Shantou

I dati della polizia citati da Saba sono quasi difficili da credere.

In distretti industriali giganteschi come Lufeng, Shantou o Huizhou.

Polimanifatturieri immensi.

Immensi.

Mm.

And we're also seeing international tourists move beyond big cities like Beijing and Shanghai to smaller cities like Luoyang and Datong, as you mentioned earlier, and also in, uh, Shantou and Chaozhou in southern China.

So what unique appeal do these lesser-known cities have for international visitors?

Well, I have to say the, the mega cities such as, uh, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou, Chongqing and Chengdu, they are still the main player-

And so I was in China at the time and having these experiences while also kind of looking into the history of China and understanding that the way that China went from being a very centralized bureaucratic country to one where there's much more of a mixed economy, and it's been much more successful taking that latter path.

I, I ended up finding out, like, in looking into the history of that, and of course, if anyone's familiar with how China reformed its economy in this more market direction, they'll know that their special economic zones across its coast, uh, Shenzhen, Shantou, Xiamen, and Zhuhai, amongst others, were very instrumental in bringing about this change.

So I started looking at how, A, countries might be able to use zones to transform themselves economically and try out new ideas, and B, how there might be a mechanism for introducing more private, more kind of libertarian-focused governance models.

And those two things drew me to the work of the Free Cities Foundation, which is essentially working with countries that are intr- they're introducing and implementing those kinds of zones in practice.

Well, actually, I grew up in Malaysia.

My grandparents or maternal grandparents came from a place called Shantou to Malaysia, and they ended up in a fishing village.

And I grew up with them and learning a lot more about the cultural way of life or the ancient way of life from them.

And then I moved to actually be with my family in another state in Malaysia called Pahang.

And I looked in the, in the, the local zoo.

It was in, um, Shantou.

Shantou was the sort of regional capital of that area.

And, um, on the zoo's [laughs] um, main website, their sort of homepage, was, um- A photograph of a chimpanzee dressed as a train driver [laughs].

[laughs] You thought-