0:01

So we've become a bit obsessed

0:03

with China around here. And actually,

0:05

if you're not a bit obsessed with China,

0:08

I think you're missing out on the story of the century,

0:10

as it is a country that

0:12

actually has the ability to compete

0:14

with the US economically and militarily,

0:18

is hell bent on doing so, and

0:20

is run by an evil dictatorship.

0:23

If that doesn't get your attention, I don't know what would,

0:26

well, what could lead us to anything

0:28

but forceful rejection of

0:30

of that country and that leadership. Well,

0:32

trillions of dollars in trade tends

0:35

to make you feel a little more ambivalent

0:37

about evil, But to discuss that

0:39

in many other topics. Ying Ma joins

0:41

us ying Ma the author

0:43

of Chinese Girl in the Ghetto, contributor to Fox

0:46

News, Washington Examiner, NBC dot

0:48

Com, former columnists

0:50

for The Wall Street Journals, China Blog, among

0:52

a number of other interesting

0:54

positions. Welcome, How are you good? Good?

0:56

Good morning? Do you both great to be back on with

0:59

you. It's been too long. I know, I know, my

1:01

gosh. I remember last time I was here, we

1:03

were in the middle of the two thousand and sixteen

1:05

campaign, and I was right in the middle

1:07

of that working for the Ben Carson campaign

1:10

in the pro Trump superpack and were now

1:12

and we're now back in another election year. So

1:16

I was reading a little of your bio stuff um

1:19

yesterday and you grew up under

1:21

Mao And there was a phrase in

1:23

there, and I don't know if you wrote it or whoever was writing

1:25

about you wrote it, but you know,

1:28

on the during the burgeoning

1:30

time of becoming a capitalist society?

1:33

Is that? So what year did you leave China at

1:35

that time? Did it seem like it was heading

1:37

the way of capitalism? I left

1:40

in the mid eighties, And so

1:42

what was happening back then was the eighties

1:45

was actually a great era because that was a

1:47

time when a lot of garshoot

1:49

pants Madonna, it was a great

1:51

area. We

1:54

had all that in China too, No

1:57

I'm kidding, but the people of China

2:00

aspired to have all that. And I

2:02

think what was interesting about the eighties was that,

2:05

um, it was when China actually

2:07

be gave, really got um

2:09

got going with its economic reforms.

2:12

And so there were lots of first

2:14

you know, the first time people got to

2:16

choose where to work, where to live,

2:19

um, you know, what to buy on the market, and

2:21

and those were very um the very

2:23

very first beginnings with baby steps,

2:26

and so I certainly it was not full blown capitalism

2:28

in in any way. But what was happening

2:31

was that capitalism was introduced

2:33

to a very repressive, um,

2:35

very closed off society. And

2:37

so you know, for instance, did you know that for the

2:39

longest time farmers in China couldn't keep

2:42

profits from you know, from their crops,

2:44

and then so profit incentives were actually

2:47

introduced in the eighties and and so from

2:49

it was from that era that China

2:52

um embarked on the road of what's

2:54

called reform and opening and

2:56

and you know, and it's one of the reasons

2:59

why China into the economic

3:01

giant that it is today. Well, when they allowed

3:04

incentives for production, production exploded,

3:07

which is not surprised you would think that would

3:09

keep a country from wanting to head back towards socialism

3:12

when you got that perfectly good example

3:14

of how capitalism works. But well,

3:16

I think they are very well.

3:19

I think one thing that they're very fond of is

3:21

that nobody in China is opposed to making

3:23

any opposed to making money. And

3:25

that goes for the Chinese Communist Party. They've

3:27

now come to realize how much money

3:29

can buy, advise you, influence overseas.

3:32

Um. It makes the party stronger. Um.

3:35

And you know, the good thing about introducing

3:37

capitalism in China is that a lot of

3:39

the Chinese people who have this

3:41

great entrepreneurial spirit, they

3:43

got to know what it is like to run their own business,

3:45

to actually, you know, to actually participate

3:48

in the market. Okay, well then there's the question then

3:50

right there. So the Stalin and

3:52

In Lenin and his crew they in Russia,

3:55

they were actually communists. It

3:57

is now known from their own personal writings

3:59

and and everything they actually believed

4:01

in communism, and then they were trying to carry that out

4:04

the Communist Party in China. Are they actually

4:06

communist? Absolutely absolutely

4:08

that they are a a new and improved

4:11

version of communism. And I

4:13

think, um, I think there is a

4:15

lot of sophistication and a lot of complexity

4:18

that's not often understood. And

4:20

and you've got all kinds of idiots writing

4:22

around saying China is no longer a communist

4:25

country. That is absolutely not true, because

4:27

I think at the core of it, communism

4:29

is about control. It is about

4:31

controlling the ideas

4:33

of the people who live under it. It isn't

4:36

about controlling their lives, and it is about

4:38

all kinds of things. And the Communist Party has

4:41

at no point decided that it wants

4:43

to seed political power in

4:45

any way, and so it is absolutely adamant

4:48

about keeping that control. What it

4:50

has done is that it has realized

4:52

that if it kept on going the way that it

4:55

did in the Cultural Revolution or the Great

4:57

Leap Forward back in the fifties and sixties,

4:59

all of its, but we're starving to death, and

5:01

that that is no way to run a country. And so it has

5:03

decided to over the past forty years

5:06

to introduce elements of market reform.

5:08

But it is not at all a free market

5:10

society, because you

5:12

know, in the middle of all those market reform

5:14

elements, the state continues to maintain

5:17

control of vast chunks of the

5:19

economy. And so what the

5:21

sophistication in all this is that the

5:23

Chinese government has managed to find

5:25

a way to make this

5:27

sort of reforms work, to generate

5:30

to generate profits, to generate

5:32

wealth, to generate influence without

5:34

having to face what the former Soviet

5:37

Union faced, which is an overthrow of

5:39

the regime well and as a regime

5:41

to balance the openness

5:44

to the free market in the global

5:46

market. With the political control,

5:48

there has to be an enormous sophistication.

5:50

Oh yes, absolutely, the the you know,

5:52

the control mechanisms and there, you know, it's almost

5:54

like recognizing that UM.

5:57

The Hitler's war machine sweeping

5:59

across Europe was a stunning

6:01

bit of military planning. I

6:03

mean, as loathsome and horrific as it was, it's

6:05

just undeniably impressive. The Chinese

6:07

regime, You've got to admire them. That's almost impossible

6:10

what they're doing right now. There is so much

6:12

sophistication and and you

6:14

know, I think it's important to recognize

6:17

us. So even though there has been all

6:19

these new UM

6:21

forms of UM of liberation

6:24

that didn't used to exist, right that people have

6:27

more opportunities to live where

6:29

they want to live, to buy what they want to buy, to say

6:31

what they want to say in private. But

6:33

what the regime has done is that it has continued

6:36

to exert control in other ways. It's now,

6:38

you know, it now censors the internet. The Internet

6:40

did not exist when I, you know, was growing up in

6:42

China. UM. It now has

6:44

very sophisticated surveillance technology

6:48

UM, supplied in part by Western

6:50

companies that want to make a profit in China, and

6:52

it uh it is able to figure out

6:55

where its citizens go, what they're doing, you

6:57

know, what trains they hop on and what trains

6:59

there. So there is this social credit

7:01

system in China that if you

7:03

do things that the Chinese government does not like,

7:06

they're all kinds of ways that it could, um,

7:08

they could impede upon your

7:10

ability to do basic things like by plane tickets

7:13

for instance. So so it is a vastly

7:15

sophisticated state in

7:17

a way that I think a lot of people don't understand.

7:19

Have you ever been to one of those wet bat markets?

7:24

Think I've been to. I've been to all

7:26

kinds of wet markets, and I've eaten all kinds

7:28

of things that you probably don't want that

7:32

they think. Is that the and

7:34

that I have not that I can. However,

7:37

you know, I tell you all kinds of ways

7:39

that people kill animals in

7:41

their own homes in order to eat them. And

7:43

and you know, and so during the days when

7:45

I used to grow up, people actually ate their pets

7:47

in China, um, And you

7:50

know, not when I was that was that was

7:52

not not an eye opening experience at all, That was not

7:54

at all, not at all and I had, you know, even though

7:56

I was in the middle of the third largest city in China,

7:58

I had chick in my

8:01

kitchen that we would grab and kill

8:03

if we wanted a meal from time to time.

8:05

That's pretty common as well. Um, I

8:08

mean it's no longer the case now, but what

8:10

markets are quite common. They're still enjoyed

8:12

by the Chinese people. And then it's you

8:15

know, but I hear that you know, the government

8:17

wants to get rid of them because they are now just a

8:19

hotbed for diseases. Um.

8:21

So you were, we were emailing yesterday and you

8:23

told me the story about this uh

8:26

m m a fighter, yes, journalist

8:29

and the coronavirus. We're gonna take a little break, but

8:31

we got we got to hear this story. This is what the Chinese

8:34

Communist Party is capable of doing. It

8:37

features at bat market and fighting

8:40

market. That's kind of all

8:43

the elements of the story that you need to keep you

8:45

to stay tuned to the Armstrong, The

8:49

Armstrong and Getty Show. If

8:53

you get a chance to pick up a copy

8:55

of Chinese Girl in the Ghetto by Yingma,

8:57

you should absolutely read it for a number for reasons.

8:59

It's so for interesting about China's super

9:01

interesting about uh, the United States

9:03

is seen through the eyes of an immigrant,

9:06

and race relations and all sorts of great stuff. But

9:08

ying mon joins us talk about China and all sorts

9:10

of good stuff. Yeah, this story because we're

9:12

emailing yesterday, this kind of encompasses a couple

9:14

of things that are in the news. Coronavirus, the guy I mean

9:16

is government, whats government is

9:18

willing to do? Tell the story well,

9:21

so um, and it encompasses

9:23

m M A, which I know is a big

9:25

deal for for lots of people across

9:28

this country. So let me start with the coronavirus.

9:30

I mean, as we all know, it's it's

9:32

really become such a big problem.

9:34

There are seventy five thousand cases

9:36

in China that we know of, and the

9:39

numbers coming out of China at all reliable,

9:41

you know. Um, the

9:43

answer is we can't possibly just believe

9:46

what they tell us. But even if even if we

9:48

don't, seventy a lot I mean

9:50

already that's what they're admitting to. And then they're

9:52

the death toll is over two hundred,

9:55

right, and and so look and

9:57

and so um what there

9:59

are couple of citizen journalists

10:01

that have gone to the epicenter of

10:04

the virus and have tried to done

10:06

sort of video video youtubeing,

10:09

YouTube videos and others to try to get get the

10:11

word out, figure out what's going on. And

10:13

and they've been disappeared by the

10:15

authorities. Yes,

10:18

that's the word that And and speaking of China

10:20

being a communist country,

10:22

this is a word that's commonly used in

10:25

you know, in in the former Soviet Union as

10:27

well as other countries behind the Iron Curtain

10:29

in the old days. That still happens in China.

10:31

So don't anybody sort of get

10:33

into the temptation of thinking that communism doesn't

10:36

continue to exist in China. And a camp

10:39

or you don't know, because when people were disappeared,

10:41

we have no idea where they are and what and

10:43

what was their offense they went to. They actually

10:46

risk their lives to go to these hospitals

10:49

where all these people are dying with

10:51

this coronavirus that we don't know very

10:53

much about. And they reported

10:56

all kinds of things that we other people, including

10:59

journalists from the New Times, had no idea

11:01

of which is one that there is a

11:03

shortage of hospital beds, two,

11:05

there is a shortage of test kits, and

11:08

so it's at the epicenter of the city

11:10

where this virus started. You

11:13

know, it becomes a problem right when

11:15

you see corpses lying around in

11:17

hospitals and they're not being cleared me

11:20

enough or that or that. Within

11:22

a day, you know, from at a major

11:24

hospital, you see the number of corpses

11:27

go from two to eight in a short amount

11:29

of time. That's the kind of reporting that some of these journalists

11:31

have done. And what did the

11:33

authorities do? Well, they rounded them

11:35

up And now here's where the m M A

11:38

guy got gets involved. Um. You

11:40

know, this is actually a fascinating story with all

11:42

these different angles there. And

11:44

for those of you who do any kind of martial

11:46

arts, um, m M A is different, I

11:49

think, And let me make a side

11:51

tangent here. Um. A lot of people

11:53

have have complained that even

11:55

though Chinese martial arts has this distinguished

11:58

history, you know, you've got all these people there

12:01

you go, right, but one of the one of one

12:03

of the biggest critiques of traditional

12:06

Chinese martial arts is that is it practical? Can

12:08

you fight? If if a Chinese martial artist,

12:10

all these people with their fancy moves get

12:13

into the octagon, can you actually

12:15

fight and So there is this Chinese um

12:18

M M A fighter in China who have taken

12:20

it upon himself to expose

12:23

the fraud, the frauds

12:25

of of Chinese martial arts to say

12:27

that you find you know, and so do

12:30

you think it's his words?

12:32

His word? He feels that many of these esteem

12:35

masters in China can't fight, and he's

12:37

challenged and he's challenged them

12:39

to real fights. He's challenged them to real

12:42

fights. And this is a guy, his name Isan.

12:45

This is a guy who became famous

12:47

because a couple of years ago he knocked out a

12:49

Tai Tea master in twenty seconds, and

12:52

since then he's gone on to challenge other masters.

12:54

And and so he's cocky, he's arrogant, he's

12:56

obnoxious and outright disrespectful.

12:59

But he happens to be friends with one

13:01

of the citizen journalists who was disappeared.

13:04

And this m M. A fighter actually

13:07

is one of the few people who had who

13:09

who actually has put

13:11

his face on a video to

13:14

say to the world that this person, you

13:16

know, this friend of mine is doing this. He

13:18

was trying to tell the truth about the coronavirus

13:20

and the government rounded him up and

13:23

the government, you know, used the excuse

13:25

that this man was infected with the virus

13:27

and hence he was quarantined. And

13:29

the m M A fighter says that's complete bs

13:32

and so um and so he

13:34

might be famous enough that they can't disappear

13:36

him. That's what he was going for. Well, he his

13:38

whole point was, I'm going to put this all out

13:40

there and they're gonna come after me, but this is my insurance

13:43

policy. I don't know how well that's

13:48

see you with just I think she has enough

13:50

people with guns and other and

13:56

listen, as long as we're kind of on the topic,

13:59

I've heard it said that this is fomenting

14:02

serious, possibly dangerous

14:04

to the regime levels of unrest.

14:08

Will the steam be let off and things you go back to

14:10

normal or do you think this has the potential to drive

14:12

real change. I would say it's fomenting

14:14

serious discontent unrest.

14:16

I don't think it's gotten to the level of unrest

14:19

yet. When you're talking about unrest, I you know, I'm thinking

14:21

about mass protests, rallies. That's

14:23

what we saw in Hong Kong, right right, And and

14:25

I'm glad you brought up Hong Kong because

14:27

I think um oh,

14:29

and this MM a fighter. When the Hong Kong

14:31

protests were at the their high he actually went

14:34

out there and publicly supported the protesters

14:36

in Hong Kong, which is a very rare feat

14:38

as well. You don't see Jackie Chan doing

14:41

that. Jackie Chan is running around condemning the

14:43

protesters. And so I

14:46

think one I think it sometimes

14:48

takes people who are a little bit crazy and perhaps

14:50

kind of obnoxious in order to challenge

14:52

the status quo to have the courage to

14:54

actually say to this powerful government,

14:57

you know, to give the give the government the middle

14:59

finger. Now it comes to unrest

15:01

and discontent in China, you are absolutely

15:04

right that this um epidemic has

15:06

stirred up all kinds of unrest. People

15:08

have been calling for freedom of speech

15:11

because if they don't have freedom of speech, people

15:13

die. You know. The government has been has

15:15

been covering up the extent

15:18

of the illness, and and so there's

15:20

a lot of that. But I think what it reminds

15:22

us of is that what that you have

15:24

to that people who

15:27

foment unrest or who challenge

15:30

the government, they don't just do it as sort

15:32

of a a

15:34

a concept. It

15:36

helps a lot more when their lives are

15:38

at stake. And and so,

15:41

um and so I think for a lot of people in China,

15:43

I don't think they Actually many people

15:45

in China were not firmly behind the protesters

15:48

in Hong Kong for a number of reasons.

15:50

But I think with something like

15:52

this, where their lives are at stake, it's stirred

15:55

up all kinds of hostility towards the

15:57

regime and all kinds of people asking the regime

15:59

to actually, you know, make reforms.

16:02

We are just about out of time with Yeng Ma,

16:04

author a Chinese Girl and the Ghetto, contributor

16:07

to Fox News dot com, Washington Examiner,

16:09

NBC News. Where do you want people to

16:11

to find you, your website, your Twitter or whatever?

16:14

Um so on Twitter, I am um

16:16

at ge z t o ghetto

16:19

gez to ghetto um and my website is

16:21

Yingma dot org. That is why I m g m

16:23

a dot org. We'll have the links that arm Strong

16:25

and Ghetti dot com so people can find them. Really,

16:27

question about a story in the news about China or

16:29

a book or whatever. She's the one that I always email or

16:31

text or whatever and say, what do you think about this? You

16:34

realize he only orders sweet and

16:36

sour park

16:41

But I thought I thought when I was on with

16:43

you guys when my book first came out. We agree

16:45

that I would take Jack to a Chinese

16:48

restaurant, an authentic Chinese.

16:51

Oh boy, alright now that's

16:53

ridiculous, But this

16:56

is the ugly American right here. Try the

16:58

real authentic, or take me to a wet bat

17:01

market. I'll check and even

17:03

the coronavirus is over. Fantastic.

17:06

Thanks for going on so much, are

17:10

strong and Getty