Dragons there, including DeepSeek, which is of course the
the AI large language model, which surprised the world back
(12:06):
in January. By making something really great
for very little money compared to its American competition.
Exactly. And then there's, you know,
video, you know, computer games,game sciences there with a very,
very popular game based on Chinese myth and legend and one
which had AI glasses, which I, which I tried on.
And what was interesting to me was quite a few of the people I
(12:26):
met were Chinese who had been inSilicon Valley, didn't feel that
they had had enough opportunity there and had gone back to China
and were getting government support or looking for
government support, but found a conducive environment there for
their startups and said that they could be creative there.
And they felt that there was more opportunity there than they
(12:46):
had found in America. Do you think that the market is
more cruel than the Chinese government?
The American market is more cruel than the Chinese
government when it comes to supporting new.
Businesses certainly there is competition red in tooth and
claw over in China that there isthe, I think the, the, the rule
of thumb that we have is that a Japanese, German, American
automaker takes about 6 years toconceptualize a new auto model
(13:09):
and then release it in the market.
In China it's much closer to 18 months or two years, which is.
Astonishing isn't? It they're moving three times
faster and no one is hypnotizingthe Americans to just move very
slowly, that is because the Chinese are just so darn
competitive. It is a ruthless market logic
over there. And describe that
competitiveness. And I want to hear from you
what, you know, whether you say that, because we're going to
talk about the lying down generation, but that
(13:30):
competitiveness, what does it look like at, you know, the
university level, at the professional level?
One of the core facts about China is that you are sorted in
all of these quite challenging competitions starting from a
very young age. Many Chinese students will have
awful memories of being labeled at the bottom half the bottom
quintile of class, and some people might still be very proud
(13:51):
of having the. Opposite to We're all winners.
Yes, that's right. All shall have prizes.
All shall have prizes. And in China it is very clear
that the top five people have prizes and everyone else is not
going to be very well regarded by the parents.
And so this sort of ruthless logic exists throughout the
formal system in China. But then the business logic is
if anything far more demanding because if you release products,
if you release taxis and in the air that collapse pretty quickly
(14:13):
afterwards, you're not going to be very competitive in the
market for very long and. You can make that money.
You can write to to the top of that tree and you can thrive and
keep your money and live a beautiful lifestyle as long as
you don't challenge the government.
And that is very challenging because you don't know where
what might be challenging the government.
Jack Moss certainly didn't know where all the lines were at the
time that he would try to move things around.
(14:35):
And so things are always shifting.
The winds are always changing inChina.
But I think there's can I come up with something here?
Because I think the other thing about, you know, going from
conception to manufacture in 18 months, that's also about the
seamlessness of the system. So in Shenzhen, you go to that
huge electronics market in the middle of the city, which you
will know very well. So if you, you know, if I have
(14:57):
an idea for some kind of widget or AI something and I, and I, I
try, it doesn't quite work. I can just go to that market and
I can find 10 different parts and I can try each of them and
within a day or a week I can work out this works and this
doesn't work and so on. But if I'm American, I probably
have to order those parts from China.
And so there's there's a very practical way in which you can
(15:20):
do trial and error and see whether your product is going to
work. And that speeds up the whole
process. Which is extraordinary.
So just to describe this a little bit more.
So there's literally like a shopping now for.
It's a shopping mall. It's five, it's five stories.
I can't remember. It's you know, it's more than AI
think. It's three square kilometres.
It's absolutely. Like an industrial park.
(15:41):
Yes, it's absolutely massive andyou can find people there who
are just, you know, trying to buy a new pair of Airpods or a
knock off pair of Airpods or youcan find all sorts of
semiconductors. But then that's the thing,
because of course on semiconductors, America still
has the edge on chips. America and obviously Taiwan,
(16:01):
TSMC, which is the, the big semiconductor manufacturer in
the world and their chips are far in advance of the Chinese
chips. Now I was told that, you know,
you could find the very advancedNVIDIA chips there, that they're
smuggled in via Japan and Hong Kong.
And of course, a chip is a very small thing.
(16:22):
So, you know, under the, under the, the, the counter you, you
can find them. So you can buy almost anything
there, but when it comes to thatvery, very high tech, the
Americans still are ahead. When I was walking through some
of that market about almost a decade ago now, and I went to
buy a little cell phone case with a white whale because my
(16:44):
favorite novel is Moby Dick. Yes, the people ask me, do you
want one or 1000? How about 1000?
And I said one is enough. Thank you.
And why is NVIDIA still able to produce better microchips than
any Chinese equivalent company? I think that the Chinese are
still relatively weak on two bigtechnological sectors.
The first is semiconductors, thesecond is aviation.
And so there is still something quite challenging about the
(17:06):
integration of many different scientific disciplines when it
comes to semiconductors. That's the integration of
computer science and chemistry and electrical engineering.
When it comes to aviation, the reason that Rolls Royce still
has this edge is that it is really good at integrating
mechanical engineering and aerodynamics, material science.
The Chinese are still catching up in anything where the science
is relatively mature but the manufacturing is quite settled.
(17:29):
The Chinese are by measure ahead, but where the science is
still challenged, I think they're still quite behind.
So to Lindsays point, right, So it's the integration of a new
idea and the way that it's manufactured and then the kind
of various, you know, manufacturing lines and and
distribution lines that you needaround it.
That's right. But they are getting better.
And so Chinese universities are rising through the ranks in all
sorts of ways. China is doing more science and
(17:51):
I expect that they will be doinggetting more Nobel Prizes as
well as other recognition sometime soon.
And do the Chinese have a bankruptcy law that if you try
something out and it doesn't work, that you didn't get bailed
out? I mean it it rather like in
America you can do Chapter 11 and have another life.
And there is still some of that,although it is much less
forgiving. If you get into personal
bankruptcy, it's possible that you can't book and fancy a
hotel, you can't take vacations anymore, You can't really go on
(18:15):
the airplane. Sometimes you have to go on the
trains instead. And so and.
You can't go shocking forward. The high.
Speed train. Listen, going on the high speed
train, I'd choose out over the plane any day.
I mean, you know, I'm sure the words bus replacement service I
never heard in China. They're very common in this
country. So, OK, let's go to the social
side of this then. So with all this competition
that you've described down from an early age on, and as you
(18:39):
know, your excellent piece from China, Lindsay, you know, one of
them was all about those people who decided to do a bit of Tan
Ping or just they just, they kind of checked out.
Is that a, is that their form ofrebellion?
They can't do politics, but whatthey can do is apathy.
Well, it's so interesting because when I lived in China in
the mid 2000s, you know, the theyounger generation were very
aware of being privileged, you know, that their grandparents
(19:00):
had survived the Great Leap Forward, their parents had
survived the Cultural Revolution.
And now they were a very lucky generation and they were going
for it. But this next generation, Gen.
Z, which seems to have problems all over the world, they're like
Nah. And so one of the concepts which
I learnt when I was there. Was their generation.
Yeah, it was, it was this American concept of garbage
(19:20):
time. So garbage time is the end of an
American football or basketball game when it's it's a foregone
conclusion which side is going to win.
And So what is the point of the last five or 10 minutes?
And so it was a young woman who I met in a cafe.
I just learnt about this concept.
And I, yeah, I just asked her a completely different question.
She said, oh, have you heard about garbage time?
(19:41):
She said. I said, yes.
She said, this is garbage time in Chinese history.
And what they feel is that there's no point in trying.
And there's a huge graduate unemployment problem.
You've got 12 million graduates every year.
And you know if you if you orderyour meal from May Twin, which
is the equivalent to Deliveroo. Chances are it's going to be a
(20:02):
graduate delivering it. At least 30% of the people
working there are graduates because they just aren't
graduate level jobs. And this is causing a huge
amount of of disillusion. And so, you know, there's a sort
of mental, I suppose you could call it a mental health crisis.
I don't know, Dan, how would yousee it?
A. Civilizational crisis, perhaps
civilization. I would go that this is that it
(20:24):
is. I think it is an indictment that
people in China, as well as mostof the rest of East Asia, don't
want to have kids, not in part because their TFR is so low, in
part because there is. They're living through this
garbage time. They don't have great hopes for
the future and I think that thisis an indictment for them.
And this is despite, you know, supposedly family values, you
know, all these sort of traditional Chinese values which
(20:45):
may or may not still exist or. May or may not still exist,
because I think a lot of women in particular are a little bit
distressed about being told and being asked all the time when
they plan to have children. I think that's something like a
Lunar New Year is a distressing time for many women because
there's only one question they can expect from their extended
aunts and uncles and grandmothers, which is when are
(21:05):
you going to marry to the singleand when are you having kids to
the childless? And that seems like that is all
their value. And there's more than that
because of course, you had the one child policy.
And so Chinese women were told one child only for all of these
years. And then suddenly the party
says, actually, you're supposed to have two children.
And now suddenly you're supposedto have three children.
Excuse me, Is this not our business?
Well, apparently not. I was told a young Chinese woman
(21:28):
who I met there said, oh, you know, sometimes the party, you
know, the local party authorities will ring you up and
ask, have you had your period this month?
Seriously. I mean, yes, that level of
intrusion into women's lives. And you know what?
Women don't like that. Yeah.
And are they rebelling against it?
They're not picking up the phoneor they're lying or they're,
well, they're giving the wrong answer.
Whatever. They're not having children, No,
because they're because they're not interested and they don't
(21:50):
see why they should be pushed into it, either by their parents
or by their aunties or by the local party secretary.
So these are the limits of social engineering.
Yeah, I can't imagine what's more scary, the the aunties or
the local party secretaries. Both are pretty frightening,
aren't they? Does the does the party know,
does the government know that it's got a problem with social
engineering or do they not get it?
I think they get it and they're willing to pay the costs.
(22:10):
I think that they have consistently decided that's the
one child policy was something that they needed to pursue that
0 COVID was something that they needed to pursue.
Look at these plans, the numbersright there in the name.
There's no ambiguity about what these things could possibly
mean. And they're thinking that by
pressuring women that they are able to produce some sort of
coerced copulation. Now, I don't believe that is the
(22:31):
sort of thing that makes more children, but I think that they
they feel like this the only thing they can do.
And I mean, what are they going to do?
What's the government going to do about the lying down?
How will they infuse people again?
Well, I think that by inciting alot of Xi Jinping thought at
them, which I also believe is not going to that's.
Going to make you fall fast asleep isn't?
It that that makes me fall fast asleep.
Very, very much so. You know, Xi Jinping is not a
(22:53):
very humorous guy. I don't love listening to him.
And so when he denounces the people for we're not going to
give them too much more money, that might create welfarism,
that might make them be very lazy.
That's something that's those are words that he has used.
He sounds a little bit like Ronald Reagan to me.
But I think there is another thing though, and this one I
found very interesting, which isthat there was a survey done
recently, which is that that between 83 and 87% of Chinese
(23:17):
people are very enthusiastic about artificial intelligence,
about AI, which is very different from here in the West
where we're rather afraid of it.And I did find in Liangju, which
was a kind of sort of Silicon Valley area.
I mean, my young woman who, you know, told me about garbage
time. She was developing an AI app for
depressed young people. And then I found these other
(23:39):
young entrepreneurs. One of them had a new app, which
was called Second Me, where yourAI avatar meets somebody else's
AI avatar. I mean for.
People, how is that working? I'm not quite.
Sure, maybe they'll have kids, but I don't think they'll have
real kids. Exactly.
That's right. They'll have Avatar kids.
But but there, there is an interest in technology and
(23:59):
particularly in AI amongst youngpeople, even those who are a bit
apathetic. And so I think that there is
some hope in the party that thisis a technology which might
infuse young people. I don't know whether that's
likely or not. Well, I think that's something
that is unites both the Chinese as well as the Americans is that
at least the broader population are interested in growth.
I think that they have an interest in making doughnuts and
(24:22):
I think that the elites are alsovery interested.
Interesting growth. When I look across at much of
the European Union, much of Europe, much of the UK, it
doesn't even seem like people aren't necessarily very
interested in growth anymore. And so that is something that
it's pretty similar about. But it's a difference between,
you know, our young generation and Chinese young generation is
that in, you know, here we worryabout or young people worry
(24:44):
about AI replacing the jobs thatthey thought they were going to
do. Is the case in China that AI
might do all these jobs. And young Chinese people are
saying, go for it, go for a computer, do that job for me,
and I'll do something else. I'll play a video game or watch
a movie. Well, one of the things that's
very challenging for US manufacturing is that might hope
that AI and automation is going to solve all of America's
manufacturing problems. The challenge is that the
(25:06):
Chinese are much more automated already.
They're much better at the algorithms.
They're much better at using robots.
And so it doesn't even seem likethey are that much against using
AI to do all their critical tasks.
And, and just do you think thinkthat this lying down generation
phenomena will continue or will there be a kind of natural
entrance at some stage when evenyoung people get bored of lying
(25:27):
down and they will just panic And now that there'll be a
political eruption or there'll be, or they'll try and get back
into the job market. I think it's hard.
Obviously, you know, I can't predict the future.
One of the things I think is really interesting to see, you
cannot oppose the government politically.
You know, if you talk about human rights, LGBTQ rights,
women's rights, then you're in prison.
You know, your head's chopped off.
(25:47):
That's it. It's not going to happen.
But if you talk about mental health and happiness, well,
that's a different thing. And the Chinese Communist Party
has said it is by us to seek happiness for the Chinese
people. So in that sense, you know,
saying that you're unhappy is a is a form of, of rebellion and
the language of human rights, I think has morphed into the
(26:08):
language of well-being and, and mental health.
So I think the real question is when and if the party sees this
generation as a new kind of challenge or threat.
I mean, Gentlemen Square is quite obvious.
There's a bloke standing there with his plastic bag in front of
a tank lying down is its own form of resistance.
And at some point I fear that the the Chinese government will
(26:31):
try and do something about it. And that of course could be more
repression, that could be even more repressive.
I don't know. What do you?
Think I wonder the how about thethe opportunities available to
young people. There's no job opportunities,
but there are excellent phone opportunities for them to keep
themselves very entertained. When Xi Jinping denounced TikTok
as spiritual opium a couple of years ago, I think he's right.
(26:53):
He's absolutely right. These things are spiritual
opium. And if all of us are going to be
hanging out with our AI friends because they always text you
back and they will always provide you some cheer, I'm a
little bit worried that many of them will just choose to lie
forever. Dan, do you think the Chinese
government is more afraid of itsown people than it is of
anything else? I think that is the scariest
thing to the Chinese government,and This is why you can see that
(27:16):
China's domestic budget for security spending is even
greater than its military spending for the People's
Liberation Army, that there is so much constructed in China to
make sure that the people don't rebel and that there is still so
much repressiveness, really to try to keep a lid on social
tensions. I.
Remember when I was in Beijing when they got the Olympics in
the year 2000, They celebrated and there were armored vehicles
(27:38):
on the streets of Beijing. And I said to my Chinese, fix a
minder, what's going on here? He said the government is afraid
of people even when they're, youknow, in the spirit of
jubilation, you know, for the greater good of the nation, They
just distrust large numbers of people showing up with any kind
of show of emotion. This is something that they feel
they have to control right now. China is in a big tiff with the
(27:59):
country of Japan, which they arespend this kind of totally
insane spat that the two countries are going.
And I think that they have to bea little bit nervous about the
sort of nationalism that they release because if they fan up
the national flames against Tokyo, who knows if that might
spread someday to Beijing. OK, couple.
Of things to end on getting backto the kind of race between the
state of engineers and the stateof lawyers, Who is winning that
(28:22):
race at the moment? No one is winning and I think
that the race will not be won. There is no gold medal at the
end that there is no because we don't know what it's like to
win. That it's not going to be quite
like the Cold War, in which, as President George HW Bush
declared, the end state is that we win, they lose.
And I think we don't know what winning the AI race will look
like. I think that we don't know what
(28:43):
winning the broader race will look like.
What I want is for the US and China just to be the best
versions of themselves, the level more for the people.
To me, that is winning. But when Chinese, you know,
government officials, scholars, students, engineers are looking
over the water to America, they see a government that is taking
down the the great institutions of American learning is cutting
the funding, you know, of technological, you know,
(29:05):
citadels of excellence. I mean, what are they thinking
is happening? You know, are they saying this
can't be true? The Chinese are helping us out
here. I mean, the Americans are doing
the, you know, our work for them.
To some extent, yes, And I thinkthat is a viewpoint from
Beijing. But I think also the young
people are seeing that the Americans are still building up
all sorts of great tech companies, that there is still
tremendous liberty available to people in the US And that is
(29:29):
still why many young Chinese want to move away, that they
want to move to the US, they want to move to the UK, they
want to move to Chiang Mai to smoke trucks that would be legal
in the state of California because they find that there's
still a little bit too much exhaustion in XI Jinping's
China. Did you find young people who
said to you any chance of comingback with you to the UK or or
moving to America? No, I didn't.
The young people I saw were the ones who tended to be the ones
(29:51):
who had gone from America back to to China.
But on the race, I think that there's two things.
I mean, obviously the Donald Trump is sort of obsessed with
manufacture and he's not in timeentirely wrong.
You know when you. Look, but he's a century out
you. Could say he's a century out,
but I think that where he he hasa point is on the issue of
robotics. You know, I went to a car
factory, a Gili factory in Ningbo, which is pretty much
(30:14):
automated now that's not going to something like that will not
bring jobs back to America. But you know that kind of
manufacture you know it is important for a country to to do
that. It's important for China, and I
can see why you would want that,why America would.
I can see why this country wouldwant that too.
I mean, we're always trying to get car factories here from the
Japanese or whatever. But the real issue, I think on
(30:36):
tech is going to be when it comes to the military.
And this is where, you know, thethe very advanced chips are
important because those are usedin precision weapons.
And that means that the weaponrythat the Americans are
developing is more advanced. But of course, the People's
Liberation Army is massive and the Chinese are building up a
huge fleet of, you know, for their, their naval fleet.
(31:01):
And so that is the next thing weare going to get into.
And that I think is really scarybecause we're into high tech
warfare. And.
Reluctant to quote Stalin again,but quantity is a quality all
its own, is something that Stalin said.
And this is something that, you know, when the Chinese are
building right now around 1500 ships, the Americans are
building something like 3. We get these giant disparities.
(31:23):
And I think that that is going to be benefiting the engineering
state. But this is the final question
then. You know, given that China's
building up militarily in the way that, you know, Germany did,
you know, the end of the 19th century, the way that Britain
did just before that, the way that America's done, you know,
right about the Second World War, You know, is this a
military buildup with the idea that that military power will be
(31:45):
used kinetically, as they like to say, in the Pentagon at some
stage? Or just, you know, this is Our
Calling card, We are powerful. We had to be reckoned with.
Well, calling cards only work ifyou're willing to play it.
And so I think that they are they want to be able to deter
the Americans from doing anything they don't like around
the island of Taiwan. And so I think that this is
something that the Americans also had to feel like they
(32:05):
developed their own calling cards to be able to deter the
Chinese. And let's just hope that things
do not go kinetic and on neithercountry place they're calling
cards. Lindsay, when you were there,
did you did Did anyone, whether they were young or old, did
they, did you get the impressionthat they thought they were on a
kind of path towards some kind of civilizational clash with the
West, with America? I got the feeling that they
(32:27):
thought that they were on a technological roll.
But you know that in the Politburo, you know the decline
and fall of the Roman Empire. Everybody has to read it, and
certainly in the party. Is that true?
They. Yeah, they always read that.
They always, they're always fascinated by the decline of
they're. Not reading it in Trump's white.
House. No, they're not they.
Should be maybe? And that's the point because
(32:49):
certainly within the party, theybelieve that there is an
inevitability that America is indecline and China is on the rise
again, as it was, you know, centuries ago.
And that is how they see historyunfolding.
I suspect that it will take longenough that, well, maybe Dan
(33:09):
will be here to see it. I don't know if you and I will.
Be but never underestimate lawyers.
No. OK.
Dan Lindsay Hilson, thank you very much to both of you for
coming in. That's it for the forecast.
I hope you enjoyed it. We'll see you next time.
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