For decades, China has stood as one of the most powerful nations on earth. At the center of that rise stands one man, Xi Jinping. His story isn’t just about politics; it’s about power, control, and the transformation of an entire country. Understanding how Xi Jinping came to lead modern China gives us a glimpse into how influence and ideology … Read More
How XI Jinping Took Control of China
Episode Transcription
00:00 Hey man, what's up? Have you ever heard of this guy? Man, you describe him for audio listeners. This is this is what's his last name? Zhong Ping, she's on thing, she's eating she's in ping, she's in ping, she's in ping. Yeah, this is the are we learning about you good China China, the what of our to what is this? He's the president right like that what their title title isn't president. The title. I mean he's the president is what it is, but 00:29 and the title is. Let me see what's. What do they call it? It's president. They call it the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party is what he is. Okay. Are we learning about the Chinese Communist Party? No, we're learning about Xi Jinping. Oh, okay. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, so sorry for listening to this pretty light episode. So if you listen to this China, because you're not going to be able to, there's a last, I don't know, a couple hours before they censored over there because we're going to tell the truth and nothing but the 01:02 That's crazy is what I was saying. Food. Life. Labor. Another one. 01:15 I'm full of y'alls. 01:24 Things I learned last night. 01:32 so she was in a plane and aliens took over his flight and they were like you. We have a leader for the Chinese Communist Party and he was like. What is that? That's how he talks. What is that the Chinese Communist Party? They were like yes, this is all history yeah and then the mud floods happened. A lot of people don't know this according to a girl. I was 02:02 I had a big crush. Here's the thing man and we talked. Do we talk about that on the show already? We already talk about okay, okay, okay, good. I mean she's not going to listen to it. I don't know she might. What if she does? You know who you are, 02:20 Yeah, I keep screenshot of your store. said to Jared and and then you were like, you know, Instagram tells you what you screed. It does. Does it? I thought it did at one point was like this person screenshot of your story. But anyway, yeah, I have screenshot all of our stories just to send them to you. I love that. And then they're seeing your camera roll. That's crazy. All right. What are friends for? But to screenshot stuff well, 02:48 Yeah, you want to talk about Xi Jinping, guess let's do it. Yeah, so Xi Jinping, he was born in nineteen fifty three Beijing. Okay, June fifteen, Xi Jinping is born. ah This is his father. His name is Xi Zhang Jun, very significant person in the history of China, okay, more than the fact that his son ends the current right, right, right, right, because he was a part of 03:16 the communist revolution, and so he he went with now should now jidong. uh There's a lot of names in this just and I'm going to be honest with you. I'm not going to remember all of them, so it's halfway through this. Is it another episode where none of these names are really that relevant? You can just say his dad. Yeah, I guess you're right. All right, yeah, yeah, we can do that. So his dad, his dad and mal we now know mal yeah his dad and mal were leading 03:46 like generals in the revolution and they ended up uh 03:53 his dad, uh she's dad ended up being a person who housed Mao during the revolution and gained a ton of favor with now and ended up becoming a key figure in Mao's party. When Mao took over as the president of China after the revolution and his role, what year was the revolution? um It was in the believe is the twenty twelve. No, 04:22 I think it was like the thirties. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Nineteen thirty two thirty six. It looks like. Okay. ah And so his dad, she and ball, she she's blasting his dad, John June. uh He rose to a leading role in the government. None of that matters by the 04:49 I just think it's confusing if I'm just saying is not I get confused saying his dad. So I feel like I have to give you his name. She's dad. um He's he's he gets a leading role in the military. He's a part of a couple of roles. OK, ends up moving up in the in the in the party, the new Chinese Communist Party to a key role under Mao's government and all the way to a point where he's a part of what's called the eight elders, which is essentially the top of the government. 05:18 which is pretty sick, pretty yes, very sick. Also, they also go by eight immortals. Honestly, can we also talk about how them being called the founding fathers is pretty sick and they weren't doing it for a branding thing or whatever, but that's that goes pretty hard. I don't think they called themselves the founding fathers. I know okay. Okay, I so say they weren't like hey guys were the founding fathers yeah, but I'm saying whoever did that even the Nate like even whoever named them that 05:49 wasn't doing it to be like like a big brother Alliance name like one of the founding fathers. You know, like they weren't trying to be cool. Yeah, yeah, but founding fathers does go pretty hard. Founding fathers is sick. That is pretty. Yeah, I've never thought about that, but you're right. That actually does go pretty dang hard. You know, yeah, it's the alliteration and then what the eight elders, the eight elders. Yeah, they go by the elders. 06:14 and or really sick. They're also sometimes referred to as the eight immortals, which turned out not to be true, um but spoilers, um but now turned out it was only two of them that were more. 06:31 the two of the two of the immortals. I guess you're going to have to put two as implies that it's plural. Yeah, huh, so things were going great until the cultural revolution, which is when now was like hey, what if everybody here thought exactly the same way as I do and then he just basically killed everybody. He disagreed with them. Yeah, she was one of those. He was consistently 07:00 He had disagreements with Mao over his handling of land rights and he consistently was pretty outspoken publicly about how he thought that Mao was handling land rights incorrectly. ah And as a response to this, when the Cultural Revolution kicked off, one of the big things that happened in the Cultural Revolution is they did these like public embarrassment things. And so people who disagreed with Mao, specifically people in like the party, like at the top of the government, 07:27 they would pull them out into the streets and parade them through the streets and everybody would have to like boo them and like say how dumb they were in public. uh And if you didn't go along with it, you were one of the, became one of the outcasts too. Yeah. And so like she, Jim ping was a part of this where he watched his dad get prayed through the streets and he had to like make a decision. What year is that? This would be, let me see the late sixties. 07:57 sixty eight sixty nine and so she's in paying watches. He's a teenager watches his dad's parade through the streets. His mom like renounces him, his father and is like making fun of her dad and then it starts as like ridicule and then it turns into like beatings and then they get outcasted. So it like I say make fun of that's not really what was happening. It was like public ridicule, defamation, beating and then kicked out of the city right and outcast and so his dad was outcasted. 08:27 His dad was outcasted. And so this was a drastic change in she's life because she's whole childhood up to this. He's 15 when this happens his whole childhood. He's living in basically like palaces because he's the top of the government. And so he's got everything at his fingertips. He's got the world before him. They've got all this absolute power and then all of a sudden it's just stripped away from them. And he is then shipped off to go work in a labor camp. Xi Jinping because his dad was ousted. And so he gets shipped off to oh 08:53 um into the countryside to work at a labor camp. Oh, oh the name doesn't matter. He worked at a labor camp in some village where he, and he was excited. We love growth. We love watching someone step into the new person that they are. You go King. Thank you. That was really fun to watch. I will make Tim a good podcaster. If it takes me 10 years, I'll tell you what. 09:23 I got good for a little bit there and then I stopped. I know we all know we've all been sitting here being like whoa. What happened? Tim was at? Well, if you go back about a hundred episodes, you got the opposite of pretty yips. You don't talk about where it's like you accidentally got good for like two years and then you were like ah, the opposite of the yips. I got the pie piece, guys piece. How do you get? Yeah, he still got it, because whatever it was, whatever it was still there. 09:53 him trying to go Pia Pia Pia. This is worth our time. He's got the yips. I'm sorry. Hey, I'm sorry. I made a whole tangent. You made a good move and then I wasted a lot of You know what that's on. Okay, so he gets sent at fifteen. He gets he gets sent to a labor camp. Yeah, and he actually was excited about it. I know we, I know we just said we should, but he genuinely he was excited because he 10:21 did he not know what it was like? He not he don't know the reality of what it was. ah I don't or is he like finally some adversity? No, it wasn't that it was. It was he was he was CCP through him through, so he was like he was like this is part of it yeah and like now was thought and he staunchly believed that like what they were doing in these camps was a good thing and so he thought he was going to learn some things. He thought oh this is going to be a good educational channel experience for me. This is going to strengthen my party alliances 10:51 And it's going to be a great thing. And then he learned that this is bad. It's very interesting because there's a quote. I'm going to pull up the quote, but it's it's very interesting because he talks about it. He almost talks about it like with like this nostalgia, like it was like a good time for him, but he also recognizes it wasn't a good time. So it's very interesting hearing him kind of like balance his uh his opinions on that era of his life, because on the one hand, 11:20 he does feel like it was valuable to him. Like he learned a lot of stuff like he grew a lot and it strengthened his opinion of the country, but on the other hand it was it was a label conditions yeah, and so he what he did not expect was how bad the conditions were going to be and how difficult it was going to be to live in that environment. Okay, he they the he thought they were treating him better. um 11:46 Yes. Yeah. He definitely thought they were treating them better. I don't think he thought that they were treating them well, but I don't think he thought that he were treating them as bad as they actually were treating them. Yeah. Um, he actually, he actually was living in a cave while he was in the labor camp. That's where they had them just in a cave underground. Um, all the laborers. And so he, don't think he expected that. Um, and he, as we mentioned, he came from literal palaces to living in a cave. Right. was a, it was a shock for him for sure. Um, but he calls it the five hurdles. 12:14 He's like, he's like, it was a great time because I was, I had to learn to overcome the five hurdles, which were flee food, life, labor and thought. And so you had to learn to overcome those five things, which were fleas. That's I was worried. Is fleas like, yeah, literal fleas. know, I have owed for come five obstacles in my life, hunger, tired, 12:46 It's food life. So obviously like you're, you could die labor, hard work. Thought is like dangerous thinking and doubt and things like that. And please, please. That's crazy. Food, life, labor, another one. 13:10 And fleas. 13:19 naked or thought food thought the other two every morning part. I'm going to wake up and I'm going to try to take on the five hurt. Yeah, I need to find the five hurdles today. Every time like you like you go somewhere and like they give you some bad food like hey, thank you for helping me overcome one of the five hurtles today. 13:47 I welcome this challenge. Thank you so he he he does six years in this labor camp and then uh he goes back to Beijing to study chemical engineering. I don't know exactly how this works out for him. Like I do know that this cultural revolution there was this this thing where it's like you would have to serve in these later camps until the malists 14:15 we're like okay, yeah, you're on the right side and so it was like until you could labor camps were a way of breaking you. was reeducation through labor got it was yeah and so I think what happened is they came and they like would quiz everybody and they're like okay. I you seem to get it and were the five hurdles what they were teaching or is this like actually going. There are five things that are hard about this like you know. I don't know for sure, but if they were like you have you must overcome the four hurdles 14:46 And he goes. 14:49 Like yes, there's a fifth one uh 14:57 there's there's one more you're forgetting. There's one more and then he tells them and they're like come with us to Beijing and they parade them through town. They're like this is the man who found the fifth heard of the flee boy flee flee flee flee. 15:22 Yeah, I don't think it's gonna get played in China. I don't think they're gonna let this play. They're gonna be cool with this. I don't think they're gonna be cool with it. Okay, so at seventy five he goes back to Beijing to study chemical engineering, which that it feels like a pretty big jump. mean like it's college free at this point. I guess I don't know. I just communism. I mean, here's what's really interesting about the Chinese Communist Party and honestly most successful forms of communism. 15:52 in the world is their communist ish. They're like communist light like they take a lot of those thought processes, but they're also dictatorships yeah, and so like they don't actually function the way a lot of communist ideology, unlike what we live in where the government has no true power and the dictators are the people who have the most money, Sam Altman and Larry Ellison and Larry Ellison and and you know musk, but like yeah. 16:22 it's yeah. I don't know. I don't know. It's so like in theory, it would be in fear, but in practice, probably not. I don't know the actual answer to that, but probably not. What it probably was was it was like it was free. If you if you were a line, yeah, yeah, it was free. If they decided it was free for you, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And so he goes to sing why university where he studies chemical engineering uh and then he gets a job as a military aid for the Central oh Military Commission. ah 16:51 I assume working in chemical engineering stuff, chemical engineering stuffs serves in that role for a small period, uh three years before the, the, was it? I'd curious. We need to look up how the college stuff works in China. Yeah. I don't actually, don't even now. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know now either. I'm not sure. uh But what was interesting is they had this thing. I can't remember the term for this. Like I think they called me young princes or something like that. 17:21 ah But there was this thing where you had these people who went through the communist revolution and they had the Maoist thought and they had some sort of connection to the party. And so for ah Xi Jinping, it was his father who was one of the eight immortals. Wasn't actually immortal. Now he's an outcast somewhere. ah But he ah had a connection. So he was considered one of the young princes. And so the young princes, they kind of had this interesting thing where they were all vying to take over the roles and 17:51 enter into these high government positions okay, and what typically would happen with these princes, even though his dad was an outcast at this point, he was still he was able to fight his way back through his re education and through accepting the Maoist doctrine, and so he and all the young princes. What typically they would do is they would go into Beijing and they would fight for these limited set of set of government position Beijing, but she's in paying. He was thinking a little bit outside the box. He said look, there's a lot of competition here in Beijing, 18:21 and he's like, but China's a big place and there's not a lot of competition in the other places, so he decided to go to a rural community. You got fleas going on. What's going on with you? What you talking? You're just really over here like I'm yeah, I'm just scratchy. 18:39 Thanks for watching our show. you like it, a great way to help out is by being a Patreon supporter. Doing that helps make this show possible, but it also gets a lot of perks for you. You can get every episode a week early ad free. You get access to a Discord where you can meet a lot of other people who love the show and actually hang out with Jaren and I every month on a hangout. And we're also in that Discord chat all the time, hanging, talking with people, talking about episodes and just random stuff in life. It's super fun. 19:02 We do, there's a way to get birthday messages, a free gift, merch discounts in there. So there's a lot of really great reasons to be a Patreon supporter. You get a lot of benefits out of it. And it also makes the show keep happening. So if that sounds great to you, you can go to support.tillin.com or tillin.com slash support, uh or just tillin.com and search around until you find the links and become a Patreon supporter. really appreciate you doing that. But if not, right back to the episode, right? 19:30 So he goes to this place called Hebe, Hebe, Hebe, Hebe, Hebe, probably Hebe. um He goes to Hebe, which is like a rural town where he becomes the leader of the Communist Party in that county. Okay, I guess they call it the deputy leader and he sir. How do do that? Does he just show up to town? He's like, hey guys, I'm in charge now. Well, it's one of those things like the the princes had this opportunity to fight for these positions and so they were kind of campaign for them. 19:56 whenever an opening open. So my assumption is, and there's not a description of how this happened, but my assumption is there was an opening in this province. Sure. He saw it. And instead of vying for something in Beijing, he's like, let me go take that. And so he went and he took that and he served in that role for three years, was really successful in that role. The people in that town loved him. Um, all this is kind of sub up for debate, but allegedly the people in that area loved him. They think he did a great job. Uh, and when the term ended in 85, 20:25 He then was like, okay, I'm going to move to a slightly larger province because now I've got a resume. Right. And so he took that resume to the slightly larger province, uh, to Fujian, uh, and which was a manufacturing hub. And he takes a 17 year stint, uh, as the deputy leader of the party there. Um, and while he's there, very similar thing, like proposes this whole overhaul of their infrastructure and all of their systems that they have in the, in the whole province. Um, he gets married. 20:54 ah to a singer, which is interesting. I've never, I never knew that he was married to like a I don't know. I don't even know if I ever knew he was married honestly, but ah then in two thousand he becomes the governor of that province, so he gets like a promotion ah and then two thousand two. He goes to a slightly larger province neighboring that city and he stays there until two thousand seven and so what's really interesting is all these princes were over there fighting for 21:24 m fighting for power in different areas all over, but he spent time building his resume yeah in different areas. Meanwhile, all this stuff is happening and he while right when he graduates from college now dies right after he graduates from college when now dies, he's replaced by a new leader and this the new leader basically says hey all that mouse stuff like it kind of got us out of the hundred years of the call like a hundred years of embarrassment, something like that 21:54 and we're in this new era of China, but the mouth thing, a little dark, kind of a dark day in our history, we're going to kind of clean up this whole thing. So they put together this whole rule, this whole new system of government where no one person has the concentration of power as a rule by committee. And so there's this eight person committee at the top of your, to now die 76. Okay. And so it's now this, uh I can't remember the exact phrase, I think communal rule or something like that. But there's rule by committee. 22:22 and so there's an eight person committee that's in charge of the whole government. No one person has all the power. There's one person that's like the top of the committee, but they don't have power. Like they don't have control over everything kind of similar to where we have the three branches of government, but much more dispersed. There's eight, there's eight people with is it there's eight similar. Is they similar how we have checks and balances 22:52 Yeah, there's a bit anyway similar because they had they had eight people with very distinct roles who had charged over eight specific parts of the government uh and can control the things that they can control. They couldn't influence the other portions. There was a person who was technically in charge, but it was more in like title than anything like they weren't really in charge, right? Similar ish ish depending on the company, but similar ish to a corporate board where it's like 23:21 you have a chair and that chair technically is in charge, but at end of the day, if the chair does something that the rest of the board disagrees with, they can be overruled. Right. And they can be ousted uh in most corporations, uh similar concept. And so the, the government of China vastly changes during this era, uh not 23:42 It ish, fastly changes ish. It's still the communist Chinese party. There's still a lot of things like that, but it's becoming a lot less uh restrictive. There's a lot less human rights violations. It's a lot free. ah And so what's really, really interesting is Xi is watching all this stuff happen. He's a person whose father was outcast. He himself was sent to a labor camp. He had gone through fleas and everything and he watches all this stuff happen and he thinks it's a bad thing. 24:12 and he's like frustrated that the government is like departing from yeah because he thought all that stuff was good even though it was really like he got the brunt of it not necessarily the brunt of it but he faced a lot of difficult times underneath that he thought that those were still good things and he still adopted that Maoist thought through all of that and was like strongly committed to it. So in two thousand seven uh shockingly uh he had built up enough of a uh 24:42 enough of uh a resume that he was appointed party chief of Shanghai, which is now he's in like the core of the right. And as a part of that, by the end of that year, he gets put in the one of the nine members. It's now nine members of the Politburo, which is that top standing committee, right? That is in charge of everything. By the following year, he's named vice president of China. And so he quickly 25:11 two ascends yeah and it's interesting. It's interesting when you look at his story because he when two thousand nine he was vice president to who two thousand and eight he became vice president of okay yeah. I don't let me see who the president of China was who Jin Tao okay yeah and he was there from two thousand and four to twenty twelve. He was the president, so they had five year term. I think it's. I think that's something that is difficult because you know we've done an episode about Vlad 25:40 we've done an episode, you know, and now we've talked about she's young thing and it's their older guys yeah and same thing with like net and yahoo. It's like these are older guys who are kind of 25:54 doing sketchy stuff yeah and it seems like because they're older dudes who are have have enormous control over their systems of government that they've been in control for a long time, but it's really only been the past like I mean for for five years only been the last twenty years yeah which relative to you know yeah it's interesting it because it 26:21 and mean we said the same thing in that episode. It just feels like these people have been there forever. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, but they haven't. They have not. Yeah, it's interesting. Even though technically she's been in government for since the eighties, but right he's been in low levels of government and so I think it's I think it's just kind of the impression that like oh this stuff boiled over decades yeah and that's where and like this person was working in the shadows for decades and then that's how they've 26:47 accumulated this force, and I don't think a lot of people realize how fast it can. This person gets in charge and then all of a sudden it's they've changed so much so are like they really can't get out of charge yeah, and it's interesting because a lot of these things like like this is a person who had power, but he didn't have a lot of power and he had these ideals this whole time. So how did he become general secretary so 27:16 You 27:25 So I'm glad you asked, that's the important part. So in 2012, here's what happened. 27:41 2008 2008 he was named vice president. He was named vice president. His first job. His His first job. Was let me see if I can find the title of his first. You know what? It doesn't matter. The growth goblins over here. So he he 28:11 he had two very significant things that happened during his vice presidency. The first thing was his first assignment. He got his vice president uh and so the first assignment he got was the Beijing Olympics. Now you need to make the oh yeah really good and so he took over that role. Beijing Olympics happened and they're a big success. They shone a light on China as like hey, China's not like poor anymore. That was kind of the idea. It was like we got to show the world that we're a part of it. 28:40 and the CCP really appreciated appreciated the work he did for China. I was like, look how normal we are. Yeah, look how look how normal we are. Also look how like advanced we are and successful. are yeah like that was it was kind of like we're we're back baby was what the Beijing Olympics was sure. He also after the global financial crisis, 29:07 He went on this tour basically to be like, hey, the financial crisis was your fault. We're cleaning it up. And so he went on this tour and all these different nations. ah And there's this quote gave during a big international summit ah in Mexico. This is an interesting line. He says, the greatest contribution towards the whole of human race was made by China to prevent one point three, seven billion people from hunger. And then he went on to say, 29:34 There are some bored foreigners with full stomachs who have nothing better to do than point fingers at us. He said, first, China doesn't export revolution. Second, China doesn't export hunger and poverty. Third, China doesn't come and cause you headaches. What more is there to be said? And so he basically was like, hey, we're cleaning up the global ah recession. ah And also it's all of the West's fault is like what he was saying, because they are super rich and making everything harder for the rest of us. 30:04 and the CCP loved him for that. So these two things became a thing where he got catapulted in popularity and the CCP and it was really left him and one other guy were the top of this bullet bureau at the end of uh that presidential term, president who Gentiles, which was twenty twelve. What is very interesting and how do they pick leaders? So there is an election, but the election is by the bullet bureau. 30:33 So there's the nine members of the top of the Politburo and then there is like a two thousand member Congress of Sours and they vote um on those on those nine positions. Sure. It's a closed door vote. Nobody knows who's been selected. Nobody. There's no campaign. There's nothing like that. It's like the Pope. How? Yeah. How you find out is the day that it happens. There's this big party and then the doors open and then the nine people walk out. The first person is the chair or the general secretary. And so 31:03 Okay. The those 2000 people fought for it. And so there was these two people that everyone's like, Oh, it's going to be one of these two. That's going to end up being the new general secretary. And it was, uh, she's been picking one other guy. What's really interesting is 14 days before. What's really interesting. Sorry. Those the fleas. Really interesting. What's really interesting is there 14 days before. 31:28 the the big celebration where they were going to announce everybody. Nobody knows who's been selected. Nobody knows. I don't even know if anyone has been selected. Okay, fourteen days before she's in ping disappears. Nobody can find him. He starts missing a bunch of meetings. The official statement that comes out is that he had a sports injury and so he was out of commission for fourteen days. Oh yeah, a torrid a Ciel. Don't worry about that. Don't worry. Hey, 31:57 Hey, don't worry about that uh and coincidentally within there are six hurdles. 32:09 Hunger. Thought. Life. Food. 32:19 Labor. Please. uh 32:25 Bort injury. And hammies. And hammies. 32:32 okay, hunger food. All right, so he he's gone and coincidentally while he's gone on his sports injury, the other guy also disappears and he has been gone from government ever since he's just gone and then that big celebration and the doors, so basically they both got taken put into a warehouse and then someone was like 33:01 one of you is going to be in charge. We need both of you to pledge your allegiance to us and the other guy was like I'm not going to do that. Okay, never heard from again and it took she's young pink two weeks to be like fine. I'll be your guy yeah and they were like okay. I don't know if that's what's happened. I don't know like there's conspiracy. I know that's what happened. There's conspiracy theories. That's something like that happened. There's curi conspiracy theories that she killed him. There is conspiracy theory like this on Chinese YouTube. So that's crazy theories out there. 33:30 but the official statement is that uh she had a straight up disappeared. Never she a sports industry injury. The other guy uh was corrupt and was banished from the government because he because of crap, but like never seen again. I don't know if he was never seen from again. He was banished from government. I know that for sure. I know that he was he was disappeared from government as what I what I the phrase, the phrase that I've seen okay, disappeared from government uh and so and then this big event happens. 33:59 and the doors open and she walks out in front and everyone's like oh, that's the guy that's been gone for fourteen days with his sports injury walking a really well for a guy who has turf toe yeah and he's he's now the leader of the country almost how long do their turn? Do they terms they have five year term limits? Yeah and so right so we're going to get to the part where he's not gone well. Twenty twelve was the beginning of his first term and then twenty eight 34:29 so twenty eighteen was the end of his end of his first term and so then yeah running through. What are you talking about? Twenty eighteen would be was the beginning. many terms can you do to there's a two term limit? So twenty twenty three was the end of his second term. So let's rewind back to where I said okay. Now we get to the part where he doesn't leave my crazy. Okay, anyway, so he almost well well 34:58 they do five year terms. Okay, yeah. Then two to five year terms. So I mean 2012 plus five 2018 obviously because you're dumb. 35:11 twelve plus five. We don't have to. We don't have to see any longer than we don't got it. We got a lot. you don't want to this anymore. We got a lot to come. I came up with the seventh trial math, food, labor, thought life, fleas, sports injury, math, thinking about numbers, basic edition. 35:37 first grade man, really easy addition, twelve plus five, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let me, let me, 18 was when his present, when the second term began. So the ended in the 17, they had the election. 18 was the beginning of the next turn. Anyways, shut up. I don't have to justify myself to you. I look, I made a mistake. It's whatever fine. Okay. Okay. So he almost immediately goes on this anti corruption campaign, of course, just removing people from government positions that are corrupt. 36:08 And the corruption is interesting because there's no explanation to the corruption. Right. These people are demoted, uh fired, disappeared. uh Disappeared is probably not a good word, like banished into like countryside and worse level positions. Then the official number that we have throughout this corruption campaign in this first term is 200,000 government employees. Holy cow. Corrupt in some way. Yep. Corrupt. 36:38 And so he then reorganizes in middle that term. This nine member Politburo changes and there's people in there that are corrupt that he outs and replaces with people who are not corrupt, who coincidentally agree with everything he says course and think everything he says is right. And so slowly but surely through the course of this five year term, he takes away a lot of this first five year term. Yes, he removes a lot of the barriers. 37:07 that spread the spread the power between these nine members of the Politburo and consolidates him to him. ah And then 37:17 ah And then in 2017, he goes to the Politburo, the big one, the 2000 member Politburo, and he brings uh a new resolution to them. And the new resolution is, I think presidents should be able to not have term limits. And they were like, we agree on unanimous, we all agree. There should be no term limits. 37:41 that you know what now that you say that we like what you just said. Now that you say that I think it's great that you watched you haven't watched what we do in the shadows. Now there's a storyline in it where he has a genie and he brings back. had thirty seven wives. It is you know because he's a vampire. He's lived forever. If you don't know what we do in the shadows is it's a it's like an office style show, but it follows these three vampires and uh so it's our mockumentary, but it's vampires vampires and they've lived for a hundred of years. 38:11 yeah, and it's very inappropriate. It's not. I'm not suggesting you watch it, especially because we're family friendly show, but like it's if you're fine with inappropriate stuff, there's some very funny elements of it where he brings back one of his wives because he grubs a genie lamp and then he's like I want that wife back and he goes. ah I want this wife to agree with me all the time and then for the next like six episodes, it's just her being like whatever you like. I like 38:39 and he is eventually like I hate her. You know, because he's just like he's like she does everything I like. She likes she we never disagree. He goes. This is great. We never disagree. She's wonderful. 38:56 it's very funny. It's a good good little tiny storyline in the thing. Yep, ah so that's what happens. You just surround yourself with people. If you can surround yourself with enough people who are like yes, yes, because their thought is that eventually they'll be the one in charge. Yes, it's what is the reason that they're doing it is not because they're such a big fan of you. Yep. They think that they could one day be in their position. Yep uh and and it's also they're also they're also say what did I say? I said this is the beginning 39:26 that I said no one tries to talk to me until we record yeah. She knows what I'm doing. It's on my calendar. Look at the calendar before you call me. I don't talk to my wife like that and you shouldn't even joke like that. Please look at the calendar before you. I don't say that to her either. Please listen. Here's the deal. If you don't look at the calendar before you call me, I'm going to give you. No, I say hey calendar use 39:53 you got to keep it. Alex is like this isn't funny. Not a funny joke. Well, our favorite thing to do when me and Tim will be in here because we're you know, this is our best friend time. We're talking. We'll be like man, this is a really frustrating thing right here. Here's something that me and my wife fought about and then we'll look at Alex. We'll go. You ever fight with your wife like that and I always goes no. 40:16 there we go. Okay, we cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, so Alex's marriage is perfect and ours are fine. 40:36 Hey, thanks for listening to things I learned last night. would do us a huge favor if you could just share this episode with somebody or just share the show. Tell someone you like it. That helps us grow the show. Another way to help us grow the show is to support our merch, which is actually super comfy. We changed to a new merch supplier a couple of years ago called fourth wall. You can buy our stuff at shop.tillin.com. None of this is a pressure by the way, but it just really does help us grow the show and it helps, you know, get the word out and people ask me about my hoodie in the airport all the time. So they're really comfy. Would love for you to support the show. 41:05 And either way, thanks for being here. We're glad that we get to do this podcast. 41:15 as someone did bring us is why someone said that during the family feud bit that we did someone someone commented in patreon and they were like I like the Jared and Tim were like oh let's all go on family feud and neither of them were like we should bring our wives. We were just like man what other white guys could we bring on family few with us huh? Let's call the other two white guy podcasters. We couldn't even think to shake it up 41:43 that's no gender diversity and we couldn't even invite Shama. You know, we were just like, let's I'm closer with Shama than I am with those guys. was like wow, wow, we need to make a team of podcasters. It's you, me, Alex. Who else do we know? does kids we else? Who else could we? Oh my gosh, our wives. No, no, not them. The ninjas are butterflies guys, our actual families. No, that's good. I appreciate that. 42:12 uh so yes, I was just saying she was calling me yeah all her back after this sounds. I love my wife. She's great yeah cool in twenty eighteen. I love my wife. 42:26 I love her. I love her. I love her so much in twenty eighteen. They have their big celebration yeah where it's like who we got to the new, all the bureau, new, Paul, a bureau guys, guys, unanimous vote doors open she jim pings in the lead right and everybody knows when they see him everybody. Everybody expects it because of that because the way was it man had been working two thousand people yeah because the way it had been working before and because that they eliminated term limits, everyone kind of expected it, but to see him walking out is like oh hey 42:55 this guy's going to president until he dies now. And it was kind of confirmed in that moment. And so this next term was a very interesting term because this is when it kind of ratcheted up pretty strongly. And so obviously you still have the anti-corruption campaigns happening. Anytime anybody does anything that the government thinks is corrupt, they are ousted in some way. um The government took over um like the 43:21 press doesn't exist. Anything and everything where anybody could have any sort of ability to say anything ah publicly, the government could come in and be like, no, that's corruption ah and you could be removed from whatever poster and or banished out to a different side of the country or imprisoned or things like that. And so that whole thing got uh continued, but censorship became a big thing in twenty sixteen right and so the government 43:51 they uh created their own own media and they brought together all the news and all the public media is all government owned and they began pumping out propaganda. uh They also uh employed this group of I.T. professionals whose entire job is just Internet censorship. Yeah. And so they control what is broadcast through the Internet to the people of China. 44:19 And so vast majority of the internet are not accessible. Um, and these people, it's very interesting. They spend hours and hours and hours a day just looking at posts on China, the Chinese internet and finding these things that are, uh, for lack of a better term, like dog whistles for anti-communist propaganda or anti-communist thought. Um, and so then they find those and they block any of those things. And what is interesting in 2019, 44:48 They created this new, I guess, law where you have, they call it the internet real name system. And so every person on the internet, have their real name attached to their account. Yeah. The way we have IP addresses, they have this uh code that links to them, that links to their actual identification and what they're doing online. you do online is traceable uh back to you personally. 45:15 and so all of your devices have to have that ID attached to them. Anything you do will be linked back to you and so whenever those those censorship arms find these things that are the anti communist thought, they then trace that back to whoever it was in prison that person yeah and so and stuff like this is like all like where people in America are like oh this is all fear mongering for us like that could never happen here. Yeah, 45:41 and I was just trying to say earlier, like with how fast that takeover happened, yeah, like it could. I'm not and I'm not trying to say like oh, this administration is doing it like I'm saying it could happen here like that. Yeah, it can happen anyway uh and it's it's significant to say because this this government was that's where I think is what's frustrating about the current moment that we're in is that any kind of stuff that's leaning that way where you go. Hey, that's going that direction. Yeah, 46:08 people will go. Oh, you're just falling into the the hating the two parties stuff or whatever. Like if this side saying it, that means it's this side is completely right. And it's just like guys, yeah, that in fighting is going to lead us straight there. Yep. Yep. Yeah. It's dangerous. That's dangerous stuff. And they, and, that's the thing is similar to Russia. This, I mean, honestly, even more so than Russia did China when Xi Jinping took over had a distribution of power, right? And like 46:37 This was not something that anybody thought was possible centralized. Yeah. And this was something where slowly but surely he chipped away at that separation of powers and consolidated it. And now he's got absolute power. Right. And so under this second term, he went and he he reformed the military when he took over. I think there was two hundred thousand soldiers. He upped that number up to two million and he drastically increased the military spending budget to now the second. 47:06 largest military on earth, ah and so he was like we need to only behind us, the USA. oh That's right, oh because 47:23 So changes a bunch of laws honestly just completely changes the entire. I'm not going to crash out of the podcast was so yeah. Let's keep going. It is the fabric of the entire country. I thought about crashing out for a second, but I hey that's growth will crash out in the after the fit. Heck yeah uh completely changes the fabric of the entire and the entire government during this the second term, uh but what was the most significant part through the second term ah is he began building this cult of personality very similar to what now had 47:52 and it's called right being thought and she's in big thought. This is why I think he was the one who came up with those five uh trials. Okay, because she's in big thought is very much that mentality because just such a gin ex coated like you've got to overcome these things and I'm going to make sure everyone goes through them. So he literally has it broken out. She's in being thought is just ten affirmations, fourteen commitments, 48:22 thirteen areas of achievement, six musts and then a worldview and a methodology. Oh my gosh, and he has all these books. I think he's got six books that he wrote of his thought of how he thinks the world should work and how everybody should think and how the economy should be and all this different stuff and how everybody should behave in a good society. Yeah, it's just Jordan Peterson's twelve rules of life book, essentially stuff like that. Yeah, m 48:52 but what's so interesting, I didn't know this until researching for this. He basically built, he built this app and it's basically duo lingo for season being thought and it's tied to your ID. Everybody has to do it every day. You have to log time in every day that you're practicing your season being thought and it's your daily devotionals where you go through it's great and there's courses and there's exercises. So they're conditioning a cold, they're conditioning the 49:18 Oh my where it's like it's like you're clearly a part of this. You're learning these things, you're adopting these things and you're you're how stuff is re is uh people will fight back and push back against this stuff like when we like if I make a clip of this and put it online, I know for sure the bot comments are going to be like oh, this is misinformation that doesn't actually happen. You guys are just fear mongering China. Yeah, well yeah, there are bot they have bot farms that go out and do propaganda worldwide. 49:45 to try to make them seem better than they are, and I think that's one of the really interesting things about this, and you see his military parade. Yeah, it's probably one of the funniest videos I've seen this year. He's riding full like and his arms are in the car, so it's just like he looks like a little like one those little whack a mole games where he's just just on the top of the car and then he's saying stuff. He's saying stuff like uh I don't know soldiers and they all go yes like yeah. You're gonna pull the video. Have you seen this video Alex? 50:15 it's worth it. Let's put it. Let's put a clip of it in the episode. You got it. Give me a second. I'll have to find out right. This is so funny because the microphones are on the car. Yeah, this is so funny. All right, some sound. I mean this is just got. We don't need sound because this is just gonna be the news. I do want something over it. No okay. Well, you're not show us the video. Okay, here we go. 50:42 it's so and he just looks bored to be there the whole time. Just soldiers. That's what I'm saying is like he didn't try to look triumphant. He didn't try to look like a strong man. He literally looked tired to be there like he's just standing out of the top of the car with four microphones and he's just like he's doing their chance back and forth their their call and responses and he's just like soldiers. Yes, 51:12 I don't know if we got any other shots of that with the car yet because then he gets out. This is an eight hour broadcast news broadcast from this is crazy. Well, it's interesting because they did a lot of weapons that they had in there that we did not know they had or at least maybe the maybe our military. Yeah, found it by Googling it dude. Oh my God, I just put it on take talk. They hear some sound 51:40 And he just, yeah, I'm going to send you this. 51:46 He looks so bored. 51:56 Yeah. 51:59 Someone else is yelling and then. 52:16 he's mad that he has to read his lines. He looks like an NFL player at the end of a loss. We said that in front of the news cameras where he's just like you know why I'm here. You know yeah like that's what that is. I'm gonna be here. We didn't play well. I'll send this to you so you can send it to that guy 52:33 Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, so yeah, they were for the military uh and I think that's what's really interesting. You got nervous. You don't want to make fun of G. I'm paying too much because I'm like, look at this. Isn't this? Isn't this really dumb that he's just like saying hello? Greeting comrades. So you're really dumb. I didn't know. How are you doing soldiers? I don't know what I was gonna bring. He literally looks like like it looks like if I came, you know what I'm happy to be here. 53:03 That's all it takes. All it takes. He looks like he's in this thing against his will. He looks like he's dead. Hello. Hello. Welcome to my parade war. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Don't say that. Put that guy in the camp. 53:27 It's a It's a trap. What is it good for? Kill that guy. uh He's just setting you up. 53:41 You gotta yell. It holds our civilization together. We have to, we have to have a giant military because we're so financially compromised that other companies can take us over because of our debt to them. But because we have a stronger military, we can defend ourselves, but because we haven't done fiscal responsibility, we can be easily manipulated and controlled based on the amount of money that we owe them. What is it good for protecting our liabilities? 54:09 Yeah. Oh, sorry. Was that too much? Yeah, too much to put in the family for the podcast. uh What it was really interesting is and this is this is kind of I think this is what you get in a lot of societies and yeah in this system. uh There is the people on the end. This is working very, very good for of course, and so this kind of back to what you were saying about the bots who are like, oh, this is misinformation. This isn't true. There are people who uh 54:39 live at the top of Chinese society and they are living a great lifestyle. ah You see those videos come out of China with like the super futuristic cities where things are really safe ah and everything is like very clean. The people who live in those areas, like they're living lifestyles that honestly are probably better than what we have here with the exception of the freedom thing. ah But they they're like day to day lifestyle is probably at 55:07 at the minimum comparable, if not better than our day-to-day lifestyle here. But if you're on the outs, there is this gap that is monumental. there are, uh for example, you might have heard of the Uyghur population, this Muslim population in Eastern China that has been subjugated since the beginning of... They're doing legitimate atrocities and genocides. Yeah, legitimate genocide, yeah. Just because these people are... 55:35 wheat, a weir population. There's no other reason for it and so there are people on the outside that are living through just completely terrible conditions and I think this is ah this is true in a lot of societies in China. I think it's pretty ah is polarized pretty strongly where there are people that are living incredibly well and that's what I mean. Whenever I you know I kind of not really kind of joke about how we're in a dictatorship of technocrats. 56:04 But that growing wealth inequality. Now the whole thing in the United States is that we, we still cling to the myth of mobility that, you know, Oh, you could win the, you could essentially win the lottery by starting a good company that then shoots you to that thing. Right. There's all kinds of things in the way of that, but we still cling to that. Like, some people still shoot the gap. 56:25 so it's possible. So we don't have as big a problem with it, but that gap is widening, it's like an alarming rate and not just like a, it's widening. It's like guys, you got to look at these numbers. It is widening at a alarming rate that we're not like the people down here are not to the conditions of what you're talking about in China yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. China's got this canyon, this divide between them. 56:52 there is a growing gap in the states. That's nothing compared to what China has nothing compared to that yet, yet, but yeah, there is, it could there are early signs that if we don't stop it yeah, yeah, that's definitely true. That's definitely true and so to your point you talked about like oh, eventually with you know if now I don't think AI is actually going to do what they predict exploring to do. That's kind of the whole thing as well, but if it were to do put forty percent of people out of jobs, they predicted it would and you were like well, they're going to have to do universal basic income. They're not gonna 57:20 Yeah, you know, not to burst that bubble for you. They're not going to set up a system where we all get checks each month and they they're gonna let you be poor. They're gonna show how you starve. Yeah, yeah, I don't care and you're like you're like no, no, they wouldn't do that. They're already doing it. We we currently living in the United States live in the rich neighborhood and people who live in Mexico don't people who live in in the African countries that we're exploiting for a lot of our resources don't live in the good neighborhood. Yeah, 57:46 and they'll just move that here where then this state or these this area, this region will be the good neighborhood and then you will live where you live. Yeah, yeah, not to sorry to get this dressing, but like that's I think that's with the the and again, I'm not trying to be like oh, capitalism is bad, but I'm saying this myth of of mobility that we're we bought into so much has kind of eased our 58:12 movement into that gigantic gap. The problem is, is that the people on the other end of the gap are not the government, which could be, you know, in theory overthrown or restructured. They're the rich and that's like, we can't over through that. You know, I think, I think what the, I think the, the moral of the story here is for decades in this country, the, uh, the, the headline is communist is bad. Capitalist is good. Right. 58:40 that's that's why you see this difference, and that's what our message is is communism's good. No, no, no, no, no, the system itself, the system itself. It doesn't really matter. The system it's who's in tiny people to know that I'm joking like this. I feel like there's some people were like wow, Jared's really falling off. No, she'll it let him make his point. The system itself doesn't really matter. What matters is who's at the top and read a hundred percent of time systems will be corrupted every time depending on what 59:10 You know, yeah. Who's in charge? Are they corrupting the system? And, ultimately too is like, how much are they corrupting the system? Because before she's in pink took over and they had this distribution of power, there was a lot of people who were in charge of different things that were corrupt. Like there were multiple stories of corruption and people being removed from power who were embezzling funds and doing things similar to what we have had it throughout the United States history. She's in pink turnover and he 59:38 ratcheting up corruption to it to come of course insane level, but it's just like how corrupt is that person in charge and how far are they willing to take it right and I think we we kind of follow this myth that it's like oh, it's the system. That's the problem. It's not the person who's abusing this right right right and so not that we're trying to justify communism. Yeah, I don't I don't think I don't think whatever we can talk about in the after the fiddle. guess yeah, but 01:00:07 All that to say he is now in the middle of his third term, which wasn't something that you could do right for. ah There's no sign of him ever having an in his seventy seven. What did I say? He was born in fifty seven to three. Did I say hold on? Let's see. He was born in yeah, fifty three. So so he's seventy two. Yeah. So he he's probably going to be in power until he dies. He has radically changed the government. Everybody else who's in control. Did you just text me? 01:00:37 it takes you to the link to the video. Oh, it just came through. I was like, when did you do? Okay, so he's probably not. He's probably not going to leave his position until he dies. What is really interesting though is he has completely reformed China, so even when he removed from power, yes, the next man up can't undo the corruption. Well, the next probably won't want to the next man up is in his thought. 01:01:07 is they've been doing Duolingo for Xi Jinping brain every day. And so the odds of it being someone who's a dissenter is pretty low to begin with. But even if it is, it is a drastic overhaul of what he's built to undo it. And so it's probably not going to change. All that being said, the things he has done has turned China from a third world country to at least 01:01:35 major portions of the country, a first world country, which is pretty insane and it's crazy how that works. If you're just corrupt and you just kind of do whatever you want and then the country to your will, you can make it pretty rich. It's pretty crazy. Well, this has been an encouraging time. We appreciate you hanging out for things. learned last night. Our next episode is our three hundred and we promise it'll be a joy filled fun time, so we'll see you next week. He doesn't know what we're talking about. 01:02:05 So, okay. Now we're in the after the fiddle here. Sorry. Fiddle off. 01:02:10 300 episodes can't figure out how to end one and thanks for checking out this episode. If you like it you should watch Vladimir Putin. We talked all about his rise to power. So if you like finding out how Xi Jinping became his dictator find out how Russia got a dictator it's a great episode really honestly crazy story and hey if you want to see next week's episode right now you can do that on Patreon but becoming a patron supporter we love our patrons. Thank you so much for your help of making this podcast happen but we'll see you next week on another episode of things island last night 300 episode 300 next week. That's exciting.