1410: China’s Economic Takeover: How the West Funded Its Own Downfall with Author Edouard Prisse

Robert Plank 0:01 He predicted major economic shifts before they happen. But no one listen. Well now we're here to listen. It's Edouard Prisse, who is the sharp minded researcher behind the very excellent book we were funding China's growth that must stop. It's a bold expose on how decades of Western trade, empowered and authoritarian rival. So we're here to talk about the chaotic genius Donald Trump, about China's rise funded by the West, about perhaps Clinton, Kissinger, some of these names that you've heard, and how we can take some action, even if we feel powerless against global economics. So, Mr. Edouard Prisse, happy to see you great speaking with you.

Edouard Prisse 0:47 Same here. I'm delighted. Thank you.

Robert Plank 0:50 You're very welcome. And so what did I leave out of that introduction? What are you all about? What should we pay close attention to?

Edouard Prisse 0:57 What I'm all about is that China is getting very rich, and it is mostly due to an original error by the US, by Bill Clinton, who otherwise was an excellent president, but he made a huge economic error in 2000 when he argued in the Paul Nitzan school in New York, when he gave a speech why America should need free trade with China, and his arguments were completely wrong, which you cannot tell him that he's a fool. He's not a fool, but he is not an economist, and he should have been well advised and wasn't. And therefore he said, as arguments to begin free trade, complete nonsense. And that's not the worst. The worst is that then he did create free trade, because the reputation of the US in matters economic is worldwide huge. Then was at least worldwide huge. The whole world followed him. Europe made free trade with China, everybody else, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, because Bill Clinton initiated it on false grounds. And the result of this error is that, because China was going to stay cheap, and it is, it has, but that was predictable as their dictatorship. Because of that, China started selling huge amount of cheese goods at prices that we in the West were not able, and still are not able, to continue completely compete with sorry. I'm stuttering. Forgive me. And so this situation is a very dangerous situation because, because we allow China to sell huge amounts to us, and we pay for that. That money has kept China's economy out of trouble, although they would have had trouble otherwise. They are weak and rickety. But we pay so much for their cheap goods that with that money, they can cover any problem they have, and with that now, the last 25 years, they have become hugely rich and powerful, and we continue by buying there to fund their growth. And my book says, if we don't stop that quickly, and that is only the White House that can do it, if the White House doesn't do that quickly, we are going to go under Chinese world power. Quite soon. It has already passed halfway that overriding world power, but it can still be slowed down, maybe stopped, because as soon as you stop funding their growth and their situation, a normal situation will be created. We need that if we don't want to let our money make them super powerful. That's the book,

Robert Plank 3:49 Okay? Well, it is good to be educated, right? Because, as you say, that the error was made, but there is still time the White House can still do something and to help us understand. You mentioned about opening up free trade with China, and I feel like maybe I understand what that means, but I want to be sure. So when you say free trade with China, just to help us understand, what does that mean?

Edouard Prisse 4:09 It means that China, at the prices they produce, may export to us and we may export to them, but since the price difference is huge. Their production costs are still now, after 25 years, less than half our production costs. That means that we in the US, and also in Europe, because I'm a European, we cannot compete with those prices that we that means that it is a basic error to allow their goods at their prices to come into our economy, because it means that that's good days we cannot compete. And now, after 25 years, what I predicted long time ago is that many of our industries are already losing out with cars, which now. Becomes a big subject, but also with everything else. And there are many subjects, products that they can now make, and we can't even anymore, because the factories that were able to do that 25 years ago have closed. In other words, our economy also becomes dependent on them, which is hugely dangerous. And

Edouard Prisse 5:23 you said, and you repeated what I said. It is still time. There is a doubt about that some people say, and they are not stupid. It is already too late. But there's a catch there, even if it is almost or already too late, if you continue doing the stupidity of making China Rich, which we do, then it is surely too late. If you stop that, then there is still a chance that it will give a good shock, together with Europe. If Europe comes to their senses, it gives a big shock to China. And then the equilibrium in the world, which is now completely screwed, might come back to normal, and we might stay alive with our democracy. Otherwise, you know how cruel China is. Let's just take the countries around it. Would that have taken? We know that they are slowly coming here. They are able now already to buy whole ports in Africa, whole railway systems and make them in Africa, they make friends with the money that we send to them, buying their cheap goods. It's a stupid mechanism, and somehow, because 25 years ago, almost everybody thought, you know, economy, the Communism will break down, just like in the USSR, we are so much better. We don't have to be afraid all these wishful thinkings were nonsense, and it hasn't broken down. And so by now, we are in a dangerous situation. My book lays out the origin of the era. It lays out what is now happening, and it tries to give a way of getting out. And then Donald Trump

Edouard Prisse 7:05 is, after all his predecessors, the only president who at least instinctively understands something is wrong with China with trade, but the way he handles it is incredibly chaotic. He just throws around terrorists without knowing the consequence. Then he comes after the consequence. He must backtrack, and it makes a mess. And also, you shouldn't do that if you do it well. And I can advise him to do it well, because there is a very clever way, a system systematically, to do it well, my book lays that out, and I can't explain that all this in the interview with you, but that's why the book is interesting.

Robert Plank 7:46 Yes, so you provide solutions, right? You don't just say hey, like there are problems, but you don't stop there. You say, hey, there is a way out of it. And I'm curious about, why do you think that no one else saw this coming? It seems like you're the only one who saw these warning signs. Why was that?

Edouard Prisse 8:04 Of course, I'm worried that I was the only one, or apparently, and I tried to explain it, as I said to you, before we thought, and everybody then 25 years and 20 years thought, Communism will crash and democracy will come, just like in the USSR, communist crash. Communism crashed. And you know that the Berlin Wall fell, and all those countries came to us, and so the we, the West, had the impulsion we are better. And as the Russian economy and communism went wrong, China will go wrong too, we are much better. And one of the arguments we use for our fallacy is that Deng Xiaoping, who was the big leader of China a bit before he completely changed Marx's economy, where everything belonged to the states and where there was no competition, and therefore no no sharpening of what they did, no competition, he changed the whole economy. He was a genius, and so he made the economy like the US. With, how do you call it competition? And with individual position, you can own something in our economy you couldn't before in China, communist Marxism, he changed that. And people think before because China came to our system. Of course, we are better, better because they imitate us. What nobody understand. Understood is that it would make China so dangerous, precisely competitively, because they accepted our system. And so there was the illusion Communism will crash. There was also the illusion we are better anyway. And there was the illusion their economy will also probably crash. And those predictions were in the press the whole time, and that is the only explanation I can give to the major error we in the West have been making, and have consistently made. And I try. It to I was full of confidence. We will stop that. Surely I'll pay it luck lever. When nothing was done to stop I wrote an article in 2008 and sent it in 2009 to the New York Times. But as I'm a European and as American things, we Europeans are idiots, New York Times didn't even answer. I put it in the waste paper basket. Luckily, they I this might call one of these American things. FBI put it on their website for three years, so I can prove I wrote it, but it wasn't read. And so then I started writing books, and I put them on Amazon, and then I thought, nobody reads that. So by now, I wrote in a book, and I have this publisher in LA in Los Angeles, who is, we have a contract for 18 months, who is making publicity. So now I hope it will begin to be read in the US.

Robert Plank 10:57 Yes, you're making the effort. You're doing what you have to to get the word out. It seems like we were perhaps overconfident, right? We didn't expect China to adapt their communist system to capitalism, and now it's to our detriment. And you were saying, Well, I tried to get the word out, tried to tell the New York Times, they wouldn't listen. But now that the world is global. We have the internet, we have social media, publicity, podcasting, you're going out there and getting the word out. And as far as you writing this amazing book, right? You have to explain this really detailed situation, but also make it accessible and interesting, and also make it short enough and long enough. So what was that like? Did you have difficulty writing the book, or what was that process like for you?

Edouard Prisse 11:44 I'm not a natural writer. I'm rather a musician and originally and a mathematician. But So I learned to write, but I think the people who read it now read it now tell me that it is very readable and even fun to read, which is, okay, fine. You just said a word which is exactly the right word. You said we were overconfident. That is the essential word. We were overconfident, absolutely. And said that has, you know, many people because they thought we are better put away all our arguments. No, we are better to forget it. And this overconfidence has gone for example, if you look at speeches that Bill Clinton gave when he visited China, he spoke to them as if they were naughty children who didn't know what to do. This overconfidence was everywhere, and we thought that was normal. And yes, you're quite right. You use the right word over confidence.

Robert Plank 12:45 Okay? And so you explain the situation in this book. And you know, the best books have all these other entertaining factors, right? There is humor, there's stories. So is there anything noteworthy about the book? In that sense, is there any any fun, humorous anecdotes or stories that you think are are relevant or important in that book.

Edouard Prisse 13:06 I'll try the whole situation is rather dangerous and not so funny. But one thing is, which I put at the first chapter, Albert Einstein. You know, the famous guy who was the famous mathematician and Nobel Prize and so called, one of the most clever guys in the world ever. He said two things are infinite, the universe, and human stupidity only about the universe. I'm not quite sure. In other words, he was black, quite sure about human stability, and if you see how we have behaved, that he is completely right, and we must try and lift ourselves out of that stupidity. And that's what the book tries to do. And it's fun in that sense, that I also give examples of how incredibly stupidity sometimes spread. And let me give you an example, which is, in fact, not fun, except that intellectually, it's nice to look at it in the European Commission. You know, Ursula von der Leyen is the boss, and she appoints every five years a new commission. And in 1999 she appointed for five years a commission for economy. Now that's fine. She appointed an Italian called Paulo Gentiloni, who had been Prime Minister of Italy, clever man, politically, very successful, except that he has no idea about any economic economy, and for five years, he was the man for economic, economy in the European Union. Now, how can you be so short sighted to appoint a clever man, yes, but who doesn't know nothing about economy? To be five years long the man who talks about economy, he did. He did nothing. And so what Einstein says?

Edouard Prisse 15:00 Yes, human stupidity is infinite, is, unfortunately, right. And so the funny thing in my book, and it's really quite fun to read, because every time something in my eyes economically, because the basis of an economy is badly done, I give an example, and you can just sit back and laugh and also be very unhappy both when you read these things.

Robert Plank 15:23 And it's scary, isn't it, that a lot of attention goes to who's who's running a country, right? A lot of attention goes to, well, who's the governor or the congress people, but it can be just some random economic position, and the wrong person's put in place, and the public maybe doesn't pay a lot of attention, because it's numbers, it's economy, it's not exciting, right? It's not interesting. And this one person in the bad position for many years can mess something up or are not doing the right thing. It's terrifying.

Edouard Prisse 15:56 Yeah, it is. Let me. Let me tell you, if you look at Clinton making that error, and I really think we shouldn't criticize Bill Clinton. He was not an economist. It's not his job to be mostly people who run countries are not economists. So that's normal. His advisors were wrong. Of course, they should have known. But there's worse, and will follow Einstein. What he said, there are about 15 professors in macro economy in the 15 top universities in the US. None of these guys, after Clinton, had given his big, cheap speech, sorry, in 2000 with his arguments. None had been in all the newspapers. None of these guys had even lifted a finger saying, there's something wrong there. That is very strange. Then other many countries followed, said it became the big trend. Free trade with China is the future, even in Geneva and those guys are Europeans, I'm afraid there is the World Trade Organization. The guys who work there are meant to be world experts on trade, none of them predicted as they should have been able to do. This is going wrong, and this illustrates what Einstein said, the if, if one's collective thinking goes one way. There are no people who trick it. Now this, I expose it, and it's fun to read, but it is also, as you said, dramatic, right? So yeah,

Robert Plank 17:25 And there's some quote I can't remember who said it, but it's that all that's needed for evil to win is for good men to do nothing. And it seems relevant here, right? Just there, that they just, they don't fix the situation, they don't fight, and need to put in the fight. And so as far as a solution to the problem, I know that you said that it's it's kind of complex. You need to read the book to get it, but is there a simplified version? Can you give us, like the 30,000 foot view to get an idea, to get us excited to read the full solution in the book?

Edouard Prisse 17:57 Well, I've tried to give it already, but I'll try again to be to make it clear, we have a situation in trade that's called free trade with China. China is a dictatorship, and China had, from the beginning, much lower prices about when in 2000 is 2001 this free trade started, the cost of production of a worker in a factory in China was then about 18% of what it was in the US. Can you imagine now it has grown. It is about 45% of what it is in the US and in Europe. But that means that even now, after 25 years, we cannot compete. And the ability of China, 25 years ago, to make complicated things, was very low. They just made jeans and shirts. And you know that we bought Steve stuff. But the Chinese are very clever. They have upgraded what they can very quick and very clever. They can now make electric cars, which is different from shirts, is much more complicated. And so in many things, they have grown tremendously in what they can at their low prices. So it is becoming more and more dangerous. Even if the prices have gone from 18% to 45 it is still impossible to compete with those prices. And then now, very funny, crazy things now, for example, the European Union says, yeah, the government in China is subsidizing and they shouldn't. Their industry. That's complete nonsense. They are just cheaper, full stop. And so we find excuses to point fingers where it doesn't work. And so I'm very happy to talk with you, I must admit, because it may help at least have some people in the US think more straight about what's happening. And if I can get that over and into public.

Edouard Prisse 19:59 Thinking I'd be the lighter. Then there's a second aspect in my book. I have, of course, worked very hard on this for 25 years. What has happened? Who is writing? What? And I found that there are many articles in the top US publishing, like foreign affairs, or like the two major think tanks, which is the Brookings Institution, on the one hand, for the Democrats, and the other one, I forget the name right now. For the Republicans, I've read everything that's right written about China. And what I found, because I've been so careful, and also checked the names of the guys who write, I found quite a lot about 12 to 15 brilliant Chinese scholars born in China having studied up till the end of University in China. So they came to the US after having gotten a master or a bachelor in China, then they got a PhD in the US, paid by the US, offered these guys, these 12 or 15

Edouard Prisse 21:08 Are all really very brilliant guys. Some are women. Two are women, the rest are men. And they are really very brilliant. And they have come here and stayed here after their PhD, and then often have asked for American passports and gotten it. And we think they are on our side, and they publish about China. And when you read carefully what they do, they criticize China on things that are minor economically, for example, that is a scandal house they change. And the Uyghurs, the Americans think because they yell at China, they must be on our side. And as soon as they write economically, they write exactly what China wants to hear. These guys still have a mother, a brother, a little cousin in China, and if they write bad about China, the mother goes to prison, the brother loses his job, the cousin cannot go to university. These guys are still brilliant in America, with jobs, with an American passport, loyal to China. And this is a so I write about that too. That is sneaky well, and it's good to get this to light, to get let the secrets out, so that way we are educated and we can speak to it with some knowledge. And in these last few minutes of our conversation, we're going to mention a minute that the book is called. We were funding China's growth. That must stop. I wanted to make sure, Mr. Edward Chrissy, that we cover what is important to you. So in these last final minutes of our discussion, is there a missing question in our conversation that I should be asking you, I just don't know to ask you.

Edouard Prisse 22:46 No, you've done it brilliantly well, and I'm so glad to talk to you, and I'm serious about that, not just praising you for fun because you are one of the few people who let me talk. And this is a delight. I think we've covered everything.

Edouard Prisse 23:00 The core message is with free trade, with China, we buy, and Europe buys, and everybody in the world buys so much there that China gets hugely rich, that power of money is already so much bigger than whatever the US has and Europe, Europe has and the rest of the world that they are overtaking. And one example that may show what that means, China can make ships, warships, and it has a capacity of how many ships it can make, warships, destroyers, in a year. That capacity is not like 10 or 15% bigger than the US capacity for making warships. It is five times as big as the US capacity right now. That's where it has gone already. So the situation is really dangerous in the future, because militarily, because of the money, because we buy there, they have been able to scale up their power, and now that makes military power as a consequence of our stupid error. That's the message, and that is scary. It's something to keep an eye on. It began in the long run, will be trouble forever. Ford now has a trouble making cars and competing with electric cars, with the Chinese you can put, of course, tariffs on electric cars, but you you must do far much more. You must stop the cheap products coming in, not just for cars. Now that's what the book is about, right? It started with blue jeans, but it's come such a long way to electric cars, and then if they can mass produce the warships, then we'll say, oh, no, if only we had done something sooner. Well, now there's still time, and and you as someone of the public, can get educated about this by claiming Edward Christie's excellent book called We were funding China's growth. That must stop. And economists.

Robert Plank 25:00 And political thinker Eduard Pressy presents a sobering and well researched analysis of how the West, especially the United States, enabled China to become an economic superpower. And you'll find out how we made some some bad mistakes, and now we need to correct them. It's not just a critique of economic policy, it's a wake up call for the West to rethink its future before it is too late. So as far as some next steps here, that book is on Amazon. Do you have any other resources, links for us? Is there a website, social media, or is it just go get the book? Well, the publisher is getting up through social media now, but I don't know what he's doing right now. I just want to thank you for being so good and clear with me. Thank you and thank you for being an excellent guest. You're Mr. Edward Chrissy. That's first name, E, D, o, u, a, r, d, last name, P, R, i, s, s, e, if you want to look him up on social media the book we were funding China's growth, that must stop before I let you go, Mr. Edward, it's time for the scary part of the podcast where I try to stump you. I try to put you on the spot by asking you about a fun quote or lesson that has served you. So what comes to mind for a fun quote or lesson,

Edouard Prisse 26:15 a quote that could make

Edouard Prisse 26:18 well, it is precisely the one I quote Einstein. In the beginning, I thought it's I don't understand why I understand something and others don't. And very slowly, it's only because of his quote that not the universe, but human stupidity, is infinite.

Edouard Prisse 26:38 Then I then I got the courage to look into it with with skepticism and not believing what people say. So that quote, to me, is very important by the cleverest man of the world is arguably that was people said about him. But Albert Einstein,

Robert Plank 26:54 I like his sense of humor too. I mean, once you see that and he's able to say it in a laughing way, which is lovely. Yes. So stupidity can be infinite, and it's up to us to educate ourselves to know what's happening. Ignorance is not an excuse, and we should check out this book called We were funding China's growth. That must stop Chinese disinformation aimed at the American public. Mr. Edward prissy, it's been a blast speaking with you. Thank you for your ideas.

Edouard Prisse 27:24 What's up? It's a delight. Thank you. Yes. Thank you very much. And get the book and we'll read it very soon. So.