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00:00Hello, Telesur English presents a new episode of China Now, our media's production that
00:14showcases the culture, technology, and politics of the Asian giant.
00:17In this first segment, we are going to start with topics talking about how Israel carried
00:21out power office targets, ornaments, attacks against Hezbollah by hiding explosives inside
00:28Pagir's batteries brawl in Lebanon, according to senior Lebanese security officials who
00:33said technology was so advanced as to be virtually undetectable.
00:39Also in China, Coren talks about Egypt's flight jets lost in China, how Lebanon Pagir's attacks
00:46affects iPhone sales in China, Chinese workers providing they are the best in France, and
00:51much more.
00:52Let's see.
00:54Welcome to TopX, your daily news related to China, I'm Derek.
00:59On 80th of September, a new wave of a remote exploding attack blasted in Lebanon, which
01:05was widely believed to be carried out by Israel, has killed at least 20 people and only 415
01:13wounded.
01:14According to Al Jazeera, several blasts took place simultaneously, which were similar to
01:18the explosions on Tuesday, but the second round was mostly related to walkie-talkies
01:24or radios.
01:25Lebanon's state news agency said some of the explosions occurred in a brand of two-way
01:30radio with images from the scenes showing walkie-talkies labeled with ICON and made
01:35in Japan.
01:36ICON is a Japanese manufacturer of wireless communication equipment producing amateur
01:42radios and navigation products.
01:44Its products are sold in more than 80 countries around the world with subsidiaries in the
01:49US, Australia, Germany, and Spain.
01:52According to the company, it has also supplied electronics gear to public safety organizations
01:58and the U.S. Department of Defense and Marine Corps.
02:01A statement on the company's website said that the ICVA-2 handheld radio was produced
02:07from 2004 to 2024 and exported to overseas markets, including in the Middle East.
02:13The company also emphasized that its products were sold overseas only to its authorized
02:18distributors, in line with Japanese government regulations.
02:23When it comes to the devices that exploded in Lebanon, ICON explained those devices were
02:28not fixed with a counterfeit prevention sticker, making it hard to confirm whether they were
02:33produced in Japan.
02:35However, the company refused to specify how it determined that radios did not have the
02:40label.
02:41Both Hezbollah and the Lebanese government accused Israel of making these attacks.
02:46Israel has not yet directly commented on the blasts, but Israeli Defense Minister Yoav
02:51Galland said in a speaking to Israeli soldiers on Wednesday that Israel is at the start of
02:57a new phase in the war.
02:58Despite no mention of the explosions of electronic devices in Lebanon, Galland praised the work
03:04of Israeli's army and security agencies, noting the results are very impressive.
03:10The U.S. denied having any pre-knowledge about the blasts.
03:13However, according to Reuters, a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity stated
03:19that Israel told Washington on Tuesday it was going to do something in Lebanon.
03:24The exact cause of the explosions remains unknown, but several analyses have suggested
03:30that the supply chain of the devices was tampered with or manipulated before reaching Lebanon.
03:37Bomb Disposal Specialist Chris Hunter told Al Jazeera that Israel may have gained access
03:43to the supplier.
03:44In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, Lebanon's Mission to the United Nations reported
03:49that a preliminary investigation by Lebanon's authorities found that the communication devices
03:54involved in the blasts had explosives planted in them before they arrived in Lebanon.
04:00Interestingly, in 2020, the U.S. had led a so-called Clean Network initiative against
04:05China, which says it seeks to eliminate the long-term threat to data privacy, security
04:11and human rights posed to the free world from authoritarian malign actors.
04:16According to the State Department's website, Israel, Japan and Taiwan authorities are still
04:22among U.S. partners in this initiative.
04:25However, the latest attack makes Chinese people doubt whether a pair of dirty hands can really
04:30clean the Internet.
04:34China Currents is a weekly news talk show from China to the world.
04:38We cover viral news about China every week and also give you the newest updates on China's
04:43cutting-edge technologies.
04:44Let's get started.
04:55Welcome to China Currents, your weekly news report on what's happening in China.
04:59I'm Lisa.
05:01In this episode, in Egypt, American flight jets lost to China's.
05:06Lebanon Patriot hacks affect iPhone sales in China.
05:10Taiwan hacker army won the Chinese netizens' laughter with a hilarious performance.
05:15Chinese workers prove they are the best in France.
05:18First, let's focus on the latest achievement of China's arms sales.
05:24According to Chinese media, the paper, on 16 September, the Egyptian Air Force will
05:30purchase Chinese fighter jets to replace America's F-16.
05:35The Egyptian Air Force plans to purchase the J-10C fighter jet, produced by China's Chengdu
05:42Aircraft Industry Group.
05:43The aircraft can carry 5,600 kg of either missiles and bombs and can fly at a maximum
05:51speed of 1.8 miles.
05:53Its combat radius is 550 km, while the direct distance between Cairo and Tel Aviv is 402
06:01km.
06:02This means that if Israel has an airshow, Egypt's J-10C would only need 11 minutes
06:08to get there.
06:09While Egypt's specific procurement quantity has not been disclosed, Voice of America claimed
06:14that China is expanding and targeting the Middle East regional market.
06:19However, according to information disclosed by other American media, the Middle East regional
06:25market is evidently being messed up by America's unreasonable pricing strategy.
06:31In fact, the Egyptian Air Force operates 220 F-16s, making it the fourth largest F-16 operator
06:38in the world.
06:39Washington had offered Cairo the upgraded F-16V, but the price of it was unreasonably
06:46expensive.
06:47For example, the U.S. once sold 66 of them to Taiwan Island for US$8 billion, which means
06:54each flight jet cost US$121 million.
06:58In contrast, Pakistan signed a US$1.4 billion deal with China in 2009 to buy a reported
07:0436 J-10Bs, with a unit price of only US$39 million.
07:10Compared to the products that the U.S. is trying to sell to Egypt, Chinese flight jets
07:15are not only half the price but also perform better.
07:19As Bulgarian Military.com reported, the J-10C offers superior combat capabilities compared
07:26to the enhanced F-16 model, or at a comparable cost.
07:31Military Watch Magazine also reported that the close to 200 F-16s that form the backbone
07:37of the fleet are considered among the least capable first-generation fighters in the world
07:42and have been heavily downgraded and restricted to using obsolete Cold War-era weaponry and
07:48no beyond-visual-range air-to-surface weapons whatsoever.
07:52In fact, the F-16 is an excellent fighter jet that has been tested in actual combat.
07:58However, due to relations with Israel, the U.S. has imposed varying degrees of air combat
08:04capability restrictions on the products sold to Egypt, preventing them from posing a significant
08:10threat to the Israeli Air Force.
08:13For example, they refuse to sell the AIM-120 missile, which should originally have been
08:18paired with the F-16.
08:21This means that Egyptian pilots must rely on AIM-7 missiles with a range of less than
08:2770 km, while Israeli pilots have missiles with at least 105 km range.
08:34On the other hand, China's J-10C flight jet can carry the PL-15 missile, which would
08:39allow pilots to strike enemies 300 km away.
08:44And the relations between China and Israel is obviously not as close as that between
08:48the U.S.
08:50According to the Eurasian Times, China is also promoting its latest stealth fighter
08:54jet, the FC-31, to the global market, which has gathered attention in the Middle East.
09:01With the American F-35, Israel is currently the only country in the Middle East with stealth
09:06flight jet.
09:07However, how long this advantage will last is uncertain.
09:12Next up, let's turn our attention to Lebanon, which had a profound impact on Chinese customers.
09:19On the 17th of September, hundreds of pagers in Lebanon simultaneously exploded by remote.
09:2512 people have been confirmed dead, including an 8-year-old girl.
09:30And 2,750 more have been injured, including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon.
09:37The pager involved in explosions belonged to a Taiwanese manufacturer, Gold Apollo,
09:43and their products have been sold to 260,000 units in the U.S. and Australia in the past
09:50two years.
09:51A second wave of remote exploding occurred just a day after the first blast, which killed
09:57at least 20 people and nearly 450 wounded.
10:02According to Al Jazeera, several blasts took place simultaneously, similar to the explosion
10:07on the 17th, but the second round was mostly related to walkie-talkies, which were labelled
10:13with the Japanese manufacturer ICOM.
10:16The New York Times reported that Israel's intelligence agency Mossad allegedly hid explosives
10:22inside the pagers, later triggering the explosion remotely.
10:27The operation may have been going on for several months and involved at least 5,000 pagers.
10:33The exact cause of the explosion remains unknown, but several analysts have suggested that the
10:39supply chain of the devices was tampered with or manipulated before reaching Lebanon.
10:45Bombs disposal specialist Chris Hunter told Al Jazeera that Israel may have gained access
10:50to the supplier.
10:52The pager attack sparked concerns about the security of supply chain on Chinese internet.
10:58In 2020, the U.S. led a so-called Clean Network initiative against China, especially Chinese
11:04technology giant Huawei, which says it seeks to eliminate the long-term threat to data
11:09privacy, security, and human rights posed to the free world from authoritarian malign
11:15actors.
11:17According to the State Department's website, Israel, Japan, and Taiwan authorities are
11:22all among the U.S. partners in this initiative.
11:25The recent pager attacks have led many in China to question whether U.S. and its allies
11:30are really endangering the global supply chain by pushing Chinese products out of the market.
11:37On China's largest social media platform, Weibo, Xiangligang, a blogger with 1.6 million
11:43followers, commented that the pager attacks have seriously undermined the credibility
11:48of electronic devices worldwide.
11:50He noted that many people in China are now questioning the security of products like
11:55iPhone and Tesla.
11:57Several days after Apple released its latest iPhone, both Pinduoduo and Taobao, the two
12:03largest e-commerce platforms in China, have slapped a 4% discount on the high-end iPhone
12:0916 Pro Max, which only came out for three days in China.
12:13For Chinese consumers, iPhones used to sell out immediately upon release.
12:18People queue up and even have to pay extras to scalpers to buy them.
12:22Things are changing.
12:23Next up, a Taiwanese hacker group were caught by Mainland China.
12:28On 23 September, China's Ministry of State Security exposed a Taiwanese hacker group
12:34specializing in fabricating fake news.
12:37Originally, their mission was to hack into the websites of universities and airlines
12:41in Mainland China to steal confidential data and to spread misleading information through
12:47bot accounts, and they unsurprisingly failed.
12:51The hacker group, named Anonymous64, is led by members of Taiwan's cyber army, established
12:57in June 2017 by Taiwanese authorities.
13:01Interestingly, the Taiwanese government denies any involvement.
13:05This group operates an ex-account, where they boldly claim to have hacked the official website
13:11of 40 Mainland Chinese universities and frequently posted images of hacking Mainland China's
13:18digital billboards and internet television to spread hate speech.
13:22In their propaganda, they portrayed Mainland China's cybersecurity as highly vulnerable.
13:28However, according to the investigation by China's Ministry of State Security, the
13:33images they posed were fake and edited by Photoshop, and the hacked university website
13:39were counterfeit replicas, with no actual user trafficked.
13:43Despite their largely unsuccessful hacking attempts, the group successfully exposed their whereabouts.
13:49China's Ministry of State Security accurately identified three active Taiwanese military
13:54personnel involved in the project, Luo Junming, Hong Liqi, and Liao Weilun, while this marks
14:02their first successful entry into a general Mainland Chinese official website.
14:07Next, on 15 September, the 47th WorldSkills Competition concluded in France.
14:13China claimed the top spot in the event, winning 36 gold, 9 silver, and 4 bronze medals.
14:20Chinese workers have won gold medals in projects such as aircraft maintenance, automotive technology,
14:27autonomous mobile robots, 3D digital gaming art, and cooking.
14:32Known as the Olympics for Workers, the week-long competition brought together over 1,600 workers
14:38from 69 countries and regions.
14:40The players competed across 59 skilled disciplines within six major categories, including construction,
14:47arts, communication, manufacturing, transportation, and services.
14:52Workers from Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia also pulled off amazing results in fields
14:57like information technology and engineering.
15:00South Africa also sent 26 workers to complete an event related to renewable energy and auto body repair.
15:07In fact, outside the competition, Chinese workers also remained close ties with their fellow athletes.
15:14Under the Belt and Road Initiative, the Luban Workshop, a vocational education and training
15:19network developed by China, allowed workers across Africa and Asia to learn skills from
15:24each other.
15:25According to the South China Morning Post, there are 33 new Luban workshops across 29
15:31Asia and Africa countries.
15:34It was a scheme that was first launched in Thailand in 2016.
15:38According to the Chinese Ministry of Education, more than 22,000 students have received vocational
15:43training there, with more than 10,000 have gone on to graduate with degrees from affiliated
15:49universities.
15:51China's main foreign aid agency recently said the Ethiopian Luban Workshop, based in
15:57Addis Ababa, has been designed as a high-quality skills training center for the entire African
16:04continent by the African Union headquarters.
16:08Despite the Luban Workshop providing a valuable platform for global workers to exchange technologies
16:13and improve vocational training, some Western outlets have cast doubts on its intentions.
16:19The Washington Post, for example, suggested that the Luban Workshops serve China's ideological
16:24goals, drawing parallel to the Confucius Institute, which have also faced criticisms and suspicion
16:31from the West.
16:33At the closing ceremony, Leon handed over the flag to Shanghai as the host of the 48th
16:39World Skull Competition.
16:40Let us wish workers from every country good results in the next competition.
16:45And that is all for today.
16:47Thank you for watching this episode of China Current.
16:49If you have any thoughts or comments about our show, please reach us at the email address
16:53below.
16:54And we look forward to hearing from you and see you next time.
17:05We'll go for a short break, but we'll be right back.
17:07Stay with us.
17:17Welcome back to China Now.
17:19In this second segment, we have Thinkers Forum with Jan Orberg, academic and director of
17:24Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research.
17:27Likewise, in Global Arena is Charles Liu, senior fellow at The Hay University, both
17:33talking about interesting topics.
17:35Let's have a look.
17:47Now, if you go to 9-11, it was a lousy conflict analysis because everybody asked, how was
17:56it done and who did it?
17:59The attack, you know, on World Trade Center and Pentagon, and the third one was meant
18:04to be the White House, but the plane crashed.
18:09They did not ask, why was it done?
18:13And so if you don't ask why, you cannot solve the problem.
18:17But that was not the intention for the U.S.
18:20The U.S. wanted to exploit that victimhood, and I'm not underestimating it, but 3,000
18:27people, less than 3,000 people were killed on 9-11, 2001.
18:31Majority of which, or at least half of which, were not American citizens, but people who
18:36sat from all over the world in the World Trade Center.
18:40So, with due respect to every life that cost, the United States decided to exploit that
18:47situation for saying, now we're going to have a global war on terror, the GWAT, the
18:53Global War on Terror.
18:56Our war on terror begins with Al-Qaeda, but it does not end there.
19:04It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.
19:16That means wherever we think that the guys who did this came from, we are going to bomb
19:21and occupy.
19:22So, on the 7th of October, they invaded Afghanistan.
19:26And so, over the time, these 23 years, figures from Brown University and elsewhere in the
19:33U.S. and other statistics have it that somewhere between 1 and 5 million people have lost their
19:40lives as part of the GWAT, the Global War on Terror that the U.S. started and still
19:47has running.
19:48So, instead of asking, why did they take the financial center of the world, the military
19:55center of the world, the Pentagon, and the political center of the world, namely the
20:00White House, which was telling, you know, they didn't bomb any kind of, you know, museum
20:05building or hospital or something.
20:07They took the three centers at that time.
20:11That should have been a message to someone.
20:13If you had read Bin Laden's book, he starts out saying that the West has done enormous
20:20harm, not the least mass killing people in the East, by which he referred to Hiroshima
20:27and Nagasaki.
20:28So, long story short, you overreact because you consider yourself a victim.
20:35Namely, you try to kill terrorists and say that thereby you will fight terrorism.
20:44That's not the way it works because when you kill terrorists in the Middle East, al-Qaeda
20:51or al-Nusra or whatever, and by the way, the West has cooperated with a lot of them, for
20:55instance, in Aleppo in Syria.
20:57I've seen it myself.
20:58When you go for killing people, you don't solve the problem.
21:02What you should do is to ask yourself, why do people become terrorists?
21:08And when you have talked with terrorists and found out what their criticism and grievances
21:12are, how they feel marginalized, and why they use violence to get attention, then you
21:18begin to have a sense of what can be done.
21:22And I think that has been a devastating development for the Western world.
21:28The fighting after 9-11 all around the world by the U.S. has contributed to making the
21:37U.S. more hated and having a more negative image than it otherwise would have had.
21:43That goes together with all the wars the U.S. has lost.
21:48There's no wars it has won since Vietnam.
21:51It has lost all the wars morally, politically, legally.
21:56The strong country, the strong society, is one in which your different elements of power
22:04are balanced equally much.
22:06A strong economy, strong political status, strong culture, strong social patterns, cohesion,
22:15strong legal power, and legitimacy in the eyes of others.
22:20Now, if all these are sinking, but there's one you have, and that is the military power.
22:25You become a kind of drug addict, in this case a weapons or militarism addict.
22:32And you will militarize yourself to death.
22:35Because the reason you have all this military is that you've taken the power from the economic power,
22:41the political power, the cultural power, and invested that in your military and warfare capacity.
22:47And the bottom of that, the basis that should carry this, is becoming smaller and smaller.
22:54And the West at the moment is the best at military power.
22:58It is declining in economic power, it's declining in political power, it's declining in cultural power,
23:06it's declining in trade, it's declining in global legitimacy.
23:11But one thing the Americans and NATO can say is, we're strong, we can do things.
23:16Now, they lost all the wars since Vietnam, but put that aside,
23:20we can still blow you up if you don't behave like we want you to behave.
23:24That's what happens at the moment because of this militarization against Russia.
23:27Which is perverse because Russia was already a dwarf before all this started.
23:32Russia had 8% of NATO's military expenditures.
23:36Excuse me, nobody with 8% or 8 horses does not start a war against somebody who has 100 horses.
23:44So this whole thing is fantasy.
23:47It is a way to legitimate your own or cover up your own blunder called Ukraine and membership of NATO.
23:54If you ask me why NATO is spreading, it's because our leaders in the West believe that we're number one.
24:00We're second to none in the military sphere.
24:03That means you will see all problems around you as something that can be solved by weapons.
24:08By means of weapons or more weapons.
24:11That's why diplomacy has basically disappeared.
24:14That's why economic sustainability, underlying defense, has disappeared.
24:20That's why you don't care anymore about whether the rest of the world finds your policies legitimate.
24:26And that's why you fight to preserve what you think you can preserve while everything else is falling apart.
24:35It takes no intelligence to start a war.
24:38It takes a lot of knowledge and intelligence to stop a war and create peace.
24:42And that's why I say there is a connection between intellectual and moral disarmament in the West.
24:48It doesn't matter anymore. We don't do diplomacy anymore.
24:51We don't take the other into account.
24:53We don't go for common security.
24:56We don't go for disarmament anymore.
24:58We don't respect the UN Charter because it's easier not to and just send some weapons.
25:02You see, the response from the Western NATO countries has been all the time, send more weapons.
25:07What do we do at the moment?
25:09The totally intellectually indefensible position.
25:13And the presidential candidates in the US have it and built on it.
25:17We want a ceasefire while we pump in weapons and ammunition to Israel.
25:21Does that make sense?
25:23I think a child can see that that is stupid and doesn't make sense.
25:27I think there is a clear connection between militarism, armament, just hammering, you know, when you have a problem.
25:39Whereas you need intellectual rearmament and moral rearmament if you want to solve conflicts in a productive and lasting sustainable way.
25:51It cannot be done by weapons. I'm sorry.
25:54And so this kind of intelligent conflict resolution is over.
25:59It's not used anymore.
26:01When I say these things here in the West, they say, oh, that's very idealist.
26:06I don't know where it happens, but I think it had to do with the fact that the Soviet Union broke down.
26:11Warsaw Pact disappeared.
26:12And then you could do anything you liked.
26:14There was a free world for the West in 20 years where you could start any war, you could bomb here and there.
26:20There was no Soviet Union that could prevent it.
26:22There was no China that could prevent it.
26:24There was nobody else who could prevent it.
26:26Now, let me give you a personal experience that I had in the 80s.
26:31I'm that old.
26:33Our colleagues, me and my colleagues, were working for the Swedish foreign ministry, writing reports, doing conceptual analysis.
26:43What is deterrence in psychological, political and moral terms and things like that?
26:48And they would get the material and they would then say, come up that and that day and we will go through your text.
26:55And we have a lot of questions to you.
26:57Why?
26:58Because Sweden needed, as a non-aligned, to a certain extent neutral country, to devise, to develop its own policies and be unique.
27:08Because it did not just call Brussels or Washington, what shall we do?
27:12It had to, because it had its own policy, it had to be very, very solidly based in knowledge and clear concepts.
27:22Now, that's not the Sweden today.
27:24The Sweden today is a foreign policy that is completely in the interest of the United States.
27:29As a member of NATO, it has no independent foreign policy anymore.
27:34In my view, you could just as well close down the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, apart from ambassadors around the world.
27:39That's nice.
27:40And it is a total de-intellectualization.
27:46It's a foreign policy and security policy formulated without you needing any knowledge.
27:55Because you get the inspiration, the words, even the Twitter statements for press conferences, you get them through the Western influence.
28:05That's how Sweden, where I come from or live in, I've seen this setting up of not only NATO membership, but 17.
28:14I said 1717 American military bases on Swedish territory, 15 in Finland, 3 in Denmark, and 4 or 5 in Norway.
28:24More than 40 bases in one year set up in what used to be a peaceful corner of the world.
28:29Not only NATO membership, but bilateral agreements about bases, bases that will be under American jurisdiction.
28:38Where, for instance, the sovereign state of Sweden has abdicated parts of its independence and sovereignty and given it to the United States.
28:47For what reason?
28:49For being used if there is a conflict with Russia.
28:54Not that we have something that we can contribute.
28:57Not something that NATO is interested in.
29:00Not something the Western world could make good means of, such as a mediation capacity.
29:06Such as a strong disarmament policy.
29:08Such as an inspirational UN relationship.
29:15We don't have it. We have nothing to give anymore.
29:18You can add to that, you know, Ukraine with NATO expansion is a factor that makes the West go down.
29:25Because everybody who is not NATO can see that NATO was a main conflict creator until Russia, unfortunately.
29:34And I would say not very productively invaded Ukraine.
29:38And then you had Nord Stream.
29:40And now you have the genocide in Gaza.
29:43All these things are contributing to undermining the authority and credibility and legitimacy in the rest of the world's eyes.
29:53Of the United States and the Western world, NATO and the European Union.
29:58I have never been anti-Western or anti-American.
30:02But I feel it's painful to see how nobody is threatening the West.
30:08But thanks to its own confrontational policies, its own militarism, its own we can do nothing wrong, the hubris, we are demolishing ourselves in the West.
30:20I think that's very sad.
30:22And I wish there would be some leadership somewhere in the West who could say, hey, we've got to find out before it's too late.
30:29It has all the time been we're doing nothing wrong.
30:32It's the others who are foolish or dangerous or a challenge.
30:36We keep on doing what we will.
30:38We step up what we do, not seeing that what they do has been self-destructive.
30:44And that's intellectually, you know, it's disarmament while you promote rearmament with military means.
30:53And that's very sad to see for those of us living in the West.
31:00A spokesman of the Turkish government has announced that Turkey is thinking of joining BRICS or BRICS Plus, as it stands now, because now it's more than the five original countries.
31:14And this is fascinating because for Turkey, which has been seeking to join the EU for a long time, has had problems.
31:24But it's also a member of NATO, a member of the U.S. military alliance, is now seeking to join BRICS.
31:32Now, what does this mean?
31:34Of course, the U.S. would not be very happy because for Turkey, a member of NATO to join BRICS is clearly taking a stance for and with the global South.
31:47I think what we have is a situation in which countries, independent and sovereign states, are seeking the best for their countries, the best for their people.
31:58And it seems that participation in NATO does not seem to measure up in terms of improving the lives of the people of Turkey.
32:08But joining BRICS may actually help in promoting South-South collaboration and promoting better trade, better financial terms, better everything among the members of BRICS.
32:22And given the fact that BRICS is now talking about a settlement currency for members of BRICS, starting with a settlement in local currencies, but possibly a BRICS currency for trade settlement,
32:36which will be very helpful to BRICS members and other financial institutions being established, BRICS bank, BRICS development institutions, all of this would be quite meaningful for Turkey.
32:49I think these are real things, concrete things, much more than the imaginary enemies that NATO gets together to fight against.
32:59For the West, there's a concern that this taking a position on wanting to join BRICS, not only by Turkey but many others, is actually siding with China, siding with Russia.
33:13Now, this is absolutely ridiculous, because BRICS was something that was created by Goldman Sachs banker, Brazil, India, Russia, China, and South Africa.
33:26It just happened that BRICS sounded good. It is not a political or geopolitical formation.
33:35It's just that these five countries, at the head of the state level, decided that it would be interesting to have a collaborative effort along the lines of these five countries' interests.
33:46And that's why it was formed. And then they found there are lots of commonalities in terms of what they have to deal with, in terms of their development efforts.
33:56So they worked along those lines. Now, very good. Many other developing countries discovered this is very helpful, and hence decided to join and actively participate.
34:09And this is why Turkey is now seeking to join. It has nothing to do with taking the side of China or taking the side of Russia.
34:19It's just common sense of exercising your sovereignty and wanting to improve your relations with other global South countries, improve trade, improve the livelihood of our people.
34:35I think the way things are moving is not just Turkey, but others will probably be joining.
34:41But the way things are going, BRICS Plus will become quite an entity, quite a sizable entity very soon.
34:49But it's a good thing. It's a good thing where the global South collaboratively tries to accelerate their development efforts and improve the lives of their people.
34:59A few weeks ago, a researcher, very well-known actually, a neuroscientist, Dr. Wu Ying, committed suicide.
35:12And the National Institute of Health formally declared that many of the researchers have found that there have been discriminatory practices and really a lot of emotional and psychological pressure on Asian Americans,
35:28especially those of the Chinese descent. This is nothing new. We've known that this has been happening after Donald Trump, while he was president, launched a program to target Asian Americans,
35:44especially Chinese Americans, for national security reasons, quote-unquote.
35:49And thereafter, there have been other legislation in U.S. Congress targeting the same, and even more ridiculous, targeting the Chinese government in terms of whether or not they have influence over researchers to capture U.S. information or science and technology secrets.
36:11Now, for someone who's been, I guess, subject to the same thing more than 50 years ago, I can actually talk quite a bit about this, because I remember the days of Martin Luther King,
36:24Reverend Martin Luther King leading demonstrations for civil rights against discrimination. I remember in 1968, the massive march on Washington.
36:34At that time, America talks about everybody being equal, human rights for all, and so on and so forth. But sorry, the N-word, you go to the back of the bus, or you don't even get a seating.
36:48And the N-word was prevalent all over, and it was commonly used. But it's nothing new for Asian Americans either, because at that same period, during that same period, you had many expressions used, derogatory expressions used against Asian Americans.
37:09Many of you probably have not heard of the expressions used at that time, and I was subject to exactly that. That continued on until today, but now it's become an international thing. It's China, China, China, Chinese Communist Party.
37:28But behind it all, underneath it all, is still racism and discrimination. A couple years ago, fellow alumni of my alma mater, Princeton University, was putting together a scholarship fund for Chinese students to study at Princeton.
37:48And eventually, the thing was dropped, because we were told, let's not say by whom, but let's say by university officials, that there is a discriminatory practice against foreign students from China, where FBI required reports on a regular basis on their activities.
38:12And even university officials were unhappy about what they had to do, and were absolutely outraged by the discriminatory practices being imposed on them by the U.S. government.
38:26Of course, we know that the U.S. government has now other regulations coming out that, oh, come and study in the U.S., pay full tuition, but don't touch the sciences. You can study the non-science subjects.
38:43It's really amazing when you think about it. I think back 50 years, more than 50 years ago, when Dr. Martin Luther King, and against the war in Vietnam, and demonstrations against the bombings in Cambodia, and so on and so forth.
39:00Going back over 50 years, and now the very same, however under a different guise, is now being practiced as racial discrimination seems to be so deeply ingrained in this country of the U.S., that all the talk about equality, and the human rights, and so on and so forth, just seems so hypocritical.
39:25And this was another episode of China Now, a show that opens a window to the present and the future of the Aishan Yai, and hope you enjoy it. See you next time.