Workers Protest in Modern China, Part 2

Friedman about the reason protests in China. I want to go back and talk about lying flat and that whole kind of I don't know movement discourse that was happening last year, because it seems like the kind of I don't know if nihilism is the right word, but this kind of like collective understanding that the whole sort of bargain of the Chinese social system of you know, and this was to some extent extended to everyone, right, like the bargain of the Chinese social system of everyone everyone,

keep your head down, will get rich together. It suddenly became clear that this wasn't gonna happen, And you know, I mean, I think like in some sense it's possible to sort of like, you know, you can you can put on your sort of like hard materialist hat and you can like look at the number of hammers banging out and you can just look at the chirp of Chinese GDP graph of the last decade and be like, Okay, well, so eventually like what what what? What? It hit like

two percent? Eventually we were going to have protests. But yeah, I guess, I guess I I wanted to talk a bit about like, yeah, what line flat was? We covered this on the show a long time ago when it was happening, But and then also sort of how that attitude shift was important or wasn't important. I don't know, Maybe it wasn't. I think it was, but yeah, I

think it's very important. Right, So, yeah, you can't just be a crude materialist and like mechanically read social protest off of some chart of you know, following profitability or something like that. Um. But there it is a cultural expression of real fundamental changes in the organization of the

Chinese economy. Uh. You know where already talked about how the post eighty nine generation was like you go to college and like you come out and you know you'll you'll be middle class right on average, And that's just

not at all the case anymore. And young people in China and and older people, middle aged people you know, who are who have children, who are who are going through the system, um, feel immense pressure in like immense competition in all spheres of life beginning from a young age in elementary school, all the way up through high school, through the super competitive and intense university admissions process, and then after graduating university and getting a job, and then

getting a job that can you know, um uh, you can earn enough money to be able to afford an apartment. And so here we have to understand you know, the cost of housing and all of the other costs associated with social reproduction. So the like the cost of care workers. Right, if middle class people in places like Shanghai and Beijing expect to have domestic workers, um, you know, looking after their children, they expect to be able to hire tutors who can um, you know, and comtutor their children in

English or in math um. And so just people feel under unbelievable sure, and this is in a situation that part of the reason that the pressure has is really ramped up is that there are fewer good paying jobs. You know, youth unemployment now in China is around um and so one of the responses to that is just forget about it. We're you know, we're gonna lie flat,

We're gonna we're gonna reject all of this. There's different expressions and I don't actually the sort of like you know, sociologists and me is like, well, we don't actually have numbers to know how many people are are lying flat and like that is true, Like maybe most people are still just going to work and you know, doing their job, but there's enough you know, stories, and certainly in terms of cultural residence of people just doing the bare minimum

at work or working for short periods of time, earning just enough money to survive and not worrying about meeting those kind of social expectations around buying a car, buying an apartment and getting married, having kids, because people just

see it as as kind of it's kind of hopeless. Um. And so I think that's a really important backdrop because we have to understand that some level that these protests are about a sense of hopelessness, right be at economic opportunities, be at the political system where cigent being is going to rain as long as he wants, or be at zero COVID, where you know, at any given moment, you're gonna be locked inside your apartment and you're not gonna be able to see your friends or or do anything.

So um. Yeah, So I think it's very relevant. Yeah, And I wanted to, I guess also to This is something I talked about on this podcast a lot, but I need to, like I don't like drill into people's heads, like just the sheer amount that people in China are working, just like like the number of hours, a number of days a week, the the amount of effort that is being put in is like it is, it is. It is a level of Rowster plus value extraction that like like like most places in the world haven't seen in

like a court like in like half a century. It is like or even longer than that. Like it is, it is a a truly stunning, like a truly stunning level of exploitation in terms of things like nine six in terms of the people who are working schedules in a way worse than that, who don't really ever get like talked about because they're not tech workers or they're

not people who have sort of like a platform Chinese society. Yeah, it's it's extremely normalized, you know, I mean, like the thing which which first of all, it is maybe worth mentioning that China legally has a forty hour work week. You're only allowed to work thirty six hours of overtime on month, right, so probably you know, not more than forty nine or fifty hours a week. That's that's like the legal the legal standard. Nobody even remotely pretends like

that is a thing in any industry. There's legal debates about like whether it applies to professional, white collar you know, salaried workers or not. But um, you know, when the thing came out and there was a pretty cool i think movement based mostly online among tech workers, it was it was great. It was very inspiring. And also every single blue collar worker like we've been waking units six for decades, you know, um, and so so it is it is very normal across these these different kinds of

of stratum for sure. Um, one of the cool things about ninetight six is people were we're revolting against it and saying like this is an unacceptable way to live. And again it comes back to this whole thing of like all of these feelings of you know, these enhanced pressures right where it's just like how do I live in this city? How do I find like decent housing?

Like if you know, if I want to have like a social life, which is the thing that some people in their twenties want to have, you know, like how do I do that? It's impossible under those circumstances. Um so so again, like you can't read these movements mechanically off of these these uh, these structural changes. But like that is a thing that has been happening that is unresolved.

It's not at least for the you know, the blank paper protesters, the kind of the more elite students and stuff, they haven't specifically articulated um, their grievances as labor demands, um. But it's it's at least an important backdrop to what's happening today. Yeah, and I think it's remember like how I think I think this was like Mide twenty nine keeen. I'm trying remember when I when I saw this specific video.

But there there there, there there was a video from the Hong Kong protests that was like it's always it was. It was like literally one of these classic like like sort of Twitter things, but like what do you want out? What do you want to do after the revolution? And it was like most of it was like I want to start a bakery, like I want to work in

a library. And it strikes me that there's these things that get subsumed under you know, when when when when you see a pro democracy movement, right when when you see you know, like the sort of well, I guess that there's something interesting to hear about the Like like day one of the protests, there were a lot of videos that we're talking about Iran, and that kind of seemed to like like the very early videos were about sort of solidarity with the protests in the room sheet

and then like it was like it was like specifically tying that to Iran and then to sort of pro democracy demands, and then later on you get the sort of like like the Shanghai like down with the party denimping,

like we went to occracy and free speech stuff. But it strikes me that like a lot of the times when you see people making those demands, it's because they think that like you know, it's like there there there's a whole set of of like things that they like, things that they believe about the future and about what will happen in the future that are like not articulated in the demands, but if you talked about if you talk about them, like if you talk to people about

what they think is going to happen after that, there's this whole sort of like opening up of stuff that they think will be like the necessary results of like the end of the one party state. And it's like, you know, I don't want him, Like I don't know, I had this debate a lot with like, like there's kind of like Chinese international student you get in the US who like comes to the US and it's like

immediately like enormously enamored with the US. It's it's it's sort of the mirror image of how we have a bunch of people who are like incredibly enamored with the Chinese state, and then you get people who come here and are like incredibly enamored the American state, and it's like, well, yeah, okay, this politician will see you and they will talk to you. However, Comma, in about two years they will be voting to throw

you in prison. So like, but obviously, like both people in China understand the Chinese system sucks and that the promises that people like in the US belief about it are fake. And then people in the US understand that you can get a multiparty democracy and things because they'll be absolutely shit. But yeah, yeah, you know, it strikes me that there's a lot of stuff sort of embedded in in in these demands that are like not really

explod articulated until later. And then that's also, I guess been a hard part about these protests that like I don't know, it's hard to get information out. You can get shortened views with people. Mostly what you're getting are like thirty seconds of footage of people yelling at a cop, right, yeah, yeah,

I mean there's a lot going on. Like if you have this one, this tiny little opening, and then instantly you have protests in like all of these cities all over the country, dozens of universities, protests among you know, working class migrants, like middle class people in Shanghai, like,

you know, all all across the country. Like that suggests that people have a variety of sets of grievances and they're kind of funneling them through this this meta narrative around ending the lockdown, which is not to diminish the significance of the actual lockdowns, which are are called causing real human suffering. But there's definitely a lot going on, and you know, one of the big ones is what's happening in Shinjong, Like it's we still don't really know

how Weakers are feeling about all of this. The fact that like all of the all the Protestants in the big Eastern cities are about commemorating what happened in ermchy Uh in a fire that killed mostly, if not exclusively, Weaker. It's like that that that deserves to be talked about. Um, We don't really know how like the Han people on the streets in the Eastern cities, like if they're thinking about this this backdrop of you know, massive repression, surveillance

and mass internment of of Weakers and other Muslim minorities. Um. But that's another thing. Uh And and I think the same thing goes for the treatment of migrant workers in in fox Con and these other um blue collar workers

who were put into the closed loop. Like to what extent our urban um Han people still kind of willing to go along with sacrificing migrant workers and treating them as as as second class citizens, or is their possibility of developing some real sense of of solidarity um with ending not just the closed loop, but ending you know, like kuko based discrimination, ending the camps in shin Jong.

You know, I mean, you can kind of spin out from there, if if you are interested in thinking about what it would mean to democratize China in like a in a robust sense of the word, I think points that are never thing about these protests that are complicated, right, which is that like they are cross class in a lot of ways, but I don't know, it seems to me like the way they're manifesting is very much down class lines. Like Okay, I genuinely don't understand what's going

on in Guangho. That like every single video I see at Guangho is like seventy people throwing bottles at a cop, and like every video I see out of like Shanghai is like six people holding a piece of paper. But it very much seems like, you know, like when when when when when the cops are getting to like these these sort of like these working class neighborhood these neighborhoods that are like a informal housing, these neighborhoods that are

full of migrant workers. There were these really really intense conflicts with the police in ways that like kind of aren't happening. Well, I mean, okay, that's because the kind of stuff seems to be happening in a room sheet. And I think it's happening there partially because you know, this is like well okay, I don't know off thought in my head whether it's more militarized than Tibet, but like one of the most militarized, like one of the

most heavily police places in China. And then also people are just really like the the immediate and palpable anger seems to be the highest there because you know, I mean like like it you're you're going to be more piste off when it's people in your city or like you know, you you maybe were like three blocks away from this fire. Yeah, like these people. But yeah, one of one piece about about Urch is that they've been in some form of lockdown for like a hundred days,

you know. Yeah, so that's not and and part of that has to do with the fact that it is this colonial setting where they feel like they can do things to people that they can't do in Beijing and Channg like people in San are not going to do that, right, It's just like it's inconceivable. Um, there's obviously a lot of Han people in Ear and she is actually a

majority Han. Now yeah, I think, yeah, um that that sounds right to me, and shin Jong is increasingly Han as well, although I believe we are still constitute a plurality. So you know, there's just like each the lockdowns kind of filtered down to these different localities and into different communities with their different social and class compositions in different

kinds of ways and have different kinds of effects. Right, So you can put people in lockdown in shin Jong for a hundred days and they're going to be really pissed when they get out. In the case of Guang Joe, you know, this was also part of the sequence that I think has been written out of the official narrative.

It's not it wasn't just fox Con. You had the initial fox Con escape in late October early November, and then you had these pretty intense riots that happened in Guang Joe, but were in these urban villages, so called urban villages largely informal housing, very densely populated, that are overwhelmingly migrant workers. In this case, it was mostly people from Hubei Um, which is which is where Wuhan is and Um and so you know, just those migrant communities

were put into lockdown in Guangzho. So if you were over in yeah, if you over in Tianaha District, which is the sort of the the newer, like fancier part of Guangho with lots of high rises, Um, you know, those places were not under lockdown, and so they they put the migrant communities, and I saw some like really not nice stuff, you know, people just being like, oh yeah,

you know. The the local Guangjo people on the other side of the river are just like going about their life and and they're they're okay with what's happening to the migrants. And the migrants were, as is the case in some of these earlier lockdowns, actually facing real subsistence crisis, like they didn't have enough food to eat, and they couldn't leave to try to get food. Um. So that's

why you saw these super intense riots. And that's why you see them confronting the police and you know, screaming at them, throwing things at them. You see tear gas, all of these things. I think. So I think that's the only place I've seen tear gas so far, Like maybe in a room sheet. I'm not there may have been a video, I don't I don't remember specifically their room sheet, but definitely like only place have seen that

level of repression. Yeah, yeah, no, it was, it was I mean, you know the Jung Joe Fox con was probably the most violent and the larger scale. Um, but you know that was it was a little bit different. I Gwang Joe. It's kind of like smaller streets they're fighting, you know, street by street. So um yeah, so they have a different experience of people in Shanghai. Again not to minimize their demands, and I think it's it's important

for people to find points of commonality, um against this policy. Um, but it's you know, it's not like that if if you're if you're a middle class person Han person in Shanghai, which is again not to minimize the very real difficulties

that those folks have been facing. Is well something this kind of you know, I think that there there there's there's like another group of people who should probably talk about a little bit, which is like this sort of downwardly mobile class a business owners who have been kind

of just getting annihlated by the lockdowns. And does that that happen in the US too, Although the Chinese version of it seems they're like less marginally less absolutely psychotic, Like they haven't tried, but they haven't tried to like kidnap a governor yet, Like they're not like they're not

as fascist as their American counterparts. Yeah, but it's it's it seems it seems like there's a kind of interesting I don't know, there's there's a class dynamic that kind of reminds me of occupy and that you have this sort of like kind of tenuous alliance between like some some parts of the working class, these elite students, and like this downwardly mobile middle class. But it strikes me that, you know, I mean, that's the sort of a finding

thing about occupying. I think like the defining thing about the whole sort of two thousand eleven doesn't thirteen wave of protests was that like it was it was really really easy to get people together into a physical space, and when when you were in that single physical space, it was like, you know, it's not it's not like classes appeared, but it was like, you know, it was,

it was, it was. It was. It was a way in which sort of like classes were mixing and you could form this new kind of like identity based around like what you're doing in this place, and it doesn't really seem like that's possible here. It really seems like, I don't know, like there's this huge like you know, this this is a protest that is like happening in a lot of different places at the same time. But

it's like it doesn't. Yeah, the segmented they don't and they don't they don't really have a sort of like cohesive social identity that in a way that you could get out of a bunch of people being in the same place. Yeah. No, I think that's right. I mean they're spatially segmented. Um. Something someone pointed out out on Twitter.

I can't remember who, but they're drawing comparisons to the protests and the kind of the physical arrangements where people are living and so particularly given you know, the online censorship, like that's been really important. So you have these worker dormitories and fox con like you can organize by actually talking to people with student dormitories, right, Um, and then you have much smaller protests among the you know, the middle class people who are able to circulate things online.

And so the consequence of that is is they are pretty segmented and I think, you know, everyone has their own grievance with zero COVID, but these grievances are actually pretty different. Right, So the fox con workers don't like the closed loop management system where you know, where they can't leave, where, where they're subjected to unsafe conditions, etcetera. Um, you know, the petty bourgeoise like they don't like the fact that there's no foot traffic you know, coming into

their shops. Right. And um, I don't know if you saw the video of the guy like kicking down the wall with a soup latal and it specifically, yeah, I mean it was it was very theatrical, dramatic and uh a great video you know in terms of like the class position and yeah, you can see how it can kind of capsize into fash quickly. Um. And then like the students, you know, they want to be able to

live normal student lives and like leave their dormitories. And that's the thing that I think students anywhere can associate with. So it's like, yeah, they're all against the zero COVID policy, but then it's kind of like what are their politics after that? And I think if if this is going to open up, um, you know, some kind of more expansive political vision, Like it's gonna be hard to maintain

that like that unity. Right, the students are already talking about like you know, censorship, freedom of speech, those things which I support, I think are very good. You're probably not gonna get the petty boudgeoisie to like risk arrest and violence with the cops, you know, over like holding up a blank white piece of paper, um, you know.

And then the micrant workers have another whole set of things, you know, around like basic like health infrastructure, like you know, can they get access to decent healthcare in the places where they're where they're living. And that's not going to resonate to the same extent with the students. So yeah, the one I think about a lot was like there's a video going around it this guy being like I

don't care about politics. I just want to go to the movies, and I was like, this is the most American person in China, Like this is the one person that I'm like, okay, like that, you know, and and like that there is that kind of sort of like I just I just want to live my normal life like thing that's happening, and then that that I think

is a kind of recognizable American impulse. But then you have the stuff that's like did you see did you see those pictures that were going around of like the hospitals they were putting megicant workers in were just like the entire bathroom floor is just like covered in poop and like awful. Yeah, it's like the whole whole bathroom

floors is just flooded. There's like just like the the the you can't flush toilet paper down it, so there's just these like mountains of toilet paper, and I think, like, yeah, it's awful. Like that the difference between the people whose things are like I want to go to the movies and the people whose demand is like please stop locking me in this, like like people like you know that

that was I guess. I guess. The other sort of lost thing that seemed to be pretty big in Chinese social media that I don't that wasn't talked about much here was the uh there was this bus that capsized that killed like twenty seven people who were being taken like to a facility to specifically to hold like you know, this is like what one of one of these sort of like I don't I don't even really want to dignify them by calling them hospitals, because they're like, yeah,

like just a complete disaster. Um. But where were people were being held, like held because they had Yeah? Yeah, And I don't know, it seems like that there's a really big sort of like you know, I mean, I guess it's like like the the protests are reflecting all of all of the sort of like existing classified in Chinese society in ways that I think are are pretty obvious if you look at it, which I guess in some sense like this this does strike me as the

most gentlemin esque thing. But look, the most unuminous thing about it is the way that the media has been like specifically covering the grievances of exactly like two groups of people, which is like the students and like, and then all of the labor stuff has just vanished after

about day two. Yeah yeah, yeah for sure. Um. And I mean I don't have much optimism that that that the coverage will change, um, But you know, there there is an experience, um that middle class people I think have had pretty acutely going back at least to the Shanghai lockdown, of this realization that there actually are no limits on state power, right, And that to them was

kind of like a shock. You know. They're like, oh, like I thought I was just gonna be able to go about my life like as long as I didn't you know, demand to be able to vote for the president. Like I can have a job. I can, um, you know, go eat hot pot or you know, get whatever kind of delicious food I want having in these big cities,

can travel internationally. You know, all of these things are you know more or less okay, Um, there's been lots of you know, there's lots of other people in training society for him, that's never been the experience, right, most importantly the minorities and the workers and the migrant workers who have always you know, experienced that raw and unchecked power of the state. And so, you know, does does this have the capacity to kind of bring them together?

You know, it's going to be extremely difficult to do, especially because there aren't like spaces for political organizing and

working through these differences in a constructive way. Yeah. I mean, I will say that the one thing that kind of that strikes me as something that like is just different about this cycle is that, like I don't know, I don't, like, I don't think I've ever seen in my lifetime outside of like really tiny maoist sex like people openly calling for the downfall of the government, like just in in a kind of like large a stemic way, and like it it seems like I don't know, maybe maybe the

censors will sort of get control back, but it really seems like there's been this kind of floodgate that's opened where suddenly like there's a there's a brief moment where like it suddenly became possible to talk about things where you know, like like two months ago, it was like one guy laid aside on a bridge and like this was this was like the biggest thing that had ever

happened in Chinese society whatever, etcet et cetera. And then suddenly, like you know, you just have people on the streets or Shanghai like just chanting stuff that wasn't even on that banner, and like, I don't know, like it really seems like like it's it's not like they've actually like fully lost control of the country or anything, like they're not even close to that, but it's it's like the sort of like the sort of regime of terror and fear that had been in place to keep people from

doing this kind of stuff has fallen off a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I I'd be very curious to know what the vibe is like in China, and obviously I have not been there for a while. Um, but like, and this is wildly speculative, and if you have any Chinese listeners who want to correct me, I would be glad

to have some more information about this. But my feeling from Hofar is that you know, like she Jinping is just like you can't you can't say anything about him, and that even in like private spaces, you know, people just like don't feel like the ability to kind of imagine something different and like that has been changed. Like I don't think we're going to see a lot more people on the streets chanting down with she be down with the Communist Party, Like it's you know, it's a

risky it's a risky thing to do. But I do think that like now at least people know that there's other other people in the country that are thinking the same things that they're thinking. And then at least within you know, like you know, face to face interactions that people might be a little bit more willing to kind of say like, oh, like these protests happened, that was pretty crazy, like let's talk about that, um and so

so so that to me is optimistic. UM. And I do hope that more of this organizing can take place, you know, offline, because I think that's the only safe way to do it. Um. So, So yeah, I I think something has changed significantly. And you see it here, you know. I mean, I've been teaching Chinese students for ten years. Um, there's no question that people are interested, um in talking about things now in a in a more open way than was the case a couple of

years ago. And like Herreck Cornell, we had we had a little vigil for um F and G as well, and people were chanting, you know, down with Ci Jin ping um, which is kind of like okay, you're you know, you're in the good New York, Like it's not dangerous. Well, I think students feel it to be dangerous, and definitely a month or two ago would have felt it to

be quite dangerous. So yeah, and I guess we probably shouldn't like completely downplay the fact that like the CCP has international networks in a way that's for sure, Like the way tenden to get covered in the press is very sort of like this kind of like right wing fear mongering, but's like no, these people do exist, and like, yeah, like it is possible for you to like tweet something while you're in the US and then like someone in China finds out about it and things start to go

very badly for you very quickly, and for sure, like that's that's that's a real danger. That yeah, and regardless of how many spies there are, how pervasive they are, like it is a real experience, real fear. The Chinese students here have, right, they don't feel comfortable, you know, they might feel more comfortable speaking openly here than they do actually within China, but they still don't feel totally free.

And and that is a very widespread sentiment, I guess sort of enclosing, I don't know, might I don't think anyone can really have much of an analysis that's better than them guessing about what's going to happen next, because this already was something that like two weeks ago, like if you'd ask anyone, like anyone in China or outside of China who wasn't like I don't know like in the following Gong or something, whether whether they were suddenly

going to be large deal like protested China ever would have been like are you nuts? But yeah, I'm wondering how what you think is going to happen next? I don't know. My my my sort of tentative read of it was like it seems like I don't know. It's it seems to me that for for a very very long time, the Chinese political system was specifically set up to stop this, like like this was this was the

exact thing it was. It was designed to make sure there would never be another sort of like like that there would never be a large well and you know, we don't know how how long this is going to go on, right, but there was There was never There was never supposed to be another street movement that was like coordinated between cities that was large and that had real political to man's and you know, I like, I I don't know, Maybe maybe I could, I could be

the most brog I've ever been, but I cannot imagine this like this specific round of protests really like challenging the government at all. Like I don't know, some something something would have to like I don't know, like aliens would have to like descend from the sky or something like. I don't know, I don't like, I don't I don't think they can do it. But the frequency at which these kinds of things break out has been increasing steadily

for the past probably twenty or thirty years. I mean, the nineties are sort of a low point for this stuff. But you know, like if if you're if you're in a country like Ecuador, right, you've seen like two pretty large scale like mass street movements in like three years, right,

and you know, it's it's it's, it's, it's. It seems to be sort of broadly the there's there, there's there's been this sort of like the decaying economic condition to combined with this like the general decaying ability of the state to prevent like a subsequent movement from from unfolding. And so I don't know, like I I my sense is that this one's not gonna do anything, but we might see another one of these in like three years

or something. Yeah, I don't think we're going to see this movement in the in the weeks and months to come to like cohere into this like massive politically potent force that has the capacity to either continue to exert demands on the central state or threatened state power. Like I don't think that that's going to happen. Um, I do think. I think I think the first thing is to acknowledge and to chalk up the victories that have already been Um. One, so Fox foxne workers got paid.

You know, they went out, they rioted something like Fox's like, here's ten thousand you one for you to leave that even for you to do your job right. So like and those are workers that came in after the other workers escaped, so they have been there in quarantine for like a couple of days, rioted got ten thousand un which is like almost U S dollars like they so so they did really well. Um And but I think more broadly, you know, around the zero COVID the government

has already made changes. They will never acknowledge we're doing this because people protested, like that's not how they operate. But um, you know, they said, Okay, we're actually gonna get more serious about vaccinating people, which is what they need to do in order to have sort of an exit strategy. There have been some some signals, low key

ones about further loosening. I mean, I think that there's a real question about how they go about doing this because if they just let it rip tomorrow, like actually hundreds of thousands and people will die. Yeah. So like I think that what they need to do is they need to vaccinate people, and they need to build a real public health infrastructure that includes migrant workers. But you know,

that's we'll see if that happens. So so I think that those are already victories like which which we should which you know, we should take account of. And I think moving forward, the ability to repress like the the street demonstrations should not be under underestimated. Like the state has immense resources at its capacity. I don't think that we're going to continue to see people chanting, you know,

down with the Communist Party in the streets regularly. Um, So I think that they'll be able to at least push that down a little bit and maybe with some concessions, people will be satisfied. You know, the guy who just wants to be able to go to the movie, like next year at this time, there's a good chance he will just be able to go to the movies. To kind of continue with my labor centric perspective, though, I

think it's going to be harder for for workers. I think it's going to be harder for them to repress that as long as the closed loop management systems are in effect and lockdowns are happening. I mean, it just puts insane demands on these workers. And there were revolts against it when it first happened in Shanghai back in April. Uh,

and I think that those will continue to exist. UM. But I think we'll probably see this kind of reversion to what's existed for the last couple of decades, which is lots of you know, small scale, somewhat manageable and

localized protests. The question is, like, does this kind of open up, um, the possibility of politicization, which we have not really seen since nine UM in a in a robust way at least, And so does this kind of open up some of those possibilities so those local protests can begin to to speak to each other with some sort of common language, UM, and and cohere some kind

of political force that's harder for the state to tame. UM. We'll see, Yeah, And I guess and I guess the other sort of X factor here is like can can can the CCP get the growth rate above like five? No? But yeah, like that's like yeah, I I I don't.

I don't know how they do it like that. I don't know, like I I short of like short of like actually just letting all of the sort of like like all all of the sort of like slack and excess capacity just get like you know, just just like intentionally tanking the entire economy and just like running all of these sort of unprofitable business in the ground. Like yeah,

I don't, I don't see how they do that. And that does seem to me, like you know, to be a kind of like the sort of like looming horizon over. I mean this and this is really true of everyone, like the the sort of looming horizon over, Like every government in the world has been that the growth rate has been collapsing for like the last forty years, and China was, you know, trying to change the comedy was like the last thing that was really driving it. And

that's like not really true anymore. It's it's a disaster. I mean. And then even even without COVID, it was sort of like not going great. I mean, it wasn't like you know, I mean it hadn't reached like it hadn't like reached like you know, like recession, or it hadn't really reached like sort of post industrialized country levels of like here's your two percent growth every year, be

happy with it, but like I it out. Yeah, but but the growth, I mean this is maybe like another whole conversation, but like the growth has become less effective, right. It's it's this like investment led growth. It's there, there's massive growth in debt, and they can, you know, build

another bridge, build another airport building. I mean, they're not building the apartment blocks as much anymore, but they do that they can prop up the growth a little bit, right, But like the fundamental problem that they've been unable to address is like increasing domestic consumption, you have a more equitable model of growth. And the reason that they can't

do that is fundamentally a political problem. Like they can't figure out a way to give working class people more money and to give them some social protections, um and like until they resolve that political problem, Like I just don't see them being able to deal with with that economic problem. So that means you are going to continue to have this kind of ongoing forms of stagnation. Zero COVID really hurts it a lot more. Of course, the geo political conflict with the US and and Biden, you know,

trying to economically kneecap them like that doesn't help. And then the demographics of you know, like all of these things are making making their lives much more difficult. And so one way to interpret what's happened, um under under zero COVID is the expansion of a massive and terrifying surveillance state that will allow them to weather whatever political storms are coming in the future. Yeah, and I guess I don't know. Well, well, well well we'll we'll, we'll see,

we'll see whether that works for them. I am somewhat skeptical in that, like I don't know, like good luck, actually terrible luck. I hope it goes badly for them, the worst of luck. Yeah. So, Eli, thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Yeah. And Okay, where where can people find you and find the stuff that you do? Uh well, I'm on Twitter as long as it's still there, um Eli D Friedman And uh yeah, I'm on the Internet. I don't know,

that's that's the main place. Come if you're in Ithica, come on by all right, yeah this this has make it happen here, drag every government into perpetual and terminal crisis until it's ops existing. It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at

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