Daniel Yergin: What does Socialism mean in China Today?

Well, you again, you don't in any way have to react, but I happen to agree with the Attorney General that this is— the lockdown has been the greatest attack on civil liberties since slavery. There's no moral— and by the way, not only the left does it, the right does it too. In Israel, Netanyahu is doing it. In India, Modi's done it. The lockdown has been has gone from mistake to evil in my opinion. But I don't wanna, I'm happy to go there, but I don't wanna push you in that direction. You were telling me about, we were talking about China and you were talking about a dialogue you were having.

Yeah, well, just to pick up your point, you made that point that all across the world, as you said, when you go to those 130 countries, developing countries, you see a big Chinese presence there. And that makes the point about how, Tied in China like the United States is in the world economy. And I mentioned Singapore saying that, Middle East saying that. And I said I did a dialogue with the President of Colombia, the country, not the university. And he made the same point. He said, you know, our relationship, our fundamental relationship is with the United States strategically, everything economically. But China's our other big customer. So the same message I'm hearing around the world is, you know, we don't want to have to choose. They're just worried about how far this now, this competition turns into a Cold War and the pressure on both sides. You made a point which I thought was a really good one about the impact, the Chinese response to the Czech Republic. The Chinese now talk about their wolves diplomats, that's a term they use, these very aggressive spokesmen who really you know, who really lash out, and that adds to the polarization.

You know, in my view, it didn't have to be this way, but the Chinese Communist Party is going the way of the Soviet Communist Party toward more and more authoritarianism, dictatorship, monitoring of its citizens, and aggressive nationalism.

So, yeah, I think that aggressive nationalism is very much at the core of, of the issue. I remember once I was in China and I asked a prominent Chinese economist who at that point was very involved in reforming, opening up the economy. I said, what does socialism mean today in China? And he said socialism means whatever is good for China. And that always stuck with me. And we've seen now how that's become even stronger. In the new map, I'm very proud of the photographs, great photographs. And one shows Xi Jinping just after he became head of the Communist Party taking his Politburo stand in front of an exhibit in a museum called A Century of Humiliation, which is about, you know, that's the Chinese theme that for 100 years the Western powers humiliated them by taking control of parts of China and stuff like that. And that is very much at the core of what you say, this new national, this very strong nationalistic fervor that they have that's mixed with Marxism.

Your dialogue is very revealing. This notion, what is socialism? Whatever is good for China. It incredibly, it validates my comment that it's going the way of the Soviet Communist Party. That was Stalin's claim and the Soviet Union's claim. Whatever is good for the Soviet Union is good for socialism. That was the defining element. That's why communists could go along with the pact with Hitler.

That's right. Yeah, exactly. You know, I was just— I mean, it's a long time ago, but I was thinking about how effective the Soviets were. They only took power in 1917, and by the 1930s they already had all these spy networks in England and, you know, the United States and everything. And they hadn't been in power that long, and yet they were able to pull all of that together and get all these people to get on board. And it was all for the good of the Soviet motherland.

What, what's right? All these spies proves that ancient theological statement: God must love fools, he has made so many of them. We'll be back in a moment. Daniel Juergens' book is up at DennisPrager.com.