Transcription
[Music] [Music] Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Npalitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, September 17th, 2025, coming to us from Western China is none other than the great Pepe Escobar himself. Pepe, thank you very much. I know you're traveling the world. When I asked you where do you call home, you said on the road and that is probably not just apocryphal, it is true and you have much to uh to share with us.
Let me start right off the bat. What is the new and current relationship between Russia and China?
>> It's the most solidified stretch of the Russia China strategic partnership so far. And this is not hyperbolic at all. Uh it has been reaffirmed by Putin and by C. It was re reaffirmed only only two weeks ago in fact. first in Tanzin during the SEO summit and then the next day when they had their private meeting at the Jean Hanai in Beijing and then the next day still when Putin was the let's say the star guest of the victory day parade in Beijing against Japanese aggression and against nagasism in uh Asia. So uh it's immensely important because uh if we had a headline for what's going on now and it's very very difficult of course you I have been trying some things would be the paradigm the paradigm shift from the hegemonic logic and who's conducting that Russia and China together.
>> Is Is much of this paradigm shift to be blamed on the neocons? The American concept of empire, the American belief that uh it can use its military to tell others how to live.
Of course it does because it this gets into the heart of uh western elites and the American ruling classes of course who simply cannot admit that China is projecting Chinese future and what they call community of a shared future for mankind. basically the global majority's future their own input derived from the lessons that they learned while they were developing China this especially this past 15 to 20 years and from the point of view of American elites this is anata uh the 21st century was supposed to be another American century exceptionalism was was supposed to rule.
>> and now we have not only uh uh China but Russia a Chinese strategic partnership. This is a Mckinder and Brazinski ultimate mega nightmare which is now consolidated in front of us and the whole global south. They see that developing bricks summits, SEO summits, uh interconnection of the global majority, the drive to reform the UN which the way it is is unreformable. Everybody knows that. and China they are building another set of structures uh the new silk roads for instance which started in 2013 that's where I am right now I am in one of the very very important crossroads of the new silk roads inside China the city of Lanjo in Gansu province which is a sort of crossroads between eastern China and western China I am more or less in the middle today um the Asian infrastructure investment bank uh the bricks bank the new development bank based in Shanghai. So China creates all these new set of uh instruments institutional mechanisms and at the same time they are the main driver side by side with Russia of bricks and SEO. So this is the beginning and and now very well organized concerted effort to change the system of international relations as we know it since 1945. So obviously the western elites for them this is beyond anata atma and and obviously in the middle of this mix there's profound xenophobia uh practically hatred of all things China and uh this sense of exceptionalism which was supposed to be eternal.
>> you um mentioned before the spectacular display uh uh of Chinese military enormity and high-end uh in that parade in Beijing the likes of which the world has never seen anything. Was Donald Trump invited to that?
He was not formally invited, judge, but there were diplomatic contacts and uh according to our good Chinese sources, uh there was no followup from the White House. There was not a formal invitation. They were sounding the possibility of Trump coming. But Trumping would not want to be upstaged in Chinese soil by sea and Putin side by side. That was the main reason in fact.
>> he was not how is President Xi uh perceived by not the elites but the average Chinese people whose uh standards of living he has uh uplifted significantly.
>> Wow. It's it's very very impressive. judge this past uh over a week I am I am on the road in the new silk roads for over after Beijing I went to can former Shangan former imperial capital that's where the silk roads began in ancient times and then I went to Dun Huang in almost in western China to visit Buddhist caves and now I'm I backtrack because of a highspeed rail schedule and I am here in Lanjo which is a big crossroads a commercial crossroads heavy industry and all when you are on a highspeed uh uh radio trip it's fascinating because you see the modernization of China in front of you in every detail uh electrification everywhere in the middle of the desert uh forests of solar panels everywhere where forests of uh Aolian energy everywhere uh every small city that the train stops is a mini industrial powerhouse. The people who come and go uh for instance I had like 10 stops in my trip today. The people who come and go they are businessmen but they're also tourists. You have uh families of tourists like in a moderately prosper country which was then how Deng Xiaoping defined it in the 90s and then Xinping picked that up. Two businessmen doing business on on the on the highspeed train uh uh until they they reach the next destination. Everybody with the state-of-the-art uh uh smartphone uh and then they when they stop somewhere they pick up their outstanding electric SUV. When you are in a big city like this, everything is silent because everything is electric and everybody has a spectacular SUV or a moped or a an electric bicycle. It it's it's abs it's amazing. Uh especially when you compare to the China that we used to know in the 80s, even in the 90s. I remember China in the 90s very very well. It was still uh not even a lower middleclass country at the time. Now it's a completely middle class country totally everywhere you go small cities in the western regions that you go it's it's mindboggling and it's for us to absorb all that uh the great thing is this is what we see in practice the title of this book this is the latest.
>> what is that book.
>> this book Chinese modernization shing is a collection of uh speeches and observations, notes and drafts by Cining for the past um uh 12 years. There's stuff from 2013 in fact in this book as well when the new Silk Roads uh started and very very important and this connects directly to the SEO summit in Chanin two weeks ago. Five, six, seven, eight years ago, he was already talking about global governance. which is exactly what he proposed in Tanzin two weeks ago like uh um every country in the global south should be equal partners uh uh true multilateralism uh no uh uh double standards especially everything that he proposed in detail two weeks ago. So this is a he he's been refining his thought and obviously it's not only Cinping's thought this is what is discussed at at the polit of course with input from his sharpers from ministries etc. It's it's an evolving process and when it's codified in China which is an extremely codified society it has to spread out everywhere and this in terms of organization with organization and meritocracy these three go together very organized meritocratic clean efficient and pragmatic if something doesn't work.
>> I want to ask you I want to ask you about India but before I do.
>> Yes.
>> What is Chinese prosperity built on? Is it built on western style debt or is it built on savings and investment?
>> It's based on savings absolutely and productive investment not speculation in Wall Street. It's a completely different economic model. The political economy of China. to understand the political economy of China have to understand everything in this past five year plans and going all the way to 2035 they already planned where they're going to be in 10 years from now just like 10 years ago judge very important that's when they came up with the made in China 2025 program which was in 10 years we're going to be we the leaders are at least next to the leaders in 10 special sectors of high technology. Guess where they are now? 10 years later, they are leaders in eight and soon they will be leaders in the other two as well. Everything uh solar panels, quantum computing, you name it. That that's how you do it. You planify uh you spread the word around. Uh you teach the cadress how to manage all that. You implement the policies. uh there's you you have to manage how they are being developed. Uh you get the population to participate and of course the results are inevitable. This is how productive capitalism works in practice and this is what I'm I'm seeing in this trip right now going to deep China. It's immensely important to see how this modernization works in practice and it's one day after another you the mind boggles really.
>> how significant was the uh public internationally seen embrace of President Putin, President Xi and Prime Minister Modi.
Wow. This is the RI back in action. Uh I've been talking about a lot about the IRC in this past few months. RIC it's the embryo of bricks. Russia, India, China. The conceptualization came from Yvi Primakov who was the Russian foreign minister in the late 1990s. Brilliant guy. By the way, he started as a journalist judge. Primaku Primacov was a task correspondent in the Middle East. That's how he started his career. So he knew everybody at the time you know Gaddafi Saddam you know Nasser everybody. And at the late in the late 90s he was foreign minister of Russia. He came up with the idea of RIC that these three Asian powerhouses and cultures will be the Asian powerhouses of the future of the 21st century. and Putin well Primakov is uh idolized by the Russian uh intellectual elite and he was indeed brilliant but he's also extremely respected in China as well and in India as well as a conceptualizer and bridging the gaps especially between uh India and China is the main challenge for the RIC to be back in full force and guess Who's the mediator? Vladimir Putin. It's thanks to Putin that we had that those outstanding scenes in Tianing of the three together exchanging a smiles, chatting in the corridors, etc.
>> Wow. How a strong Well, before I get to the military, what are President G's plans with respect to Taiwan?
>> There are no plans, judge. This is an American invention. Uh the the short answer to the plan for Taiwan, we have to go back to Deng Xiaoing. Deng Xiaoping before the return of Hong Kong in 1997 and the return of Macau in 1999. Then Xiaoping was saying look uh we have until 2049 for Taiwan to be reunited with the motherland. So we are not in a hurry. So if we are applying one country two systems to Hong Kong which by the way works very very well. Uh this is something that I've seen by practical experience. I was there covering the handover 1997 and after that I lived in Hong Kong on and off for many years. So I saw one country one systems developing in real time and you see how it works. And now the ruling classes in Hong Kong finally, you know, they got rid of their uh British complex and they said, "No, our future is connected as a giant developing node in southern China uh with Guandong province linked with Shenzhen, the high-tech powerhouse, Guanu, etc. Uh so then Xiaoping was saying we can have maybe not in these words but basically he was saying we could have one country three systems in the future China Hong Kong and Taiwan so we're not in a hurry and the reunification would be would be peaceful these are the guidelines and uh the communist party of China will never deviate from these guidelines. Another thing is foreign interference.
>> Ah, everybody knows what.
>> when the uh very brilliant and gifted American secretary of defense stands in Japan and shakes his fist at China. What do they think? How do they react to this? They must laugh at him. One word for you uh uh judge which they use for all these people from the west in similar situations. He's just a barbarian.
>> How uh powerful visav the US is the Chinese military? Army, navy, air force.
Well, I had a wonderful meeting in Beijing two weeks ago with Joe Bo, which I strongly suggest he comes to the show, judge. I I I could I I asked him if he would be interested to come on your show, and he said, "Yes, you will be a fantastic interview for you." Because he's a former PLA uh colono. Uh he speaks fluent English. He has a master in international relations in uh Oxford if I'm not mistaken. He knows the system inside out militarily and he also knows international relations because he also knows the west. And he said he told me look everything that we saw in the parade these weapons they already up and running all of that but we did not show the new ones. It's just like the Russians. The Russians only show what they have when it's already working. For instance, nobody talked about Orishnik before and then one day Orishnik is being tested live in the Ukraine battlefield. The Chinese is the same thing. And for instance, they have but this is something that the Americans know already. What in China here is called the underwater great wall, which is a system of soners that tracks everything that is in every uh of the waters of the South China Sea and beyond by the Chinese. So uh it's not a question of who's more powerful, who has the most developer that that's not the point is uh they are prepared. If there is a serious confrontation, they are prepared and they will be even more prepared and they know that the serious and when I say they this is sining the police buru and most of the best Chinese scholars. it will be a provocation uh in Taiwan or using a false flag using one of those hassles like the on and off Philippines in the South China.
>> I see right does um China attack its own allies or impose 50% tariffs on them like the US does.
>> no they don't just they exactly the opposite uh when you have scores of African African nations that have debts uh with China. What does China do? They cancel those debts. They cancel African debt literally year after year. And they are learning the mistakes that they had in some of the projects of the belt and road initiative, the new silk roads. So they rearrange the loans. uh the projects uh not only Chinese companies, they bring in local companies and local workers. So they learn from their mistakes and they made a lot of mistakes in the beginning. No question about that. But uh what they are let's say the soft power of what they are selling to the global south is look we learn a lot in our own uh modernization process. we can share our uh experience with all of you. This doesn't mean that all of you will be copying the Chinese model. Our model, the Chinese model is only good for China. And when we are traveling in China, you we see how the model works literally for everybody. It it's fascinating this when you see a moderately moderately prosperous society in a country of 1.3 billion people in front of you day after day. It's a mind-boggling experience compared to the recent past. you know it's something that India will take a long time to get to unfortunately because of Indian uh domestic and um the configuration of India society the case system you name it.
>> um what are the long-term goals of bricks and where where will they be if they if they are if they get there and they get where they want to be in 10 or 15 or 20 years.
Let's say that the global governance as explained by Cinping and as detailed uh by the Chinese leadership would be the let's see the philosophical umbrella for all that and then we have the role of multilateral organizations like bricks and SEO and other organizations that work in parallel like the Asia uh infrastructure investment bank, the BRICS bank, etc. uh for instance, one of the things that I think a lot of people in the US did not notice that in fact Silanov the Russian Ministry of Finance, he said that we are actually starting to work inside the SEO to have a clearing system away from Euro Clear, our own clearing system in Eurasia. and this SEO development bank will be instrumental in establishing that it's very very important because most of the money stolen from Russia or confiscated etc. these Russian funds were in a clear in Belgium. So the West controls that. That's why they can freeze or steal Russia's assets or anybody else else's assets across the global south. So if you have a clearing system in Saudi Arabia, none of that will happen. So, so you see the the building of a new system of international geoeconomic relations and financial relations is being driven by Russia and China especially the strategic partnership. Of course to convince India to get on board it's very complicated because India has very strong ties with the west and their ruling class is still um Anglo Anglo basically uh controlled by the AngloAmerican mentality. It will happen. It will take a long time. But they have on board for instance Indonesia, Iran, most of the Southeast Asian nations, uh the relationship between China. Ju just to give you numbers on Southeast Asia judge. Uh I was planning to quote this for you. China Azan trade. So Azan, they are the largest market for China in the world. It's 17% of China's trade is with Azan compared with 13% with the EU and gas with US only 9%. So the US is not important for the Chinese trade balancing for the Southeast Asian neighbors here to the south they are much more important almost double more important than the US. So you know this but these numbers for instance very few people in the west know about these numbers as very few people in the west know the details of this u mind-boggling uh Chinese modernization process.
>> this this has been an utterly fascinating conversation you're opening up the eyes and ears of uh so many tens of thousands of people here in the west who have no idea of the prosperity in China and of the ability of Russia, China, India and their allies to basically tell the United States when it does these foolish things whether they be economic or warlike to go take a hike. Literally.
>> I'm dialing back the language that I might use if you and I were together and alone.
>> Thank you very much.
>> Not in the new Silk Roads. Exactly.
>> Right. Enjoy the Silk Road. And I hope wherever you are a week from now, you'll be back with us.
>> You're going to love this, Judge. I'm going to be in Sing Jung next week. This is going to be a powerhouse.
>> All right. Safe travels, my dear man. Thank you very much. All the best.
>> Thank you. so much judge. Thank you. Thanks to the audience.
>> What a great great human being and with encyclopedic knowledge of that part of the world about which we in the West seem to know so little. Coming up later today, 2:00 this afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. 3:00 this afternoon, the great Phil Geraldi. 4:00 this afternoon, the inimitable Professor Jeffrey Saxs. Judge Nepal, Tanner for Judging Freedom. [Music] [Music]