I'm the director of the China Center here at the Hasei Institute. And again, thank you for coming to this event. We're very blessed by the centrality of the China topic in Washington, D.C., because everybody's talking about the challenge we're facing. And we frequently have good speakers with great credentials and great insights, and today is no exception. And China Center, let me just say a few words. China Center is a center here affiliated with Hasei Institute. We have the advisory board chaired by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. And the board consists of a few great individuals. And Kyle, our speaker, just joined the board, and welcome, Kyle. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ma.
And one of the important board members is here, that's Paula Dobranski, who is an ambassador, Paula. And the advisory board also consists, of course, of Scott Morrison, former Prime Minister of Australia, as well as Morgan Ortega, former spokesperson at the State Department. It was a former colleague of mine.
So, today's speaker is probably the smartest private equity manager in the country. Not only because he is a big capitalist, he's also a very responsible capitalist. He's also an environmental conservative. What is it? Environmental conservation. That's correct. So, it's bridged the gap between the left and right, so both topics very good. Most importantly, he's a tremendous insight into the financial world and how China factors in, from the financial, from the economic point of view, which is something that we really, really needs. He's a member of the lifetime member of the Council of Foreign Relations. And he has taken great interest in international affairs, and he's truly the intercontinental person, not only Europe, but also Asia. And so, from that perspective, so we're very pleased to have him as a speaker today. And let's see his full biography from our website at tussing.org.
So, without further ado, and I'm going to, oh, before I say that, so today, Kyle is going to speak on the topic that we're all very concerned about. And then we'll be followed by a question and answer session to be moderated by Ambassador Dopranzky. And after that, we have a reception. So, the drinks are all on us. With our further ado, Kyle, please.
Thank you. Thank you, Miles. Thank you. We may need a drink after this. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you, Miles. Thank you, Paula, and the Hudson Center for having me. It's a life's passion of mine after studying financial markets, global macro flows, and trying to understand the world works financially, how it, of course, without a doubt, interfaces geopolitically. So, I'll get through what I want to say as quickly as I can. I'd love to interface with the audience as soon as I get finished. But this topic, I think, is central and vital to the national security of our nation and what we're facing today.
I'm going to just let you know how this came about. We got out of whiteboard. And I know we all live in this world where we read all of the press, and the press catches things, and the press particularly doesn't catch things that Xi Jinping says in his speeches and in his written text. So, we spend a lot of time developing our own view of exactly what she's saying, and I'm going to cover very specific things that he said, and not necessarily what our press runs with. And I think that's a big gap there, and hopefully I can help bridge that gap.
So, when I think about what's going on and what Xi has said, you just look at the bottom of this slide. At the end of the 20th Party Congress in the working papers, he said, we must strengthen our sense of worry, adhere to the bottom line thinking, which means party thinking, of course. Prepare for danger in times of peace, and prepare to undergo high winds and waves, and even for the stormy seas of a major test. I think that's a pretty ominous statement to be making at the end of the 20th Party Congress.
Today, I'm just going to talk about this in three different buckets. If you were thinking about Xi Jinping, if he were preparing for war with Taiwan, I like to separate into three thoughts. The first thought is the forced thought, the militaristic thought. What's he doing with his military that might suggest that either building up, moving it around, what's happening, and of course, that's not my core area of expertise. I interfaced with the top levels of US military. I'm building the section. That will go quick.
The second section is, what is China doing on the mainland? What are they doing inside of China on their mainland in their legal system? What are they doing in building specific things if they were about to go to war? What would they be building on shore? And then what are they doing from a policy perspective on the mainland? That's the second bucket.
The third bucket is where my primary expertise is, but the middle bucket is also vitally important. And that's what would China be doing to insulate themselves from severe financial sanctions? In the event that they move on Taiwan, when Putin moved on invaded Ukraine, we supposedly went through with some really strong sanctions. Those sanctions were like Swiss cheese. We really didn't hurt him at all. In this case, I think we will be able to execute much more crippling sanctions in the event that China invades Taiwan. And I'm going to talk about what China is doing that actually doesn't make financial sense. If you and I were running a sovereign and we were running it to, let's say, operate in the highest regard of our capital and returns on capital, we would be making specific decisions. What I'm going to show you today is China is not making those decisions. They're making decisions that are non-economic and preparing themselves for sanctions. So I'm going to walk through those three buckets.
The first one is the liberation that PLA's required readiness simulations. We believe there are three simulations that have to take place before Xi Jinping and the Central Military Commission will authorize a strike on Taiwan. The first one happened in August of 22, Operation Joint Fire Strike. The second Operation Joint Sword just happened in April of 23. The final one that hasn't happened yet is an amphibious assault timing TBD. And I'll get into when we think we as a country think that timing can happen.
The first one was a 10-day exercise, of course, immediately after Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, where the Chinese launched 11 ballistic missiles to simulate the neutralization of Taiwan's air defense systems, multiplying ice submarine attacks and sea raids as part of China's furious response to the provocation of the separatist elements of the external forces. That was their words, not mine. And then subsequently to that particular exercise, the China's Taiwan Affairs Office released its first white paper in Taiwan in over 20 years. There was something really important in there. They said that the new policy document did away with the past promises and troops or, quote, administrators to Taiwan if China successfully conquers the island. Definitely another ominous sign.
The second operation was Joint Sword, which, of course, began the day after Sienwen's trip to America. It happened April 8 through the 10th. And this one was a much more, let's just say, integrated exercise where there were two phases. One was an immediate deployment of forces. The second one was rapid seizure of all domains for control, air, sea, and information to gain what one of their senior colonel said was to gain an extremely advantageous position at the outset. What we have learned, China has learned from Putin's mistakes in Ukraine, is, number one, Xi knows that he can't telegraph the move like Putin did. Putin did a lot of things to telegraph when his invasion was happening. We don't believe Xi will do that.
The second thing is, is battlefield control and domains for control are vital to China's attack if and when they attack Taiwan. And information control is key. If you look through a lot of the Communist Party rhetoric and at the schools, the Communist Party schools, the professors are all talking about the need for the cessation of data flows between Taiwan and the rest of the world. And we're going to get into that and what's going on on the mainland today, but they stress this and this exercise. It's stressed speed and agility, but most importantly, control of data, which resonates throughout this presentation.
Prior to just prior to joint sword, the PLA severed the undersea fiber optic cables between Taiwan and Matsu Island. And you know where those are up on the just north, just northwest of Taiwan closer to Fuzhan. Lee, professor of Beijing's Communist Party school, said this in quotes, we need to reunify with Taiwan as soon as possible with our overwhelming troops and firepower simultaneously it demands cutting off water, electricity and mobile phones throughout the island. Electricity, water and mobile phones can all be reconnected once they're liberated, but we must disconnect in areas the PLA is not liberated, particularly mobile phones.
If you remember, China was really struggling with the protest in Hong Kong, and the reason they couldn't roll in there with the tanks and handle things the way they wanted to handle things is there was so much connectivity, there were so many phones, and the world would see the disaster that they would be, the humanitarian disaster they would be affecting on the people of Hong Kong.
So when we get to amphibious assault, this will simulate an amphibious evasion. Naval experts believe there are only three months in the calendar that allow for this assault, and those are April, May and August.
For those of you that have studied Normandy and the Allied invasion there, there were very specific conditions that had to be present for that invasion to be able to happen. The tides had to be at a certain level, the currents couldn't be as strong as they are in certain periods of the year. This is even more challenging. This is a 110-mile gap. It has 20-foot tidal surges, and there are three miles of mud bogs. So this attack will have to be at very specific times.
Again, we think it can only happen in April, May or August, roughly, for them to basically bring all three of those simulations to life, and especially with the amphibious side. Once they give this particular, once they execute an amphibious assault, then we believe, our military believes they'll be ready to give a go order. Again, this is the fourth side of the bucket.
Let's move straight into the mainland preparations for war and a timeline. This is vital, again, to getting out a whiteboard, putting some things on the whiteboard to understand the logical progression of what China has done to change their legal system, to change things on the mainland to prepare for war.
In January of 2020, China updated its foreign investment law, which gave Beijing the power and ability to nationalize foreign assets investments under special circumstances, which include war. Their words not mine.
Very important to know that they updated a law that gave Beijing the authority to just nationalize things and take them. We saw that happen in arm holdings for those of you that followed what happened to arm.
June 2021, China issued a or passed a new counter-foreign sanctions law, which enabled Beijing to seize corporate assets and detain expat employees. Simply, if they underline condition was compliance with foreign sanctions, i.e. if the US or Europe sanctioned China and the corporations of the US or Europe were supplying with their own sanctions, China could nationalize the assets and detain the people.
April 2023, Chinese lawmakers passed a wide ranging update to their anti-espionage law, which I'm sure we all saw, banning the transfer of any information related to national security and broadening that definition of what national security information could be. And we're going to get into the raids of the various US companies since then.
Just recently, in fact, last month, China passed a sweeping foreign policy law that represented a much broader extension of that counter-foreign sanctions law that created obligations and responsibilities for Chinese companies, which essentially make all Chinese companies extension of the Chinese government. It gives Beijing the legal authority to seize individuals assets and prevent them from leaving China.
The new law coupled with the anti-espionage law makes it virtually impossible for foreign companies to operate safely in the PRC. The last thing is they plan to roll out a new law that will push patriotic education. I should have put that in quotes for Internet users, school, children, and overseas Chinese. That was just submitted.
Physical structures, power systems, and the new blood drive. March of 2023 in Fuzhan, China's building 18 new air raid shelters, which the province announced and showcased on its website. And two days later, gone, took it off the website, never to be seen again. So, Fuzhan was very proud of these 18 air raid shelters. For those of you that know the geography of China, that is across the street from Taiwan. They geo-blocked it, and we can't find it anymore, but we have screen grabs of it.
March 2023, they're building the world's largest combat hospital, also geo-blocked after one day of announced on a website. So, if you're building 18 air raid shelters along the Fuzhan coast, you're building a combat hospital. This rhymes with what Putin was doing. If you remember, he moved entire groups, brigades of troops in October. He started building and transferring blood banks to the border December, January. He was telling you what was coming. It's happening again, and we need to pay attention.
In June 2023, China states its first ever emergency drill to ensure it can handle large-scale power outages in its eastern region. Happens to be the region right across from the Taiwan Strait. It's the first time the National Energy Administration has held an emergency drill for large-scale power outages across provinces and region. It's also the largest, most extensive, most targeted joint emergency power drill.
In June 2023, millions of people have been banned from traveling by planar train, and the Communist Party announced that the reason that was is their social credit scores were too low.
One way that they can increase their social credit scores go give some blood. That's super interesting. Go give blood to bring that social credit score up. I think as a standalone comment, it's not as interesting, but putting it into a timeline like this, it shows you the methodical thought process of the Communist Party and what they're actually putting together.
In January of 2022, the Communist Party's journal, Kishi, published, she's secret speech 60 days roughly after it was given. And for the first time, she himself was quoted as saying he called for the struggle against hostile forces. We all know he never names the United States in these speeches, but we are deemed to be the hostile forces.
I don't think we're the strategic competitor that the press writes about. We are a hostile force.
我不认为我们是媒体所报道的战略竞争对手。我们是敌对势力。
In May 2022, she ordered the Chinese banking system to risk assess and insulate against quote potential severe US sanctions. Well, what would precipitate severe US sanctions? We are sending our foreign policy staff there with knee pads begging for meetings. Those are just begging for more meetings. What would change the Biden administration's tact to want us to or force us to install or instill crippling sanctions? In my view, it would only be a militaristic move on Taiwan.
In May 2022, she also ordered Chinese nationals overseas to divest their assets and repatriate foreign capital back to China. I'm going to get into why that's very important too.
June of 2022, in a page right out of Putin's playbook, she announced a trial plan outline to classify military operations against Taiwan to be classified as quote armed forces operations, not a war. And I remember it was just a joint military exercise.
October 2022, the 20th party Congress, she said to the Communist Party and working papers. I just went over this in the beginning, prepared to undergo high winds, waves, and even for stormy seas of a major test. And also at the 20th party Congress on Taiwan specifically, he said, we will never promise to give up the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary measures.
October 2022, he also ratcheted his rhetoric regarding Taiwan by changing what he views as something that authorities, sorry, the authorizes China's use of force. He declared that a simple refusal of China's overtures to reunify would then be grounds for an invasion. Prior to this, it was someone in China in Taiwan's cabinet or presidency would have to formally declare they want to be independent. And that's just if you just refuse our overture, we can come attack. Again, the ratchet has only moved one way.
We remember how she humiliated Hu Jintao and his loyalists removed him from the party and installed a wartime cabinet. What the press missed in the Hu Jintao humiliation was in one day, imagine if we woke up here in America, one day you woke up and they said Janet Yellen is gone. The central bank president Jerome Powell is gone. And Gary Gensler is gone. So we're going to fire the head of the SEC, the head of the Fed, all in one day. And we're going to replace them with the head of the missile unit. We're going to replace them with the head of nuclear munitions and then the head of all conventional munitions. That is removing every market technocrat that was responsible for China's supposed westernization and dealing with markets and replacing them with military people. So the press kind of missed that. I thought that was really important. All they caught was they were ripping Hu Jintao out of his seat and it was a humiliation.
Third, also she states that China is now laser focused, quote, on the reacquisition of the Taiwanese separatists. Again, his rhetoric is becoming more bellicose. Every speech he's given since 2017, he tells you what he's going to do. And it's just getting worse and worse and worse in his words.
In the two sessions, three speeches, the markets expected those speeches at two sessions to be further stimulative about restarting the Chinese economic economy and moving things forward. All three speeches, she told the people of China to prepare for war. The press here focused on the very first 15 minutes where Lee Kang attempted to calm investment markets and attract additional western capital. But then once he sat down, Xi Jinping took over and said, we need to prepare for war. And he said it in three separate speeches.
All right, so we're going to get in now to the financial market movements, changes in their data policies, bond defaults, corporate raids, and wartime planning for natural resources. These are things that they're doing in the financial markets and as outshoots to those the commodity markets.
So Xi watched as the western world moved immediately to try to seize Putin's 360 billion in FX reserves. We're not sure how much the West was able to actually freeze with Putin, but we immediately went to freeze as FX reserves. What we should have done is immediately sanctioned all their banks, hold them off the swift system, and sanctioned their energy business, which we were all too much afraid to do.
But that rhymes with what happened with Mussolini and data. If you remember, UK and France got together and they had the same kind of peace through weakness ideology back then. And they said, we're going to sanction Mussolini. And Mussolini said, if you sanction my energy or my food, that's an act of war. So they said, we can't do that. So we'll sanction a few other things, but you can have all your energy and all your food to continue your campaign. That's what we did with Putin.
If Xi were planning for war, you'd expect him to take what assets the sovereign has and the SOEs have in direct accounts with the US and they would start whittling them down or trying to sanction proof. And we're going to get into what he's doing. US capital markets are the deepest, most liquid markets in the world and currently have the highest interest rates. So again, dollar balances should be buying short-term treasuries at 4% and 5% and not doing other things with them.
So we all know China's GDP in dollar terms. These are Bloomberg and World Bank numbers have increased 500% since 2008 alone. There are trade balance with China has basically come down to where it's about a $380 billion trade deficit annually. We have about $850 billion of trade that turns into a $380 billion trade deficit. Now, the difference between trade balance and current account balance, those of you that aren't a particular economist or financial people, the trade balance is one data series that contributes to the calculation of the current account. The current account is all financial flows in and out.
So, you know, there are 450,000 Chinese students in US universities in the US. They are paying about 62 billion a year for that. That's money leaving, right? This is money coming into China. That was money leaving. When the Chinese were traveling prior to COVID around the world and spending, they can't spend R&B anywhere. They have to spend dollars, Eurogens or pounds. That number was a huge number, multiple hundreds of billions. So, the current account is kind of the net assessment. Think about the net income of the sovereign.
So, the current account, I'm going to, you guys are going to think I'm maybe conspiratorial, but let me walk you through this. The current account, just prior to the COVID was, as you see, trending down towards zero. That international travel number on China's macro level data series in the wind database, right before COVID was $420 billion. So, think about this for a second. The current account was going to zero, and the primary reason was they had a big balance of trade that was positive in their favor, but allowing the Chinese population writ large to travel and spend abroad and maybe invest a little bit. You remember they had certain amounts that were allowable. That number got to be $420 billion.
So, at a time in which the Hong Kong protests were at their zenith, December 2019, and the time in which their current account was dangerously heading below zero for the first time, COVID arose, that was really convenient for them. That really saved two major existential problems for the Communist Party. Hong Kong and their current account. So, if you look at the current account, boom, in which straight back up to magic, $400 billion. So, again, maybe it was just a pure coincidence, but maybe it was a perfectly timed execution of something else.
So, if you're running a positive current account, if you have more dollars coming in than going out, what you would be doing with that money is investing it in dollar-based debt at the highest yields with the deepest capital markets in the world. But what are you seeing here? China's taken their treasury balance from a trillion to 850 billion. We don't know what the new number is yet, but I would imagine that Janet Yellen's tour de appeasement recently was begging them to just stop selling their treasuries. We have to issue another $800,000,000 just for the announced fiscal deficit for the year, and the Fed's not buying them, China's not buying them. There are a few other sovereigns that are buying them. Someone who's got to buy these things, I think our banking system will lose more deposits. They'll go into treasuries. But the point being is, this is a non-financial move. If you were running China, you'd be buying treasuries not selling them, unless you're trying to sanction-proof your reserves. They're getting them out here.
Now, you guys, those of you there in the economics profession probably follow Brad's set-turn, a couple of people that really understand financial flows. Well, Brad's comment here is that they're selling treasuries, but they're buying agency securities in Belgium.
If that's the case, and by the way, it's supposition. There's no data series that will show you that that's the case. But if he's right, that's also trying to betting that they can divide Europe and not have severe European sanctions if and when the US sanctions them.
As we've seen out of Macron lately in what you're seeing out of Germany, there's not a lot of solidarity in Europe as far as it relates to China. But this is something really interesting.
One of the other things that happened in the last few months is, how many of you in here use any of the China data series like Wind or any of these, like the Bloomberg's of China? At our firm, we use Wind at all the research universities in the US. They use Wind. It is a data aggregator of both macro level data and corporate level data.
About three, four months ago, severed. It's gone. No more data series. You're not allowed to have it. The data that we're getting out of China now is from the mainland approved by Xi Jinping to be released in a press release. There's no more databases. Stanford doesn't have it anymore. Harvard doesn't have anymore. All of the universities that are actually partners with China in many ways and receive a lot of Chinese donations have been different. It would be different if it was just me that got severed, but it was everybody. I think access to all data was just severed.
If you think about the strategy on the battlefield, about controlling the data domain, we all know that China has 20% plus youth unemployment. We all know their economy is really struggling right now. The last thing Xi Jinping wants is the Western press to keep writing about how much trouble their economy is in. You know what? They just cut the data feed. Now we're going to run with whatever they say.
In case in point, last year, last year they were welding their citizens into their buildings during the extreme COVID lockdowns. They were the LNG demand for China was down 22%, and we chat payments were down 30%. If I gave you those three data points on a chalkboard, would you say GDP was up or down? It was a train wreck last year, and you see that in the commodities markets, but China reported a very positive GDP for the year. So it's interesting what they do. So now we're not going to get those data series anymore.
If you were Xi Jinping and you were, you have two worlds. You have your domestic world, which is your RMB or your UAM based world, which you control. They control everything internally. But then you have the world, they're interfaced with the outside, and this is key to understanding.
They all cross border settlements, about 85% of all cross border settlements, when China trades with the rest of the world, they're in dollars. Everything they do internally is in RMB or UAM. The dollars really important to them. And so if you were Xi and you thought about the way their Chinese capital markets work, you have domestic capital markets that issue bonds and stocks in RMB, then you have domestic or Chinese companies that issue bonds in dollars.
So case in point, there are about $170 billion worth of dollar bonds that the Chinese property developers issued to the West. So a bunch of Western investors bought dollar bonds. They have RMB based bonds too. But if you were China and you were about to prepare for war, you would just say, you know what? I'm just not going to pay those dollars back. I'm going to default on my dollar stuff, and I'm going to pay my RMB stuff so that my people are okay. That's the basic way to think about what they're doing here.
So they're offshore defaults for their dollar based bonds. If you look at the two current categories, they're 35%. So 65% of the dollar based bonds of all the property developers in China are in default offshore. Onshore, it's a little bit different. Right now, there are 79% of those bonds of the same companies, not default. Only 21% are in default. So if you're a Westerner holding a dollar bond, you're going to get something that rhymes with hero.
Essaywee banks, this is another thing that just started happening. So the way that airplane leasing works in China is the big SOE banks are the orderers for Boeing and Airbus. They're the biggest orderers in Asia. They own the order books. Those order books have grown since China ascended the WTO. They want to control the aircraft leasing markets. They want to do it for their own market domestically and then they want to be the big less sore for the rest of Southeast Asia, which they are. They have never missed a year to grow their order books in the last 20 years.
Well, just a few months, just two months ago, some NDAs went out to the marketplace. Two of the big SOE banks want to sell their entire order book. They've gone from building, building, building, building, with a very specific strategy in mind is controlling the order books of all the big airliners in China to we want to sell it all. And we want dollars and we want the highest bidder. It's just a change in their strategic positioning in the financial markets. They would never do that. If they thought they wanted to keep growing and having a positive relationship with financial markets in the West.
These things are in the market. These are $10 billion plus transactions. So the other thing that happened even before they put together their new laws about national security of data is the Chinese authorities arbitrarily and capriciously rated the men's group, Bain, Cap Vision. They detain multiple employees. They are doing things that are scaring the lights out of US corporate due diligence companies. All three of these companies just due diligence. They look at Chinese competition. If you're a private equity firm in the US, you hire one of these firms and say, hey, this group of Chinese investors or entrepreneurs came to us to get us to give them money and raise for the new company. We need to understand if they're criminals. We need to understand what their history is. You do basic due diligence. The Chinese rated all three of these firms took all of the computers and detained employees. If you were trying to develop or continue a system that attracts dollars and attracts corporate interests, this is something you would never do.
Okay. We're time planning for natural resources. If again, if we were running China, China's the world's largest importer of crude oil and LNG, they import almost 12 million barrels a day of crude, 8 B.C. F. a day of LNG. They use about 15.5 billion or a million barrels of oil a day. So you would try to secure that kind of natural resource commitment from, let's just say, countries around the world that might not adhere to US sanctions.
And if you were going to do that, what would you do? Well, maybe you'd get on an airplane. And for the first time in the history of the world, the Chinese premier landed in Saudi Arabia. And maybe you'd try to get the Sunnis in the Shi'as to love each other and start talking with Iran and Iraq. What do you think he just did? He just did that. He's trying to put together 12 million barrels a day. On the gas, he'd be trying to do the same thing. Gas is harder. So I'm going to walk you through. Here's where China gets its crude from, about half from the Middle East, 13% Africa, about 16% from Russia. So really, they only have to worry about a handful of percent. You know, the Russians are going to go along with them. So the Saudis play both sides. You know the rest of the Middle East will play both sides. So they're pretty safe, I think, in their, let's say, countering sanctions moment in the event of an invasion. What they're going to have to worry about is the majority of this is seaborne, and we have a great navy. So those straits in Malacca are going to become trouble for them on the energy side. But let's just say in securing commitments. They're there on the natural gas side, LNG. The brown area there is mostly the stands, and that's pipeline. So you get to focus on the rest of the world. The really only problem for them on the LNG side is Australia. So if you knew you couldn't get Australia, which they won't get Australia to agree, what would you do? Would you build a lot more coal because you have a lot of coal?
In May of 2023, China's coal imports hit 360 to 380 million tons. That compares with 290 million tons the year before and an all time record in 2013 of 327 million tons. This is John Kerry's worst nightmare. They are going back to the dirtiest, cheapest potential fuel in the event that they're not going to be able to get that LNG. Again, I'm giving you one idea here, but it sure looks to me that they are securing all of, trying to secure all of their energy commitments.
Chinese local governments permitted a staggering 106 gigawatts of new coal in 2022. That's 100 large coal-fired power plants the most since 2015, and it quadrupled over 2021. Think about where the world's headed on an ESG front and on a climate front in Greta. I can't figure out why Greta never ends up in Beijing, but we can talk about that later. Other coal-powered project activity accelerated as well. 50% more starts. China, the combined capacity of coal-powered plants that started construction that just began last year was six times as large as all the rest of the world combined, just to put things into perspective.
What else would they be doing to diversify themselves away from sanctions? Gold. They added eight tons of gold in April. They've got about $150 billion worth of gold. It doesn't really move the needle per se, but on $3 trillion of reserves, $150 billion is nothing to sneeze at if they're going to really need access to something they can sell somewhere that doesn't adhere to US sanctions.
The last thing, there are two things I'm almost finished here. We're going to have plenty of time for questions. China has 20% of the world's population, and they're hoarding almost 70% of the world's grain today. Now, different grains are in different amounts, but the head of grain reserves at the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration told reporters this last November, are wheat stockpiles can sustain China for a year and a half. That's super interesting. Why would you need to do that? Why would you need to have a wheat stockpile that lasts a year and a half in China? The China Enterprise Grain Reserve Company was formed in August of 22 to manage their national grain reserves. The new companies are joint venture between their two state-owned grain companies, Sino-grain and Kafka. If you had a grain reserve, you're running a country, and your people in one of your largest cities are hanging out their windows, banging pots and pans because they're welded into their buildings, and you have a food reserve in that city, wouldn't you release the food reserve to the people that needed food? It didn't happen. The grain reserves weren't touched in Shanghai when the extreme COVID lockdowns were going on. If you're not going to release them then, then why are you holding them? I don't know, maybe you're holding them for something even larger. That's an even larger problem.
Again, I'm trying to show you in a series of different ways that they're doing things that don't actually make sense unless there's a greater plan for a worse situation. The last one here, this is a fascinating stat. The number of Chinese ICBM launchers reported by the Pentagon went from 100 missile silos and launchers in 2020 to 450 by October of last year. Just think about that for a second. They had 100 in their entire country in 2020. They have taken that number and increased it by 350% in 18 months. Now, why would they do that? Again, this has a strategic militaristic buildup, food buildup. They're trying to sanction proof their money, and she's telling you in every speech he's given to prepare for war. In fact, he just recently did it the day that Janet Yellen landed in China. That day he visited China's Eastern Military Command, and he told the people in the Eastern Military Command to oversee Taiwan to prepare for war. He was gaslighting Yellen right before she landed.
So, if you listen to Xi, you read what he says, and forget about the Western press, like I've tried to do here, he's telling you where he's going, he's telling you what he's doing, and he's making every preparation that I would make if I were running China and I knew I was going to invade Taiwan. So, I think it's important to have this conversation. Do I know that he's going to do it? I don't. But I actually take him at his word. I think it's likely. I think it's highly likely that he invades Taiwan. And I'm not a military strategist or analyst. I'm a financial analyst, but looking at all of the writing on what I call the Great Wall, it sure looks like it's headed all in one direction.
So, I'll stop there and love to take questions, and Paula, I think you're going to come up and join me. Thank you. Thank you. I was indeed going to say that because this is our game plan. First, outstanding presentation, very compelling, well researched. So, really, the kind of detail and the argumentation, as I said, is very compelling, and we have to have a vibrant discussion.
So, I'm only going to ask you one question. So, all of you, please be thinking about your questions because we're going to really go to you and hear your exchange with Kyle. My core question is this, I did just as Dr. Yu just mentioned, I just returned from Taiwan. And needless to say, front and center, at least during my visit in the delegation I was on, we did focus on this very question. What's the timeline here? I don't think anyone is focusing on if, but they are focusing on when. And this is what I want to push you a bit further. So, elections on Taiwan, the three candidates will be held in January, 2024. Some are arguing that this election, the Chinese, of course, are already wielding and waging their influence on, are hoping to wield their influence on the results of the election. People argue, well, that's the quote unquote invasion, that they have the political, some argue this, well, you know, get the right candidate, it's low cost, we got it. We don't have to expend our military or our economic reserves.
On the other hand, then, to a different point of view, it was said, well, let's look at 2027. Shizhi Ping, you know, that's a point where he goes on to another term, and looking at really the legacy. And maybe it should be that point in time. Give us now your view, since you made such an extremely compelling case. What do you think in terms of the timing? And let me add one more wrinkle in the mix. You know, the question was, is it going to be military? You even yourself in articulating and mentioning the operation joint fight strike, the ambitious assault, excuse me, amphibious assault. In this case, the other question is, well, could it just take the form of a blockade, dive a little deeper on that, and then we're going to go to all of you.
I'll start by saying, I recently returned and so did Miles from the beaches of Normandy. And when you walk around and you understand the destruction and the disaster that one madman, or let's say back then to Hitler and Mussolini, could bring to an entire world, it really sunk in understanding that we know Putin's a madman. And we also know he's not acting. When I hear people rationalize when someone might move for this reason or that, or there's an election coming, or it's much easier and it'd be much easier on the economy to do X, Y, or Z. When you really think about who these guys are, they are not rational. And they are not economic actors.
And I remind you, Putin didn't invade because he thought it was a great economic move. And he didn't choose a time that was suitable to the rest of the world. It was a time suitable to him. And so when I think about whether or not Xi Jinping is rational and economic, and if you even remember when the blood banks move to the border, the New York Times are saying he's just saved rattling. I mean, for God's sake, everyone thinks these people are rational and they're not. So you think this could be imminent, imminent in the sense that there's a mobilization. I mean, it could be around the corner. It could certainly be in 2024. Yeah, so the sum total of my analysis, especially on the financial side, which is where I find myself to have the most expertise, it's now down to a period of months in which they're ready and not years. The cadence of what they're doing in financial markets can take us down to 12 to 18 months. So I would say my guess is before the end of next year. And again, who am I to guess. But based on my analysis, it sure looks obvious that that's the case.
And then if I was Xi Jinping, if you read very carefully the militaristic doctrine that is in open source, they are focused on targeting destruction, ways of life. And destruction, way before detection happens. So I think he'll move much sooner than any of us think he'll move. And I think it will be military. And I hope I'm wrong about all this because the world will be so much better placed for us and our kids and our families and our relationships. If I'm right, that's awful. And it's something I don't want.
I have to say again, your analysis here is very compelling. It's well articulated and well researched. And so, all right, let's go to questions. And by the way, we're going to try to get everybody in the mix here. Let's go to you first and please introduce yourself. I'm Peter Humphrey. I'm an intelligence analyst and a former diplomat. I'm troubled by a real fantasy that seemed to dominate this problem. And that is that Taiwan has to wear with all to stop an invasion fleet. And clearly, it does not. If we're looking at convoys coming from Poland, they ain't coming. Everything that Taiwan needs has to be on the island on day one. And it needs more stuff than Ukraine ever needed. And we ain't supplying it. So I want to ask why we're living with this fantasy that we cannot conceivably arm Taiwan in time. And telling that does Taiwan have the financial wherewithal to make the anti ship missiles, the drones and their torpedoes that might might have a chance at sinking the invasion fleet.
Thank you for your two questions. Thank you also. No speeches. We can hear his answer.
谢谢您提出的两个问题。也谢谢您。不需要演讲。我们可以听他的回答。
One thing I haven't, I didn't really elucidate well there is I am a huge proponent of crippling China through the economic sphere. There are four wars that we can be fighting with them. One, the kinetic war that you're that we're all referring to today, where the US has the best war department in the world. The second one is a cyber war department cyber war where we have the best department in the world. The two other wars, the economic war and the data slash propaganda war, we don't have war departments. Okay. What I'm advocating for is if 86% of cross border settlement for all of China's daily transactions are in dollars, we can hobble their economy if we press one button. If we take them off the swift system writ large and say your S.O.E. banks, your joint stock banks. If you invade Taiwan, that's what we're going to do. Their economy comes to a grinding hall in one month. And we need to we need to socialize the concept of that button.
Here's the problem. You look at the administration and again, I'm not being partisan. It's just the people in place today. And even the people that were in place in the Trump administration because we talked about this. The Treasury's owned by Wall Street, right? Mnuchin was owned by Wall Street, Yellen is owned by Wall Street. They want one thing. They want more dollars, more euros, more shackles. They want to chase economic deals. And so getting Treasury and OFAC to socialize the concept of pressing this economic nuclear button. They won't talk about it. It's too incendiary. But it is incredibly effective. We don't need all the harpoon missiles sitting around Taiwan. If we don't want to engage militarily, I believe some of it will be military. But if we really want to be effective, we press that button. Put me in charge of OFAC. I can work the button. And I know what kind of devastation it will do to China. And so we as a country, it's an amazing effective deterrent. We need to start talking about it. By the way, if I could just add, it's Russia based. Do you know what Medvedev, when he was president of Russia, he said, you take us off swift. You cut us on swift. It's a declaration of war. So it is a severe measure.
Let's go to this gentleman here. If we get a mic over here and if you'll introduce yourself. Please, no speeches, just questions. Thank you, everyone. So I'm Daniel. I'm the co-founder of Freeware Investment. So basically, my job is to basically just conduct the investigation on S&P companies to assess their exposure to China. We were looking about, like last time I come to the house institute, it was a U-sequent, their legislative yarn came here, their chairman came here. We were talking about the election. So thank you for bringing it up.
So the thing is, my worry is that how do we read the risk from China from China of all those war-stricken S&P companies considering their significant exposure from China. We're talking about more than 15% of almost like S&P companies being exposed to China. And my job is to basically just to build up a portfolio that's free from all of the entire countries to offer to investors.
And one of the things that I think right now, American investors, we have trust of ESG environment, but we don't have a trust on human rights. It was saying that I want a portfolio that's free from China for all of the time, countries. I want human rights. Sorry, you don't have a choice. So my job is facing some difficulties right now to promote that awareness. Is there something that we can do here in the private sector? Yes.
Thank you. Thank you. It's a great question. It's something I've been pushing for behind the scenes and in the public domain for a long time. And unfortunately, again, even if you think about Biden and especially Blinken on the campaign trail, he specifically said many times in the public domain that we will, we, meaning the United States, will never trade human rights for a trade deal with China. But what did we just do? We just went over there, hat in hand, begging for meetings in the various disciplines, and we didn't mention human rights. We don't care. We care about economics and it's Wall Street driving this movement.
So I always say in our firm, if our national security and our values were left up to Wall Street and the government, and the private sector will be speaking Chinese tomorrow, right? We need leadership at the top. We need leadership to set the guard rails. And it's interesting, the Director of National Intelligence in the United States every year declassifies a bunch of work and he writes a report to Congress. It happens every March. And it's the DNI threat assessment report to Congress. How many of you in here have read that report before? Okay, 5%. That report details the largest threats to US national security. And every year, it's China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and that order. And it's really, it's really interesting. It's well written. And there's this chasm between Wall Street, NSSNP, and the Director of National Intelligence giving you the data saying they are the largest threat to our way of life, to our values, to our system, and to the security of our country. And yet we can't wait to raise more money for an IPO that will help them genetically modify their food so that they can have a bigger reserve to attack us with. It's actually insane.
So there's no answer other than if and when this happens, the people that lose the money that lose what they have invested in China, whether it's PP&E on the corporate level or whether it's money invested from US institutions in their equity markets and their private equity world, they're going to lose it all, in my opinion. That day is coming. And those people deserve to lose it all, and they deserve to lose their jobs. Those people have never lost their jobs, right? They're going to say, but everybody did it. And I'm going to tell you that that's not going to fly.
So I think there's just, there's no way to prevent it. Although corporate America is doing all they can now to diversify supply chains, and they're not going to tell you about it beforehand. They're going to do it very quietly. And they are. They are doing it.
I'm going to catch Dr. Yu. Did you have, you said you have a question or comment? I will. You're welcome. I need to know. All right, because thank you, because there are quite a few. I'm going to go to you right there, and then we'll pass it to you next. And I'll come back. I saw over on this side and back there. We'll catch you. We'll get you all. Please if you introduce yourself.
Hi, thank you for speaking. My name is Zoe, and I'm an intern at the Vandenberg Coalition this summer. I just wanted to go back to what you said in your comments at the start of this discussion where you said that you don't think that she is necessarily a rational actor. I'm wondering how you reconcile that with kind of the methodical approach you think he's taking in terms of the grain reserves, you know, selling bonds and all the things you mentioned in your PowerPoint. Why would he go that far and then act in some kind of irrational way, not taking to account other factors like elections and such in his actual invasion of Taiwan. If you'll pass the mic to him and we'll hold your question.
I think that they've had this plan for a very long time. I think, you know, she has been in 10 years. He's consolidated power like any dictator would. He's removed all of his opposition with Hu Jintao being the final straw. There is everyone in the standing committee owes their life to Zhejiang Ping in some way or fashion. So he's got yes men all the way through. And he's finally got to this point where he has total power. Now he's still very worried about, you know, he's he's sex generals like it's the national pastime over there when they even look look the wrong way. So he's worried internally about any kind of conflict, something that Miles and I talk about, but he's been very rational in the build to take Taiwan. But what I'm saying is rational thought from our perspective, our perspective is, well, if he was rational, he would never do that. He would never move on Taiwan. If he wants the GDP of China to move and he wants them to continue to grow and internationalize and make the world a larger kumbaya place, he would never do this. Right. So what I'm saying is from our perspective, he's not going to act rationally. From his perspective, what's rational is he's going to take Taiwan. And it doesn't matter what anyone else in the world says. They believe they're strong enough now to withstand US sanctions. They're going to build a coalition of the Axis of Evil. You just see who she's been visiting. You've got you've got him visiting Saudi. You've got him visiting Venezuela. He told, you know, he's a limitless partnership with the world's number one war criminal. How does our treasury secretary grow over there and ask for more meetings? Like there's there's a big gap between kind of, I think, perception and reality. I wake up every day thinking I'm taking crazy pills. So I think he's rational in his own mind, but he's not rational as we think. Kyle, we like your directness on everything here. All right, you're up next.
Hi, I'm Kai. I'm also an Internet the Vandenberg coalition. My question is regarding Southeast Asia. So a lot of Chinese soft power and economic power is in Southeast Asia. And as someone whose family in Singapore grew up in Singapore 20 years, that's very concerning to me. Do you think that the US has any sway in Southeast Asia if China were to do anything to Taiwan in terms of holding China economically accountable, as you said in your speech? Yeah, you're. And if we could get the mic over to the gentleman right here with the yellow tie. Thank you sir.
So your point your point is well taken. Taiwan isn't the prize. Taiwan is a stepping stone to Southeast Asia and also to Oceana.
你的观点很好理解。台湾不是目标,而是通往东南亚和大洋洲的跳板。
You know, we fought some really big battles in World War II on the Marshall Islands, right, and the Solomon's. And so when you think about Southeast Asia and the noceana writ large, China has been methodically changing the organizational structure of Oceana, bribing them, putting, I mean, I'm sure you saw, they just announced they're putting an embassy in the Solomon Island yesterday.
We are fighting as much as we can, but again, they don't operate in the rules based order. They bribe, coerce, they influence. They do things that we can't do. Now we can help build things and enter economic partnerships, but we can't pay off leadership like they do.
So they have really set an influence campaign in the in Oceana and in Southeast Asia. We have our allies, right, Singapore. I don't know, Singapore might split down the middle. Sorry.
But when you think about the Philippines and you think about Japan, some of our greatest allies over there care very much about this. I'll tell you one of our senior military leaders who I'm close to, maybe the senior most one over there went and met with the Japanese Defense Minister. And the Japanese Defense Minister said something really interesting. He said, this is the largest existential crisis Japan has ever faced. And we said respectfully, you know, ever, I mean, this is up there, right? He said, no, ever. And so to me, that told me, Japan knows how vital this potential conflict is to them. And we, of course, have very strong militaristic ties to Japan. And we have article five protections with them.
So the long way of saying this is Taiwan is a stepping stone to Southeast Asia. And if we allow this to happen, then the countries of Southeast Asia will have to arm and fight or submit to China's rule. And this is China's plan, if for those of you that have read unrestricted warfare, right, they have to secure the first island chain by a certain date, and then the second island chain, and then they move on. They actually have a plan, and they've had this plan for a long time. And so we have to stop it.
Sir, we're going to you. And then we have two questions here and back there. Yes. Eric Rosenman from the Jewish Policy Center. We have seen repeatedly in the press that American analysts have quoted, he's telling his military to be ready to take Taiwan by 2027. You're saying 12 to 18 months, perhaps. And your expertise is fiscal. You said not necessarily military, but you're in touch with military experts. Are we in a position, if it comes sooner rather than later, and even four years is maybe not that much of a warning or preparation time, is it your sense that the US military can do anything other than suffer perhaps a very serious defeat if pushed earlier?
Yeah, let me disevaluate of that thought. We have a plan. We have a very strong plan. We know we can win. We just need to go. And it's going to be ugly. If we have to execute that way with our allies and strategic partners in the region, they're going to be tens of thousands of lives lost. And then one wants that to happen. But please don't believe in this sense of fatalism that we're so far behind that we don't know what to do.
You know, China has, you think about this, I think in 2010, China had 35 ships in their Navy. And now they've got 350 ships in their Navy and they're building a Navy. They have 11 shipyards running 24 seven. We have two that have like union problems. So, you know, our country's gone somewhere where we need to fix a few things.
But in their Navy being that large as far as a ship counts concern, they have two aircraft carriers. One was a junker from the Ukraine that a Chinese businessman bought to turn it into a casino. And in the end, it was an MSS guy wanting to flip it into a aircraft carrier. That's the landing. They built one. They're building another one. Both of their aircraft carriers run on diesel. So we have 11 carrier strike groups that all run on nuclear. We're still ahead on the naval side and advance weaponry side and they haven't fought a war. We, you know, at least have some people that can that can really move this needle forward. You probably saw the US just took Admiral Sam Paparo, whose commander at Pacific Fleet nominated him to be the chief of the Navy. His Senate confirmation hearing should be in the next couple weeks. And we have people in the right places. We have the right people in the right places. We have the right equipment.
This isn't something that we want. And we never want to execute this. But I can tell you, without beyond a shadow of a doubt, we have a plan. And our plan is a devastating plan to China.
You have a question. Hi, my name is Kevin from Georgetown University. So in examining all instruments of national power, what is military diplomatic or economic, has American diplomacy like failed us so that we have to resort to using potentially military power. And to that extent, you know, how should we integrate, you know, all these instruments to effectively deter China?
Yeah. So this question about American for a policy or diplomacy. You know, we have obviously adopted what I call, we've energized the appeasement caucus, name a time in which appeasement against autocratic despots has ever worked. It never works. Right. What you learn is deterrence through strength is the only path forward. So the current path of our country is embarrassing to me. And, and by the way, I need to tell you from a political perspective, I don't sit on either side. I am pro choice. I own 200 guns and I'm the biggest gun control advocate there is out there. I don't fit in a box. But I think you're a Texan. Yeah, I'm a Texan. But again, a Texan who is number one in gun control. Okay. So I'm not, I don't fit with our governor either. The point I'm trying to make is it's a nonpartisan thing to say that our foreign policy is gone so far in the wrong direction that I actually lose sleep about it at night. It drives me berserk to see the weakness that we're pushing and that this begging and pleading when what we need to do is show strength and be strong. We're the strongest country in the world. And we should start acting that way. And so if it goes to war, it's not a failure per se, a foreign policy, although we're going in the wrong direction.
I don't believe we could have stopped Hitler. If you read Hitler's own notes and you read all of the notes of Churchill, I don't know if you've read Churchill's books and Hitler's notes. Now Hitler was going to invade. There was nothing that was going to dissuade him. Now, if we attacked him when he moved on the Rhineland, that war would have been much smaller. But that's such a tough decision to make amongst a bunch of pacifists and appeasers. You can't attack early and God, I can't imagine us being the first mover. We would never do that now given the way the world is reset.
So I'm resigned to believe that if and when it happens, she is going to do this. He's told you since 2017 in every single public speech he's given that he's going to do this. So I'm believing that that's going to happen. And what we've got to do is have everything ready for if and when that happens back to your question. We are the economic powerhouse of the world and Europe is in theory our ally, there are a few that might go the other way. But if we just act in unison, we can shut them down. They've a closed capital account. We can stop this or we can hobble them. And then we'll have a new regime and they can start over. So I think the foreign policy failure question is something where I'm very disappointed where we are. But let's hope we can change that quickly. But I actually don't think foreign policy can fix this.
All right. You have a question at the back and then we have one up front and then we're going to move to Dr. you. Okay, but at the back, please.
好的。你有一个后排的问题,然后我们前面还有一个问题,接着我们会去找你,好吗?但是请先坐在后排。
Hi, thanks for a great speech. This is Katia with Voice of America. After the withdrawal of I have treated the US is still like in behind in developing this intermediate range missiles reaching between 3000 to 5500.
Well, China has already fielded over 1200 ballistic and crewed missiles. What does this missile gap mean to the US in the potential conflict over Taiwan? And what is your recommendation to help offset China's missile advantage in the Pacific. Recently, there are some policymakers proposed this ring of fire missile strategy. So I think that the US, the Philippines or Japan to host some shorter range missiles and deploy the long range to Australia Pacific or Guam. But do you think it's feasible or necessary to build this network of conventional missile ground ground based missile in circling China or should the US invest more on nuclear weapons or drones and other weapons system.
Not my strong point, although I have my opinions. I think that when you look at our submarine fleet and our Navy, I don't think we need any more missiles. We have plenty and we have the best submarine fleet in the world and that's we are at least a generation, if not to, ahead of China on the submarine fleet. So I don't think that that's encircling China with our missiles is necessarily even a good idea on the land base. But I do think that we have all the firepower we need at the moment. And I don't think the basic missile counts matter. And if you read what the Pentagon says, you know, while China might have more missiles silos than we do. We don't know if there are active missiles in there, they're still building.
But the point being is, if you think back to what Churchill was saying in World War II, from the late 1920s on, he's saying, Hey, hey, are you guys looking at what he's building? He's building the biggest air force. He's committed to building the Navy's committed to building more airplanes and more munitions than anyone else. Is anyone paying attention? And we also know there's not going to be another war. Let's just let Neville Chamberlain learn how effects work this out. The point being is China has been hell bent really in the last five years, going exponential on everything military. And we're just starting to wake up to this fact. And it really bothers me too. But again, it's all par for the course. If you think he's really going to do what he's going to do. It's I think, unfortunately, I believe that's likely to happen.
So we have your question. We'll hear from Dr. Yu. And with his permission, I'm going to ask one last wrap up. Oh, we just saw you in the back. Okay, we'll take yours in right there. And we're going to close with that.
Yes. Hi, I'm Kathy. And I now intern project 2049. And I'm from Taiwan. And I used to work in legislative UN for two years. I agree with what you say, because we've put too much focus on Western, the risk China, but China is also also direct for the world. So my question is how Taiwan and the world can prepare for China that is the risking from the world. And how this say do gap. Like we were aware, Ned, about like China is going to the risk of world, but how can we overcome this say do gap in this democratic countries, especially us and Western countries. Thank you.
Okay, thank you. And let's take that mic all the way to the gentleman in the back if he raises his hand. And no, no, keep yours. Keep yours. We have to please. So again, it goes back to the kind of dogmatic operations of the people sitting in the office today. We all want peace. I think everyone in this room wants peace. But if you know that war is coming, you better start changing your method of operation. And unfortunately, we continue to go down the appeasement pacifist route more and more instead of turning the other way.
And I think I really think we should have turned the other way a long time ago because I know from talking with our senior military leadership, they know this is coming. And our intelligence agencies know this is coming and think it's a high probability event. They don't think it's a super low probability event. So why isn't our leadership in our country acting differently? And they're just in a position where we've had too much peace for too long and they really, really, really want peace and they want to, they really want to project their moral values and I get it. I understand that. But unfortunately, that's not where the world is today. And I think that's where the gap is. Right? Leadership has to change. Has to change quickly. But I would say from having just been there, I think people are really mobilizing and they're aware of what is at stake here.
Dr. You were going to go take him and then come to you and then me. Please.
您要去接他,然后再到您那里,最后再到我这里。拜托了。
Tom Lyons for 2430 Group. You got to speak up. Sorry, it's hard to hear.
Tom Lyons 向2430 Group的人说话。你必须大声说。对不起,很难听清楚。
2430 Group. Question for you. What do you make of the new appointment to the PVOC over the weekend? And then what advice do you have for multinationals that have operations based there?
First of all, glad to meet you in person. Thanks for coming. Thanks for your service to our country. Anyway, I think that, okay, so a lot of people didn't follow this back to the 20th party Congress where they fired the head of their central bank, the head of their treasury and the head of their Securities and Exchange Commission all in one day in one failed swoop. I can imagine if we did that. I can imagine what world markets would do.
So, Yigang, they took out of the PVOC and just a few weeks later quietly reinstalled him. Now, we were just kidding. I mean, the rest of the world hated the fact that he got ripped out of the PVOC. On the Saturday of 4th of July weekend, about a week ago, they quietly fired him again. So they fired him, rehired him, fired him. And it's in a period of time when the Yuan, both onshore and offshore, was massively devaluing. So they fired him 5% in a week. And that was really worrying, China. So they were in the middle of a currency crisis and they fired their central banker. That's not the crisis operation you should engage in at that moment in time.
So I think it was a move of panic. I think it was a move of, it was a sophomore move in capital markets. You have to remember that Chinese have only been at this capital markets game for 20 plus years. So I think they are still really green, really new at capital markets. The problem is the size of their market in nominal terms is so much larger than their GDP. And so they've got like 20 plates spending all the time. And if one plate drops, the others are shortly behind.
So I think it's a big deal that Yigang kind of did the on again, off again, off again moves. It's fascinating to me to see truthfully, I was with my son and the Bahamas spearfishing. I had a friend to ask me 5 days later, and I follow this stuff as closely as I can, especially the financial side. I missed it. I'll be the first one to admit, I missed it. And that was intentional by China. Saturday on 4th of July weekend, it's a perfect day to tell us, to just remove him and put someone else in and pretend nothing ever happened. It was fascinating.
Miles, let's get yours, then mine, we're going to wrap then, and you'll get to be one on one with our guest speaker. Ajay, thank you very much. I think it's due to the constraint of time. I'm going to yield my time to you for sure. You are. Okay. Well, thank you. All right. Well, thank you. You're very gracious. I have the mic right here. My wrap up question for you is, and I can't help myself because I do follow Ukraine very closely. And something you said reminded me, lessons learned. We're in the midst of what's happening right now with Ukraine. And it said over and over what happens in Ukraine, and if there's a successful outcome, that will send a signal to Xi Jinping.
Okay. Potentially, potentially not. But something you said earlier, very fast, Putin in 2007 at the Munich Security Conference, he actually openly said, Western values are not our values. We have every right to go and invade in any country where you have Russian speakers and ethnic Russians. And then we saw 2008, Georgia. Well, Chachina before that, 2008, Georgia, 2014, Ukraine, and then just last year. What is the core lesson learned and that you, the core message you want to impart to this audience here? You actually just stated it for me. It was perfect. And you and I met over Ukraine at the Bush Center. And I think exactly, you just put it together perfectly. I think that Putin told you where he was going and what he was going to do. Now, he didn't tell you he was going to blow up his own apartment building to start Chachina. But he did go take Georgia very quickly. He took Kremea and Savasthapol next in 2014.
Here's also a fun fact. If you just think about this. I've been on the boards of some of the largest financial institutions in America as far as endowments are concerned. And so when you think about institutional asset allocation and investing in various markets, institutions had fairly large sums of money invested in Russia. I helped craft an institutional compliance program or a sanctions compliance program in 2017. And I stood up on the stage and I was beating drum saying, why do we have money in Russia? I'm trying to understand. You know, he took Georgia no way. He took Kremea and Savasthapol in 2014. And why do we have $350 million invested in Russia? They said, well, because it's cheap. Super cheap. They gave me a 60 page power point, which I still have. And I said, I think it's insane. We're insane to have money in Russia. Half of these companies were investing in Russia. The Russian government owns more than half the company.
Like cheap. It's cheap for a reason. They can just take it away. And he's not a good guy. And it's a terrible place for our money. And by the way, so is China. It's an awful place for our money. And here's why. And I was saying that in 2017. And I was overruled. And the day that Putin invaded, 350 million lit on fire. And these institutions can sweep small amounts of money under the table. If you have $100 billion, what's 350 million bucks? It actually doesn't even make the news, by the way. It just goes away. And your constituents probably don't even know it. But in China, you can't sweep $5 billion under the rug if you've got $100 billion. You're going to have to talk about it. And so, I think that the lesson learned is Putin's invasion of Ukraine was really important all across the board. From the force perspective, from the diplomatic perspective, from understanding the psyche of madmen. And then the financial markets. And financial markets, think about back to World War II. After World War I, it was the US and Britain lending Hitler the money to build his force back up to come at us with. We lent him the billions of dollars to build his force back. We are building China's entire PLA, Navy, Army. And with US money, we've got $3 trillion worth of PP&E and FDI invested in China. I think it's insane that we keep investing their money. And I know many of us have worked together to try to keep the thrift savings plan of the US military from investing in Chinese companies. I mean, you can't even make that up. One day there's going to be a book written about this.
Miles, you and the China Center here at Hudson, thank you for inviting Kyle Bass. If I may, please join us in thanking what an outstanding presentation we are delighted you are here today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
It should be called the Financial Interpretation of China's Logic of Aggression. So, thank you very much. And with all this green assessment and green convincing, I'm going to present you with a token of appreciation, which is a symbol of honey, peas and harmony, which is the Winnie de Pooh. I love it. Thank you, Miles. Thank you. I love it. This will be on my table every morning. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you.