Robert Pape

You know what the big industries in Erie, Pennsylvania are?

Hospitals where you're born and funeral parlor is where you die.

Okay?

And this just breaks my heart here.

And we just don't have any real approach like this.

But what China's doing is they're not just uplifting a –

A deep seek or an alibaba there they are creating webs of doing that, but 90% of this is happening in a much broader context.

Where they're taking say a St Louis and they're uplifting the whole area they're taking a Pittsburgh they're uplifting the whole city they're taking Detroit and they're uplifting the whole city.

And they've done, I went in that two week period, I went to these four areas.

It's about 50 million people that are being uplifted.

Now, maybe they haven't uplifted anybody else.

I don't know.

I didn't actually, they're telling me that if I went to the more rural areas, I'd be impressed there too.

And maybe I will go back.

But the bottom line is, let's assume it's only 50 million people, only 50 million people.

And we're going to look down on that.

No, I think they're 10, 20 years ahead of us, maybe even more, not because of they're a couple months ahead or behind on deep seek or chat GBT, but because of uplifting the entire cities here.

And this is, you know, this is what digital China is, is uplifting this whole area.

And quite a few of these business owners, when I had dinners with them here, they would tell me their personal story, just like when we started out here.

And almost, you know, many of them had a very similar story, which was, well, in the 1980s or 90s, I lived in rural areas and I didn't even have shoes.