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Sixteen years on the streets, living and working with the people of China, Jeff

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Intro

Great to have Mario on the show today, someone VERY experienced in China, living and working in a secondary city in the far Northeast. This makes him an exceptional Sinoland expat.

Mario uses X for his outreach, so please subscribe there,

https://x.com/mariocavolo

You will learn so much. Enjoy!

Transcript

Jeff J. Brown: Good morning everybody. This is Jeff J. Brown. China Rising Radio Sinoland and I got a great friend and comrade on the show today, Mario Cavalo. How are you doing, Mario?

Mario Cavalo: Jeff, I’m extremely excited. I understand that we are about 10,000km apart. You’re over there in France. Here I am in North Dongbei, China, here in the northeast in Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning. Super happy to be with you.

Jeff: China Rising Radio Sinoland fans don’t know you. You’re a quiet member of the China Writers Group. You’re in the background to make comments once in a while. But please tell us who you are, what you’re doing, and where is Dongbei.

Mario: Sure. Shenyang is my wife’s hometown. I married a classic northeast China Dongbei girl. And she is very much a traditional Dongbei gal. And we’ve been together for 18. We’ve been married for 18 years. We’ve been together on the big two, oh, 20 years now. We have a beautiful 12-year-old boy. And it’s just been an amazing experience. I guess you could say that when I first came to China, I didn’t know which was in 1999 to Chengdu, in Sichuan in the west and it was an unexpected invitation, and I can’t say that I knew I was going to stay. But once you find yourself in a situation where it becomes more personal, I met a gal that I wanted to marry, settle down with, and have a family and knew that that gal had a mother-in-law who didn’t speak a wink of English and didn’t need to take care of her too.

Jeff: So you always have a three-generation family in China?

Mario: Yeah, exactly. And I understood and I knew all of that going in. Woe to the man who does not understand that going in. And I knew that. But you know what Jeff I, so on my background guess what I feel more Italian than American. I’ve always said that all my life. I’m Italiano Americano. My family is originally from the Basilicata region in south-central Italy. Both my parent’s families came from that region and immigrated to the United States. So I am an elderly Maquoketa. So I’m an immigrant to the United States. I explained this to China. They always say, where are you, Anishinaabe and say, well, I don’t want them to just think I’m an American because I’m Italian. My blood is Italian. I was born and raised in America. But I came here, as I mentioned, 99. So that means this year, which I feel very happy about.

Jeff: It’s been 25 years, man.

Mario: I’m going to have a party. It was mid-October when I first flew here. So coming this autumn is 25 years. October is my anniversary. I had the original boarding card for that flight. I took a photo of it and I had it on a hard drive and then that hard drive broke.

Jeff: Oh no.

Mario: So I don’t know the exact date. I could probably call the airline and find out the exact date of my original flight, but that date is the anniversary of my coming to China. It was mid-October, is what I remember, and it was to Chongqing in Chengdu and Frank Chen. God bless you, Frank. He’s a gentleman who originally invited me. He’s from Chongqing. He’s in Los Angeles. When we went back last summer to after the pandemic. We hadn’t been back in four years. Right. Because we were locked in here.

For four years, Jeff, we didn’t leave China to go back to see my family. We went back after four years. We met my mom and my brother in L.A. and I said to them, I want you to meet Frank, who is the original guy that invited me to China 25 years ago. We met up in Chinatown in El Monte. We all had dinner together, so I’m still in touch with that original friend of mine who invited me here 25 years ago. So those are the great stories. And here I am. I’ll let you continue. Yeah.

Jeff: Well, for those people out there who don’t know everybody’s heard about Beijing cuisine and Shanghai cuisine and Cantonese cuisine and maybe you’ve heard about spicy pepper, Hunan cuisine where Mao Zedong came from. And maybe you’ve heard about Uyghur Xinjiang Muslim cuisine.

Mario: Xinjiang Sichuan.

Jeff: But Mario comes from the northeast. Believe it or not, northeast Dongbei cuisine is recognized as one of the great cuisines of China. Tell us about it.

Mario: I want to. In my life, the parallels between Italy and China are much more similar. There are not so many parallels and happy things between America and China. It’s like this right now, and it has been for a long time. But Italy and China are very there’s this similarity there in their cultures and the focus on family traditions and the country Italian food in the South is the northern country food in the north here. It’s that country style Dongbei food is country style. And so this is the big road. I mean, don’t just think of, say, roast meat because you know where you are in France, Roast meat.

I think the portions are a little smaller than they are here in Dongbei. I mean, here when you’re talking about meats in Dongbei, you go. I go to the local butcher. I go to the local farmers market, and one of the vendors in the market will be the sausage vendor. And he’s got just thousands of. And the sausages come in every variety, shape, and size you can imagine. And this is big business pork sausages and giant pork. The hip, the pork hip, like the German pork knuckle, right? I mean, all of this kind of food Pig’s feet, giant roasts done in the stew pot.

And of course, this fits what we would all call hearty eating for the wintertime, right? Because it’s a cold, long winter up here. We get into December, Jeff, and we pop into an extended, call it three months, where basically every single day it’s pretty much 5 to 10 below zero during the day and 20 below at night. I mean, every day for 2 to 3 months. So the hearty stew-type country food seems to be what fits up here. Now they throw in enough spice as well. We eat plenty of hot spicy food up here as well.

But the Dongbei food is amazing. And the last thing I want to mention is we’ll often go to places where if you want to have a grand old party and we just had one about two months ago, you got a group of friends who have an excuse to invite them out for a nice big party 10, 15, 20 people. We had a nice we invited everyone out to the. There’s a horse country club, the horse culture, Arabian horses and riding, equestrian culture is also big up here in Dongbei. Nobody knows this stuff. There are Arabian horse farms with award-winning horses from all over the world here in Shenyang.

Nobody knows this kind of thing about the culture in the north. And then we would order a Chuanjiang Cao and that is the whole roast barbecue lamb, the full-size lamb on the spit. And the company actually comes and brings the whole rig with the spit and the lamb, and they set it up where you’re at, on-site at your location, and then they start roasting this train trans young, this giant, this whole lamb for you. And they put it out and they start slicing it. If you’re a vegetarian, you’re not very happy right now. But if you are a meat eater.

Jeff: I’m not a vegetarian.

Mario: This is Dongbei culture. It’s amazing. Yeah.

Jeff: There’s actually now with no visa for two weeks, etc. for dozens of countries now, when you go to China, you don’t have to go to Dongbei to eat Dongbei food. There are actually Dongbei restaurants all over China. And so even if you’re in Shanghai, just say Dongbei restaurant and they’re all over the place. And I always love it when I meet a Dongbei person, like in Shenzhen or Guangdong or some other part of China, and Dongbei and what do you miss? I miss the cookie. Dongbeirs when they’re living and working in other parts of China, they dream of their home cooking up in Dongbei.

Mario: Have you ever lived on the north side up here in China?

Jeff: No, Beijing is the farthest lived in Beijing, from 1990 to 1997 and then from 2010 to 2016, and then three years in Shenzhen (2016 to 2019). Well, anyway, let’s maybe after we get to Taiwan Province, we can come visit you and have a cup of tea together.

Mario: Sounds great.

Jeff: So let’s talk today about Chinese governance. It’s extremely important for the whole world for that matter. I asked Mario to talk about something as dry and as academic as the recent meeting called the Third Plenum. And before you yawn and roll your eyes, I think it’s very important to understand how 1.4 billion people are governed by the leadership. So please tell us what just happened recently. It was even in the New York Times and on BBC they talked about the Third Plenum. So it’s becoming a part of you know, even in Western media, they’re talking about Chinese meetings. So tell us about what just happened this, this last month. Mario?

Mario: You bet. Believe it or not, the entire time that you were talking everyone saw that I’ve been looking down at my little mini pad here. I’m on my mini pad and I’ve got all of the notes. The entire time I have been scrolling the notes summarizing the third plenum, which means I’m going to start reading them to you now, and you can set your alarm for about three hours later. And that’s how long it’ll take you. I mean, so it’s impossible. So all that time I was scrolling, all of that was a lot of pages, paragraph after paragraph. You could write a whole book just to summarize the third plenum. So how are we going to break that down and then here’s a link. And you could maybe when you share that.

Jeff: I’ll share that on the web (https://apcoworldwide.com/blog/chinas-2024-third-plenum-six-key-takeaways/).

Mario: And then Monocle in his newsletter, he put up a wonderful summary. I’ve got that one as well. But I picked a particular summary that’s brief, and I picked it from the fantastic resource. And then there’s I have a zinger for you because there’s another part about the third plenum. It’s the kind of thing that most people don’t talk about because it’s more juicy. And I’m getting to that part right here. And then I’m going to tell you about that part as well because it’s really important. And just give me a second to get to that part, because it has to do with the kind of things that happen in Chinese governance that don’t happen in Western governance.

So what I’ve done here is there are many different sources that would summarize the third plenum. Folks, we want to do that in a way for you so that you can understand the value of it, the meaning of it, and what it’s really all about. And one of my longtime friends in China is a gentleman by the name of Ken Jarrett. He’s a former consul general for the United States. And he was the president of AmCham for many, many years. And also he is also one of the original founders of Apco. And Apco was in Beijing based along with Mitch Praznik and other gentlemen that we know.

These were the originals. This was back when China, back when you mentioned in the 90s, Apco was a very serious PR firm and governance firm advisory firm. So they’re extremely well respected and well known. Apco put out as they would, Apco put out a six-point summary of the third plenum, and it is as brief as you possibly get and I’m going to read through it and comment through it. I’m not just going to dryly read through it. So what are the six key takeaways of the Third Plenum?

Everybody has to understand that the style of governance here in China, first of all, as you realize, is very formal that in the UK, they argue with each other and insult each other. And in America, I don’t even want to talk about that political system. It’s to me now quite bad. It’s hard to have respect for the American political system. I have a lot of issues with it as many people do. But here in China, it’s just serious business. And you have to think about the responsibility of, for example, you have the third plenum.

Part of that is the National People’s Congress. People complain and they say things like, oh, it’s a one-party government. Therefore it’s an authoritarian dictatorship because there are not two parties. Now, this is nonsense. The one-party central government of China has the National People’s Congress. The keyword in there is the word People’s Congress. The United States Congress is 50 guys, 50 men, and women, each one guy who man or woman who represents the state. Right? Or is that the Senate who has it backward?

Jeff: Yeah, yeah, two for each state. So there are 100 senators.

Mario: 100 senators

Jeff: And 538 representatives of Congress.

Mario: Right. So in China, the National People’s Congress is literally made up of people, not just from the state. So it’s not to say, oh, I want representatives from Liaoning Province and Shanxi Province and Hunan Province, because then they’re just state representatives. No, in China, it’s a membership of 2500 people who come from and represent all walks of life. So amongst those 2500 people, you’ll have minorities and nurses and doctors and engineers and sanitation workers and farmers. Jeff, can you imagine if there were farmers representing farmers in Congress and the Senate of the United States? They’re all lawyers. They’re all lawyers.

Jeff: Like 60-something percent are lawyers.

Mario: Yeah. So people don’t understand that it really is the genuine truth that the Chinese government is there to represent and serve the interests of the people and the society, and to the degree that gets balanced against individual freedom. So there’s much more of a balance between the two. And as Apco describes, the third plenum, here are the six key takeaways. Number one, continued effort to balance the public and private sectors with increasing support for the latter. No fancy words. Public sector in the United States, you could say the public sector is the government, government jobs, right?

In the United States, if you have a government job, you’re part of the public sector. Look, you have the government sector in America. That’s fine. Well, folks, you have the government sector here in China, too. Lots of people have government jobs downstairs in our local neighborhood is the local government bureau for the neighborhood. I mean, there are government jobs everywhere, and that’s the public sector. In China, it also is a big utility company. None of them have been privatized, the electric utilities and all. These are all still services of utility services and giant industrial services.

Here in Dongbei or here in all of North China, for example, there are beautiful iron radiators on the walls. And I’m very happy about that because they keep our homes warm all winter long, 24 hours a day. So there are these giant utility companies that are out there boiling vats of water bigger than you can imagine to keep us all warm in the winter. And all of that is in the public sector. And whoever all those thousands of employees are public sector. Well, what’s the private sector? Well, Jeff, it’s you and me, right? I mean, it’s the private sector. Capitalism and entrepreneurism and running and owning your own business.

If you want to get a job, if you want to start a company, either of those two things and everything in between, you’re allowed and free to do. Less, I think that’s called capitalism, and it’s a wide-open market. So I find it it’s difficult when people say, oh, it’s an authoritarian government. They won’t let you do anything. No, they let you do everything. You can do anything you want to do. If I want to open an Italian sausage shop downstairs, I can do it. I don’t want to, but if I wanted to, like everybody else, I could do it.

I want to open any kind of business I can. So now China is and has for the last, I’m going to say 30, 40 years since around the 90s when you first arrived, they recognized that allowing the private sector to do as much as it can to grow and prosper is terrific. So they’ve emphasized this to a greater degree, increased support for the private sector. Now, it already had been increasing for the last 20 years. So they’re continuing in that direction. Number two government wants to build a robust national innovative ecosystem.

What do we recognize about the entire world, not just China? That the world is the way we live and work. Here is my Z-fold mobile phone. I mean this is incredible. I love this phone. My son who’s 12 doesn’t understand that life without this doesn’t work. In China, no function. Without this, you don’t have life. But we grew up where this didn’t exist. So, oh my gosh, how do we do that? So the world is changing. And the industries of the future revolving around tech, revolving around AI. Industrially speaking, I need to mention robotics. This is very, very important. We’re going to talk about it later.

Jeff, people are worried about the job situation and they should be. But robotics offers some benefits in that respect. So we have the government saying point number two, we need to continue building the foundation of the new high quality, new industry, innovative productive forces in society. So this country, this country’s government is not going to allow itself to fall behind. You’ll notice that China is now pulled to the forefront of, for example, the EV automotive industry. And five years ago, guys like you and myself who are supposed experts who are up to date on China even we didn’t see that coming.

No one saw it coming. So China is not allowing itself to fall behind on the innovative industries of the future and is constantly rolling out through its series of five-year plans, support measures that continue supporting this whole new world that we’re living in, which is just nothing like the world, guys, like we grew up in the previous generation. It’s just absolutely incredible. Number three. And this is an interesting shift. Local governments will be given more power and responsibility. So when you’re governing 1.4 billion people, it’s safe to say in a rapidly changing society and economy and transforming society in the economy.

That’s a load for one central government to have to handle. So now they’re having to restructure and offload those responsibilities to more at the provincial level. But they recognize the danger of doing that because they’ve cleaned up so much corruption. So they’re also increasing central government oversight of those local governments. So that’s another combination of things that they’re doing. That’s point number three. Point number four the government aims to boost consumption in the long term by solving pressing economic and social challenges. Now what do we mean by that?

For example, we need and want every economy to hope for endlessly increasing domestic demand. I mean, it’s a dream come true. For every society that it would be able to continue expanding so that people can continue becoming more and more prosperous. We can keep bringing lower-income people up into the middle class. But in the real world, it doesn’t always work that way. And that domestic demand, relatively speaking, has, in the words of the Chinese government, they see and know that it is largely stagnated.

The pandemic caused a lot of damage. We can’t deny that. I mean, it didn’t just cause damage in China. It caused damage all over the world. And the retail sector that’s down on the street. I look out my window and we live in your typical downtown China area, where you go downstairs and everything is everywhere. It’s like being in downtown Manhattan. I mean, you come out downstairs and there are hundreds of shops lining the streets. Anything and everything you need is no more than 100m away, including the school. And that’s where we live. But you can see a lot of the retailers.

They got hurt and they went through their money savings wise. So is domestic demand negative? This is an important point for people to know. No, it’s not negative. It’s just lower than what it was before. Domestic demand before for China from the ’90s through the 2000s, I arrived in 2000 right on through 2015 was always over 10% per year, which is incredible. Well, now it’s you know, I’m saying a negative. Now it’s down to about 6%. So 6% domestic consumption growth is amazing compared to Europe compared to the United States. But you’ve got a billion people that you’re trying to improve the lives of. So you need even more than that.

So the Third Plenum is seeking to restore longer-term domestic demand. They have to figure out how to do that. So they have to address major social and economic issues and reiterate the need to continue improving the integration of rural and urban populations. So you see here in Xinjiang, it’s wonderful, Jeff. Come on over right here. Let’s pop downstairs, get in my car, have a seat, and get in the car. We drive 20 minutes and we’re already outside of the city, and we’re in the middle of a cornfield. So we need to continue expanding the urban landscape and in the United States of America, Phoenix, Arizona is a very good example of this.

It just keeps getting bigger and bigger, encroaching larger and larger out into the desert. And that’s what cities like Shenyang and other urban metropolises here in China need to do. Look what they’re doing in the South where you were. They’re basically using the fast trains to connect Guangzhou and Shenzhen and building the bridges and the new causeway over the water to connect these places. If I can get from here to there in 37 minutes instead of an hour and a half, doesn’t that make it more possible for me to be able to expand my business customer base?

Jeff: Yes, absolutely. Of course.

Mario: You see, so this is what they doing and this is what they need to do to continue bringing the urban and the rural populations together. And before I pop on to the fifth point note that China’s urban population now, how many are living in what we would call urban areas now is, well, moving well past 60%, well past 60%, and towards 70%. And they need to keep moving that figure up, keep moving that figure up. And this takes a tremendous amount of I mean, government central planning on this. I would never want that job. I mean, wow.

Jeff: I think they want to get to 80%.

Mario: That’s right.

Jeff: That’s what I’ve heard. They’re planning on getting to 80% by 20, whatever it is, 30 or 2045 or whatever.

Mario: Well they can’t go much beyond that because they do need 20% of the populace to be in agriculture. Someone’s got to continue planting all the food. And in that respect also they’re modernizing. We talked about the modernization of industries as well. And that includes agriculture, where traditionally a farm run by a family will have to say I’m out of the farm. I don’t know the agriculture industry very well, but with common sense, we can apply where we want to be able to increase the yield per mu per acre.

So they know that if they bring in modern farming equipment and modern farming techniques, that are perfected back in the West. In America, the farming system is amazing. Yields have gone up through the roof over the decades. And now they’re doing the same thing here. You know like for example, all the cotton fields in Xinjiang where they make the fake accusations and all that nonsense. But actually, John Deere and Harvester and all the tractors are now automated tractors that are out there that are harvesting the cotton fields.

Jeff: With drones flying overhead, checking everything.

Mario: Incredible. So these things will continue and are a very important part of China’s also important part of China’s poverty alleviation program. I mean, they’ve raised up the lifestyles of countless tens of millions of people in the agriculture industry. We don’t have time to talk about it today, but I need to tell you that farmers in the countryside who supposedly don’t have any income are not as poor as you think they are.

Jeff: Well, I’ve been back three months in the last year and spent a lot of it just driving around in the countryside. And the countryside is so prosperous. It’s just unbelievable. It’s just. That’s a whole nother show. Keep going, Mario.

Mario: That’s a whole nother show. They don’t have the cash but they’re very comfortable. So number five. And then the last two points five and six numbers. Number five goes to again more modernization specifically in the area of energy green transformation, the move toward clean. Well, all new coal that’s being brought online is fourth-generation clean-tech coal. The critics of China don’t ever mention that when they complain China is still bringing on more coal. Well, if you want China to be the world’s factory, you made that decision. If you want China to stop producing all your stuff, just say the word.

And China won’t need that to bring on more coal anymore because it’ll stop being your factory. What they won’t say is that all the new coal that’s coming on is clean tech coal. So it’s a lot lower level of pollution. But China is not satisfied with that as well. They’re bringing on an additional I think they are wisely, in my opinion, full-blown commitment to. I think what’s online now is an additional 127 again next-generation safety nuclear plants coming online along with, as you might already be aware of, I don’t know what the number is China has installed and is installing something along the lines of five times or ten times the amount of solar.

Jeff: And wind.

Mario: And all the next countries combined.

Jeff: The whole world combined.

Mario: So what they’ve done to address the green transformation is eons beyond what any other country has done. But again, in the West, you’ll never hear this from the Western newspapers. The Third Plenum also introduced measures to help China get to that carbon-neutral goal by 2060. Let me see. While China appears to be on track to reach its carbon peaking goal of 2030 actually two years from now. But they’re expected to reach it like, three years ahead of time by 2027. Yeah, which is amazing, which is amazing. So that’s the item number five. And then lastly, China’s rhetoric around opening up continues while it is also preparing, it has no choice for more ongoing trade tensions in the international landscape.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s a given.

Mario: That’s a given.

Jeff: Republican or Democrat or liberal or conservative in Europe that’s not going to change.

Mario: No, I’m sorry to say that I agree with you that that’s not going to change. And it’s really it’s really disturbing, isn’t it?

Jeff: Yeah.

Mario: I just don’t get the world’s not benefiting from any of this. The world’s not benefiting from any of it. And I’m taking a breath here and then looking for something else that I wanted to share. So feel free to fire away with your next.

Jeff: By the way, I actually, before we had our show, I actually looked up what plenum meant because I knew a plenum was like the space in a building where you have the air conditioning ducts and the water pipes that’s what for me a plenum. And that’s true. That one definition of a plenum is where there’s a space where you put electrical cables, water pipes, and air conditioning ducts. But another definition for plenum is simply it’s a fancy Latin word for meeting. So this is the third meeting. And how many do they have between each five-year plan? I think it’s like seven, right? Between each five-year plan.

Mario: There are a couple of special meetings. Yes. Because there’s an annual always but then there’s a couple of special meetings and I forget how often they come along.

Jeff: And they are theme-based. This one is based on is based on policy and the economy. And the number four is another subject. And then number five, they hone in on something else. And they do this between each five-year plan.

Jeff: You look at this system and you just like and then you look at this the dog and pony shows in Europe and the West.

Mario: You’re killing me.

Mario: The point you just made, I came across it. Over the past 46 years, the evolution of China’s institutional reforms has been categorized into two primary areas and they rotate. The plenums rotate between being development-oriented, which is what this one was, and governance-oriented. So they’re either making sure they’re doing their best to get the government structure the way it needs to be, or they’re looking at the economy and the society, and they have these dual focuses and balanced back and forth between the two since 1978. The initial phase of the development-oriented reforms commenced with the third Plenary Session of the 11th Communist Party of China Central Committee, and that was in 1978.

Jeff: That’s when they did the reform and opening up with Deng Xiaoping.

Mario: Yes, that’s right. And then there’s the shift toward striking the balance between development-oriented reforms and government-oriented reforms took off with the plenary session of the eighth of the 18th meeting, which was in 2013. So that’s when the government made a shift change. It’s like, wait a minute. We need to shift the way. We address the things that are happening. It’s amazing to me how they adjust along the way. That’s what they do. They adjust to what’s happening to the country along the way considering how big a behemoth the government is, the fact that they could adjust anything, anywhere at all is amazing because it’s like a big cruise ship. It doesn’t turn quickly.

Jeff: And 2013, of course, is when XI Jinping was elected president.

Mario: That’s right.

Jeff: So that’s not a coincidence?

Mario: No, it’s not at all. And I really think that. What is the degree to which you are aware that here in China, it used to be where there was this higher, higher level of admiration for the international, the other countries, and other brands but now that has flipped. The pride of China in China and the Olympics is a really good example of it happening this week. I mean, it was before where I would say to, I’m going to go back, say ten years. I would say to Chinese people, I want to buy a Hongqi car. Now, a Hongqi is a red flag. This is the original government-brand limousine that Mao Zedong would drive and that matters.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah.

Mario: And they came out with their H9 sedan. This is China’s Bentley. That’s what it is. It’s about $70,000. And this is China’s Bentley. And I’m a foreigner and I dig living here. I like it, and I’m like, I don’t want to buy a Buick. I want to buy a Chinese car. I want to buy a Hongqi. And the Chinese would look at me and go, no, no, no, they all wanted to buy Buick. Jeff, ten years ago, you know this. You were here. What was the number one selling brand in China? Buick. And the other one was number one, number two always because it was the original Volkswagen.

Jeff: And also Audi, Mercedes.

Mario: Absolutely. Yeah. But they were for rich people. But even like, not rich people. Right. Just amongst if you went to any middle class, if I went downstairs and did a survey of every 500 shops, little shops down there and asked them what kind of a car they’d want to buy ten years ago, they would all say a Buick or a Volkswagen. They would never buy a Chinese car. And I’m like, but I want to buy a Chinese car. And they’re like, no, they’re no good. They’re cheaper. The Buick is the best car. It’s a foreign car. And they were proud and interested in the international world. And now it is flipped completely. It is flipped completely. I don’t think Ford is going to survive, actually. Buick will survive because they’re okay and GM will survive because actually in the upper-middle-class market, the Cadillac is doing well.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen a lot of Cadillacs.

Mario: Yeah, and Mercedes and Audi and Volkswagen will always survive because there’s legacy respect for.

Jeff: The German Technology.

Mario: The German brands in the upper middle class. But amongst the middle class, 250,000 RMB and below, which is, by the way, about 30,000$, 36,000$, $38,000 and below regular Chinese people the level of pride now in their country, and they recognize how much their country has improved quality-wise in so many ways. They’re buying Chinese now. They’re buying Chinese now. Again, it’s part of the shift of what’s happening in this society and the government needs the government aware of this. There’s one more thing that I’m trying to find to share with you about the plenary sessions.

Jeff: If you’re willing to share your notes, please send them to me and I’ll add them to the interview page for people to have as resources for further study.

Mario: Yes. Well for some reason what I saw and it’s taken me too much time to scroll through it. So I’m just going to tell you the story. Imagine if this was happening in Congress or the Senate back in the United States. You couldn’t ever imagine it. As part of the plenum sessions, the party members who got caught breaking the rules, committing a crime, and breaking the law were removed from the party period. So that is also a formal part of the session. So this kind of accountability, you just don’t find anything like it happening. And I mean now again I’ve said this I don’t want to end the show by just knocking the other governments.

But the dignity and the ethics are just gone. And here in China, these members were removed. You’re not asked. You’re told. You did this. You broke the rules. You broke the law. You have been ousted. You are removed from the party. You weren’t half-impeached. You’re impeached by the Congress but not the Senate. I mean, come on, give me a break. It’s a political circus right in the West. Here in China, there’s no political circus. It’s a very serious thing. And it needs to be a very serious thing because they’re responsible for governing a society of 1.4 billion people. And those people are the boss because if you don’t satisfy those people, they’ll turn on you and then your government is in big trouble.

Jeff: Then you lose the mandate, the heavenly mandate.

Mario: That’s right. Then you got the mandate. That’s right. That’s the mandate to serve the people and to serve the society. I’ve been here 25 years and that’s what they’re doing. It really is what they’re doing. I’m sorry so many people don’t understand that. And I’m so sorry for all the propaganda that tries to tell people otherwise.

Jeff: Every time I see an article about corrupt people being arrested or brought in for questioning or demoted or punished or kicked out of the party, I save those, and I’ve already done two articles with 10 or 15. And these are not gas station attendants. These are vice ministers, generals, CEOs of state-owned companies, and powerful, powerful people. And I’m so backed up, I’ve got like 30 more headlines and I’m trying to find the time to do these just to show people that they’re just merciless about holding people accountable.

And because that’s what the people are demanding. That’s the one thing like before Tiananmen in 1989, it was inflation. It was a market, there were supply problems going from the iron rice bowl to market-oriented policies. But the big one that upset the people before Tiananmen was corruption. And that’s the one thing that the Chinese people just cannot tolerate. And especially since XI Jinping was elected president in 2013, it has been absolutely a bloodbath for anybody who wants to be a crook which is one of the reasons the economy is doing so well.

Mario: Yes. I’d love to tell you an amazing inside story about how XI Jinping cleaned up corruption. And I have the quick version, the 32nd version. I have a dear friend of mine from Chengdu, the original city that I came to in 99. His English name is David. He’s a local Chengdu guy. He’s a very successful lawyer with a law firm, and I’ve known him for the entire 25 years. We’ve still in touch since we were law Sangyo back in 99 when I first met him in Chengdu when I first arrived in China. We’ve stayed in touch all this time.

And I met with him in Chengdu. I went to Chengdu. I was invited to speak at a forum and I went to Chengdu. I contacted him and said, I’m in town. He’s like, oh, come on, we’ve got to meet. We met. He looked at me and he said, “Mario, Xi Jinping saved my life.” I thought, what? What kind of a comment is that? “He said Xi Jinping saved my life. I’m not kidding you.” He said for years, as a lawyer, we would do business with all of these government firms and everything.

And the way you did business in the old days of China if you wanted to do business with someone, you go out to dinner and you drink and you drink and you get gifts and your hand and you give each other gifts and money and it wasn’t just that you would have the Maotai, the Maotai, and the Maotai was 1500 RMB a bottle. This is $200 worth of Maotai and you just don’t give the bottle. You have to open the bottle and you have to drink the bottle. And he says, and I’m drinking and I’m drinking. He says I would be dead by now. I would be dead.

I was dying of drinking of the culture with all of the gifts and the booze and the Byejoe, he said. And Xi Jinping put an end to it. He said, stop it. Just do business. Forget the gifts, forget the home vows, forget the Maotai, forget it all. You’re not allowed to take any gifts anymore. Just sit down and negotiate and do deals and have meetings. He cleaned it all up. And this is what my friend was saying. He says he literally saved his life. He said if Xi Jinping hadn’t cleaned up the way business is done like that, he said, by now I definitely would be dead.

Jeff: He died of cirrhosis of the liver.

Mario: That’s right.

Jeff: Well, Mario, this has been fun. We’ll have to do it again. And I would love to meet you in person. when we get to Taiwan province, and either you come to visit us, or we can maybe come to visit you. I follow you on Twitter what’s now called X. I follow you on X, and I promote your posts and repost your post because you’ve got some great stuff.

Mario: You too, Jeff.

Jeff: The one thing I admire about Mario if you get his x channel, he doesn’t pull any punches brother. He just lays it on the line. He is not subtle about expressing what he thinks is right and wrong, which I really appreciate.

Mario: Yeah, I do that on X. I wonder about the wisdom of doing that on X, but I do it occasionally. And that last one that I did, China Daily picked it up and it went viral. It’s got millions of views. But anyway, Jeff, thank you. And we would love to. We haven’t yet come to Taiwan. You are now our excuse to finally.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah. We were there for a week on this last trip.

Mario: I heard it’s lovely. I heard it’s beautiful.

Jeff: Yeah, really spectacular. And the people are just jewels. So this is Jeff J. Brown China Rising Radio Sinoland signing out, and we have had the wonderful Mario Cavalo on the show today, and I will make sure you get a link that you can share on X. And in the meantime, I will give you a Buddhist bow and wishing you happiness, health, and safety which is not a problem in Shenyang. So take care and we’ll be talking soon. Bye-bye.

Mario: Thank you everyone. Bye-bye.

###

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