In this episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins dive deep into China’s sweeping crackdown on social media, exploring how the Chinese government is targeting not just political dissent, but also “sad people,” conspicuous consumption, LGBTQ+ communities, and even influencers who promote minimalism or criticize the economy. We discuss the cultural, economic, and political motivations behind these policies, compare them to similar trends in other countries, and debate the long-term consequences for China and the world. From the disappearance of China’s “Kim Kardashian” to the fate of the “lying flat” movement, this conversation is packed with surprising stories, sharp analysis, and global context.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be with you today because we are going to talk about China’s crackdown and it’s not exactly what you would expect.

It’s a crackdown on sad

Malcolm Collins: people. Sad

Simone Collins: people

Malcolm Collins: go to jail,

Simone Collins: directly to jail, sad people. It’s also a crackdown on, on Crazy Rich Asians, which are my favorite.

Malcolm Collins: So yes, yes. Sad people. Rich people. They’re basically like live. The middle class like that is the aspiration we want on the internet. Yeah. You will be moderates.

Well, but not just that. ‘cause we’re also gonna go on, you know, them disappearing gay people, them disappearing trans people. Literally everything that they are shoving down the west right now. Like everything that they are filling. TikTok whiz, their bots are hammering. YouTube whiz. Probably

Simone Collins: more apparently.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but this, this is, oh, no, no. YouTube still very badly affected by Chinese bots. This is what every, everything that, that, you know, we keep saying this is what they’re hitting [00:01:00] us with within their own country. It’s controlled their own citizens can’t even voluntarily produce this kind of content.

And

Simone Collins: most people are familiar with this, with TikTok. How, like in the United States, TikTok is just sort of this, this, this. S toilet vortex of debauchery and distraction. And in, in China it’s like educational content.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But the way that Laowai talked about this was he said it’s, it’s a form of informational, asymmetric warfare, you know?

Mm-hmm. With their own country. All of this stuff is banned and I think the question that we’re gonna be coming to throughout this episode is. Is this actually bad, like the way that China is implementing this? Yeah. I know that we have like this idea around free speech maxing in the United States but when other powers are actively and provably using these platforms to, so social discord was in our country.

You know, do we need to address this? Or is [00:02:00] there benefit in addressing it the way that, that China’s addressing it? And what are the downsides to addressing it the way that China’s addressing it? Yeah. So get started, Simone.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So first off, what really got me and what I, where I first heard about this was the conspicuous consumption takedown where all of a sudden these really treasured.

Famous Chinese people. Just like not known to Americans had their accounts taken down. So notable people were weighing Hong Queing. Yes, I butchered that. 2.3 million

Malcolm Collins: followers.

Simone Collins: Yeah, this guy was known for being China’s Kim Kardashian. I’m setting you. A picture of him looking fabulous in his outfits.

I, I just, I love his look. I’m, I’m kind of devastated that he’s been taken down because this means that I can’t easily consume

Malcolm Collins: his content anymore. Matt, those outfits look ridiculous. He looks

Simone Collins: like he’s out of some crazy futuristic anime. He, his whole thing, aside from being China’s Kim Kardashian. Was that he [00:03:00] became really famous for his claims of never leaving home with less than 1.4 million worth of clothing and jewelry, as well as owning seven high value properties reportedly worth over 110 million US dollars.

They were all located within this exclusive Beijing compound. He, he is, is really known for the lavish outfits. Great examples that I sent to you. Yeah. Valuable jewelry, frequent visits to hot couture. Jewelry dealers accompanied by his security team, which makes sense. ‘ cause if you don’t leave the H it’s like you’re famous for not leaving the house in that amount of money.

Like

Malcolm Collins: screwed. Yeah. You’re, you’re, you’re asking for. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think what a lot of people don’t realize is, is you build this up, building up. Fame like that, you know, 2.3 million followers. Like, I’d be devastated if our followers just got wiped one day. Right? Like, this is something you worked for years building up.

Well, and

Simone Collins: this is, he’s someone who like, literally, I mean this, this wasn’t how he got his wealth. His wealth was from a family business in coal mining, mining that was later invested into jdi jewelry, [00:04:00] which of course is why he. Has a lot of Jdi jewelry. And he’s also launched his own luxury boutique.

But he’s been very explicit about like, no, I wanna be famous. I want to be an influencer. And China just

Malcolm Collins: pulled the rug away. There’s other people, by the way, I dunno if you saw this one. They were lady ab, sister abalone? No, no. The one who got disappeared for giving money to poor people.

Simone Collins: I dunno, this one.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So there was a guy who was sort of doing like what Mr. Beast was doing, but in China. Oh. Where he would you know, ask poor people who had recently bought groceries. You know, how much did you spend on that? And then he’d pay them back for it and get sort of their life story. And he had built up I think it was millions of followers.

And and he was taking,

Simone Collins: he was, he’s redistributing wealth though. This is part of the, but,

Malcolm Collins: but Xi Jinping declared. That there are no poor people in China. So Oh no, he’s, and he was very pro to state, and the thing that they finally disappeared him over and I mean, disappeared. They didn’t just take him off social [00:05:00] media.

You now can’t search his name or anything like that. Right. He’s likely in a detainment facility somewhere. Oh, no. He had somebody come on his channel during a live stream and ask him if he shot Xi Jinping was a dictator. And he immediately cut the video. He then went on a rant about how crazy this guy was, and the government should look him up and arrest him.

He joined the line to the public. Exactly. Disappears the next day. Oh.

Speaker: 说什么我想说你认为习他是一个独裁者吗?我操,这种人严重违反直播规范啊,这种人严重违反直播规范,我第一时间给他挂掉。这种人疯了吧,这种人。这种人是不是疯了?我的天呐,这种人太可怕了这种人。这种人肯定有人找他的,这种人肯定有人找他。 有人找他,这种人疯掉了这种人。你怎么能违反直播规范呢?[00:06:00] 我的天呐,我第一时间给他挂掉了啊,第一时间给他挂掉了。这种人,你自己承担自己的法律后果。我的天哪,这种人太可怕了,这种人。

Malcolm Collins: This didn’t just happen to him. This happened to another guy who disappeared. This other guy had like, I think half a million followers and he was bantering with some kid, you know, like a, an actual child, right? Like they were doing like video game banter.

And at one point he’s like, who do you think you are? And the kid’s like, well, my dad will beat you up. And then the guy was like, who’s your dad? And the kid said, Xi Jinping. And then the guy just like stops talking and like gets this like scared look at the camera. The next day he disappears as well.

His dad was obviously not Xi Jinping, he made a joke. But you can’t make a joke about Xi Jinping and the kid, one does not joke. Kidden didn’t realize that. Oh boy. And so, you know, you’re, you’re, you are, the level of these people aren’t just disappearing from the internet, but they’re often [00:07:00] actually disappearing and unsearchable after this happens.

Simone Collins: That is terrifying,

Malcolm Collins: but continue.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I’m, I, yeah, I was just, I was thinking in this case about just these, these conspicuous consumptions. Were you think about the

Malcolm Collins: Apple guy, the guy who now they’re putting his face on Apple phones across stores around the world? No. Okay. Well, we’ll get to that later because this is another instance where I’m, no,

Simone Collins: I’m sad about Sister Abalone who help me, sister abalone.

She’s, she’s she’s known for, she’s actually an older woman, so she was really, I was like, oh, this is so cool. Like an influential, like fashionable old woman. She had over 2 million followers on, on Doyen, and, and she had this lavish Macau is. State that had private gardens and courtyards and a golf course, and she wore lots of jade jewelry and she would document her her lifestyle, eating really expensive food, hence sister abalone.

There’s also Mr. Bo who was all about like the fancy clothes and he a lot of dogs in his videos and he w you know, wear his [00:08:00] dogs in fancy purses. And this is, it’s so interesting to me. Because in the, the United States and probably other places like Western countries, this like almost fetishization of crazy rich Asians who just have insane conspicuous consumption is mm-hmm.

So high. And even some of the new, most famous, just not because they’re Asian, but just because they’re rich influencers do happen to be Asian. Oh God, why am I blanking on her name?

Becca Bloom. Okay, so there’s, there’s this new influencer, they’re basically on this year in 2025, came on the scene in the United States. She’s actually, she’s a Silicon Valley background. Like she, she, her, I think her mansion is in Atherton, Malcolm. Oh, wow. Yeah, so like Silicon Valley parents, like in tech and she herself.

Is I think working in finance, probably investing, but she suddenly became this beloved influencer specifically just for being wealthy. And like she [00:09:00] sh shows off her jewelry. She just got married, so she had this amazing lavish marriage. And she’ll show off the insane like desserts that she serves to her dog that are more than like what we would be able to afford for like.

A, a very, very special holiday meal for our entire family, extended family that kind of thing. And, and she here, and it’s just so crazy to me this contrast of like this, this celebration of it in the United States and it often centering around. Asian influencers and then them just being apparently quite trounced in China.

But what’s makes this so much more interesting is also, as you pointed out, the lying flat takedown. And then the New York Times recently covered this which is basically a very new two month campaign. And it turns out that these campaigns are related. Did you know that? No. The take down of both the depressing people and of the rich people, it’s part of.

So both of them have been executed by the [00:10:00] cyberspace administration of China, which I love that they have.

Malcolm Collins: We need one of those continue. Okay, so how are they connected?

Simone Collins: It is, it’s just literally the internet police. So I think the American of it has to be the internet police for obvious reasons. And if you’re too young to know that reference, then. I’m sad for you.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, right. The, the, we’ll, we’ll back trace them. But in China they actually do like, no, that’s the thing.

They have the internet police

Simone Collins: and they will back trace you. I love it so much. But yeah, so they’re both part of this larger common prosperity initiative. And it, it’s a broad set of measures. It’s, it’s policy and it’s like literal, like fiscal economic. Government legislative policy and social initiatives that’s measured at, at reducing inequality, improving social services, and fostering balanced development across regions and population groups.

So literally this is it. It is about sort of forcing people into moderation in some middle [00:11:00] ground. So you can’t work too little, but you can’t work too much. You can’t be too rich, but you can’t be too poor. What we, what we’re talking about here with the, taking down the depressing social media influencers, but also the Kim Kardashian hyper consumption social media influencers is the, the, so just the social elements.

So they’re, they’re trying to promote what they call spiritual prosperity, um mm-hmm. Is as, as well as material prosperity where they’re, they’re, they have policies aimed at social stability and national morale, and positive cultural values, which is why they’re trying to fight like. Cynicism, but also the hyper consumerism.

And they believe that, that there are also additional, like, things that they’re taking out is entertainment, celebrity culture. So I think that might help to explain why they’re, they’re Mr. Beast, like person was taken out. ‘cause they literally don’t want like entertainment culture, that is another one of them.

So they’re, they’re trying to get rid of consumerism, pessimism, [00:12:00] entertainment culture and celebrity culture and gay stuff. Yeah. So was Russia though. I mean, like everyone wants to get rid of gay stuff. I don’t know why. Right.

Malcolm Collins: So in, in 2023, there were massive shutdowns of the Beijing LGBT center, the PLGA China, the university queer societies were abruptly deleted in 2021.

Mm-hmm.

And again, in 2023, then the CAC ordered the closure of WeChat, profiles of Beijing laa, Solana Lesbian Networking, and WW w use GBT Plus Group and Trans Trans Story transgender support networks as well as others like the Flying Cat Brotherhood.

Simone Collins: That sounds amazing. What?

See, these are travesties, all these, all these amazing influencers and groups that just sound, but

Malcolm Collins: hold on. But these are, what’s funny is these are the people who, like on TikTok and everything like that, think China is their friend. Like, they’re like, oh, China, what a great place to, to, to be gay, to be queer, to, yeah.

They’re nationalistic.

Simone Collins: They’re just, unfortunately they’re [00:13:00] not welcome

Malcolm Collins: in. Yeah. They’re always this a movie a queer themed movie filmed. Called together which was digitally edited to turn a same sex couple into a heterosexual couple. And then they tried to like share the movie secretly online, unedited parts of it.

And I think there was a rest over that. One student organizer, a trans activist, had her WeChat history scrubbed and wow. I actually have a list of, I think a erases here. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you’re talking about small things, because it’s not just the stuff that you’re talking about, it’s also like criticizing celebrities can get you arrested.

Criticizing

Simone Collins: celebrities.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Ash too, in September, 2025, had an account with 50,000 followers. And they were, they had all their, their posts erased for hyping a celebrity’s makeup, eg. Vega star drama post. Let’s, I think

Simone Collins: that’s part of the celebrity culture crackdown though.

Malcolm Collins: It’s just that don’t want celebrity gossip.

October, 2025 a, a post they got ended up getting reposted 600 times. Got a [00:14:00] user removed because it was a quote unquote personal update, but the personal update involved financial hardship due to traffic fines.

Simone Collins: Oh oh dear.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So it’s, it’s it’s little things like this. That are getting people removed.

Simone Collins: But I think it’s, it’s bigger things too though. And I’d love to read a little bit from the New York Times article about the lying flat style. Okay, go for it. Because this is one of the bigger trends that we’ve covered more on the podcast and I’ve really been aware

Malcolm Collins: lying flat is the movement where people protest through not working or engaging within the Chinese economy and just trying to earn what they need to to survive.

And I have come to view

Simone Collins: this. Is something that was like insurmountable, like that there would be no, this was the one way you could actually resist the Chinese government. And so I, I’m really interested to see how it plays out for the Chinese government to resist this because like the whole point with lying flat is like, well you can’t stop me from this, you know?

Yeah. So, but they can. You’d be right, apparently. Yeah. And so let’s, [00:15:00] that’s why I wanted to, to,

Malcolm Collins: to dig into

Simone Collins: this. Well, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: they’re basically saying you cannot get out of the rat race. The rat race is why you exist. Yeah. Get back on that

Simone Collins: fricking treadmill

Malcolm Collins: NY Chinese person. Get back on the

Simone Collins: treadmill.

So the air times it just released this, we’re recording this on Friday. Maybe we’ll run it Monday or Tuesday. But cheer up or else. China cracks down on the haters and cynics. As China struggles with economic discontent, internet censors are silencing those who voice doubts about work, marriage, or simply sigh too loudly online, which is to like, can you imagine this happening in America where like 90% of social, social media is either conspicuous, hyper consumption, like all the restock videos, all the like holiday decoration videos, all of the, you know, clothing, whatever.

And then. The, I hate the government. I hate my life. I hate, I’m, I’m depressed. I’m disabled Videos. Yeah. Like what would our social media even be? I, that’s what I kind of wonder what’s left anyway. Yeah. China censors are moving to stamp out more than just political [00:16:00] descent online. Now they’re targeting the public mood itself, punishing bloggers and influencers whose weary posts are resonating widely.

In a country where optimism is fraying, the authorities have punished two bloggers who advocated for a life of less work and less pressure and influencer who said that it made financial sense not to marry and have children, and a commentator known for bluntly observing that she, hold on, let life behind Western countries in terms of quality.

She said.

Malcolm Collins: It makes financial sense to not marry and have kids and they’re getting rid of her. They’re, they’re, you know, I think this is what people imagine if we had total power in America, what social media would be like.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh, I don’t know. I mean, I think like we toe the line so heavily on cultural sovereignty.

We’re more like, yeah, don’t, don’t get married and have kids. You’re clearly not up for it. What do you see?

Malcolm Collins: Somebody is driving into our neighbor’s yard without appearing to slow down. I mean, they’re slowing down a little. What, what are they doing?

Simone Collins: Well, they’re, I saw a car in front of his yard like right in front of their house earlier, and he was standing out that our, our neighbor was standing [00:17:00] out in front of his phone.

So I think that’s,

Malcolm Collins: that’s somebody who they know

Simone Collins: intentional. Yeah. These supposed cynics and skeptics, two of whom had tens of millions of followers, have had their accounts suspended or banned in recent weeks as China’s internet regulator conducts new cleanup of Chinese social media. The two month campaign launched by the Cyber Space Administration of China, AKA, the internet police as far as I’m concerned in late September, is aimed at purging content that incites excessively pessimistic sentiment.

And panic or promotes defeatist ideas such as hard work is useless according to a notice from the agency, which

Malcolm Collins: a lot of Chinese people. You can see our episode on this belief.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. In reality, we all experience fatigue and anxiety as a result of work and life, but these real emotions deserve respect and should not be deliberately amplified for traffic.

The internet is not a dumping ground for negativity. Chinese state broadcaster, CCTV said in an editorial about the campaign, I love that they’re like. Stop whining, basically. [00:18:00] Grow up around the world. Officials debate how to keep social media from stoking outrage and polarization that could spill over into real world violence or harm.

The internet regulator in China has framed its campaign in similar terms, expressing concern about messages that stoke divisions based on gender or other group identities. Live streaming content that glorifies self-harm and violence, but China. So basically they’d outlaw like the manosphere and like feminist.

Stuff I would assist. Oh yeah, no. Yeah. Oh God. Yeah. But that, that’s the other like 5%. Right? So if 90% is whining and hyper consumerism, then like 5%. Manosphere woman os sphere, queer ophere, that’s gone too. What is what?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I would, I would, I would sacrifice the manosphere to if, if the feminist side of things also disappeared at the same time,

Simone Collins: I feel like, yeah, maybe the manosphere would sacrifice itself just to get them shut up.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, I, I just like shut up with this gender nonsense. Oh yeah. Seriously.

Simone Collins: But China’s crackdown carries a distinctly political undercurrent. It demonstrates the concern [00:19:00] among its leadership about the spread of malaise as the country grapples with economic uncertainty of volatile rivalry with the United States and growing disenchantment among young people.

In recent years, some young people have opted out of the rat race in favor of the minimal life of lying flat or given up on goals altogether and letting it rot, which apparently is another one of the. Phrases that’s come out. The accounts of two bloggers known for promoting a minimal lying flat lifestyle were blocked from adding followers late last month.

And that’s an interesting, sophisticated way of mm-hmm. Of doing it. Just like capping

Malcolm Collins: your upside. Yeah. No more followers. I mean, I love that because. You know, you as a follower might not realize something has happened. I mean, obviously Yeah. The, the blogger knows something has happened and they’ve got to like re decide how they’re gonna structure their lives.

Mm-hmm. ‘Cause you know, that’s their income stream and everything, right? Mm-hmm. But the, the followers themselves wouldn’t immediately realize that they had been blocked or disappeared.

Simone Collins: And this is framed as obviously very dystopian. The same thing essentially [00:20:00] happened on pre Elon Musk Twitter.

People were essentially shadow banned and they couldn’t add more followers. Actually, you know, a lot of people right now are complaining people who have smaller follower accounts like us Yeah. Are arguing on exit, like basically with the algorithm. They, they have no choice, like they’ve no choice or option ability to grow.

So as much as it’s like, ooh, China evil, China bad. Kind of like this happens everywhere and sometimes it’s not even a political thing. Wait, so

Malcolm Collins: why are they saying this on X? Are they just saying like the way the algorithm works? Yeah. Or are they saying they’re They’re just saying like,

Simone Collins: basically with current algorithm updates, small fries have no chance of growing.

Hmm. Yeah. Interesting. So, I mean, just, just to say I’m, I’m just trying to add some perspective anyway. Beijing is concerned that such pessimism doesn’t just discourage citizens from being productive. Members of society could run into criticism of the ruling communist party. The root cause is deteriorating economic and social perspectives for many Chinese, which has led to what a country would be in a natural social response, the expression of anxiety.

And misgiving said David [00:21:00] Erky, the director of the China Media project, a research group. Such sentiment. The leadership worries might be infectious. Mr. Ben Dsky said, local governments and social media platforms have jumped into action to carry out the regulator’s orders. In the city of Jdu in Central China officials said two U social media account users were investigated for portraying the city in an unflattering light.

And I just like imagine you

Malcolm Collins: were, you were today. Like imagine if like for the San Francisco PO Maps or something. Yeah. We gotta take you down. Like LA Ducks and traffic is terrible, you know? Yeah. You come to your house, can’t, you can’t post

Simone Collins: about that anymore. Yeah. You’re not, you’re not allowed into LA anymore.

You’re banned, you’re shadow banned from la.

Malcolm Collins: Such a

Simone Collins: downer

Malcolm Collins: about how terrible LA is. No. And before you further, I mean, for me, this is why I do not think it’s a good idea, even if broadly it’s a, it is a good thing to try to monitor social media because you’re like, well. On the whole, it’s probably doing more good than harm by removing these unrealistic lifestyles, by removing a lot of the downer nihilist posts.

[00:22:00] A lot of the Yeah. Well, yeah, because I mean, we’ve seen people whose lives

Simone Collins: have been ruined by DOR influencers.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But I mean, I think that. At the end of the day, what’s going to happen is China is going to suffer from this,

Because they are not building up the same mimetic and social immunity to this that’s we’re building up in the west.

Agreed. Yes. And I think also

Simone Collins: a degree of criticism is necessary. I mean, the article also points to an internet regulator in shehan. Another place in China where they’re, they’re taking down people for spreading false information about housing prices and real estate regulations. But are they really spreading false information?

Like sometimes it’s, yeah, it’s probably accurate

Malcolm Collins: information. Yeah. Yeah. You can’t say the economy’s bad. You know, that’s what happens when you begin to give governments these sorts of powers. Yeah. And the way that they’re using it at the local level for like intercommunity fights is a really big thing, and they’re even using this.

Like hard line nationalists. That’s, and that’s

Simone Collins: [00:23:00] what really

Malcolm Collins: gets

Simone Collins: me is so, there, to go back to this, this common prosperity initiative key policies and areas of, of the actual, like the, the more legislative economic things is education reforms. So they’re cracking down on for-profit private tutoring services.

They’re trying to focus more on income distribution through tax policy and social insurance. They’re trying to. Fix housing policy by making housing more accessible to low and middle income. How of families? They’re trying to improve healthcare, they’re trying to revitalize rural areas. They’re, they’re trying to fix labor and tech regulations to address exploitative labor conditions.

Yeah,

they’re, they’re doing environmental things, so I’m just like, there are a lot of really good things that are happening, but then. What’s happening is like for example on Wabo it more than 1002 accounts were, were suspended for spreading rumors about the economy and government welfare programs.

But as you pointed out, like with the ccp, there are a lot of adverse incentives that would prevent information [00:24:00] about corruption from making it to the higher echelons of the ccp. And I kind of see social media as a way to circumvent that. Like if people can surface. Fraud that is taking place with social welfare programs, for example, or with housing policy, then they can address it and actually execute.

On this broad and, and actually like good sounding common prosperity initiative. But if instead these cities have this mandate and, and Right. Apparently to take down these, this false information Yeah. Then they won’t even be able to execute on the common prosperity initiative. So I, I feel like it in some ways it’s like, to, to your point, right, it’s well intentioned, but it’s not gonna work the way that they want it to.

Yeah. So it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of scary.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, but I, I think that the, the, so one, it ends up being used and this is one of the problems in these big China bureaucrat things. You know, I have friends, and I guess I should talk about the fate of China more broadly as a [00:25:00] result of this,

Where they you know.

Listeners have reached out and they’ve been like, have, have you changed your position on China? Like, do you think it has a shot now? Like, you know, they’re like, I know you see China as this giant bureaucracy, but is not the US full of a lot of bureaucracies that are breaking down and incompetent. And my you know, through, through its authoritarian nature, China might be able to fix something about where the world is heading or what’s going to happen.

And unfortunately the broad answer is extremely unlikely unless AI somehow acts as a solution for them. So I’ll explain to you why it’s unlikely if you studied the history of China, which I’m very interested in as a subject. I spend a lot of time studying. China really only gained its current economic dynamism because it began to loosen state control because it began to allow for private, not really ownership, but 99 year leases that nobody really [00:26:00] believed that they were gonna get rid of.

We know nobody believed they would get rid of it because it helps us aren’t priced differently based on how long into the lease they are. Which implies that there is a broad social understanding that they would be renewed. But the point here being is China, you know, basically makes private land ownership legal in, in regions.

China makes private companies legal, China, you know, loosens a lot of stuff. And this brings in outside investment. And this creates a degree of dynamism that led China to become a world power while other. Quote unquote communist countries, whether it be, you know, North Korea or you know, the, the Soviet Union never really were able to be.

Now, if you look at the direction that China’s going right now, especially if you look at the hypotheses that people have around how China could fix its current scenario. The hypotheses are all, well, what China needs to do to fix things is it needs to [00:27:00] reconsolidate and it needs to exercise. Its centralized authority.

But the problem is, is the more China moves in that direction. The less it will have. The only reason it has economic relevance on a global stage at all.

Simone Collins: Hmm. And

Malcolm Collins: this is why we are seeing that economic relevance contract. Not only that, but it doesn’t even really have a role in sort of the global supply chain going forward.

The

Simone Collins: well, isn’t it trying it, it tried to create that role and it tried to create alternate networks through the Belt and Road Initiative. Why do you discount that? Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Well, so the Belt and Road initiative is not what people think it is, at least in terms of a, a function. The Belt and Road initiative has become a way for Chinese elites to smuggle money out of the country.

It’s not actually building up goodwill in the regions where it’s operating. And they, they’re doing things like, oh, we’ll get this region in a debt trap and then we’ll get this port and then we’ll get access to X. And it’s like, yeah, you can have contracts for all that until the next revolution. And you [00:28:00] just quote, unquote owned a port in Africa and you don’t have that port anymore.

Or not, not meaningfully. Right. And so a lot of this stuff is very much like things that the US tried in the past and learned why you don’t do it. Like the Belt and Road initiative is very similar to the US period of sort of like us colonialism, I guess you’d call it. When the US decided to go out and be sort of the world police.

China’s like, yes, but we’re doing it nefarious style. That will certainly work. And it’s like, no, it won’t. It won’t work. So, you haven’t seen, if you look at the, the results of the Belt and Road Initiative, a lot of actual meaningful goodwill out of like, outside of super poor like African countries, that’s goodwill doesn’t actually matter except like in, in terms of un votes.

If you look at where China needs goodwill, where does it need goodwill? Like for where, where it could actually earn it. Okay. It’s probably not gonna win over Japan, right? But it could win over Vietnam and the Philippines and, oh, all these countries hate [00:29:00] China now more than they ever have. Like, that was, that was the wins it could have had was the belt and road that it didn’t get.

So for that reason. I see one. China has basically a worse relationship with every one of the players that were up for grabs, I’d say five or six years ago. Mm-hmm. Now they’re no longer really up for grabs. Two. The huge, huge problem for China is, and, and, and they’re no longer up for grabs. No.

They went from being up for grabs to not up for grabs during the period of Belt and road investment. Okay? If Belt and Road was working at all, that wouldn’t have happened, right? It doesn’t matter if poor, irrelevant country, that’s about to have another revolution in Africa, as your friend, you needed to get Vietnam and the Philippines on your side, and you effing failed, and keep in mind.

China, China, Vietnam kicked your butt in a war not that long ago. Okay. They, they kicked our butt too, but they’re not our [00:30:00] neighbors. All right. You actually need them to like you. Next problem. Their relationship with India has gotten worse. Other major neighbor, like every one of their neighbors, effing, hates them now, like Russia is this close to like war with China.

And the only reason we’re not seeing more conflict there is because Russia’s dependent on them because of the Ukraine sections. But China has overplayed its hand with them. They, they tried to do like a one currency thing and they ended up screwing over Russia. You don’t need to get the, the specifics of it, it’s just that China.

Not doing great there. And then you’ve got the problem of how big the bureaucracy is. So if you look at like the United States, I do aware about that and we look at the inefficiency of the American bureaucracy, whether it’s like the, the Navy or whether it’s you know, anything else that we have, China is that times a thousand, right?

And you can say they’re putting X mini billion into their new AI infrastructure. And it’s like, but that infrastructure is gonna be [00:31:00] China’s equivalent of. Managed by like our army, but like a hundred times less efficient. And we are getting that with Microsoft and Oracle and Google and Facebook all competing against each other.

Which means that what we’re gonna produce is gonna be astronomically more efficient in, in, in the AI space, right? Like, and, and investment dollars. Why would you go into China with AI stuff when you could just go worry about being taken from you?

Simone Collins: So, I mean,

what I’m curious about though is sort of what you think about the likely efficacy or not of this larger social media effort.

And I mean, one, I just wanna point out like China’s not alone in doing this. We’ve already covered how Russia has banned in both mainstream media and on social media. Not only. Gay stuff like gay, lesbian, bi, whatever, but also anything antinatalists, anything that, that, that promotes not having kids like being of Dick.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Vietnam also has a lot of censorship and it also floods social media [00:32:00] with positive pro state messaging in Turkey, Iran, and Egypt. There are shuts downs there. There are arrests, there are legal actions against influencers who spread messages that they don’t think are helpful for the state.

India, Brazil and others have platform bans. So they’ll just have legal take down demands over any sort of like harmful social content and even EU countries. They have regulation over what they call unfair market practices and also misinformation, which of course could be real information that they just don’t like.

And some various authoritarian or even semit, authoritarian

Malcolm Collins: right. And, and, and, and my thought on this is the exact thought I, I, I mentioned before, I think this will be very effective for a country like China in the short run. Mm-hmm. I think it’s going to be very damaging to them in the long run and the eu

Simone Collins: like, and so basically in all these countries, you, you, you think like.

This is a short-term fix. It’s gonna cause long-term damage.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. As I have said, memes and cultures [00:33:00] spread like viruses.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Um right. You’ll have a movement like the feminist movement or you’ll have a movement like, you know, the trans phenomenon or something like that. Sometimes, like do, do I think that trans is ever really gonna spread within China?

No. I think that that’s gonna be handled in the west before it had the time to really permeate China. But when I’m thinking of other phenomenon. By the way, we, we could do a whole other episode on this, but like, it’s, it’s very interesting to see the people that are still clinging to like trans normalization when like, even Blue Sky is like, no, we’re not banning like Transphobes anymore.

Like, we don’t, like even Blue Sky is like, yeah, you guys can screech at us that they’re killing you, but we don’t care anymore. Like, you, you guys clearly just abused your P Power. It’s gone too far. Yeah. So, but the problem is, is that. The people who fall for this stuff, like Western nihilism and stuff like that mm-hmm.

They are taken out of the cultural pool and they’re taken out of the gene pool of the next generation. And then

Simone Collins: like, let’s, let’s just let this happen naturally. But I mean, I think even the nihilists who are suppressed in [00:34:00] China, they’re still, they, there will still be people who lie flat. Yeah, no, there

Malcolm Collins: will still be, but I’m, I’m sort of viewing this the same way I knew COVID, right?

Like, with COVID, I, we now know that the masks did nothing. They lowered short-term spread. But. Overall because through lowering short-term spread, they increased the number of non-immune people who were around. The death rates over time in these regions were broadly the same. This we’ve seen in studies of European death rates in, in regions that were very strictly controlled around mass.

And regions that were not. And also in comparison between states that were strictly controlled and the states that were not strictly controlled within the United States, there just aren’t actually in the United States, the states that were less strictly controlled had lower overall death rates. But you could say that they’re more rural.

And I’m like, okay, great. Yeah, like that makes sense. But the, the larger point here being is that it didn’t seem to work. And I think that what we’re looking here. Are masks, but for your brain and your eyes and your ears. And this is why I’m so against, you know, in that episode that, [00:35:00] you know, we ran today, right?

Where I was like, you cannot beat this by restricting the social media your children have access to. You, you, you need to unionize them to these types of ideas. And that can only be done through information. It can not, so it, it would

Simone Collins: be better for. Chinese officials to as, as they do right, they know how to flood the zone with content and comments to just shame the celebrity, worship, the doism, the consumerism.

That’s what you would do if you were the ccp, is just make it embarrassing. Rather than censor it, make

Malcolm Collins: it embarrassing, produce state content about how it’s embarrassing, making fun of them. You know?

Simone Collins: I feel like you also need to give something more though, and I, I, I guess what I couldn’t find from the research I did on this is, okay, what is China replacing this with?

Because okay, I can’t be like minimalist and stoic. I also can’t be hyper consumerist and like extra vitalistic. I have to be [00:36:00] like, what? Nothing. Like I can’t be gay. I can’t be a, a celebrity fan. Like, what can I be? I, I guess, I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: You’ve got to, you can be a beige mom. That’s what they want is beige moms.

They want to, no,

Simone Collins: actually, the, the stereotype of beige moms is hyper consumeristic, so I’ll say I know,

Malcolm Collins: but what they mean is, is middle they what they want, and this is important, it’s not consumerism that they’re against, it’s wealthy consumerism.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: They want everyone in the middle class rat race.

That’s what they’re trying to do is build blinders to anything other than the middle class record. Well, and they’re

Simone Collins: also trying to build policy mechanisms, economic, educational, et cetera, that also make that possible. They’re trying to redistribute income to create a thick middle class. I mean, I, I like the idea.

Yeah. I mean, it’s always interesting to watch China because they have the ability to do things in a more fast and blunt way. Then, and they always f it up. I if that’s the problem. And may it’s, I mean, like you said, big brain bureaucracy doesn’t [00:37:00] help

Malcolm Collins: every time they do something. Right. And this is what I was talking about when I’m talking about like, putting these sorts of restrictions in.

Mm-hmm. The restrictions get put in and then like one district is using them in a battle with, against another district because you’re trying to move up the communist hierarchy. And that’s how that, that that works, right? Like you end up turning the guns that you built against each other, right? Mm-hmm. But it’s, it’s.

It is worse than that because you look at something like China’s bullet train system like that was genuinely working. It was great. It was amazing. And you can watch the videos on YouTube about how it’s going bankrupt and, and very dangerous to the country now because I know

Simone Collins: really

Malcolm Collins: it did great. And then they decided, well then let’s just like double triple down on this.

And they built a bunch of routes to areas that nobody uses. Oh, now the whole thing doesn’t work anymore. And. Economically speaking and we had this problem in the United States. I, I don’t know if you, if you know about this but we actually had, it was the way the airlines worked because we initially tried to mandate the way airlines worked.

It’s a, it’s a confusing history. I’m not gonna [00:38:00] get into it, but basically. We then released the, the mandates and we moved to what’s called a hub and spoke model. Mm-hmm. And the cost of flying in the United States went down like 15 X or something. It was like, yeah, because we

Simone Collins: let market forces essentially determine,

Malcolm Collins: essentially determine it.

But that’s the problem with these centralized systems. And we were at a pivotal turning point in human history with ai. And China can’t get around this just by building bigger data centers. And you can be like, oh no. Of course they could look at all the money they have. The problem is, is if that money’s on a 20 x or 30 x dilution spree, right?

Because of the bureaucracy. And then in the United States, everybody knows AI is a future. And so every rich person wants to be involved in whatever AI thing is going to work, and so they’re pouring money and pouring money in. People are like, how is Amazon spending like. Like, I don’t know, like five times the amount of money on building out their AI platform than they spent on like AWS in the last X many years.

That’s like their primary earning platform. [00:39:00] Mm-hmm. And it’s like, because everybody knows it’s a future. So every dollar in the world that from like the ultra wealthy is just pouring into it like an infinite money. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: And except to China, because nobody wants to be involved in a state controlled infrastructure project.

Well, nobody’s smart.

Simone Collins: All I can say then is I, I’m glad that we still in America have Becca Bloom. I think they’re making a second Crazy Rich Asians. Thank God. And we’re just gonna have to persist in this fantasy that China never cracked down on them. And that at least we have our American crazy rich Asians because we need them.

Well, I, I love they do rich best. I feel like no one does rich better, like rich Russians just still have houses that are super ugly on the outside and then like crazy on the inside. No, I want everything crazy.

Malcolm Collins: No rich Russians, they have a lot of like castles and stuff that they build in the forest, in their, in their, like the war Lauren type.

Yeah. The

Simone Collins: stereotype is super ugly outside. Super. Lavish inside. There’s the, I was looking at it’s just depressing. Like,

Malcolm Collins: oh my God, I hate Middle Eastern wealth. It is [00:40:00] so ugly. Their sense of style, everything. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Asian wealth is amazing and European

Simone Collins: wealth, I mean like old money is just like, you know, crumbling everything.

It’s not, yeah. Everything’s falling

Malcolm Collins: apart because they don’t have anymore and American new

Simone Collins: money isn’t that fun? So no, it has to be, yeah, I disagree.

Malcolm Collins: I think American, like Connecticut wealth can be pretty nice again. Oh, waspy

Simone Collins: old money. Yeah. Yeah. Walk

Malcolm Collins: me. But we, we were just

Simone Collins: talking though offline about how that’s like pretty much over that there are influencers who try to keep that aesthetic alive, some of which I love to follow on Instagram, but they’re just do doing it to hawk their Halloween sweaters and socks and it’s, it’s all a fantasy.

Like it’s not real. No one actually goes yachting anymore. No one actually wears, you know? Yeah. We know

Malcolm Collins: that the yacht industry is falling apart. I was watching a YouTube video on that recently. Not, not just yacht, but failing more broadly like a, yeah. But you know, I, Hey, I love our aesthetic, the old Stonehouse aesthetic, you know, the yeah, maybe techno.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but that’s not, you know, it’s not an aspirational, hyper, hyper consumeristic thing, so, oh, well, I [00:41:00] suppose

Malcolm Collins: it’s, it’s not consumeristic enough. But yeah, the, the, the, the closing point I was going to make is, I really think China’s just setting itself up for failure. And the point I was making earlier, which is so important for people to rock, is if the way that you think, like if your hypothesis is well, China can manage things in a centralized, top-down fashion, and that’s how they’re gonna get around.

X problem. What you need to understand is every single dollar that China has right now, every great like, like their entire civilization rise in these last 30 years was because of deregulation. If you think the way they are going to get around one of their current problems just by tightening up.

Recentralization. Mm-hmm. What you are saying is they are going to go back to the economic relevance that they had 20, 30 years ago, because that economic relevance didn’t come from like the Chinese people or something like that. They’re not that different from the Vietnamese or the you know, the, the Thai or any of the other [00:42:00] surrounding populations.

It came from the. Fact that the government decentralized the economy and, and, and China before this was truly economically irrelevant. And if you think that they’re going to be able to, like, this is the thing where people think that like Saudi Arabia is gonna make this like NIM city and it’s gonna be economically relevant.

Oh no.

Simone Collins: Everyone knows NIMS never

Malcolm Collins: happening. That’s what China’s doing with AI right now. They’re making No, you think, okay, so you think China’s

Simone Collins: ai is China’s

Malcolm Collins: neo? Yeah. It’s, it’s not like really supposed to work. It’s supposed to look like it could work because that’s how you move up in the ccp and it’s not that it’s impossible that China could do something.

Right. The problem is, is that Xi is the guy who’s in charge right now. And Xi is. Completely incompetent.

Simone Collins: How old is he? Let’s see.

Malcolm Collins: And unfortunately he has a fear of anyone replacing him. He’s 72 and so he’s basically cleared anyone out of high levels [00:43:00] of government who’s competent and could replace him.

And apparently there’s like one guy who might be able to, but like Chyna really needs to get rid of she soon if it wants to have any chance of getting out of the disaster that it’s heading into right now. And I just don’t see that happening. So, yeah, well, but, but, but Belt and Road is not Ace Belt and Road.

When people hear Belt and Road, they should think the opposite of a success, like an actual in the moment disaster of huge amounts of money flowing out of China for people who are just pocketing it and trying to escape before the ship sinks.

Simone Collins: So we never get to visit China again. I hope you don’t regret that.

I at least got to travel a lot there, so that was nice. And looking forward to hearing all the comments from our China experts who are gonna vehemently disagree with us because they think China’s just gonna kill it somehow.

Malcolm Collins: If you like, seriously, the delusion of that belief, like. I can’t even, I, I, I [00:44:00] literally can’t even, it’s like the people who think the urban monoculture is gonna somehow work out.

I’m like, but look at the statistics. Look at the statistics. Look at the statistics.

Simone Collins: Rufuss is cracking his knuckles. Tim is, is stretching his hands out. Getting ready for that keyboard. We see you. We see you. Yeah. Love you guys. And I love you Malcolm. And I love

Malcolm Collins: Tex. Oh yeah. Tex came home. Look at this.

He is alive. Just came home a few hours ago.

Simone Collins: Yeah, like

Malcolm Collins: literally they did another x-ray. He is no longer got holes in his lungs. So, you know, we got a healthy kid for now. I mean, SIDS can happen. High probability in the first, you know, few weeks and months. Don’t say that. So like, let’s just get through this before we truly celebrate.

But yeah, he is not

Simone Collins: gonna be more than like 15 inches away from me for the next like six months

Malcolm Collins: basically. Yeah. Putting an oxygen. We, we,

Simone Collins: yeah, we got it. We got an ox, a foot oxygen cuff. I don’t care about the false alarms, it’s gonna give me and freak me out. I’m just, I don’t care. Okay. You know what? I don’t need to sleep for the next

Malcolm Collins: five kids now.

Simone. Five. That’s

Simone Collins: pretty great. [00:45:00] Love you.

Malcolm Collins: Hey, we’re actual ISTs Now. That’s like a, a number of kids. It’s like four. No, that’s, we’ve,

Simone Collins: we’ve reached Katherine LIC qualifications ‘cause she, for Hannah’s children only interviewed college educated women who had more than like five or more children. So I didn’t qualify as a mother, you know, before that.

Now I do. I’m, I’m a LIC mother. And that’s saying a lot. She had eight of her own and then raised 16 total. So. We will get there. We need to. She’s so amazing. What a woman. What a woman. Malcolm, someday. What do you think? We can beat eight. I hope I I would love to at least do eight. I mean, seven’s obviously our bare minimum.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I wanna beat at least Kevin Dolan and he’s at six.

Simone Collins: Didn’t he just make it to seven?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, he did. Dang well. Who can we beat? Have we beat Matt Walsh yet? At least? Let’s see, thought he had five. So maybe

Simone Collins: we’re neck and neck with Matt [00:46:00] Walsh.

Malcolm Collins: But all these people like got married. Oh, well, but they had two sets of twins. That’s kind of cheating still. Not

Simone Collins: really. You go, you really go through it. When you have twins, that’s, I mean, talk about NICU time.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I have, I have one donated kid, so I’m at six, at least genetically speaking.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But I, I want, I want to raise, I want to raise a minimum of seven.

All right. Hopefully eight

Malcolm Collins: 12. Love you, Simone. I love you

Simone Collins: too. All right.

Malcolm Collins: Alright, so what do people think of today’s episode? Even though it did terribly for whatever reason, this was the 7 4 7 video on like the the Satanic Minecraft cult.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I was surprised by that.

Malcolm Collins: Who doesn’t wanna learn about a Satanic Minecraft cult? Maybe our audience is just not interested in. I can actually have to, to see if the issue was watch time or it was click through rate. The [00:47:00] watch time was high, but the click through rate with click

Simone Collins: okay. Gimme a second.

Malcolm Collins: So what did people have to say about it?

Simone Collins: They liked it. A a lot of people were sort of like, this is my approach to social media, which I think was, was good to hear. Yeah, the, I I think you saw the comment on original sin, which I thought was interesting. Oh yeah. Yeah. I like that one. I gave it like a this idea that like, you know, actually not all people are good as it happens and.

That’s so true. ‘Cause I was kind of raised to believe that all people, I mean, my parents were like, yeah, there are a few people out there who aren’t good. But I don’t know, I was kind of just given the impression societally that you can just trust people and everyone’s good and it’s gonna be fine. And that led to problems that wasn’t

Malcolm Collins: for you?

Yes. Yes. Well, I think that’s a really toxic thing to teach young people. You know, I think viewing society adversarially is quite useful in terms of navigating it successfully.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: absolutely.

Simone Collins: I will, I’ll kick us off though. I, I think it was a great episode. I, I think maybe it’ll do well on the long tail.[00:48:00]

We’ll see. We’ll see. But yeah oh, well, next week will be a better week and hopefully this, this will, this will do it.

Malcolm Collins: All right, well, I’ll let you get started on this one.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And I pulled up some data too that I can also go over.

Simone Collins: Yeah. All right.

Speaker 2: Twist, are you lost? Come on, let’s keep looking. Tighten to Octavian.

Speaker 3: Go Exit. I go Exit find. Exit there. Okay,

Speaker 5: go there. Do you think maybe you need to go under there? Yeah, go there. I.

Speaker 6: Stay here.

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