 wrote initiative in the Pacific Islands, but we're gonna go much further than that. With Christopher Cottrell as a journalist, then most of it, most of his professional life is the right to say that in China and Asia and centered in Bangkok right now. And if he writes any way like he talks, he's a fire hydrant. You're a fire hydrant, actually Chris, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me on Jane. It's nice to be on a Hawaiian media channel. I got my start really, I would say, as a Pacific journalist in Hawaii, writing for Boston Glows, I was pitching stories, LA Times travel. Then I got my big break hired as the obituary writer at the Honolulu Star Bulletin. I was called the Star Bulletin in those days. While I was studying Pacific Islands history at U of Mendoza, then I graduated in 2002 and moved to Asia full-time and I last 20 years, I've been based 18 out of China and the last two out of Thailand. And you speak Mandarin? I thought so. What does that mean? It means yes, I can speak Chinese and that's all I can say. Sure, I'm sure it's more than that. I'm really interested in journalists who make it to Asia and who spend a career, if you will, in Asia. I mean, it's very exciting to think of moving like that and being comfortable where you are, relatively speaking. I was telling you before the show that I always thought that being in the Foreign Service was a great way to spend your time and appreciate the world. But a journalist actually has a better deal. So why? Why did you study journalism in the first place? How do you see yourself as an evolving journalist and why Asia? All good questions. I wanted to be a journalist, I think, once I was like a kid. I thought that it'd be neat to go to foreign countries and be a correspondent and write. I thought that's something that appealed to me. So I pursued two ways to do that, study anthropology and history, which allows you to have a better grasp of context and cultures. I thought covering the local city, town hall, my young. Home of California was fun. And I did break my teeth freelancing earlier in Berkeley, California. City council, these kind of small things before I moved out to Hawaii for graduate school. Journalism has changed constantly over the course of, I've been writing since 1998, with the death of kind of print journalism the rise of online. And then in 2007 with mobile phone media, which turns everything inside out upside down and allows also good programs like yours to emerge as well. So we're always changing and adapting. And also in that same period, we've seen extraordinary growth of globalization with the rise of China being, I think, a central piece of this new history. So when I was a student at UH Manoa, I got invited to Dr. Daniel Quok's China seminars, which he would have. I remember it well at Maple Garden, yeah. Yeah, I love Maple Garden. I would go hang out there once a month, get my free food while I sign people in and listen to the stories of New China that was emerging. And I thought, I've got to be over there now. And I heard that from a lot of the speakers who were there, a lot of the blue bloods in Hawaii said the same thing, like you've got to get to China and report on it and having that grounding in Maple Gardens with Dr. Quok was really important. Yeah, that's really interesting that a lot of the seminal things that happened to you were here in Hawaii. Well, absolutely, yes. It was really transformative. And I've kept nice links with my former professors over the years to chat about the Pacific, to chat about China. I tried to get back every couple of years. I should be back sooner, hopefully, rather than later, but I'm in the deep Pacific, which I've wanted to come to since COVID broke out. I've wanted to come to Fiji, Solomon's, Papua New Guinea, a few other places. I got to Bonoatu, that was fantastic. And I just wrote a story on the Guardian about the cyber attack that they had there. So when I told a few of my reporter friends, I used to be based in Beijing or now in Australia, do you see that I'm in the Pacific? I said, you've got to write something about China in the Pacific. I said, well, I kind of love China behind. I want to write about the beach and the jungles. But sure, I'll try to pay attention to see what this kind of new era of globalization is going to look like with Pacific Islander characteristics defining a lot of conversations. And I think that's the most exciting thing that I've been able to pick up the last two months I've been in the South Pacific is what Islanders really want, how we can listen to them better, and also how Western media can do a better job trying to amplify those voices. So give us some examples of articles you've been writing in Pacific Islands. Well, the cyber attack on Bonoatu was a surprise because I went there for a conference of the Pacific community, which brought together leaders like Prime Minister of Samoa, Montafa, the new Prime Minister of Bonoatu, Kalsakau, Henry Puna from the Pacific Forum, he's also the former President of Cook Islands, as well as a lot of other different ones from Tonga, Kiribati, basically the entire 27 countries that comprise the Pacific community, including the Indo-Pacific minister from the UK. It's just a tremendous amount of energy at that small conference in Port Villa, but with the backdrop of this cyber attacks. Oh, I use that as a kind of side... Who would cyber attack Bonoatu? There's not so much in Bonoatu to cyber attack. They have cryptocurrency, they've got casinos, they have an investment scheme where if you drop, I think, $5,200,000, I have to check the figures, you get a Bonoatu passport. So Bonoatu actually does have a lot of appeal. It's also a free port. Within the last six months, there have been major cyber attacks globally. This one was less, the malware that I understand that was fished in there wasn't so lethal compared to some of the other heavy attacks that have happened globally, universities, hospitals, even the Bishop Museum was hit a few years ago. This is a new level of crime. Was Bonoatu prepared for this? Did they have the capacity to, you know, fix it after the fact and get back online? Since my story came out, they've updated it, they've got 70% back online. It did take them 30 days. And to be fair, it's the Prime Minister's second day on the job when they find out about it and really kind of identify it, even though there were some warning signs earlier in the week that something wasn't quite right, but sometimes in Pacific islands, technology goes out. So, you know, the net's down and the different departments, I think the Ministry of Finance was the best prepared. So the Reserve Bank was fine. The tourism office was offline in a separate division. So that wasn't hurt. The post office was fine, but the Ministry of Climate Change was hit. The- Who would do this? I mean, China's close and China certainly has the capacity as a state actor. Russia is further away and couldn't care, I guess. I would imagine maybe other private state, private actors got involved. Who did that? I've asked this and I haven't got a definitive answer yet from VonWall to authorities about that. What was taken, what could be held as ransomware steel? Like, I really don't know. I think it's just cheaper for them. I was told to just buy new software and put it all in the cloud and keep it more contained. It could be anyone. It could be a 15-year-old in Estonia. It could really be actors who are in a variety of other jurisdictions. Some speculated out of Indonesia, but that doesn't mean that it's Indonesians doing this. It doesn't mean it's Chinese or Russians or any ethnicity. I was just worried about a Cuban gang doing something. This could be anyone, really. Not necessarily a state actor. There was an article in The Times yesterday. You remember The Times, don't you? They're the ones who own the Boston Globe, right? Where I was a correspondent for the Hawaii Islands once upon a time. Anyway, there was an article about how Cuba's economy was failing. There's two significant pieces. One is a lot of these people would like to leave Cuba and get to an economy where they could eat well or better. And the other thing is that if you're really desperate, maybe hacking will serve you well. The investment is not that great and the reward could be very substantial. Yeah, it can be. One of the things I don't understand about these malware attacks, it wouldn't be like a send it to my bank in Switzerland. You'd get arrested, send it to my bank here. It would have to be a cryptocurrency. And what I read is 95 to 90% of these black males are sending it to some crypto account. But crypto is crashing, so it's not really worth anything. So I'm wondering if the crypto crash, these are not led by crypto folks. I think crypto was at a better day. That guy was arrested today in the Caribbean by some local country, I wanna say Nassau, but I could be wrong. Okay. At the request of the United States. So it's more than just making a few bucks is being treated as criminal now. Oh yeah, it should be because they could steal institutional data. Like in the hacks into hospitals are highly disturbing if they could ever get into those internet of things and start really playing around actually with like a defibrillators or something like this and some kind of nightmare scenario. It sounds like science fiction, but I don't think we're too far away from it. So why are you in Fiji now? Is this your first trip? Did you go as a matter of intellectual or journalistic curiosity? Or did you wanna spend some time on the beach? What was it? All of the above. Once upon a time I was a sort of studious history student wanting to understand the deforestation of Pacific Islands in the early 19th century. This is where Hawaii's story really begins with United States and China trade. So I wrote my master's thesis on that, but the trade of that begins in a context. It begins in 1805 in Fiji. On one of the islands I just went to on Sandewood Bay. I went in the jungle, took some pictures of the trees. It moves over to Marquesis and then Fiji Marquesis went out of trees as a rush and then Hawaii as it for 30 years. And then at the end of that, Hawaiian sailed to Vanua too, to the island of Aramanga to try to get it from themselves. And a very troubled expedition that had Tongans and where were Tongans on the beach, engaged in combat. And the ships coming back to Hawaii once sank. Lots of crew members died from I think malaria. It was horrible. But it also commences in the 1840s and 50s, Sandewood rushes across New Hebrides loyalty islands, what's now in the modern day on Vanua too, and New Caledonia. And then it migrates over to Australia. So you've really got this larger story of Pacific islands and Sandewood kind of being a corner story. Me, I went to China to learn about what happened to Sandewood in China and I spent 18 years in modern Chinese history rather than looking at it. But I just did a piece in the South China Morning Post Sunday magazine about the sort of long deray of Sandewood beginning in India, China, Japan. And that was from a chapter I wrote for some Indian publishers about conserving Sandewood. So the world history of Sandewood is why I came to Fiji in the South Pacific. That's kind of my ulterior motive but that doesn't pay bills but writing some stories along the way does. Now, would you gotta be quick if you're gonna be an independent journalist, right? You have to have the connections, you have to have the portfolio, you have to have the curiosity about stories that nobody's spotted yet. So that's very challenging, no? It's completely challenging. It's mind-bending. It's frustrating. There's out of pocket expensive. It's hot. Sometimes you run out of internet space. It's very bad bandwidth but for the Pacific islands, you must be here. You cannot parachute in like parachute in but I've spent two months down here meeting a lot of people, professors, drivers, hotel staff, folks on the street, just having normal conversations about what I should be listening to. And one of the places I had a nice time listening to was in Oniara in Solomon Islands. And they're kind of at literally crossroads where when you arrive in Oniara, they're like, oh, there's the Japan road and then there's the China road and then there's our roads. So, okay, it will tell me more about that. Well, Kitano is a Japanese company and also they're, I think, I forget the Japanese aid acronym at the minute but Japan's Indo-Pacific strategy involves developing infrastructure also and they're very concerted in open and transparent way. So when you get out of the airport, you turn left and that's kind of like the Japan road. And it's a bit smoother, but they're still like fixing it because the roads there are a bit rough in downtown Oniara especially with all of the construction for the biggest project downtown which is the new Pacific Games stadiums and compounds. And then you pass into that realm and they call that the China road. And that really has, that's a really bumpy road. So if that's the Belt and Road, I'm not going to tease them the whole way. So symbolic, really. Well, yeah, it is. And my friends, I encountered there, ethnic Chinese said, don't worry, it'll be fixed by the time the games are open. I said, that's like a year away. And you're going to have a road like this, poor Solomon's. When it rains heavy, a lot of the sewers have problems so there's trash all over the streets. Even I was going to go take pictures of inside the stadium and I had permission, because I got permission to before I just knock on anyone's door to come in. So well, you can't today, because there's traffic. Were you born a shy child, Chris? Yes. See, it's compensating for that. So what about the Pacific Games? This is a big deal, at least there. I mean, assuming everybody stays above water at that time because that's a real issue all through the Pacific, isn't it? So clearly, what are the Pacific Games? Go ahead. So the Pacific Games began in 1963. So they're 60 years old next year. They began in Fiji and they're every four years or three or four years and they bring a lot of the island communities together to participate in rugby and kayaking and a lot of the other great things. They're affiliated with the IOC, the Ocean and National Olympic Committee. This is kind of general organizing structure but Pacific Games is its own entity. But they work together because a lot of the athlete who go to these games, this is their avenue into the Olympics. So it's quite exciting for the young athletes, their families, their communities, their countries to come together for this. So this is a unique one because only ours never ever had this before and China offered to pay for the stadium. They said, yeah, sure, one on. You know, that's a great gesture. Is it a gesture or a debt trap? Well, that's the question. If you ask Solomon Islanders, they think it's a debt trap. They will also say, what are we gonna do with this after it is over? Australia has raised questions with it because mainly, is this a sustainable endeavor? A few of the locals I spoke with said, look, we don't know where we're gonna put all these athletes out right now. There's supposed to be dormitories but there's questions of waste management. There's, we'll damage the water table actually if they suck up so much water and the water goes down and it starts with salt water. That's something that marine biologists was expressing to me that they're concerned. I won't say who, but someone in the UN I encountered was highly concerned about human rights with the amount of labor that was being put into it around the clock to work. This individual said, I arrived at night and I was on a very bumpy, dangerous back road. I go, yeah, that's the Belt and Road for you right there. I'm gonna be smooth later, but in the meantime, it's a construction site that's happens with infrastructure, maybe normal. And it was just a glowing sky of white light, like a spaceship. You know, that was my impression when I first visited China. These guys are working at two o'clock in the morning. You could see the welders on the top of these steel structures, 24 by seven building stuff. Oh yeah. It's good in some ways, but in other ways, it's not good. I did live there all through a lot of the boom years. When I first arrived by boat from Japan, I took a two night boat from Osaka to Shanghai, arriving by slow boat, if you will. And they were still building Pudong and it would go all night. It just didn't end. And it was quite actually amazing to watch. I felt like I was in a science fiction set. Half of my life, basically. So you mentioned that there was this incident, maybe a number of incidents involving Chinese guys, maybe who were laborers on building things and the local people and there was unpleasantness. What was that? Well, I think there's a variety of things happening within the Chinese communities. You have your ethnic historical communities and then you have new mainland business people and then you also have the engineers who are working for the state. And those folks tend to be a little bit more wound up, if you will, for whatever reason, they're wound up for their... What do you mean wound up? High strong. If you want to speak to them in Mandarin, they are sometimes ready to speak to you. Also, remember, they don't want to go home to zero COVID China. And so they're very happy to stay where they are, but they're under a tense situation. Remember, in Onirara last November, Chinatown was burned down. And there were protests because there were political protests over the recognition of Taiwan, which Onirara had flipped to in 2019, same with Kyrgyzstan in 2019, and for referencing Panama in 2017. Flipped to the China side of it. Yeah, to a Beijing equation rather than a Taipei equation, and saying, basically, we no longer recognize Taiwan as an independent country, we recognize one country, two systems framework, the one China principle. So there was a protest against that, and then went and burned down a lot of Chinese shops. And I drove through there and took pictures, and I thought this was a terrible thing. Really, you don't want to see ethnic violence. And the outcome from that was a security pact where China wants to bring ships to maybe ex-fielder personnel if there's other problems. It's led to more of a police training context as well where Chinese are bringing local police to train in China and then equipping them recently with motorcycles and trucks and two water cannons. Australia has had a president's training police for over 20 years, and if not longer, in the Solomon Islands and continues to be a force for transparency and training. So, but it looks like it's a tit for tat thing in the local press. And I think that's a bad way to read, a new cycle is a bad way to see what each side is trying to do separately. That's quotable. Yep. Basically, I think, well, with Australia also, after I left, they announced that they were gonna be investing 100 million Solomon Island dollars, which I think is like 12, $15 million. I have to go check exactly at the exchange rates, but they're putting in the facilities for a lot of the dormitories in the schools. They're bringing over 150 athletes from Australia. So there's gonna be a lot of attention on this, whereas I'm still trying to get information on what are the other dormitories in the athletic village going to look like? How safe are they? I just read that there's a tender for caters and a clean management system. They're like green and clean safety managers that they're still hiring. So it's a work in progress, but if you're a Pacific Island reporter or an athlete or a parent or community leader, you wanna get a bit more out of this right away. So I went over to take some nice pictures of the stadium and I had already called and got sort of semi-permission to do so, but from the outside, they said, you can't go in today. I said, well, that's fine. I understand if it's a mess and maybe it's not safe unless you work in there and you have a hard hat and boots and a special tour. So I went in, I asked some of the local people, can I come in? And they said, oh, talk to the boss and Chinese guy and I said, oh, you can't take pictures. I said, well, I'm not sure. I just want to talk to you. I just want to talk to you. So this is very pretty. I just want to take some outside pictures. The sky is nice. And he started to put his hands together and I was like, no, no, no, no, you can't do it. He's like, what's wrong with you? And I said, okay, I get it. It's your job. It's highly sensitive. I'll just walk out and I'll just take the front of the building and then I'll get in my taxi and I'll be on my way and that's what I can do. And when I'm invited back, I'll be a good guest as always. I don't like trespassing and you know, popping over the fence or something like this is not, you know, some journalists do that, but that's not, these are, it's a sporting event. Like it's not possible. You can't come back. You can't come back, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's the long stories of what's the longevity and the outcome. So he ran after me when I tried to take pictures. And I took a picture of him and he put his hands up like this over his face. Like he was a volleyball player. Okay, that's all I can do. I'm going, but other reporters from ABC News Australia as well as Channel News Asia have gone and have been chased away in more serious ways with the guards coming over and yelling at them, threatening to take police action against them, et cetera. And I thought Solomon's Islands is a neighbor to ASEAN and Australia, just as much as it's in United States. So I know how to behave with a, maybe over-aggressive Chinese bow on their guards, but if you were a journalist from Tonga who didn't need to understand that this guy's going to come and chase after you, it could be a real altercation or. Well, it sounds like this is a story that it's going to last for a while until the games themselves. And you've been there two months. What's your plan? Are you going to stay through the games? You sound like there's plenty of news coming. There is plenty of news coming. And I mean, it's November 19th to December 2nd, next year. So there's going to be a lot of evolution in this. We're still waiting to hear about who's going to be the organizer of the press. I understood that there was a bid from Australia, a bid from China. And some of the organizers asked me, what did you think of it when you were there? These were organizers at Fiji. I said, there's only like four or five like major hotels downtown. Where are all the families going to stay? Where's the press going to stay? I had a lot of headaches just trying to get basic internet going. Even the nice hotel I stayed at broke down like three or four times. And finally, I'll name the hotel Heritage Park. That's where I was able to buy internet and have fast and reliable communication. But I've heard other press who were brought there had similar conundrums. How can we report on this great event that you're putting together? Are you going to bring press from Marshall Islands? Guam, right? These places, Samoa. How are you going to eat it? It's going to be television and cameras and international feed and a pool, if you will. That's going to be pretty complicated. So why don't you put yourself up for the leader? Well, let's see how it goes. I'm working on the story. I have to get more voices of where I feel confident really putting this together and just sort of brainstorming with you on this now. It's kind of a part of the fun because I think your media group can also ask these bigger questions, right? And also amplify to other regional and international press. Like here's some fun stories that can be asked and approached, but just take precaution and contact the right authorities and don't try to walk by the Chinese garb. Wow, the bigger the better. But let me go back to China for a minute with you. I'm just so exciting to go to China around that time because for the first few years you were there, it was really open. Hu Jintao was a terrific guy, I mean, relatively speaking. Xi Jinping got a little tougher with his anti-corruption initiatives and all the things he's done, which have, I wouldn't say alienated, but oppressed people. And you're talking about the South China Morning Post and my goodness gracious, life in Hong Kong has certainly, certainly changed. So being a journalist there for what, 18 years, that's really something. I'm sure you haven't written out all the stuff that crossed your mind in that period. But I really wonder how you feel about China now. That there has been a dynamic in China that's inescapable from say 2000 or so until 2010, wow, it has changed a lot and not necessarily for the best. What's your thought about that? It's very complicated to operate inside of the mainland. If you register as press, you'll be followed and you can't talk to people openly so you can't get any stories. But there are things where you're doing political stories whereas you can do bigger stories on culture, lifestyle, even just explaining history in itself in the earliest was itself a breakthrough. We never thought we could actually discuss things from periods of history that maybe were not raised certainly in the 50s and 60s at all. And even talking about the Red Guards openly as the Chinese do was pretty amazing to people who'd been there for a long time. I speak with a lot of reporter friends daily who are based in Southeast Asia now who can no longer get back inside to see what's really going on. So it's very difficult to gauge conversations and I don't have conversations with WeChat anymore. I closed it last year, actually closed on me. I was like, I don't need it. Well, they're probably listening to every word you say. Sure, there's figures and they register for foreigners. One of the ways that one might go back inside to operate is you register and you do your job and you have your frustrations and you go out or you cover finance in Hong Kong. That's about it. But there's some very serious lines now in Hong Kong about what is safe or not safe to say. So I have friends who just cover markets and that's it. Others have been called. It's out of animal farm or one of those, you know, dystopian views of the future is happening with the cameras and the prosecutions and the retraining camps more and more and very, very troublesome. And, you know, the borders are such an issue. It's not only Taiwan. It was a border clash yesterday over the Himalayas with India that's happened, you know, a number of times. He's pretty aggressive. So that leads me to ask you about Belt and Road. Because Belt and Road is the most ambitious thing that any country on the planet has ever done in terms of infrastructure. And is it working? Is it working in terms of diplomacy, economics, political agreement in the country about it? Or is it just a great big burden on China? I think it's a combination of things. It's had two periods. First of all, it's early launch in 2013, up to 2019, where there was excitement that they were going to be putting in high-speed trains across Africa. And we're delivering them with COVID that's been a bit slower, but still last year they opened up the train from Kunming to Vientian on the Thai border in Nongkai. And I was in other parts of Thailand last year and only this year. And you can see, yes, they're putting in bits and pieces of these high-speed trains that will link up to Central China and Southwest China. With Philippines, they're going to build this big bridge from the city of Davao, capital of Mindanao Island to Samara Island, $350 million bridge that will be built. So putting concrete, and they're gonna build these games but how sustainable are them? For how long? Different Chinese people have different opinions. Some would say use that money for Chinese people. Don't take it abroad. Those aren't universal voices. Others think this is great because now I can do global business, right? I can no longer need to be in Henan. I can go be a miner or a farmer in Central Africa. So I think the other element that was lost after 2019 is the people-to-people exchanges that were promised. So around Southeast Asia and the Pacific, they will say, well, these are neat projects but where are the Chinese tourists? Yeah, they were expecting massive tour groups to come. Well, they haven't been around for a couple of years. They might come back, but in different form and maybe highly circumscribed, meaning like you've got to fill out the form of every place you're going to. It can only be a state license done. Travel agent, you can only go to these shops but certainly in Port Vila, in Onyara, Suva, and Nandi, the other side of Fiji, there's lots of Chinese shops, lots of Chinese restaurants, yeah. Are they local Chinese or are they Chinese Chinese? Most of these are a combination of recent mainlanders who've purchased properties, especially in Port Vila. Port Vila, the Chinese I spoke to, they bought lots of like the small garment shops all over downtown. They tended to be from Fujian and Zhejiang provinces on the coast, whereas I got a mixed group of people that I encountered in Onyara, from like Zhongzhou and Hema and Beijing. Yeah, even in the Solomon's on a smaller island called Makira, there were some Chinese guys from Indonesia but they only spoke Mandarin and their leader was from Nanjing, okay. And they were out there for like nickel mining or something. So, you'll see a return certainly to people of people in business to business exchanges on which are what the islanders are asking for. These larger stake projects, I think Samoa rejected one recently last year because it just wouldn't give them so much debt burden, really. Yeah, I wanna ask you about that. We've all heard about the debt traps and all. And I would imagine that some countries, maybe Samoa, is this Western Samoa? Yeah. What is APA, yeah, this is Samoa, the Prime Minister of Montauba, said he- They say no because they don't wanna fall into the trap. Yeah, that's true. And they don't trust the Chinese, and there's an issue about that. So the question is, there's two things I wanted to ask you about. One is, are they getting resistance on this glorious vision of world connection? What is it, one big family kind of thing, all over the world, thanks to the Chinese? Or are countries happy enough to have them invest the money? They want them to invest the money. And again, coming into COVID period, where everything was frozen, a lot of the islands shut down instantly, their tourism industries collapsed, they really need a recalibration. So they'll welcome that, but they're also skeptical after they see institutions like Angola, Sri Lanka was a wake-up call, I think, for many smaller countries. Others have better ways of managing them, but yet still have skepticism. Cambodia had a good job, I think, overall. A couple of years ago, before COVID, I think there's really a thing on that. A couple of years ago before COVID, let's call it BC. Another time, I know the word. Historian's terminology, okay. In Hawaii, downtown, there were some people from China who conducted a conference, and the conference was intended to encourage investment in Belt and Road. And this does not mean investment, either from Hawaii or from China, but other places, everywhere, Europe. They were all there from Europe, they were there from other countries in Asia, from the mainland US, bankers, what have you, who were considering writing checks to invest in projects that were part of Belt and Road. And I said to myself, gee, this is really terrific that they are opening it up that way, that they're allowing money to come in, although they're gonna control how the money is actually spent. Then I thought, when COVID came, gee, it's probably not happening the way they thought it would happen. They're probably not getting investment from outside investment sources, and it all has to come from China. Have you seen or heard of any issues along those lines? I think there's resistance to invest in it because there is pushback in a lot of Western capitals on it. And then secondly, this is arisen in the discourse out of China. You'll hear BRRI mentioned, but now they're really wanting to emphasize the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative. Those are an area that the Lowy Institute in Australia has put a hand up and said, well, wait a minute. All gains for economic empowerment and development over human rights is not something that we like. So I think the Lowy Institute paper on those two initiatives is worth, I'll send it to you if I'm having to read on because that's the new language I think they're using to show that they are being beneficial actors, even though when they go and sit down at the bilateral level, they'll mention BRRI. Well, boy, if I could realize it'll be something. I mean, certainly it may have slowed down, but it's certainly not dead. And it's really a fantastic vision from Beijing to Spain. My goodness gracious, what a thought. And if they can pull it off, it will change the world. It is, they'll get some things accomplished. They'll take longer to do it, but they have the patience to do this, right? They have their five year plans. I don't think they're gonna be shaking this anytime soon. I think Kevin Rudd is forecast that she would be empowered to 2037 or something like this. So leadership change, I don't see it happening anytime soon, and that's five years at least. So they'll have maybe a recovery of COVID this year and early next year with more vaccines, more firmly established, and a bit more of, you can say flexibility. And when that happens, you'll see, I think, the first big ripple effects in ASEAN and probably Central Asia, pending stability with Russia. Right, all of the Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkestan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, they're having more dialogues with Beijing. And you're seeing more business people go out there and what they put their trains across Central Asia. I think Putin's invasion of Ukraine really gummed up their greater vision for being able to get into Europe directly with trains. But if they can get- Central Asia was a thousand years ago and now an important bridge. Gotta get across that. Yeah, also for BRI, if you will pay attention to Peru, the port of Changkei, north of Lima, I think it's 65 miles or something like this, will be one of the largest ports in the South Pacific. That will transform Solomon's, Egypt, Kira boss, and Vanuatu and other small ports around the region as they develop massive timber and mining trade and fishing, et cetera, out of Latin America. There's been a recent coup in Peru. So I was like, oh, that's a red flag. I wonder what's really happening on the ground there. But 2023, within the first six months of the year, the port of Changkei is supposed to be open for business. That's another thing that the BRI has done effectively. So you've got this reconstruction of the Pacific happening and that's a bigger picture to pay attention to. Well, you've got to give them credit as a country. They understand the value of infrastructure, not only in country, but to other countries and all the leverage points that flow from that. I mean, he talking about influences, talking about economy, he talking about world leadership, what he's talking about. I was going to say it could not be underestimated. Yeah, I think. And you understand it, because you were there, you watched it unfold and you must have thought about, this is my last question, because we've got to go. Oh, sure. You must have thought about the comparison between these fantastic plans, these glorious possibilities for China under whoever is running it, but especially under Xi, so ambitious, and the US, which changes government, like changes underwear. And every administration is different and nobody outside the country can predict exactly where we are going at any point in time and whether we could ever keep up. So what are your thoughts about that? I have to have spent 18 years in China. I mean, it's got to be a problem if we who used to be in charge of this kind of thing are now falling back in a comparative analysis. I like our balance of power. I like our checks and balances, even though it might seem like it's not continuity, but we have the continuity of institutions overall. Inside of China, the things change very quickly. So gaining a rule of law to keep your contracts is not so easy necessarily. The bigger picture is, yeah, they can say we have a grand vision to 2050, but the blue Pacific is also enabling themselves with bigger roadmaps like this. US corporations have big roadmaps as well for investors to look into. Many people in the US would not want to see our state have 100 year revisions for what the country is going to march on to. I think we set a nice tone that works for us and we think that it liberates and emancipates people ultimately and I'm very happy about that. Whereas China's system is different. It's organized for the Chinese people with their context and how they want to read the world and it's very hard to engage in conversations where those two systems overlap anymore. Whereas in the early years, my first decade there, you could have much easier conversations, but now I think each side is more entrenched. Hey, I can't have a, I can't have an easy conversation with somebody from Arkansas or Missouri. So, conversations are hard all over. Conversations are hard all over. I do have a great conversation. Let's take a look at the guy from Arkansas. He was a, he worked in a bank, a nice guy. Hey, you know, Chris, I really want to do this again. I hope you'll be available wherever you are. There's a million other questions. We just don't have the time today, but thanks so much for joining me and I look forward to talking with you again soon. My pleasure, Jay, and thanks to your tech team there and to the viewers there in Hawaii and abroad. Zai Jin. Zai Jin. Zai Shea. Jai Oloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.