 Which voice at high speed? I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm Jay Fidel. And I'm Russell Liu. All right. This is Think Tech. In fact, this is, what, Asia in Review. Asia in Review. Okay. And we're going to discuss the TPP. Now let me, in the way of background, let me say that it was about a week ago when Xi Jinping was in Davos. Do you remember this, Russell? Yes, yes. And it was really interesting because there were a lot of leaders in Davos, and he became the hero. He got a long, like five minutes plus standing ovation in Davos. Why? Why did he get the standing ovation? Because he said China will protect globalism. China is expanding and endorses and supports globalism. Now of course the flip side of that was he was making an attack on Donald Trump who's, you know, going the other direction entirely and folding in the borders of the United States in every way. That's very interesting that he did that, that Xi Jinping did that. It's also interesting that all the countries that were there liked it, what he said. And I think it really talks about, it defines our times in terms of globalism versus non-globalism. Trump is going his way, Xi Jinping is going his way, but the world understands and supports and agrees with Xi Jinping. It makes him kind of a moral leader in this matter. And here we are, you know, abandoning our leadership, which we have had, what, since 1945 anyway. So I guess the question is, what exactly is Donald Trump doing to build these new walls, walls against international trade, walls against globalism? And I know that one thing he's doing is he's trying to rip down the TPP back out of it. Now that's odd because China was not a part of it in the first place, but China, you know, supports the notion. What is China's position on TPP? How is it affected by Trump's backing out? Xi, that's a really good question because TPP, well let's, let's tell them what TPP stands for. TPP stands for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Now this was a partnership agreement among Pacific Rim nations in the U.S., including Japan, Vietnam, the East South Korea, some of the Pacific Rim nations, and it would give them preferential status for them to ship things tower-free to the U.S. China was not included in the TPP, but it was a sign of a new age when they started talking about TPP. And so what China has been doing is, it's already planned for that without TPP. It knew that it could not be a part of TPP because the biggest hurdle for China to join TPP was to ensure intellectual property protection, which is a very big task for China to do. So what it has been doing over the years is actually been doing globalism, going out of China. For example, what we see today, let's fast forward, China has been quietly working with, for example, the countries in Central America, in South America, Latin America. One of the big proposals was to help them build infrastructure, building a rail that would go coast-to-coast across Brazil, to Peru, Ecuador, and this would be great benefits because they... Interesting that we never did that. Well, again, it's a different political strategy. I'm not a politician, and I'm not going to venture in that water, but we had a different way of doing things. Our way of American life means that, first, for one thing, governance, how to govern people. We had a certain way of, if we're going to economic aid. China has been more, we're going to come in, we're going to help you with your infrastructure. And it's also benefits China because Central America, Latin America is rich in resources, things that they would need in China. Yeah. Well, I think his view of it, and he's been, I would say, consistent, if not increasing in the intensity of his view over the past few years, is to connect everything up, to be global. I mean, to, you know, to Friedman, Thomas Friedman. Globalism everywhere. I mean, for example, CCTV, I don't know if you and Ray Tsujima talked about that on many of the shows, but CCTV was all within China until about three years ago. And then Xi Jinping decided, let's make CCTV global. Let's put it everywhere so that we can get our message out. And so from a communications point of view, public relations, a branding point of view, now three years later, CCTV is everywhere. And not in the U.S., I might add, for some reason it's not here, but it's everywhere else. And it just shows you that China knows how to reach out. Yes. Secondly, and this is something you did talk about last week with Ray Tsujima, and I'm happy that you did, is the train. The train is a phenomenal statement of globalism. You start in China, and you go what, five, six thousand miles through the heart of Europe, and you deliver goods. That is brilliant. That is an example of trade and globalism, and everyone stands in awe of connecting and reminiscent of the train across South America, as you think. That's right. Well, getting back to Tom Friedman, he remembers a book. We are one world. We're all connected. There are no borders. The borders are all political boundaries. And we're connected because today even more so because we have internet. The knowledge is there for everyone. So now the countries in Asia have developed rapidly because of the internet. They're able to get the knowledge, access to knowledge. So again, we don't need to have boundaries like as Tom Friedman, we're just one big global village. And in doing so, building the infrastructure is what China has been doing. The big train, it actually has arrived in London. And along the way, it makes stops in all these smaller countries, carrying goods, picking up goods, dropping goods. Connecting. And so we're having a change. I hate to say, maybe this stop will one day, this conference that you talked about, it's going to be when the global order has changed just when the sun set over the empire for the British empire. And how Britain became, again, closes borders. But now Britain's opening up to China. There's a lot of synergy. They're smart, they will. They're smart. And so again, getting back to this TPP, getting back to TPP. Before we leave the subject, though, it seems to me that despite all of that, China wants to develop hegemony. It wants to be powerful. It wants to be the number one country in the world. And it sees the root to that as closely intertwined with globalism, with trade. It's not only the trade, but it wants to dominate the trade. And I'm going to add when we come back, I guess we're going to take a break, about the breaking news that we have seen in the last day or so. It's very important that we touch on that, Jay, and things that President Trump has said publicly. His new Rex Tillerson has talked about it. And it's a little bit alarming, and we're going to talk about that. OK. Don't be too alarmed. Be a little alarmed. We're going to take a short break. Don't be alarmed about that. But when we come back, we'll talk about the other reasons for alarm. We'll be right back. Hi. I'm Chris Leitham with The Economy and You, and I'd like to invite you each week to come watch my show each Wednesday at 3 p.m. Thank you for watching Think Tech. I'm Grace Cheng, the new host for Global Connections. You can find me here live every Thursday at 1 p.m., where we'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs. So please tune in, and Aloha, and thanks for watching. Aloha. My name is John Wahey. Can I actually have a small part to do with what's happening today? Served actually in public office. But if you don't already know that, here's a chance to learn more about what's happening in our state by joining me for a talk story with John Wahey every other Monday. Thank you, and I look forward to your seeing us in the future. OK. We're back for live. I'm Jay Fidel, here on Think Tech's Asia In Review, and my co-host and contributor, regular contributor on this show. In fact, the host of the show, technically, is Russell Hyde. So let's talk about the alarming information that you wanted to reveal and discuss before the break. Well, I think we just had some breaking news, not only besides TPP, but there was a headlines about the new message that President Trump wants to send to China, that we're going to take an aggressive posture in South China Seas, and we're going to make sure that we're going to stop the Chinese from expanding what they're doing, building their islands and so forth, which may tap them out to be a naval blockade, some things we want to do. You mean we're going to engage in the naval blockade? We're going to engage in that. We're going to take that issue off. We stopped them from building the island they started. It's very interesting, because all the Think Techs in Washington, D.C., says that there's no basis of international law for us to do that. That may be tantamount to act of war. There is no international law that justifies us to do that. So there are some ominous signs coming ahead, Jay, which may trigger other facets in this relationship. Well, you can bet they will. And then surely it's going to be... You know, he triggered all the carrier going through the straits of Formosa there, a couple of weeks ago. He's triggering a cooling of the relationship, gee whiz. And he's talked about revisiting the Taiwan relationship, the one China policy. Serious threat to them and thus to us. To them and to the world, because it has implications to how countries around the world will view the United States. Are we going to be an ally, or are we going to be shifting towards China? Well... It's an opportunity for China, really. This is an opportunity for China. And I think Xi Jinping, if he's smart and he is very smart, will use it as an opportunity. And he will again take the moral high road and he will make advances by trade, by globalism, by international connection, and make us look like we build walls. And you know what's very interesting is because what that causes as President Trump announced that we're going to get closer, we're going to warm up to Russia. Now what's going to happen is that all the European nations are already starting to get worried. In fact, just over last week, the UKs had put their tanks on the tracks and wrapped under the underwater tunnel to take Europe to see how fast and whether logistically it could do that. And they're wrapping up, because they're afraid of that, tanks, actual tanks. In the channel? In the channel. Yes, yes. First time that's happened? First time that's happened. And so they're alarming news stuff. So that means there's a shift in how we're China's going to be. And China has a very closer relationship with the UK than we are today, possibly, because economic ties. So Europe may be shifting towards more towards a China than the US. Can't take anything for granted anymore. No assumptions anymore. It's all in a cocked hat, so to speak. So again, that's to China's advantage. And the other thing is that he made this ridiculous statement to say that he thought that Angela Merkel, who is a great leader, has done amazing things in Germany and handled humanitarian issues as well as could ever be expected for Germany, including all the immigrants, the migrants coming in, and then she was offering them so much solace and support. She's a great leader. And he put him on a parody Trump did. He said, Angela Merkel, who is a great leader, really, and Putin, who is not nearly a great leader and is suspected of all kinds of bad acts, huge bad crimes, he put him on an equality. I don't understand that. But that alienates Europe, doesn't it? It certainly does. And so again, we're seeing a lot of signs here where possible geopolitical shifts will occur. And getting back to the economic world, the reality, getting back to it, I think if we're going to look the US, there's one question that we have is, OK, if Trump does certain things, for example, he's talked about also about renegotiating NAFTA. And that's the treaty with Mexico and Canada. We're going to change it, the equation, and does that mean we also will change the Central America Free Trade Agreement? So we're going to see a very, very delicate situation where these countries, which don't export a lot of things to the US, what's going to happen? The Chinese are investing heavily in Latin South America. They're going to see it as an opportunity, Russell. They're going to move in. They're going to have the kind of relationship we should have had. We worked to have for how many decades. They're going to enjoy that relationship. And we're going to be on the outs. That's what's going to happen. We're going to shut in by our own wall. We're closing our borders. That's what we're doing. And the second thing where we're getting to the heart of the show is that a big thing is remember that we closed our factories, our manufacturing infrastructure 30 years ago. It's too expensive. We couldn't afford it. Where's the money? We don't have the money to rebuild it. Look at our train system. We don't have the money to rebuild the bridges. The bridges. The bridges. You name it. Essential to do business within our borders. Essential for manufacturing. Essential to getting local jobs back on track. And we talked about trends recently. For example, there was a major $1 billion investment by a company called Fuyo Glass, which was a major glass manufacturer. And they were buying OGM plants to bring the jobs back to America, to invest in America, or the actual glass for the auto industry is going to be made in the U.S. Made by American workers, made for American cars, wages of salary being paid to local American employees. So what does this happen now if there is a mixed signal to China? Okay. A lot of the investments from China for Chinese companies to go to the U.S. requires the approval of the regulators in China. And that might accept the balance there. And what I'm concerned about is, if we take a look at the numbers, in 2016, Chinese companies invested $51 billion into the U.S. In 2015, they invested about $11.7 billion. So there was a 360% increase of this foreign-invested money into America. And in 2016, this represented 12% of the foreign direct investment into America by foreign companies. And it's interesting because this is the kind of money that we need to jumpstart an economy. We start closing our borders. We start welcoming China. We start cutting that flow of the investments. We're getting this very xenophobic thing about, it reminds me back in the 1800s, with Asia, we're not going to let the Asians come into America. We're not going to let anti-immigration laws, exclusion act, and we're getting into that kind of thinking. We're closing our borders when we do need that money. So again, where does that leave us? Okay. Right. I mean, Jay, excuse me, I'm keeping some range, Jay, but it just doesn't make sense. It does not make sense. No, I think what's, I think, but it is happening. It's the reality. He's used it in his campaign. People voted for him. He takes it as a mandate. He is going right down the path of what he said he was going to do, TPP and NAFTA and all foreign trade. He's closing it down. And so what do we do? We have a president who's going the wrong way. This is 180 wrong. We have Xi Jinping, who is very akamai about this, and replacing us on the global stage. He's taking our role and making it the Chinese role. And it's going to be very successful for him. And it's going to be easier for him. It's going to be easier for him to do that. It's for an opportunity for him. It's an opportunity for China. And so these are things that are very troubling that's happening. Yeah, so what do we do? Well, let's look to Hawaii. Let's look to what we can do in Hawaii. What do you do as a country? What do you do as a country? Good question. We get another president. Okay, let's go to Hawaii then. So in Hawaii, we have a very peculiar situation because we don't have big industry. We don't have manufacturing. But there's a glimmer of hope because I think that I'm seeing these things happening here that people are realizing that, number one, tourism, that's been our big industry. That's a big money maker for us. But they're realizing that maybe we've got to take this into our own hands and we've got to look at other industries that we can build here in Hawaii. And I read the papers a couple days ago about a big investment by Iowani School. I believe it's ranked 35th in the country, one of the top schools in the USA. It's great that we have a school like this in Hawaii. And it's non-squads. It's going to spend $40 million to build international student stormatory. And they're going to go and bring the best and brightest from Asia. And so this is a start, maybe. That's a great idea. Super idea. Kudos to Iowani. Kudos to the new headmaster who's put Iowani on the track to be globalized. So this is what we talk about a program. We need to think out of box here. We need to think what is our core strength in Hawaii. And I think the governor's wife is right on track. She's talked about education. And we need to strengthen our education system here domestically. We need to do what Iowani School is doing. We need to look at our education history. And this is the point that I make is that we're never going to have a Harvard here. We're never going to have an MIT. We're not going to have those kind of universities because it takes a long tradition, lots of money. But what we can do is what we're good in is preparatory education, elementary school, junior high school, high school. And what we should focus on is getting this niche cottage education industry to create as Hawaii is one of the best places in America. It's safe. It's clean. Great education. Lots of tradition. Iowani School found it. It's diverse. It's diverse. It's multi-racial. It's multi-ethnic. So we have a great possibility. Great possibility. But it's not just business, though. I hear what you're saying is it would be beneficial for the state because there would be an inflow of cash money from the parents of these kids who send these kids over here, and they'd be spending money. Like, you know, tourists, I suppose, would be a secondary form of tourism. But there's something else. And what is that? It's like the APCSS down in Waikiki. It's, you know, when you bring people in from foreign governments, foreign military, you're making friends with them for life. These kids are going to be our friends wherever they come from for life. You're thinking like a lawyer. You must have been a lawyer in your life. You're thinking where I'm thinking, you know, you develop relationships. And when they like this place, they feel part of the community. They've invested because their children have grown up here. And they want to do something special. They want to invest in a community. And I see a glimmer of hope that maybe we can start to build an intellectual resource space here, where they come back. And maybe we can start to do industries where we talked about high tech. You know, we have Mr. Facebook, who says he's going to make his home in Kauai. You know, that brings a lot of views to places like China, Japan, Korea, you know. And you might have some other very influential people from Asia that says, I'll make my home here. Kids will go to school here. And you start to create possibilities. And that's the key. Possibilities, people who have more than an interest because they live in a community. And I think that's very possible. But we need to take those baby steps. We need to support what we're doing, what Iolani school is doing, and hopefully, and Mid-Pacific and Pono, all great schools, great traditions. We need to help. And we need to help our public school system support that. There's a great program at, I believe, Waipahu High School. And I was at the White Tourism Authority conference last year and the principal there had brought in Mandarin to Waipahu High School. He's thinking global. And we need to gather resources, create the synergy in our public schools as well as our private schools, and start moving this towards the right direction. And it's interesting because, you know, I live in Beijing and I live here. And I'm actually getting calls from business institutions that are looking to place kids in kindergarten here to bring them in summer, to bring kindergartners to spend a few days learning English, get here English in the environment, play with American kids. And this is where you started. This is where you started. So this will, you know, have huge benefits going forward. And so, you know, it goes to all these other programs that the United States has had over the past several decades, the social safety net, if you will. They're all at risk now. When really things that we need, we're going to find out later how much we needed them. But the federal government's not going to do a lot of that anymore. And that leaves it to the states. And the federal government is not going to do international relations. The diplomatic policies are going to change. Foreign policy will change under this president. And that leaves it to the states. So I totally agree with you. Hawaii is a multicultural, multi-ethnic, diverse kind of place. And we're in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We can reach out to both sides. This is something we can do, you know, especially now because of the diminution of, you know, of connection by Washington with these countries. We can have connection with these countries. This is a great role for us to play. And I hope we see that, hope our leadership sees that. On the investment side, let me add one other thing, and I'll turn it back to you to close, is that we have to manage for our investment. We have to want it. We have to go out and get it. We have to make a home for it. We have to treat it fairly. At the same time, we can't let it take advantage of us. And so it's a yin and a yang, this is a Chinese term. It's a yin and a yang thing where we have to, you know, manage it. We have to bring it in, and we have to take care of it while it's here. And we must have a leadership to do that. We have not been doing a good job at it. We've been either throwing them out as pariah or we have been bending over for them as cargo cult. We have to find a sort of a global way of appreciating offshore investment. That's my last statement. But you close now, Russell. Sure. And, you know, as you know, I've been away from Hawaii for 13 years on and off. But I think I'm convinced more so that time is right for us now to do it. It's important because we have direct flights between, for example, Beijing and here. We need to really push these direct flights. We need to help get this message out into our educational community because that's where it starts. That's where it's going to start because that's where relationships will begin. We have to look at our core strengths. We're going to have to look at our master plan. I know the good people, Hawaii Tourism Authority, have been doing this. They've been actually programmed to push this, education, tourism, but maybe all of this is not enough. It's the will of people, and it's really important because, as you say, we're not going to get federal money. We're not going to get leadership from the president because we're really closing our borders. But we need to take charge of it ourselves. And the future is in our hands, and I'm confident that we have very good leaders here. I think the path is much more clear today than it is than it was 20 years ago. We live in a global world, not an international world. We also live in a place that welcomes people traditionally for hundreds, thousands of years. The Hawaiian people have welcomed people. The way this place has grown, although it's a little spotty these days, we welcome people, ekomomai. So if you have tourism and educational tourism, they're kissing cousins. If you know how to do this kind, you can do this kind. And remember one thing is that there's a lot of people in the world of technology. They don't need a physical location. They don't have to because of the internet. So we need to bring in these kind of people because it brings more awareness. It brings more opportunities to this place. And we're looking at very big changes, for example, the city of San Francisco, because there are recently, all the dot-coms are moving back into San Francisco from the Silicon Valley. So you don't have to be tied in a certain place, but we need to look and evaluate our core strength. And I think- We have to find a way to bring technology here after all these years. Yes, it's very important. There are lots of talk and very little action. But let me offer this as a closing thought, Russell, as you can be on a beach with a laptop and have as good an idea and do as good a concept programming and make as much money as anybody anywhere in the world on the beach with your laptop. It can be done. It should be done. And going back to real quickly, I took a look at the Innovation Center that the Uline School and the Sullivan family put together. To Tim Cottrell, the headmaster, great vision. This guy's got a great vision. And they put together, it blew me away. We need to do more things like that in the community. We need to harness this. We need to get our kids up the level in this new world. Okay, Russell, you're absolutely right. I'm with you. And kudos again to Eolone School for all that it has done and is doing for science and for that matter, global relations. Thank you so much. Thank you, Rich.