Now that Xi's visit is wrapping up, what do you think was the real message Beijing wanted to send during this summit? And on the flip side, what was she listening for from President Trump?

Right.

Well, this looked on the surface to be a major event, but I think there wasn't a lot of things that wasn't already covered back in May when President Trump went to China.

So I think this was more of an extension or a confirmation.

I think they got two months in the extension of the pause of the trade tariffs and those kind of things.

But in terms of the major stuff like Rare Earths, AI, and even I think a lot of investments, we haven't seen the concrete details yet.

And I think what she was really looking for was more possible American investments going back to China as they've been leaving China for the last few years.

How does Beijing reconcile those two realities, wanting greater influence while growing, facing at least, growing suspicion in the United States?

Tell us about that aspect of this.

Right, I think what you mentioned is something that, actually, when you think about it, so the rally brought together, or at least the parts that I watched, human rights activists, religious activists, you know, people from different religious groups, as well as politicians.

I believe I saw Congressman Pat Ryan was there speaking today, as well as on screen, Nina Shea.

These are people, you know, I think the point here is that this issue is not just something that stays in the realm of human rights and activism.

It is something that should be championed in all conversations and at the forefront of all conversations with the Chinese Communist Party.

Because look, you know, the CCP, the reason they're allowed to still continue these type of, you know, atrocious behaviors is because there is no accountability in place yet.

So there's, you know, there's something happening in Congress.

What do you think that could look like?

And earlier, I spoke with David Zhang, director at Ashmore Capital, to get his thoughts on the news.

I think Chanel continuing to invest in China is quite interesting because it separates the short-term, you know, consumer cycle from the long-term China story.

There's no doubt that, uh, luxury spending in China has been under pressure.

You know, consumer confidence, uh, from what we've seen, you know, has been weaker.

The property market has, of course, been soft, and it's, and it still is.

So people are g- are generally more cautious about discretionary spending.

But for a global luxury brand like Chanel in China, it's simply too important a market to judge, you know, based on one or two difficult years.

And earlier I spoke with David Zhang, director at Asher Capital, to get his thoughts on the news.

I think Chanel continuing to invest in China is quite interesting because it separates the short-term consumer cycle from the long-term China story.

There's no doubt that luxury spending in China has been under pressure.

Consumer confidence from what we've seen has been weaker.

The property market has of course been soft and it still is.

So people are generally more cautious about discretionary spending But for a global luxury brand like Chanel, China is simply too important a market to judge based on one or two difficult years.

And luxury is also slightly different from mass market consumption.

How vulnerable are we, not only just our government's websites being hacked by China, but just us as individual Americans? I mean, what's going on there?

Yeah, I think this is really the important question to understand is what's the point of somebody like Joe or Mary from the Midwest got to do with anything like that? It does.

So I'll tell you the ultimate mission of the Chinese Communist Party, not just the Chinese people, but...

the Chinese Communist Party in its understanding of the world, and every five years it has a plan of how to move forward with things, is to change the way how people live, right? They want to...

Fundamentally, they reject the ideas of capitalism.

They reject the ideas of what the Constitution provides to the American people, what... rights are given or granted by by god and by just being on earth you know being existing so fundamentally if you read like communist writing marxist writings you you find that it's it's fundamentally trying to play god right now the chinese the ccp took what was in Russia, took what was in Europe and kind of made it a flavor of what the Chinese people would accept.

So it took in a lot of things like from fascism, from totalitarianism, all of these things to make it the flavor of the time.

Go for it.

I mean, it's, it's, it's hard to fight unless we have some sort of, I don't know, what do you suggest? What's a good, what would be some good techniques that the U S could use to, you know, push back against this other than, you know, keep building up our military and, you know, in some impending land war, like you said, which will probably never happen because it's not in our mutual best interest.

It's a, it's a very great question because I'll say this first.

So I, I know there's like, for me, at least my audience, I know many of them are in the, in active duty or are in the process of, at least so I've heard getting into it.

So like, they, I think there is a general interest, whether you're in the military or you're, you're in the civil or like civilian side.

Right.

Um, but, but we don't.

Okay.

You're saying the guy wrote the book based on China's initiatives or China's getting their initiatives off this guy's book?

How concerned are you about the numbers out of Meta, and how do they compare against Microsoft's results?

I'm concerned about Meta.

You know, although the core advertising business is not falling apart, you know, y- when you see the, uh, results, you know, second quarter revenue reached about sixty billion and was, you know, slightly ahead of expectations.

The concern is the re- really the combination of a slower forward growth and, you know, rising, uh, expenditure.

You know, their third quarter guidance of about sixty-one billion to sixty-four billion implies, you know, around twenty-two percent, um, you know, growth at the midpoint compared with, you know, twenty percent in the second quarter.

And in the meantime, you know, a- annual CapEx is, uh, expected to reach hundred and thirty to hundred and forty-five billion.

So the key question is no longer whether AI improves, you know, Meta's advertising recommendations.

How far were the numbers in line with your expectations?

David, what did these newly released files reveal to you?

It was a comprehensive network.

It was a mission campaign started by the Chinese Communist Party from the very top.

There's direct orders because in the Xi Jinping era, this is clearly a high chain of command issued down order to do this.

Now, we understand now that the first Trump administration was quite impactful to Xi Jinping in terms of raising America's comprehensive national power and in turn lowering China's.

And so what they really wanted to do, and we saw the aftermath of the COVID virus as well, it was to decrease the global power ranking.

And so this campaign that we're now seeing, I'm honestly surprised that it was 100 million.

So what does the CCP do precisely with all this money? And is there other nondisclosed money being spent on a variety of influence tactics? things that are outside of what they disclose publicly.

I want to get your sense of, you know, outside of China, of course we know what this day is, but inside of China, to the average person, has the CCP been relatively successful at essentially rewriting history?

Right.

There's clearly many people in China who've never seen this before.

There's also a vast majority, especially young people now, who are accessing the internet.

Between June 3rd, June 4th to 5th, China actually enacts a lot of censorship online in what is essentially the Barbra Streisand effect.

where they pretend like, oh, for example, video games are going into maintenance mode.

Shops, this year, the June 4th falls on a Thursday.

So do you see freedoms increasing or more of these examples as with the Tiananmen mothers who are unable to just mourn their own relatives because of a bureaucratic decision? Where do freedoms stand for the average Chinese person today?

So what do you think about the fact that the president called Xi [lips smack] a, a friend, a, a great leader, and now he's almost defending him, saying, "Elegantly referred to." What's, what's the strategy here, David?

Yeah, look, Lidia, on the surface it seems like the president was sort of giving all of the, uh, appraises needed to the dictator over there, but I think this is honestly part of Trump's, uh, business dealing strategy.

You gotta make your opponents feel like that they're getting more or that they're in this sort of, uh, you know, discussion on equal footing.

But look, uh, the president went into China on this trip with a lot of, uh, what I would assume i- are cards that don't really require China, such as Iran, such as energy.

But China, you see...

W- we'll probably see this in the coming hours or days, uh, buying more American products, uh, soybean, crude oil, or at least I think, I hope they keep their promise.

But just on that, uh, Truth Social post just now, it honestly makes me feel like that, uh, the president is speaking to Xi directly.

So this, do you think Pr- the president knows, Trump knows Xi, the Communist Party is our adversary? At, although he's talking nice, but at the end of the day, they don't wish us well.

Tell us about the documentary.

Yeah, the investigation is really based on a book written by a Chinese official called America Against America.

And this is something he did while traveling in the United States in the 80s, where he determined that there's many parts of the United States that can be exploited.

And we really see this reflected in today's strategy from the Chinese Congress Party against the United States.

And it's in a full frontal-slash-backwards-slash-sideways, all the run-assault on the United States systems and culture and society.

And so this film is really the overview, but also at the same time understanding how through America against America there's a systematic approach from the other side of the Pacific Ocean to target and exploit systems in the United States for the benefit of weakening the United States so that China could potentially rise to the top, particularly in times of war or even during peacetime.

So why did you decide to take on this project and make this film?

I personally cover news on China and on Chinese society daily, and so I see there's a lot of problems arising from people that are facing in China.

Yeah.

So, I was talking with this, uh, this, this guy, he has a lot of information from China, but basically, uh, you know how the CCP would do these honeypot operations, right? They would send not most beautiful girls, but the, the mediocre looking girls, but they're trained.

The point is they, they understand that especially men want three things, right? Money, lust and power.

And so they do these things, they target what the weakness is.

And so, you know, wh- why is it that so many foreign phases are willing to do this? Is while they're either getting money or they're getting something in China, or they're getting girls or something else.

And so I- I've realized that, um, talking to even the, the Chinese dissidents now, many of them have turned because of these three things, or one of the three things that they lack, right? If you're a poor democracy activist, you come live in America, maybe you no longer have money.

Like, what do they do? They offer you the money and you can, you know, tell them certain things about your group.

Love that.