Transcript of the above video: 

So for the last week, I have been in the land of China, to paraphrase Forrest Gump. And I was up there primarily with my kid on a sort of school exchange trip, and I got to get a glimpse of mainland China. Let me preface this video by saying I still hate Communist ideology, be with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, I do. I think Marxism, the notion of each according to his ability, each according to his needs - although it sounds great - in practice, especially when it's enforced at the barrel of a gun, is not the best way to organize a society. That being said, much like Vietnam which I've been to in the past, and I had to kind of give them a grudging sort of pass on the whole Commie thing, it looks like I have got to kind of do the same thing for China.

While again the flags are all up and there's a lot of the sort of symbolism of all of that, when you look at the day-to-day with these folks, they are looking to do business. Now there are some aspects of the place that I myself would disagree with if I had to live in a place that had such policies, most notably the social credit thing. I'm not a huge fan of having to use your phone; everything's cashless effectively. I'll get to the cashless thing; everything is not actually cashless as a practical matter up there. But in many ways, if you just kind of want to get on with your life and not have to have obstacles and things, it would probably be easier to just use your phone for everything, I get that. But that's not my country; I don't live there; they're happy with it, good, good for you. You have your own country, China; you can do what you want. The thing that I was thinking about while I was there and I had a lot of time to think because I didn't have a lot of ability to communicate, as many of my clients will be aware and I'm sure I'll be talking to folks this week in the aftermath of this trip, and I will get to all you guys. It just was what it was; I was incommunicado. The Great Chinese Firewall if you will was keeping me from communicating particularly effectively. So again it's their country; they can do what they want with it; I am happy for them. Enjoy sort of thing. 

One thing though I really noticed is this whole talk of a Trade War. It just seemed so much more ridiculous to me after I had been there because it's an oxymoron. Trade War: you are either trading with people, or you are warring with people. The notion of doing both is sort of internally inconsistent; again it is an oxymoron. So the big thing that I saw is industrialization and the reason for the thumbnail, if anybody has ever seen the movie 42 regarding Jackie Robinson who was the first black man to play in Major League Baseball, there's this great scene in that movie 42 - he played for at the time, the Brooklyn Dodgers - and they are in spring training and all the other guys on the team, not all by the way, a faction of some of the team and there's a scene that's not pertaining to the thumbnail where Peewee Reese who I always thought was kind of a classy guy in all of this was just sort of like, "what are you guys going on about? let's just play some baseball" basically. But they form a petition because they don't want to play baseball with Jackie Robinson because he's black is basically the premise of their petition. And there's this scene, I think his name is Leo, I can't remember his last name, who's the Manager of the Ball Club in that particular scene where he takes them all down to this kitchen at the hotel where they are having spring training, he's banging these pots and pans around, and he's telling them, "Hey, nobody cares about your thoughts on this. If this guy can help us win games he's coming." But there's a great scene and I felt like it pertained to China or at least from my observations of the place, I was just looking around, and it immediately made me think of that scene. And there's this part where he is talking to these guys and he is saying, "this is happening. You guys can write your petitions and do whatever you want. The ownership of this team will gladly make other arrangements for you, and you can move on down the road." I liked the scene because of the quote which is in the thumbnail which is, "there is more coming and they are talented and they want to play." That was what he was trying to get through their heads was like, "Hey, this guy isn't just a one-off phenomenon; this isn't an anomaly. There are more of these guys that are going to be gunning for your job," is basically what he was saying, and you guys are writing a petition to keep him out based on something as arbitrary as skin colour. 

At the end of the day, when I'm looking around China and I'm living here in Thailand which you talk about a country that is quickly industrializing themselves and in many ways is already industrialized, the same can be said for China as well, these guys are doing it at orders of magnitude more, just because it's a bigger place and there are more of them. So those out there in the West, take heed from the thumbnail. Take heed from the scene - we will put the link in the description below to the scene where the thumbnail comes from - take heed from that scene with regard to the notion of a Trade War or anything else with China. Probably time to start thinking less about war and more about trade because there is more coming and they want to build; they want to play; they want to get into market economics; they want to do business. I saw nothing but cranes and bridges being built everywhere. I mean we are already seeing it down here in Thailand, but this was orders of magnitude even more. Again they are a bigger place, there are more people up there, it makes sense. They are industrializing; they want to play and there's more coming. 

I was at a school for most of the time I was there, and I am looking at all these kids and how dedicated they are to their studies and things. This isn't a civilization that is going to produce a bunch of people waxing philosophically about the differences in their upbringing and how that changed their life. These are people that want to build bridges, and boats, technological innovations that take us into the space and things of this nature, okay. They want to play. That was my biggest observation for being up in China. 

So take it for whatever it's worth; it's one man's opinion. But at the end of the day, this notion that any type of Trade War with these people or anybody else for that matter much out here in East Asia is going to be in any way an effective means and method of maintaining standards of living that the West is used to, no, that's an unsound strategy. We need to be looking in the West by we - I mean in putting my hat on as a Westerner or somebody born in the West - that we need to be thinking about how best we can trade with these people, how best we can learn to do business with them, how best we can augment and facilitate each other's innovations, rather than worrying about fighting with them over this and that because at the end of the day, much like in 42, that manager’s prophecy was prescient. He was right. There were more coming, and the guys that didn't get out of the way as you see at the end of the movie, there's one of the guys, he's sitting there going to "Pittsburgh", he keeps going "Pittsburgh" because they got moved from New York, the city of everything, to Pittsburgh. Nothing wrong with Pittsburgh, it is just sort of the ongoing sort of joke in the movie. If we are not going to get on board with the East rising, then we had better get out of the way because it's coming like a freight train one way or the other.