Transcription
Singapore is not China light. Okay. So if you live in Singapore, you are essentially living in the West.
So Chinese people are not cowed into submissiveness. They are very vocal. When they get mad, they get mad. They're on YouTube, you know, I mean, and you see them. China 90 days collapse. China 180-day collapse. 10 million views. China is going to collapse in 90 days. And people love those videos. I don't know why, but I see.
But, um, what I see on the digital front, I see digital technology and the use of digital technology to make your life better at a level in China that the US has not even fully comprehended.
Fore speech. Fore after living for quite a long periods of time in China. Then you came to Singapore. You moved to Singapore for a couple of years. Was it like weird for you? Was it like a weird version of China, kind of thing, or like a weird mix of like China and the West in Singapore?
No, that's that's a wonderful question. And so the answer is, Singapore has a vibe that is very unique. And it certainly is not for anybody listening who needs to keep this in perspective. Singapore is not China light. Okay. So if you live in Singapore, you are essentially living in the West. Whether you call it a UK-influenced version of the West or a US-influenced version of the West, it's a sort of a hybrid between the two. And that's fine. But it is not China. No way. It doesn't. It doesn't feel like China. It doesn't work like China. People don't think like China. Yes, people are of Chinese ancestry. That is true. But, you know, these are people like me when I say I'm Italian. You know, I've been substantially influenced by American culture because that's where my educational system was. I can never compare myself to my Italian cousins here who've gone through the complete Italian education system. So, a Chinese person living in Singapore has gone through a British, uh, education system to some degree. All right? So they can never compare themselves in totality with a native Chinese who's gone through that educational system. So it's it's they are very, very different.
Chinese and Americans, what's like the the big things that are very, very different? As how people think. The one thing that I will say that they're similar on before we talk about the differences is that they both, you know, mainland Chinese now has something called the Chinese dream. And, you know, the dream is not very different than the American dream. And it's a good life for your children. It's a car. It's a home. It's material affluence to a certain degree. Um, and those things are very much similar.
But what you see that is extremely different is that in China, there is less emphasis on independent "I am going to be the hero or star" and attain this dream through my own singular efforts, and a greater willingness to work with others in a company or in a group setting to attain the dream. Is the same. You want to get to the, you want to get to that point, but how you're going to get there is visualized differently. And we look in the United States toward Steve Jobs. I want to be, uh, Bill Gates. I want to be that individual star of greatness who achieves something wonderfully. And in China, you certainly see, you do see that. You see the Jack Ma and you see the others who are, you know, who are tech wizards or, you know, or great singular people who do, who do great things and had great companies. But from a day-to-day level, uh, I think you see a greater willingness to cooperate and be part of a larger entity that will get you there. So it's a more sense of a community and communal efforts to get somewhere.
Yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't want to use the word communal because people will say, "Oh, communal is communist." And that's not really what people are thinking about on their day-to-day life. What people are thinking about is how to keep things calm, cool, collected so we can achieve all, achieve a a goal. Now, look, that isn't true for everyone. You know, you talk, we're making really broad generalizations which are very hard. Uh, I know I've met with people in my career who, you know, who have that sense that they want to be the hero or the star and do great things. I have, I've worked with young Chinese people who frankly don't want to work and want to do the minimum amount of work. So, you know, there, there, it's very hard to generalize over an ancient society. But still, fundamentally, on the workplace or in society, there is a very big difference between how Singaporeans see themselves, even if they are of Chinese ancestry, and how native Chinese view their world and think about themselves, both in the workplace and in their interaction with society.
So that's the similarity, kind of Chinese dream and American dream, they're kind of similar to some extent. What's the biggest differences of how people, how like Chinese and Americans, again, we are generalizing, but what's the differences that you see in society, how people think?
That's a great question. And I'm going to hit a very tender subject right now, and it's near to my heart because, uh, I was born in the United States. But right now, we have tremendous divisiveness in the United States between political right, political left, divisiveness over cultural issues, political correctness, being woke or not woke, as the expression goes. So there's divisiveness along many, many different lines of thought. You know, it's not just Democrat, Republican, left, right divides. There's, there's many different fractures happening in American society. And what's interesting to me is that you don't see that in China in the sense that, and, and people are going to jump on this. They're going to say, "Oh, well, it's only one political party. You can't have a right or left." And that is obviously true. I do not deny that. But what's interesting is you still have this very high approval rating for the government. And somebody is now going to say, well, how can you actually do a poll? Yes, they actually do polls. And actually, American and Western companies do polls of Chinese people. You're allowed to do that. And the government has this very high approval rating. And what government aside, what you don't see is the divisiveness. Okay? You don't see that in cultural issues on the streets of Shanghai. You don't see it over the government. Now, so there are, there were periods of divisiveness. Clearly, you can go back to the revolution. This was a company, a country that up till 1949 had a revolution. So people could be divided here. And during COVID also, toward the end of the COVID period here, there were divisiveness over how the government handled COVID. So Chinese people are not cowed into submissiveness. They are very vocal. When they get mad, they get mad. But in general, what we're seeing right now is, compared to the United States, is a more unified sense of purpose and of contentedness than what I see in the very fractured nature of the United States at this moment. And that matters.
And so, let me put it in context. So I, I write and work, everything I do is about technology. So what you see happening now in China for the, uh, adoption of artificial intelligence, the artificial, uh, the adoption of digital technology is beyond anything that most people can conceive of. I am older. I'm 64. In fact, I'm 64 and only 20 days. Um, and, uh, I grew up during the United States's space race when all of the United States worked to put people on the moon, right? So that was a, you know, that was a unifying time of the United States. And that's exactly what I see going on in China today with huge numbers of science, technology, educated young people. Um, all of them going to work in artificial intelligence, many of them going to work for digital services. So you see this, you know, sort of what's what's called in Chinese terms, a whole society effort for digitization in China because people believe, and have ample evidence of this, that digitization has made China a better place for them to live. So that's, you know, a good example of how when I said it's less divisive and people are the society is moving toward a goal, and the goal is digitization and AI and all sorts of other, uh, great technologies. So it's, it's an interesting place to be right now. And that's the, that's the sense of, sense of lack of the divisiveness that you see that I feel we're living there now.
It's very interesting that you mentioned about the moon project in in America like in the '60s. So it was like a big idea for the nation, like a big thing for for many people. And then it's like the American dream. What was that's the thing that people from not from America, but from, I grew up in Russia, so I knew about this American dream thing. There was a like the big idea for Americans. What's the big idea now for Chinese society, for Chinese people right now?
China is in an economic slowdown. It's got GDP growth of 5% as opposed to GDP, GDP growth of anything between 12 and 8%. For China, 5% GDP growth is considered, you know, is considered like a recession in the West. So right now, the majority of young people, let's divide it, you know. So right now, the, you know, the question is for most people, can we maintain our standard of living with a lower sense of growth? Now, that's for somebody who's older and has a job. For young people, it's, can I find a job? And is it a decent job? And, you know, and much more basic now. So the, the statistics used to be that China needed 8% GDP growth just to employ all of the young graduates coming out of university. So now with 5% GDP growth, there are a group of young people, all with good degrees, not, it's not about, you know, it's not that they have degrees in art history or something or music or something that's traditionally hard to get a job at. You know, these young people have good degrees and they are taking forever to get, uh, employment. And many are seeking alternative employment. You know, so this is going to sound, this is going to sound terrible, but there's an entire group of young people who have decided to say, become delivery drivers. You know, so they've got a degree in something. You know, there's one guy who made the news, he has a PhD in physics, and he's, and he's doing delivery. Now, you know, I'm not sure that's what he wants to do for all of his life. But he said, "Yes, I'm making money and I'm, you know, I'm okay with this for now." But, you know, so young people are, their desire is to simply find the job. Older people, it's their, their concern is how much do I spend? How much can I spend? And that's what the Chinese government has been working on. Are, uh, they've had programs to try to boost the economy through spending, to allow people to help them feel more confident in spending more money because people are saving what they've got. And the more people are saving and pull back from spending, the more the economy slows down.
But there's something important I think for people in the West to get. And that is that there is no, there's no crisis. China is not collapsing. There is no, you know, YouTube videos. You're on, you know, you're on YouTube, you know, I mean, and you see them. China 90 days collapse. China 180-day collapse. You know, there's a whole genre of videos that are predicting China collapse. And I'm sorry, I live there every day, you know, and I don't see the collapse. And, you know, so it's sort of funny to see how that's an entire business is, you know, picking, you know, pick 10 million views. China is going to collapse in 90 days. And people love those videos. I don't know why. But I see these videos often. And they're also coming from like, not only from individual like bloggers, YouTubers, but also from like official media kind of thing.
But it's probably because Americans see China as a threat and they kind of nervous about about it. I think for many people, China is like a black box. It's something there, something massive. They don't understand what's going on there. They they think it's like a communist, communist people like obey like orders and on like super suppressed. So I think there is a fear. I, I don't know, proofing. Uh, tell me if I'm wrong, but in the US, people think they don't know about China and they kind of have this sense of fear about it.
Yeah, I think I think that's accurate. Um, I think that China is now the number two GDP nation in the world, number one having surpassed the United States. If you take GDP and weight it by what's called purchasing power parity, PPP GDP, they've actually surpassed the United States. So, yeah, that's a concern. And people in the United States are concerned about China's rise, what it means long-term for the US. But I have a message. Nobody should be hoping for the fall of China. And so there's, there's two radical fringe elements that come out of this. Okay. One is the China, and I guess the, let's roll them into one. China economic collapse or China political collapse. Let's put them all into one. And it's the China collapse theory. And nobody should want that. Nobody should, whether if you, the United States, don't like, don't like China, absolutely fine. But no one should hope that a country of 1.4 billion people enters either economic or political collapse, 'cause that's bad for everybody. All right? You know, you can't take the number two nation in the world who is supplying the US and much of the world with all the things that you buy when you go to the store. Have it collapse and have it be a good worldwide outcome. All right? So, you know, let's pull back on the rhetoric and understand that China is a big country. We're going to, we're going to live with it for a long time.
China is not the same government or is not the same, pl is the same government obviously in name since 1949. But their policies and how the government acts is not the same today as it was in 1976 or '75 during the Cultural Revolution. Right? So the government in China changes. The name stays the same, but it changes. Um, it views its world differently. So, um, it's an evolving place. Um, and that's fundamentally good. Don't hope for collapse. Hoping for collapse is a bad, is a very bad thing for everybody.
Yeah. And it changes fast. I think people don't realize how China like changes like completely different in every two years, three years, especially the cities, you know.
That's a really great point, Max, because I can come back to my town in Italy where my father lived, and we still have Baldi's family. And from on, if I were to come back at five-year gaps, the difference between zero and five years would be almost nothing. Actually, the 20 years, you could come back and, you know, it's the same. It's been the same town since 1500, right? But, but the point is, things change very slowly here. And I, and I tell this to people, and I'm not joking. If I spend two months away traveling for work and doing other things out of Shanghai, when I come back, I walk in my neighborhood and I look at how many stores have changed and I look at, you know, how much it's changed. So between expats related to this is when I meet somebody and they say, "Oh, I lived in Shanghai." My first question is, when? Because if you lived in Shanghai, my first trip to Shanghai was 2003. I then moved here in 2000 or in 2010. The seven-year gap. What I saw when I came back in 2010 was incomprehensibly different. In fact, one funny thing is that I had to orient myself to the city a little bit in early days when when I was planning to move in 2010, I had a subway map, a metro map. And what I didn't realize is that when I got back, when I actually got to the city in 2010, they had built five or six new metros. They built one metro a year from the time I had been there in 2003 till seven years later when I got back in 2010. It, it really changes quickly. So, it's a country that changes quickly. It's a place where people adapt relatively quickly. So, um, it's kind of interesting to watch and, you know, to be there and it's exciting. You know, I've spent 15 and a half years in Shanghai, and it's been, every year is exciting with something new and different. That's all I can say.
You wrote two books, right? Yes, I did indeed. Yeah. So, I just, just want to say that the latest one is Cashless. It was published in 2021. And so my question is actually like kind of inspired by by the book and by your main thing, what what you do, like speaking of digital e-economy, like genuinely, why do you think China overtook America and where China is still behind America?
Let's first of all make sure that everybody understands that China is two countries. China is the Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and large cities that you see in the, the news with big, big skylines. And it's also a different country. And I, I like my wife, my, my partner and I hike a lot. All right. And we go to very remote rural areas. And rural China is a different planet. It's a very poor place. People don't see it that way because they see Shanghai and Beijing and the, the big cities, but it's got this tremendous gap between what's going on in the big cities and what's going on in the rural areas.
The biggest thing happening here I see is is the biggest focus, of course, is digital. I see digital as the, I am biased because it's what I do. So, but what I see happening here, uh, from a digital perspective is tremendous. So right now, we're in the middle of what is commonly called an AI race. And I will submit to people, there is no race. Everybody will get AI. Everyone will use AI. It's not that AI will be better in China than the United States and one will conquer the other. No. AI is going to be everywhere. There's no race. We're all going to get it. Okay. But, um, what I see on the digital front, I see digital technology and the use of digital technology to make your life better at a level in China that the US has not even fully comprehended. In other words, if you're looking in the US and you think Amazon is really cool and Uber is really cool, great. I have no problem with that. I think those are great services. And yes, we have them in China. But we have those services in war. Okay. So we eclipse them. You know, we've just got, you know, we've got stuff where buying airplane tickets. Okay. I bought a pair of airline tickets. Now, I changed my plans. I refund the tickets immediately. I get an immediate refund on my airline tickets. Now, I'm using that example specifically because anybody in the West knows that getting a refund on your deposit for a hotel room, if you have to put a deposit on, or for an airline ticket can take months, right? Depending on when it is in the credit card cycle. So, yeah, both China and US have wonderful tech. And I'm sure anybody in the United States, you're thinking about Amazon, you're thinking about Uber. Look, China has all of those, but they're on steroids, okay? They, you know, there's a lot that China technology can do that is still, um, not available in the West. And, you know, particularly payments, digital payments, which is of course why I wrote a book about it. And it's of course very near and dear to my heart as a former banker. But, you know, the reality is the use of digital in China is really on another level. And of course, uh, and it's not just, you know, who's winning the AI race, it's about what the use of digital to make your life better on a daily basis. So QR codes, which is how we pay here, you scan a QR code, they're everywhere. You can just do a lot like, uh, digital entry now. So, you know, I have dig, you know, of course, electronic passport entries. This, it's just, it's just really, um, and yes, we have that in the West, too. I get it. But, um, the use of digital here is paramount. Even small enterprises, you know, are all on WeChat and they're all able to, um, build small applications on WeChat and run their business through them. It's, it's really dramatic to see. So I, you know, I think digital is one of the areas where I'm the most impressed, where I see China as being advanced.
Now, that means something. So, and it really is an important point for those who do believe in an AI race. All right, which I, before I mentioned, doesn't really exist. But if you really believe that it exists, okay, fine. It doesn't matter who's got the smartest AI. What matters is who uses it, who's able to roll it out, who's able to implement AI in a meaningful method. And that's where China is going to eclipse the United States because they roll out new software, new products at an incredible speed that the West can't really match. That's, you know, that's part of it.
Now, so, so what does China do worse? Okay, so, you know, you know, what's the good and what's the bad? I'm struggling to find something for the most that China does worse. People are expecting me to say, "Well, the government's terrible." And, you know, that's not something I can say because I don't really feel it. I don't feel the government's terrible. But you don't have representation. And to which my answer is, no. But, you know, we actually do have representation. And that's sort of the interesting part. And it's hard to get across to people. So, look, obviously people are under the oppression and everything is commanded from Beijing down. And that's not really quite the case. And in fact, we have very active local representation in government. And it's funny because in my apartment compound, there's a lady who, she doesn't live there, but she's part of the local organizing committee for probably one or two square blocks around Shanghai. All right. But her name is Annie. And we know her. And Annie, every couple of weeks, stands outside the door, uh, or the gateway of our compound. I live in a compound with four 36-story buildings. So, you know, these 12,300 people living there. And Annie asks people, "What's bothering me?" And, you know, for me, I, I don't have any complaints. But, you know, but what's really interesting is that when people complain about cars parking on the street improperly, or something needing fixing, or something needs to be done in the neighborhood. Well, not of course your apartments. The apartments have a separate management team, but, you know, but, you know, for our neighborhood, she handles that. And so, you know, and we see her and she's visible. So, um, you know, the concept that Chinese people live there and don't have any say into their to their lives and are just controlled by Beijing is, is sort of, is, is just so far from reality. So, um, that's what people would expect me to say, you know, um, that, you know, the government is a problem. You know, in fact, in many of the advances that China, uh, has, including digital, were from the government. So back in already back in 2002, 2003, in one of the five-year plans, I think it's the 12th or something, 12th five-year plan, first of all, China has something called a five-year plan where they look out five years and they plan for that period of time, which is quite remarkable since the US changes governments every four years and has the two, actually a two-year cycle based on midterm elections. But I digress. Um, but, you know, China recognized the importance of digital back in early 2003, '04, somewhere around there. And they mandated that all of the little villages would get then 3G data service brought into them because the government realized that with 1.4 billion people, um, digital services were the way that they were going to be able to actually reach people in a meaningful manner. So anyway, so government is not perfect. It certainly has issues. Some of them are are very, uh, clear in the newspaper. And the country has problems. We have, uh, a housing crisis, you know, where, or housing real estate crisis where they overbuilt real estate. There were a lot of shady deals. I don't want to go into that in detail, but, you know, it's certainly not causing the collapse of China as as many would would would, uh, would seem. So, yeah, there's problems. I'm not, it's not a carefree perfect Shangri-la environment where everything is is wonderful. Sure, we got lots of problems here. Um, but overall, it's a pleasant place to live. And most of all, most of the guests that I have that come here all tell me the same thing. This is not what we envisioned. We didn't know it would be like this. We had no idea that particularly Shanghai was such a vibrant and, you know, and fascinating city. So most people have a vision of China and vision of Shanghai that is very different than reality.
What's the most fascinating technology that you seen? And maybe like the most, the technology that surprised your, I don't know, American friends? For us, as now, like the plan is, I want to go to Shenzhen. We are shooting video there and we want to like show all the like technologies that you can find in Shenzhen from flying drones to self-driving taxis and stuff. If someone asked you, what's the most fascinating technology for you that you seen in China?
I, so, you know, it's really funny. I just did a trip with a bunch of CEOs, uh, from Europe. And the thing that impressed them the most, and the thing that impressed most of my guests over the years the most, are the high-speed rail. Because most people have never been on a train, you know, going 200, 250 miles an hour or 300. I don't remember how many kilometers kph now. And, you know, so the first time you put somebody on the high-speed train and you get them the, you know, the first-class area, which is, you know, lay-flat kind of bed thing. It's, it's remarkable. It's, it really is. And, you know, you're, you're going, you know, on that trip between Shanghai and Beijing. And, you know, it's three hours, three easy hours. And, you know, you're sitting there on the train and it's absolutely flat. And then they say, "But I have cell phone?" And I'm like, "Yeah, you'll have cell phone the entire signal uninterrupted from Shanghai to Beijing on this line, no problem." So, it's really that. That sure, the drones are great, the robots are fun, and payment technology, people don't really care about. Even though I wrote a book on it, unless you're in the business, they're just like, you, you paid. That's all that people care about, right? But I think the train is what really makes people the most, the most excited that I've seen.