Like this Chinese run hotel. The owner estimates there are as many as one hundred hotels in Quito that like hers, host Chinese migrants headed to the US. They've got essentially a how to guide to go from here and to continue north, and they tell you here how many days you should be preparing, the vaccinations you might need, other
documents you should carry with you. They even mentioned bringing three hundred dollars and hiding that amount of money because of presumably being robbed at some point and eating cash as a backup.
We're about to talk a little bit about China. I thought it'd slide in that story about the Chinese that are coming to the United States through Ecuador, and the Chinese have actually set up a hotel in the capital in Ecuador with a guide on getting Chinese nationals into the country.
Sounds like a pretty good travel agent too. It covers, you know, vaccinations and everything, how much cash to have on head our most potent and dangerous for an adversary getting their nationals into our country sneaking across the board. I wouldn't worry about that at all. Speaking of kin, the most excellent Josh Rogan Global Opinions columnists for The Washington Post and author of Chaos under Heaven, Trump she in the Battle for the twenty first Century, joins us
to talk about matters reach China. Josh, how are you, sir.
Great, Happy to year, Happy new year to you.
Thank you so far, so good. I guess ah, So, I was so intrigued by something you wrote recently about anti Semitism in Chinese media and social media. Just on its face, it's pretty interesting. But why it's important to the West and what it shows. Can you just start with telling us what's going on, what you've observed.
Right, Well, it's kind of crazy actually, because you know, we sort of saw ever since the October seventh terrorist attacks on Israel that the Chinese government has been pretty much pro Palestinian. That's not really that like surprising, you might say. They have, you know, Chijing being hosted the Palestinian authority just a couple months earlier. They see the Palaestiny struggle is a great way to screw with our ally Israel and thereby screw with us and promote their
anti anti imperialist, anti West autocratic agenda. So they make common cause with a lot of these you know groups, But What was really crazy when a lot of my you know, Chinese friends especially notice, is that on the Chinese Internet, especially on their social media, it wasn't just like criticizing Natanyahu. It was Jews or Nazis and the Jews control of the media and the Jews control of the world, and all of this really sort of old school anti Semitic garbage.
If I might, if I, if I may jump in, if I may jump in quickly, Jews are Nazis indicates a lack of understanding of some terms.
Well, and it's not like there's a ton of Jewish folks kicking around in Beijing either, But go on, John.
Well, that's the thing. I mean, I've traveled in China many times, and usually it's like a philo Semitism. It's like, oh, Jews are so smart, you must have so much money, and you know, oh you know, how did you know? But they now it's like really like, oh, you guys are genocidal maniac and you're right, a cabal running the
world behind the scenes, and it's really nasty. And because we know the Chinese Internet is controlled by the Chinese government, it necessarily means that they're fueling this and then all of a sudden, here comes to the state TV with clips about how you know, uh, you know, the Jews control of the American election, so democracy doesn't work. And you realize that what they're doing is they're trying to say that democracy is a sham. Therefore, did everybody want
like an emperor? Isn't that a much better deal? And that comes to the cost of like a lot of anti semitism and hatred. And once you stir up all of those things in China, they don't just go away. You're training all these people who have no choice really but to read the heavily sister Chinese Internet to hate, and it's really messed up. I just thought it was really messed up, saying, well.
The first thing my mind jumps to is is TikTok and how the Chinese government has been so successful in piping ideas into the heads of our young people. Have you seen that same sort of anti semitism on TikTok for instance?
Oh yeah, My whole TikTok feed is anti semitism and Chinese propaganda. Now maybe that's because I click on those things and I watch them because it's like from my professional research, But somehow. You know, it seems like TikTok is a wash which like really viral, and every time I report the anti semitism, it never gets taken down, you know what I mean? And then the Chinese propaganda so sophisticated, it's so savvy in a way, because what
is more and more through American voices. It's like that Osama bin Laden thing, Like how did forty thousand you know, American teenagers all decide on the exact same day that Osama bin Laden was right about, you know what I mean? Like that doesn't happen organically. That's what the algorithm does. And that's not to say that I don't have a problem with Facebook or x or Instagram or threat whatever.
Their algorithms also need to be more transparent. We need to know how they're manipulating what we see and how that affects what our children's minds perceive as the reality. But if they're not the genocidal, mass murdering dictatorship that they out to get us, And I think that's what people don't realize is that TikTok is run by the genocidal, mass murdering dictatorship. That's that teachs us harm. That's trying to influence our society to come to theirs. And that's
really an order of magnitude worse than Facebook. It's worse worse than Instagram all put together.
And here's where we must point out that the move to get TikTok banned or more heavily regulated has completely died because they're so successful in spreading bribes around the political spectrum. Nobody has any interest in the topic anymore.
Well, yeah, that's exactly right. Well, first they had that horrible hearing where like the guy who you know, you had that one center who was like, how come I keep just doing dancing men on my TikTok? And they build that CEO was like, I don't know, should I tell you know what? Like that was like the level of investigation that we got from you know, then I understand have no idea what they're talking about. And then
of course here comes the lobbying. And it's not just the Chinese companies with millions of the American companies like Oracle and who are making money off of the making the money and who want, you know, to have their own politicians in their pockets, and the Wall Street guys, because you know, all these Chinese companies are using Wall Street money, that means private equity. That's big power in Washington. So of course it's nothing happens and everybody pounds the
table and then we go back to business. But you know, if you just think about how, like, you know, what's going on in our so sitey, how much it's driven by the content that people see on social media. Putting that in the hands of our greatest adversary is is it's crazy, it's stupid, and you know something's got to be done.
It makes the Trojan Horse seem like, you know, a minor incident in world history. It's one of the most amazing things that's ever happened. Historians will look back on this someday if historians are allowed to print anything when China takes over the world and think, how did any superpower allow all their young people to be educated by their number one adversary?
Right, And it's sort of like, you know, it's good that you point out's on a new tactic, right, So they've been doing it since Trojan times. But if you just think about, like just the difference between twenty sixteen, no matter what you thought about the Russian interference. In the end, it was a bunch of Facebook pages. This is like a heavily organized, artificial intelligence driven thing. It makes the Russian interference look like like child's play by comparison.
And that's what you don't realize about the Chinese is that they don't do it in the clumsy way. They do it in the smart way, which is to make it have their messages come through American phones with American voices and American influencers. And we're not savvy enough as a democracy to have in suspicious that can even understand that much less regulated. But essentially in the end, that's exactly what's gonna have to happen.
Good Little Herd is discouraging. Yeah, it's like the Trojan Horse was a moving sidewalk in the Greeks or the Spartans or the Irish or whoever got Trojan Horse didn't bother.
Shutting down the sidewalk.
They just left it open.
Good lord.
Josh Rogan, Global Opinion's columnist for The Washington Post, is online speaking of China taking over the world. Josh, there have been a number of headlines in the business papers, especially, but China's run into some serious, serious economic stumbles, haven't they.
Well, yeah, these two things going on. One is that the Chinese economy has been slowing for over a decade. All right, that's like structural when it's the bigger it gets, the lower the growth rate is going to be. It's just natural that it was going to slow. And then you add on the extra things that's usually thing has done wrong. And you know, there's two ways to analyze it. There's the Wall streetway and then there's the honest way. Right.
The Wall Street way is to say, oh, well, this is a good time to invest in China because all the stocks are down and oh you know, everything's going to be fine and they're going to bounce back, so you know, or some people will even say, well that this means they're not that powerful, so we don't really
have to do anything to compete with them. But the honest way didn't out analyze it, is to say that the reason in that China's economy is in the toilet is because Jijen King has destroyed private business in China because he's nationalized the education, the gaming, everything, it's all becoming the technology. He put people falling out of windows, putting people in prison, the executives dying all the time. This is a scary scenario. This is an environment where
American businesses are getting scooped up and shut down. And what that really should tell us is that China is becoming more dangerous as it gets weaker.
Not less interesting. Josh Rogan Global Opinions columns for the Washington Post. Excellent follow on X as well. Josh, thanks a million for the time. Good to talk to you anytime.