 If it turns out that, yes, international travel did continue while domestic travel did not, then the question is, why was it done on purpose in order to infect the West, in order to infect other countries? I doubt that. It does not help China to have the U.S. infected. I know that sounds weird, but it does not help China to have the U.S. infected. It does not have China to have its customers infected. China relies on exports. It relies on people buying its products. It relies on people bringing manufacturing capital to China and investing in China. China is still not a wealthy enough country to go on its own. It's still not a wealthy enough country to see the rest of the world destroyed and right to the rescue. It cannot do a Marshall plan for the rest of the world. It is, it just doesn't make any sense for China to, you know, export a virus unless it's a grand scheme of somehow taking over the West. But how, how will they even do that? They don't have the resources for it. They don't have the military for it. The virus is not deadly enough to kill enough of us off to make it easy for China to come in. So it just doesn't make any sense. Now, you know, is it right to think of China as a rational calculation? Yes, I think so. They're not fanatics in the sense of Muslim fanatics are willing to commit suicide. They let's assume they want world domination, you know, infecting the rest of the world with a virus does not lead them to closer to world domination. And indeed, it won't and you'll see, you know, I don't think even the Chinese would be that deluded. Now, I guess it's possible, but I think it's unlikely. So the question is, why would they do that? And again, I think it's much more likely, much, much more likely to be absolute incompetence, right? They drove it. Then it is some malicious intent to launch war against the West, war that they won't even declare, war that they won't do anything about. So I think that China clearly covered this up. Then the other thing that's riling people up right now is that China is providing, you know, has a whole propaganda machine, just like the Russians do, just like the Iranians do, but the Russian, the Chinese are, I think, particularly good at it, on Twitter, on elsewhere, basically ramping up fake news and false stories in order to incite Americans. And part of that false information is conspiracy theories, including conspiracy theory that has really upended the life of this woman who serves in the US military, who the Chinese, an official in the Chinese foreign minister has actually accused her of being the agent that brought coronavirus into China, and they're actually accusing America of starting the coronavirus in a sense, an act of war against China. So there's a whole conspiracy theory that the coronavirus is a virus created by the American military and experimented on in the Chinese and it was brought into China by the Americans. And an official in the foreign minister, ministry of China, actually has been, I guess, tweeting about this. So, and by the way, their American conspiracy theory notes, there are plenty of those who have caught on to this. And I think they actually, I think the conspiracy theory that America did it, and this particular woman did it, started in the US and then picked up by the Chinese and reinforced by the Chinese. But I think the origin is some conspiracy theory website nut case here in the US, starting it, and then the Chinese reinforcing it. But the Chinese have a massive propaganda machine, they, you know, they have to, they're an authoritarian regime, and they have to do it in their own country. And as a consequence, they're trying to shape public opinion, not just in the United States, but primarily, I would say, in the rest of the world. They want to make sure that the rest of the world views China as the victim, and views China as the savior, as the savior. China is going to come up with the best treatment. China is going to come up with a vaccine, which they might. China is is is dealt with us well. China had few deaths. Look at the United States. Look what a mess they've made. Look what a disaster it's over there. Look at Italy, look at Europe, look at the European Union. Look at what a mess it all is. Hey, people, you should follow the Chinese way. So it's a propaganda part of the Chinese propaganda to try to convince the world that of the two models, the model of, you know, democracy, voting, representational government, and authoritarianism, that authoritarianism is the winning strategy. And they've been trying to export not a communist ideology, but an authoritarian ideology to the rest of the world. It's partially to justify to their own people. And partially this is how they gain allies. They gain allies and influence around the world by promoting authoritarianism around the world. So and and of course, America plays really well into this because the United States has fumbled as completely, you know, messed up its response to coronavirus. And as a, you know, the reaction to that is, whoa, the Americans can't do it. The Chinese did a better job. I mean, it's not clear that the Chinese did a better job partially because we don't know how many people actually died in China or actually had the virus in China because of misinformation. But that's the story that the world is hearing. And that's a story I think a lot of people are integrating the same thing. Same thing happened during the financial crisis. And I'll talk about this. I think the beginning of the shift in China towards even greater authoritarianism and towards viewing themselves as a clear alternative model to the United States. I think all of that started in the financial crisis. The financial crisis where, which originated in the United States was caused by the United States, caused by a financial, you know, financial markets seemingly, but really regulations and controls of the federal government, but was viewed by the world as a failure of the United States. And more broadly, the financial crisis was viewed as finding it as a failure of capitalism. And China said, oh, we don't want that. If that's what capitalism is, that's a failure. And of course, remember what the response was of the Bush administration. We're going to have to abandon capitalism in order to save it. We're going to have to bail out the banks in order, you know, to save capitalism. We're going to have to pump huge amounts of money into the economy to save capitalism. We're going to have to do all these anti-capitalist things in order to save capitalism. So it's not like there's a defender of capitalism out there. To counter the story coming out of China, which is, look, capitalism failed. What you should really adopt is our system, our program. We're much more stable. We don't have all this nonsense. Now, of course, that's not really even the right story, even for China, because China went through a devastating time during the financial crisis. But it never, it won't admit it in it, because it's authoritarian, can frame the story the way they want to frame the story. So China is covering up. China is providing false information, fake news, conspiracy theories. Some of it is just a knee-jerk reaction to Trump, who complimented China early on, then turned against China, then was involved in conspiracy theories about China, then now is saying maybe there isn't a China trade deal, and his people are saying maybe there is a China trade deal, and nobody knows if there's a China trade deal. So part of this is you've got this guy in a White House that this is the way he operates. Let's play the same game. But part of it is just the nature of authoritarianism. What is authoritarianism? What authoritarian regimes have to do in order to survive? What are they skilled at doing in order to survive? Well, the skill that coverups, typically covering up their failures, because they don't want their own people to know about their failures. They're very, very skilled at false information, at fake news, as pretending they're very, very skilled with conspiracy theories, because nothing they do can be bad. Nothing bad that happens can be their fault. So they have to create an enemy, and in China the enemy is periodically the Japanese, and often it's the Americans, and sometimes it's the Muslims in Western China, but there has to be some external force to justify whatever failures happen. It can't be the fault of the central government. The central government is infallible. If it's fallible, then maybe we should replace it. And finally, they're very good at censoring opposition voices. Whether those opposition voices are talking about representational government, or whether they're talking about freedom of speech, or whether they're talking about, hey, there's a virus here, and you're not handling it like the doctor in the heroic doctor Wuhan, who got his wrist slapped for speaking out about the virus, and ended up dying from the virus. And then the numerous other people who are suspected of having just disappeared, who spoke up against the regime in the context of the virus. But this is the nature of authoritarianism. There's nothing different about China than any other authoritarian regime. This is how they function, and this is how they must function, otherwise they will not survive. They cannot exist. In the light of the truth, authoritarianism crumbles, authoritarianism melts, it disappears. Authoritarianism is only built, can only build, can only survive, on a foundation of lies, and deceptions, and misinformation, and cover-ups, and conspiracy theories, and censorship. And that's why they do it. They do it because it's the only mechanism by which they can survive, and they have, they place no value on individual life, or on individual rights, and so on. Now what makes the China case so sad is that there was a real opportunity for this to go in a different path. And I've said this before, but there was a period in China in the, I think late 1990s, mid to late 1990s, and into 2000s, and really probably until about 2009, 2010, when China seemed to be on the path, not only for massive economic liberalization, which they actually did, and opening up the economy and providing kind of a freedom, economic freedom, that to some extent we don't even have here. But it seemed like they were also opening up to more freedom of speech, more internal debate, more acceptance of opposition ideas, of opposing ideas, more openness to bringing in, for example, speakers to speak about capitalism in Ayn Rand, and actually party officials going to those speeches as they determined, and others I know in kind of the free market movement, who were regular speakers in China in those days. And I'd say that continued probably really, I think looking back, it probably started changing in after the financial crisis, and it certainly started changing with Xi coming to power. But it really started changing about four years ago, when a campaign to try to silence opposition views started, and really, you know, it's gotten worse and worse and worse every single year. The police state aspect of the authoritarian nature of the Chinese regime just became worse and worse and worse over the last four or five years. And today, opposition voices are muted. They're afraid or they're in prison. But there's very little opposition within China that's vocal. I know the people that are opposed, so they're there. They haven't gone anywhere. They are muted. They are not allowed to speak. And of course, the Chinese people have not stood up to the authorities. They've not rebelled, have not done a second Tiananmen Square, and we'll get to Tiananmen Square in a minute, because they bought into the story. And the story has been that the Chinese authorities have told them. The story has been, look, China's a big country, lots of different people. It's a crazy place. The only way we can get economic success, the only way you, the people, can become rich is if we stay authoritarian. It's if we control things. So give us, leave us the control. Let us remain the sole rulers. And what we promise you is that you will get rich. You will become middle class. You will gain wealth. You will gain a better life. And that's the devil's bargain. Take our money or take the money that you are producing, right? And leave us alone, right? And you know, I think to a large extent that works. I remember as far back as 2000, I think it was four, first time I was in China. I was speaking to an engineer in China. And I said, yeah, it was 2004 because I was, it was probably October because I was going back or maybe September because I was going back to vote in the US election. So I remember that. So I said, don't you want more of a voice in politics? Don't you want a more representative government? And he said, why do I care? He said, as long as I can get richer every year, as long as my standard of living goes up, as long as my quality of life goes up, what do I need to vote for? And that's a bargain. I think a lot of people, particularly coming out of severe oppression of communism and the Mao, it's a bargain a lot of people would take. I want to be richer every year. I want to be economically freer every year. I want to be able to pursue my economic freedom. I want to be able to make a lot of money. I want to be able to buy the stuff I want. I want to be able to travel around the world. I don't care about voting. I don't really care that much about even expressing my opinions about politics. And in no, and from 2004 on, my general sense was, and this is the sense people in China told me, is you could speak your mind. As long as you didn't directly criticize the Communist Party, you could speak your mind of particular issues. I mean, different provinces were a little different. But generally, there, and I spoke about this, remember, both my books say in Chinese, Free Market Revolution, was published in Chinese. Equal is unfair, that book back there, was published in Chinese. All of Ayn Rand's books were published in Chinese. And the only one that they hesitated about was capitalism, not an idea, because there was something in it critical of Mao. So as long as you didn't criticize the Chinese party, you were pretty much left alone. And under those circumstances, the people left a party alone. The problem is that that, I think, is starting to break down. There is no question that there was a lot of anger in Wuhan, Wuhan, sorry Wuhan, over the government's response to COVID. A lot of people have died. And the way they were treated, they were not happy with. I'm sure there is a lot of angst within China about the horrible, horrible economic conditions that are in China today. People's quality of life, standard of living, are really threatened. Economic production is down, GDP is down, imports are down, because consumption is down, because people either don't have money or don't want to spend money because they rather save it because of an uncertain future. Fewer jobs, massive job destruction in China because of coronavirus. And because, by the way, not only coronavirus in China, and this is my idea about why would they want to export this? Because by exporting this, they shut down the U.S. economy. By shutting down the U.S. economy, they've shut down and destroyed millions of jobs in China. Because we're not buying their stuff. So it makes no sense for them to export this virus and cause themselves economic harm. And you don't have to be, you know, super knowledgeable in economics to realize that that's going to happen and the Chinese know enough to know that that's exactly what's going to happen. So the Chinese are suffering significantly economically. Now they started economically slowing down before the coronavirus because of the consequences of all the stuff they did coming out of the financial crisis. They did a stimulus package that makes ours look tame and small in comparison. Stimulus packages suppress economic growth long-term. They suppress investment. They distort investment. They keep bad companies alive and restrict or, you know, make it very difficult for the kind of creative destruction where bad companies go out of business, good companies coming to existence, that that process happens. So I'd say over the last 10 years, the Chinese economy has not been doing as well as the Chinese pretend. Not enough people have come out of poverty. Not enough people have become rich. Well, many have. And I think China has grown more and more and more afraid. You see so many of our leaders and so many of the commentators and so many of the people I see on TV think that China is this confident giant that is assured of its own capabilities and is engaged in the world from a position of self-esteem. I think it's exact other way around. I think China is deeply, and the Chinese Communist Party is deeply afraid of its own people. I think it's deeply afraid of a revolution. They're deeply afraid of losing power. And they come at the world from a position of massive insecurity. So yes, they're aggressive, but they're aggressive, you know, from a position of weakness, not a position of strength. China is not strong in any dimension. It's not strong militarily. It's not strong economically. It couldn't survive economically without the rest of the world having a robust economy and buying their products. Because they don't have freedom with China. And even economic freedom that they had that produced the wealth that got them to where they are today that has also been in decline over the last couple of years. More and more central planning. More and more control from the top. More and more Xi dominating decision-making. And as a consequence, China, I think, is losing ground. Is weak. Is afraid. Is insecure. And more than anything, it is afraid of its own people. It's not afraid of the United States. Nobody is afraid of the United States. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism, and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. Using the super chat, and I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you stepped forward and actually supported the show for the first time, so I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity, go to Iranbrookshow.com slash support, or go to subscribestar.com, Iranbrookshow, and make kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going. I'm not sure when the next...