 Hello everyone. I'm Jim Garrison and I want to welcome you to this session of Humanity Rising as we look at the geostrategic realities of the escalating US-Chinese conflict. This is part of a five-day program here on Humanity Rising. We're partnering with Code Pink, which has been a partner for us in the past as we've convened several summits on Ukraine. Code Pink is one of the most extraordinary and dynamic peace organizations in the United States and around the world, so we're very privileged and honored to be co-sponsoring this summit on why China is not our enemy and why there is no necessity of going to war with China. Yesterday, we talked about China in a general sense and there was a link put in the chat of a documentary done by an investment banker, who was fascinated by China and went over there to look at China's campaign to eliminate poverty. You know, 30, 40 years ago, most of the Chinese population were under the poverty line. And now today in 2023, almost no Chinese are in abject poverty. It's one of the most extraordinary achievements in modern times. And it was done in a very profoundly innovative way, using very experimental forms reinforced at both the national, regional, and local, and I would say neighborhood levels across the length and breadth of China. That's the documentary last night. And I must say, the power of the people in China to raise themselves up in this way, while simultaneously becoming a superpower, economic giant in the world, and now increasingly becoming a broker of peace around the world is an amazing achievement by any standard. So, this week, we're really going to delve into some of the realities of China, knowing that the propaganda in the mass media is depicting China in a very crude, caricaturaturics way. But nevertheless, what we try to do on humanity rising is not only speak truth to power, but to speak the kind of truth that can illuminate just how distorted the messaging is from our governments in the United States and in NATO about the world, and not only about China, but also about the current conflict in the Ukraine, and other areas of global geostrategic concern. So it's my pleasure now to introduce Jodi Evans, who's the co-founder of Code Pink. Jodi, thank you so much for all that you've done. And I turn the program over to you. Thank you, Jim, and thanks for watching the film. You know, I encourage everyone to always take a deeper dive after we've finished. So welcome back to this week on China's Not Our Enemy and this day is actually we're just taking a deeper dive into China. But remembering that this is, you know, a vast subject. This is a deep look and the short amount of time so it'll also be shallow. As I said yesterday, one of the things that happens as we look west to China is we flatten it and simplify it. It is so complex, textured, diverse and rich. You know, it's really beyond our understanding from a US imperialist point of view, as we don't have the levels of richness in our own history or the depth of the culture. So I don't think from our own shallowness that we can truly grasp China. I see it as a rich tapestry of woven threads with this tensile strength that is its history and its culture. And I think that's part of what we don't understand and therefore project ourselves on. The fabric of society. It's been in the last 20 years so frayed and it's been so much so that I don't think it's valued. And I think that's what why US leadership continues to think it can tear others to shreds so easily, which it can't. So, you know, remember that as you, this is a short period of time so as you get things please take them on their next journey, as Jim did, you know last night, find something from it and take it a little deeper, because we hope that this is really just bringing you in to a future of taking a deeper look at China, the history of China is fascinating, and something, you know, we weren't taught in American history in our history classes here in the US. We have two fabulous guests today, KJ Noah and Meek Earthug, with two very different vantage points to bring us into China. I want to start with KJ who teaches me something, almost every day. He is a wealth of knowledge and a really gift to have him with us today. He's a journalist political analyst writer and teacher specializing in the geopolitics of the Asia Pacific region. And his knowledge of China is layered and his understanding of history and region make him the perfect person to take us deeper into China today. KJ, thank you so much for joining. Thank you. Pleasure to be with you, Jody pleasure to be with you, Mika. And I'm also very honored, Jim, to be part of humanity rising lecture series. So I'll just jump right in. And I want to give a little bit of a perspective about China that is personal, but I hope is also gives us a little bit of a synoptic sense of where China is coming from. I've been reporting on this demonization of China for over a decade. I think there are a few journalists who have reported on this issue as intensively and in as much detail and as consistently as I have. All the signs that I see make me extraordinarily worried that we are very, very close to the precipice of kinetic war. So what I want to do here is step back, give a little bit of perspective, a little bit of the history, and then also perhaps some tools for to decipher what is happening right now in this current moment. So the first thing I want to talk about is really China's accomplishments. And these are things that we are often not very much aware of, but I mean the first thing when we think of China is China, that is to say porcelain is for eating and for many other goods. And porcelain is quite an extraordinary accomplishment because it was the first type of technology that you could use in your household for eating and cooking, that did not incur a risk of food poisoning because it was the first really sterile and useful form of household where that we could use, but it goes from there, you know, China invented flush toilets if you appreciate flush toilets. Chinese invented them thousands of years ago. If you got a covert vaccination, you have to understand that vaccination in the form of very elation was invented by the Chinese in the 10th century, and by the 15th century was standard practice for smallpox. If you like ketchup, you should understand that ketchup is a Cantonese word, and it refers to a Chinese sauce. I think many of us like ice cream, I certainly do. What it came to is a Chinese invention that traveled through Persia through the Silk Road, and then came to the West. And so there's so much that China has developed and given to the world, certainly in the domain of deliciousness sources spices, the notion of balance as well as the notion of sustainability, for example, in rice farming, how to work with nature in order to sustain a civilization. These are deep and powerful currents and knowledges that China has developed and bequeathed to the world. In fact, this the testament of this is China is the only country in the planet that I know have that I know of that is actually written sustainability environmental sustainability directly into its constitution. But there are other things that China is very important and has contributed to the world. One is, of course, as Jody has mentioned before the notion of relationship, this comes out of the Confucian tradition, but it's the understanding that that relationship is primary, that it is, in a sense, it's sacred, you know, that if you ask the Chinese to point to a God, they will point to relationship that there is something sacred about the relationships that connect us and bind us. They've also developed an extraordinary culture of tolerance, inclusion and diversity. This comes out of the great Chinese philosophical tradition of Moism, but it speaks to, for example, the fact that the earliest Jewish traders settled in China, probably around the eight ninth, perhaps the 10th century. And China is known as the only place on the planet where the Jewish people as a diaspora did not suffer anti Semitic oppression. In fact, when the Jewish merchants arrived in China, they were received by the emperor, and the emperor said to them, welcome to China, make sure you revere your ancestors and maintain their tradition and their rights. In other words, you have the Confucian emperor of China telling the Jewish merchants to make sure that they remain Jewish. We see the same tolerance of Islam, the oldest Masjid, the oldest mosques in the world are to be found in China. And they have existed continuously with Islam so much so that when the first Western explorers arrived in the Chinese court, they marveled and they criticized all these Saracens that they saw in high office in the imperial court. For them it was inconceivable, because the West was waging centuries of war against Islam. And here was a secular state that had this extraordinary ecumenical multi religious tolerance of all religions and that allowed everybody of every creed and faith and color to rise to the highest levels of official power. And so currently in, for example, at the current moment, there are over 20,000 mosques in China or one mosque for every 2000 believers. And that's a ratio that you do not find anywhere in the world. Of course, those of us who are more into the religion itself should understand that there are actually four indigenous schools of Sufism that are Chinese, that is, there is an indigenous Chinese Sufi tradition which could never arise if there was any formal oppression of Islam. So somebody just mentioned in the comments that about the Uighurs. And let me put this down, you know, very firmly. The lies, everything that you're hearing about this quote unquote, Uighur genocide is absolutely and completely fraudulent. It is, it is information war designed to generate consent to manufacture consent for war against China, it is completely and totally without foundation. But the key thing to understand is that why are such extraordinarily lies being told. In a sense, if these lies were being told, if these statements were being made and they were true. In a sense, they would mean that there is something the world can do about it and we can call out China criticize etc. But the absolute fact is that it is not true. And that is something which is even more worrisome because when you have that level of extraordinary propaganda and fraudulence. This is the direct precursor to war. We've seen this pattern over and over again. And we are currently right in the thick of it. So I'll come back to that in a moment. But I want to talk a little bit more about China's culture. As I said before, you know, the key elements of Chinese culture are relationship that comes out of Confucianism tolerance that comes out of mohism, non interference that comes out of Taoism. And from that, from the above, what we have essentially is a culture of peace. For 22 centuries, China has been the richest and most powerful state in civilization state in in history. For most of that time, it rarely engaged in overseas war. It traveled all over the world. Jung her had the largest naval fleet on the planet. He traveled all over the world, even went to Africa. And he took nothing. He told nothing. He colonized nothing. What they did was they exchanged greetings and gifts and returned. So it is a fundamentally different orientation to the world. And I think this is one of the things that the West has a hard time understanding that you can have a culture that is so rich and deep and powerful. It's not focused on aggressive power and domination. And that I think is one of the fundamental things that we have to understand. I'd say that in addition to this culture of peace. I just pointed out, it's also a culture of beauty of extraordinary beauty. And I see that as an understanding of the power of art and artistry. And there's a term in China for this. The term is kung fu, as in the martial art kung fu simply means great accomplishment or great artistry. Achieved through hard work. And so there's a real kind of foundational belief that not only can we improve ourselves but we can achieve extraordinary artistic and spiritual accomplishments through hard work. It's a culture of hard work. And from that we also get that it is a culture of merit. That is, it's a culture that believes that we work hard. We work hard together we strive, we improve ourselves we improve our community, we improve our culture, and we also improve governance. When the first Western missionaries came to China, the Jesuits, they were astonished that they had this culture where once again people rose to high office, not based on their family bloodline, which is what the European system was it was aristocratic, but that it was built on one's capacity, one's intelligence, and in particular, the capacity to pass a universal civil service exam. And this service civil service exam would test people on their capacity to understand moral reasoning. How well can you argue and understand morality. How well do you understand culture. But more than that, usually the examinants were tested on the capacity to write poetry. Can you extemporize poetry to a high level. And so can you imagine a culture that picks its leaders on the basis of their ability to write poetry to be poets. And this is not a trivial thing. It really is. It means, can you communicate clearly. Do you have empathy. Can you work creatively within tight constraints. Do you have the capacity to appreciate beauty. Do you have the past capacity to connect and speak to people. Do you understand metaphoricity. All of these are fundamental skills for governance and for being human. The Chinese system selected for this. Can you imagine if our electoral system, you know, tested our leaders for their capacity to write poetry I can tell you there are a lot of. I think there are a lot of politicians who would not pass that test. They the Jesuits noticed this, and then they imported these ideas into the West. And these ideas became some of the foundational ideas of the Western enlightened, that is, that we do away with bloodline aristocracy. Really create a polity that is not only responsive to the gov to the people, but raises the best people to the top. And you can see that currently in the Chinese government, the leadership is extraordinary. There's also the most popular leadership on the planet. Longitudinal studies show that China is somewhere between 90 to 90 something percent support of the people. And these are long term studies done by the West. So, you know that they're doing something right, not simply in the fact that they banished poverty and created an extraordinary development. But that they have extraordinary support and and popularity among the people in general. But I do want to pivot to this other issue, which is given all of that and given all our capacity to cooperate and to benefit from cooperation with China. Why is the media so negative about China right now, day in and day out. It's so extraordinarily negative and demonizing. And my point here is not simply to refute the lies about China, but to explain why they're being told. Essentially, the China bad messaging takes the form of two key tropes, and they're designed to trigger two key emotions. One of the emotions that it's trying to trigger is fear. So China is threatening US democracy. It's threatening global democracy is threatening the economy, global health, global environment. It's threatening our jobs, supply chains, threatening countries, Philippines, the South China Sea is threatening our security is threatening freedom of navigation is threatening with bases. It's building bases, it actually only has one base, but it's building bases all over the planet. It's threatening by supporting Russia, it's enslaving and debt trapping Africa. So the message here is, you have to be afraid. And then the other message that you will also hear is China is doing terrible and unspeakable things to the Uighurs, the Tibetans, Hong Kong, its own people, workers around the world, women, LGBTQI people, name it. But essentially it's like the wheel of fortune you spin the wheel and you get a new type of horrific thing that China is doing one day it's this the next day it's something else, but it's just like one long screen against China and China's building a base unsafe intercepts, you know, it has a huge Navy spying on us, threatening Japan, Korea, etc, etc. Okay, and it's also another thing that you will see is that China is responsible for genocidal bio warfare against the planet. It has secret WMD labs that released COVID on the planet. Now where have you heard this term secret WMD labs before. Think hard about that those of us who a little bit older will probably recognize the Iraq war this is exactly the type of lie that we heard before the Iraq war. Now as I said before if these terrible things were true you could actually breathe a sigh of belief you know all these things that are supposed to engender fear and pity. If they were true, you could actually breathe a sigh of relief because the media would be reporting what is the case and we could take active steps to change the situation, but first note, there's no attempt to change the situation there's simple demonization. And secondly, if these things are not true, then something much more sinister, much more dangerous is happening. Let me just go over them. China created or leaked COVID right. This is a WMD type of lie. The same thing for China is genociding Uighurs. The Uighur population has increased fourfold life expectancy has doubled it increased 35 years. The Uighurs were exempt from the one child policy. They received preferential treatment in schooling and employment. There are more masks than anywhere else on the planet. The language is widely written, displayed, taught and learned, and the Uighurs are doing just fine. Anyone who is a Uighur who has visited or someone who has visited, Xinjiang can tell you and these include thousands of expert investigators, jurists, journalists, diplomats, and advocates of Islam, including the organization of Islamic cooperation which represents the interests of, you know, billions of Muslims around the planet. Essentially these China bashing allegations are not true. It's propaganda, spin, and lies. You see, when you have this level of incessant fraudulent, constant, drumbeat, threat inflation, fear mongering, hate mongering, plus fake atrocity, propagandizing, it means one thing. It means preparation for war. That is to say, war is the first casualty of truth. Those who tell you absurdities are preparing you for atrocities. And the farther you are away from truth, the closer you are to war. So the U.S. is already at war with China in the domain of information war. This is the pre-kinetic or the sub-kinetic dimension of war. It's what happens before the shooting war happens. When the shooting war happens, there's usually a pattern of suppressive fire and electronic warfare, which is to knock out all the radar and all the defenses, and then you send in the infantry. And this is usually done through missiles and air war and electronic warfare. Same thing with kinetic war. Before kinetic war happens, there is suppressive fire that is instigated through information warfare. That is, it suppresses your critical capacity. It knocks out all your radar for BS. It makes it impossible for you to resist or to challenge this war. This information warfare enables, prepares and justifies kinetic war. And the scale, the enormity, the extremity of these lies lets us know that the meme or the trope is China is so bad, so beyond the pale, that we can only go to war. This is the situation we are at right now. And if you look around you, there is one more canary in the coal mine. And that is the incessant and nonstop attacks and killings and violence against Asians. Every single day you hear of a new Asian. Often non-Chinese, often Koreans or other East Asians were beaten, assaulted, killed because this hate-mongering has gotten to such a crescendo that when you have that kind of wholesale policy, hate-mongering, it will trickle down into retail violence. If you prepare to go to war over there against them, it will also result in attacks against Asians over here. Your neighbors, your friends, perhaps even your family are at risk. This is why it's so important for us to understand China, to understand the situation, and to do everything possible we can to prevent this drive to war. Thank you. You brought me to tears. Deepest gratitude because your clarity, your heart, and just who you are is to be able to tell the truth. Why I created China's Not Our Enemy is exactly what you said, is I went, oh my God, this is exactly what took us to war in Iraq. They're taking us to war. And that, you know, that's three and a half years ago now, but it's because I could see the pattern that I was so familiar with that the US uses to take us to war. I was so right about how people get owned by the information and they can't see past it because they, they've been manipulated into fright. Code Pink, why did we, Bush was frightening the American people into war with the color-coded alerts, orange, red, and yellow, and we called Code Pink for Peace. So it's like, how do you disrupt that very powerful weapon that has been used against the hearts and minds of the people of the country that will then be bombing. And you've nailed it and also you've just exposed China so beautifully in such a delicious way for people to feel. Do you have time to stay on and we can hear from Mika and maybe I'm sure there's going to be questions. So, just deep gratitude. Well, I'm excited to bring on my dear friend and co-author of the book we're working on, China is Not Our Enemy. China is an educator and researcher, she's part of Pan-Africanism Today's Secretariat, which she coordinates the regional articulation of the International People's Assembly, and is part of the No Cold War Coordination Committee. She's platform started the same time as China is Not Our Enemy, but is global, promoting multilateralism and maximum global cooperation. She's also part of Dongxing, an international collective of researchers interested in Chinese politics and society, and hosts the Crane, an Africa-China podcast that comes out at the Dongxing news. And when she's talking, I'll post the Dongxing news in there because every week you can get a little bit of real news on China, which squeezes its way through all the propaganda. So Mika, thank you for joining us and we look forward to hearing from you. Hello everyone. Thank you so much Jodi for the introduction. Thank you KJ for an incredible input. As you saw in the chat, we, a lot of us learned about the ketchup thing that was a first and I think that's the kind of the examples you were using tells us a little bit about the lack of the lack of sense, sensibility around the deep and vast and expansive contributions of Chinese society and Chinese people and Chinese history, and how that's a region of the world that as growing up in South Africa, we weren't necessarily given attention. So I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the things that are catching the attention and imagination and creativity of young people in Africa, and that should be concerns for young people in Africa. And I'll start off with a little anecdote that when I was 17 I think it was I recall this was 2009 ish a lot of the magazines, New York Times or some of these time magazines, these big periodicals. You know, a lot of these covers you know with the Chinese dragon talking about China rising. And at the time, I found it interesting for two reasons is one, we didn't talk about Chinese history or any part of China and any of our subjects in our schools in South Africa. If it was mentioned it might be mentioned as KJ said in relation to like porcelain or noodles, but it was basically a complete black hole or, you know, absence in our kind of sense of geography of history of society. But whilst we were starting to get exposed a little bit in late high school to this China rising phenomenon. It was, of course, entirely mediated by a Western perspective. And so it wasn't necessarily looking at what does this rising mean for the global self and for the development of people in the global south. And of course, from an African perspective, it's an incredible feat to think that a continent of over 1 billion people. Similarly, you know, large in scale as China is although the continent is physically bigger but in terms of the population over a billion people. China when it triumphed and gained independence in 1949 by 1950 it was still amongst the 10 poorest countries in the world. And the ones I think it was number eight the ones that were poorer were mostly African countries I think there's one Southeast Asian country and over the course of you know less than a century has been able to fundamentally transform their society. And as was mentioned, bring people out of 800,000 800 million people out of poverty, extreme poverty is a huge feat, considering the, not only the kind of history of imperialism, the history of the century of humiliation between 1800 to 19, just over the 20th century, the early 20th century. But what I was confused about is when, for example, the poverty alleviation studies were starting to circulate and in 2020 we were notified about this huge accomplishment. It was not being reported in a lot of African newspapers it was not being reported as something of of significance that we need to think about that we need to learn of it was not reported that you know life expectancy from 1950 to the contemporary was almost doubled whilst in Africa we see life expectancy, largely stagnating and not improving. The fact that, you know, literacy in China is 99.83% whilst in South Africa I think a study came out, I think it was a couple of months ago, where eight out of 10 South African school children by the age 10 are struggling to read with their attention. So, we're seeing a gulf between what is actually happening in China, and the serious source of inspiration it could be for the rest of the particularly the global south. And with the reality that the global south continues to sit in a position that China sat in over 70 years ago. So, I think part of the work that I'm involved in right now with Tri-Continental and with Dongsheng is how can we share China and Chinese stories and Chinese histories and Chinese politics that is not mediated by a western orientalist historically colonialist imperialist perspective and lens. And part of that is actually, you know, going to China, speaking with Chinese people, understanding the process of development on its own terms. One of the projects that we just, the second edition just came out today, in fact, is we've started to launch an international version of Wenhua Zongheng, which is basically the Beijing Cultural Review. And it's a quarterly journal of Chinese thought we launched the first one a quarter ago, and the second one just came out today you can check it out on the Tri-Continental website hopefully the links can be shared. But part of our point of sharing this is that we are trying to translate in English, Portuguese and Spanish, a lot of the internal debates that are happening in China, so that we can start to broaden and expand various platforms in which we can as the global south engage more independently with China not mediated by the West and the West's interests. And part of this work has been, you know, the astonishing tracking the astonishing processes of the poverty alleviation project, particularly the targeted poverty alleviation project because very few people as KJA pointed to know, for example, the massive support that, you know, 90% plus support that the Chinese people have for the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government. In fact, you know, if the Chinese Communist Party was a country, it would be the 16th most populous country in the world with, you know, over 90 million members. And without you can't understand, somebody made a joke earlier about how to characterize China's economy and China's project. Don't think that we can also understand the process of development in China without understanding the process of socialist construction and the important role that socialist work has done in this project, the fact that it has been about taking the reins of resources are labor to serve not profit but to serve people. And that is also an important element and pillar of understanding the project. But then getting back to, to China itself and I think some of the, the learnings I've had in the last few years, in relation to China Africa but also in relation to China itself is all these different processes which I hope you will read on and and check out on tri-continental we also have a study on poverty alleviation that you can check out there is that now we're seeing a China where the Chinese people are confident when I was there I was there last month in Beijing and Shanghai and it's quite a wonder to be there because not only is there a sense of confidence in one's sense of patriotism, but in one sense of ability to be active politically engaged productive members of society. I'm currently in New York visiting and you know the scourges of capitalism are so rampant you know every block there is one or another person in some form of mental distress economic distress. There's, you know, a level of like hysteria at the level of, of, of, of just how ravaged people are by the failures of capitalism, and it's continued exploitation of the majority of the world, and walking in the streets of China you see confident productive people who feel, you know, not only confident in their government but confident in their capacity as people to transform their society, and you don't see that in many parts of the world. You don't see, I've never seen so much domestic tourism amongst elderly women, like retired women, going across the country, you know, dancing in groups in parks publicly coming from all over the country. Most working class women in South Africa really get the opportunity to travel, only traveling on the basis of having to migrate for sources of income. And so, being in China, you, these are totally different feeling you get that does not necessarily easily easy to portray. But for the reasons that KJ mentioned, have a deeper historical route that I think we need to share more and learn from I mean the when he talked about beauty and kung fu. It's not about an aesthetic beauty for consumptive purposes. It's about thinking about the integrated whole and well being of a people. And you simply you simply don't see that in many parts of the world, particularly the where capitalist economy dominates economic life, and, and the ways we live. The other thing is, you know, as a young woman, a young African woman, walking in the streets of of China in Beijing in Shanghai and I was also in Yunnan province and the in the West and Dali walking in the streets alone as a woman. There's such, there's a level of safety I've never experienced in my whole life, where you're not constantly having a looking over your shoulder, worrying about your personal safety. And that's been brought about through this process of trying to increase the quality of life of people and I've just never seen that level of quality of life where people feel safe, people feel taken care of. People have access to all the various services that allow for a high quality of life. But going back then to Africa, and why I think we're at a critical conjunction in terms of the opportunities that lie behind stronger global south alliances and regional projects that aren't mediated by the West. African people have since the Tezara Railway was created in 1975, which was basically a railway line created and funded largely by the Chinese government at a moment in which they did not have a lot of resources for kind of a solidarity project. But this railway line was created between Zambia and Tanzania in order to allow for a form of transportation of resources of their mining outputs that didn't go through then Rhodesia which was the colonial Zimbabwe as well as going through apartheid South Africa. And so we do have a longer history. We can even go back to Jenher as KJ mentioned, who came to Africa but did not aim to colonize did not aim to, you know, exploit and violate African people but simply traded and learned from what was happening in the Horn of Africa. But going back to Tezara, the China Africa relationship initially has been premised on these kinds of solidarity acts that allowed for alternative opportunities and alternative economic political avenues than what was being offered by the colonialists because many of the countries of Africa were still under colonial full colonial control, as well as in later periods, more so in the early 2000s we've seen more opportunities for alternative financing that's not based on a neoliberal debt trapping framework and I say debt trapping because that's largely been one of the things that's been an accusation thrown at China which is entirely false and completely out of context because the real debt trap is the legacy of the structural adjustment programs that happened in the late 80s, early 90s, where the monopoly over the financial systems or global financial systems by the West by Europe by the US made it so that a lot of African countries who were just emerging out of colonialism were trying to restructure their economies to serve their people weren't able to break out of the global structure and the global economic framework and they only could then get certain capital investment to build infrastructural projects that would aim to serve the people by getting predatory loans that had conditionalities that had high interest rates that essentially would reinvigorate and serve western economies and largely benefit western economies and so in by the 2000s we see China play a more prominent role in giving alternative funding streams and giving alternative funding streams that actually have seen concrete things come up we've seen railway lines between Mali and Guinea between Sudan and Senegal we've seen huge energy infrastructural projects like in Nigeria there's a big hydropower project and in Ghana there's a big dam project and we've seen huge amounts of investment that have basically allowed for a African governments to have choices which is a historical denial based on the needs of colonialism to have a monopoly over the control of resources and therefore the control of economies and how economies develop and to that we have seen material improvements in the lives of millions of African people I mean China has I think a third of Africa or has built a third of Africa's power grid and infrastructure financed and constructed by Chinese state owned companies and this is a continent where more than a third of Africans don't have access to electricity and so one is up there has been again I'll try to wrap up one is that if we want to take China for what it is we also have to take our collaborations and our engagements not mediated by Western sources and Western frameworks of what diplomacy looks like what collaboration looks like what solidarity looks like but to that if you look at it at a qualitative level, you can clearly see a totally different logic behind China African engagement and let's say US Africa engagement what we see with China African engagement it's based on consensus building based on shared experiences it's patient it's long term there's non interference non conditionality which is opposite to all the things around the the propaganda about trapping us into debt, colonizing us stealing our land all of those are false things that come largely from Western media houses and contrasting this to the US framework or the Western framework which is coercive it is always very much single interest based and I mean you can see this exhibited in the towards a new strategy strategy tool towards a new strategy in sub-Saharan Africa which was the US government's foreign policy for Africa that was launched last year in August where even though the Anthony Blinken was saying you can make your choices we just want to be a good partner ultimately if you read the document it's all framed in coercive single interest based approaches that don't send to African people's needs but send to the US's hegemonic needs in relation to Africa rather than seeing Africans and Africa as its own autonomous project that has and should pursue sovereign development I'm just going to end with a small anecdote around that is when Kamala Harris was visiting Tanzania she visited the memorial for the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy which was a tragedy and 200 lives were lost but that bombing was as a result of the US's quote unquote war on terror and you know all the foreign policy based on Islamophobia and violent repression of people of Middle Eastern descent versus when the Chinese government visited that region they went to a memorial of the Tanzania Zambia railway line and they laid a wreath for all the workers who had lost their lives during the process of trying to produce a sovereign development project for that region and so I share that anecdote I don't know if it makes all the sense in the world but it's to say that they are totally they're two very different world views that are up for grabs right now and it's in the interest of the global south particularly the African continent to further and advance one that has had material success and results as we've seen in China as well as that I think respect fundamentally the principles of life and dignity and sovereignty, which I think a partnership between China and Africa is the clearest evidence of that. Oh, wow. Thank you so much. Mika you you you brought us in with, you know, breaking open the ways that people in the West look at things to be able to see from another place. And the stories that we've been told, but to be able to feel China also from from your experience and taking a steeper thank you so much. I'm so excited to be writing this book with you. So, KJ and Mika I know this audience probably has a lot of questions for you. I'll ask everyone to put the questions in their questions in the chat, but I want to start with KJ KJ do you have a question for Mika. Thank you so much Mika and I loved your presentation and I loved how you are able to speak the truth from the ground as you have seen it and experienced it and I think that's so important for us to debunk these lies that quote unquote Chinese debt trapping Africa. I do want to point out. And I think this is a really important thing for people to understand is that in the post World War two period, as the world was supposed to decolonize. These decolonized countries, probably only five or six have actually been able to reach a developed status. And most of them have reached this develop status because they were receiving preferential treatment from the United States or from the West that is to say they were trotted forth as success stories for capitalism. I'm talking about South Korea. I'm talking about Taiwan province and talking about Hong Kong Singapore etc. And Hong Kong Singapore are sui generous. They are city states there. You know, cases unto themselves the other countries that have developed are really like banking havens and and a few Petro states that never really achieved real sovereign status. So for countries to actually start to be able to develop and to enter this kind of sovereign develop status without being subordinated to this global Western capitalist system is extraordinary. And China kind of paved the way. And I believe, honestly, that as it paves the way that it is paving the way for the rest of the global south to follow and to, and to do the same thing and I just wondered what you thought about that Mika. Yeah, I, I, I totally agree with the caveat that one debate that's happening is people saying well we can't replicate China we can't just take China and impose it on the world, which is misinformed position because I think part of what you shared and what we're also thinking about is it's not about forcing something onto another thing. It's about what kind of dynamism and methodologies of confronting reality has China used that could be methodologies that are affecting our realities. What level of you know investment into the people is required for such a vast society to mobilize, you know, for poverty alleviation 800,000. It's also required to go door to door in 2014 door to door to 89, you know, million. I think 89 million, I guess, households or people, I guess we said households, but going door to door, getting their information, thinking about it's not, you know, in the US and the rest of the world we look at very, you know, one dimensional forms of poverty of like, you know, your income, or it's about this. They're going in cadre sitting with people learning about how, how many family members you have the data, the intensive grassroots work. And I think that that's, for example, a lesson for the global south and for many of us that you can't simply rely on doing you know an online survey you have to go and be with the people understand their concrete realities, and it's intense of the people who did that you know, you know, you're coming from provinces far away you're there for three years, and your purposefully coming from provinces far away so that there's no conflict of interest, etc. So this level of detail on such a vast scale is something I think that we can learn from. And as you said, I think there's a ton of stuff that China has paved the way for they've opened up, like the way that I'm the oldest. I'm the oldest brother, and when I went partying for the first time it allowed for my brother to go partying with a lot more ease, and without so many restrictions from the parents. So, in the same way that I think China's opening up for us to think there are other ways to go. You know, it's not. What is that acronym. There is no alternative. There are many alternatives and China's showing that it's possible to do that. And I think that's really important and now it's on us in Africa to also better collectively bargain and bring a collective position to China because often what we see, which I saw at the forum on China Africa cooperation in Dakar in 2021 was China's coming with so much on the table, and it's almost like the African leaders are like well we'll take what we can get but there's no sense of agency and a mechanism on the side of the Africans to want to place ourselves as agents in history, which of course colonialism did a huge number on us, but we want to as, as you know, Mao and the people in 1949 did that finally stand up. And as Thomas Ankara said in the 80s, you know Burkina Faso means the land of the upright people, and we've lost some of those traditions for a myriad of reasons, but what we've seen with China is that it is possible and that's a huge source of inspiration and hope I think. Thank you Mika. Do you have a question for KJ. I guess for, for people who don't who come from Western traditions. I guess what would you be your advice around how people can get themselves out of certain fixed assumptions that are based on Western epistemologies and ontologies. But how do you get people to think about just a totally different reality because we place certain assumptions on China on what is democracy, what are forms of quote unquote democratic processes that if it doesn't tick the Western boxes is basically negated or or rejected. Well, I think the first thing point that I would make is that we really have to remove the Western blinders. And it's what I call the imperial knapsack, you know some people refer to this thing called the white knapsack there's something even more pernicious, which is the imperial knapsack, and this imperial knapsack is the privilege to be ignorant. It's also the privilege to be violent. It's also the privilege to be greedy. And I think the first step in removing or changing or reorienting ourselves to the world is to remove the blinders of this ignorance. So, when you hear anything about China always emphasize with people that you have to take it with a grain of salt if you heard it in the mainstream media if it's received knowledge about China. It is probably wrong. And as I pointed out in this current moment, it is propaganda design to manufacture consent for war. It's just, for example, let's think about what you said about poverty alleviation, you know, 89,000 cadres going into the communities finding out what the community needs. It's not simply doing surveys or, you know, doing research, those cadres lived with the poor. Imagine, I mean I live in San Francisco, which is a horrible homeless problem. Can you imagine if we told our politicians, our government bureau officials that they had to live with the poor for three years in order to figure out together how to get out of poverty. We have a completely different structure. We would end homelessness just as China ended poverty or extreme poverty. Same thing with drug abuse. Now, you know, drug abuse is a huge problem in the United States and among very poor and oppressed communities. Let me ask you, which country had the largest drug problem on the planet in the 20th century. That country was China. And it had that huge drug problem, because the West, especially, you know, the fabulously wealthy East Coast philanthropists and the fabulously prestigious American universities I'm talking about Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, all of these schools, they became wealthy by drug trafficking opium into China. Hong Kong was the staging ground for this drug trafficking, which is why they're so upset that it was taken away from them. The, the Eastern wealth came from drug trafficking into China and scholars have referred to it as probably the worst one of the worst crimes in human history, one of the worst sustained crimes against humanity in human history. In 1949 the Chinese Revolution happened, and China not only had a broken impoverished state, but it had a massive drug problem somewhere between one tenth to one third of all adults were addicted to opium. How did China deal with that. They didn't deal it with, you know, you know, the kind of milk toast measures that you would see in the United States. They did it by land reform. And so with everybody who was dispossessed, the means to start to create their own livelihoods, and then there was education and support and community building. But that goes to the heart of the problem, which is the understanding that drug addiction doesn't come out of nowhere. Of course, it comes because there are those who seek to profit from it. There are those who seek to use it as a way to vitiate and destroy communities and countries, but that there is also an antidote in that if we build community, if we give people resources if we give them land, if we give them houses, this can be overcome. Can you imagine if we took every person who was who had a drug problem in the United States and gave them the real resources that they need. I think we would see a fundamental difference. So these are the things that I think that we can learn. So I think that we have to approach China with extraordinary humility, and be willing to learn and to understand that, you know, there are profound things that we can learn from China, and that there are profound ways that we can cooperate and lift ourselves up together, rather than this demonization. I made me cry again KJ because I wasn't actually imagining, you know, like, like you I was just in San Francisco and my heart was breaking and, and the same last night in Portland. And I when I was in China I said, I, you know, I live in the city with the most homeless in the whole United States and I take me help me find a place here where I can see what it looks like and they said, the people don't fall through the fabrics of society. It's that it won't be longer than a day or two before someone picks them up and takes them or gets them what they need. And you've articulated that so well and Shannon put in the, the chat, you know, the war on drugs has killed so many people these wars that, as you said we perpetrate on each other. So I know that everyone's minds and hearts are so full, you both have given so much today that I feel like we should be just in deep gratitude for all that you've shared where you've taken us. And, you know, these mornings are about giving everyone listening the capacity to be a tuning fork for peace, because they've been, you know, taken out of tune by that propaganda that you've talked about by being manipulated their hearts and minds. So thank you for taking the the tarnish off. So the real true humanity and heart can feel again and think again and, and witness again and be in, you know, in humility, again, which is I think, you know what's beautiful about being able to serve the poor and something that she did that I don't think the American understands is, if he came from that place you just described of living in a village and understanding. And, you know, why was the first thing he did was to, you know, make sure he could take everyone out of poverty think about that as a leader. So, deepest gratitude for all you have shared and what inside of you moves you to do this work for peace and bring harmony between the United States and China and Africa. We'll see you all again tomorrow. When we talk further about this piece of propaganda that we witnessed the, you know, the beauty. Let's, you know, look at the darkness of what happens when the United States makes enemies and what does that propaganda do to us. So, until tomorrow. Thank you. Onward to peace. As we launch this at could think we're launching a summer of peace, because when I was in Washington you got buzz sawed if you talk about peace so it's going to take all of us to raise piece up again. So it can't be demonized in the halls of Congress. Thank you. Thank you, KJ. Thank you, Mika. You're awesome humans.