Dwarkesh

This, I think, is a really interesting thing to consider from this lecture, that, you know, in retrospect, maybe one of the most important things, if not the most important thing that happened in the 20th century, is the Chinese Civil War.

At the time, you know, you wouldn't think of this as a... Especially World War II has just happened...

You wouldn't think of this as, if you were living in 1948 or 1949, you wouldn't think of this as the main thing happening in the world.

But given that we know in retrospect this is a really big country with a huge population, we should be paying a lot of attention to its internal political development.

And I wonder if we should apply the same logic today where there's other countries with huge populations where we don't think a lot about what's happening.

India or Nigeria.

I mean, I really couldn't tell you the first thing about Nigeria, even though I know that it's a big country with a huge population.

Let's not try, because I don't know anything about it either.

Okay.

I want to zoom in on one particular episode during this period that I think is fascinating.

So in 1936, the communists in China kidnap Chiang Kai-shek, who is the leader of the Nationalists.

And they're about to kill him.

And Stalin radios in over the comment term.

And he says, no, you can't kill Chiang Kai-shek.

Even though he's your enemy, he's been massacring you.

You got to let him go.

And in exchange, Chiang Kai-shek has a promise to create a united front.

against the Japanese.

Now there's 30,000 communist guerrillas when they're fighting the Japanese at this period.

And there's 1.5 to 2 million nationalist troops.