The US Talks, China Does! Conversation w/Jerry Grey!

All right, hello everybody and welcome to Geopolitical Trends, where truth matters. Very excited to be with you on this, uh, July 15th. I know it's, uh, usually I do live streams at 12:15, uh, but now because of my guest, uh, who has not joined the studio yet, so I'm waiting, uh, for him to— sometimes communication, you guys know, how it is when you are on the other side of the globe. So, uh, nonetheless, we're gonna have a little bit of conversation here waiting for the guest to arrive. Then the moment he's here, we can launch in into our conversation. Well, first let me say hi to all of you. Hope you had a, a relaxing weekend and you just enjoyed whatever you did. So let me see who is here and we'll just go from there, man. Bong Bong, good to see you. I hope it's not— it's not the Filipino president watching this here, which by the way, if he was, Marcos Jr., watching this, he might learn something. So, uh, uh, okay. Paul Hang, good to see you. Uh, Truth Seeker, Willie Harmon, as always. YT, good morning and good evening. So good, good evening for me and good morning for, uh, my fellow, uh, viewers in Asia. That's what it is. Uh, F, good to see you. And yeah, we're waiting for Jerry, uh, to get over here. Timeline Dunkley, good to see you as always from New York City, and thank you for your comment, by the way. Earlier I read your comment, uh, and yes, regarding what happened to Trump, uh, yeah, it was interesting that, uh, I don't know, I'm putting a big question mark on that. That's a conversation for Uh, either the shooter is, is incompetent, or yeah, that, that something is not right. So Matt Becky, good to see you. Hi from Tehran. Wow, hope, uh, you are enjoying your time in Tehran. So, uh, Jane Wong, good to see you. Uh, thank you as always. Uh, Speaking the Truth, good to see you. Uh, Daniela Modus Carter, good to see you from Great Britain. Speaking of Great Britain, Tomorrow, I make sure to— not tomorrow, I'm sorry, it would be on Wednesday when I will address the UK's economy, given that the article is now coming out of either London or even in Washington suggesting that the economy of UK is rebounding. It's a lie, it's nonsense. So I have some stats I will share and, and I'll talk about that one on Wednesday. Now for tomorrow, I have Larry Johnson at 12:15. We're going to be talking about some— here's my guest, he's already here. Let me get in here and add— hi, Jerry!

Hi, good morning. I am terribly sorry.

Don't you worry about it. My community is— no, no, no worry about it, Jerry. Good to see you. Well, we're gonna— I'm already in conversation here with the community. So guys, I'll finish that conversation for tomorrow. Now we have Jerry here. We're gonna keep going into the conversation. So first of all, Jerry, I'd like you please to do a brief intro for those who do not know you. Then we're gonna get in into our conversation.

Okay, briefly to introduce myself, I am a British-born Australian citizen living currently in China. I've been here since 2004, came here for a 1-year contract as an English teacher, in fact, and decided I liked it, so I wanted to stay a little longer. And now I'm married. I, I, this is my home. I live here, and I don't think I will go back to live. I'll obviously go back to visit my home countries, the UK. I have family there in Australia. I have family there, but this is home now. Um, about 5 years ago, I got involved in social media. I retired. I retired from full-time work. I'm 66 years old now. And the retirement age in China is 60. So I was kind of shuffled out of the workforce and came into social media. I have gone progressively into a different direction to what I expected to go. I started on Twitter as it was then and posted photographs of my bike rides. Uh, the picture behind me is a photograph from one of my bike rides. Um, I cycled across China several times, once from the border of Macau to the border of Kazakhstan, once from Harbin in the far north near the Russian border, and then all the way down south to where I live. And I live very near to Macau, Hong Kong-Macau area. And once I started posting those things, I used to get these comments, mostly from Americans actually, which would say things like, well, you can't cycle through Xinjiang. And I would say, well, yes you can, here's the pictures, you know, here's the videos, I've done it. And it started to get a little bit more, um, I would say defensive. I became more defensive of China because I love the place. And having found when I arrived here that everything was very different to what I expected, I started to realize that I'd been very badly misinformed by pretty much everything I'd ever read, seen, watched about China. It was all, all untrue. And so the particular one at that time, 5, 6 years ago, was Xinjiang with this Uyghur genocide.

Yeah.

And I started defending China and saying, this is absolutely not what's happening. And then I got picked up by someone in China Daily, said, can we interview you? And it Basically it rolled forward from there, and now I seem to be a kind of, um, I'm a go-to guy for the Chinese media, which makes me the CCP shill. And, um, I'm a supporter. If someone says to me, do you support the CCP? My answer is no, I support the CPC.

And I support a lot of, a lot of people, Jerry, in the West do not understand the difference between CCP and CPC. So, and we'll get into that later on. Yeah, go on, go on.

Yeah, we can get into that. Uh, well, that's basically what I do now. I, I, I support China. I, I do have a tendency to be a little biased about China. I'll accept that. Um, I've been accused of being a Beijing influencer with rose-tinted glasses. I've been accused of being a retired security guard, for Christ's sake. Uh, I was a police officer for 10 years, and I worked in the security industry in Australia. And, and so I have this kind of Again, misinformation about anybody who speaks out about China is immediately misinformed about in Western media. And basically all I do is I try my best to correct the misinterpretations. I'm generally quite polite to people. I don't call them the idiots that I actually think they are. I just had someone say to me in a comment on YouTube yesterday, it was LOL, which country do you think is greater than America then? Oh, my reply. Well, LOL, you've got the highest drug problems, the highest gun deaths, the highest suicide rates in the OECD. You've got increasing costs, you've got increasing crime, increasing drug uses. Which country do you think is greater than the USA? I mean, pretty much all of them, as far as I can see as an observer outside looking in. Now, I don't want to get into that China is better than America thing because Americans believe America is great. And good luck to them. Chinese believe the same about their own country. Country. And good luck to them. That's how I view that.

Mm-hmm. Well, it's very, very interesting. Well, this is why, uh, uh, and as a matter of fact, believe it or not, Jerry, I mean, I was aware of you, but not in depth. So I didn't know a few things, and I'm, I'm glad you shared that. Uh, and by the way, guys, uh, Jerry and I shared the stage on the Multipolar Peace Initiative that was launched by Warwick. I will release a video for you about that. And this is like initiative that took off. Now we are appearing on that platform once in a while to add to the conversation to that. So, so that's why I said Jerry, uh, and, and I had some viewers on my channel, some avid supporters send the comments like, hey, Dr. O, can you please invite Jerry Gray on this Say, sure, sure. And of course, that's all I said, but they didn't know why I said that. It's because to me, for not only the viewers in the channel but around the world, whomever is going to pick up this video and watch it, it's better for him or her to hear from someone who is on the ground than just read article here and there. And this leads me to my first question for you. Since you've been there for a long time, so you witnessed the changes that China went through. Can you please just elaborate on that change, whether in infrastructure, change whether into how the society moved from poverty into sort of media, uh, middle class, uh, change into the political system that is working for the people? Not against the people. Since you were on the ground, can you please elaborate on that for my viewers here?

Sure. I mean, the obvious and most visible one is the infrastructure. I arrived here and I was working in a school. As I said, I was just an English teacher, very simple stuff. It was a high school and I was traveling along this road, which was a 2-lane highway. It's now an 8-lane highway to get to my old school. It's 11 kilometers. It used to take 40 minutes. To get there, and it now takes about 14 minutes to get there. Just down this, and it's got flyovers and it's got underpasses and it's got cycle tracks on each side, and it's got a bus lane. And what used to be rice fields and some small villages along the 11-kilometer route are now— they're all gone. There's nothing green. Well, actually, that's not true. There's a lot of green. China builds a lot of green, but there's, there's, there's no farmland left there. So that's all gone. Um, I would say that's the most obvious thing. When you look around you and you see what used to be, um, 10-story, 20-story buildings, they're now dwarfed by the 40, 50-story buildings. So we've, we've seen that infrastructure. Um, I just made a video. I was invited out by my local media to the Zhongshan-Shenzhen link. Shenzhen-Zhongshan link. This is a bridge and a tunnel, and it's broken 10 world records. It's the link between— well, now my town Zhongshan, where I live, is full of Hong Kong and Shenzhen registered vehicles and a few Dongguan as well. So on the other side of the Pearl River, they're now coming across here for dinner. It costs 66 RMB, which is just over a little less than $10. To get across here on this 27-kilometer link, which is about the same price as the Golden Gate Bridge. I researched that.

Yes.

Um, so it's actually, it's a tiny bit cheaper than the Golden Gate Bridge to get across there, and they can eat and stay the night. And it's done wonders for our economy in, in terms of, uh, economic turnover for the city that I live in, which compared to Shenzhen, where 20 million people live is quite— not quite, it's very expensive. One of the most expensive cities in China and possibly the world. Zhongshan is the opposite. It's a tiny little— tiny, 4 million people live here and it's very small.

Why is it expensive? Is it because, like, is it a tech center? Is it some sort of Silicon Valley for China?

Shenzhen is Silicon Valley. Yeah. Shenzhen and Dongguan together are the manufacturing They're bordering onto Hong Kong, or Shenzhen borders Hong Kong, and it is the link to China's outside world, special economic zone. It was— this is the city that 40, 50 years ago was a sleepy fishing— it wasn't. I mean, they tell the story that this is a fishing village. It was a series of fishing villages, farming villages. It was very, very underdeveloped, bordering with Hong Kong. Hong Kong residents used to go out to the border with binoculars and have a look to see what China looked like. In the days when China was closed. And I remember one of my friends— in fact, my father said the same thing later— but one of my friends said to me, the only thing different about it was the smell.

Really?

So yeah, that was what somebody said to me more than 30 years ago. But he had visited Hong Kong. He'd lived in Hong Kong for many years when the whole place was— when China was closed off, and he'd never actually set foot in mainland China. He has now, and he's seen that infrastructure. You mentioned the, the way that the government is at the moment and, and how it works. That could be a 1-hour show just on its own. The government here is incredibly collaborative. I don't like the use of the word, um, democracy to describe China's, and that's not to say it's not democratic, it is. It's extremely democratic, but it's much more collaborative than Western government. Now, when I talk to Americans about this, if we can avoid the arguments that Americans quite often approach me with, I can say, well, hang on a second, let's think about this. What does your local government do for you? And then they say, oh yeah, well, they do this, they look after the roads, look after the schools. Okay, that's what central government does for China. But it's done in a system, a tiered system, uh, through from central government down to the province or the municipality, which is one of the big managed cities, and then down to the towns and villages inside of the city. So I live in a city that has 22 towns in it, and each town has communities, and each community has a community office, and National Party Congress members go and sit in that office at designated times. So anyone can walk into that office and talk to a local National Party member, National Party Congress. So the, the NPC is the, the government body that oversees the work of the CPC, the Communist Party, which is the government of China. And so these people, when they get a complaint, a suggestion, when they come in, it's written down on a piece of paper. I've seen this happen thousands and thousands of pieces of paper, and it's entered into an app that then goes to the people responsible for fixing what the problem was or improving the situation that somebody has suggested. Oh, this is a good idea, let's do this. And so it gets dealt with, and the app responds. The people have to respond. You can't ignore this. And this is where collaborative government actually works. Because right down here at the very ground level, I saw— and I've been in many of these meetings, and I've seen people talking about parking problems in their village to someone who represents the province in Beijing every year at the two-party session, the two sessions. So we've got really, really high-level government officials sitting down talking with local farmers and local villagers and the towns are run like that. They're very much run on a system of cascading authority all the way down to the lowest level. And at the lowest level, all the representatives are voted for by the people. So they then vote for who represents them at the higher level, and they then vote for who represents them at the higher level. And when it gets up to the, uh, the standing committee, they vote for who the president will be. And that's the National People's Congress. The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress can vote for Xi Jinping or vote him out. So he's not president for life. He's president as long as the people want him there.

Yeah. Wow. I wish we— well, to me, Jerry, and I'm not saying it to be Mr. Nice because that's not my personality. I'm straightforward. To me, that's what's really the meaning of democracy, in my opinion.

Agree.

That's classic. Because in my government, the way— I mean, I mean, I'll give just an example. Be they here in Washington or in Canberra or in London, massive corruption that exists in a system, but the, the citizens end up being the one hurt emotionally, physically, politically, economically, because the government is so damn incompetent.

I think the government is protective. It protects itself rather than protects the people it represents. That's the issue. It protects its donors, which is part of itself. The system— the system— I view the system very differently now that I live here. And bearing in mind that during the 1970s, 1980s, I was a police officer in Great Britain, and I worked on Margaret Thatcher's thin blue line. You know, I was the guy who said something's not right here, and I got out. And a lot of people look at that and go, well, why did you get out? I mean, in an authoritarian police state, there's no better place to be than an authoritarian police officer. And that was how UK was going when I was there. That's 50 years ago. I left there in 1987. And I mean, I love the UK, I love Australia, but I won't go back to live in the UK. I know that for a fact.

Well, your home now is China. So speaking of teaching, uh, I had some people even approached me to consider teaching at the university in, uh, in, uh, in China. I was like, I don't know about that. I need to look into that and read up more about it. And that's something for down the road.

So it's worth thinking about.

Yeah, I am. I am, believe it or not, uh, uh, uh, Jerry, because I made the decision, even though I'm still affiliated with an institution here, academic, Uh, but I don't— I didn't teach for the last year because I am on my own contract and I don't do full-time because to me, because education in America is just transactional. Uh, students are not even interested in learning, so I kind of like dropped that ball here. But, uh, I always like classroom settings and, and you try to come up—

you might enjoy Chinese classrooms then, or Chinese, Chinese lectures.

Because this Because the students are disciplined.

Yeah, it's not so much their discipline. They, they, they have discipline for sure. They— it's self-discipline. It's culturally different. The students respect the teachers. That's what it is. And you don't get me wrong, you will always get a couple of bad students, but at university level, probably not. They've worked very, very hard to get to university. Uh, most of my teaching— I've done some university teaching, I've done teacher training, I've I've actually taught teachers how to teach in China, and I've taught at high school level. All of my teaching— never taught children— all of my teaching was university preparation. I was for a period of time here something called an IELTS examiner. That's the International English Language Testing System, and you have a TOEFL over there. We have an IELTS for the British-influenced English-speaking world, and I was an examiner working for the British Council. So I mean, mostly I've dealt with senior-level students, usually better English speakers, which is why my Chinese is pretty bad.

Well, well, that's something I keep in the back of my mind. So let's get into some, uh, uh, sort of geopolitical topics, because that's usually what I do, what I talk about. But it's nice also to know this side, Jerry. And this is why, uh, the moment I received that comment from one of my viewers, I was like, sure, I'll reach out to Jerry Media. I And by the way, appreciate you, Jerry, for getting back to me. I know sometimes the email gets lost, whatever, but I'm very thankful to you on behalf of the community that you get back to me. And I'm glad to have you.

I've actually been asked if I could speak to you and I said, I don't even know if you'd be interested in talking to me or knows who I am. Why would he know me?

No, I, to me, it's kind of, that's how I wanted the community to learn because to me, different perspective from different people. It's always helpful to learn, and, and I've been always that way. So I kind of made the, the sort of initiate this one, and here we are. So what I want to get your take, Jerry, is I want to— since you live there, you are on the ground, you've, you've understand now how the Chinese culture deals with issues pertaining to foreign policy, pertaining to global politics, and so forth. I'm sure you heard by now, and, and we've talked about this, you and I, on the, when we shared the stage on the Multipolar Peace Initiative, we've heard about NATO considering expanding east and for the sole purpose is to target China. And I know recently that the Chinese government pushed back very hard against NATO. So, yes, as one who lived in China and you are currently in China, Where do you see the country, China that is, moving forward, given that NATO is set on moving east?

I think probably China sees it as almost an inevitability. It's, it's been a ramping up of the anti-China rhetoric for the last maybe 10, 12 years. Prior to that, China was everybody's friend and there was never any problems. And since then it started to change. The Xinjiang lies, and they are lies. Tibet is back on the cards. I'm going to Tibet tomorrow, which is exciting for me. It's my first trip there. Tibet is back on the cards. The invasion of Taiwan, which is ridiculous. All of these things have seemed to ramp up and really, really, they've turned the ratchet right up on it. Over the last maybe 2 or 3 years, particularly during the Biden administration. Now, in terms of being bellicose, Trump was quite bellicose, but more economically than militarily against China. And so he introduced the first set of tariffs, but he introduced the major tariffs, and then that's just escalated. So we've got a complete series of escalations against China, and the Chinese government I'm certain would have said, well, we know they're going to do this. It was proposed last year that Australia join— New Zealand, I don't think was last year, but this year New Zealand are included. But it's only 4 countries that they're talking about expanding NATO into. Australia did the right thing and said, we're not interested last year. This year they said, well, we're a little bit interested, and the Prime Minister of Australia decided not to attend. So that means that he sent his defense minister, who is a grossly anti-China person anyway. Yeah, so he's the right person to go for that. But also it tells the United States that Australia are not really in the ballpark for this. Now, the other two countries involved, South Korea and Japan, are basically occupied countries by America. They're controlled, occupied militarily. South Korea is militarily controlled by by the United States. I think that's a given. There's actually an agreement that that exists. Economically, both countries are pretty much locked into US lockstep. They can't move away and say, no, we're not interested. India has said, na. India is actually— Modi's gone to Moscow at the same time. So that's really poking Biden and the United States and NATO in the eye, as far as I'm concerned. Uh, but Modi will always do what Modi does. It's whatever is good for India and, and forget the rest. But then you, you've got the, the, even in Europe, some people— France, um, boycott— or not boycott, vetoed, I think, the Japanese NATO office last year. But I think they may not be able to keep doing that. So it looks like NATO with its IP4 group, the Indo-Pacific Group, Australia And if you think about Australia, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, these are all Five Eyes, AUKUS, Quad, these kinds of military alliances. So they're all connected and they're trying to bring Philippines involved. And Philippines and Australia— Philippines and China have had a great relationship for many years. A few tensions about this, that, the other, but they've had a good relationship and now it's all turned upside down. What do China think? Chinese people and Chinese government have very different views on this. The Chinese people couldn't care less. They know that the Chinese government will look after them. That's how they view it. So you will find Chinese people who do get involved in and, uh, are interested and discuss politics. But generally speaking, Chinese people couldn't care less. Is their life better today than it was last year? That's what they're interested in. Is my life better than my dad's? Is my son's life going to be better than mine? These are the topics of conversation that you have if you're having beers around the table. They're really concerned about what's going wrong, confused about what's going wrong. Why don't Australia like us? They would ask me. You're an Australian. Why don't Australia like us? And I said, well, because Australia is controlled by America. It's not Australia that doesn't like you, and it's not even Australians that don't like you. That's true. It's the government, and the government is encouraged to dislike you by a bigger government that doesn't like— oh, we know America doesn't like— so they, they feel that. What does China think about this as a country? Oh, I can't remember the words, but it was very, very strongly worded. They do not believe that this is right. They, they are saying that NATO is wrong. NATO's expanded, expanded I think it was 12 countries once, and now it's 30-something countries. And to say that they are a— thank you— to say they are a defensive alliance, no, they're not. There's nothing defensive there at all. It's an assertive, aggressive— and they're fighting an imaginary enemy here in the East, because China is not their enemy, never has been. China has never invaded a NATO country, never invaded any country unless you count a 3-week incursion uh, which was before most of our viewers here were born. Um, so China has no history. It's not dropping bombs, it's not trying to enforce its ideology, it's not even trying to enforce its economic or fiscal policies on any country. It lends money, it, uh, it has some debt defaulters, it, it, it absorbs— absolves some of the debt defaulters. It's doing everything that the United States probably should have done back in the 1950s and 1960s when the US really was a wonderful country and a fantastic place with a fantastic future. They went off on a different direction and became this, uh, belligerent, warlike— I mean, maybe they were warlike already, but I think Korea, they had their reasons. Vietnam, I've yet to find anyone explain to me why Vietnam was a necessary war for the United States. I really can't get that. And nobody can— nobody, not even Americans, can tell me, oh yeah, the Vietnamese posed a threat to us. Did they? In what way? So the domino effect, I guess. But they'd already lost in Korea, then they lost in Vietnam, and they haven't won yet.

Yeah, that's true. It's always been— it's been always since the '50s, the decision when it was made to get involved in conflict but not winning a war, because we couldn't fight a war. And when you look at the history from the Korean War, Vietnam, Gulf War I, Gulf War II, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine. And so the history is right there. So now, in your opinion, Jerry, given that, uh, uh, because first of all, I am very concerned and I've been voicing this openly about the two other countries, New Zealand and the Philippines. Philippines, in my opinion, has been sucked in, into the orbit. And given what just took place between China and the US regarding the— I don't know if you were aware of it— about the South China Sea electronic warfare that took place.

Yes, I heard about this.

Yeah, and it ends because we had to withdraw the GPS. Whatever, that's, that's a conversation for another day. But the point, the point is because we used the Philippines as bait for that. So, and Philippines with Marcos Jr. doesn't realize where he's dragging his country into. The same arguments I made about New Zealand. When Mahuta was in charge, she said no to Tony Blinken to his face. When now Luxon, his name, the Prime Minister, I believe, took over, he's like, that's it, turnover. So my question to you, Jerry, is How do you believe, since you live in the region now, you are very familiar with the thinking, how do you believe Asian countries is going to push back against this NATO thinking about expanding there?

Yeah, Malaysia already has. The Malaysian Star ran a piece saying that this is, this is very, very bad for stability in the region. This does not de-escalate anything. This contributes to the opposite side. The Malaysian government are basically calling on Indonesia. So Malaysia and Indonesia are the two greatest powers other than China, and both of them seem to be against this as a policy. Now, whether or not Indonesia will react, I don't think they'll react positively. I think that's a given. They're not going to react positively to it. Yeah, but whether they'll react as negatively as Malaysia have and China has, And I haven't yet seen any response from Vietnam, which I think is kind of strange. Maybe there is one and I just haven't noticed it yet. But I went looking for it and I can't see what Vietnam think about this. I believe Vietnam are a very sensible country. This is a really interesting thing. The American government went to war with the communists in Vietnam in order to stop them. When they lost that war and pulled out, the communists took over the country and there was a little bit of chaos. There's always chaos when a new country is formed, reformed, in fact, not formed, but new government, communist government that has done nothing but fight wars for, for the basically the last 100 years against the French and then the Americans. So there was a period of chaos where Vietnam was a very poor country and China helped Vietnam enormously, except for during 1976 where China didn't want Vietnam moving into Cambodia and Laos and then Yeah, that's history. We know all about that. But Vietnam now is China's ally and it's America's ally. It's the ally of both countries. So it's got to play a very diplomatic game. It's playing a diplomatic role. And the Philippines used to do that under Duterte. The Philippines did do that. Now under Marcos, they don't do that. And the simple reason for that, I mean, it, it may be much more complicated, but it's very simple. Marcos is a very wealthy man. And that wealth was ill-gotten and is controlled by America. So if he's got an 8-year term— this is one of the things I don't like about the Philippines, they have term, a one-term term limit, but it's an 8-year term. So he's there for the next 5 years or so. We're not going to see much changes from the Philippines unless something happens to Marcos Jr. And really, he needs to be dealt with for the corruption or whatever it is that's keeping him in place. I don't see the Philippines as being a huge issue because I don't think the people of the Philippines who are being misinformed, the same as the world is being misinformed by China, the people of the Philippines are being misinformed about China. There are some huge operations going on. You probably heard about the vaccine issues and how Chinese vaccines were harmful. So the people are being— they're being misinformed, but that misinformation is now leaking out. And I often say to people, you know, who do you trust? Do you trust your politicians? No, of course I don't. Do you trust your media? No, of course I don't. Well, who tells you that China is bad? The politicians are all saying it, so are the media. You don't trust them. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. Well, it's, you know, if you take— if you take— an average Westerner, he or she, the understanding is very limited as far as seeing the policies of another country from the other side. We always have to look at it from ours.

I was that average Westerner for many, many years. I mean, my eyes opened up when I came into China. My first day in China, wow, this is not what I expected. I expected what I see behind me here. Much more of that. And, you know, maybe some cities, but it would be much more like this. This is actually quite rare. That's why I've used it as a picture. This is a little village on Hainan Island, and people do still live there, and it is quite rare. And they go up the road to get their water, and their electricity is just a string on the outside which is bringing the lights. There's no air conditioning in that village, that's for sure.

Is that one closer to Suzhou?

No, this is Hainan Island. Hainan Island is right down the south. I mean, Hainan is actually as close to Vietnam as it is to China, but it's never been under any dispute. There's a peninsula sticking out the bottom of China, and then there's like a teardrop. They call it the chicken's egg, actually, the teardrop that sits at the bottom. That's Hainan.

Yeah, except we had an issue back in my days in Washington. We were kind kind of, we created an issue for the P-130 that was flying over in Hainan, and it gets closer to Chinese fighter jets. And so I was in, I was in the middle of all that back then.

It would be exciting.

Yeah, but, but at the same time, Jerry, even though I was asking the questions like, what are we doing fomenting more tensions? Well, we just— I was like, no, it doesn't work that way.

You—

one country is going to be patient to a degree You keep pushing, they're gonna push back, and sometimes you're gonna push back very hard. Yeah, and it was like, well, we just— I said, listen, if you look at the history of the world, every empire reached its peak and starts going down. Is that just part of how it is? It's China's turn. Simple as that.

And Ray Dalio did a very good book on that.

Yeah, well, I read all you and the likes. They all, you know, it's, it's the establishment, you know. I was aware of that. That's why one of the reasons why I left Washington altogether, washed my hand of it, because that's it. You start to see where— well, you start to see, uh, here I, here I am inside the government, but the government is not working for the people, you know. I want to some parts of the world that the media would never make it there. And when I was asked internally why, I said it's for that average citizen who does not know what's going on around the world. Simple as that. But when you start seeing the government, uh, marred into corruption and not working for the people, you start to say, I have a choice here: either stay in the system or wash my hand off and leave. And I chose the latter to be in peace with myself.

So Now I think I have the same feeling from my, my experience with the police. I had to get out of that.

Well, we dealt, you know, you know, Jerry, and I'll say it, there is nothing classified about it because I had to deal with the some of the highest classification stuff, you know, the work with the MI6 and MI5 was the norm. So it's kind of anytime I used to go through London, they will think I'm an MI6 guy. I said, do I look like an MI6, you know?

Well, you do now.

Well, back when I stopped in Heathrow, they would be like, oh, Mr. O, you're here. I said, yes, I am. Simple as that. Uh, so what I wanted to ask Jerry, because we want to cover some key topics, you mentioned earlier about Tibet, and I know that Nancy Pelosi made a trip to India and wanted to pull India into Like you said, a new card of the Tibetans. In your opinion, do you think India will ever sit down with China and resolve the border issue?

I think they have to, um, and I think they should, but will they? Uh, that's a different story. Um, we've got to go back well over 100 years to find where this dispute between India and China lay. And it wasn't a dispute with India and China, it was a dispute with Britain and China. And, and, and at that time, this is one of the arguments where people say, but Tibet's not part of China. Well, it most certainly was when they were hiving part of China off to make it— to draw the McMahon Line. And there's a couple of other lines as well, but the McMahon is the most famous one. They drew a line and they took away part of Tibet, part of China, and gave it to India and said, this is yours and that's yours. And that line still exists. And China has quite categorically said, we want to reunite China as one country. And that means it wants the Aksai Chin back. Uh, whether or not China will compromise on that, because we've got all kinds of things going on up there, there's a lot of stuff going on that most of us don't know about. And that is, one of them is that there's no weapons there. This Line of Actual Control, the LAC, there are no guns, there are no artillery, there are just sticks and stones. And when they get into a bit of a biffle with each other, they're hitting each other with sticks. Some of these sticks are pretty lethal-looking sticks and they've got metal bits on the end, but there are no lethal weapons, if we can call them that. So no firearms exist in that area, and that's designed to kind of de-escalate the tension. I mean, they taunt each other and they throw things at each other, but that's just what boys do. And let's be honest, most military, most military are just made up of boys who may be trained to do different things, but they're mostly boys, some girls. But that's what they're doing up there. They're arguing with each other. They're not fighting with each other. So that's a good point. I do believe that China and India talk about this all the time. It's an ongoing thing. Even, even the Dalai Lama was involved in this way, way back in the 1950s. A lot of people don't know this when they say Tibet's never been part of China. Well, my question is, why was the Dalai Lama part of the National People's Congress? He was a member. In fact, he was the vice chair of the Standing Committee. Of the, the CPPCC. Why would he do that if it's not his country? It is his country. He says it's his country. History shows it's his country, and it's been— China has been his country since before the US existed. So we can put that aside. Will China and India ever put their differences aside? As long as Americans and MI6, MI5 continue— because Britain still has a lot of influence there too— they will continue to create the tension. Once that tension is removed, then the discussions can start again. And I think that's probably what needs to happen. Uh, and Modi is now getting a few little finger-wagging warnings from the US. We're starting to see Modi being treated as not the great democratic hero of the Asia-Pacific region, or the Indo-Pacific region as they like to call it. Uh, we're starting to see Modi as being a bit of a bad guy. Um, whether he is a bad guy or not, that's up to his own country to decide. But when America starts interfering in sovereign decisions that India is making, then the next thing that follows is all the media, all the press to tell us how bad Modi is. When that happens, then I think Modi will be pushed towards India. He's already pushed towards Russia. It's been an enormous boost for the Indian economy what's going on in Ukraine. I don't think anyone can deny that. India's purchases of gas, oil, and a lot of other things. And the interesting thing is India is selling it all to the European Union. China is benefiting from this as well. China's imports and exports to and from Russia have increased, but nowhere near the amount that India has. India, India is on solid ground right now. And the European Union need India to avoid the sanctions. And the sanctions are not unilateral, they're unilateral. They are America and its allies saying we're not going to deal. So then what does Germany do? It has to buy its oil from India because India's got the oil. So, you know, we can see what's happening here. Russia has not suffered at all. Through this. I mean, obviously there's been some challenges for Russia, but its economy is still increasing. Sanctions have failed. Why have sanctions failed? Not because of China. It's got nothing to do with China. It's India. China is dealing with Russia on a China-Russia basis. Sorry. Yeah. China-Russia basis.

Yeah.

India is dealing with on the rest of the world. India is taking everything it can from Russia and selling it to the rest of the world. The Eurasian Economic Union is doing quite well out of this too. Germany is doing extremely well selling Mercedes-Benz and the like to Kazakhstan. Why does Kazakhstan need a 900% increase in the sales of BMWs and Mercedes? It's because Germany is defying US sanctions and selling to Russia. Everyone's doing it. Why is China suddenly a threat? Because they, they've become this decisive enabler of Russia. They're not at all. They're just doing business. Simple. There's a lot more countries doing more business and enabling Russia if that's, if that's the accusation.

Yeah. Including us, which a lot of Americans do not know that we do uranium from Russia. From Russia. A lot of Americans have no idea.

Because America has only capped what it doesn't need. What it needs, it won't, it won't sanction what it needs. It'll only sanction what it doesn't need. And then it won't tell you. This is the misinformation by omission. We can call it lies by omission, but definitely the American public are being misinformed about Russia's relationship with the United States. It's still quite strong.

That's true. And even now, I just find out this morning that the Saudis now is going to be limiting oil exports to the US for oil. It's because we're running short on SPR, the Strategic Petroleum Reserves, and the Saudis said no. I ain't gonna be sending you oil just because you asked for it. And they even threatened— they threatened— now Saudis threatened the EU that if they confiscated the assets of the Russian assets, the $300 billion, the Saudis will go ahead and sell most of the EU bonds. And we all know what it means. We all know what it means. Yeah, yeah. There are some information doesn't make it through the mainstream media because The mainstream media wanted to keep people in the dark, especially here in the US. This is part of why we don't hear much about, for example, the progress of China technologically, in technology, for example, the progress of China in chip making after we imposed sanctions and China reached some sort of strides into this. We're not hearing much about it here. So this is why I'm going to go to Asia soon. Jerry, so I'll see you when you come.

Yeah, no, it is an incredible place. I mean, I don't follow the chip, that's far too technical and scientific for me. But what I am seeing, and I follow Chinese media, most of the English language Chinese media. People say China is not transparent. Just go to the State Council Information Office and have a look what China is doing. You can find out everything China's It's extremely transparent. And I'm seeing these strides that you're talking about. They do exist and they are real. And you're being— you as Americans are being misinformed about this, quite considerably misinformed.

No, I keep an eye open on this stuff and I have my own sources and contacts. You know, when you spend decades and decades in Washington, you know where to look for the accurate information that they don't want to share herself. I want to, I want to pick your brain, Jerry, about another topic that has to do with BRICS, where BRICS is headed. And, and we just heard, it's not confirmed yet, I just heard it this morning, I'm yet to look into it, uh, and I have my contacts in that part of, of the world to, to confirm this one, uh, regarding that the call by the Russian president now to establish a parliament for the BRICS. A lot of people have no idea how significant this is.

It makes BRICS into a European Union type thing.

Exactly, which means will render the EU useless, given that BRICS have about 40% of the population consumer base and about 32% of the world GDP. In your opinion, Yeah, I was gonna say, Jerry, in your opinion, do you see the expansion of BRICS is gonna go fast? And if so, which countries do you think will play, uh, will be an additional asset instead of being a deadweight?

I'm a little concerned about India in BRICS, I have to be honest. Um, India needs to, I think, either step up or step out. It, it can't sit on the, it can't sit on the fence. It's, it's never— India is never going to be part of G7. This is one thing, even though its economy says it could be. They say that India is too poor. Now what could, could happen is, in order to entice India away from the BRICS, uh, the, and, and the BRICS countries, they could offer India a seat at the G7 in the way that Spain is in G7. It's not really in, but it's a permanent observer of G7. So they could do that, and that would certainly, um, make it a little more complicated. I have a very, very strong feeling that Putin has put this forward. I, I can't see it, to be honest. I think he's put it forward as a, a curveball, uh, and, and he wants to see what the reaction will be. Because it did come out of the blue. Uh, I, I saw nothing to indicate that it was going to happen. And just a couple of days ago, there's this announcement that there will be— and he said, not said there might be— there will be a BRICS Parliament. Now, as an English person who grew up during Britain's entry into the Common Market, the European Union, uh, the EEC, the, the— this is, this is what I saw happening. Uh, it went from being a very good thing, a trade relationship, into they now have sovereignty over us. And this is the big thing that the UK didn't like and why Brexit happened, in my opinion, is that sovereignty was lost. The British government would— an elected government, half elected because the House of Lords are not— but the British government would make a decision that would get passed into law, and then the European Parliament would say, well, you need to change that because it doesn't fit European ideals or values or standards or whatever it was. So that would come back to the British government to be rewritten as a different law, which the elected representatives of the British people didn't want. So there were some things— I mean, the, the immigration was a problem, a perceived problem, whether it was real or not, it was certainly perceived problem. The loss of jobs and all the standardization in the UK. They didn't like it. They didn't want to be part of a controlled— I mean, some people think— Van der Leyen, for example, seems to think that the European Union is a country of its own and can dictate to the rest of the world in the same way that America can. Well, France is saying no to that. Hungary is saying no to that. And Serbia can't even get in. So there's a few different issues about whether or not they have the unity of the Union behind them, and I don't think they do. But BRICS does seem to have that. Now, who's coming into BRICS? I think there are currently more than 30 countries have applied for, or at least expressed an interest in joining. Uh, we— it went from 5 to—

to—

it was going to be 11 but stopped at 10 because Argentina pulled out. I'm not really sure where it will go, but it will go. And BRICS is, is the future, I think, for the underdeveloped world, the developing world now. And I often make this point: without a developed world, we wouldn't have an underdeveloped world. It's as simple as that, because the developed world has kept the underdeveloped world in poverty by extracting at base prices. You know, they extract everything for their own benefit rather than for the benefit of the people there. And that's what Belt and Road Initiative, BRI, not BRICS, that's what BRI does for the underdeveloped world now. It goes in there and says, okay, you've got uranium, you've got lithium, you've got whatever it is that we want. We want that cobalt. Okay, but that cobalt is in a mountain 200 kilometers away from the port. And the port isn't big enough to put proper ships in. So let's build a road or a train line from there to there, and you can use this road and train line to help yourself get across. Let's build a dam to provide some power. This is what China does. And, and that infrastructure is built, and that really, that cobalt was there all the time. America, France, Germany, whoever it was, was extracting it but not helping the country. They were taking it away. Maybe they were paying for it, Maybe they were paying market prices, but the country gets no benefit from that because it was going to the government that was put there by the people who wanted that lithium, cobalt, or whatever it was. So that's the way BRICS and the BRI are working. They're developing countries. It really is a very, very different thing to the G7. BRICS is purely trade, nothing else. It's economic and trade. And I personally can't see it becoming political. I can't see that. I can't see there being a BRICS parliament. So I, I'm probably wrong. If, if Vladimir Putin is saying it's going to happen, it's probably going to happen. I just can't see how it would work because I can't see countries like India or China being part of a larger parliament system that says, you know, your own rules are going to be overridden by our rules, which is effectively what the European Parliament is doing to members of, of the European Union. Yeah, so, well, I'm not— go on.

No, no, go ahead, go ahead, Jared.

I'm just gonna re-emphasize, I'm not convinced it will happen. Uh, BRICS will grow. I'm not convinced, convinced that BRICS will grow into a political union.

Yeah, well, I just want to get to two points you mentioned about the role of India in BRICS. I share your opinion on this. I've been voicing this for years. That India is like dead weight. They're gonna have to decide which side of the fence they want to be in. The second one is about when you mentioned about some, uh, the developed countries extracting resources from countries. Uh, a best example I can share with the, with the, uh, listeners here is the when France used to get uranium from Niger for about $8 a pound and sell it for about $200. $200. And I checked on this, by the way, because I have family lives in France. So I asked them, hey, do me a favor, you go to the archives in Paris and look for information. I'll give them the direction what to look for and they'll get me the information. So, so now that's— yeah. And now, like you mentioned about the infrastructure, we're seeing that now in Africa. And of course, there is always that narrative coming out of Washington that China is putting those countries in debt. The debt trap. I know it's been hurting, uh, we've been hearing about it forever. As a matter of fact, guys, just to guys let you know, I am working on a specific analysis for a video I'm gonna do for you about the IMF and the BRI, and I'm gonna provide you that analysis and let you decide. Uh, just guys, prepare a question or two for Jerry as we covered the last part of our conversation here. And I'll turn it for some questions for him later on. So, uh, now one of other things I want to get your take on, uh, that I'd like to have your take on, Jerry, is the idea of given the British economy is going down, given the US economy— we are not doing well here, by the way. A lot of people— government is not even reporting the amount of poverty that is increased right here in the US last two years. It's, it's getting bad. So all this, and I'm looking also on the other side for the likes of BRICS, the likes of Asia, and so forth. And one thing that comes to my mind is the financial structure, and I'm starting to feel comfortable using the term Bretton Woods 2.0. Are you seeing, are you seeing this coming on the global stage as far as the financial system By which most countries are going to dump the dollar.

I had a chat yesterday with a Swiss banker and talked exactly about this, and the chat was, why isn't the US dollar collapsing? And what basically he said, there's a difference between the US dollar and the US economy. These are very different things. The US dollar is not going to collapse. Simple as that. The US dollar can't collapse. There's just too much going on behind the scenes, too much depth for it. We don't know as non-economists like me will look at it and go, you know, I describe the US as a punch-drunk boxer or the US dollar as a punch-drunk boxer. It hasn't yet hit the canvas, but it's getting blows. I mean, it's getting blows because the SWIFT system number of transactions is down. CIPS is up. We're going to have a central bank digital currency. We already have one., and it looks like Saudi Arabia joining. Russia already in it. Um, the, the, the Embridge, which is going to be the, I think, the BRICS currency. I've been saying this for about 3 years. I thought South Africa, we'd have a big announcement about Embridge. It didn't happen. And I was like, why not? Why not? Uh, but Embridge looks like it's going to be a serious contender for the US dollar. The US dollar, the, the, the amount of printing money is not an issue according to Christoph, my Swiss banker. Who I did a video with just last night, 12 hours ago. Christoph tells me that printing money is not the issue. The amount of printed money around is minuscule. The amount of money that is being moved between transactions, transactional money, is massive. The US dollar is not going to collapse. That was the view that I got from a Swiss banker. But then he said, but that's just my opinion. And if I'm wrong, who cares? It's true. He then went on to explain why, why insurances— and there is this thing called an insurance that you can buy against hedging your bet against the dollar collapsing. And, and there is like a 99.7% certainty that the US dollar will not collapse in the next 5 years. That's, that's— these are people who know, these are people put their money on the table and they invest and they buy insurance in case it goes wrong. And the insurance is, is based, uh, depending on the risk. Switzerland is the lowest risk, and some other countries have much higher risks, and the US is not a high risk. So he's quite convinced that it's not going to, and I, I agree with that. But there are, in terms of the US economy, there are going to be some very, very serious challenges as less and less people hold US reserves, less and less people buy US Treasury bonds, and China is selling rapidly, selling US Treasury bonds, and less and less people use the US dollar in transactions. So these are going to be challenges, not to the US dollar so much, which they are challenges to the US dollar, but they're not going to cause a collapse. But this is a huge challenge to the US economy. That's where we need to worry about this. This is the US economy's issue. Big problems for them.

Yeah, and it is because, uh, you know, I live here, so I kind of seen where things are headed, and average families here are really, really struggling. You never— if you ask me about what, 20 years ago, uh, will America be where it is today, I'll tell you most likely not the case, assuming we embark on a good foreign policy. But apparently Washington never cared before because the corruption that exists in the system allowed the politicians not to worry about all this.

And this is part of where it's worth looking at, um, the 2025 agenda, Project 2025. Um, I don't agree with 90% of what's in Project 2025. Yeah, but I do see what's, what's coming here. And there are two, there are two issues with Project 2025, two things that they say the fundamental problems that America faces now. One is China is an enemy, a strategic enemy of the United States. I disagree with that entirely. America wants to make it an enemy, but it's not. The other one is that the elites have betrayed the country. Now there's the problem, because the elites have come to China, they have made loads of money in China, and then they've taken it out. And now all of those— I mean, Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, and almost everything that he sells comes from China. Now, he doesn't actually sell it. He just takes— skims a little bit off the top. Now, who did that? Who made that happen? China didn't steal your jobs. China didn't steal your IP or your technology. That's a different story for another show. China did not steal your labor. China did not. America gave them away. And when America tries to bring them back, America is going to find that We can't reshore them. We have to just offshore them somewhere else. Other shore them, if that's the right word. So where they are, they're currently now reducing their reliance on China. Great. America can reduce its reliance on China, but it can't really reduce its reliance on China's supply chain. So suddenly Mexico's trade with China has increased enormously. Yes, it's gone up. Why? America's trade with Mexico has gone up enormously. Uh, you don't need to be a mathematician. A 7-year-old child can join dots together and make a picture. That picture is there.

These—

you join these dots together. China's selling to Mexico, Mexico selling to America, China selling to, uh, another one, huge, huge increases in sales to Bangladesh and huge increases from Bangladesh to America. Yeah, join the dogs.

Yeah, that's true. It's, it's a short-sighted on our politicians. They don't have— but again, we have politicians that are not competent, they are not qualified for the position. I never in support of for any type of job, if, if one is not qualified, shouldn't be in the position to begin with because it's a responsibility more so than anything else. All right, I'm gonna take some questions here. And, and by the way, guys, now that I linked up with Jerry, we'll have Jerry back here, rest sure. I will make sure of that. So, so first of all, Jerry, I want to say thank you to some of my, uh, avid supporters. I want to share this with you. Francis Tango is one of my avid supporters, so he bought me coffee here. So when I get to China, I'll take you for coffee. That's what it's about.

€6 is enough for 2 cups of coffee in China.

Yeah, yeah. Dr. O, take Jerry with you when you go to China for drinks of coffee. You know I don't drink alcohol, so I hope this is enough. Thank you very much, Francis. Truly appreciate you. I have also 2 others here. I have, uh, uh, uh, uh, Speaking the Truth. Thank you so much for your—

Speaking the Truth is always in my, my streams as well. Thank you.

But he's here as well. They always, uh, he's with another super sticker here. Uh, it's, it's, they are very, very avid supporters and I'm very, very grateful for that. So, all right, let me take a question or two, guys, from you here before I let Jerry go. And, uh, and just to remind you, I will see you guys tomorrow for my conversation with Larry Johnson at 12:00 hours, 12:15, that is. So I'm gonna look for a question here and we'll, uh, we'll just go from there. So let me scroll down here. Oh, they— I have someone here I have to say hi to. George Liang.

Yep. Hi, George.

Oh yes, George is a— what an incredible guy. Good to see you.

I would pronounce that Juga Liang.

He helped me how to pronounce it. And you know that the name is— do you know that the name is after a history inside China? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He helped me how to pronounce it. Thank you, and good to see you, J. So let me see, uh, okay, someone is asking a question here. Where is Sima Yi? I don't know which one he's talking about. Right there on the screen.

Sima Yi.

Is there place there in China called Sima Yi?

Uh, Shima Ling, uh, not— I've never heard of Shima. I don't know this one, sorry.

Okay, okay, let me see. Uh, just guys, put Q so I know it's a question. This way I'll get to it. Uh, by the way, Jerry, how often do you go to Australia?

I haven't been since 2019, uh, pre-COVID. I'm a little nervous about heading to Australia now. They have something called a foreign influence disclosure law, and, and I may be, um, fallen into a trap without being in Australia. I can't register as an agent of foreign influence, and when I get paid for an article written by Global Times or something, if I write an article for Global Times and get paid, I may be an agent of foreign influence. It's something I'm a little nervous about, so maybe I won't go back for a while.

Yeah, we do have similar law here. Because I do consult— yeah, go ahead.

Sima Yi was a military officer from the Wei Kingdom during the Three Kingdoms era. There you go.

Oh, I didn't know that. So, uh, we do have a law here in the US that, uh, for example, in my case, which I do consulting for even foreign governments, but I can't just do it till I register in Washington. So that's just, uh, that's fair enough.

I have, I have no problem with registering, but the difficulty is I need to be in Australia with an Australian address to register, and I don't have such things. So, so I, I would need to set it all up with a lawyer before I land in Australia, just because—

yeah, yeah, you don't want, you don't want any issues with them, because since Canberra is not able to make decisions, it's Washington that makes decisions for Canberra. So here's a question here, Jerry. Uh, we'll take a question here, please. Could you comment on China real estate sector?

Yeah, it's a— that's a really good question. The West call it China's property collapse. I call it controlled demolition. What has happened in China is in 2019, the Chinese government forecast, predicted, announced that they are going to make changes to property development laws. Property houses are for living in, not for speculating on. And that was the premise. Xi Jinping said that, and that has been the premise ever since he said it. So effectively what actually happened was they said, if you're going to borrow, you can only borrow to a certain amount of the assets that you're building. You can't borrow against the projected growth. And the growth in property values was like 15% a year and the interest rate was, was 1%. So people were borrowing money to invest in an apartment that they were never going to— I personally know a guy who owns literally hundreds of apartments through this system. Uh, he was, he was buying off the plan 40 or 50 apartments, and then by the time they were half done, he'd sold half of them and he made loads of money. And then when they were completed, he sold the rest and he made loads more money because they were rising at 15% in the time from the, the groundbreaking, because they build really fast here, but from breaking the ground to building a 50-story apartment block might very well only be a year, less than a year. And in that period of time, this guy was making millions, literally, possibly even billions. He was making a lot of money. He's a very, very wealthy man. Now, what was happening was that was driving the cost up, because if all the properties are sold before they're even on the market, then no one who's on the market— people like me— you can't get into the property, can't afford to. A normal person. And this is what Xi Jinping said has to stop. And he forecast what was going to happen. And he told the whole world, knew it was quite transparent what was going to happen. And two companies, very, very large companies, said, well, we're too big to fail. Evergrande was one of them. And the owner of that is now in very— or the CEO of that is in very serious trouble. He's going to go to prison for a long time. I think he's in prison now. And the reason he's in prison now is not because of all of that. It's because when they— when this all happened, they went to seize his assets because he owes the government money as well, and he was transferring assets to his wife, and his wife doesn't owe the government money. So they said, that's not allowed. These are your assets. We're going to keep these. So now they've confiscated his wife's assets too. So effectively, China is stopping the unfettered capitalism, and it caused the crash. It caused this controlled demolition. We knew it was going to happen. It happened worse than it should have happened because a few companies did what Evergrande did. Evergrande was the largest of them. Country Garden was another large one. And there are, I don't know, 700,000 construction companies that it didn't happen to. So construction is still going on. There is no crash in, in China. What there is is a large reduction in the value. Now, I actually own 3 apartments. I'm not rich. The first apartment cost me 240,000 RMB, which is about $30,000. I bought it for cash. I saved, I worked hard, saved money. When I got married, my wife and I bought this small apartment. Then my mother passed away and I was left with some money, and for 400,000, I bought another apartment. £700,000. So we're talking about two apartments with a value of £700,000 when I bought them. A year or two later, they were both valued at over £800,000, and then they went up to £1 million, and now they're back to £400,000. So that is a crash. But I, I don't sell those apartments. I pay no rates, I pay no standing charges, I pay no property taxes on them. It is completely, totally, absolutely free for me to have those apartments sitting empty. And because I lived in both of them, I won't have to pay capital gains tax on either of them. So when the property market recovers, I will sell them. If somebody— if there was a shortage of property, then the price would probably start going up. There's not, there's plenty of property, so there's no need. I'm not, I'm not being selfish by keeping somebody on the street. There's no homeless in China, or virtually no homeless in China. It's not like I'm being selfish. If I wanted to rent it out I'd probably get 1,100, 1,200 RMB a month, which is like $150. It's just not worth the trouble of putting tenants in there. And if I could find tenants, because everybody's got property here, everybody owns something. So property ownership in China is something like 94%. 100% equity is about 70%. So almost everyone in China who has property doesn't have a mortgage. This really affected wealthy investors, and it has affected people like me who own an apartment and want to sell it. But the other thing was, because I have 3 apartments, when I was living in one of them and the property market crashed, I was able to buy the one I'm in now at a much better price than I would have done a year ago or a year before. So you see what happened here. I'm not actually worse off. People who live in their own property are not worse off. If you don't want to sell your property, you haven't lost anything. Even if you've got a mortgage on it, your mortgage interest rate currently is less than 4%, so it's not a big deal. Interest rates haven't gone up in, I think, more than 2 years in China. Interest rates in other countries are increasing all the time. Here, they've been pretty stable. In fact, the, the last two interest rate movements in China were both decreases. So if you own property and you have a mortgage, stay in it. If you're looking for property and you don't have a mortgage, it's very good time to do so now because they're putting stimulus out there and there's lots of properties available. So that's why the price is now depressed. Uh, the only people who've lost money are investors. I'm okay with billionaires losing a billion. I'm okay if someone's got 5 billion and they lose 2 of them.

Yeah, so they have enough. Well, why not, Jerry? Hey, am I, am I, am I, am I buy an apartment from you if I decide to move?

Well, you can, but you need to have a residence permit to live.

Of course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Anyone can buy property in China if they have a resident visa. So if you're here on a business visa, or tourist visa, you can't buy property.

No, no, of course, of course. Let me say thank you to Army with Harmony, another avid supporter, and he's asking a question here. Is there a residential real estate bubble there?

There's more property than there are people wanting properties. I don't know if that is the term of a bubble. I mean, there's nothing going to burst because it's already been deflated. So what happened was not a collapse. I call this a controlled demolition. China said what was going to happen. It happened. It was worse than they anticipated. They had to bite the bullet and say, we're not going to bail out Evergrande. We're not going to bail out Country Garden. You're the guys who've got to fight this off. Now, Evergrande tried to declare bankruptcy in New York, and New York Stock Exchange said, no, you're a Hong Kong registered company. You can't declare bankruptcy here. Because they would have got more protection there than they do in China. So, so they've gone bankrupt. Prices have already reduced considerably. My 1,800,000 to 1 million RMB apartment is now worth about 400,000. Both apartments that I own that are empty are still worth more than I bought them. One was back in 2009 and the other one was 2015. So both of them are worth more than I bought them back then. So it hasn't been that big a deal.

Interesting. It is— I want to say thank you to Jane Juan, thank you very much for your Super Sticker. And one more here is, uh, Joey Cho, thank you so much for your Super Sticker, truly appreciate it. I'll take one last question, Jerry, here before I let you go. And by the way, Uh, when I, uh, move you out of the studio, just if you can hold on a second after I say bye to my community and, and, and talk to you privately here. So last question here, uh, China is covered with surveillance cameras, which makes the country extremely safe. However, many Westerners say this is intrusive of freedom and privacy. Do you feel that when living there?

I feel safe.

I laugh, I laugh at it.

Well, here's the truth of the matter is there's a cultural difference between Chinese people and Western people. There are something— there's a field of study called dimensions of culture. One of the dimensions of culture is something called a power distance index, and it's how you relate to people in authority. On the power distance index, Americans and Australians are kind of like that. Chinese are up there. So the Chinese respect authority. The Chinese want their government to look after them. The Chinese care that their government does look after them. So, so from the perspective of a Chinese person, all of that surveillance is what makes them feel safe. That's a good thing. And it's a fact that you cannot commit a crime in China in the street. And get away with it. You just can't now. They have facial recognition. And yet many people would say that's offensive to me, that's intrusive to me. Civil libertarians would hate this. When I was a police officer, I remember coming up in not a debate, but a discussion with a civil libertarian about me being authoritarian. I'm the least authoritarian person you can imagine. But 'You're putting cameras everywhere.' This was back in the 1970s. 'You're putting cameras everywhere.' Yeah, but who's going to be bothered by that? The only people bothered by that surely are the people who are committing crimes, right? And that was my view back then. My view is the same today. It hasn't changed. I, I do not feel a problem. Now, here for the record, both New York and London have more cameras per capita than China. Okay, so what does that tell you? Both New York and London have massive crime problems. Street crime is there in both of those cities. Now, I've never lived or even been to New York, so all I can go by is Hollywood and TV series. But, you know, if the movies are to be believed, New York is not a place I want to go to. That's a fact.

Yeah, simply, you don't want to go there.

Okay, but some parts of it I definitely don't want to go to. But London I do know. I lived and worked in central London for many years. I was a police officer in London. I know that the crime rate now is higher than the crime rate was when I was a police officer there. So I can see that crime is still increasing despite the surveillance. So people say Chinese people can't commit a crime because they're surveilled. Well, crime was low anyway. When I got here, I was robbed once. It was 19 years ago. I was robbed in the street. I lost my wallet and my passport, and they left me my phone, which was an old Nokia, which I brought with me from Australia. Look at that. So they left my phone with me, but they robbed me of my wallet and my passport. Okay, these things happen. I was walking out of a bar at 2 o'clock in the morning. And that is what happens. So I wasn't concerned that it was China that did that. I was concerned with my own stupidity. I should have just got straight into a taxi and gone home, but I thought I'll walk home. It's 2 o'clock in the morning. It will help me have sober up a little bit. And I got robbed. Fine. Uh, that's it. I haven't had a single incident since. I don't know anybody, and literally I know thousands of people, I don't know anybody who's had a street crime happen to them in the last 10 years. That's safe. Now, is that as a result of the surveillance, or is that a result of culture? And I think it's both. And one of the big factors in that is I personally don't believe anybody wakes up in the morning and says, I'm going to go out and commit a crime. I think people wake up in the morning and say, I need to get some money to do this, or I need to get food, and they go out and commit a crime because of that. Poverty has been eradicated. Absolute poverty has. There are still a lot of poor people here in China, but poverty in an absolute sense has been eradicated. Homelessness doesn't exist, literally doesn't exist. You do get some homeless people, but they're usually people who've fallen through the cracks of the mental health system. Um, everybody has a home to go to. Everybody all have registered addresses. So homelessness is not a— it's not a factor. So if homeless is not a factor, poverty is not a factor, and culture is a huge factor I think that's the issue. The cameras protect. I have this expression that I say a lot. In China, they manage our behavior. In the West, they profit from our misbehavior. That's the difference between our two cultures.

Perfect. Well said. Well said. Last person I say thank you to. Qiu Luo, thank you very much for your super sticker. Truly appreciate you. Well, Jerry, on behalf of the entire community, I want to say thank you for carving out time for us. Truly appreciate you sharing your insight, someone on the ground. And this is for you guys, to those who do not know Jerry, now you get a chance to, uh, know about him and hear from him. He's on the ground over there, so I, I always believe when somebody on the ground, you'll get a better perspective than than someone who's reading articles or just assuming that's how it is. So, so I'm very grateful to you, Gerry, and I look forward to seeing you next time. You will be here back.

Thank you very much for the invitation, and it is great to finally meet you face to face. I know we were on a panel, but we didn't get a chance to talk. This has been a great experience, and thank you to the audience for those questions.

All right, well, stay here, Gerry, don't go yet. All right guys, I, uh, hope you all enjoyed this conversation here. Uh, Jerry, it's my first time meeting Jerry here and inviting him here, so great guy, and I will have him back here on the channel. I might even bring him over to the big channel later on. So, so this is something I want you to have, and I look forward to seeing you. Good to see some of you, like Zhu Liang. I haven't seen you for a while. Good to see you as always. Remember, guys, uh, tomorrow to join me at 12:15 for my conversation with Larry Johnson. And on Wednesday at 12:15, I will be doing the live stream for you about the UK economy. I get a hold of some data that I would like to share with you. As always, remember, geopolitics impacts your daily life in more ways than one. Till next time, guys. Bye-bye.