 Hello everyone. I'm Jim Garrison. I want to welcome you to this session of Humanity Rising as we begin a five-day program on China with the theme that China is not our enemy. As we begin the program, I think it's important for us to set a little bit of context, which we'll do today. I want to begin by just recalling that the United States now is escalating conflict with two superpowers simultaneously. At Humanity Rising we have been tracking the escalating tensions and in fact proxy war between the United States and Russia in Ukraine. A conflict that is getting more and more dangerous day by day with an increasing probability of a nuclear exchange. The world has not been at this level of danger of a nuclear war since the Cuban missile crisis in October of 1962. And that is something that all of us need to take in as we contemplate how we live our lives, what issues we should be addressing. We need to bear in mind that the conflict between these two superpowers is escalating in increasingly dangerous ways. At the same time, the United States is escalating conflict with China with increasingly specific rhetoric articulated by several of the people in the U.S. military about the increasing probability of war against China, one general predicting war by no later than 2025 over Taiwan. So we find ourselves in a situation of an extraordinary contradiction. All of us are aware that we should be dealing with escalating climate turbulence as global warming and the ecological chaos that ensues is getting more and more accelerated, more and more severe everywhere around the world. At no time in human history has it been more urgently necessary for not only the superpowers but every nation on earth to come together in enhanced cooperation to deal with escalating climate disaster, which is affecting all of us. But that's not what's happening. Instead, the United States has chosen to escalate tensions with Russia, with China as part of a global strategy articulated 30 years ago by the neoconservatives that the United States would use the unipolar moment with the collapse of the Soviet Union to ensure global primacy, global supremacy, and would take any action necessary to ensure that no other power on earth could challenge the primacy of the United States. And that is what is now being played out in the escalating tensions with Russia and China. We've had two summits on Ukraine, and this is our first summit on China. We've convened these summits with Code Pink, one of the most dynamic and effective peace organizations in the United States and around the world. So we want to welcome all the Code Pink listeners and all of you in the humanity arising global community in over 130 countries. And however you're listening through Facebook or LinkedIn or YouTube and through our live streaming partners, we want to welcome you as humanity rising seeks to elevate Code Red issues. But to do so in a way that not only informs but catalyzes collaborative action so that we, the people of the world, can not only know what's really going on, but also can take the kind of actions that are required to compel our governments to remedy situations that only the governments in the yen can solve. And the issue of war and peace, the issue of whether we're going to use nuclear weapons or not, are those kinds of critical, ultimately governmental issues. And the sad tragedy of our world is that our governments are not living up to their responsibilities and therefore the accountability to ensure that they do resides with we, the people. It's my pleasure to introduce now Jodi Evans, the one of the co-founders of Code Pink who's been co-moderating these summits with me over the last six months or so. She will be talking about the plans for the week, setting context for what we're going to be considering, introducing our guests, and then we'll circle back for a discussion for the balance of the time. But Jodi, thank you so much for everything that you've done with us, and I turn the program over to you. Thank you, Jim. And good morning, everyone. Welcome back to our summits on peace. Yes, China is not our enemy. That was the title. I decided to name this campaign because I was listening to a lot of lies and hate on China that was surprising me and a lot of propaganda. And I realized, oh, this is just like the Iraq war all over again. It had the same pattern. It was happening in the same way. They were the same exaggerations and lies that a normal person shouldn't actually take in. And my response is, but China is not our enemy. We must cooperate for the concerns we have on the planet, for the people and the planet, especially with climate change. We must be in cooperation with China. So that's how this started. And I want to thank you for being here because it really is how we build a movement is that we ourselves get the confidence of our own voice to be attuning for peace. There is so much misinformation out there that people just want to crawl under a hole because it's argument and lies and they're being filled with hate and distrust. And it is up to each one of us to be an antidote to that. And so peace is never about arguing. Peace is about offering different positions and not being attached to yours, except it is important that it enter the room because this propaganda that we're seeing on Ukraine and on China is deep. And it's what people hold on to. We have to have a lot of compassion for the people have intentionally with effort and money. Their hearts and minds, I say, have been weaponized for war. And we have to have patience with that. So what gives us strength is knowing other things that are stronger stones to stand on. I find the lines lies are actually easy to crack through once you give truth, because truth is is actually a stronger standing place. And people want that. So I want to thank you for being here for wanting to learn wanting to know. And I hope wanting them to share because that's as much as that's the next most important thing after listening and learning. So I want to just give you an overview for the week. There's so much about China and about this campaign that I want to structure it in a way that you had what I felt you needed to at least start a deeper dive in. So the campaign was launched three and a half years ago. So there's a lot of information on the website and later I'll post some links. Tomorrow, today, we're just going to do an overview and we've got Wei who's going to talk to us both about what it was like with the pivot to Asia being in China and then what it was like to be Asian American Asian in in the West going to college. So we can we can get that really intimate look. Tomorrow, we will look into China, the culture, history, political structure. Wednesday, we'll look at the propaganda and how that has already paying people paying the cost of this war and where that propaganda comes from. And then Thursday, we'll hear from Asian Americans who are paying the price. And Friday, we'll try to answer more of your questions and then how we can all be tools for peace and what's happening, what you can engage in, what you can share. It's a huge subject. China is a huge subject. So first, starting with China is not our enemy. China is beautiful. It has a 3000 year culture. And that culture at the core of it holds peace at the very core of it is how do we get along. Confucius has a lot to do with that, which was really at a time where that arose to answer the question of how do we live together. And so, you know, how do you live in relationship, in respect of, in the understanding of the whole, which is a very hard thing for western people to understand because we live such individualistic lives. And we kind of are in a pool of narcissism because that's even what the media talks about. But what is it to be related in a way that the earth, your country, your community, and your family are as much a part of you as you are is something I think it's a stretch for us to understand. But that's been there. And also there's been this commitment that those who rule a country are responsible to the people. So that's also very old and expected. So, you know, like the under heaven, it needs to feel like you're under heaven, or the leaders aren't doing their job. I also want to say I was just in Dali and I'm going to flow through this with having just spent a month in China. And one of the things I learned was that 1200 years ago in this place where there was leaders of this whole area of China's past. At some point, the the ruler would leave his his post of as a ruler and move into the temple and become a monk. And I thought, wow, in this time, where people in power in the United States, I don't know about the rest of the world, but I have to say in the United States, they will not relinquish power. We have a senator who won't let go. It's cocaine this power. And I don't think it's meant to be that way. It's been so created in the structure that it's really just crack cocaine. They won't let go of it. And I thought it was interesting that they move the even the value of philosophy and the connection to that which helps us be healthy. Is it the core of this culture? Now, it is also a culture that's in modernity. It is complex. It is enormous. It's almost a billion and a half people. So to say China is also insane. It is made up of many, many ethnic Chinese minorities. It's made up with vast differences of bioclimates, bioregions, histories, different, even smaller histories because it is a collection of places. So what's happening in one can have little to do with what's happening in another. And that is still true. What it's like to live in the freezing cold of Northern China and the balmy sheets of Southern China create even different personalities as we know this globally. So to say China is, we need to hold in our mind the vastness of also diversity. So when we started this campaign, what I recognized was that there was a lot of propaganda and it was targeted at the progressive movement, my movement, the part that my community, the place that I'm part of. And it was definitely weaponizing the beautiful hearts and minds, the compassion and the empathy of those that are progressives. And so as the first year I felt like this community of China is not our enemy, we really spent in educating that we couldn't let those we love be used for war. And the State Department in the Pentagon and throwed out what I call a lot of weeds to grab people. And then if you started doing the weeds and talk about how that wasn't true, you got kind of grabbed in an argument, which I didn't feel was useful. And then it was like, let's just move up to China is not our enemy and stay out of the weeds. That is enough. So we did about a year of work of pulling the progressives off from being used for war. And that took a lot of education, a lot of one on one education. They literally wanted Ilana more to be the poster child for this going to war with China. So reminding people that there is no greater violation of human rights than war. There is no greater violation to the planet than war. There you know, like all these places that you're being dragged into the weeds. War. We're forgetting the costs of war. We have forgotten the cost of war. We get a lot of manipulation. We get a lot of hate. But when do we actually have to sit for a day and really be with what the costs of war are? And I know, you know, Jim and I talked to a lot of people in Ukraine. We are not getting this in our media. We're getting driven to war. We're getting manipulated to war. But the costs of war, I think would help us change that the capacity that we have to be dragged in and be used by. So this campaign is about there is a beautiful place. It is complicated as we are. It has as many complications as the United States. But who are we to tell it who to be? What we should be is saying we all have to get along on this planet that is fragile. We need to be cooperating on climate change. We need to be cooperating on poverty. We need to be cooperating on how we live together instead of creating more wars and more devastation and more death and more people homeless but with the refugees and those at home because we're taking United States taxpayer money to fund this. And they want to go back to that funding piece. The beginning when Bush and family, Bush and friends were pushing for this war on rock that kind of brings me into this story. They told us that it was going to cost no more than $200 billion. That was what Rumsfeld was saying to members of Congress. The 20 years of the war on terror cost $22 trillion of taxpayer money. $22 trillion. Not only does it create a culture of weaponization and war and hate and other creating an enemy but it has robbed that $22 trillion from the needs of the people of the United States and literally undermined the infrastructure. So I want to talk about what China did in that same 20 years. It didn't invest very little in its military. Its budget for the military did not raise and it spent its money building the infrastructure for its people and for the planet. It built infrastructure that would take down their contribution to climate change. China I think is the only country I think maybe there's three others that have come to where they agreed and in Paris. So they took that money and instead decided to serve the people on the planet and in the same period of time they took 800 million people out of poverty. So you know let's look at that also and then we have the United States under Obama pivoting to Asia and you know that pivot had many reasons but mostly that the United States could see that China was growing as an economic power. It had failed in the Middle East. It had basically destroyed a lot of the Middle East and with that northern Africa it didn't want to talk about it anymore. It didn't want to be engaged anymore. It's just like let's just move to fresh territory and so it started you know upping the military and I just want to say the pivot to Asia is not just about China and we should remember that and with Ukraine we talked about in the summit we've watched ricks rise but it was a pivot to China India and Indonesia which represent close to four billion people on the planet and so it's a market it's a power it's a power of you know them all coming into their strength as as countries really spending time strength to comment on leadership it's to comment on the country itself the country the people have moved into modernity and have moved into ways to make their citizens happier and that's true for China India and Indonesia that doesn't mean all the people are happier but it it it's where we are in the United States there's a lot of unhappiness you have to look at there's four billion people that are happier than people in the United States pretty much so just kind of understand what was what's happening it was a lot about the economy and a lot about having military control over a place that the Obama and those in power didn't feel like they had enough control and for much of that time they deployed the State Department and many people into engaging themselves in summits in meeting with the governments and creating partnerships and but I want to say it's where the rules-based order kind of started seeping up you have to be part of our rules-based order as we've seen Biden kind of embrace fully but the United States has 250 or more bases surrounding China and that costs a lot to the people there near those bases in those bases the planet that it destroys the pristine ecosystems it destroys and I want to say it could pink we've we've been engaged at at trying to stop some of them including the one in Jeju Island in South Korea because it was one of the most beautiful pristine ecosystems you've ever seen and they decided to destroy it with a military base so this pivot to Asia is pretty ugly in its expression so you know we've seen with the Ukraine war also that NATO that belongs you know in in Europe is also pivoting to Asia and we've got NATO moving to around China so that which has nothing to do with peace and should have nothing to do with Asia also I wanted to say there China does have one other base it's in Djibouti but that was because the United States asked them to participate in anti-piracy operations and to build that base now with the US bringing weapons to Taiwan China of course it has to respond by upping its military spending which it had resisted doing but when you start to you know a war on someone they have to race to meet you so this is part of the problem we don't want to have happen because now with US wanting to spend another couple of trillion dollars on new nuclear weapons what can China do but meet that any leader in another country that's watching the military rise to you know and threatening more on it general say that's going to happen in two years you have to respond and I think that's one of the crimes of this US war on China is that it's just creating more weapons on the planet which we should not have the other thing that we saw at the beginning of this is the propaganda creates xenophobia the heat and the lies of which there are many which is on purpose which I think is another crime to hate on another to create an enemy of another how juvenile how five-year-old you know this is this is you know I mean actually you learn not to do that in kindergarten this is you know distorted and and really grown-ups a behavior grown-ups should not be engaged in because it affects and we saw very early on the effects of this with a rise of like 3000 percent in xenophobia in violence against Asians and I want to say Asians because in the United States was people first of all know nothing about Asia but also know don't know what country you're from when you're Asian and so that meant that everyone that was Asian is pulled under the umbrella and are vulnerable to the attacks to the xenophobic hate attacks and you know in talking about this I just want to bring up also that in the West we don't recognize how much our thinking is imperialist thinking even those of us who are anti-imperialists and there's a whole China and Asia are different cultures than the West and we constantly project our own culture and our own thinking on Asia to try to think about it and it's wrong we miss by by projecting the the violence and hate and militarism of the West that we are so steeped in on China we miss the beauty and we miss what it is what it is not you know what it look the great book about never going to war is from China so you know it's we we we project ourselves instead of really looking to understand and I hope the part of this is that it what's your curiosity about what is China what really is China and not what is the propaganda of China or what has China been in the last before the last decade China changes faster probably than any place on the planet I don't I don't know of a place that changes faster but when I when I was a kid um when you were eating your meal my parents used to say you have to finish because there's a starving child in China that you know in 1970 it was one of the poorest countries on the planet it is now neck and neck with the United States I met with women who remember their grandmother's bound feet so I mean just take a minute to think about what that must feel like in a psyche in a in a in a human that is experiencing that rapid change and I can only relate it to coming of age you know going to school in 1970 and um talking to my grandmother where you know from automobiles to computers had happened in her lifetime from telephones and think about what it felt like in the United States then where anything felt possible and there was a sense of kind of buoyancy I relate that to China right now it's like when so much has changed and yet the dark side hasn't quite moved in yet um and don't think China doesn't understand there's a dark side to where they are and they they are trying to take steps that I think we didn't take in the United States that understand power the cost of power that understand and respect that um you know power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely that understand you know one of the things China does is it learns it pays attention and learns it knows it's made a lot of mistakes and it's 70 years into an experiment it that you know ends in I think 49 it's in an experiment it understands it's in an experiment United States is in an experiment I think sometimes we forget that we forget to pivot we forget to learn from our mistakes it's trying to learn from its mistakes it's learned from other people's mistakes so it and it learns in an interesting way like one of the things I learned while we've been doing this campaign is like in five different countries uh cities uh cities are as big as countries in China it will try five different solutions to uh five different ways to address a problem and then watch what happens and then you know take the one that has the best results and then everybody does it but so think about that like how does this work how is it affecting the people um listening I mean one of the things it does is listen to the people uh there's a film that was made about how they took everyone out of poverty it was a um uh a person in Wall Street that wanted to understand that and he hired an Emmy award-winning filmmaker out of DC and took him to China they took footage came back edited made the film got PBS to produce it showed it once uh people watching felt it made Beijing look too good and so it's been censored um so you know uh in it you understand like how they make things happen and it's on a very intimate level direct democracy is happening when you watch this how they took people out of poverty but it you know the a responsibility to care for the people uh is is an interesting thing to witness and I also encourage everyone to go there have their own experience because it is vast and the and the experiences will be so different um so that's you know a little bit of an an entry I I also um want to talk about um Taiwan a little and this pivot this last 20 years of propaganda in Taiwan of of the commitment the United States has had and we heard Lincoln come back with it again from his last trip that there is one China and that when the United States starts um invading the idea of one China and trying to change it it doesn't work out well for the people didn't work out for well for the people in Tibet when the CIA armed Tibet taught them to go to war and tried to get them to be the frontline of war on China it doesn't work out in Shenzhen when the United States goes to the king of Saudi Arabia and asks them to radicalize the Muslims it doesn't work out well for Taiwan already and they have back channeled to the leadership of the US to say shut up stop lying about China invading Taiwan every person in China knows that China is not going to bomb itself but you can get you know you can get the Americans to believe anything so the Taiwanese say you can't do that anymore because now that's got major contracts being canceled it is affecting its economics so let's just look at you know what happens when a country is used as a tool for war on another country Ukraine Taiwan is watching that and does not want to be Ukraine so you know we'll we'll hear more about Taiwan from a professor later in the week but um it's also one of the weeds but it's also a place that we need to understand as people in the United States even though Biden says yes we believe in one China policy and Blinken comes back and says we will have nothing to do with Taiwan independence they are still all you know those are words the behaviors matter and the behaviors are already hurting people including the hate that they're driving so um I've given you a little you know ground to walk on um and there's what I'd really like to do is now bring in Wei Wei you has been code pink China's not our enemy campaign coordinator and a lot of the things that you see on her site um she's created she was born in ancient China um a port near Beijing and has lived in the United States since her high school years when she was at university she was after a degree in sociology and international studies and conducted an independent research project on neocolonial bias in the global north academia she's worked with several non-profit organizations serving women racial minorities and other progressive causes she's passionate about anti-imperialism and peacebuilding work and um also is a vegan chef in her free time so Wei if you can um bring this bring us into your story thank you so much Jody um everyone good morning uh if you're in the western hemisphere uh so like Jody mentioned um I was actually born in China um and since the day we're talking about the 10 years of pivot to war um on China um let's just go back in time a little bit and um to the beginning of obama administration's pivot to Asia um so I was actually living in China at the time I was 12 years old um and uh the and it was also I remember it was like the summer holiday right between my sixth grade and the and seventh grade when I was supposed to start um junior high school and um that was the summer when I first got um politicized essentially um that was one eventful summer that really opened up my eyes on a lot of international issues um mainly because there was this um the what was on everyone's mind at the time was this um territorial dispute between China and Japan um with East China Sea and some islands um and this is like a very like this is kind of like a weed like Jody mentioned and there's like a lot of historic um issues and between the relations of uh there's a lot of historical issues in the relations between China and Japan and I'm just not going to get into that but I also remember that because there's so much history between the two countries there from um the Japanese occupation of China in the 20th century or the Japanese occupation of like much of East Asia in 20th century and also the Sino-Japan war um back in the 1800s um there's like just a lot going on between the countries but then I remember seeing in the news and that was a questioning why does the United States have something to say about this? Why is the United States being a provocateur in the situation and just escalating tension? Why is the United States sending warships all the way across the Pacific Ocean to have these military exercises with Japan? And it really just made me question about like what is the whole thing about is there like an agenda behind it and then um I was just so confused and so afraid that entire summer because like like I mentioned again it was the summer holiday so I got a lot of free time and what I ended up spending this free time I'm supposed to enjoy is that I just stayed at home and watched the news like the entire day um and I remember um the there was like a dedicated news channel right and they would have like a news program every hour and they are pretty much repeating the same thing because you are not going to get any news um unless there's update but then I would still watch every repetition of that program at the top of every hour because I was just so afraid that maybe like the war has already started and then I just don't know what's going on and it was just again just like a very fearful very confusing summer and I'm just questioning myself like why is the United States involved and what is its agenda to create fear and panic um among people and among like little kids like me um and then a couple of years later I moved to the States and then a lot of like struggle with racism also as well as the unxenophobia but then um like Jody mentioned in a couple of days work on the talk about like US foreign policy and also how it affects Asian Americans um but um my um story I have like the the most um memorable thing for me it was definitely during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and we saw in the news a lot of these um anti-Asian attacks that are happening um just randomly in the streets and also a lot of them are targeting the elderly in the community which is just very upsetting um and I was also just very fearful about um just going outside and that I might be the target of the next racist attack um so I remember during that time because I was so afraid and then I was just trying to think of anything anything that would keep myself safe and what I did was that um because I was in college so every time I went outside I would make sure to put on like a t-shirt or sweatshirt with my college's name on it so it goes like Jacksonville or like go JU just like so trying to like really Americanize myself and just dim down like my um identity so that people would just hopefully ignore me and so that I could stay safe and looking back that's just like such silly thinking but then at a time I really thought that that's what's going to keep me safe from all of these racist attacks um and recently I um I was I was hanging out with my friend and her boyfriend just flew in town to visit her and her boyfriend is actually Afghan and um when he flew into town he was wearing this t-shirt that has like an American flag on his chest uh so he did that to avoid getting harassed at a TSA or at the airport and then I remember thinking I get it now I'm I'm East Asian and then this is like a Middle Eastern uh man but like I get that feeling now and going back to what Jodi said um we saw we are seeing this propaganda and also this preparing for war to China not unlike what we saw um in Iraq 20 years ago and I can tell you from like this individual experience it really is like that um and we just sort of had like this bonding moment like even though like me East Asian and then him Middle Eastern and we just have like this um interesting experience of like people that look like us are being attacked um as this preparation for war going on um and um yeah so today I just really want to like share my experience and um also thank you so much for like stand sharing like all the um links in a chat and I'll hand back to Jodi and I just hope you all like really take home with this experience like this this um my story with you is just that all of this preparation of war is really creating fear for people who are has not who wants nothing to do with them way thank you so much Jodi thank you so so much um you're turning everything most people know on its head thank you thank you I'd like to start with you way um what Jodi described about how China organizes itself and the way that they're interpreting uh the democratic principles of governance uh is is very unique and I would love to hear from you as someone who grew up in China what was your personal experience of the Chinese polity you know we're consistently told that it's a dictatorship Joe Biden called Xi Jinping a dictator just a few days ago that it's a totalitarian system that it's a police state but what was your experience as just an individual growing up over there and how would you evaluate the Chinese form of governance in relationship to what Jodi was saying yeah um so while I was in China I was again just like a child and just like really growing up but then my experience was really just that this um democratic process um and the sanctity associated with it is just like so deeply instilled in my mind um when I was starting school um actually we will have like election within our class um every month so how my school did it was that um every month there's going to be an election for the best students of the month basically um we had around like 30-ish students in my class so we would elect you every month um and you are just elected by your peers right your teacher doesn't get a vote on it your parents don't get a vote on it on vote on it it's really just like students um voting on who they think deserve the title of the best students and it's not even like you're voting for your best friends it's always every month it's like the kids who get the good grades or the kids who are well behaved in class they are always getting elected um and I remember there was one time I think I was around like third grade maybe um it's so interesting because um on that day we're supposed to have like an art class um and I so happened um I brought some like extra art supplies that day and then I was like sharing it with my classmates um because I was just you know being nice and like being nice to other kids um and then our teacher walked into the classroom and seen me passing out stuff and that was also like an election day when we were supposed to vote for best students our teacher was like that's bribing that's not okay and then I just got so scared I was like oh no I did something so terrible so really this like this like democratic value this like process um like you learn about it at a very young age you get to participate in it as soon as you start school at six years old and there's some sort of like sanctity associated with it like you just it just it just can't be tainted you can't you obviously you can't bribe people and then you can't do any like thing that will make you suspicious of bribing um yeah that was just that was just like my experience like you you learn about this whole election at a very young age and then you get to practice it and also everyone's being fair thank you thank you so much Jody I'd love to hear a little bit more because you just came back from China uh tell us a little bit about your trip over there and in particular what you were learning about how the Chinese society at every level self-organizes itself around various issues and concerns because I think that is a sort of a foreign concept to the way we understand democracy in the United States which is an election every two or four years we don't have a sense of democracy at a family level or at a community level and the Chinese have developed that over the eons of time and I think our audience would be very interested in in a deeper dive into your understanding of how they self-organize well so I also just want to comment on wasting you know what we was talking about voting I don't think Americans understand that in the last election in China 800 million people voted which is a larger percentage than people who vote in US elections so you know in the sense of like the value of elections um also that value and that the political system is like the US system it's you elect to select so at the very end the leadership is selected in this I think with more people actually in the process what we have 535 that select the president of the United States I think it's a bigger number in China I think it's 2000 and something so it's the same elect to select process that we have in the United States so just want to like when we to understand that there's also two structures there's the party and then there's the the running of the country so the cabinet falls under the prime minister and that's like the military how things run that's like one thing and the parties have totally different thing and that's she's the head of the party he's not the head of the country I also want to say the party is only 90 million members so um you know just uh people think it's a dictatorship and a monoculture and the politic the poly of China is more diverse than the United States so just to say that you know that it's got all kinds of things in its threads you know and so at the very core of how the country run is run is the same way it's been for 2500 years and that is locally and so you know like I talked about the diversity um I can like my experience of this was my husband who lives in Beijing Shanghai in Sanya and his experience of COVID the time of COVID it depended on where you lived as your experience the other thing is people talk about the China shutdown I think five cities in China were locked down which totaled maybe 100 million people it's a country of a billion five so we also are fed a very narrow thread of what that COVID lockdown looked like to most of China there was no lockdown um and to and I also want to say remember when I talked about the experiment the experiment was happening in Shanghai and another experience was happening in another city five different cities were doing it in five different ways Shanghai was the worst and that was in three months to figure something out and I would say that probably contributed to like okay we have to open up you know and may I say that that looked like a failure but he became the prime minister of the country after that and I want to you know let's look at that like because why because he was willing to take the hardest task to fulfill the hardest task I hope everybody understand something and was rewarded for it so you know failure is a big deal in China it's like when you take on what's going to be the failure it's like you're seen as like having courage having commitment like being willing to do what has to be done for everybody to learn and and like I think that's I found that super interesting because I was like oh my god this guy's gonna get canned and then he becomes the prime minister I'm like oh I don't understand anything so I you know I'm constantly reminded that my US mind does not do well and as I try to figure out the so I think you know which you know I'm you know goes to Biden and Blinken having no clue what's going on in China or having capacity to communicate and I know that it's also very their immaturity and and manipulation and bullying don't play well with Chinese culture or characters so what happens is that and and again 2500 years of experience what is real in your life happens locally so people are more connected to what's happening locally they're part of that you're part of your community you have a responsibility to it somebody's like a community leader but you listen to them that's where because they're all going to do it differently depending on the neighborhood you live in what's needed who's old who's young what the pushback's going to be because Chinese people there's a lot of pushback there's a lot of like I don't like that I don't want that so it happens locally and it happens in community and you're engaged you go to meetings and once a week you're you know where the poly happens is locally and we see that with the taking the you know people out of poverty it happened first person to person and then it was about the community and then what they delivered was infrastructure not money you know money was the last thing I don't know way if you wanted it seemed like in the chat somebody wanted to see the film if you could share that I think that inside that film you get to see that the poly goes deep into what is the relationship what is the personal experience because it's about serving the people it's not about what is my idea and how do I go off and do it it's always iterating also did that work didn't that work and I think one of the interesting things out of the film on taking people out of poverty is the understanding that that will you're playing with that thank you way you're playing with that problem all the time and so you know coming from Venice Beach where I have 5000 unhoused people in my neighborhood to a country where I couldn't find a homeless person and I said where you know there must be homeless people take me to them and you know people looked at me crazy like of course people fall through the fabric of society but they're picked up and maybe somebody's homeless for a day and at the most two before the community picks them up and they're taken to what's needed for them and so you know just that concept of building a fabric of society that cares for everyone and then the other thing is is that first of all like China is so clean I decided there must be two million gardeners because the gardens are lush and you're what happens to you and I'm a gardener so maybe that's you know I'm you know deeply moved by it and another way but I I really feel what happens to us when we see beauty is peace that I think it takes our heart to peace and so to be in a place that cares so deeply about beauty is profound and and then to find what the community does in that beauty I live across from the park and be in in Shanghai and I just always go down like every hour to see what's happening in the park so in the morning there's a whole crowd and they're doing tai chi and then there's like I'm told I like have the folks there help me know what's going on there's then a whole bunch of parents come and they're doing matchmaking and they're bringing their kids and then you see their kids and there's like this whole matchmaking thing that happens and then there's always equipment in the park where people can exercise and you see all these you know retired people working on the machines knowing that they need to keep in shape keeping in shape and eating is a big thing you know like she's like all about like how do you eat you know because when you become modernized and and wealthier bad eating habits take form so they try to work on exercise and eating and then there's my favorite is that the old guys with their little tiny bird cages and their little tiny birds and they come and buy trade bird cages and birds and it's just like so beautiful and they're so adorable and so just like oh and then the game playing and you know and the women who just like have these crowds around them because they know how to play the game better and everybody's watching I can't follow it but it's just community happening and I you know that's steeped from the relationships you have from where you live that you know your neighbors that my friend tings talked about how much they loved the lockdown because out of that the neighbors got to know each other better everybody wasn't off running off to work and they created things that still exist about how they order their food to the building at a discount price and then they all share it and they've like got into that ordering thing that's continued so as we know you know through COVID that we learned what is essential and some of those patterns have continued some of those things have continued out of a lockdown with those in China so I hope that answered your question Tim oh beautiful beautiful beautiful way would you add anything to what Jody said I think Jody said everything beautifully well you know I can testify to that I was actually born in China in 1951 in in western Sichuan province right near the Tibetan border and then grew up until I was about 15 in Taiwan and I was always struck by the communal nature of Chinese society and the constant interactivity between parents and their kids and and families and compounds and just a constant chatter of a communal nature so that the individual is always identified relationally with a larger collective so I'm not surprised Jody that with 1.5 billion people there's no homelessness or that if there is homelessness it happens for a day or two before that collective closes in and begins to ameliorate whatever that situation is and that that individual and I think that's one of the reasons why Chinese civilization has lasted for as long as it has you know nearly four or five thousand years of continuous Chinese history and there's no country in the world that even comes close to that level of durability over time and one of the keys has been a collectivist communal understanding of the individual which is not a negation of the individual but an understanding just like in nature were identified not as separate but as relationally always within a larger whole that scales and it's the capacity of a society to hold the different levels of interactivity and identity that really marks longevity and that is one of the great teachers I think for not going to war and the reason why China if you compare it with the United States is is just a fraction of the hostilities that the United States has experienced and I'd like to turn to that whole domain and I'd like to fill out what you said a little bit with a comparison of the the US Chinese and also Russian military budgets because it was just released not long ago that the United States this year is spending more on its military than the next 10 countries combined the United States runs at about 800 billion dollars officially but there's another couple 200 250 billion that's in what they call the dark budget so you have a generally understood as a military budget by the United States of around a trillion dollars China is second and the official Chinese budget was under 300 million so the United States is spending three times the Chinese it's very important for the Chinese of five times the population with five times the population yeah yeah yeah yeah and it's also important to bear in mind that the Russian military budget was only 48 billion dollars so the United States is spending 20 times what the Russians are spending on their military and right now if you look at what's going on in Ukraine it's the combined military capacity of the United States and NATO going against Russia that is at the heart of the asymmetry in that conflict and is one of the reasons why the Russians keep saying we're going to keep it moderate but if you start overwhelming us we will use nuclear weapons and it is the lack of appreciation of the of the of the gravity of that on the part of most Americans that feeds this exuberance this irrational exuberance around war and if you correct me Jodi and and Wei but I if my understanding is that China went to war against Vietnam after the Vietnamese war for a very very brief period of time there were hostilities in Tibet but you could count I think the number of Chinese military operations on one hand yeah let's talk about provoking in a war you know so if there's we should I think this is an important thing to witness is that when provoked when things you know it wasn't they both came out of a provoking not out of a you know peace was happening and then provoking started happening yeah oh for sure sure just want to you know war is what the United States does on innocent people like to me I think if there's you know because people talk about peace like defending oneself um you know if we look at you know what happened with Putin and Ukraine it's like I don't want a war I don't want a war I don't want a war and if you get closer there's going to be a war and then if you continue to arm Ukraine it's I've got to come in before it's fully you know like you're going to force me to move there's you know I China when provoked will act to protect itself I would say that's most places so we really need to understand about provoking um and yeah yeah yeah yeah for sure horrific Ukraine is and it was that it was this did not have to happen and and that's the importance of this campaign that I really want to say is that provoking you know will cause I mean China has been through hell you know it's uh it's it's years of you know indignity forced on it by Europe and the United States and Japan um and just I saw also not the valuing I mean just also never being valued um are recognized for what you know so it provoked it will act and and it's shown that and I think that's important to know um that uh you know that the United States was part of that provoking into that oh for sure and I was raising it that if you think that provoked or not if you think of the Chinese using military maybe less than five times uh in the last uh 50 years I think the latest estimate is that the United States has used military action one way or another over 250 times in the last 30 years alone what the most important thing about this gym is is that every war that the US gets into the rich get richer so it loses the wars the country loses the war the people lose the war the people spend the money on the war and they get nothing back for it but the rich get richer so the US makes on war I mean look at the talk to people and Europe right now they are losing in this war but they are tied they are yoked to the United States so they're losing but the United States it wins in war including the civil war the rich got richer so China you know when we're talking about the philosophy that they run on it's a win-win philosophy you know everyone in China knows the it's like that philosophy that that part of your culture is like in how they relate it's like it's got to be win-win right and so they lose in war and so in the China mind war is a loose it's like you know it's in the art of war it's a lose that is in their culture and they actually do lose they don't they're not set up to make bank on war the United States is set up from the beginning to make bank on war and you know I I love that Bobby Kennedy jr is bringing you know really bringing up his uncle and his his race which for nothing else his race you know is raising up peace and one of the things his uncle knew because he listened to Eisenhower was the job of the president was to keep the break on the military congressional Eisenhower called it the congressional military industrial complex he knew he knew because when he became president and he saw what they had done to North Korea and then you know he created North Korea he cried he cried and said stop this you know we saw what happened with our dear Daniel Ellsberg who was with us in our first summit and has left this planet but you know in such dignity and grace you know exposing the lies of Vietnam and how horrific that was that it it turned the stomach of people who had been in that war so I think this is really important for us to know when we're being used by the State Department we're really being used by those who make a killing on killing and taking in that propaganda is just so you can be fodder for war also um I you know we look at war you can't in war till you end the war economy because war serves the war economy and I wanted to say since I brought Daniel into the room that I learned something from Daniel's death and being with him over those last three months of his dying the dignity and grace and the fierceness and so we look out and and you know I hear fears of I could say the folly of fretting and people fretting and climbing into their corners and oh my god oh my god in Dan's life he knew the truth about all of it about nuclear weapons about war about the violence of the culture about the society and its violence and he never lost his grace or his dignity and he never quit talking until his last breath and I just want to raise that up that you know no matter what happens to not he never went into fear he never got used by it he was just beauty dignity and grace till the very end and I I longed to follow in his footsteps because that's what we need right now it's not to be caught up in the fear not to be caught up in the separation but to know what we know and share it as a service to peace and he never stopped doing that so we come together in these you know with humanity rising for all of us to be a tuning pork I mean I hear things like things should be this way things should be that way it's us it is only us it is you know it's how we enter the world how we share with friends because you know when we started Sam was talking about a movement you know right now the movement for beasts is being silenced I just came from the halls of Congress I met with 30 members of Congress or did a teach-in in that many offices they it's like inside those halls of Congress they're not allowed to talk about peace they get buzz sod is as one said buzz sod for bringing up peace and inside of each office is an embedded member of the military that's called a military fellow in these offices that is at every meeting talking about how many more weapons we're going to buy and how much more what more we're going to be engaged in and they're I had one member of Congress staff say to me as I was telling them what I you know saw in China she was like well we know better than you because we get briefed by the State Department I came back I'm sharing stories from the ground but you are listening to the State Department who's taken us to wars who's driven the seat who are irresponsible and I mean like just so you know it is really up to us that you've got to be able to look at this they're lost I mean Jim's very kind and saying you know they're insane this is insane and we have to recognize that and I think one of the lessons I take from China is they recognize things early and we know as human beings that when we recognize the problem early we have a much better chance of having a soft landing than when we avoid ignore deny and then get crushed by it so if we recognize that China is not our enemy that this is a war we could stop it's really about each one of us changing the hearts and minds of those we know because China is not our enemy it's wrong to make enemies China knows better than to make enemies it's you know when have we how are we going to in this democracy that is broken you can't have democracy when there's this much inequality and there's no real journalism can have democracy but we're about to enter arm being swept away by that game it is a game that is you know definitely managed by those that are in power when trillions of dollars have spent on election you have to understand who owns those politicians and I mean I was in Congress the military industrial complex owns those politicians they speak like they're on their staffs they're they're asking for more than the Pentagon asked for they're trying to be heroes this is this is grotesque and the politic is infected with militarism and war and violence and we need to be the healthy cells we need to be the healthy cells and we need to do it with joy and love no expectation of outcome because we have no idea how deep people are in the manipulation of this propaganda it takes time it takes our patience so it's just that be imbued by the peace and the information that we continue to share because we want to give you strong ground to stand on so that you can share and be tuning forks for peace tuning forks for for cooperation the planet needs it the people need it we all need it and I just want to say it's a beautiful place to live your life from as a peace activist I know there are many listening that it's also a very beautiful life thank you Jody so much that's a beautiful way to I think to end our program uh today I would just make a one or two quick comments and then maybe way you can have a final word and then Jody you can tee us up for uh tomorrow and that is that this month marks the 60th anniversary of the speech that President John Kennedy cave at the American University in 1963 which is one of the most extraordinary speeches that I believe any American president has ever made about the issues of war and peace and if you would just google it uh America John Kennedy American University speech 1963 it's easily accessible and then compare it with something that is coming out of the U.S. Congress or coming from Joe Biden uh you'll see the truth of what Jody is saying that the entire polity of the governance of the United States uh is caught up in the war machine and if you would watch this movie called 13 days which is a Hollywood production on the Cuban missile crisis in October there were 13 days in October 1962 um where we came very close to nuclear war and everybody wanted to go nuclear the Joint Chiefs of Staff the Secretary of State the Secretary of Defense most of the cabinet and it was only John and Bobby Kennedy uh and Adelaide Stevenson who was the ambassador to the United Nations that stood up against that rising momentum and discerned away toward a political solution and John Kennedy was so unnerved by not only the power of the military industrial complex even against him as President of the United States that he began negotiations with Nikita Khrushchev the General Secretary of the Communist Party and the then the Soviet Union to begin negotiations that led to the nuclear test ban treaty in 1963 and it was in advance of that signing of that treaty that he gave this extraordinary speech about understanding those that we hold as enemies and valuing that they also have a point of view and what he said was crucial in terms of what we're experiencing today in Ukraine he said in a nuclear world you never want to place your adversary who has nuclear weapons in a position of either surrendered or using those weapons and that is the position that increasingly the United States is putting Russia today but there's nobody in the White House with the elegance and the wisdom of John Kennedy that's what we need and we also need it around China so when Jody connects in the spirit of Daniel Ellsberg who since the 1960s has been an indefatigable warrior against the use of nuclear weapons in four piece we all need to do whatever we need to to imbibe that spirit because that spirit is the only thing that's going to lead us through it's an extraordinarily subtle political history of the 1960s that are well worth examining and studying particularly Kennedy's speech at the American University if we want to know the posture and disposition that we need to embrace today because the world has never been more dangerous since that time as it is right now and we need to embody the kind of enlightenment that is required so thank you for raising that and for your comments way so let's start with you any final words that you would like to make way and then you Jody and then we'll close it out yeah thank you so much Jim for having me here like you said like this is really scary time but then that's why that's what makes me appreciate even more about these like forums these events that we're having it really makes us feel that there's a movement there's a lot of us all together in this trying to make peace and what Jody said like a bit earlier really stuck with me is that they see this as a game right in April the House Select Committee on China they actually had this war game about like they basically planned out how a conflict with China over China one would look like and they literally saw everything as pieces on the transport and that just like takes away the humanity of people like of China of people in the US just everyone and then it's very important that here we're having like these conversations and all of you here hearing my story that making us realize that oh we're just all people and we're just all humans and all connected and yeah thank you so much thank you way Jody final word thank you way yeah I think way said it you know that all this talk I call the weeds takes us away from our humanity we know better we know it's like we then we give away our own common sense our own heart feelings to all this information that we don't understand and we think it's true because we think the state you know we think people have our best interest at heart and I think it's just like coming back to who are we as humans and that's what this campaign is about let's be relational to each other and so in China not being our enemy what what is like why not have the curiosity to what is China instead of what are you being fed as China and tomorrow we're going to get more of that so with KJ and Mika so I look forward to seeing you tomorrow there's many more layers of this story before we finish the week off so thank you for joining us peace thank you Jody thank you way thank you all that brings our session to a close for today as a reminder it's just the first day of a five-day program here on humanity rising in partnership with code pink you're all welcome to the after session chat and we'll see everyone tomorrow for day two same time same station thanks everyone bye for now