Goodfellows — Frank Dikötter on China, Mao, Xi Jinping, Taiwan, Trump, Economics, and “Stolen Land”

00:00:01 — Opening: Chinatown Reference and Show Introduction

Film Reference:

Chinatown

• The episode opens with famous lines from the film Chinatown:
  • “Go home, Jake, I’m doing you a favor.”
  • “Goodbye, Jake.”
  • “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”
• The reference sets a mood of mystery, corruption, and hidden power structures before the discussion turns to China.

Show Context

• Date: Friday, February 13, 2026.
• Program: Goodfellows, a Hoover Institution broadcast.
• Focus of show: history, economics, and geopolitics.
• Moderator:
  • Bill Whalen, Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow.
• Panelists:
  • Sir Niall Ferguson — historian.
  • John Cochrane — economist.
  • Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster — historian and geostrategist.
• All three are Hoover Senior Fellows.

Light Introductory Exchange

• Whalen jokes about Friday the 13th and asks whether anyone has “triskaidekaphobia.”
• Definition: Triskaidekaphobia
  • Fear of the number 13.

Episode Roadmap

• The first major segment focuses on China.
• The later “B-Block” will cover:
  • A columnist’s claim that Donald Trump has “lost the country.”
  • A Grammy winner’s claim that “we all live on stolen land.”

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00:01:26 — Guest Introduction: Frank Dikötter and

Red Dawn Over China

Frank Dikötter’s Credentials

• Guest: Frank Dikötter.
• Titles:
  • Milias Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.
  • Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong.
• Whalen describes him as “the most widely read living historian on modern China.”

New Book

• Title: Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity
• Subject: The rise of the Chinese Communist Party from 1921 to 1949.
• Whalen says the book covers “the better part of 30 years” of Chinese history.

Dikötter’s Move to California

• Whalen notes that Dikötter had recently moved from Hong Kong to California.
• Dikötter says he is “getting there” as a Californian and enjoys the “perpetual sunshine.”

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00:02:17 — How the Chinese Communist Party Teaches Its Own Origins

Whalen’s Framing Question

• Whalen compares American teaching about the founding of the Republic, especially as the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, to how China teaches children about the founding of modern Communist China.
• He asks whether Chinese students are taught the detailed 1921–1949 history or a broader “arc” of history.

Standard PRC Historical Narrative

Dikötter describes the official Chinese Communist Party narrative:

The Qing/Manchu Empire

• The story begins with a Manchu empire, the Qing.
• The Qing are portrayed as:
  • Corrupt.
  • Assaulted by imperialist powers.
  • Unable to defend China.

Collapse of the Empire

• The empire collapses in 1911.
• China enters the Republican era.
• Warlords emerge and fight each other.

Warlord Era

• Warlords are said to:
  • Oppress the population.
  • Cause peasant immiseration.
• Definition: Immiseration
  • A process by which people become increasingly impoverished or miserable.

Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalists

• The official Communist narrative portrays Chiang Kai-shek’s regime as a fascist dictatorship.
• Chiang’s government is blamed for oppression and failure.

Communist Party as Savior

• Dikötter summarizes the official story ironically:
  • “Thank Karl Marx, Lenin, and Stalin for the appearance of the Communist Party.”
• The party is presented as:
  • Progressive.
  • Fighting for freedom in the hills.
  • Resonating with hundreds of millions of poor peasants.
  • Leading China to liberation in 1949.

1949 Symbol

• The triumph is symbolized by the red flag rising over the Forbidden City.

Dikötter’s Criticism of the Standard Account

• He says this is a simplified “David and Goliath” story.
• Analogy: David and Goliath
  • The CCP is cast as the small, heroic underdog defeating a huge oppressive enemy.
• Dikötter argues that this romanticized account is common not only inside China but also abroad.

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00:04:36 — What an “Unvarnished” History Would Show

Dikötter’s Target Audience

• Dikötter says his main concern is not Chinese students inside the PRC.
• He believes many Chinese students already know to question official accounts.
• His greater concern is Western readers of modern Chinese history, especially in Europe and the United States.

Why the Book Is Difficult

Dikötter says the book is difficult for two reasons:

Objective Difficulty: The Republican Era Was Complex

• The period from 1911 to 1949 is called the Republican era.
• China becomes a republic, the first in Asia.
• The era includes:
  • Changing capitals.
  • Multiple parties competing for power.
  • Foreign intervention.
  • Extraterritorial systems.
  • Alliances between communists and nationalists.
  • Alliances that repeatedly form and fail.
  • Many generals fighting each other.

Definition: Extraterritorial System

• A system in which foreign nationals or foreign powers are exempt from local law and subject to their own legal systems.
• In China, this was associated with imperial influence and treaty ports.

Subjective Difficulty: Western Romanticization

• Abroad, the period is simplified into a liberation narrative.
• The romantic story says:
  • Conditions were terrible.
  • The Communists understood the rural poor.
  • The Communists liberated the country.
• Dikötter says this does not match the evidence in:
  • CCP archives.
  • Comintern documents.
  • Other available historical records.

Definition: Comintern

• Short for Communist International.
• A Soviet-led international organization founded to promote world communist revolution.
• Dikötter emphasizes that the Comintern was involved with the Chinese Communist Party almost from its foundation in July 1921.

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00:06:37 — Niall Ferguson’s Three Major Themes in Dikötter’s Book

Ferguson Rejects the Idea That the Book Is Difficult

• Niall Ferguson says he found the book gripping.
• He identifies three major themes.

Theme 1: The Improbability of Mao’s Triumph

• Ferguson says Dikötter shows how unlikely Mao Zedong’s eventual victory was.
• Mao’s movement repeatedly had extremely small numbers of followers compared with China’s huge population.
• Ferguson compares the improbability of Mao’s victory to the Bolshevik success in Russia and says Mao’s victory seems even less likely.

Definition: Bolsheviks

• The faction of the Russian socialist movement led by Lenin that seized power in Russia in 1917 and founded the Soviet regime.

Theme 2: Stalin’s Role

• Ferguson says he had not fully appreciated how much the Chinese revolution became a Soviet operation.
• He compares this to the Russian Revolution being assisted by Germany during World War I.
• Analogy
  • Russian Revolution as partly a German military operation.
  • Chinese Revolution as partly a Soviet operation.

Theme 3: Mao’s Myth of Rural Revolution vs. Rural Reality

• Ferguson says Dikötter shows a sharp contrast between:
  • Mao’s portrayal of the countryside as ready for a peasant revolution.
  • The actual social and economic structure of rural China.
• Ferguson says Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism did not fit Chinese conditions.
• Mao’s communists came to power through violence against the villagers they claimed to represent.

Ferguson’s Evaluation

• Ferguson calls the book “one of your most brilliant.”
• He says it “completely recasts” understanding of Mao’s revolution.

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00:08:50 — The Myth of Social Revolution and Land Reform

Dikötter’s Central Target: The “Social Revolution” Assumption

• Dikötter says the deepest stereotype is the belief that China’s revolution must have had social origins.
• This assumption says:
  • The Communist Party rose because Chinese society had deep structural injustices.
  • The peasantry supported the CCP because the CCP solved those injustices.

Land Reform as the Core Myth

• Dikötter identifies “land reform” as the core of the myth.
• The standard claim:
  • The CCP redistributed land in a poor countryside.
  • Villagers supported the CCP because it gave them land.
• Dikötter prefers “villagers” over “peasants” or “peasantry,” which he calls unpleasant terms.

China Was Not a Feudal Country

• Dikötter rejects the idea that China was a simple feudal country with landlords and serfs.
• He emphasizes China’s huge size and regional diversity.

Regional Variation

• China is described as the size of Europe.
• Land ownership varied enormously:
  • North China: land ownership was often relatively equal.
  • South China: powerful clans and lineages controlled land and defended their interests against other clans and villages.

Definition: Clan / Lineage

• A kinship-based social group tracing descent through family lines.
• In southern China, clans and lineages often organized landholding, local defense, and social power.

Rural Conditions Were Mixed

• Dikötter says conditions in the countryside varied and were often far from ideal.
• Problems included:
  • An underclass.
  • Drifters.
  • Unemployment.
  • Exploitation.
• Mao referred to some marginal groups as “riffraff.”
• Dikötter agrees that rural conditions needed improvement.
• But he argues that Communist-style land reform was not the answer.

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00:11:04 — What “Land Reform” Meant in Practice

Soviet Origins of the Model

• Dikötter explains that the model of land reform came from the Soviet Union.
• In the Russian case:
  • There was a landed aristocracy.
  • There had been serfs.
  • Serfs were emancipated in the 1860s.
  • Large disparities in landownership existed.

Communist Theory of Land Reform

• The model:
  • Take land from rich landlords.
  • Give land to the poor.
  • Generate agricultural surplus.
  • Use the surplus to feed the Communist Party and its armies.

Dikötter’s Claim: China Had No Comparable Landlord Class

• He states bluntly:
  • “There are no landlords in China.”
• More precisely, he argues that China did not have enough large landlords, squires, or barons from whom land could be taken and distributed.
• The Russian model did not fit Chinese reality.

Escalating Confiscation

Because there were not enough true landlords, the CCP broadened the target categories:

1. “Landlords”
2. “Rich peasants”
3. “Middle peasants”
4. Eventually, almost everyone

Consequence: Bonded Servitude

• Dikötter argues that the result was not liberation but reduction of villagers to something like serfdom.
• The CCP became a machine extracting:
  • Grain.
  • Labor.
  • Soldiers.

Definition: Bonded Servitude

• A condition in which people are tied to labor obligations and cannot freely control their own work or output.
• Dikötter uses the term to describe how villagers were reduced to dependency and coercion under Communist control.

Communist Party as War Machine

• Dikötter says:
  • The CCP always needed more grain.
  • It always needed more “cannon fodder.”
• Definition: Cannon fodder
  • Soldiers treated as expendable in war.
• Local economies eventually collapsed under extraction.

“Squeezed Like a Lemon”

• Dikötter cites Communist leader Zhang Guotao’s phrase:
  • The party “squeezed it like a lemon.”
• Analogy
  • Communist extraction from villages is compared to squeezing all juice out of a lemon.
  • Once the local economy was exhausted, the party moved elsewhere.

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00:13:27 — Why Villagers Did Not Voluntarily Flock to the CCP

Lack of Rural Enthusiasm

• Dikötter says very few villagers, including poor villagers, wanted to join the CCP.
• This contradicts the standard myth of enthusiastic peasant support.

Communist Document on “Lazy” Villagers

• Dikötter describes a 1930s document from a Communist Soviet area in the mountains.
• A Communist leader complained that villagers had become lazy.

Dikötter’s Explanation

• Villagers were not lazy in a moral sense.
• They understood that most of what they produced would be confiscated by the party.
• Therefore:
  • There was little incentive to produce beyond subsistence.
  • Rational villagers produced only what they needed to feed themselves.

Core Point

• Dikötter summarizes:
  • “That’s the myth. Land reform.”

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00:14:10 — How to Read Dikötter’s Body of Work

H.R. McMaster’s Question

• McMaster praises Dikötter’s body of work and asks how readers should approach it.
• Should they:
  • Start with Mao’s Great Famine?
  • Read in publication order?
  • Read chronologically, beginning with Red Dawn Over China?

Dikötter’s Recommendation

• Dikötter says Red Dawn Over China is probably the toughest.
• He suggests reading his work backwards.

Suggested Reading Order

1. China After Mao
2. Then earlier works, eventually reaching Red Dawn Over China

Why

Mao’s Great Famine

Is Easier

• Dikötter says most readers can easily understand the horror of the famine.
• The famine occurred from 1958 to 1962.
• Tens of millions were:
  • Starved.
  • Beaten.
  • Neglected to death.

Continuities Between Mao’s Guerrillas and Xi’s Superpower

Dikötter says readers can move from China After Mao to Red Dawn Over China and still see continuities.

Continuity 1: Paranoia

• The CCP constantly believes it is surrounded by imperialists out to destroy it.

Continuity 2: Broken Promises

• The CCP makes promises and pledges when useful.
• It breaks them when they become inconvenient.

Continuity 3: “New Democracy” and Orwellian Language

• In 1940 Mao promised:
  • Protection of private property.
  • Opposition parties.
  • Freedom of speech.
• At the same time, from 1942 to 1944, Mao purged his own party and executed thousands.

Definition: Orwellian Doublespeak

• Political language that reverses or hides reality, associated with George Orwell’s 1984.
• Example from Orwell:
  • “War is peace.”
• Dikötter compares this to CCP phrases such as:
  • “New democracy.”
  • “People’s democratic dictatorship.”
  • “Peaceful liberation.”

Continuity 4: Purges

• Dikötter compares Mao-era purges in Yan’an to contemporary purges under Xi Jinping.
• He says the Central Military Commission has been reduced from seven members to two, one of whom is Xi Jinping.
• He says this resembles what happened in Yan’an in 1942–1943.

Definition: Yan’an

• The wartime Communist base in northern China.
• It became central to Mao’s consolidation of power and ideological control.

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00:17:17 — Contingency, Ruthlessness, and Mao’s Rise

John Cochrane’s Question

• Cochrane asks how a “mild-mannered library assistant” became the greatest dictator of all time.
• He stresses:
  • Contingency.
  • Shifting alliances.
  • Soviet involvement.
  • The CCP’s willingness to do anything to win.

Cochrane’s Interpretation

• The CCP won because of:
  • Extreme ruthlessness.
  • Internal violence.
  • External violence.
  • Lying, cheating, stealing, killing, and devastation.
• Cochrane highlights that during the civil war:
  • Refugees did not flee toward Communist areas.
  • They fled away from them.
• He says this “speaks volumes.”

Military-Historical Question

• How did a small ragtag group conquer China?
• Cochrane suggests the answer may be willingness to use more violence than anyone else.

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00:19:03 — The CCP Was Tiny Before the 1940s

Dikötter’s Numbers

Dikötter emphasizes how small the Communist movement was for much of its early history.

1921

• About 50 people at the founding of the CCP.

1923

• The CCP enters a united front with Sun Yat-sen and the Nationalists.
• Membership is perhaps in the hundreds.

1936

• Around 40,000 people followed the Communists.
• This is in a country of roughly half a billion people.

1940

• Even using inflated Comintern statistics, about 1 in every 1,700 people in China was a Communist.
• Dikötter says this was roughly comparable to Communist Party membership in the United States at the time.

Comparative Point

• Communist membership as a share of population was higher in many European countries than in China.
• Dikötter says China was not obviously a mass Communist country before the 1940s.

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00:20:01 — Why China Became Communist: The Soviet Invasion of Manchuria

Japanese War as Turning Point

• From 1937 onward, Japan defeated and weakened the central Chinese government.
• But Dikötter says the key moment is 1945.

Dikötter’s Analogy

When students ask, “How come China became communist?” Dikötter answers:

• “How come Poland became communist?”
• “How come Eastern Germany became communist?”

Answer

• They were invaded by the Red Army in 1945.

Manchuria’s Strategic Importance

• Manchuria is described as:
  • The size of France.
  • North of Beijing.
  • Rich in resources.
  • A strategic gateway to the rest of China.
• The Manchus used Manchuria as the launching point for their 1644 conquest of China.

Soviet Intervention

• In summer 1945, one million Soviet soldiers invaded Manchuria.
• The Soviets stayed and handed the countryside over to Mao and the Communists.
• This shifted the balance of power dramatically.

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00:21:18 — “Unrestricted Warfare” and Communist Military Methods

Soviet Backing

Once backed by the Soviet Union, the CCP received:

• Weapons by train from North Korea and Siberia.
• Officers trained in Moscow.
• Military institutions established in Manchuria.

Dikötter’s Term: “Unrestricted Warfare”

• He uses this term to describe Communist methods.
• It means being more determined and less restrained than the enemy.

Tactics Included

• Using villagers as human shields.
• Barrier troops.
• Starving cities into surrender.

Definition: Barrier Troops

• Soldiers positioned behind front-line troops to prevent retreat.
• If front-line troops move forward, they may survive.
• If they turn back, they are shot.

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00:22:18 — Changchun: Starving a City into Surrender

The Siege of Changchun

• Year: 1948.
• Location: Changchun, a major city in Manchuria.
• Communist commander mentioned: Lin Biao.
• The city was surrounded by PLA/Red Army Communist forces.

Siege Conditions

• Trenches four meters deep surrounded the city.
• Sentries prevented anyone from entering or leaving.
• Civilians were trapped inside.

Death Toll

• Dikötter says 160,000 civilians starved to death over eight months.
• He compares the number to the victims of Hiroshima after the atomic bombing.

Strategic Consequence

• Once Changchun collapsed, other cities understood what resistance might mean.
• Dikötter asks rhetorically:
  • If you were defending Beijing, would you be willing to fight after seeing Changchun?
• Cities then “topple like dominoes.”

Analogy: Dominoes

• Once one major city falls through terror and starvation, others fall in sequence.

Korean War Connection

• Dikötter says Americans later saw the nature of this Communist war machine during the Korean War.

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00:23:18 — Contemporary China: Taiwan and Military Capability

Whalen’s 2026 Question

• Whalen shifts to contemporary China.
• He mentions a reported Xi Jinping–Donald Trump phone call.
• Xi reportedly said:
  • Taiwan is “the most important issue in China-US relations.”
  • China will “never allow Taiwan to be separated from China.”

Dikötter’s Earlier “Paper Tiger” Claim

• Whalen asks whether Dikötter still calls China a “paper tiger” militarily.
• Dikötter says:
  • “Not quite a paper tiger.”

Definition: Paper Tiger

• A power that appears threatening but is weaker than it looks.

Tactics vs. Strategy

Dikötter links contemporary China to the pre-1949 CCP:

Tactics

• Throw large numbers of people at the enemy.
• Use mass mobilization.
• Accept enormous casualties.

Contemporary Parallel

• Thousands of civilian boats around Taiwan could be used to train or prepare for blockade conditions.

Strategy

• Dikötter says China’s tactics may be strong but strategy poor.
• Such methods are costly and dangerous.

Aircraft Carrier Criticism

• Dikötter criticizes China’s third aircraft carrier:
  • Oil boilers.
  • Inability, according to him, to have planes land and take off at the same time.
• He suggests Chinese naval technology should not be overestimated.
• He notes that people always talk about the next aircraft carrier, but says “we shall see.”

Real Concern

• The concern is not necessarily technical superiority.
• The concern is China’s ability to mobilize:
  • Huge numbers of people.
  • Huge numbers of boats.
  • Huge amounts of pressure.
  • Casualty-insensitive tactics.

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00:25:18 — Would the PLA Follow Xi’s Orders?

Dikötter’s Question

• How much control does Xi Jinping really have over the military?
• Would soldiers on the ground actually fight?

Tiananmen Example

• In 1989, the regime had difficulty getting soldiers to attack Chinese citizens.
• Dikötter says an entire army was turned back when first ordered toward Tiananmen Square.
• He says this occurred roughly six weeks before the June crackdown.

Contemporary Military Purges

• Dikötter mentions the purge or sacking of Zhang Youxia and others.
• His interpretation:
  • Military leaders may understand how difficult a Taiwan invasion or blockade would be.
  • Xi may be unwilling to listen.

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00:26:26 — Why Westerners Still Misunderstand CCP Brutality

McMaster’s Question

• McMaster asks why so many people still fail to grasp CCP brutality.
• He criticizes the claim that Chinese people are culturally predisposed not to want a say in government.
• He asks how the CCP has cultivated voices inside and outside China who repeat such arguments.
• He asks whether there are parallels to Mao’s civil war period.

Useful Idiots and Edgar Snow

• Dikötter refers to “useful idiots” such as Edgar Snow.
• Snow wrote Red Star Over China, published in 1937.
• Snow portrayed the Communists not primarily as Communists but as:
  • Agrarian reformers.
  • Liberators.
  • People bringing freedom to a desperate nation.

Definition: Useful Idiot

• A term used for someone who unintentionally serves the interests of a political movement or regime by spreading its propaganda or legitimizing its image.

Yan’an as Potemkin Village

• Mao cultivated a favorable image in Yan’an during World War II.
• American journalists were shown:
  • Model schools.
  • Model prisons.
  • Model farms.
• They returned home and repeated the favorable image.

Definition: Potemkin Village

• A fake or staged display designed to create the impression that conditions are better than they are.

Dikötter’s Key Claim

• People in China know exactly how brutal the Communist Party is.
• The misunderstanding is mainly Western.

Western Error: Confusing Communism with Chinese Culture

• Dikötter says Westerners often do not believe Chinese Communism is “real communism.”
• They interpret Chinese Communism through:
  • Chinese culture.
  • Confucianism.
  • Supposed civilizational traits.
• They fail to interpret it through Communist politics.

Historical Continuity of the Error

Dikötter says the same mistake was made by:

• Americans during World War II.
• Nixon and Kissinger.
• Clinton.
• Others who assumed Chinese Communists were basically reformers or democrats waiting to emerge.

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00:28:57 — China, the Dollar, and the Renminbi

Whalen’s Economic Question

• Whalen mentions two stories:
  1. Xi reportedly wants to challenge the U.S. dollar’s global dominance.
  2. A Wall Street Journal headline says the American and Chinese economies are moving toward a “messy divorce.”

Dikötter’s View

• Xi would like to de-dollarize.
• Xi would like the renminbi/yuan to become an international currency.
• But Dikötter says this is unlikely under current conditions.

Currency Share

• Dikötter says the renminbi represents about 2% of international exchanges.

Marxist Economy and Capital Controls

• He describes China as a Marxist economy.
• The renminbi is constrained by capital controls.
• It cannot be freely exchanged.

Definition: Capital Controls

• Government restrictions on moving money into or out of a country or converting currency freely.

Why the Renminbi Cannot Rival the Dollar

• A global reserve currency must be freely convertible.
• China keeps capital controls because it wants to fix or manage the exchange rate.
• China uses exchange-rate control to support exports.

Definition: Fixed Exchange Rate

• A system in which a currency’s value is held or managed relative to another currency or basket of currencies.

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00:30:14 — Cochrane on Trust, Convertibility, and Currency Power

Cochrane’s Addition

• Cochrane says a fixed exchange rate is not inherently terrible.
• But a credible international currency must be:
  • Fairly convertible.
  • Trustworthy.

Trust Requirements

If someone holds Chinese bonds, they need confidence that:

• They will be repaid.
• The debt will not be defaulted on.
• Value will not be taxed away.
• Value will not be inflated away.

U.S. Weakness and Chinese Limits

• Cochrane says the U.S. is not perfectly trustworthy either.
• But China is not ready to fill the opening.

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00:30:38 — Would a Taiwan War Blockade China Too?

Cochrane’s Question

• China depends on exports and imports.
• A blockade or war over Taiwan would shut down trade.
• Would that be catastrophic for China too?

Dikötter’s Answer

• Yes.
• China can blockade Taiwan, but would also be blockading itself.

Chinese Import Dependencies

Dikötter says China depends heavily on:

• Oil.
• Petrol.
• Grain.
• Other imports.

“Go West” Campaign

• Dikötter mentions Jiang Zemin’s “Go West” campaign.
• Purpose:
  • Develop Xinjiang.
  • Cultivate the region.
  • Build pipelines through Xinjiang into wider Asia.

Definition: Go West Campaign

• A Chinese state development strategy aimed at integrating and developing western regions such as Xinjiang.

Limits

• Dikötter says these efforts are not enough.
• A blockade would be extremely difficult for the PRC itself to sustain.

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00:31:47 — Sanctions, Taiwan, Japan, and Regional Security

Cochrane’s Question

• China may not need a global currency everyone trusts.
• It may only need an emergency system to get around sanctions.
• Cochrane asks whether U.S. allies would cooperate with sanctions if China blockaded Taiwan.
• He implies some countries may hesitate because they benefit from cheap Chinese goods and may resent prior U.S. tariff policy.

Dikötter’s Answer

• He says the issue is broader than U.S.-China.
• He cites Sanae Takaichi’s statement:
  • Any blockade of Taiwan is a direct threat to Japan’s national security.

Regional Implication

• A Taiwan blockade would not be merely a PRC-Taiwan issue.
• It would concern every country in the region.
• Dikötter says he cannot see the PRC as a power surrounded by friendly allies.

Ferguson’s Historical Warning

• Ferguson says governments can ignore the economic catastrophe that follows from invasion.
• He links this to the history of World War I.

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00:33:12 — Niall Ferguson on China’s Rearmament and Eyck Freymann’s

Defending Taiwan

Book Mentioned

• Eyck Freymann’s forthcoming book:
  • Defending Taiwan

Ferguson’s Argument

• China has been trying to reduce vulnerability to sanctions and blockade.
• Measures include:
  • Stockpiling oil.
  • Stockpiling grain.
  • Buying gold.
• Ferguson says China is less vulnerable than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

Military Buildup

• Ferguson agrees with Dikötter on weaknesses in China’s military leadership.
• But he warns against ignoring:
  • Speed of rearmament.
  • Weapons buildup across domains.
  • Surface ships.
  • Submarines.
  • Missiles.
  • Hypersonic missiles.
  • Potential threat to U.S. communications in Guam.

Definition: Hypersonic Missiles

• Missiles that travel at extremely high speeds, typically Mach 5 or above, and may maneuver in flight, making them harder to intercept.

Xi’s Mao Complex

• Ferguson says Xi Jinping appears to have a “Mao complex.”
• Evidence:
  • Personality cult.
  • Concentration of power.
  • Abolition or disregard of term limits.
  • Desire to equal Mao by bringing Taiwan under CCP control.
  • Hong Kong as a precedent for political absorption.

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00:35:17 — Dikötter on Dictators Imitating Dictators

Dictators Study Each Other

• Dikötter says all dictators study one another.
• They want to emulate and surpass predecessors.

Mao and Stalin

• Mao wanted to emulate Stalin and perhaps go beyond him.
• Mao believed Stalin made mistakes.
• One mistake:
  • Stalin failed to identify Nikita Khrushchev as a future threat.
• Khrushchev began de-Stalinization after Stalin’s death in 1953.

Definition: De-Stalinization

• Khrushchev’s campaign to reduce Stalin’s cult of personality, criticize his crimes, and modify Soviet politics after Stalin’s death.

Pol Pot and Mao

• Pol Pot visited Mao and believed he could do better.
• Mao reportedly told Pol Pot that he had made a mistake with cities because they remained bourgeois capitalist centers.
• Pol Pot then emptied Cambodia’s cities under the Khmer Rouge.

Definition: Khmer Rouge

• The Cambodian communist movement led by Pol Pot, responsible for mass murder and radical social engineering from 1975 to 1979.

Dictatorial “Success”

• For a dictator, success means concentration of power.
• Dictators compete to become more powerful, more ruthless, and more successful.

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00:36:11 — Taiwan as a Longstanding CCP Objective

All CCP Leaders Wanted Taiwan

Dikötter says the desire to take Taiwan did not begin with Xi.

Mao

• Determined to take Taiwan after 1949.

Deng Xiaoping

• Repeatedly said he would invade Taiwan if necessary.

Jiang Zemin

• Sent missiles across the Taiwan Strait in 1994–1995.

Xi’s Difference

• Xi has far more power and material capability than earlier leaders.
• China has benefited enormously from inclusion in the WTO.

Definition: WTO

• World Trade Organization.
• International body regulating trade rules among member states.
• China joined in 2001, which accelerated its integration into global trade.

“Caveman Marxist”

• Dikötter repeats his characterization of Xi as a “Caveman Marxist.”
• Meaning:
  • Ideologically rigid.
  • Marxist in worldview.
  • Crude or blunt in strategic thinking.

Xi vs. Mao

• Dikötter says Xi is not as talented or clever as Mao.
• He calls Xi “obtuse.”
• He links this to the purges of the Central Military Commission.

Xi vs. Brezhnev

• Ferguson adds that Xi is also not Brezhnev.
• The contrast with late Soviet stagnation is implied to matter.
• Definition: Brezhnev
  • Leonid Brezhnev led the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982 and is associated with stagnation, bureaucratic consolidation, and late-Soviet rigidity.

---

00:37:50 — Closing the Dikötter Segment

Whalen’s Closing

• Whalen suggests Dikötter should return after writing a book on Xi Jinping.
• He again names the book:
  • Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity

---

00:38:09 — B-Block Item 1: Has Donald Trump “Lost the Country”?

Topic Introduction

• Whalen moves to three B-block items.
• First item:
  • Ross Douthat of The New York Times claims Donald Trump has “lost the country.”
• Reasons cited:
  • Poor approval numbers.
  • Electorate in a “wrong track” mood.
  • Policy blunders such as DOGE and ICE.

Niall Ferguson’s Response: The Six-Year Itch

• Ferguson says the situation is not unprecedented.
• He argues that “politics as usual” is happening.
• Trump is in the second year of a second term.
• Presidents commonly experience political trouble at this point.

Historical Comparisons

• Harry Truman onward: presidents often suffer approval decline.
• Richard Nixon:
  • Watergate damaged his second term.
• Ronald Reagan:
  • Iran-Contra exploded near the end of the second year of his second term.
• Bill Clinton:
  • Lewinsky scandal nearly derailed his second term.

Definition: Six-Year Itch

• A political pattern in which presidents suffer serious midterm difficulties around the sixth year of their presidency, especially during a second term.

Ferguson’s View of Trump’s Approval

• Trump’s approval rating is down generally.
• It is also down on issues where he is supposed to be strong:
  • Economy.
  • Inflation.
  • Immigration.
• Ferguson says immigration overreach, “egged on by Stephen Miller in Minneapolis,” has backfired.
• He predicts Republicans are likely to lose the House.
• He thinks they may hold the Senate because the electoral map is favorable.

Whalen’s Caution

• Whalen says presidential approval numbers matter more than “wrong track” numbers.
• Example:
  • In 2012, the U.S. was in a 55% wrong-track mood, but Barack Obama was reelected.

---

00:40:23 — McMaster on Trump Surrendering the High Ground

McMaster’s Main Argument

• Trump often starts with the stronger position but then undermines himself.
• McMaster repeatedly frames this as “surrendering the high ground.”

Definition: High Ground

• In military terms, a superior tactical position.
• In political rhetoric, the morally or strategically stronger position.

Example 1: Justice Department

• Trump had a plausible argument that the Justice Department had been weaponized against him.
• But if he then uses similar tactics to settle scores, he loses the high ground.

Example 2: Military Politicization

• Trump had a strong argument that the Biden administration politicized the military through a radical social agenda.
• McMaster criticizes six Congressmen and Senators for a video saying, “Don’t follow illegal orders,” calling it “BS.”
• But Trump then undermined his position by:
  • Prosecuting a sitting senator.
  • Suggesting the senator could be punished by death.

Example 3: Sovereignty and Allies

• Trump had the high ground on sovereignty issues such as:
  • Panama Canal.
  • Greenland.
• He also had an opportunity to strengthen alliances after pressuring allies to spend more on defense.
• McMaster says Trump weakened this by insulting allies.
• This could make allies think Xi Jinping is “not that bad.”

Example 4: Border Security

• Trump had the high ground on border security.
• McMaster says images and conduct in Minneapolis caused him to surrender it.

---

00:42:15 — Cochrane on Political Volatility

Cochrane’s Main Point

• The political environment is volatile.
• It is hard to predict outcomes.

What Trump Needs

• A few clear victories.
• A few cycles without self-inflicted damage.

Latino Voters

• Cochrane says Trump made inroads with Latinos.
• But stories of people being picked up on the street because “they don’t look right” are damaging to that electorate.

News Cycles

• Many news cycles remain before the election.
• The political trajectory could still change.

Under-the-Radar Policy

• Cochrane cites reversal of the EPA’s endangerment finding for carbon as a major positive for the economy.
• He says it likely will not affect polling soon.

Definition: EPA Endangerment Finding

• A regulatory finding that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, forming a legal basis for carbon regulation.

---

00:43:21 — B-Block Item 2: Economic Indicators and Forecasting

Whalen’s Setup

• Whalen says inflation is down to 2.4%.
• He cites a New York Times argument that global economic signals are broken.
• The issue:
  • Markets, spending, debt, and other indicators are proving unreliable.

Cochrane’s Answer

• “We don’t. Don’t trust.”
• He says forecasting the economy is a fool’s errand.

Why Forecasting Is Hard

• Most economic events are caused by external shocks.
• They are not simply internal dynamics playing out predictably.
• Cochrane says one should believe in contingency, especially in the age of Trump.

Definition: Contingency

• The role of chance, unexpected events, and non-inevitable developments in history or economics.

---

00:44:05 — Ferguson on Economic Strength, Affordability, and AI CapEx

Economic Data Looks Strong

• Ferguson says if one only looks at U.S. economic performance, Trump should be politically stronger.
• By historical standards, the economy looks good.

AI-Driven CapEx Boom

• Ferguson says the economy is being propelled by an extraordinary capital expenditure boom linked to artificial intelligence.

Definition: CapEx

• Capital expenditure.
• Business spending on long-term assets such as factories, equipment, data centers, or infrastructure.

Job Creation

• Ferguson notes job creation in sectors that receive less attention.
• Healthcare is creating many jobs.
• This may reflect an aging population.

Affordability vs. Inflation

• Voters complain about affordability.
• Ferguson says affordability is different from inflation as the Federal Reserve defines it.
• The public wants prices to go down.
• The Fed generally aims for slower price increases, not deflation.

Definition: Inflation

• A sustained increase in the general price level.

Definition: Affordability

• Whether people feel able to pay for goods, services, housing, healthcare, and other necessities with their income.

Market Fragility

• Ferguson sees signs that the AI CapEx boom may be nearing its peak.
• Evidence:
  • Volatility in silver.
  • Volatility in technology stocks.
  • Weakness in software stocks.

The “$1 Trillion Bag”

• Ferguson says companies are spending trillions on data centers.
• Projected revenue over five years may be one trillion dollars less than spending.
• Someone may be left holding a “$1 trillion bag.”

Analogy: Holding the Bag

• Being left with the losses after others exit a risky investment or speculative boom.

---

00:46:02 — B-Block Item 3: Billie Eilish, ICE, and “Stolen Land”

Topic Introduction

• Whalen turns to California and celebrity politics.
• Billie Eilish, winner of Song of the Year at the Grammys, denounced ICE raids.
• She said:
  • “No one is illegal on stolen land.”

Ferguson’s Response

• Ferguson says people who use this rhetoric should surrender any real estate they own to whoever they think the rightful owners are.
• He calls land acknowledgements a “leftist cult.”
• He says they are mandatory at many public events in:
  • Canada.
  • New Zealand.
• He says the practice is spreading in the United States.

Montana Example

• Ferguson recalls seeing graffiti saying he was skiing on stolen land.

Locke and Terra Nullius

• Ferguson invokes John Locke.
• He says Locke argued uncultivated land was terra nullius, meaning it had no property rights until cultivated.

Definition: Terra Nullius

• Latin for “nobody’s land.”
• A legal-philosophical concept used historically to describe land regarded as not legally owned by anyone.
• Ferguson says this idea influenced settlement of North and South America.

Ferguson’s Conclusion

• He says one can retrospectively decide land was stolen.
• But he argues that this is not grounded in American law.
• His challenge to Billie Eilish:
  • If she believes the land is stolen, she should hand over her own property.
  • If not, she should “shut the heck up.”

---

00:48:05 — Cochrane on Land Acknowledgements and Human History

Bank of New Zealand Example

• Cochrane says he once heard a land acknowledgement at the Bank of New Zealand delivered in Māori.
• He jokes that at least they got the language right.

Terry Anderson Example

• Cochrane references Hoover colleague Terry Anderson, a student of Native American history.
• Anderson once gave a detailed land acknowledgement that included:
  • The tribe previously on the land.
  • The tribe before them.
  • Earlier tribes displaced by violence.
• The point:
  • Human history often involves conquest, migration, displacement, and violence.

Cochrane’s English/Danish Joke

• As a descendant of Englishmen, he jokingly complains about the Danes invading York and stealing ancestral land.
• The joke illustrates that conquest and displacement are nearly universal in human history.

---

00:48:56 — McMaster on Conquest, Borders, and Historical Reality

McMaster’s Argument

• He asks the listener to find a nation not founded in some way by:
  • Conquest.
  • Migration.
  • Colonization.
• He rejects the idea that because land was once conquered, a country should not enforce its borders.
• He calls that argument “ludicrous.”

---

00:49:28 — Ferguson’s Closing Qualification: Native American Tragedy

Ferguson Adds a Qualification

• Ferguson says what happened to Native populations in America was a tragedy.
• Millions died.
• He says most died not from war but from disease.
• Populations were reduced dramatically, in some cases to around 5%.

Criticism of Performative Politics

• Ferguson says a performative statement at a Hollywood event does not meaningfully acknowledge the tragedy.
• He says:
  • “It’s not a morality play. That’s what happened.”

Book Mentioned: Charles C. Mann’s

1491

• Ferguson recommends Charles Mann’s 1491.
• The book describes what the Americas looked like before European contact and smallpox.

---

00:50:04 — Closing Remarks

Next Guest

• Whalen says the next episode will feature Kemi Badenoch.
• She is the leader of the Conservative Party in Great Britain.
• The panel jokes about British and Scottish accents.

Closing Music

• The episode ends with lyrics from “This Land Is Your Land”:
  • “This land is your land / And this land is my land…”
• The song choice directly echoes the preceding discussion of land ownership, stolen land, and American identity.

---

Extra Resources Mentioned

Books

• Frank Dikötter, Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity
• Frank Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine
• Frank Dikötter, China After Mao
• Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China
• Eyck Freymann, Defending Taiwan
• Charles C. Mann, 1491

People Mentioned

• Frank Dikötter
• Sir Niall Ferguson
• John Cochrane
• H.R. McMaster
• Bill Whalen
• Mao Zedong
• Chiang Kai-shek
• Karl Marx
• Vladimir Lenin
• Joseph Stalin
• Zhang Guotao
• Zhang Youxia
• Lin Biao
• Sun Yat-sen
• Xi Jinping
• Donald Trump
• Ross Douthat
• Stephen Miller
• Barack Obama
• Richard Nixon
• Ronald Reagan
• Bill Clinton
• Henry Kissinger
• Jiang Zemin
• Deng Xiaoping
• Nikita Khrushchev
• Pol Pot
• Billie Eilish
• John Locke
• Charles C. Mann
• Kemi Badenoch
• Sanae Takaichi
• Eyck Freymann
• Terry Anderson

Institutions / Organizations

• Hoover Institution
• Chinese Communist Party
• Comintern
• People’s Liberation Army
• Central Military Commission
• World Trade Organization
• Environmental Protection Agency
• Federal Reserve
• Bank of New Zealand

---

High-Level Summary

This episode of Goodfellows centers on Frank Dikötter’s argument that the Chinese Communist Party’s rise from 1921 to 1949 has been badly misunderstood, especially in the West. Dikötter rejects the romantic narrative that Mao’s revolution emerged from genuine peasant support or liberating land reform. Instead, he argues that the CCP was tiny for decades, depended heavily on Soviet support, extracted grain and manpower violently from villagers, and rose to power through coercion, starvation sieges, and ruthless military tactics. The panel then links Mao-era patterns to Xi Jinping’s China, discussing Taiwan, military purges, currency limits, China’s dependence on trade, and Western misunderstandings of Chinese communism. In the B-block, the panel discusses Trump’s approval problems, economic uncertainty despite strong data, the AI capital expenditure boom, and the moral-political rhetoric of “stolen land.”

---

Key Takeaways

1. The official CCP story portrays the party as the heroic liberator of China from Qing corruption, warlordism, imperialism, and Nationalist dictatorship.
2. Dikötter argues this story is a romantic myth that survives not only in China but also among Western readers and journalists.
3. The Republican era from 1911 to 1949 was genuinely complex, which makes simplified liberation narratives attractive.
4. Mao’s victory was highly improbable because the CCP remained tiny for much of the 1920s, 1930s, and even into 1940.
5. The myth of “land reform” is central to the standard account of Communist success, but Dikötter argues that China did not have a Russian-style landlord-serf system.
6. Communist land reform often meant expanding the category of class enemies until even middle villagers were dispossessed or coerced.
7. The CCP functioned as a war machine that extracted grain, labor, and soldiers from villages until local economies collapsed.
8. Soviet intervention in Manchuria in 1945 was, in Dikötter’s account, the decisive turning point that allowed Mao’s forces to shift the balance of power.
9. The siege of Changchun is presented as a horrific example of Communist unrestricted warfare, with 160,000 civilians starved to death.
10. Dikötter sees strong continuities between Mao’s CCP and Xi Jinping’s CCP: paranoia, broken promises, Orwellian language, purges, and concentration of power.
11. The panel argues that many Westerners misunderstand Chinese Communism because they interpret it as Chinese culture rather than as Communist politics.
12. China’s renminbi is unlikely to rival the dollar while capital controls remain and the currency is not freely convertible.
13. A blockade of Taiwan would also impose serious costs on China because of its dependence on imported oil, grain, and other goods.
14. Ferguson warns that China has become less vulnerable to sanctions through stockpiling and rearmament, even if the regime has internal weaknesses.
15. The B-block argues that Trump’s main political problem may be repeatedly surrendering the “high ground,” while the economy may be strong but politically undermined by affordability concerns and financial-market fragility.

---

Glossary

Affordability

The practical ability of people to pay for goods and services, distinct from inflation rates. Prices can stop rising quickly while still remaining unaffordable.

Barrier Troops

Military units placed behind front-line soldiers to prevent retreat, sometimes by threatening to shoot retreating troops.

Bolsheviks

Lenin’s revolutionary faction that seized power in Russia in 1917 and created the Soviet regime.

Bonded Servitude

A condition where people are tied to labor obligations and lack real control over their work, land, or output.

CapEx

Capital expenditure; business spending on long-term assets such as buildings, equipment, infrastructure, or data centers.

Capital Controls

Government restrictions on currency conversion or moving money across borders.

Cannon Fodder

Soldiers treated as expendable in military operations.

Central Military Commission

The top military command body in the People’s Republic of China, closely tied to CCP power.

Comintern

The Communist International, a Soviet-led organization designed to promote communist revolution worldwide.

Contingency

The role of chance, accident, and unpredictable events in shaping history or politics.

De-dollarization

The effort to reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar in international trade, finance, or reserves.

De-Stalinization

Khrushchev’s post-1953 campaign to criticize Stalin’s rule and reduce Stalinist features in Soviet politics.

EPA Endangerment Finding

A regulatory finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, providing the basis for carbon regulation in the United States.

Extraterritoriality

A system in which foreign nationals or foreign powers are exempt from local laws and governed by their own legal systems.

Fixed Exchange Rate

A currency system in which a government manages or pegs its currency value relative to another currency or basket of currencies.

Go West Campaign

A Chinese development strategy associated with Jiang Zemin aimed at developing western regions such as Xinjiang and improving infrastructure links.

High Ground

A military term for superior terrain, used metaphorically to mean a stronger moral, rhetorical, or strategic position.

Hypersonic Missiles

Missiles that travel at extremely high speeds, generally Mach 5 or above, and may maneuver in flight.

Immiseration

The process of becoming increasingly poor or miserable.

Khmer Rouge

The Cambodian communist regime led by Pol Pot, responsible for radical social engineering and mass death.

Land Acknowledgement

A public statement recognizing Indigenous peoples as original or prior inhabitants of land where an event is held.

Land Reform

Redistribution of land from wealthier owners to poorer cultivators. Dikötter argues the Chinese Communist version became a mechanism of coercion and extraction.

Marxist Economy

In this discussion, an economy shaped by Communist Party control, capital restrictions, political management of markets, and state-directed priorities.

Orwellian Doublespeak

Political language that obscures, reverses, or manipulates reality, associated with George Orwell’s 1984.

Paper Tiger

Something that appears powerful or threatening but is weaker than it seems.

Peasantry

A term for rural agricultural populations, though Dikötter dislikes the term and prefers “villagers.”

People’s Democratic Dictatorship

A CCP political phrase combining democratic rhetoric with one-party dictatorship.

Potemkin Village

A staged or deceptive display designed to make conditions look better than they really are.

Renminbi / Yuan

China’s currency. “Renminbi” is the official currency name; “yuan” is the unit of account.

Republican Era

The period in Chinese history after the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and before Communist victory in 1949.

Six-Year Itch

A political pattern in which a president faces severe trouble around the sixth year in office, especially during a second term.

Terra Nullius

Latin for “nobody’s land”; a concept used historically to describe land treated as not legally owned by anyone.

Triskaidekaphobia

Fear of the number 13.

Unrestricted Warfare

In Dikötter’s usage here, warfare without conventional moral or strategic restraint, including human shields, barrier troops, and starvation sieges.

Useful Idiot

A person who unintentionally serves a political movement’s propaganda aims by repeating or legitimizing its preferred narrative.

WTO

World Trade Organization, the international body governing global trade rules. China’s WTO entry greatly expanded its integration into the global economy.

Yan’an

The wartime Communist base in northern China where Mao consolidated ideological and political control.

---

Content

Frank Dikötter dissect the origins of Communist rule in China and why its founding myth still shapes Xi Jinping’s strategy today. Plus, the GoodFellows debate on how Donald Trump has “lost the country,” and Billie Eilish’s belief that “no one is illegal on stolen land.”

Join our newsletter to be the first to watch the next GoodFellows episode: https://www.hoover.org/publications/goodfellows?utm\_source=youtube&utm\_medium=description&utm\_campaign=gf\_youtube&utm\_content=02132026

00:03:15 - What Chinese Children Learn (and What They Don’t)
00:07:45 - Misconceptions of the Chinese Communist Revolution
00:11:00 - Why Xi Jinping is Purging Like It’s 1942
00:13:20 - The Rise of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party
00:18:45 - Was the Chinese Revolution Actually a Soviet Operation?
00:23:00 - Why Land Reform Was Really a Path to Bonded Servitude
00:33:15 - Evaluating China’s Actual Military Capabilities and the Threat to Taiwan
00:40:00 - Western Misunderstandings of Chinese Communist Ideology
00:47:30 - Domestic Politics: Donald Trump’s Approval Ratings + AI “CapEx” Boom Peaking
00:50:00 - Billie Eilish’s Remark: Who Truly Owns “Stolen Land”?

__________
The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University.

© 2026 by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University.

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Transcript

0:01 · Go home, Jake, I’m doing you a favor.

0:07 · Goodbye, Jake.

0:12 · Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.

0:15 · (mysterious music) (upbeat music) It’s Friday, February 13, 2026. And welcome back to “Goodfellows,” a Hoover Institution broadcast examining history, economics, and geopolitics. I’m Bill Whalen. I’m a Hoover Distinguished Policy fellow. I’ll be your moderator today. Looking forward to conversation featuring three of my colleagues we refer to as the Goodfellows. That will of course be the historian, Sir Niall Ferguson, the economist, John Cochrane, and the historian geostrategist, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster.

0:51 · Niall, John, and H.R. are Hoover Senior Fellows. Guys, good to see you.

0:55 · Do we have any triskaidekaphobia in the crowd here?

0:58 · Is anybody here afraid of the number 13?

1:02 · I take that as a no. 2026 is a strange year, by the way. Friday the 13 is coming up for you this year. Two segments today, gentlemen. In the B-Block, we’ll get into all sorts of various things, including one columnist assertion that Donald Trump has “lost the country.” And also want to get the historian’s thoughts on one Grammy Award winner’s thoughts that we all live on stolen land. But first we’re gonna turn our attention to China.

1:26 · Joining us today is returning to “Goodfellows,” is our colleague Frank Dikötter. Frank Dikötter is the Milias Senior Fellow here at the Hoover Institution, and Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. He is the most widely read living historian on modern China. You can add to that collection Frank’s latest book, which comes out later this month. It’s titled “Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered A Quarter of Humanity.” Frank, welcome back to Goodfellows.

1:49 · Thank you for having me.

1:51 · Before we get into your book, which really is terrific, Frank, last time we had you on the show, you were new to California, having just moved here from Hong Kong. You’ve now had about a year to acclimate.

2:00 · Are you a Californian now?

2:02 · I am getting there.

2:04 · I’m definitely enjoying the perpetual sunshine. It’s very hard to believe that you could find a place like this anywhere in Europe. So yes, I’m getting there.

2:17 · Good, good to hear, Frank. So let’s talk about the book. Congratulations again on it. I really like the way that you laid out the better part of 30 years of history of the Chinese Communist Party, and our viewers should know that Frank’s book covers the years 1921 to 1949.

2:32 · My question for you, Frank, here in this country, 250th anniversary of America coming up, kids are having long conversations in school about the founding of the Republic, and what the United States is. Let’s look at it from the Chinese perspective in terms of how the Chinese teach their kids about the rise of the party, and the creation of the modern country.

2:50 · Do they teach it the same way you write in your book?

2:52 · Do they take 30 years, and chop it up into little bits and pieces?

2:55 · Or do they give a greater arc of history?

2:58 · Well, of course, there are textbooks written in the PRC and beyond that will go into this entire period in great detail. But the overarching story is quite straightforward. There is a Manchu empire called the Qin. They are corrupt, assaulted by imperialist powers. The empire collapses in 1911. Warlords appear, who fight each other, oppress the population. It causes peasant immiseration. There is a fascist dictatorship under Chiang Kai-shek that appears in the 1920s and ‘30s.

What Chinese Children Learn (and What They Don’t)

3:35 · And thank the sweet Lord, or rather, thank Karl Marx, Lenin, and Stalin for the appearance of the Communist Party. These are the true pioneers in tune with the more progressive spirit.

3:52 · They are the ones who fight for freedom in the hills, and their message of liberation finds great resonance among hundreds of millions of poor peasants, who very much rally behind the party and propel it to power in 1949 when the red flag goes up over the Forbidden City. That’s the standard account. You’ll find variations of it abroad.

4:20 · Unfortunately, a great many elements of this sort of tale of a David and Goliath, with the sympathy going to the boy with the sling, you can find it abroad as well.

4:36 · And if those students, Frank, were to read your book, and read an unvarnished history of China, what would they learn?

4:42 · Well, my problem would not be so much students in the People’s Republic of China. They have learned that one should query a great many of these official accounts. My problem really is the readers of modern history abroad, not least in Europe and this country. So the book is difficult for an objective and a subjective reason.

5:07 · The book is difficult because it is true that the period from 1911 to 1949, it’s referred to as the Republican era, China becomes a republic. The first one in Asia, by the way, is extraordinarily complex with a capital that changes several times, different parties vying for power, intervention of great powers and extraterritorial system. Alliances between communists and nationalists that are built and failed.

5:37 · It is complex.

5:39 · Endless names of generals who fight each other. So that’s an objective difficulty. Now, the subject of difficulty is that this abroad has also been simplified into this romantic tale, where thank the God, thank God for the communists, who really know how to do something about these dire conditions in the countryside, not to mention cities, and liberate the country.

6:06 · So the objective difficulty lends readers to embrace a very simplistic tale of liberation, which unfortunately doesn’t correspond to any of the evidence you can find within the archives of the party itself, within the documents written by the Comintern, the Communist International, which was behind the Communist Party pretty much from day one, 1921, July, when the party is established, or elsewhere.

6:37 · Frank, I think you’re being too hard on yourself. Because I didn’t think the book was difficult at all, actually. I found it gripping, and I saw three big themes that kind of impelled me to keep reading. The first one is just the sheer unlikeliness of Mao Zedong’s ultimate triumph. You show again and again how few people there were at his side.

7:03 · That the numbers just ludicrously small, especially considering the size of China’s population in the 1930s and 1940s. So it seems even less likely that the Bolsheviks, than the Bolsheviks’ success in Russia. So that was the first thing. It’s just such an extraordinary story, and so implausible that he finally prevails. The second big theme is Stalin’s role in his success.

7:34 · And I think I hadn’t fully understood the extent to which the Chinese revolution ends up being a kind of Soviet operation, the way the Russian revolution had been a German military operation. And then the most extraordinary thing that you teach us is the enormous difference between the way Mao portrays the Chinese countryside, the peasants’ revolution that he supposedly leads, and the reality of life in rural China.

Misconceptions of the Chinese Communist Revolution

8:06 · And that’s to me, the really fascinating part of this book. You realize that the whole template that Mao brings from Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, doesn’t fit China at all. And indeed, the only way that Mao’s communists can come to power is by just a relentless campaign of violence against the very people that they claim to represent. So I think the book is one of your most brilliant.

8:37 · It’s utterly gripping, but it also completely recasts our understanding of the rise of Mao’s communist revolution.

8:47 · Okay, well, thank you so much.

8:50 · I can tell that the difficulty is that there is such an ingrained notion of a social revolution in China. It’s so common and widespread. The belief that there must have been origins to the revolution. That there must have been social reasons why the Communist Party managed to gain power. That’s really the huge sort of stereotype I’m fighting against.

9:24 · And at core, the core of it, is of course, the belief that there is something referred to as land reform. Now, it doesn’t really matter whether we’re talking about the 1920s or ’30s or ’40s. The idea is that the communists implemented land reform in a desperately poor countryside, and as a result, gained the support of the, what I refer to as villagers. But most writers refer to as peasants, not to mention peasantry, all rather unpleasant terms.

9:59 · This is not a feudal country. So first point to be made is that this is a country the size of Europe. When the good old chairman, Mao, says 5% of people in the countryside are landlords, he knows nothing about it. It varies enormously from the north, where land ownership is pretty much equal to the south, where you have very powerful clans and lineages that very jealously safeguard their interest against other clans and villages.

10:31 · It’s a huge variation. And point two is that throughout from roughly the 1880s till the 1930s, the economic conditions improve. But even if we were to agree, and I think everybody agrees on that, that the conditions in the countryside vary, and are not ideal, far from it. There’s an underclass of people, drifters, those Mao himself refers to as “riffraff.” There’s unemployment, there’s exploitation. This is a system that has to be changed.

Why Xi Jinping is Purging Like It’s 1942

11:04 · And needless to say, a great many people do want to improve the conditions in the countryside, but land reform is not the answer.

11:13 · So what is land reform?

11:14 · That’s very, very interesting, ‘cause that’s the core of the myth. So it comes from the Soviet Union. You have an aristocracy, landed. You have serfs who are emancipated, what is it, the 1860s, 1870s.

11:27 · Enormous disparities there.

11:29 · So the idea is if you take land from the rich landlords, you give it to the poor, you create a surplus, the surplus will feed the Communist Party. There are no landlords in China. That’s the key problem. There’s not enough land to be taken from squires or barons or landlords in China to be distributed to the poor. So these land ownership patterns vary enormously, but simply isn’t that.

12:01 · So what happens is that the communists only ever manage to establish themselves in very inhospitable land, where the villages are already very poor, barely able to survive. And now with the arrival of the communist, they have to feed not just themselves, but also the soldiers and leaders of the Communist Party.

12:26 · What is it that the Communist Party does?

12:28 · It wants to take land from those it refers to as landlords.

12:32 · There are none.

12:33 · Then it takes the land from those it refers to as rich peasants. There are very few. Then it takes the land from those it refers to as middle peasants, which is a great many. Then it goes on and on to the extent that towards the end, everybody has become pretty much a serf.

12:53 · Everybody has been reduced to bonded servitude. Why is that?

12:57 · Because the Communist Party is a war machine. It always needs more grain. It always needs more canon fodder. There’s a point where the local economy just collapses. They have in effect, in the words of one of the communist leaders, Zhang Guotao, they have squeezed it like a lemon, and then they have to move on. They have to move on to greener pastures. And this sort of pattern repeats itself time and again.

The Rise of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party

13:27 · So no wonder, no wonder that so few of the villagers, including the poor ones, are actually keen on joining the Communist Party of China. There’s a remarkable document where in the 1930s, one of the leaders in the Soviet that these communists have established in the mountainous area, say the villagers have become lazy.

13:53 · And why does he say it?

13:54 · Because in effect, every cultivator realizes that the majority of what they produce will be confiscated by the party.

14:04 · So why do anything?

14:05 · Why produce more than what you need to feed yourself?

14:07 · That’s the myth. Land reform.

14:10 · Hey Frank, I’ll tell you, I love this latest volume. I love the whole body of your work.

14:14 · I wanna ask you a quick, easy question first, which is, how should readers read your body of work?

14:19 · Should we start with “Mao’s Great Famine,” and then read them in the order in which you’ve written these volumes?

14:24 · Or do you think now they should just read chronologically, and read this latest book first?

14:30 · The latest one, in my opinion, is the toughest one. We can all relate to “Mao’s Great Famine.” The famine in which tens of millions were starved, beaten, neglected to death from 1958 to 62. We can all agree that that was a horrendous episode. But this one is so challenging. I would probably read them backwards. If I were me, I would probably start - So go to “China After Mao” first.

14:56 · [Frank] I would read that one first.

14:57 · Yeah, it’s a fantastic book, too. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that’s a great way to approach it. And I think our readers, if you’re looking for a summer project, just get the whole set, and do as Frank has recommended.

15:11 · And then of course the interesting thing is you could skip anything in between, and then jump from “China After Mao,” which is really the 40 years of so-called reform, and opening up, brings you all the way up to Xi Jinping. And then you could read this particular volume and still see all the continuities. It seems like a different planet, a bunch of real communist guerilla fighters, a ragtag army plundering the countryside, and then this great superpower.

15:43 · You think these are two utterly different entities, yet underneath, so many similarities, so many similarities. There is the constant paranoia and conviction that the Communist Party is being surrounded by the imperialists who are out to get them. There is the extraordinary sort of willingness to make promises and pledges, which are broken the moment these pledges are no longer convenient.

16:10 · There is a rhetoric about a new democracy in 1940, when Mao promises protection of private property, opposition parties, freedom of speech. And in the meantime, is purging his own, the ranks of his own party with thousands being executed from ‘42 to ‘44. Very much the same today. There is this sort of Orwellian doublespeak. New democracy in 1940. And now of course, you have the people’s democratic dictatorship. I mean, remember Orwell, “war is peace.”

16:46 · Here we have it. Peaceful liberation. And then of course the purges, the purges. We’ve just seen how the Central Military Commission has been reduced from seven chaps to two. And one of the two is Mr. Xi Jinping himself. You could not get closer to what happens in Yan’an, the wartime capital of Chairman Mao in 1942, 43. Could not get closer to it.

17:17 · Yeah, and we should come back to the historical pedagogy question that H.R. brought up.

17:21 · Do you read history front to back, back to front, or all the way in between?

17:25 · I kinda like all the way in between. Let me ask Frank a question. This is absolutely wonderful, and shaking the founding myth of a nation in a dictatorship is gonna cause you some kerfuffle, I’m sure. Well, I’m struck, as Niall said, by the incredible contingency of it.

17:44 · By the ever shifting alliances, first, Mao is supported by the Russians, and then were together against the Chinese, and then we join up with the nationalists, and then back again and so forth.

17:58 · How does a mild-mannered library assistant wind up the greatest dictator of all time?

18:06 · How in the world do they win in the end?

18:11 · And I think the picture you pointed is absolute ruthlessness and incredible violence, both internal and external. They were simply willing to do more in the quest of power and internal power than everybody else’s. We mentioned lying, cheating, and stealing, but killing and devastating, that doesn’t matter.

18:36 · Whatever it takes.

18:38 · And one little note you made really struck me. As the civil war is going on, nobody, no refugees are ever going to the communist side. They’re always running the other way. That speaks volumes.

Was the Chinese Revolution Actually a Soviet Operation?

18:50 · But as military history, how do you start a ragtag little band, and then you conquer China?

18:57 · It seems to be just the willingness to be more ridiculously violent than anyone else.

19:03 · Yeah, so I would say all the way 1920s, ’30s, in fact, till 1940, this party barely exists. We’re talking about 50 people in 1921 at the foundation of the party, 1923 when they go into a united front with Sun Yat-sen and nationalists, maybe hundreds. By 1936, right bang in the middle of the 1930s, there are about 40,000 people who followed the communists. In a country of half a billion.

19:36 · By 1940, there’s about, if you believe the inflated statistics of the Comintern, about one out of every 1,700 people in that huge country is a communist, which is roughly the same number as Communist Party members in the United States of America, at the time the United States not being seen as a great leader of the communist revolution.

20:01 · So in fact, in Europe, pretty much anywhere, except possibly for Nazi Germany, there are more communists as a proportion of the overall population. So that changes in the 1940s when the Japanese, in effect, do something the communists couldn’t do, which from ‘37 onwards, to be fair, the Japanese defeat the central government. But the key point is 1945.

20:24 · Students ask me, “How come China became communist?”

20:28 · My answer is, “How come Poland became communist?

20:32 · How come Eastern Germany became communist?”

20:35 · It’s because they were invaded by the Red Army in 1945. And Manchuria, the size of France and Japan to the north of Beijing, extraordinarily rich in resources, strategic gateway to the rest of the country. That’s where the Manchus came when they invaded in 1644, a million soldiers from the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria in the summer of 1945, and they stay there, and they hand over the countryside to Chairman Mao and the communist.

21:06 · And that’s the key point where all of a sudden, that balance of power becomes to change. And then what you say is absolutely crucial. They are lost in the 1920s and ’30s.

21:18 · But once they are backed by the Soviet Union, with weapons arriving by the train load from North Korea, of course, but also from Siberia, with officers being trained in Moscow with military institutions established throughout Manchuria, then what they, the kind of warfare they practice, I refer to as unrestricted warfare. And it means that you are just more determined than your enemy.

21:49 · So that includes using villagers as shields, it includes barrier troops, putting soldiers behind the soldiers in front of you, so that at least they have a chance of survival if they move forward. If they turn back, they get shot. But most of all, the horrendous willingness of starving entire cities into surrender.

22:18 · So this happens in 1948, Changchun, big city, right bang in the middle of Manchuria, it is starved, surrounded by PLA Red Army, communist soldiers by Lin Biao, trenches four meters deep, sentries all around it. Nobody’s allowed to leave or enter that city. 160,000 civilians starved to death over a period of eight months. The same number of victims endured in Hiroshima after the dropping of the bomb.

22:47 · So once that city collapses, if you were in charge of Beijing, if you are the man having to defend Beijing, would you be willing to fight?

Why Land Reform Was Really a Path to Bonded Servitude

23:06 · So one by one, these cities, they topple like dominoes. You just can’t fight this machine. Of course, that’s exactly what the Americans find out a couple of years later during the Korean War.

23:18 · Frank, our time is winding down with you. I’d like to get your thoughts on two topics related to China. The China of 2026. - Yes.

23:25 · One is geopolitical, the other John, is economic. First, let’s start with the geopolitics, Frank. Xi Jinping and Donald Trump recently had a phone call in which reportedly, Xi said, Taiwan is “The most important issue in China-US relations.” And Xi also said, “China will ‘never allow Taiwan to be separated from China.’” That was what was reported. Frank, you have called China a paper tiger militarily.

23:48 · Are you still standing by that?

23:50 · Not quite a paper tiger.

23:52 · So here’s the link if you wish, with pre-‘49. This a somewhat worrying one. The tactics are great, but the strategies poor.

24:06 · So what are the tactics?

24:07 · The tactics are that you throw vast numbers of people at your enemy. This is what happens during the Civil War, 1945, 49. And we have seen a similar attempt with this thousands of boats, civilian boats outside Taiwan to somehow train for a possible blockade. So that really is the challenge.

24:33 · If you look at the aircraft carriers, what, the last one, the third one?

24:39 · With its oil boilers incapable of having planes land and take off at the same time?

24:45 · Not exactly a great technological innovation. Of course the talk is always about the next aircraft carrier. Well, we shall see. It’s not a nuclear one. And not to mention submarines. That’s not the issue. The issue is that this country could potentially mobilize so many people, so many boats, and throw so much at it without regard for casualties. That’s the problem of great tactics and poor strategy, is that it comes at an enormous cost.

25:15 · So that is very, very, very worrisome.

25:18 · But as I also said, what is the capacity of the man in charge to actually get the army to follow his orders?

25:34 · And what is the willingness of soldiers on the ground to actually go in there and fight?

25:41 · They had great difficulties in 1989, fighting their own citizens. An entire army was turned back when it first tried to crush the demonstrators on Tiananmen Square. This was not June, this was six weeks earlier. So I’m not so sure that Xi Jinping all he has to do is press a button, and we have a blockade, or an invasion of Taiwan.

26:05 · I would say what has happened with the sacking of the purge of Zhang Youxia and others is that my best guess is that these military know quite well how extraordinarily difficult it would be, and Xi Jinping is not really willing to listen.

26:26 · Hey Frank, going back to the theme that understanding China and the Chinese Communist Party today does really have its roots back in the Civil War. There are two related questions I wanna ask you.

26:36 · Why despite the brutality of the CCP, do people still not get it?

26:40 · How brutal the party is, and as a result, make arguments like, “Hey, the Chinese people are culturally predisposed toward not wanting a say in how they’re governed.” They actually need to be governed by a party who employs the kind of tactics that they’re using to extinguish human freedom. And the party is able to cultivate voices not only within China, that put forward that argument, but internationally.

27:08 · How is the party able to accomplish that?

27:09 · And are there parallels back to that civil war period as Mao is murdering such large numbers of his own people?

27:18 · Yes.

27:19 · So first of all, you have useful idiots like Edgar Snow, “Red Star over China,” book published in 1937, that portrays them not so much as communists, but great agrarian reformers who are there to bring freedom and liberty to a nation in despair.

27:34 · And of course, Mao cultivates that image in Yan’an, wartime capital of the communist during the Second World War with really a Potemkin village, where you have American journalists come and see model schools, model prisons, model farms, and go back and chant it. But the real answer to your question is that the people in China know exactly how brutal, how brutal the Communist Party is. They know exactly, you don’t have to explain to them.

28:03 · It is us, Westerners, possibly Japanese as well, who make a fatal mistake. And I think that mistake is quite straightforward when we talk about Chinese communism. A great many of us simply do not believe that it is real communism. In other words, when we talk about communist China and the communists, we think of culture, Chinese culture. We don’t think of communist politics. Now that’s the key mistake.

28:34 · That mistake was made by the Americans during the Second World War, when the Chinese Mao describes the grand reformers made again by Kissinger, Nixon, when they described as sort of Confucian world, and again, of course by Clinton. So all along, this confusion that Chinese communists are not real communists, that there’s basically Democrats waiting to emerge.

28:57 · Now, Frank, the economic side of things, two stories out. One, Xi reportedly wants to challenge US dollar for world dominance. He wants, “A powerful central bank in China, and a more resilient international currency.” Couple that with a Wall Street Journal headline. “The American and Chinese economies are hurtling toward a messy divorce.” Your thoughts, Frank? - Well, great. I’m sure that Xi Jinping would like to de-dollarize and have the renminbi or the yuan become international currency.

29:26 · But at this point in time, it represents 2% of all international exchanges. The key point really is that we’re dealing with a Marxist economy, meaning that there are constraints, capital controls on the renminbi, cannot be freely exchanged. And as long as that remains the case, there will be no true challenge to the dollar, or other currencies. I simply don’t see it.

29:50 · And why will these capital constraints not be lifted?

29:54 · For the very simple reason that they need to fix the exchange rate in order to be able to keep on exporting the vast amounts that they do at this point in time. They’ve controlled the exchange rate pretty much from day one, and they’re not about to give it up.

30:14 · Let me chime in on that one.

30:17 · Fixed exchange rate isn’t necessarily terrible, but absolutely has to be fairly convertible, and it has to be totally trustworthy. If you hold the Chinese bond, you know you’re gonna get paid back. It’s not gonna be defaulted, it’s not gonna be taxed away, it’s not gonna be inflated away. There’s an opening there. The US isn’t so trustworthy, but China isn’t ready to fill that opening.

30:38 · The second thing you mentioned though, China depends on exports, and it depends on imports. They also have their own problems.

30:45 · So a blockade, a war in Taiwan, would shut down trade, and would probably be as fairly catastrophic for the Chinese as well, no?

30:55 · Yes, yeah, absolutely. This is what I’ve always said. That they can blockade Taiwan, but they’re really blockading themselves. That they depend to an unusual extent, on imports of oil, petrol, grain. The list is pretty long. Now, of course, they have been trying for decades now.

31:18 · This started with Jiang Zemin, the so-called “Go West” campaign, which is to open up Xinjiang province, cultivate it, and of course have oil pipes go through Xinjiang all the way to- - Right.

31:29 · To the rest of Asia. But that is not enough. So a blockade would be extremely difficult to sustain. Not so much by Taiwan, but by the People’s Republic of China.

31:47 · So following up the, I think some of what they’re trying to do with the currency is to have not a global currency that everybody likes, but a break glass in case of emergency way to pay for things that get around sanctions. And the other question is, when the great blockade comes, the US calls up Canada, Latin America, Europe and says, “Hey, we need you all to help us here on the financial and economic sanctions.”

32:09 · Do they say, “Okay, we’ll give up all the great cheap stuff we’re getting from China.” Or do they say, “Oh! You! The US! How lovely to hear from you again! We were last talking about tariffs.”

32:21 · Well, yes and no.

32:23 · But as Sanae Takaichi made so clear, it is very eloquent. Any blockade of Taiwan is a direct threat to the national security of Japan. So it will not just be a sort of PRC/Taiwan issue. It will be an issue for every country in that region. And I can’t - - Which is why we care.

32:49 · Indeed!

32:50 · I simply cannot see the PRC as a power that is surrounded by friendly allies.

33:01 · I think, as Niall’s beautiful First World War illustrates, governments are able to ignore the economic catastrophe that will follow from an invasion. Sorry, Niall, go ahead.

33:12 · Frank, can I just throw in a plug for Eyck Freymann’s forthcoming book, “Defending Taiwan,” in which he argues that China’s been furiously trying to reduce its exposure to trade sanctions and a blockade. It’s stockpiling immense quantities of oil and grain. It’s buying gold like crazy. John will have noticed the price action in the gold market.

Evaluating China’s Actual Military Capabilities and the Threat to Taiwan

33:41 · And so compared with 10 or 20 years ago, China’s much less vulnerable to the kind of economic measures that we’re talking about. I mean, I agree with much that you say. In fact, I wholly agree with your points about China’s military leadership. But one can’t ignore the speed of rearmament, or armament under Xi Jinping.

34:01 · An incredible buildup of weaponry in every domain, not only surface ships, you mentioned submarines, but also missiles, including hypersonic missiles that could take out US communications in Guam. So I think it’s really important to recognize, not only the weaknesses of the regime, and this is part of the point of your new book, but also the ruthlessness that animates it. And that’s especially important when we know that Xi Jinping, in a sense, has a Mao complex.

34:34 · Yeah.

34:35 · And I wanted to get your thought on this. There’s a sense in which the man is trying to somehow emulate Mao. There’s a personality cult unlike anything we’ve seen since Mao in Chinese media. There’s a concentration of power in the hands of Xi Jinping, which is again, remarkable. He has cast term limits aside.

34:55 · And one senses a kind of a thirst to equal Mao by bringing Taiwan under the control of the CCP, the way Hong Kong has been, more or less brought under its control.

35:07 · Do you think that’s the right way to think about Xi?

35:11 · As somebody, a sort of Mao wannabe, who will take great risk and be very ruthless to achieve that goal?

35:17 · Well, of course all dictators study each other. And all dictators are a wannabe, whoever is better. So Mao wants to be, wants to emulate Stalin, and possibly go beyond. He thinks Stalin made several mistakes. And one is that didn’t spot his nemesis, Nikita Khrushchev, who of course started de-Stalinization a few years after Stalin dies in ‘53.

35:45 · The Stalin.

35:46 · Stalin is a great example for Mao, but Mao will do better. Pol Pot comes to see Mao, believes he will do better. But Mao tells him, “Ah, I made a mistake with the cities. They’re just bourgeois capitalists. There’s little I can do about it, even Shanghai.” Pol Pot starts by emptying every single city under the Khmer Rouge. They all wanna imitate each other. They all wanna be stronger and better and more successful.

36:11 · And success from the point of view of a dictator is concentration of power. Now to the point, the other point really is that from ‘49 onwards, all of them are determined to take back Taiwan.

36:24 · So Mao’s determined.

36:25 · Deng repeatedly says that he will, if necessary, invade Taiwan, and take it back. Jiang Zemin is the one who starts sending missiles across the Taiwan Strait, ‘94, ‘95. They’re not exactly choir boys. But see, the difference with Xi Jinping is he’s got the clouts. This is not the China of the 1980s or 1990s. This country has benefited enormously from its inclusion in the WTO.

36:58 · So the clout, the power that Xi has at his disposal is far greater. But I think you are right. There’s something very, very shortsighted. You remember I called him “Caveman Marxist.” And Xi Jinping strikes me exactly as that. Unfortunately, the real worrying thing is that he is, in my opinion, not as talented as Mao. He simply isn’t as clever as Mao. There’s something very obtuse about him.

37:36 · And I think that is manifested in all those purges on the Central Military Commission.

37:42 · He’s also not Brezhnev.

37:44 · The contrast with the late Russian seems very important here. - Yes.

37:50 · Well, Frank, I think you have to come back on “Goodfellows” maybe after you’ve written another book on Xi Jinping, and we can further discuss that. I want to thank you for your time today, sir. You are a great guest. Come back soon on the show. Congratulations again on the book. It’s titled, for those who didn’t catch it the beginning of the show, “Red Dawn over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity.”

38:08 · Frank, congratulations.

38:09 · Thank you. (screen whooshing) Gentlemen, on to the B-Block, I have three items for you. Item number one, citing poor approval numbers and electorate in a wrong track mood. Policy blunders such as DOGE and ICE, New York Times communist Ross Douthat claims that Donald Trump has and I quote, “lost the country.”

38:26 · Do you agree or disagree?

38:27 · Niall, why don’t you take a crack at this, because you recently wrote about Trump and how he may try to avoid the, what you call the six-year itch.

38:34 · Well, we’ve been told time and time again that something dreadfully new is happening because Donald Trump is president. The constitution’s in danger, the republic will celebrate 250 years, and then go into liquidation. But guess what? It’s politics as usual. We’re in the second year of a second term. And the thing that happens to all presidents, certainly since Harry Truman, is happening to Donald Trump.

39:01 · His approval rating is way down, not just generally, but also on all the issues where he’s supposed to be strong.

39:10 · The economy, inflation.

39:13 · Immigration, where the overreach, egged on by Stephen Miller in Minneapolis, is completely blown up in the administration’s face. And just to add to the sense of historical familiarity, there’s a scandal, there’s always a scandal. It burnt through Nixon’s second term most famously. But let’s not forget Iran-Contra, which blew up at the end of the second year of Ronald Reagan’s second term.

39:41 · And of course, Lewinsky, who completely, or very nearly derailed Bill Clinton’s second year of his second term. So I’ve definitely seen this movie before. And it tends to end nearly always, not always, but nearly always with the president’s party doing really badly in the midterms. And they’re certainly on course to lose the House the way things are going, though I think they just hang on to the Senate because the map’s a favorable one this year.

Western Misunderstandings of Chinese Communist Ideology

40:11 · Yeah, a word of caution.

40:12 · Pay more attention to the president’s approval numbers than the wrong track number. In 2012, the country was in a 55% wrong track mood, but it still reelected Barack Obama.

40:20 · But H.R., John, you have thoughts on this?

40:23 · I guess my thought is, it seems like President Trump is not missing too many opportunities to surrender the high ground on issues. And so he came in, he’s disrupting a lot of what needs to be disrupted. And of course, he had some real claims that hey, the Justice Department had been weaponized against him, and he had been treated unfairly. But then to engage in similar activity to settle scores, I mean, he loses the high ground.

40:48 · On the military, hey, great argument. That the Biden administration is pushing this radical social agenda on the military, politicizing the military. Great argument that those six Congressmen and Senators, with that BS video in my view, saying, “Hey, don’t follow illegal orders.” He had the high ground.

41:06 · And then he surrenders it by prosecuting a sitting senator and maybe suggesting that he could be punished by death?

41:13 · I mean, come on! You’ve got the high ground on being a champion for sovereignty! Whether it’s on, used to be the Panama Canal, or Greenland.

41:22 · And then strengthening ties with allies after he got them to spend more in defense, right?

41:29 · And now what a great opportunity to come together, as John was mentioning in the conversation with Frank, to confront Chinese economic aggression, for example. And then you gratuitously insult all of your allies, and then they begin to think, “Well, maybe Xi Jinping’s not that bad.”

41:45 · So anyway, I just think maybe these numbers reflect to a certain extent, President Trump’s propensity to take the high ground, which in the military, that’s a good thing, man, to have the high ground. But then he surrenders the high ground. And I think maybe people are getting tired of that. I mean, and of course we’re talking about he has the high ground on border security and so forth. And then Minneapolis, the images there, the conduct there.

42:12 · I mean, you surrender the high ground.

42:14 · John, what are your thoughts?

42:15 · Yeah, time of great volatility means, who knows, really?

42:20 · Trump needs a couple of nice victories and a couple of don’t shoot yourself in the foot. And we’ve seen both victories and shooting.

42:26 · Don’t give up the high ground, John! Don’t give up.

42:28 · Exactly.

42:28 · Exactly.

42:31 · Of this latest news cycle, I think Trump made big inroads with Latinos and, but the news that they’re getting picked up randomly on the street ‘cause they don’t look right, is I think that’s really damaging to that corner of the electorate. But there’ll be 15 news cycles between now and the elections. And if they can just win a couple of them, there’s, so it is very hard to say exactly which way we’ll go.

42:58 · And there’s lots of great stuff going on under the radar screen, but maybe they could bring it back up. Like, I’ll just highlight today’s. Reversing the EPA’s endangerment finding for carbon. That’s just a huge positive for the economy. I don’t think that’s gonna go anywhere in the polling and in the elections. And it’s not gonna have its effect within the year. But that kind of stuff is going on.

43:21 · Let’s stick with the economics, John, for a second. And by the way, inflation down today, 2.4%. John, New York Times recently cautioned, “The global economy signals are broken.” Adding, “From markets to spending to debt, usually reliable indicators that forecast where the economy is headed are proving deeply fallible.”

43:37 · Okay, John, in what indicators do we trust?

43:40 · We don’t. Don’t trust.

43:42 · Forecasting the economy’s a fool’s errand. In part because most of what happens is the external shocks. It’s not the, in the internal dynamics working themselves out. So you can forecast to some extent, but don’t believe in indicators. Believe in, I think Niall will tell us the contingency of history, and boy, in the age of Trump, is there ever a contingency of history.

44:04 · Yep.

44:05 · Very interesting moment economically.

44:08 · Because if you just look at the data for US performance, Trump ought to be riding high. - Yeah.

44:14 · By the standards of pretty much every presidency in my lifetime, this is going great. And it’s going great mainly because of this extraordinary CapEx boom being propelled forward by investment in artificial intelligence. But there’s also all kinds of job creation in sectors that don’t really attract so much attention. Nearly all the jobs seem to be getting created in healthcare, which I guess tells us that we’re an aging population, and need a lot of healthcare.

44:43 · But the strength of the economy doesn’t translate into popularity for the administration right now, in ways that are interesting that voters complain about affordability, which is a completely different concept from inflation as the Fed defines it. The public kinda wants prices to go down. That’s not part of the Fed’s plan. I’ll add one other point.

45:06 · I mean, I do think there’s a lot of volatility in some parts of financial markets that might be signaling we are nearing the top. All the kind of price action around silver we’ve seen. The volatility in tech stocks and software stocks particularly.

45:22 · I mean, I’m getting an uneasy feeling that this CapEx boom is nearing its peak, because people are starting to ask the question, we’ve discussed this before, “Hey, we’re spending like trillions on all these data centers, but the amount of money we’re projecting to make, the revenue over the next five years is like one trillion less than all we’re spending on the CapEx.”

45:46 · Somebody’s gonna be left holding a $1 trillion bag, and I suspect the scramble to avoid holding that bag is soon to be upon us.

45:56 · And the software companies are already starting to go down. So we can start seeing, yeah, we’re at a moment of fragility, that’s for sure.

46:02 · All right, gentlemen, our final item, it’s related to California, which is fitting since this is the rare “Goodfellows” where all of you are in California, at least in California till Niall hops a plane soon for parts unknown. So let’s talk about little California brand ditziness.

46:14 · Pop sensation, Billie Eilish, the winner of the Song of the Year at this year’s Grammy Awards took the stage and made it opportunity to denounce not only ICE raids, but also added, and I quote, No one is illegal on stolen land.

46:27 · (crowd cheering) Niall?

46:34 · Well, anybody who engages in this kind of rhetoric should be obliged to surrender any real estate that they own themselves, to whoever they think the rightful owners are. This has become a kind of leftist cult. The land acknowledgement is now mandatory at almost any public event in Canada or New Zealand. It’s creeping in, in the United States. I’m heading to Montana.

47:03 · I remember coming across graffiti not so long ago, insisting that I was skiing on stolen land. It’s all very silly indeed. Because when North America was being settled, nearly all the land was uncultivated. And the great philosopher John Locke made the argument that it was terra nullius, that this land didn’t have property rights in it until it had been cultivated. And that was a basis for the way in which North, and indeed, South America were settled.

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47:39 · So you can take the decision retrospectively that the land you’re living on was stolen from someone. But that’s on you. It’s certainly not based in any understanding of American law. So yeah, Billie, hand it over. You can hand it over to anyone you like. But if you’re not prepared to hand over the real estate you own, then shut the heck up.

48:05 · John, I had a flashback to grade school, and we all had to sing “This Land is Your Land.”

48:09 · I had a great introduction to this.

48:11 · I was at the Bank of New Zealand, and the land acknowledgement was delivered in Maori, which, so, at least get the language right. Our colleague, Hoover colleague, Terry Anderson, who actually is a student of Native American history, once delivered a wonderful land acknowledgement. ‘Cause he knew the history of it, and he acknowledged the tribe who used to own that land. And the tribe before then, that tribe A had murdered, slaughtered, raped, and killed and kicked out.

48:35 · And then he like had four tribes back of, ‘cause this is what human history has been for hundreds of thousands of years. And as a true descendant of Englishmen, I want to complain about those darn Danes, and what were they doing coming into my ancestral home of York and stealing our land!

48:56 · H.R., I’m gonna give you the last word. So you’re down in Newport Beach, and weather permitting, you’re gonna go paddle-boarding at some point.

49:01 · Question, my friend, do you live on stolen land?

49:03 · And do you paddle on stolen water?

49:06 · Hey, I would just say, try to find, try to find a nation that was not founded in some way by conquest, migration, colonization, right?

49:17 · So, no, it is just a ridiculous argument that you just don’t enforce your borders, because of some kind of pre-ownership. It’s, yeah, it’s ludicrous.

49:28 · Yeah, I think we should close on this. What happened to the Native populations in America was a tragedy. Millions of people died, not of war, but largely of disease. Populations cut down to the 5%. I don’t think saying something performative at a Hollywood event does anything to acknowledge that it was a tragedy. It’s not a morality play. That’s what happened.

49:56 · And a quick shout-out here to Charles Mann’s wonderful book, “1491,” which tells you what America looked like before contact with Europeans and smallpox.

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50:04 · All right gentlemen, good conversation.

50:05 · We’ll be back in a couple weeks. It’s a show viewers don’t wanna miss because our guest will be Kemi Badenoch. She is the leader of the Conservative Party in Great Britain. Finally, someone Niall could talk to as an accent he’ll understand. So we’ll get in all sorts of things about UK politics. I’m very fascinated about the parallel.

50:20 · No, he’s Scottish. He’s Scottish.

50:21 · He won’t be able to, I mean, I mean, I understand you. I could just about understand you, Bill, but you’re stumbling over your words so much, I’m not sure English is your first language!

50:31 · Yeah, it’s early in the morning for me, my friend. Anyway, that’s it for this episode of “Goodfellows.” On behalf of my colleagues, Sir Niall Ferguson, H.R. McMaster, John Cochrane, all of us here at the Hoover Institution. We hope you enjoyed the show. We’ll see you back soon. Till next time, take care.

50:45 · (gentle music) ♪ You and me ♪ ♪ This land is your land ♪ ♪ And this land is my land ♪ ♪ From California to the New York Island ♪ ♪ From the Redwood Forest ♪ ♪ To the Gulf Stream waters ♪ ♪ This land was made for you and me ♪ (gentle music) (gentle music continues)

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