A (2:30)

Well, the amazing thing is, when I embarked on writing my memoir about the last 20 years, I never really even considered how integrated they are into everyday business between the two superpowers. It wasn't really until the Daryl Morey tweet, the Houston Rockets GM back in October, where I woke up to my complicity in it. So it's sort of a fascinating journey that I had because the idea of writing the book was just to tell this really colorful story of the chaos and the craziness of trying to get cultural and commercial exchange done between the two countries. And primarily I was focused in the music business, in the NBA, and various sports businesses. And then obviously we moved into the movie business, where at the of the main part of the story, I talk about our journey with Iron Man 3. Now, looking back post Daryl Morey, and as I look through my memoir and the writings of it, it's obvious all the different pandering and kowtowing we were doing even back then. I mean, the story takes place between the years 2000 and 2014. And then I rope it into a congressional delegation trip with three House members that I brought over in late August of last year, where we met with Carrie Lam and protesters in Hong Kong, and then went up and met with the NPC and the ccp. And when you look back with those the fog of the war taken away from you after seeing this Daryl Morey tweet and how it woke up the American public, you start looking at it all differently. I don't know if you ever saw the Sixth Sense movie, but obviously as you're watching that movie, you're seeing one version of a story, and then at the very end, there's that twist, and then you have to rethink it all in your head. So to answer your question, it's very integrated in today's capitalism between the two countries.

B (4:30)

Can you remind our listeners what the Darrel Morey tweet was and why that was such a telling moment for yourself and for others?

A (4:39)

Yeah. So in early October, I actually had gotten back, and what's interesting is that my agent told me because I was embarking on a story about the integration and the journey of capitalism between the two countries, particularly in the Hollywood business, that I would have a really hard time finding a publisher that leaned left to pick up the book. And he was 100% right. And that was because a lot of that publishing side was trying to protect what was obviously going on between Hollywood and China when Darryl Morey tweeted out his support for the Hong Kong protesters. I saw that tweet in the colored lens that I had prior to the tweet, which was, my gosh, I said to a soccer dad on the sidelines as we were watching our kids play soccer, I said, that tweet is gonna really hurt the NBA in China. And the dad said, well, why is that? And I said, I don't even know who this Daryl Morey guy is, but he's supporting Hong K protesters. And he's the GM of the Houston Rockets, which is the biggest branded team in the China market because of Yao Ming and his playing days there. And what was interesting is that was the only thing I thought of And I was 100% accurate on that forecast. It really decimated the NBA's business in China. What I didn't see happening was all the fumbling and bumbling of responses by other NBA personnel and various people around the NBA business in regards to whether they supported Darryl Morey's freedom of speech and First Amendment rights or whether they weren't on board with him and they wanted to distance themselves. It was all kinds of craziness that was going on with a very misdirected and misguided various forms of responses to it. And the American public woke up to that and they said, wait, what is the NBA doing here? This is obvious. Daryl Morey said something we all believe in. But why are they now backtracking and retreating from this? This makes no sense. And that's when journalists finally started picking up what had been going on for a long time between the NBA and China. And now we're seeing today with Mulan and Disney, the same effect happening with Hollywood.

B (6:58)

So essentially, and I've said this before, the Chinese Communist Party is almost. They have the final stamp of approval on so much of the social type of content that is produced for, from Hollywood and from the National Basketball Association. You call this the trillion dollar dilemma. Is it really that big of a issue for the biggest business, especially Hollywood and the National Basketball Association, a trillion dollar dilemma?

A (7:27)

If you look at the amount of trade going on between the two countries and the amount of growth that our corporations are essentially riding on in regards to what their stock market values are, you can add all that up and it's billions and billions of dollars and well, surpasses the trillion dollar mark. So it's major, major business. So the idea of decoupling fully from China is a major hit to American corporations and one that has to be really thought about before we really embark on going full blown in that direction. But the fact of the matter is there are lots of issues in regards to how corporations do business in China, that's a real issue that we need to address because there's all kinds of pandering and kowtowing to that CCP. That's control, a narrative to their 1.4 billion people. And that is a real problem. We can get into sort of the macro of how the Ministry of Propaganda works on the way down.

B (8:31)

Yeah, can you walk us? Yeah, can you walk us through that, please?

A (8:34)

Yeah. So you have the Chinese Communist party, right? There's 92 million people involved with the Chinese Communist Party. There's 1.4 billion people total in China. Their goal, the CCP, is to maintain power. How do they maintain power? Well, the best way to do that is to keep people just happy enough that they don't revolt. They don't want another Tiananmen Square incident. And the reason I say just happy enough is because there's not enough resources on earth to make them all happy. So they have to give them all of what they need and some of what they want, and then also provide this messaging that they can aspire to to get more of what they want if they keep working in regards to the group mentality of communism. So under the CCP or under the Standing Committee of the ccp, which obviously Xi Jinping runs, is there's seven party members there, and then below that is obviously the party itself, the Politburo, which meets several times a year. And then the main force that we talk about in regards to controlling narrative is the Ministry of Propaganda. And their goal is to do pretty much the most important thing, which is to keep people just happy enough. So if the Communist Party can't provide all the middle class jobs for 1.4 billion people, which they can't, they brought about 600 million into the middle class, then they have to control a narrative that keeps envy away from the rest and keeps the people that are not a part of that middle class or higher feeling like the government's doing everything they need in order to make them feel comfortable with what their leadership is. So that's where the issue is. Disney has to placate the Ministry of Propaganda in order to get huge business done there. So does Apple, so does Starbucks, and that's where the problem lies.

B (10:27)

That's. That's a very. That's a very good take and it's very helpful, I should say, because I haven't actually heard someone break it down like that. So American business is sacrificing our Western values just to try to make profits in China. Can you walk us through this Mulan example. What is going on with Mulan right now? I know a lot of young families are watching it. Wasn't it filmed? Or at least there was a credit to the city where the concentration camps are. What's going on with Mulan?

A (10:55)

Yeah, so Mulan is a really interesting example and one where I was in initial meetings for back in 2015 when the project first got started. And what's interesting about Mulan is Disney said, hey, look, we have this great Western IP that we develop into movies and it works in China. It's actually helped us pave the way to open up this Shanghai theme park, which they opened in 2016. The idea behind Mulan was, what if we take Chinese IP and we create it in this huge Hollywood tentpole movie type of way and bring it to the Chinese to further ingratiate us and our company into that nation? So Mulan was exactly that. And the idea was, here's this great mythology. Let's create a lot of things that allow the Ministry of Propaganda to. To be able to promote that are objectives that the CCP has that are being taken care of. Right. For instance, if you're shooting a movie like Mulan, you want to incorporate on the ground Chinese resources. You want to create skillset exchanges between best in class people in Hollywood with the fledgling film industry there in China. Why? Because the more people you bring up to speed with experienced skill sets, the more people you can bring into the middle class. Right. And the more you can showcase backdrops of China and showcase artists in China, like different actors and different players in the background and also bring in below the line crew, the more that generates that narrative that the Ministry of Propaganda wants, which is, hey, we're creating middle class jobs, we're creating skill sets can bring more people into the middle class. We're showcasing China as this magnificent backdrop and something that's really special for the world to know about. And we're utilizing various other resources and infrastructure that China has that's also allowing more money to be spent on the ground in that nation. So it's all about satisfying that Ministry of Propaganda directive, which ultimately is about keeping 1.4 billion people just happy enough that they don't revolt.

B (13:13)

Now, what is the controversy around the movie though? Some people are saying to boycott Mulan. What is the reason for that?

A (13:19)

Right. Well, there's a couple reasons. One is there's the Boycott Mulan sort of initiative that took place around the Hong Kong protest starting a year ago and moving all the way until now. Even though the protesters have Been pretty much shut down by the encroachment of China. But two of the main. The two main stars of the movie came out in support of the CCP and the way they were policing and cracking down on the rights of the protesters in Hong Kong. So that was number one. So the Hong Kong freedom movement really started pushing that Boycott Mulan message, and they were trying to get the globe to actually follow it too, especially democracies around the world like the West. And Daryl Morey was one of those people that started to follow that movement. The second controversy is where they shot some of the movie. Now, it's debatable how much they actually shot there, but there was a lot of below the line activity in regards to location scouts getting what they call plate shots, which are background shots of various scenes that they might shoot, say, in New Zealand or somewhere else. So there was a lot of activity on the ground in China and it happened to be in Xinjiang Province. And the problem with Xinjiang Province, as we know, is there's a major Uyghur issue that is quite atrocious. And the players that were involved from the government standpoint in regards to supporting what was going on in that movie on the ground, there were also the same members and the same entities that are also involved with the atrocities in regards to the Uyghurs. And that was where the problem was. And even worse, Disney actually credited those entities, those agencies in the building block of the end credits of the movie.

B (15:12)

So do the elites of the film industry, do they just not care about Western values? Is it just in pursuit of maximizing profits? I mean, it is so egregious what the Chinese Communist Party is doing and has done in Hong Kong. One million Muslims in concentration camps. The virus alone that has infected the entire globe and how they lied about and covered it up. They've stole our intellectual property, they have destroyed our industrial base. They building islands in the South China Sea Belt Road Initiative. I could go on. What? Where is. What is the priority of these American companies that continually just panders to these evil people in China?

A (15:49)

Well, I mean, you talked about it on one of your last episodes, the Corporations versus America episode. And my feeling is that capitalism has always come first in this world of globalism that we embarked on, say, 40 years ago. Capitalism was what drove me. It drove my mission in regards to opening that market any way possible as I could as a cog in the wheel in the system that I was a part of. And I think it's still very much impressed upon all C Suite executives and all the people that work in Hollywood, all the people that work in the sports industry, all the people that work in the tech industry, all the people that work at Starbucks, et cetera, is open that market at all costs, sell our products and services there. That's great for investors, that's great for shareholders, that's great for globalism. What I'm pushing for now is a very simple plan. It's to put patriotism ahead of capitalism, which by the way, is what we've had for most of our history in this country. So I don't understand why it's so difficult to yes, grasp onto such a simple idea moving forward. I am a capitalist. I believe in free markets. But I also believe in all the opportunity that this country has provided us. Right. And we need to protect that. We need to protect what's special about it and protect our principles and values and our national security interests and quite frankly our rights, like the First Amendment right and various others that are encroached upon by the Chinese. That needs to come first. And then after that, yes, I'm all for capitalism. Like we should sell products and services into that country. We shouldn't decouple, quite frankly, we helped build them to where they are today. So let's take advantage of it. Let's get our money out of this thing now, but let's do it behind patriotism. That's the priority and that's how we fix it. I mean it's as simple thing as Make America great again to death panels to whatever the different sort of slogans are for movements. Black Lives Matter patriotism before capitalism is pretty simple. It's a simple concept. And I can't imagine anybody in this country would feel like, oh, I don't want to support something like that.

B (18:06)

So have you seen in the last couple decades of working in China, have they become more Western the more we trade with them? Or have you almost seen them become less Western?

A (18:15)

Okay, so that's a great question now. I mean that almost goes into the Hong Kong theory of why do we do a 50 year deal or why do the UK do a 50 year deal to turn over Hong Kong to China? Well, the idea was over 50 years China would become more like the west and Hong Kong would maintain essentially the same way it had always been. Obviously we found that wasn't the case and they went in there 23 years into a 50 year deal and sort of took it over. The same thing is sort of what we're seeing now in regards to this soft power influence of Western Culture, Western products, the ability to sort of win over China to become a democracy. Now, I will say, having been in China a lot, the Chinese people, a lot of them I love, I think they're fantastic people. I still have great friends there, and a lot of them really are. There's an aspirational quality of American products and services. They want to be a lot like us, and they actually have been won over by time. The ccp, on the other hand, which runs the country, has not. So the question is, if we completely decouple, we give up on this idea of winning over that country into the world of democracy at some point down the road. Now, granted, I think it's a very, very long shot that we can do it, but it is possible. And the reason it's possible is not because we're ever going to win over the CCP. It's because we can win over enough of the 1.31, 3.1 billion people there that will aspire so much to be a part of democracy that they will no longer be just happy enough and there will be another revolution.

B (20:00)

So I guess my fear, though, is because of American tech companies and the new social credit system, will their totalitarianism coupled with technology actually make that less possible than it might have been 50 years ago?

A (20:15)

What makes it really difficult, and it's a great question, what makes it really difficult is that you have one narrative, one party line there. Yes, there's a certain amount of people that VPNs and can get around firewall and get information various other ways, but the majority of people, the vast majority of people hear one story, one party line. It's as if you had MSNBC and CNN and Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon and everybody else all on the same page saying the. Every day it would happen to us here, we would all believe the same stuff, but instead we have different opinions and people can make up their own minds there. They can't. So it is a real difficult problem in regards to overcoming that power of narrative, that power of messaging, because they're so good at flipping a switch away from some attention on something that threatens their leadership onto something that creates a nationalistic fever. Right? A perfect example is in 2012, when the Uyghur stuff first started. There were massive stabbings at bus stops. There was a car that drove through Tiananmen Square and killed a bunch of people. There was a lot of terrorist activity, and it was creating a bit of a boiling moment. And immediately the Ministry of Propaganda flipped the nationalistic Switch and started a quasi war against Japan around these rocky islands in the South China Sea. And amazing, everybody just pushed all their attention towards I hate Japan, rather than, wow, look at all this uprising that's going on around me. Maybe there's something there to it. So that's the problem.

B (21:58)

Well, yeah. And I fear though, also because they're instituting this social credit score, they're instituting mass artificial intelligence and technology. This actually might be the first time that totalitarianism can be made easier because it doesn't have to be deployed by human beings. That's my fear. And also I see the CCP becoming so militant to the west and they're using our capital flows to do that. And so my fear is that if we continue trade as normal with them, they're just going to continue these multi trillion dollar flows of trade in their favor to build the largest navy, which they now have, to hack our cyber grid, infiltrate our institutions of higher learning and the universities. And so it's a very difficult challenge for us in the west because half of our country quite honestly, doesn't really care. They don't. They think America's a much bigger evil than China, and that's the Democrat Party. They think that America is the ultimate evil and that China is going to help us take down America in our image. They're happy to partner with anyone in that aim. And then the other half, I would say the Republican conservatives, most of the Republicans in leadership are bought completely by the US Chamber of Commerce, which should be called the US Chamber of Commerce. Crony capitalism via China or crony corporatism, I should say. And so I guess my concern is if we don't have. It's been incredible to me. The best way I can say this is how little Chinese backlash there has been in our country. Chinese Communist Party backlash just from this virus. I mean, there's some people that are angry here and there, but it's so obvious what this country has done to us. And do you think that, do you think there's a collision point coming between the CCP and the US or do you just think, how do you see this playing out absent any sort of dramatic action?

A (23:44)

Yeah, well, that's a very complicated question with a lot of layers to it. I mean, if you want to simplify it, it comes down to the buck. I mean, that's really what it comes down to. As long as capitalism is running rampant in this country, and that's what the first priority is of all Americans, it's going to be very difficult to Tackle the China challenge. I am definitely not saying that we should just keep trade the way it is. I mean, there's a lot of really big problems that need to be completely changed. For instance, why are they still considered a developing nation? They should be a developed nation. That would put them at least on some sort of a level playing field with us. Number one, it's ridiculous. We haven't changed that. Number two is why do they have access to our capital markets like you say, in the way that no one else does? They hide behind state street secrets laws which allow them to not have the same standards of accounting practices that we require of every other company around the world to have access to our public exchanges. It's ridiculous that we haven't changed that. We also allow them forced JV privileges where if we want to sell products and services in that country, they say, great, we'll give you access, but you gotta let us own 51% of it and you need to build it on your dime. That's ridiculous. On top of it, they're still using. I mean, granted, we did this at the beginning of our industrial revolution where we had protectionist policies and various other pro America trade policies that allowed us an advantage against the European Union or the Europeans when we were trying to get caught up to speed with them. But they didn't put up with it very long. Once we got caught up, they said, okay, we're changing, we're rebalancing this. We should take the same tactic with China right now. I mean, the fact that we allow tariffs the way they do, where a car costs three times what it would here, or the fact that they have quotas even in the Hollywood system of how many movies are allowed in that market completely outside of the free market capitalistic system we're used to. And the way we allow them into access to our country, it's ridiculous. Even on the journalism front, something that both you and I touch upon quite a bit. They're allowed full access to our platforms, our social media platforms, whether it's Facebook or Snapchat or Twitter over there. Our journalists aren't allowed access to any of those platforms. In fact, most of the stuff that we report in that market, we can't even report in the market. So there are a lot of things we need to change. I am not saying for the same, you know, keep trade the same way. I'm just saying there are advantages not to fully decouple and there's advantages for us to rebalance this and start getting our money out of that country.

B (26:28)

What's been really disappointing for me to see is people like LeBron James and the elites in our country just go out of their way to complement the Chinese Communist Party. And I think that you're probably right that it is a. It is. It is a desire to just maximize their own earnings. And I think that it would probably be a mistake to look beyond that. However, someone like LeBron James, he really didn't say very much. He doesn't really say nice things about our country anyway. So for him, it's a perfect harmony, right? It's. I get to insult America and make a bunch of money while doing it. And then the National Basketball association puts BLM on their court. Meanwhile, they're piping this into the Chinese mainland, where a million Muslims are in concentration camps and they oppress the rights of citizens there. So. So can you just talk a little bit more about your book and what you think, where it faces Hollywood, faces, the NBA, American business? Can you give us any optimistic news on this front? Have you seen any sort of changes, any sort of business decisions that are moving in the right direction?

A (27:34)

Once again, a layered question. Let me try to tackle that. So, number one is the book. I know you have a lot of young listeners and viewers. One thing about the book is that I don't look at myself as any sort of esteemed expert. I fell into the business between the US and China like Michael Keaton did in that old movie Gung Ho. It just happened. I got fired from a company because I didn't get along with my boss. And the only client that followed me out the door was this weird Chinese company back in 2000. So I took a swing and it turned into what it turned into. And the great thing about the book, for anybody that's in college or looking to figure out where they're going to go in life. By the way, I'm sorry, but Mulan is causing my phone to ring too much.

B (28:21)

No worries.

A (28:22)

But if anybody's thinking, oh, to become an expert or to do what Chris Fenton's doing, you must have some master plan when you're a young kid. No, that's not the case. Only Charlie Kirk had that. Most people fell into what they do and they just live life and they follow the opportunities. And that's one of the parts of the book that I really like and I think are great for young readers. The number two thing is there's no partisan aspect to it. The reason for that is if we're going to address the challenge of China, it needs to be a Red and blue teamed up. Unity, unified effort. They're one party, they're one message. In this particular situation, we need to have both Democrats and Republicans and everybody else on board with the fact that we have a common enemy and we gotta face this challenge together. Part of where I see the hope that you asked for is that a unified approach is key to address any of these issues. LeBron James, for instance, I get why there's so much hypocrisy involved with his response towards China, but I also get the fact that he has lots of money riding on China, whereas Senator Marco Rubio doesn't. So it's easy to call out LeBron and say, hey, do the right thing. But he loses a lot more in that process than, say, a single senator. Who, by the way, is calling out an issue that should be called out too. Where I see the hope is that China is like an adolescent, it's like a teenager. They had a curfew at 10 o' clock and over time they pushed that curfew back to 2am and after Daryl Morey, I suddenly am realizing, wait a minute, why is the curfew 2am? And I think a lot of Americans are starting to realize that. And the beauty of teenagers is that if parents or the adults in the room, America decide, hey, enough is enough, we're going to push back. Teenagers, retreat. So two reasons why I see hope. One is they had a China, the CCP had an initiative called Wolf Warrior Diplomacy where they were pretty much forcing countries to take on belt and road initiatives and also force them to take this new narrative of the COVID virus and the fact that maybe it was generated in the US or they had nothing to do with it. They are actually the ones that tried to find the solution. And look at how great they are. They pushed that on a lot of countries. In Europe, those countries pushed back. They pushed it on us, we pushed back. They pushed it on Australia, Australia pushed back. Where is Wolf Warrior diplomacy right now? It's non existent. It hasn't been around for two months. That's because we pushed back in a unified front with various other nations. The same thing can be said and we'll go back to LeBron James and the BLM movement and the civil rights movement here. If it was just basketball, it was just the NBA pushing that narrative of we need better civil rights, we need policing to be much fairer and more balanced, et cetera. It might have fallen on deaf ears, but what happened with the NBA is they were able to pull in all the other sports League. And it actually took a nice movement that took place over the last two weeks to sort of push this agenda even further because there was a unified front on a domestic issue. So let's take that to the international issue of China. If the NBA wants to stand behind Daryl Morey and his First Amendment rights, they should stand behind it. And the rest of the sports leagues and the rest of the celebrities in those sports leagues and all the different players from the Nikes and the Under Armours should stand behind Daryl Morey's free speech rights and say, if you retaliate against China, retaliates against the NBA China, then you're not getting any of our product, any of our service, any of our sports content. We are pulling it out Hollywood. The same way you want to have the Taiwanese and Japanese flag on the jacket of Tom Cruise in the latest Top Gun movie, Paramount. You have that right. And we're going to stand behind you as Hollywood and stand behind you as Hollywood's partners like IMAX and Activision and Hasbro. And if they retaliate against you, then we're going to stop sending our products, services and content in there. That type of unified front can make a change. If it's just one lone wolf after another, it will just be sacrificial lamb, sort of whack a mole type of process. So that's where it needs to be.

B (33:02)

I guess my concern, though, is that's not happening and it should be. And that's. Yeah.

A (33:07)

Okay, so why it's not happening?

B (33:10)

No, no, it's not happening because, I mean, these companies quite honestly don't care about our country. But that's. That's a separate issue.

A (33:16)

No, no, no. But here. But I'm going to take it one step further. It's conversations like these. You have 2 million Twitter followers. Like, this conversation is going to hit 2 million followers, and those followers are going to retweet it to their followers. And every time we talk about this, the populace of the United States of America is going to put pressure on our business leaders and our political leaders. We're already seeing it on the political leaders, especially on the right. And we're starting to see on the left, too. I mean, Isaac Stonefish and Sonny Bunch at Washington Post have brought this to light in the left side of the aisle, which, by the way, the left should be all over this. This is freedom of expression. I know.

B (33:57)

It's a perfect issue for them.

A (33:58)

Yeah. Human rights, freedom of expression, labor class, middle class, et cetera. I mean, there's so many different things that are important to both sides of the aisle. So it's conversations like this that are going to apply the pressure to get the ostrich head out of the sand. And that is crucial. That's so crucial. And it's part of the reason why I wanted to get on this show because I knew you had a very strong young base, a base that quite frankly has to live in a US China world a lot longer than I do at the age of 49. And it's super important that the movement of pressure on our leaders is just as strong with the young people in this country as it is with the old. And quite frankly, it's going to come from the young because the more pressure we put on what we're doing with China, the more opportunities are going to be created here in the United States of America for the next generation to enjoy.

B (34:54)

I agree. Well, Chris, the book is thank you again for coming. The Feeding the Dragon. I encourage everyone to check it out. The US China relationship is something that needs to really be addressed. And you know, I agree these conversations can make a very big impact and a very big difference, but it is incumbent on free citizens to, you know, stand up against totalitarianism wherever it rears its head.

A (35:16)

Yeah, I really appreciate it and thank you for plugging the book. And I'm excited about your young readers, you know, and your younger audience taking a look at this and of course parents too, because this is something that's facing all generations, but the younger generations in particular. And then my Twitter is the dragonfeeder and we have a very good dialogue going back and forth on there. So anyway, just keep patriotism before capitalism and we'll figure this out.

B (35:44)

Thank you Chris, so much. And please everyone go check out the book. Talk to you soon.

A (35:47)

Thank you.

B (35:48)

Bye. Thank you guys so much for listening. Please consider getting involved with Turning Point USA. Go to tpusa.com tpusa.com TurningPoint USA is fighting on high school and college campuses across the country for freedom, for liberty, for American exceptionalism, and for a strong America for our generation. Go to tpusa.com tpusa.com Email us as always, at freedom charliekirk.com, freedomcharliekirk.com if you guys want to win a signed copy of the Maga Doctrine, type Charlie Kirk show into your podcast provider. Hit subscribe, give us a five star review, screenshot it and email us freedomarliekirk com.com freedom@charliekirk.com. thank you guys so much for listening. God bless. Talk to you soon.