 So, welcome to another episode of China is Not Our Enemy. With the increase of the Pentagon budget from Biden, using the excuse of the aggression and coming war with China, sharing what is true about China and who is really the aggressor is more important than ever. We watch as more and more lies flow while the answer is always war is never the answer. And as troops are being pulled out of Afghanistan, later than Trump negotiated, but maybe finally coming home, we are reminded that war yet again is never the answer. It is always the wrong answer. It always costs lives. It always costs money and no one wins. The people lose, the planet loses, and there are more and more weapons, destruction and a pattern of violence that is spreading. So with this lesson, the last thing the U.S. and the Pentagon should be doing is funding more weapons and more. You can see our past episodes of China is Not Our Enemy on the YouTube Code Pink Alert Channel and at our playlist China is Not Our Enemy. This weekend we had a fabulous conversation hosted by Madison Tang, the campaign coordinator for this campaign that you don't want to miss, dragon ladies, sex, nuclear weapons and death. Check it out. It's a conversation with four young Asian women and you will be smarter for it. Like joining us today, I am thrilled to be with two friends, Ting's Chalk and Marco Fernandez. Both are comrades I admire greatly for their commitment to a peace economy and a world that is committed to humanity. Instead of a war economy that we live in in the United States, that is extractive, destructive and oppressive that is killing us, our communities and the planet. Ting's and Marco are researchers for the Tri-Continental Institute for Social Research. They have been living in China for at least a year. They'll, you know, they'll me out if I'm wrong, but I think it's at least a year. Ting's and Marco, we want to learn from you. What does it look like from where you sit because we're showered with lies and distortion endlessly by the mainstream media here, especially around COVID. Tell us, share with us. You're there. Well, I mean, thank you, cold pink. Thank you to China's our enemy for having us here. I mean, I think the work you are all doing is brave and urgent and necessary, you know? So, as you said, we moved here just over a year ago. It was the end of March. So it's an interesting time at the end of March because it was kind of the tail end of the virus or the worst of the virus here in China. But the world was still sort of just entering. And so it was a period where I think we were seeing a lot, especially in the Western media criticisms of China's response to the to the to the virus itself. But just about a month later is when Wuhan on April 23rd would actually get out of lockdown. Yeah, just just reminding that we almost didn't make it because we are right here on Sunday. On Tuesday, they started the mandatory quarantine for people from outside. And on Saturday, they closed the borders. So for five, six days, we we almost didn't make it. Yeah, it was definitely one of those moments where you you felt like you were sort of the gates were closing and you're kind of it's like an action film, you know, just rolling through the gates and getting in just in time. But I mean, at the time, you know, it feels like a long time ago, but there was a lot about, you know, the authoritarianism of China and how it was sort of cracking down on on the people in the sense of like the heavy measures of the lockdown and all that. But when you think back, you know, we were kind of benefiting from this actual response is that within three months, more or less the virus was controlled. And, you know, we're arriving at a reality now, more than a year into the virus, where there are places that, you know, like, for example, in Brazil, it's actually hasn't peaked yet. You know, the actual duration of the whole COVID experience had the same number of deaths and cases per day right now in Brazil than the duration of what experience in China. So it's about like over 4,000 now. More than 4,000 deaths a day in Brazil. And I know I kind of arrived at that in the US, too. So it's hard to think, you know, sometimes, you know, the questions of authoritarianism or even human rights, when, you know, the fundamental part of it, you know, human rights is about protecting human lives, you know, that the right to survive first. And so one of the things that you mentioned were both researchers with tricontinental is that tricontinental also did a research study called China and Corona Shock around this time to help understand and dispel some of the myths about how this was actually done. How did China actually respond from a governmental level all the way to the grassroots community organizing level? Yeah, I think this is important also to reinforce because, I mean, the way that China control the virus, it's more or less the same. We're going to talk later about population here. And you can see it's a pattern because it's not like a top down decision that is just implemented. No, I mean, this requires mobilization of the whole society. And they have the means to do that because they have organization. I mean, we live here in what is it called? Is it like community? Kind of, yeah, a very, very classic sort of working class, middle class complex. That's maybe, I don't know, 30 buildings or something like that. Guess what? There is like a community center here. There is a sort of like a coordination, a group that takes care of the beauty, organize everything, takes care. So they do this in the whole society. Every year we go, you have in the streets, you have in the neighborhoods, you have in the city. So because of that, they were able in many cases to, I mean, to just mobilize people to test, to make sure that people are following the measures. This is something that when we arrived here, the world was still not leaving the pandemic. So we are right here end of March. It was a whole like, OK, you have to use masks until today. By the way, there's no more pandemic in China, like in Shanghai for months. But you still cannot go to Subway or public transportation without a mask. And people respect that because they know this is for the greater good. This is for the collective. And I think this is the kind of thing. It's not only a decision of a government. It's awareness of the whole society. This is a collective commitment. This is a collective challenge. And they they do that. Yeah, so I mean, in this study and also the experience of living here, that it just goes into this, you know, how was the actual virus discovered? But really, how was the chain of infection broken in a short amount of time? That says, you know, exactly what Mark was said, these community neighborhood organizations, how they organized to the top level of how the actual government is able to mobilize. It's also state resources. You know, we heard these and saw the midges of, you know, building hospitals in 10 days and and that kind of thing, its ability to mobilize its state like planned economy, as well as the people on the basis. And of course, it's it's kind of shocking. You know, when you come and see that we're, I mean, felt really privileged to be able to live this experience here, almost at times felt almost guilty, you know, because the world got much, you know, went to a really difficult moment and it's still living that. So so it's like jarring almost, you know, it's like, oh, this is authoritarian, but we feel actually very protected. You know, it's great when you actually walk from go from one city to another, that, you know, there's a tracking system in terms of, oh, there's a health code, it shows I want to know where other people, you know, that we're sharing a train with has been so that if there was any in a case, we would know that all of us who have been exposed to this one person on the same train could be tested and there are measures to do that. So, you know, we actually had an interesting experience too, because a few months ago we went back to Brazil. We were come, we came here from Brazil and saw, saw basically like almost two experiences, like a parallel universe. Yeah. I mean, just one example before going to Brazil, there wasn't, I think we're more or less in June, there was a small outbreak in Beijing, the capital. So there was like a, maybe a few, I mean, a few people were infected, but actually everything started this, this for me, this is one of the most incredible stories about COVID in China. And I mean, it's not well told in the Western. So there was an old guy, like 50 something, Mr. Tang, he was feeling bad, he got some symptoms and he went to the hospital. So he was tested, he was positive. So then they started to do investigation, like right away. So they sat with him, say, okay, so where did you go in the last 14 days? And then started with his memory, but then go to the cell phone, because you pay everything in China, you pay in your cell phone, so you can track all the stories you've been. And the messages you, of course, in the WeChat, like their WhatsApp, they can know, okay, I talked to the people, I met my friend in that place, et cetera. So they did this. And then they realized that, oh, that could be from the big market called Shinfadi in Beijing. It's like a market that actually distributes food. From the wholesale market. Yeah. So, but then they went there, they went to Shinfadi, they found, they started to investigate, they found the source of the virus. It was like a fish shop. And they just closed the market. But they did this in 22 hours. From the moment that Mr. Tang went to the hospital, to the moment they found out what was the origin of that outbreak, it was 22 hours. And then they locked, not the whole city, because at this point, China already also had learned some lessons. So they locked down the, some communities around the market and they tracked people, they did like massive contact tracing to know where, which, how many people were in the market, et cetera, et cetera. And then guess what? You had to test. So they test like 10 million people in one week in Beijing. And then with this, they were sure, okay, now we know who is infected, who is not, this would be locked down, the whole city is okay. So that's the kind of things that you say, man, this is, I mean, they are taking care of people. This authoritarian state, the control of the state. No, no, it's the control of the virus. Because if you don't know where the people were, you can control the virus. And they just avoid like a big outbreak in the capital in June. I mean, this is interesting because this is, it was in June. So just a couple of months after the lockdown in Wuhan, which was a very complete, because you have to remember when the outbreak came out in Wuhan, like they didn't have the benefit of other countries in the sense of actually having known that there's a virus that exists. It was still unknown, how to respond to it, what it was. Was it airborne? Like how does it travel? So that we have to kind of put us back into that moment. But there's something that we also learned here is how quickly a Chinese government adapts. Let's say there's an adaptability. So by the time like Mark was saying, by the time of the Beijing outbreak, they already know that they don't have to do a citywide lockdown because they figured out how to respond quickly. They know what the virus is, how to get to in 22 hours, and not disrupt the whole of life of society. But then by the time the next outbreak happened in Qingdao, also shortly after, it was also then a really quick, so I'll just talk about the testing. So we were amazed one million tests a day in Beijing because how they do it is this like four in one tracing. So basically they test four people, put the samples together, and then only test that one sample, process that one sample. So if one of the four has the virus, then they just retest those four people instead of actually processing every single test. So as a four in one testing, by the time the Qingdao outbreak came, it was already 10 in one, which was highly efficient. So that means you test 10 people. Most people don't have the virus. So that means you don't have to use all the resources to process all those 10 tests. So then they were able to even control that much quicker. So even with a few short months, how this virus was responded to means that it was highly adaptive. It wasn't one way of doing it. And I mean, since Wuhan, there hasn't been this major city lockdown. Since then, most people have been living a pretty normal life, with measures if you want to travel, you do have to do, especially to the countryside, where there's less medical resources, you do have to do tests. It's like there's a whole system in place, but I think even since last March, we have lived a pretty, let's say, normal, mobile life in that sense. Yeah, I mean, Can I just ask one question? You know, you're talking, so in the US, the first thing we hear is that China, it's China's fault that there's a virus. They reacted the wrong way. They lied. What do you know about that part? Because that's still the story that gets woven into the story. Can you tell us anything you've learned about that part? I mean, yeah, definitely some questions. In this study, there's a bit more about that. Those questions of, oh, was there whistleblowers? Did they try to cover it up? Why didn't they tell sooner? But everything that this detailed study that we went into kind of doesn't support it, in terms of there are reporting systems that were established especially after SARS, the SARS outbreak. Actually, I'm originally from Hong Kong, so the SARS outbreak, we understand how frightening that was. That was also created to be able to respond quickly. One of the things that they realized is that for unknown viruses, it's not an easy, there's no easy way to register that. But there's also methods about how to register that. So even within pretty much days of the first reporting, there were already teams being sent to Wuhan from their local levels to provincial levels to go check in on what was happening. And even about a month after the first discovery of this unknown virus, remember, we're still unknown, so people are classifying in different things. There was already a call to the US, what's it called? No, that was a few days, a few days after the... In, I think in December already, the US, what's it called? I think it was New Year's Eve. They called the CDC, the US CDC, New Year's Eve to, I think they found out that 20-something December, a few days after they called the US CDC. The head of Redford, right? Yeah, I think so. So, I mean, this is so, I mean, they were still talking about that in the Western, like, oh, China covered up. China didn't tell us. I mean, this is so ridiculous. I mean, they didn't take any measures against the virus for months. They just ignored the virus and then China covered up. But I'm sorry, actually what China did was a huge sacrifice that bought time to the Western countries, to Africa, to the Dutch and America. Because, I mean, if it wasn't for the lockdown in Wuhan, probably the virus would have spread much faster in the other continents. And at the end of the day, the tragedy would be much bigger in the first weeks in other continents. So, but this is clearly like a way that you always do the things. It's all everybody's fault. There's no accountability. There's no fault of the US or we're just victimized. We didn't know about the virus. China didn't tell us about the virus. I mean, China actually did the whole genetic map of the virus in 12 days. That was the world record, never in the history. There was a case when you found a new virus and you have the whole genetic map of the virus in 12 days. And what that meant, that in that particular moment, they already started to research for the vaccine. So, I mean, so China bought like a lot of time to the other countries and China was able to delivery, to provide the genetic map to start the research on the vaccine in just 12 days. So, I mean, this is, it's so insane. And I mean, they also shared that with the whole world, right? They just shared it with everyone. They didn't make people happy. They just shared it with the whole world, right? Exactly. Exactly. I mean, and then what, and then because, I think this question about buying time for the world is an important one because just as people, the other countries are getting into the worst of the virus, China's factories also started coming online, in terms of what we could see in producing medical equipment, masks, PPE and all that and sending it to other countries that was absolutely essential. So now we're seeing that now as well. US likes to talk about vaccine diplomacy or not just the US. This is really a Western media because as Marco said, the commitment then was starting to early on start researching for a vaccine and early on declaring that a vaccine would be a public good, right? So what has happened now? Now it's talking about the question of vaccine diplomacy as if something is inherently, let's say, I don't know, sinister about sharing vaccines with the world or something like that. Yeah, I mean, for this we strongly recommend you to read the child collective piece, I think like last week or a little bit more than that. On China's vaccine internationalism. Vaccine internationalism, exactly, because I mean, what they're doing, it's unbelievable. I mean, first of all, I just got my first job here as a foreigner last Monday. So this is the first thing. I mean, I feel so grateful and privileged because in my country right now, I mean, there's 4,000 people dying every day. There's 100,000 new cases every day. And guess what? Because the government didn't care about its people. We still have a very, very little number of vaccines available for the population. So I mean, I don't know when I would be vaccinated in Brazil if I was there, I'm like 42 years old. So I'm like pretty, pretty far in the line. So but I got here and it's just not me. I mean, all the foreigners since March 29th, they actually open for the foreigners. You just go to your cell phone. There's a nap. You apply and then you go to a place and take the vaccine. But it's not just like people here. It's all around the world. Imagine that right now, I mean, in March actually, by the end of March, China has exported 150 million doses of vaccine, which is actually half of its production, which means that China, oh, guess what? UK, UK produces AstraZeneca. Guess how many doses of vaccines UK exported, not even donated, exported like sell to another country. Guess how many? Zero. US had exported 3 million. China has exported 150 million, 115 million doses. That's the difference. And I think it's also important to add, we know that it's included in this child collective text as well, is that which are the countries that are being prioritized in this 150 million doses, it's half of the production, but it's sent to over 35 countries. 37, they donated to 37 countries, donated, and they already had agreements with 70 countries. Exactly that. And most of them are in the global south. We know that most of the wealthier northern nations have been hoarding vaccines, buying, on average, three times its population. And the country I grew up in, in Canada, has hoarded five times the vaccines of its population. Meanwhile, most of China's production is going to the third world. So third world as in developing countries, poor countries that would never have access to the vaccine. So if you call it vaccine diplomacy, whatever name you want to call it. Thank you. Do it. If it saves lives, then I call it whatever name you want to call it. Madison has posted in the chat for people to see both on YouTube and on Zoom. So you can check that out from the child collective. So earlier you talked about what it's like to live in the neighborhood and how people are helping you. And I think that some of that neighborhood project came out of how they've been able to eliminate poverty. What have you learned about, I mean, I have to say, I live in a city with right now 5,000 people are homeless. They live in tents on the street outside my house. It's pretty horrifically sad. And they're trying to recall our governor because he can't solve the problem of how much homelessness there is in California while COVID, while everything is going on, while Congress is voting more money for war. So how can China, the poorest country in the world back in the 70s, have eliminated poverty? What have you learned about that? I mean, it's a huge question. So one of the things with poverty alleviation is that, as you said, China has been, it's a very new country in terms of when it became People's Republic of China in 49. It was one of the poorest countries in the world. In fact, the 11th poorest country in the world, just two countries in Asia and eight countries in Africa. In GDP per capita, actually. Yeah, that was GBP per capita, exactly. So to be able to say in the end of 2020 that they eliminated extreme poverty is amazing. So I mean, some of the numbers are just phenomenal. Do you want to go on to that? Yeah, I mean, this is something, I mean, it's again. I mean, try to find articles in New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post about poverty alleviation in China. I mean, maybe you find a couple. But most of the time, I mean, you're not going to find mostly. And when you find somebody's just like, oh, it's too expensive program. I mean, yeah, it is expensive. I mean, life is expensive for people. And but what China has been doing in the last 40 years, I mean, since the reforming opening up in 1978, China took 850 million people out of the extreme poverty. This means that was 76% of the poverty reduction in the planet was done by China. I mean, if you go to like 90 nations, all these, the centennial goals, sustainability, goals, this kind of things, I mean, which includes the issue of poverty. If you take China out of that, I mean, the world didn't do much for challenging and for tackling poverty. So this was what China been doing in different ways in the last 40 years. But especially the most, I think the most interesting phase is the last one since 2013, which is when President Xi Jinping became president. From 2013 to last year, China left out of poverty 100 million people. And but they did this. This 100 million was the most difficult ones, actually. And this is, I think, the most important lesson that also China is providing to the whole world, to the whole global south of developing countries is how to do that. How do you, what is the methodology to take people out of poverty? So I think, I don't know if things want to talk more about that. Yeah, I mean, I think we have to step back a second and talk about how poverty is defined here before going into how it was done. Is that so, looking at international standards, World Bank classifies extreme poverty as living under a dollar and 90 cents per day. One of the criticisms you'll actually read in New York Times or the articles, oh, is this China actually, the party line is much lower than the international standard. But when you actually look at it, it's interesting how China has used, they use measures a little bit differently. And when you actually adjust to what is called purchasing parity, which is like the ability for that dollar to actually purchase goods in the country. Because obviously, the standard of living in the US is different than China. So a dollar can be stretched a lot further here than say in the US. So you have to adjust to the local conditions. So when you actually adjust it to that, China is $2.30 a day. Obviously, this is talking at the extreme level, extreme poverty level. But one of the things is that we know that giving money is not just the only way to resolve systemic issues of poverty. Like they did in Brazil, for instance. Exactly. Brazil is a very interesting experience to compare with China. Because they have a very, it was a very good program during, I mean, the program is still there. But of course with Bolsonaro, I mean, it's not a big program anymore. But it was a big deal in between 2005, 2006 and 2013 during Lula's and Dilma's government. And basically, yeah, they gave money to people, to like 50 million people. Almost like 41 quarter of the population got some subsidies from the state. That was like critical. That was for millions of people was the difference between starving or not. But and also this China learned, I mean, this is not enough because you actually don't go to the roots, the cause of the poverty, which is much more complex. So, I mean, in the sense of like the dollar amounts won't actually be able to capture what poverty alleviation looks like. So they developed a system here to think of the different dimensions of poverty. So it kind of comes in a slogan of saying it's called two no worries and three guarantees. What does that mean? So in addition to your income, you have two no worries, two things you don't have to worry about. It's just food and clothing. And there's a whole, you know, system of measuring what does that food look like? It's not just calories, but you know, how much protein and etc. And then there's the three guarantees, which is ensuring that you have free and guaranteed education here. The compulsory education is between six and 15 years old. So it's nine years. The second is basic medical care. I know, I mean, even more so in the time right now of COVID, how essential a robust medical health system, a public health system is. And then a third is looking at housing. But housing is not just, you know, you have just a roof overhead, making sure that you have electricity, safe drinking water. And those are all elements within that. And the question of how they did it, which Marco was talking about, is something next level. You know, we can't just throw money at it. You actually have to look at how to organize the society and mobilize the entire society, not unlike what we saw with the COVID, in order to, in order to respond to it. So they developed a, yeah, yeah, exactly. So I mean, go ahead. No, no, it's just, it's just because before you go to the methodologies, which I think is the most fascinating thing. And also, I think we can talk about our experience, like last week's visiting some of these places is just like the issue of the cost, because there was like a New York Times article a couple of months ago saying, oh, probably the issue is, is, is okay. But it's actually, it's too, too expensive. I mean, the states can't afford that. So then we were wait, wait, wait, wait, I've seen the bill. It's less than what the U.S. has spent on war. I mean, it's like one third of the military budget of U.S. this year is like one third. But I mean, the comparison also we would like to, to make was, was actually 250 billion U.S. dollars. The government invested in the last, in the last years, since 2013. But I mean, you guys might remember how, what was the, the check from the Federal Reserve, actually from the U.S. people in 2008 was, remember, it was 700 billion dollars to fund, like they are four bank, like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers. I mean, that was the cost, just one check of 700 billion dollars. And here they spent 250 billion dollars with 100 million people. That's, I think, the difference between socialism and capitalism. So, but, but even four banks are 100 million people. Exactly. But that's not the most exciting part. The most exciting part, it's, it's how they, how they did it, the methodologies, which is really incredible. I mean, the thing is, Marco gave this number about 850 million people since, you know, in the 40, 40 year period. You know, most of this is because there was a huge economic reform, which means that the society was developing, there was, you know, the society was getting richer and along with it, lifting up millions and millions, hundreds of millions of poor people. But by the end, we got into 2013, the last years, this last 100 million were the more, let's say, the more the tricky parts of poverty. You know, we're talking about in regions that have been historically poor for a long time. They're like mountainous regions, or we're talking about people with disabilities, the elderly, people who can't work. How do we reach that, that pocket of people, you know, China is 1.4 billion people. So it's the kind of last pocket of, of extreme poverty. So they developed something called the targeted poverty alleviation. That's a new kind of strategy to address this, which is that you need to go down deep into the base to understand the situation. And so what they did was they said 3 million party members like Cadres to live and work for multiple years at a time in the villages. And that's the way that they can actually map out the last 100 million families or people in the families. So it's looking going to door to door at every house. What is the situation? Okay, how many people are in this household? What is the income level? What is education level? What do they do for work? You know, what is the health situation? And this is mapped into a huge system, a national system of tracking, basically people's status in poverty. And then the job of these Cadres is to work with, usually they have a few families assigned to each Cadre. Yeah. And then in case it was five families, right? Yeah. In the village we went was five, each Cadre has to take care of five families. Yeah. And so that's your, you're basically on call all the time. It's like, you know, an uncle will call and say, oh, you know, my door is locked. I can't open it. Can you come here and help me, you know, open my door or, oh, my kid is not going to school and trying to go figure out why he's not going to school. Is there, you know, how to deal with, oh, the dad's been yelling at his kid too much, you know, into the family affairs, into the economic affairs, into the health affairs of a family. And you're actually just guiding them along the way until they get lifted out of poverty. So this kind of organization and mobilization of people is at the, you know, core of it. You can have a national policy, but without people that are actually going to go into the ground to know the conditions and work with each individual family, it's not possible to lift this last hundred million people. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, for instance, we've been to Guizhou, which is, I mean, we live in Shanghai, which is one of the richest cities in the world in certain ways, it's sort of like a bubble of China's abundance and wealth, wealthiness. But then if you go, of course, to the countryside, it's a different country, and they know that they are aware of that. That's why they are putting so much effort in the program like power alleviation. So we went to Guizhou, which is the province in the southwest of China, is actually one of the poorest provinces, and it was the last one, was the last nine counties. Nine counties were lifted out of poverty in last November. We're all them in Guizhou. So we went there to visit some places. And for instance, for me, one of the things that I thought more interesting was about the industry, the so-called one of the five methodologies. One of them is related to production, actually to local peace economy, because it's basically organizing cops. I mean, we're talking about mostly about peasants, right? So people who are just, I mean, they've been working in the land, but sometimes, of course, not a lot of perfect conditions, ideal conditions in terms of a capacity of production and how much income they can get. So with that basis, they organized like many cooperatives. I mean, we've been in a few of them in Guizhou, one of like a grapefruit farm. I mean, lots of greenhouses with like ginger and strawberries and watermelon. They also like built like a big factory. So they are also raising pigs and they sell to a bigger company who is like close to that village. But in all these situations, again, it's not about Marco and Ting's and their farm. It's about, it's a collective project. It's related to the organization of the village. Of course, there are the party cadres. They are part of this whole organization, the story. I mean, some of them also work in the land, because they are also peasants. So, but then you think about that replicated in the whole country. And you see the numbers. I mean, we saw like with this projects, like how much income the people are getting. Again, of course, it's not a lot. The people, they're not getting rich because of like this grapefruit farm, but it's much better than they had before. We saw cases like going from a thousand U.N., which is like a hundred, twenty, thirty dollars a month, going to like four times that, to like almost three thousand U.S. dollars a month for the family, oh, sorry, four hundred, five hundred U.S. dollars a month for the whole family in like one or two years of the organization of the project. So, these kind of things. And many other projects, right, that we saw also. Yeah, I mean, one thing I think is interesting about this kind of organization of cooperatives at the village level. I mean, there have been millions created in this process because of course, as Marco said, it's creating jobs. But at the same time is how is that wealth also redistributed back into the villages. So, there's a lot of organizations with the village level committees is that during the phase, because now the program is officially over, probably alleviation, but there is always a set amount of dividends that go to the registered houses that are listed as poor, regardless of what the actual production rates are. So, there's sort of a guaranteed subsidy as well. And there are for people who, for example, they have some land, they can't work it. So, there's a way that they can lease out the land in this collectivized system. Or if they can work it, then they can also get another salary as being peasant workers in actual farms themselves. So, kind of can engage the village needs in multiple levels. And of course, in a place like Kuijou, to help I think viewers understand, it's like extremely mountainous area. There's like a saying there that you can't see flat land for three kilometers. Like as in flat land doesn't last for three kilometers and good weather doesn't last for three days. Because it's highly, it's very rainy, very wet mountainous region. So, we have also places, it's where this idea of infrastructure or industry doesn't work. We have actually, some people might have seen these images of these cliff villages, you know, villages of very small villages that literally are built on the side of cliffs. You know, for kids to get to school and we actually got to talk to some people who live this reality is like for kids that go to school, they might be going through very precarious situation, no climbing down rope ladders, crossing rivers, walking two hours to school every day. And back. So, there are a grouping of people as well that need to relocate. That's one of the parts of programs about, let's say 10% of the whole program where people who relocated from either dangerous or areas that can't be developed into more urban areas. Which is an essential thing. You're thinking about bringing electricity, bringing roads, bringing all the key, to guarantee those things we said about safe housing and water, medical care, access education, just can't reach the most remote, remote areas. I mean, it's also interesting to listen to some stories. Of course, especially for the elders, it's not easy. I mean, you can just come from like a peasant life and they just go through a beauty in the city. So, for some people, especially the elders, some of them didn't move or, I mean, came back to the village. But I think especially for the kids, it was really a transforming experience. Because, I mean, this issue of the school, it's not like a detail. I mean, so many kids just stop going to the school because, I mean, imagine if you had to walk two hours to school every day. And two hours, I mean, two hours one way, two hours back. So, but now your school is there. And also one aspect of the Power of Aviation program is education. I mean, this is, of course, we know, this is obvious. I mean, you don't change Power of Situation without access to education for the young generations. So, and China is doing, I mean, so much about that. It's not only Power of Aviation specifically, but even, for instance, we are reading about that, like even universities. I mean, since 2017, 70% of the new students, universities in China, 70% are the first one in the family who got to the university. 70%. And not talking about like a few thousand people. It's like tens of hundreds of thousands of new students every year, universities in China. And from the 70%, 70% are from rural areas. So, I mean, that's the transformation. That's not going to happen next week, next month. That's the transformation that's going to happen next five, 10, 15 years in this country. And I just want to say something about that, because, you know, back to like living in a situation where there's homeless in my city. And when Congress voted the US to war on an innocent country, I, you know, recognize I'm not going to be able to end war because war serves the war economy, but I have to keep putting my finger in the dike and disrupting the machine as many ways as I can. But I also felt I needed to do something real for the people who lived in my city. So, I started an after-school writing program with Dave Eggers because what you're talking about is what happens in the US. And we have whole communities in my city and in Los Angeles where generation after generation, they can't lift themselves out of poverty because we have a really bad education system. They go to school, but they don't have somebody at home that can help them with homework. They don't, you know, it takes them, for them to get to school is super hard, even like in Los Angeles. So, you're describing a situation that is happening in my own city where poverty happens generation after generation. And what I was able to create in these neighborhoods was the capacity for some of these people actually to go to college. So, I know how hard that is. But you're also talking about charity, which doesn't change anything, makes rich people and rich countries feel good, but just keeps poverty going so that they can keep extracting and exploiting. And so, to really care about people at the level of, you know, in the United States, we have so many cities where poor people don't get clean water and nobody cares. And matter of fact, they pay taxes and they don't get clean water. So, this is staggering what you're saying. I'm just like, I mean, you make me cry with the 74% that hadn't been first time going to college. Because that is a place that, you know, is hard to affect. And this is, you know, in a country where we also burden that student that's going to college with a lifetime of paying off a debt. And what debt feels like as a human being. So, those things are huge. And you literally made me cry. No, I mean, I think the education part is important. I mean, we did talk to one young woman who had just gone to university, also relocated from a very poor village. And one of the things that you see for the young people is that there is, you know, you have to get them to the school. You have to be able to subsidize them enough that it's feasible to get to school. But then you also have to get, you know, first-generation peasants going to the cities. You have to build the confidence that they can also, you know, go to school. So what was really impressive was seeing young people like this one college student, the confidence they had. We asked, oh, you know, we're coming from the countryside to the city. Did you feel any discrimination? Do you feel like you couldn't catch up at the university? He's like, I didn't feel that for one second. There's like a, that I think is in terms of like building that cultural confidence is a testament to the whole program, you know. You can give money to people. You can even give them houses, but if you don't give them confidence that they can overcome their own poverty and they are participating in the overcoming of their own poverty. This is where that like shift, I think you're saying from the charity model to a more empowered model where people are, yeah. I am a participant. I am an agent in this process. And I mean, one of the things about, you know, building confidence, we got to visit one of these relocation sites. There's actually 1,000, 18,000 people who move there. Many people from, you know, different ethnic minority groups because Guizhou is a place that's 37% ethnic minority, so much higher than other regions. So people move there and we got to talk to someone who in the process of moving or what made her want to move. We said, you know, that, you know, children have a difficult time in the villages because they have to walk a long ways. They have to care for parents, grandparents. But one thing is that because a lot of people have to move out of the cities as villages to the cities to work, there's a whole generation of kids that are called like left behind children, you know, because they're left to the care of their grandparents. So this woman what made her decide to move is like she wanted to be with her family. So relocation was a way that she could actually be with her kids, be with her mother, be with her mother-in-law, be with her husband instead of just, you know, in the holidays going home to visit. So this aspect of saying, oh, families can actually work where they live and be with their family and have a possibility where the kids can attend school, their parents can access healthcare and that they can also work and become also leaders in the communities. This woman said an impressive thing not only because of how she could be with her kids. She says that in the process I went from, she said being a housewife that didn't really know how to talk much, even express what I was living to becoming a leader in the community and being able to, you know, this is the lifting yourself out of poverty in the process becoming leader in the process, right? Yeah, exactly. No, I mean, this is amazing. I mean, this story, you can imagine how many people also leave that story, how many women. Because again, I mean, this is, I mean, you could see we spend like a couple of hours with her. I mean, she's just totally like, she's in there. Like people call her all the time. People come to talk to her all the time. She's really a reference for the community. And I mean, this process was like in two or three years. And I mean, again, I mean, this is the kind of story that you see, oh, okay. I mean, are we talking about expensive project? I mean, it transforming so radically the life of 100 million, 100 million people. And I think especially women and young people. I mean, so at the end of the day, I mean, I think that's two examples that we are talking about. I mean, both the COVID and poverty alleviation. We're talking about major challenges of humanity. I mean, of course, the most immediate urgent challenge we have now, which is COVID, which unfortunately most of our countries, Europe and Latin America, we didn't do great. Africa also has big problems. But I mean, look at what China did and what China is doing in terms of vaccinations. For instance, even yesterday, they just released a news saying that China is going to produce by the end of the year, China will produce 3 billion doses of vaccine. And guess what? I mean, they probably will export half at least of this or even more, and they will donate millions of doses of vaccines for countries in Africa. For instance, that right now only expects to get vaccines in 2024, three years from now. So that's the kind of things. And the same with poverty alleviation, because this is like a historical for centuries, for millennia's challenge of humanity. And look what China is doing. It's not as small stuff. And again, I think it's an example for so many of other countries like in the global south. So I think this is... And I just want to jump in on that. And those two themes are very related, because one of the things is that what COVID has done is actually, the issue of poverty was urgent already, but has become even more urgent. I mean, some of the kind of... I think UNDP came up with a report not long ago to say that COVID, more or less, their estimate has pushed back poverty levels 9.1 years. You're talking about 15 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, last I checked, have been pushed into extreme poverty, adding to the previous hundred... In Brazil, 17 million, only in Brazil. Exactly. So you're talking about numbers of people actually... There's a regression that has happened during this COVID moment, because we know COVID has tested the assault on public health care systems and the public sector in many places, that now the consequences more people are falling into poverty. So this is almost like one story, like COVID was one that was totally, let's say, there's filled with misinformation and fake news distorted. And let's say poverty alleviation is the one that's been kind of brushed under the rug. Like it's a story too powerful to tell. Well, not just that, just so you know, we have a campaign at Code Pink because there was an amazing documentary made about the alleviation of poverty by a super straight investment banker, right, with the question like, how did this happen? He made the film and PBS has censored it. I'm impoverishing American minds because it's too frightening, because it makes Beijing look too good. And so Madison has posted the link to people to sign up. But here we are, we talk about, you know, the heavy hand of China, but instead it's the heavy hand of U.S. funded PBS, taxpayer funded, that is committed to the U.S. people getting to see everything. Instead it has censored the story you're telling us, which is really a story for the globe to understand. I love the way you related the 700 billion that bailed out the five U.S. banks because that bailout impoverished millions of Americans. Like in that period of time, the money moved from the poor to the rich, right? That bailout moved more money from the poor to the rich. Instead of helping people that were poor, it created a greater number of poor. So here we are, watching China be the bad guy, watching U.S. aggression on China, watching more lies directed toward China, watching more and more mudflown at Chinese face, while China is a country that seems committed to humanity. Committed to all the people. And some of the things you've said look like participatory democracy that doesn't exist in the United States, where we have a democracy. We can't have democracy in the U.S. because we don't have a media. It's all funded by the billionaires. We don't have elections because it's all funded by the rich. Trillions of dollars was put into elections. Why are trillions of dollars put into the elections so the rich can get their way? That's not... So you've really described participatory democracy. And one of the things you said is what is it like to have a party member come and care about you? Instead of living in cities where people spit on homeless people, what is it like to have someone leave their life and go care about the uncle that can't lock the door? Or go care about what is your... How do I facilitate a smart path for you out of poverty? Out of poverty. Not how do I keep giving you charity so you stay there so I can exploit you? So thank you for sharing this story with us. Another area where we're trying to... Another area they try to exploit is human rights. While the U.S. is exploiting the people in Okinawa, for decades, since the World War II, we're exploiting, raping, pillaging, violating the people of Okinawa. So we talk about China and human rights while not looking at our own human right abuses, including those that continue with the policemen who kill Black people in the streets of the cities of the United States, which yesterday we saw a right response to a police officer's killing that should have happened 1,000 killings before. And at the same time as that was coming down, we watched yet another Black officer kill a 15-year-old girl. So we're super grateful that you can make us smarter about China while we're made dumber by U.S. media. We look forward to another conversation with you. We'd love you to take us deeper into other things you're learning. Listeners can watch Ting's and Marco weekly on the Daniel Dumbrill show, and they can, as they unpack, pack what is reported in the dengshengnews.org. So if you want to get some real news about what's happening in China on a weekly basis, you can look at the dengshengnews.org, and you can watch them unpack it for you and take you deeper. I mean, I loved last week the telescope. That was so exciting because I love telescopes. Thank you for all the ways at the tricontinental, at the dengshengnews, that you're helping to make people in the world smarter about China. Super grateful for that, because people in the United States have already given their lives to this war. And there's already over 3,000 attacks on Asians in the United States. So folks, if you want to be engaged and learn more, check out codepink.org backslash China. We have lots to offer you. Follow Ting's and Marco as they make everyone around the world smarter with Daniel Dumbrill each week and make folks smarter with the dengshengnews. Thank you so much for all you do. Love you. I miss you, Madly. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Keep fighting the good fight. We love the work you all are doing. It's brave and bold and necessary. Thank you. China is not our enemy in codepink. Thank you. Thank you very much.