Gordon Chang
speaker
524 appearances
9 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 23 May
Gordon Chang’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
It's just a question of supply and demand, which, although China exercises a lot of control over the economy, supply and demand still works in China. So, that's probably their weakest link. But there are a lot of other weak links, Mike.
I think he has less ability to change than he once did. I don't think he's the all-powerful supremo that he was, let's say, four or five years ago. And we're seeing signs in the Chinese political system of real instability. So, for instance, at the top of the Chinese military, the People's Liberation Army propaganda organs are now praising what they call, quote, collective leadership.
That is a direct challenge to Xi Jinping. And that means that a lot of the turmoil that we see in the upper ranks of the military, this could very well be the foes of Xi Jinping actually purging Xi Jinping's people. We don't know that yet because it's obscure. But the point is, these things don't happen in periods where Xi Jinping would be the supreme leader.
So I'm not sure he has that same sort of strategic autonomy that he did when China was obviously successful and he was getting all the credit for it.
Well, two developments since Marco Rubio went there on his first trip as Secretary of State. First of all, the Panamanian president, Molino, said that he would not renew his Belt and Road memorandum with China, that he might even cancel the existing one. But the news this week is that BlackRock, the American financials company,
asset manager, biggest in the world, by the way, is buying and taking over two Chinese port operations in the canal from CK Hutchison, which is the mega port operator around the world in Hong Kong, subject to Chinese rule. Those are the ports at Balboa on the Pacific side of the canal and at Cristobal on the Atlantic side.
And these are the two port operations that have attracted a lot of attention because they could be easily turned into Chinese military bases when Beijing gives the order. So that is stunning news. It means that China is being muscled out of the canal zone, which is great because China still can block the canal, but it's losing its basis to do that.
There are other Chinese operations in the canal zone. We need to get rid of those as well. But this is a very good sign. And it means that in other countries that are getting sick and tired of China, they'll be inspired to do the same thing. So with a little pressure from President Trump. We can do it.
Yeah, I think it is, actually, in Latin America, for sure. We've had some problems with some of the other Chinese ports, but generally, Beijing has been able to negotiate its way around them, most clearly in Sri Lanka. But yeah, this is really terrific news because this could be the beginning of not just a trend in Latin America, but around the world as well.
Yeah. In the People's Republic, no entity, no person can ignore or disobey an order from the Communist Party. And that's also true of Hong Kong. Hong Kong was supposed to be autonomous, supposed to have one country, two systems for 50 years. But that ended in 2020 with China adopting the national security law for Hong Kong. which meant essentially full Chinese control of Hong Kong.
And so we had to assume from a national security point of view that CK Hutchison would close the port, the canal zone, if given an order to do that. And clearly, the Chinese military and Chinese operatives, Ministry of State Security, were based in the canal zone, probably at those two port operations. So, it was really important to get them back.
And it's important to continue to eject China from the canal zone, because there's still a dozen ways that China can block that canal. Right.
Yes. And President Trump has opened up an office of shipbuilding in the White House itself, which shows you that it is a priority. American shipbuilding has withered away. And there are a couple of things that President Trump has done. So for instance, go back a week, The U.S.
trade representative announced that it was imposing million-dollar-plus fees on Chinese-built ships and Chinese-owned ships that entered U.S. ports. That gives all sorts of people incentives to build ships elsewhere. And that's a good thing to get it out of the People's Republic of China. But it also incentives for American shipbuilding.
And we need to do this, not just for the Navy, which is woefully doesn't have the shipbuilding capacity anymore, but also just regular commercial ships, which are really important. It's the lifeblood of trade. So this is, again, great news.
By far, by far. They're well ahead of South Korea, which I think is in second place. But China makes something, and correct me if I'm wrong, something like over 50% of the world's ships.
That I don't know, Mike. But if you said 15th, I would say that's really high. Would have been, my guess, even lower than that. But one other thing. South Korea, which is a US treaty ally, is going through a political crisis. And it's not inconceivable that within three months, they could have basically a communist as president. This is really serious stuff.
So that means number one and number two, shipbuilder would basically be in Beijing's orbit.
It's really high. About a month or two ago, it would have been close to 90%. Fortunately, things are moving in a much better direction. What happened is President Yun Suk-yeol, a conservative-leaning figure, declared martial law on December 3. He was impeached by the National Assembly on, I think, the 14th.
The constitutional court decides this month and maybe in the next week whether to remove him or not. If he's removed, there's 60 days for another election. Now, Yoon was really unpopular even before martial law. He had an approval rating below 20%. Now, because the leftists have overreached, his approval rating is at least in the 40s and in some polls over 50%.
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