← GoodFellows: Conversations on Economics, History & Geopolitics
GoodFellows: Conversations on Economics, History & Geopolitics
The Origins of Modern China; Is Trump “Lost”? America, Home of the . . . Squatters? | GoodFellows | Hoover Institution
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- [00:01]
Frank Decoder
Go home, jake.
- [00:04]
John Cochran
I'm doing you a favor.
- [00:07]
Frank Decoder
Come on, jake.
- [00:12]
John Cochran
Forget it, jake.
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Frank Decoder
It's chinatown.
- [00:24]
Bill Whelan
It's Friday, February 13, 2026. And welcome back to Goodfellows, a Hoover Institution broadcast examining history, economics and geopol politics. I'm Bill Whelan. I'm a Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow, and I'll be your moderator today. Looking forward to a conversation featuring three of my colleagues we refer to as the Goodfellows. That would of course be the historian, Sir Neil Ferguson, the economist John Cochran, and the historian geostrategist, Lt. Gen. H.R. mcMaster. Neil, John and H.R. are Hoover Senior fellows. Guys, good to see you. Do we have any Triska decophobiacs in the crowd here? Is anybody here afraid of the number 13? I take that as a no. 2026 is a strange year, by the way. Three Friday the 13th coming up for you this year. Two segments today, gentlemen, in the B block. We'll get into all sorts of various things, including one columnist assertion that Donald Trump has, quote, lost the country. And also want to get the historian's thoughts on one Grammy Award winner's thoughts that we all live on stolen land. But first, we're going to turn our attention to China. Joining us today is returning to Goodfellows is our colleague, Frank Decoder. Frank Decoder is the Milius Senior Fellow here at the Hoover Institution and Chair professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. He is the most widely read living historian on modern China. You can add to that collection Frank's latest book, which comes out later this month. It's titled Red dawn over How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity. Frank, welcome back to Goodfellows.
- [01:46]
Frank Decoder
Thank you for having me.
- [01:48]
Bill Whelan
Before we get into your book, which really is terrific, Frank, last time we had you on the show, you were new to California, having just moved here from Hong Kong. You've now had about a year to acclimate. Are you a Californian now?
- [01:59]
Frank Decoder
I am getting there. I'm definitely enjoying the perpetual sunshine. It's very hard to believe that you could find a place like this anywhere in Europe. So, yes, I'm getting there.
- [02:14]
Bill Whelan
Good to hear, Frank. So let's talk about the book. Congratulations again on it. I really like the way that you laid out the better part of 30 years of history of the Chinese Communist Party. And our viewers should know that Frank's book covers the years 1921 to 1949. My question for you, Frank. Here in this country, 250th anniversary of America, coming up, kids are having long conversations in school about the founding of The Republic and what the United States is. Let's look at it from the Chinese perspective, in terms of how the Chinese teach their kids about the rise of the Party and the creation of the modern country. Do they teach it the same way you write in your book? Do they take 30 years and chop it up into little bits and pieces, or do they give a greater arc of history?
- [02:56]
Frank Decoder
Well, of course, there are textbooks written in the PLC and beyond that will go into this entire period in great detail. But the overarching story is quite straightforward. There is a Manchu empire called the Qing. They are corrupt, assaulted by imperialist powers. The empire collapses in 1911. Warlords appear who fight each other, oppress the population. It causes peasant immiseration. There is a fascist dictatorship under Chiang Kai Shek that appears in the 1920s and 30s. And thank the sweet Lord, or rather thank Karl Marx, Lenin and Stalin for the appearance of the Communist Party. These are the true pioneers, in tune with the more progressive spirit. They are the ones who fight for freedom in the hills. And their message of liberation finds great resonance among hundreds of millions of poor peasants who very much rally behind the Party and propel it to power. In 1949, when the Red flag goes up over the Forbidden City, that's the standard account. You will find variations of it abroad, unfortunately, a great many of. Of a great many elements of this sort of tale of a David and Goliath, with the sympathy going to the boy with the sling. You can find it abroad as well.
- [04:33]
Bill Whelan
And if those students, Frank, were to read your book and read an unvarnished history of China, what would they learn?
- [04:39]
Frank Decoder
Well, my problem would not be so much students in the People's Republic of China, they have learned that one should query a great many of these official accounts. My problem really is the readers of modern history abroad, not least in Europe and this country. So the book is difficult for an objective and a subjective reason. The book is difficult because it is true that the period from 1911 to 1949 is referred to as the Republican era. China becomes an a republic, the first one in Asia, by the way, is extraordinarily complex, with a capital that changes several times, different parties vying for power, intervention of great powers, an extraterritorial system, alliances between Communists and Nationalists that are built and failed. It is complex, endless names of generals who fight each other. So that's an objective difficulty. Now, the subjective difficulty is that this abroad has also been simplified into this romantic tale where, thank God for the Communists who really know how to do something about these dire conditions in the countryside, not to mention cities, and liberate the country. So the objective difficulty lends readers to embrace a very simplistic tale of liberation, which unfortunately doesn't correspond to. To any of the evidence you can find within the archives of the Party itself, within the documents written by the Comintern, the Communist International, which was behind the Communist Party pretty much from day one, 1921, July, when the Party is established or elsewhere.
- [06:34]
Sir Neil Ferguson
Frank, I think you're being too hard on yourself because I didn't think the book was difficult at all. Actually. I found it gripping and I saw three big themes that kind of impelled me to keep reading. The first one is just the sheer unlikeliness of Mao Zedong's ultimate triumph. You show again and again how few people there were at his side, that the numbers are just ludicrously small, especially considering the size of China's population in the 1930s and 1940s. So it seems even less likely that the Bolsheviks than the Bolsheviks success in. In Russia. So that was the first thing. It's just such an extraordinary story and so implausible that he finally prevails. The second big theme is Stalin's role in his success. And I think I hadn't fully understood the extent to which the Chinese revolution ends up being a kind of Soviet operation, the way the Russian revolution had been a German military operation. And then the most extraordinary thing that you teach us is the enormous difference between the way Mao portrays the Chinese countryside, the peasants revolution that he supposedly leads, and the reality of life in. In rural China. And that. That's, to me, the really fascinating part of this book. You realize that the whole template that Mao brings from Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, doesn't fit China at all. And indeed, the only way that Mao's Communists can come to power is by just a relentless campaign of violence against the very people that they claim to represent. So I think the book is one of your most brilliant. It's utterly gripping, but it also completely recasts our understanding of the rise of Mao's Communist revolution.
- [08:44]
Frank Decoder
Okay, well, thank you so much. I can tell that the difficulty is that there is such an ingrained notion of a social revolution in China. It is so common and widespread, the belief that there must have been origins to the revolution, that there must have been social reasons why the Communist Party managed to gain power. That's really the huge sort of stereotype in fighting against. And at core, the core of it is of course, the belief that there is something referred to as land reform. Now, does it really matter. Whether we're talking about the 1920s or 30s or 40s. The idea is that the Communists implemented land reform in a desperately poor countryside and as a result gained the support of what I refer to as villagers, but most writers refer to as peasants, not to mention peasantry, all rather unpleasant terms. This is not a feudal country. So first point to be made is that this is a country the size of Europe under good old Chairman Mao says 5% of people in the countryside are landlords. He knows nothing about it. It varies enormously from the north, where land ownership is pretty much equal to the south, where you have very powerful clans and lineages that very jealously safeguard their interests against other clans and villages. Huge variation. And point two is that throughout, from roughly the 1880s till the 1930s, the economic conditions improve. But even if we were to agree, and I think everybody agrees on that, that the conditions in the countryside vary and are not ideal, far from it. There's an underclass of people, drifters, those Mao himself refers to as riffraff. There's unemployment, there's exploitation. This is a system that has to be changed. And, you know, needless to say, a great many people do want to improve the conditions in the countryside, but land reform is not the answer. So what is land reform? That's very, very interesting because that's the core of the myth. So it comes from the Soviet Union. You have an aristocracy landed, you have Serbs who are emancipated. What is it, the 1860s, 1870s? Enormous disparities there. But. So the idea is, if you take land from the rich landlords, you give it to the poor, you create a surplus, the surplus will feed the Communist Party. There are no landlords in China. That's the key problem. There's not enough land to be taken from squires or barons or landlords in China to be distributed to the poor. So these land ownership patterns vary enormously. But simply isn't that so? What happens is that the Communists only ever manage to establish themselves in very inhospitable land, where the villages are already very poor, barely able to survive. And now, with the arrival of the Communists, they have to feed not just themselves, but also the soldiers and leaders of the Communist Party. What is it that the Communist Party does? It wants to take land from those it refers to as landlords. There are none. Then it takes the land from those it refers to as rich peasants. There are very few. Then it takes the land from those it refers to as middle peasants, which is a great many. Then it goes on and on to the extent that towards the end, everybody has become pretty much a serf, everybody has been reduced to bonded servitude. Why is that? Because the Communist Party is a war machine. It always needs more grain, it always needs more cannon fodder. There's a point where the local economy just collapses. They have, in effect, in the words of one of the communist leaders, Jung Guo Tao, they have squeezed it like a lemon. And then they have to move on. They have to move on to greener pastures. And this sort of pattern repeats itself time and again. So no wonder, no wonder that so few of the villages, including the poor ones, are actually keen on joining the communist part of China. There's a remarkable document where in the 1930s, one of the leaders in the Soviet that these communists have established in the mountainous area say the villagers have become lazy. Why does he say it? Because, in effect, every cultivator realizes that the majority of what they produce will be confiscated by the party. So why do anything? Why produce more than what you need to feed yourself? That's the myth. Land reform.
- [14:07]
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster
Hey, Frank, I'll tell you, I love this latest volume. I love the whole body of your work. I want to ask you a quick, easy question first, which is how should readers read your body of work? Should we start with Mao's great famine and then read them in the order in which you've written these volumes? Or do you think now they should just read chronologically and read this latest book first?
- [14:27]
Frank Decoder
The latest one, in my opinion, is the toughest one. We can all relate to Mao's great famine, the famine in which tens of millions were starved, beaten, neglected to death from 1958-62. We can all agree that that was a horrendous episode. But this is so challenging. I would probably read them backwards if I were me.
- [14:50]
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster
I would.
- [14:50]
Frank Decoder
I'd probably stop.
- [14:51]
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster
So go to China after Mao first.
- [14:53]
Frank Decoder
I would read that one first.
- [14:54]
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster
Yeah, it's a fantastic book too. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's a great, a great way to approach it. And I think our readers, if you're looking for a summer project, get the. Just get the whole set and do as Frank has recommended.
- [15:09]
Frank Decoder
And then of course the interesting thing is you, you could skip anything in between and then jump from, from China after Mao, which is really the 40 so called reform and opening up brings you all the way up to Xi Jinping. Then you could read this particular volume and still see all the continuities. It seems like a different planet. A bunch of real communist guerrilla Fighters, a ragtag army plundering the countryside, and then this great superpower. You think these are two utterly different entities. Yet underneath so many similarities, so many similarities, there is, you know, the constant paranoia and conviction that the Communist Party is being surrounded by the imperialists who are out to get them. There is the extraordinary sort of willingness to make promises and pledges which are broken the moment these pledges are no longer convenient. There is a rhetoric about a new democracy in 1940, when Mao promises protection of private property, opposition, opposition parties, freedom of speech, and in the meantime is purging his own, the ranks of his own party, with thousands being executed from 42 to 44. Very much the same today. There is this sort of Orwellian double speech, you know, New Democracy, 1940. And now, of course, you have the people's democratic dictatorship. I mean, remember Orwell, war is peace. Here we have it, peaceful liberation. And then, of course, the purges. The purges. We've just seen how the Central Military Commission has been reduced from seven chaps to two. And one of the two is Mr. Xi Jinping himself. You could not get closer to what happens in Yenan, the wartime capital of Chairman Mao in 1942. 43. Could not, could not get closer to it.
- [17:14]
John Cochran
And we should come back to the historical pedagogy question that HR brought up. Do you read history front to back, back to front, or all the way in between? I kind of like all the way in between. Let me ask Frank a question. This is absolutely wonderful. And shaking the founding myth of a nation and a dictatorship is going to cause you some kerfuffle, I'm sure. Well, I'm struck, as Neil said, by the incredible contingency of it, by the ever shifting alliances. You know, first Mao supported by the Russians, and then we're together against the Chinese, and then we join up with the Nationalists and then back again and so forth. How does a mild mannered library assistant wind up the greatest dictator of all time? How in the world do they win in the end? And I think the picture you pointed is absolute ruthlessness and incredible violence, both internal and external. They were simply willing to do more in the quest of power and internal power than everybody else was. We mentioned lying, cheating and stealing, but killing and devastating, it doesn't matter, whatever it takes. And one little note you made really struck me. As the civil war is going on, nobody, no refugees are ever going to the Communist side. They're always running the other way. That speaks volumes. But how, as military history, how do you start a ragtag little band and then you conquer China. It seems to be just the willingness to be more ridiculously violent than anyone else.
- [19:00]
Frank Decoder
Yeah, so. So I would say all the way 1920s, 30s, in fact till 1940, this party barely exists. We're talking about 50 people in 1921 at the foundation of the party, 1923, when they go into a united front with Sun Yat sender nationalists, maybe hundreds. By 1936, right bang, in the middle of the 1930s, there are about 40,000 people who follow the communists in a country of half a billion. By 1940, there's about, if you believe the inflated statistics of the common town, about one out of every 1,700 people in that huge country is a communist, which is roughly the same number as Communist Party members in the United States of America at the time. The United States not being seen as a great leader of the communist revolution. So in fact, in Europe, pretty much anywhere, except possibly for Nazi Germany, there are more communists as to opposed proportion of the overall population. So that changes in the 1940s when the Japanese in effect do something the communists couldn't do, which from 37 onwards, to be fair, the Japanese defeat the central government. But the key point is 1945. Students ask me how come China became Communist? My answer is how come Poland became communist? How come Eastern Germany became communist? It's because they were invaded by the Red army in 1945. And Manchuria, the size of France and Japan, to the north of Beijing, extraordinarily rich in resources, strategic gateway to the rest of the country. That's where the Manchus came when they invaded in 1644. A million soldiers from the Soviet Union invade Manchuria in the summer of 1945. And they stay there and they hand over the countryside to Chairman Mao and the Communists. That's the key point where all of a sudden that balance of power becomes to change. And what you say is absolutely crucial. They are lost in the 1920s and 30s. But once they are backed by the Soviet Union with weapons arriving by the train load from North Korea, of course, but also from Siberia, with officers being trained in Moscow, with military institutions established throughout Manchuria, than what they the kind of warfare they practice I refer to as unrestricted warfare. And it means that you are just more determined than your enemy. So that includes using villages as shields. It includes barrier troops putting soldiers behind the soldiers in front of you so that at least they have a chance of survival if they move forward. If they turn back, they get shot. But most of all, the horrendous Willingness of starving entire cities into surrender. So this happens in 1948. Changchun, big city, right bang in the middle of Manchuria. It is starved. Surrounded by PLA Red army communist soldiers, by Lin Biao. Trenches 4 meters deep, centuries all around it. Nobody's allowed to leave or enter that city. 160,000 civilians starved to death over a period of eight months. The same number of victims endured in Hiroshima after the dropping of the bomb. So once that city collapses, if you were in charge of Beijing, if you're the, you know, the man having to defend Beijing, would you be willing to fight? So one by one, these cities, they topple like dominoes. You just can't fight. This machine, of course, is exactly what the Americans find out a couple of years later during the Korean War.
- [23:15]
John Cochran
Break.
- [23:16]
Bill Whelan
Our time is winding down with you. I'd like to get your thoughts on two topics related to China, the China of 2026. Yes, one is geopolitical. The other, John, is economic. First, let's start with the geopolitics, Frank. Xi Jinping and Donald Trump recently had a phone call in which reportedly Xi said Taiwan is, quote, the most important issue in China, US Relations. And Xi also said, quote, China will, quote, never allow Taiwan to be separated from China. That was what was reported. Frank, you have called China a paper tiger, militarily. Are you still standing by that?
- [23:48]
Frank Decoder
Not quite a paper tiger. So here's the, here's the, the link, if you wish, with pre 49. It's a somewhat worrying one. The tactics are great, but the strategy is poor. So what are the tactics? Tactics? The tactics are that you throw vast numbers of people at your enemy. This is what happens during the Civil War, 1945, 49. And we have seen a similar attempt with this thousands of boats, civilian boats, outside Taiwan to somehow train for a possible blockade. So that really is the challenge. If you look at the aircraft carriers, what, the last one, the third one with its oil boilers, incapable of having planes land and take off at the same time. Not exactly a great technological innovation. Of course, the talk is always about the next aircraft carrier. Well, we shall see. It's not a nuclear one, not to mention submarines. That's not the issue. The issue is that this country could potentially mobilize so many people, so many boats and throw so much at it without regard for casualties. That's the problem of great tactics and poor strategy, is that it comes at an enormous cost. So that is very, very, very worrisome. But as I also said, watch is the capacity of the man in charge to actually get the army to follow his orders. And what is the willingness of soldiers on the ground to actually go in there and fight? They had great difficulties in 1989 fighting their own citizens. An entire army was turned back when it first tried to crush the demonstrators on Tiananmen Square. This was not Chun. This was. This was six weeks earlier. So I'm not so sure that Xi Jinping all has to do is press a button and we have a blockade or an invasion of Taiwan. I would say what has happened with the sacking of the purge of Zhang Youxia and others is that my best guess is that these military know quite well how extraordinarily difficult it would be to. And Xi Jinping is not really willing to listen.
- [26:23]
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster
Hey, Frank, going back to the theme that understanding China and the Chinese Communist Party today does really have its roots back in the civil war, there are two related questions I want to ask you. Why, despite the brutality of the ccp, do people still not get it, how brutal the Party is and as a result, make arguments like, hey, the Chinese people are culturally predisposed toward not wanting a say in how they're governed. They actually need to be governed by a party who employs the kind of tactics that they're using to extinguish human freedom. And the party is able to cultivate voices not only within China that put forward that argument, but internationally. How is the party able to accomplish that? And are there parallels back to that civil war period as Mao is murdering such large numbers of his own people?
- [27:15]
Frank Decoder
Yes. So, first of all, you have useful idiots like Edgar Snow Red Star Over China book published in 1937, that portrays them not so much as Communists, but great agrarian reformers who are there to bring freedom and liberty to a nation in despair. And of course, Mao cultivates that image in Yenan, wartime capital of the Communists during the Second World War, with really a Potemkin village where you have American journalists and come and see model schools, model prisons, model farms, and go back enchanted. But the real answer to your question is that the people in China know exactly how brutal. How brutal the Communist Party is. They know exactly. You don't have to explain to them it is us Westerners, possibly Japanese as well, who make a fatal mistake. And I think that mistake is quite straightforward. When we talk about Chinese Communism, a great many of us simply do not believe that it is real Communism. In other words, when we talk about Communist China and the Communists, we think of culture, Chinese culture. We don't think of Communist politics. That's the key Mistake. That mistake was made by the Americans during the Second World War when the Chinese Mao describes the grand reformers, made again by Kissinger, Nixon, one that describes a sort of Confucian world and again of course by Clinton. So all along this confusion that Chinese Communists are not real Communists, that there's basically Democrats waiting to emerge.
- [28:54]
Bill Whelan
Now, Frank, the economic side of things. Two stories out. One, Xi reportedly wants to challenge the US dollar for world dominance. He once quote a powerful central bank in China and a more resilient international currency. Couple that with the Wall Street Journal headline the American and Chinese economies are hurdling toward a messy divorce. Your thoughts, Frank?
- [29:13]
Frank Decoder
Well, great. I'm sure that Xi Jinping would like to de$ize and have the renminbi or the yuan become international currency. But at this point in time it represents 2% of all international exchanges. The key point really is that we're dealing with a Marxist economy, meaning that there are constraints, capital controls on the renminbi. It cannot be freely exchanged. And as long as that remains the case, there will be no true challenge to the dollar or other currencies. I simply don't see it. And why will these capital constraints not be lifted? For the very simple reason that they need to fix the exchange rate in order to be able to keep on exporting the vast amounts that they do at this point in time. They've controlled the exchange rate pretty much from day one and are not about to give it up.
- [30:12]
John Cochran
Let me chime in on that. One fixed exchange rate isn't necessarily terrible, but absolutely has to be fairly convertible and it has to be totally trustworthy. If you hold the Chinese bond, you know you're going to get paid back. It's not going to be defaulted, it's not going to be taxed away, it's not going to be inflated away. There's, there's an opening there. The US isn't so trustworthy, but China isn't ready to fill that opening. The second thing you mentioned though, China depends on exports and it depends on imports. They also have their own problems. So a blockade, a war in Taiwan would shut down trade and would probably be fairly catastrophic for the Chinese as well. No?
- [30:52]
Frank Decoder
Yes, yeah, absolutely. This is what I've always said, that they can blockade Taiwan, but they're really blockading themselves that they depend to an unusual extent on imports of oil, petrol, grain. The list is pretty long now. Of course they have been trying for decades now. This started with Jiang Zemin, the so called Go west campaign, which is to open up Xinjiang Province, Cultivate it, and of course, have oil pipes go through Xinjiang all the way to the rest of Asia. But that is not enough. So a blockade would be extremely difficult to sustain. Not so much by Taiwan, but by the People's Republic of China.
- [31:44]
John Cochran
So following up, I think some of what they're trying to do with the currency is to have not a global currency that everybody likes, but a break glass in case of emergency way to pay for things that get around sanctions. And the other question is, when the great blockade comes, the US Calls up Canada, Latin America, Europe, and says, hey, we need you all to help us here on the financial and economic sanctions. Do they say, okay, we'll give up all the great cheap stuff we're getting from China, or to say, oh, you, the U.S. how lovely to hear from you again. We were last talking about tariffs.
- [32:19]
Frank Decoder
Well, yes and no. But, you know, as Sakai Takeichi made so clear, it's very, you know, eloquent. Any blockade of Taiwan is a direct threat to the national security of Japan. So it will not just be a sort of PRC Taiwan issue. It, it will be an issue for every country in that region. And I can't.
- [32:45]
Bill Whelan
This is why we care.
- [32:46]
Frank Decoder
This, indeed. I simply cannot see the PRC as a power that is surrounded by friendly allies.
- [32:59]
John Cochran
I think, as Neil's beautiful First World War illustrates, governments are able to ignore the economic catastrophe that will follow from an invasion. Sorry, Neil.
- [33:08]
Frank Decoder
Go ahead, Frank.
- [33:10]
Sir Neil Ferguson
Can I just throw in a plug for Ike Freeman's forthcoming book, Defending Taiwan, in which he argues that China's been furiously trying to reduce its exposure to trade sanctions and a blockade? It's stockpiling immense quantities of oil and grain. It's buying gold like crazy. John will have noticed the price action in the gold market. And so compared with 10 or 20 years ago, China is much less vulnerable to the kind of economic measures that we're talking about. I mean, I agree with much that you say. In fact, I wholly agree with your points about China's military leadership. But one can't ignore the spirit speed of rearmament or armament under Xi Jinping, the incredible buildup of weaponry in every domain. Not only surface ships. You mentioned submarines, but, but also missiles, including hypersonic missiles that could take out U.S. communications in Guam. So I, I think it's, it's really important to recognize not only the weaknesses of the regime, and this is part of the point of your new book, but, but also the ruthlessness that animates it. And that's especially important when we know that Xi Jinping, in a sense has a Mao complex. And I wanted to get your thought on this. There's a sense in which the man is trying to somehow emulate Mao. There's a personality cult unlike anything we've seen since Mao in Chinese media. There's a concentration of power in the hands of Xi Jinping, which is again remarkable. He has cast term limits aside and one senses a kind of a thirst to equal Mao by bringing Taiwan under the control of the CCP the way Hong Kong has been more or less brought under its control. Do you think that that's the right way to think about Xi as somebody, a sort of Mao wannabe who will take great risk and be very ruthless to achieve that goal?
- [35:15]
Frank Decoder
Well, of course, all dictators study each other and all dictators are a wannabe, whoever is better. So Mao wants to emulate Stalin and possibly go beyond he thinks. Stalin made several mistakes and one is that he didn't spot his nemesis, Nikita Khrushchev, who of course started de Stalinization a few years after Stalin dies in 1553. To Stalin, Stalin is a great example for Mao. But Mao will do better. Pol Pot comes to see Mao, believes he will do better. But Mao tells him, ah, I made a mistake with the cities. They're just bourgeois capitalists. There's little I can do about it. Even Shanghai. Pol Pot starts by emptying every single city under the Khmer Rouge. That all want to imitate each other. They all want to be stronger and better and more successful. And success from the point of view of a dictator is concentration of power. The other point really is that from 49 onwards, all of them are determined to take back Taiwan. So Mao's determined. Deng repeatedly says that he will, if necessary, invade Taiwan and take it back. Jiang Zemin is the one who starts sending missiles across the Taiwan Strait. 94, 95. They're not exactly choir boys. But see, the difference with Xi Jinping is he's got the clouts. This is not the China of the 1980s or 1990s. This country has benefited enormously from its inclusion into WTO. So the clout, the power that Xi has at its disposal is far greater. But I think you are right. There's something very, very short sighted. You remember I called him caveman Marxist and Xi Jinping strikes me exactly as that. Unfortunately, the real worrying thing is that he is, in my opinion, not as talented as Mao. He simply isn't as clever as Mao. There's something very obtuse about him and I think that is manifested in all those purges on the Central Military commission.
- [37:40]
John Cochran
He's also not Brezhnev. The contrast with the late Russian seems very important here.
- [37:46]
Frank Decoder
Yes.
- [37:47]
Bill Whelan
Well, Frank, I think you have to come back on Goodfellows. Maybe after you've written another book on Xi Jinping and we can further discuss that. I want to thank you for your time today, sir. You are a great guest. Come back soon on the show. And congratulations again on the book. It's titled, for those who didn't catch it at the beginning of the show, Red dawn over how Communism Conquered a quarter of humanity. Frank, congratulations.
- [38:06]
Frank Decoder
Thank you.
- [38:09]
Bill Whelan
Gentlemen, onto the B block. I have three items for you. Item number one, citing poor approval numbers, an electorate in a wrong track mood, policy blunders such as Doge and ice. New York Times columnist Rous Douthat claims that Donald Trump has, and I quote, lost the country. Do you agree or disagree? And, Neil, why don't you take a crack at this? Because he recently wrote about Trump and how he has to, how he may try to avoid the, what you call the six year itch.
- [38:31]
Sir Neil Ferguson
Well, we've been told time and time again that something dreadfully new is happening because Donald Trump is president. The Constitution's in danger. The Republic will celebrate 250 years and then go into liquidation. But guess what? It's politics as usual. We're in the second year of a second term. And the thing that happens to all presidents, certainly since Harry Truman, is happening to Donald Trump. His approval rating is way down, not just generally, but also on all the issues where he's supposed to be strong, the economy, inflation, immigration, where the overreach egged on by Stephen Miller in Minneapolis has completely blown up in the administration's face. And just to add to the sense of historical familiarity, there's a scandal. There's always a scandal. It burnt through Nixon's second term, most famously. But let's not forget Iran Contra, which blew up at the end of the second year of Ronald Reagan's second term, and of course, Lewinsky, who completely or very nearly derailed Bill Clinton's second year of his second term. So I've definitely seen this movie before, and it tends to end nearly always. Not always, but nearly always with the president's party doing really badly in the midterms. And they're certainly on course to lose the House. The way things are going, though, I think they just hang onto the Senate because the map's a favorable one this year.
- [40:08]
Bill Whelan
Yeah. A word of caution. Pay more attention to the president's approval numbers than the wrong track number in 2012. The country was in a 55% wrong track move, but it still reelected Barack Obama. But HR John, you have thoughts on this?
- [40:20]
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster
I guess my thought is it seems like President Trump is not missing too many opportunities to surrender the high ground on issues, you know, so, so he's, he came in, he's disrupting a lot of what needs to be disrupted. And, and of course, you know, he had, he had some real claims that, hey, the Justice Department had been weaponized against him and he had been treated unf. But then to engage in similar activity to settle scores, I mean, he loses the high ground on the military. Hey, great argument, you know, that the Biden administration is pushing this radical social agenda on the military, politicizing the military. Great argument that those six congressmen and senators, you know, with that, that BS video, in my view, you know, saying, hey, don't follow illegal orders, he had the high ground and then he surrenders it, you know, by, by prosecuting a sitting senator and maybe suggesting that he could be punished by death. I mean, come on, you know, you've got the high ground on being a champion for sovereignty, whether it's the Panama Canal or Greenland, and then strengthening ties with allies after, you know, after he got them to spend more defense. Right. And now what a great opportunity to come together, as John was, was mentioning the conversation with Frank, you know, to confront Chinese economic aggression, for example, and then you gratuitously insult, you know, all of your allies and then they begin to think, well, maybe Xi Jinping's not that bad. So anyway, I just think maybe these numbers reflect to a certain extent, you know, President Trump's propensity, you know, to take the high ground, you know, which in the military, that's a good thing, man down, the high ground. But then he surrenders the high ground. And I think maybe people are getting tired of that. I mean, you know, and of course we're talking about he has the high ground on, on border security and, and, and, and, and so forth. And then Minneapolis, you know, the images there, the, the conduct there, I mean, you surrender the high ground.
- [42:11]
John Cochran
John, quickly, your thought time of great volatility means, who knows, really, Trump needs a couple of nice victories and a couple of don't shoot yourself in the foot. And we've seen both victories and shooting.
- [42:24]
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster
Don't give up the high ground, John. Don.
- [42:26]
John Cochran
Exactly, exactly. You know, of this latest news cycle, I think Trump made big inroads with Latinos. And, but the news that they're getting picked up randomly on the street because they don't look right is I think that's really damaging to that corner of the electorate. But you know, there'll be 15 news cycles between now and, and the elections and if they can just win a couple of them, there's so it's very hard to say exactly which way we'll go and there's lots of great stuff going on under the radar screen but maybe they could bring it back up. Like I'll just highlight Today's Reversing the EPA's Endangerment Finding for carbon dioxide. That's just a huge positive for the economy. I don't think that's going to go anywhere in the polling and in the elections and it's not going to have its effect within the the year. But that kind of stuff is going on.
- [43:18]
Bill Whelan
Let's stick with economics, John, for a second on and by the way, inflation now today 2.4%. John, New York Times recently cautioned, quote, the global economy signals are broken. Adding quote from markets to spending to debt, usually reliable indicators that forecast where the economy is headed are proving deeply fallible. Okay, John, in what indicators do we trust?
- [43:37]
John Cochran
We don't, don't try to forecast the economy is a fool's errand in part because most of what happens is the external shocks. It's not the internal dynamics working themselves out. So you can forecast to some extent. But I don't believe in indicators. Believe in I think Neil will tell us the contingency of history and boy, in the age of Trump, is there ever contingency of history.
- [44:01]
Sir Neil Ferguson
Neil, very interesting moment economically because if you just look at the data for US Performance, Trump ought to be riding high.
- [44:11]
Frank Decoder
Yeah.
- [44:11]
Sir Neil Ferguson
By the standards of pretty much every presidency in my lifetime, this is going great. And it's going great mainly because of this extraordinary capex boom being propelled forward by investment in artificial intelligence. But there's also all kinds of job creation in sectors that don't really attract so much attention. Nearly all the jobs seem to be getting created in healthcare, which I guess tells us that we're an aging population and need a lot of healthcare. But this, the strength of the economy doesn't translate into popularity for the administration right now in ways that are interesting that voters complain about affordability, which is a completely different concept from inflation as the Fed defines it. The public kind of wants prices to go down. That's not part of the Fed's plan. I'll add one other point. I mean I do think there's a lot of volatility in some parts of financial markets that might be signaling we're nearing the top. All the kind of price action around Silver, we've seen the volatility in tech stocks, in software stocks particularly. I mean, I'm getting an uneasy feeling that this Capex boom is nearing its peak because people are starting to ask the question. We've discussed this before. Hey, we're spending like trillions on all these data centers. But the amount of money we're projecting to make the revenue over the next five years is like 1 trillion less than all we're spending on the Capex. Somebody's going to be left holding a one trillion dollar bag and I suspect the scramble to avoid holding that bag is soon to be upon us and.
- [45:53]
John Cochran
The software companies are already starting to go down. So we can start seeing. Yeah, we're at a moment of fragility, that's for sure.
- [45:59]
Bill Whelan
All right, gentlemen, our final item. It's related to California, which is fitting since this is the rare goodfellows where all of you are in California. At least in California, till Neil hops a plane soon for parts unknown. So let's talk about little California brand ditziness. Pop Billie Eilish, the winner of the song of the year at this year's Grammy Awards, took the stage and made an opportunity to denounce not only ice raids, but also added, and I quote.
- [46:22]
Sir Neil Ferguson
No one is illegal on stolen land.
- [46:29]
Bill Whelan
Neil.
- [46:31]
Sir Neil Ferguson
Well, I think anybody who engages in this kind of rhetoric should be obliged to surrender any real estate that they own, themselves, themselves, to whoever they think the rightful owners are. This has become a kind of leftist cult. The land acknowledgment is now mandatory at almost any public event in Canada or New Zealand. It's creeping in in the United States. I'm heading to Montana. I remember coming across graffiti not so long ago insisting that I was skiing on, on stolen land. It's all very silly indeed because when North America was being settled, nearly all of land was uncultivated. And the great philosopher John Locke made the argument that it, it was terra nullius, that this land didn't have property rights in, in it until it had been cultivated and that that was the basis for the way in which north anded South America were settled. So you can take the decision retrospectively that the land you're living on was stolen from someone. But, you know, that's on you. It's certainly not based in any understanding of American law. So yeah, Billy, you know, hand it over. You can hand it over to anyone you like, but if you're not prepared to hand over the real estate you own then shut the heck up, John.
- [48:02]
Bill Whelan
I had a flashback to grade school and we all had to sing this land is your land.
- [48:06]
John Cochran
I had a great introduction to this. I was at the bank of New Zealand and the land acknowledgement was delivered in Maori. So, you know, at least get the language right. Our colleague Cooper, colleague Terry Anderson, who actually is a student of Native American history, once delivered a wonderful land acknowledgement because he knew the history of it and he acknowledged the tribe who used to own that land and the tribe before then that tribe A had murdered, slaughtered, raped and killed and kicked out. And then he like had four tribes back of, you know, because this is what human history has been for, you know, hundreds of thousands of years. And as a true descendant of Englishman, I want to complain about those darn Danes and what were they doing coming into my, to my ancestral home of York and stealing.
- [48:53]
Bill Whelan
Hr? I'm going to give you the last word. So you're down in Newport beach and weather permitting, you're going to go paddleboarding at some point. Question, my friend. Do you live on stolen land and do you paddle on stolen water?
- [49:03]
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster
Hey, I would just say try to find, you know, try to find a nation that is, that was, is not, you know, founded in some way by conquest, migration, colonization.
- [49:14]
Bill Whelan
Right.
- [49:14]
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster
So no, it is just a ridiculous argument that you just don't enforce your borders, you know, because of some kind of pre ownership. It's ludicrous.
- [49:26]
John Cochran
We should close on this. What happened to the native populations in America was a tragedy. Millions of people died. Not of war, but largely of disease. Populations cut down to the 5%. You know, I don't think saying something performative at a Hollywood event does anything to acknowledge that it was a tragedy. It's not a morality play. That's what happened. And a quick shout out here to Charles mann's wonderful book 1491, which tells you what America looked like before contact with Europeans and smallpox.
- [50:01]
Bill Whelan
All right, gentlemen, good conversation. We'll be back in a couple weeks. It's a show our viewers don't want to miss because our guest will be Kemi Badenok. She is the leader of the Conservative Party in Great Britain. Finally, someone Neil could talk to as an accent he'll understand. So we'll get in all sorts of things about UK politics. I'm very fascinated about the pair.
- [50:17]
Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster
No, he's Scottish. He's Scottish.
- [50:18]
Frank Decoder
He won't be able to. I mean, I mean, I understand you.
- [50:22]
Sir Neil Ferguson
I could just about understand you, Bill, but you know, you're stumbling over your words so much I'm not sure English is your first language.
- [50:28]
Bill Whelan
Yeah, it's early in the morning for me, my friend. Anyway, that's it for this episode of Goodfellows. On behalf of my colleagues, Sir Neil Ferguson, HR McMaster, John Cochran, all of us here at the Hoover Institution, we hope you enjoyed the show. We'll see you back soon. Till next time, take care.
- [50:43]
John Cochran
This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we generate and promote ideas, advancing freedom. For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts, or view our video content, please visit hoover.org.