All Episodes
Previous Next
April 24, 2020 - The Delingpod - James Delingpole
01:07:01
Scott Arthur - scenes from behind the bamboo curtain...
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Welcome to the DellingPod with me, James Dellingpole.
And a special welcome to those of you who are listening to these podcasts three days in advance.
That means you've generously donated to my Patreon account $5 or more, which gives you special advanced access.
Now, I've been thinking long and hard about how to monetize the podcast and I don't want to upset those of you who've been enjoying the podcast and maybe, you know, you just haven't got any money and that's fine.
I just want to differentiate, if possible, between the people who can afford it and just can't be asked to give me any money and those who genuinely can't.
So I think the fairest way is to give advance listen to those who've contributed $5 or more to my Patreon account.
And I really hope that more of you can do so.
It's really lovely, those of you who have already.
And I mean, face it, I've got to eat.
I've got to make the podcast work.
I can give you more, better, longer, faster, everything.
But I need your support.
So really, really appreciate it, those of you who've donated already.
Details are on my website, delingpoleworld.com.
So, this week's special guest is so exciting.
And what's even more exciting is that there are two special guests this week.
First of all, there's my friend from China who you're about to meet in a moment.
And secondly, I've got another Carbon Mike podcast already.
I know you loved Carbon Mike last time.
So, again, thank you for supporting the podcast, and please, more of you do so.
You're all my special friends, but I have to say, the specialist of all are the ones who donate to my Patreon or buy special friend badges, or ideally both.
Right, meet my special guest.
Welcome to the Deling Podcast with me, James Deling Podcast. James Deling Podcast.
I know I always say I get very excited about this week's guest, but this guest is really unusual.
His name is Scott Arthur.
That's not his real name.
He lives behind the Behind the Dragon Curtain, or whatever you call it, in China.
And, Scott, you were one of the first people to keep me abreast of this mysterious new disease, which was causing a lot of deaths, which were being covered up in Wuhan.
I mean, you were telling me about this stuff, what, in January, weren't you?
Because you're living at the sharp end.
Yes, actually, only...
Not too many hundreds of kilometres away from the actual site, we would say.
Yeah.
And originally, I have to say...
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, what I was going to say is, I would have thought that censorship in China was such that you wouldn't be allowed to know what was going on.
So how did you know what was going on?
Because in the first instance, it always takes time for the government here to respond.
To issues like this with regards to censorship.
So for the first couple of weeks of what was happening there, there were a number of videos getting out of Wuhan from doctors, from nurses, from people working in crematoria, etc.
And of course from citizen journalists.
I forgot to see these.
Yes, I did.
And, you know, I I found it very difficult to understand how we, our Western media, weren't really picking up on a lot of these things.
I would have thought that they'd have people with a background in Synology or China and who would be able to access these things as well and would have access to the same social media networks where I was seeing these things, but seemingly not.
I was quite astounded by that.
This is one of the things that totally astounded me.
In January, thanks partly to your bulletins, I was going around saying to a few people, not many because I got so widely mocked, I was saying, look, this coronavirus thing that's coming out of China is serious.
And how come the stock markets aren't tanking?
Why is the West not responding to this?
Because this could be serious.
And I even wrote an article to this effect for a publication that shall remain nameless, pointing out some of this stuff.
And it got spiked.
I got sort of mocked for, well, you know, I was told it wasn't fit for publication because it was saying things that were simply...
I don't know implausible or or hysterical even but of course my my piece actually has been more than vindicated by events since just just tell me some of the some of the stuff that you were sending me just remind me because it was all pretty horrible wasn't it well I think one of them the early things that I saw was a video from a nurse Fully kitted out.
She sent it direct from her ward where she was working.
She was very distressed.
It was several minutes in length.
And I think it was probably about the second day of the lockdown, or thereabouts, in Wuhan.
And she, at that time, was very worried for her family, of course.
And this was, you know, what the primary purpose was, to warn her family and friends and, of course, the country at large.
But at that time she said there were already 95,000 people who were down with the illness and already thousands of dead.
Later I watched a hidden recording done by a citizen journalist on his telephone chatting to a doctor in Wuhan in one of the hospitals and she said at that time there were already And I know it sounds incredulous, but 30,000 dead.
And then I saw videos of people who worked in crematoria stating that they were overworked and were working non-stop.
And to top that, the most gruesome thing I thought that got me was when I saw videos being Made from apartment blocks at night in Wuhan, out into the distance, into the still green areas on the outskirts of Wuhan, of huge burning pyres at night.
And only at night.
Just to know a few things.
And I couldn't understand why The media in the West wasn't getting this, or why our own government seemed to be not getting it.
Yeah.
Do you have any theories on that?
Because I have a few.
Well, I certainly have one in regard to the nature of, you know, as to how the government is being advised on China in general, and that is their reliance upon academic sinologists.
I don't think they're using people like myself who've been here on the ground for, well, 20 years almost.
And I've lived in the south of China, central China, eastern China, northern China.
I've mixed with the absolute lowest peasant classes all the way up to government level.
I have a very broad understanding of China and the Chinese psyche as a consequence.
And I think the problem with the academics who advise government is just that.
They're just academics usually as well.
They're politically left anyway as well.
And so they have their relationships with China when they come over in order to keep them sweet.
Well, they keep them sweet in order to maintain these relationships.
So I don't think they're really touching base with With reality or what life is really like for people here and how they perceive their lives and how they perceive their country and the world at large.
And so I think that certainly plays a part.
So a few real people with real life experience of living and working here as opposed to those with an academic historical background Or, you know, sinological background are not really that functional.
They don't have the pay to it.
Do you think it's possible also that the academics and the supposed experts advising governments are bought and paid for by the Chinese authorities?
Oh, without a doubt.
To varying degrees, I would say yes, because it's in their interests, you know.
As an academic, when you're tenured, you want that security.
You have to maintain that.
And you know the only thing that's really maintaining you in your position is your prestige and your links and your connections which you've forged over the years.
And so in order to maintain them, then yes, you have to really, I think they're a little bit more flexible.
I'm one of those people who's not easily bought.
I just can't be bought.
But there are enough intellectual prostitutes and academia, people who will sell themselves, I think, in order to maintain their position and ignore a truth or two, you know, if it interferes with their worldview.
Yes, certainly.
So tell me, before we go on, how you come to be living in China?
I mean, I personally can't think of anything worse than living in a communist country where, you know, there's censorship and also dubious hygiene standards and stuff.
So what drew you to China?
Well, that's really very strange.
I I had a very unusual upbringing, and I ended up in children's homes.
Whilst I was there, I started reading in libraries, because although we had what was called schools on the premises, it was really not any kind of education.
You'd have a class with 11-year-olds to 17-year-olds, and it was ridiculous.
So I joined a number of libraries and I started reading actually about China very early on and in primary school as well.
I remember we were giving, you know, this is in about 1970, 71, we were giving cards with a photograph on the front of a Chinese boy and, you know, we donate tuppence every week and we get that stamped.
I'd always had this interest in China and also history and archaeology and things like that.
So I was naturally drawn to it in that sense and the philosophies and the whole martial arts thing as a youth.
And then I was actually on my way to China because when I came out of kids' homes at 16, I had 35 pounds in my pocket.
I left the Nardo's with that and nothing more.
I ended up traveling, trying to find work, trying to find a home.
Back in 1991, I stopped off in Berlin.
I was planning on hitching to China and doing the Trans-Siberian Express into China, so hitching through Europe first.
I stopped off in Berlin to do some work and get some extra money to move on to Poland and elsewhere.
And I met a woman, married her, a German woman, and then 13 years later, divorced.
And when we divorced, I thought, well, what will I do?
I'll finish my trip.
And so I came out here.
And I'd already been to East Germany and Russia as well.
So I came out here in 2001.
And China's a kind of a...
It sucks you in.
In the past, I've experienced a standard of living that I wouldn't have experienced in the UK. And so, you kind of get tapped into that.
And then, of course, you get into relationships, and eventually, the next thing you know, you've been here, you know, 19, coming on 20 years.
And I self-taught Chinese, you know.
It's a very hard country to live in, China.
Approximately 80% of foreigners who come here leave within 18 months.
The remainder tend to leave within the next 12 to 14 months.
And obviously it's because there are huge cultural differences and linguistic differences, of course.
But the vast majority of people find it Very much to be the opposite in terms of logic to the way we are brought up.
And it is.
It's about as alien as it gets without leaving the planet.
If you're looking for strange and new and unusual and so on, well, this is where you tend to find it.
And I fit it in quite well.
Because of my background, I was able to persist where others gave up.
I've always had a certain sense of self-belief which allowed me to persist on living out here and making a life for myself out here.
Do you have aspects of your personality which make you suitable for living in China?
Are you Chinese in your outlook?
No, but the Chinese do call me an egg, which means that I'm white on the outside and yellow on the inside.
And I often get accused of knowing the Chinese far too well.
You know us too well.
And, you know, we can't say anything in front of you.
Because normally with other foreign people who do speak Chinese, they can speak freely in front of them and use modes of speech and phraseology, which the foreign speaker might understand.
But On a certain level, but doesn't get the deeper meaning.
Whereas I tend to.
Usually, I pick things up very quickly.
But what made it easy for me, I think, was just because of the kind of life that I led as a child.
You know, foster care, children's homes, and then roaming Europe for about 15 years with a pack on my back, eventually self-educating, going to university.
And then coming out here.
For me, it was easy.
I've been alone a lot in my life.
China is a strange place because it's a huge country.
It's absolutely vast.
However, upon entering it, you're cut off from YouTube, you're cut off from Google, you're cut off from this, you're cut off from that.
You're intellectually isolated.
You're socially isolated.
You're culturally isolated.
And it's like going on a very small island.
Whereas, of course, the Chinese experience the opposite when they leave here and they go abroad.
For them, it's an eye-opening experience.
And in fact, the Chinese government feels that this is becoming a bit of a problem nowadays.
A lot of the youth, they have what the Chinese call bu'ai guo.
Meaning they don't love their country or they learn not to love their country when they go abroad.
So they're losing the sense of being Chinese and belonging.
And this is something that they call Western cultural pollution and they're worried about it.
And I think what we've seen over the years in terms of the social changes whereby they're using technology to bring greater controls over society Are precisely for this purpose.
And I noticed these changes pretty much on day one after Xi Jinping became leader.
I remember the day after, the person he put in charge of education in China turned around on the TV and said, we don't need foreigners here to teach us English, we will teach ourselves.
So there's always been a kind of slightly anti, in my opinion, my personal opinion, anti-foreign bias since Hu Jintao left.
Yes, but that goes back a long way, doesn't it?
I mean, the fact that the Chinese isolated themselves from the world when they might have advanced much more quickly if they hadn't had this policy of...
goes back a long way.
Chauvinism.
It does.
Well, yes, you know, the Chinese are and always have been a very insular people.
But, you know, there are reasons for this.
China, for example, China doesn't do what we do.
We tend to...
Cultures come into our culture and then our culture becomes diluted, let's say, by these other cultures.
Whilst, on the other hand, cultures which come into China, they are absorbed.
China doesn't do other people's cultures in that respect.
It just absorbs them.
When they had the revolution and Mao came into power, as far as I'm concerned, and many Chinese that I've spoken to at higher levels, all it was, it was no different to the Manchurian takeover or any other Takeover throughout Chinese history.
Really, it was a new emperor, as it were.
A new group of people running the country.
Mongolians before, Manchurians, and of course, now.
What it is.
And to be honest, you know, China is not the kind of country where you could have democracy.
I honestly believe that, after being here so long, because the people are so apolitical.
They really have no interest in politics.
And I'm talking to the greater degree.
They have no interest.
As long as somebody's steering the ship and doing a reasonably good job, and even though everybody knows there's a bit of fiddle going on or even a lot of fiddle going on, they don't really care.
They're not interested in that because they're too busy, you know, focusing on the propagation of their family and their personal lives.
So the concept of who's in charge is not really Except, haven't we seen during the handling of the coronavirus, or the mishandling, that ordinary Chinese have started getting very restive, protesting against, I mean, not just ordinary people, but the kind of the nomenclature, as it were, the billionaires.
Who've been disappearing, I understand, for speaking out against President Xi.
And can you see this developing at all?
Or do you think that the CCP will close everything down and it will be business as usual?
Yeah, look, I've never seen in almost 20 years now that I've been here, in those 20 years, I've never seen so much grumbling As I did with regards to what was happening here with Wuhan and the way it was being managed, there were a lot of rumblings.
But, you see, the thing is, yes, and I personally know a number of Chinese people who are moneyed, very well moneyed, and they send their children abroad for education with the aim of basically not coming back.
They want to open businesses for them abroad and Have them stay there, because they actually feel there may be something coming in the future, you know, in terms of a change of politics.
But, that being said, the Chinese have a long memory for harm done to them by foreigners, but a very, very short memory for harm done to them by themselves.
And the way the government has managed it, the way they closed down everything within a couple of weeks in terms of how they managed WeChat, You know, the social media networking over here and really hammered keywords and phrases so that, you know, nothing was being found.
And of course, then at the same time, they closed down many thousands of people's accounts.
They managed that very well.
People.
And then, you know, when they started turning around and saying, well, yes, it was America, or yes, it was Italy, or whatever, I was already saying that they were going to say that before they said that, because I was expecting it.
It's quite normal.
It's par for the course here.
And the point being that people will believe it, and they want to believe it, not because they believe it to be true, but because this is a face culture.
And when the country or the government loses face, then they lose face, too.
So they have a really, really deep-rooted pride in their country.
And this is what, this unity, this is what makes them so strong as a nation.
And so, yes, rumblings, but I think they are quiet.
Right.
But there will be those who have the money who will leave, you know.
Right.
And what is their game plan?
Because I can't help feeling that we've been sleepwalking towards disaster in the West.
our dealings with China have been a bit like a sucker in a poker game that they've been they've been taking us for a ride all along we've been going
yeah we're fine and we're all equals and we're all friends and I was thinking it's interesting that you you went to China in the year that China was admitted to the World Trade Organization which was probably the most dramatic geopolitical move any of us have experienced Well, I mean, it was it changed everything and it flooded the world with cheap Chinese goods.
But they've got things like The Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese effectively buying up Africa, commandeering its natural resources.
There's the trick it does, I think it did it in Sri Lanka, didn't it, where it effectively, it exploits the indebtedness of developing countries and uses that to build these What I'm saying is China has been taking over the world by stealth and is that the game plan?
Do they want to rule the world or am I making things sound more sinister than they actually are?
No, you're not.
As a matter of fact, you know, I think for a very long time now, I've been trying to communicate with people in the West with regards to, you know, the need to stop feeding the dragon.
Listen, you know, China was built off, you know, a lot of investment from abroad and a lot of taxpayers' money sent here too.
But if you talk to any Chinese citizen, even in government, At high levels, they have no idea that money was sent from abroad.
They don't know about the fact that, you know, 40 years ago we were bringing Chinese students to the UK and other countries around the world, educating them for free in university and so on, sending foreign experts over to China to assist in the development of this and that.
You know, all of the companies that have come here over the years, they've come, of course, chasing profits, but what they've done is they've overextended They've put themselves under a regulatory authority which doesn't function the way we do.
And yes, they have definite intentions, which can be seen by what's going on in the South China Sea.
Belden Road, as you mentioned, and of course, in one particular case, they've actually managed to sequester a harbour long enough to put an aircraft carrier in.
Australia has had issues with Chinese, let's say, people of Chinese origin in Australia being funded by the Chinese in order to get into Parliament.
And so these, you know, these It's not benign.
It isn't benign.
This is something that has been in my mind for a long time, but how to get to people, how to make people in the West understand this, half the time I sit in absolute disbelief.
For example, when the UK government was considering allowing the Chinese to be involved in our nuclear power stations, And then later with 5G, I thought, are you absolutely off your mind?
The line from Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, came to mind where he says, the slightest thought wouldn't begin to speculate about the nearest possibility of crossing my mind.
And really, it shouldn't.
That kind of stuff should not cross your mind.
Do you know who you're dealing with?
And this is the problem.
This is where I'm saying we have these academics advising government.
No, we are not dealing with people who think the way we think.
These are people who, when they do an MBA course in China, they have to study Sun Tzu's Art of War as part of the curriculum.
They don't do business.
They do at you.
They do it at you.
And they're very strategic.
And when you look at the number of Partially owned or fully owned state-owned enterprises around the world and where they're putting themselves and what they're doing, then, you know, if you're not...
If your eyes aren't open, the next thing you know, you'll find yourself in a hole, and that's what's happening with us.
You know, we can't even make a light bulb anymore.
You know, when you can't even produce your own steel, when you can't manage your own infrastructure, your own technology, and you're relying on a communist country, which...
Really still holds grudges with regards to things like the opium wars and so on.
They actually still hold grudges.
You know, they teach kids in school to hate the Japanese.
And I really mean it.
My own child, my son, you know, is in school here.
He's eight years of age.
And if I say Japanese, you know, I hate the Japanese, you know, because that's what they actually teach them.
So they teach them all of this history.
They've got that sense of national pride, but they have a sense of bitterness with regards to what's been done to them in their minds with regards to the past.
But when it comes down to business, they are all about spreading.
They're all about having it all.
I remember before the Beijing Olympics, The British Embassy in Beijing was asked by the government, the Chinese government, to take a webpage down because the webpage said something along the lines of, look, don't come out to China, go to a company, sign a contract, and fly off home thinking, hey, hunk your dory, because by the time you get to London Heathrow and your foot hits the tarmac, things will have changed.
Okay?
Because the contract...
It isn't a contract in the way that we see a contract.
We will stick to it.
We're very rigid about that.
But for people here, it's flexible.
And they'll change it depending on the situation.
I myself, for 13 years, I helped foreign companies source products from China.
And in many cases, people approached me later to help them get money that they'd lost here, which it's a huge vacuum.
It's a whole story in and of itself, actually, that.
But, you know, No, not benign.
Let's put it that way.
Really not.
Right.
I could speak it great.
But, you know, we don't have that time at the moment.
No.
The government needs to stick its head in a cold bucket of water, give it a good shake.
Now, I recently applied for one of those positions that, you know, God, what's the guy's name?
Sorry, you'll have to excuse me because, of course, predominantly Chinese in my head.
But what's the guy called who's assisting the Prime Minister?
The supposed genius.
Dominic Cummings.
Dominic Cummings.
Yes.
You know, he was asking for people with unusual backgrounds that may be of benefit to the government.
I applied for one of those positions and I, you know, It was just a few weeks ago and they turned me down and I just thought, you know, idiots!
Because here I am with something which is functional and not academic and which the government really seems to be in need of.
Did they give you a reason?
No, just kind of, oh, you know, we look at your details and blah, blah, blah.
And, you know, no, thank you.
I just thought...
I don't think...
I don't think Dom Cummings has really risen to the challenge.
I mean, we really had high hopes for him.
He was going to be...
He was going to clean out the orgy and stables of the deep state and reform the civil service and get...
Efficient government back on track, and he's done none of those things.
I think the deep state has won.
But anyway, so tell me more about...
Here's the thing that puzzles me.
Some of the stuff that I was seeing on social media that you were sending me, things like stories about satellites capable of reading the...
The composition of the fires which were burning in Wuhan and which showed they were burning organic matter which suggested that these were bodies and Sulfur dioxide and there was stuff about people being welded into their apartment blocks In order to stop them.
Were they literally being welded in so they couldn't get out at all?
Or was it the case that they were welding all the doors shut bar one so that people could come in and out but only with permission of the guards?
Is that right?
Originally, they were welding in people in individual apartments.
That's how it started.
And first, what they started doing What was to put aluminium crossbeams across the corridor between one apartment and another and stop the people from getting out.
So they could die there?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, I saw a video the other week of some officials going into Wuhan apartments after things had settled down.
They were going around the apartments Basically just collecting the dead from the apartments.
I actually saw footage of that.
But in the beginning, yes, it was individual apartments.
And then they decided that, okay, if one family within a block were infected, then they'd best just weld the whole lot in.
So they were welding the main doors downstairs, front and back, if they had back.
And then I even saw when they didn't have welding equipment, they just piled, dump the trucks, loads of rubble in front of the doors.
I saw footage of people falling from apartment block windows, you know, 10 or 12 floors up.
I saw people jumping out of windows because they were just so stressed by the whole thing, you know.
So, none of this, I couldn't, all the time, I'm watching this stuff, I'm seeing this stuff, and I'm thinking, why aren't people in the West seeing this?
What are newspapers doing nowadays?
Don't they have any investigative journalists?
Don't they have people who think to themselves, look, all this stuff going down in China, maybe you better get somebody who's a Chinese speaker and can access it?
You know, social media and see what's going on.
You know, I can't.
I'm dumbfounded.
Really.
I'm dumbfounded.
And the response of that editor gives you an idea of what we're up against.
That there is this kind of...
Wishful thinking, I think, partly, that no regime could possibly be this bad.
It's like conspiracy theory stuff.
It's wacko stuff that's happening on the Internet that we can't report on because that would be irresponsible because it might not be true.
But you're saying it's very much true.
I mean, it sounds even worse than I imagined.
So you're saying that...
Families were just locked into their apartments, welded into their apartments, and left to die.
Did they starve to death?
Because here's what I don't understand.
Now we've experienced Wu flu in our countries, and although there have been hot spots like Lombardy, our experience has not been of it being like, say, the Spanish flu, where people were contracting it You know, and dying of it 12 hours later sometimes.
It hasn't been that dangerous.
I mean, you know, it's claimed a few old people, a few people with underlying health conditions, but generally if you're young and reasonably healthy, you're fine.
So why did so many people die in China?
Well, that's a very strange thing because I've seen footage of You know, security guards inside of buildings, in the camera room, in the TV room, you know, where they have all the screens, you know, suddenly taking a fit and then shaking their legs on the floor and then dead.
I've seen security guys, you know, walking down the street in groups of three and one of them suddenly just dropping like a rock.
There were many instances of this.
And, yeah, it's...
And of course, you know, people getting ill, being cured, apparently cured, and then a couple of weeks later, being ill again.
And in between time, actually being discovered to have infected other people.
I don't know exactly what the situation is regarding it.
I know that at the moment there are currently three strains, major strains, going around the world.
But what I can say is, in the last week, Just outside of Wuhan, when they started opening up Wuhan, 108 people were found there to be infected.
I understand from what I saw in terms of material on social media here when Wuhan was opening that there were still residential compounds which were still on lockdown and even the story of an old man with a Tracheoptomy, or whatever it's called.
A hole in the throat, basically, put there by the doctor.
Sent out onto the streets and told, go home, you're well.
Probably just to make the statistics.
Hello, look, we've got no sick people.
But his family were very outraged, and eventually he was taken back into hospital.
And then, of course, yesterday, we heard that in Heilongjiang, one person was responsible for infecting 42 patients And in another place, one person was responsible for infecting 36 people.
So it seems to be kind of kicking off again here to some degree.
And so there's a little bit of worry about the second wave.
Right.
And are you in lockdown at the moment?
Well, we went into lockdown Pretty much immediately after Wuhan.
We're not now in lockdown.
We've been out for about maybe a week and a half, technically two weeks.
But they keep pushing back, for example, the date of when schools are to start again.
And it turns out that we've just had 32 people come out of Wuhan You see, the thing is, when they opened Wuhan, anybody without a hukou, a Wuhan hukou, is allowed to leave.
A hukou, you can imagine that as a document which is kind of like a family passport, a point of origin where the family is known to live and reside permanently.
And even though you may live in another city in China, your name will still be on the hukou book back in your hometown.
So all of those people whose names were on hukou books outside of Wuhan, when the walls came down, and in many cases literal walls because they piled up rubble and rocks over the roads, when they came down, everybody kind of got out, everybody who could get out.
And then, boom, all of a sudden we hear about, you know, people being infected in Heilongjiang and elsewhere.
So...
Wow!
So, is it that Chinese people, Asian people are more susceptible to this particular virus?
I mean, it does seem to have different effects on different races, doesn't it?
Number one.
Number two, do you think that the strain in China was perhaps deadlier?
Well, firstly, from what I've read, the number of ACE2 receptors in Chinese people, or Asian people, let's put it that way, Southeast Asian people, are higher than for, say, Africans or Europeans.
So they have a higher ratio of ACE2 receptors.
The strain itself, originally, I really don't know.
There were a lot of things about that, by the way, and which people are still, I can't even believe that people are still speculating about whether or not it's man-made, because there's been enough published material where they've stated quite clearly there are protein sequences in there.
And for God's sakes, I mean, the virus's actual real name is, you know, SARS-2 COVID. Okay, it's SARS-2 because it has the SARS protein in there.
With regards to whether or not it was accidentally released or whatever, I think it was probably an accident.
There was a Stanford University professor who went out to the lab several months before the virus kicked off, and he then published a report when he got back stating that he felt that safety features were not perhaps as strong as they could be.
And that should some of what was in there manage to get out, then that would actually, you know, he also put up some numbers, you know, up to, I think, three and a half million people.
And, you know, at the same time, the lab itself, I saw their webpage where they were advertising in November for PhD and above people with experience in bat COVID viruses.
So, you know, and it's just yards away from the market.
Now, so all it takes is for somebody to come out with a bit of that on their boot or on their hair or wherever, and they go into the markets.
And, you know, boom.
A market in China, as you can imagine, is one of these places.
It's just full chocker with people.
So you couldn't wish for a better starting point, as it were.
But I think it was probably accessible.
So you think there's no question that it was a bioweapon?
It was engineered in the lab?
Yes.
Particularly when you look at the news that came out of Canada about the two guys who had been arrested.
The Chinese guys who've been arrested trying to get other viruses out of Canada.
And they themselves had been working in prestigious labs.
This is another issue altogether, to be honest.
When it comes down to intellectual property and industrial espionage and Bio-espionage.
I think we are so stupid, really, because they would not allow us into their labs.
They would not allow us to do what they do to us in terms of...
Yes.
You know, they are, you know, aggressive in the way they do things.
And so we are.
We've become a nation of pussies, really.
We've been almost...
It's as if the sense of self-preservation has been denuded from society and from government over the last 35-40 years.
They lack the requisite suspicion that they should have for the job titles that they have.
I have no doubt.
And also, actually, in a report that I read on that, one report I read on the subject of The guy's been arrested in Canada.
They'd already managed to get stuff out anyway.
And to where?
To the only level 4 lab in China, which is Wuhan.
So, you know, I think that makes it easier for them later if they want to say something like, well, it was the Americans or North Americans or whatever, because if they've got a sample of something which is, you know, genetically tagged, Or biologically tagged as being from North America, then they point the finger and say, well, that's where it came from.
And, you know, they're not going to take the blame.
Nobody in China, you know, there's a joke about, you know, how face works.
You know, the manager, the senior manager does something wrong.
He kicks the next manager beneath him and he kicks the next one down, down, down, down, down, until eventually you get the man on the gate who kicks the man who sweeps the road and then he kicks a cat.
Nobody is willing to take any kind of personal responsibility because it's a face culture.
Nobody wants loss of face, either for themselves or for the country as a whole.
And they'll do whatever they have to do to maintain that.
Well, how strict was it during the lockdown for you?
Oh, very.
Only one person allowed to leave the family home to go shopping at Had to be the same person every time.
Checked at the gate going in and out.
Temperature checked.
ID checked.
Nobody allowed anywhere near the gate who didn't belong there or here.
So yeah, really rather strict.
And even within the compound, you know, because we all live in these complexes which are fence and wall, even within this The rather large one that I live in.
If you try to walk around the grounds without a mask on, you'll be in big trouble.
Really?
Yeah, really rather strict.
And of course, China can do that.
We can't.
We don't do that very well.
And this is one of the reasons I mentioned earlier that China has...
You know, couldn't do democracy because they've always required an iron fist from the first Huangdi, the first emperor, to now.
They've always required an iron fist because essentially they're just rather naughty and they don't listen to authority.
And so they actually need a good slap before they'll actually take heed.
And so I know how that sounds, but It's true.
It is what it is.
And that's how society is here.
And so it's always needed this iron fist.
And to be honest, if you took away communism from China, I think the country would just instantly disintegrate.
Interesting.
And it would be terrible.
It would be terrible.
It would be terrible for all of the people living here.
And it would be, you know, it would have consequences which ran around the world.
So I've never been one of these people who have...
Okay, we need to have democracy in China.
I may have been before I came here, but after living here for 90 years now, it is what it is, and it's what's needed.
Because they don't work the way that we work.
They don't think the way that we think.
They drag traditions around the way that Jacob Marley dragged his chains around.
You know, they just don't let it go.
And that's what makes things slow to change here, in many ways.
I mean, yes, you can look at the country and say, oh, there's been this massive technological progression in the last, whatever, many years.
But inside of themselves, you know, if you look at some of the books written by, you know, people like Smith, who were here in 1848, and spoke Chinese and read all the classics and in 1848 when you read his Chinese characteristics where he breaks down the psyche of Chinese people it makes you laugh because nothing has changed bar the transport and the clothes and the technology they have remained that
way so much so that even on their courses for sociology and for business They actually learn.
They have to read the book.
It's written by an American Jesuit who was back here in the 1840s.
By that time, he'd already been here 40 years.
And it's considered to be one of the best sociological and psychological breakdowns of the Chinese people.
And so they even read it for themselves because basically what they're saying is, look, this is how foreigners see us or saw us back then.
And to be honest, it's actually a pretty good picture of who we are.
And so you better read it and know your weaknesses, know your strengths.
And so, you know, they couldn't operate the way we do.
It has to be this way.
And it's just ridiculous to want otherwise.
Because for any Western power to suggest that China really should change and leave communism behind, well, I'm sorry, the knock-on effects would actually...
You know, reverberate around the world for years, you know, in economic terms.
So we're not, as we naively imagined when we admitted them to WTO in 2001, we're not going to make the Chinese more like us, more amenable, more Wesson.
So what's our best hope of A, averting war, And B, protecting our interests and stopping it getting any worse.
Personally, I think we need to...
I've mentioned the phrase before because I've been thinking about writing a little document called Stop Feeding the Dragon.
And that's what we really have to do.
We have to start repatriation of businesses back to our own countries.
We have to consider that.
Now, I mean, this is going to happen anyway because...
When Trump started his trade war there, last year, when the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, when they queried all of the businesses who are registered with them across China, as to what their plans were for this coming year, 2020, in excess of 40% They said they were planning on leaving China and moving to Vietnam.
Because Vietnam, of course, is very much like China was 30 years ago, 25 years ago.
So they're chasing the next profit.
But again, I would suggest that's not a wise move.
It's a wise move for business, yes.
But for us, as a country, we need to start repatriating business as well.
And government has to think carefully about how it's going to do that.
It's a requirement for the stability and the safety of our country, particularly during times of crises.
If we have these huge supply lines, and let's face it, when you look at what happened, basically the Chinese government knew what was going on in November, and then they immediately contacted They're state-owned enterprise companies around the world, even partially state-owned enterprises.
And they said, buy up all the masks you can get.
Buy up all the equipment and sprays and things like that for sanitation.
Buy them all up and ship them back.
From Australia alone, well over 100 tons of masks and sanitizer were sent back to China, paid for by a company which actually is not involved in that industry.
They're involved in property, land and property, but they're state-owned enterprise.
So China will always take care of itself first, and always has done.
China's always been a hungry country.
That's why when people meet each other, you know, say ni hao, which is the normal standard greeting of how are you.
But, you know, when you get up north, people don't say that.
They say, you know, ni chifan lama, have you eaten?
Have you eaten rice?
Is what it really means.
Hunger, you know, has always been a part of China.
It's always been a fear.
And jobs in government are called the iron rice bowl, meaning that if you've got a job in government, your future is secured, your family, their food needs are secured, the iron rice bowl.
So when it comes to protecting itself, China is just no problem.
And they told 3M, companies like 3M and all of the other companies in China, foreign companies who were producing masks and equipment, that's it, you're not sending it abroad.
It's saying here, you sell it to us.
You buy it.
So very, very protectionist.
And why is this not getting in the press?
I mean, Australia seems to be way ahead of the UK curve when it comes down to the press.
I think if you want news now, you better listen to the Australian news.
In fact, now in Australia, they're talking about how about we simply confiscate Many of these companies and their assets now for the costs that we've been put to and for the potential harm that's been put to us.
But Australia's in a terrible, terrible predicament itself in terms of information.
But isn't Canada even worse, is what I've heard, from that Australian professor who wrote the book about China's infiltration of the Australian political system, and he said, well, we've got it bad, but look at Justin Trudeau's Canada, which is just, it's gone beyond the point of no return.
Yeah, and this is what I was saying, you know, you can't, you know, for example, you remember Rover Cars?
Rover cars, I remember when they went bust.
What happened was you had this Chinese woman who was their senior accountant.
She ends up having an affair with senior executives.
Next thing you know, information is dumped on the market.
Prices fall through the floor and a Shanghai company buys it up, which incidentally just happened to be owned by her father.
Right.
Do you remember Northern Rock Building Society?
Yes.
Northern Rock Building Society.
You know, same thing.
I think they were hacked, actually.
They were hacked, data dumped on the market, and share prices went down, and then the Chinese, as I understand it, boarded them up.
And I think the same was true with Commerzbank in Germany as well.
So there's a lot of this going on.
Even right now, Land Rover, I think it was two years ago, I think Land Rover were prosecuting a company in China for producing a vehicle almost identical to the latest one that Land Rover themselves were producing.
They went mad about it when they found it at a trade show, taking them to court in China.
But you never win in China if you're foreign.
China's for the Chinese.
It literally really is.
You know, I've had dealings with court in China, and even in cases where it's obvious to a first-year law undergrad that, you know, for example, in my two cases, we should win.
No, you don't, because it's all about, you know, guanxi, your personal relationships.
And so, you know, They are very, very much for themselves.
And we've just become some kind of tripped-out flower, hippie, softy, boneheaded idiots who just don't know who we're dealing with.
I come from a very hard background.
A lot of violence and aggression in my life, you know.
I was battered.
I had the NSPC sent to my house twice as a child.
Before I eventually put myself in a kid's home.
And then when you're growing up in kids' homes, when you're living in a home with maybe 39 other kids, for example, you learn to read people and you learn to be very cautious.
And so that's something which has stood me in good stead so that wherever I've traveled in the world, I've managed to keep myself out of difficulty.
But I'm seeing people who have obviously never had a slap in positions of power in government in the UK and who are...
In my opinion, just hugely naive.
Wow.
Scott, I've...
No, I've totally loved this.
Everything you've said has been utterly fascinating.
And as long as the recording has worked, I think this is just podcast gold.
So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us.
I love the fact that the pseudonym you've chosen was your Foreign Legion pseudonym before you got...
What did you say?
You got invalidated out because you were sick.
Is that right?
Well, actually, you see, I was in the parachute regiment first, but...
What had happened was, in 1981, I was crossing the road.
A drunk driver hit me.
I went in the hospital for four months.
I was told I would never walk again.
38 fractures, you know, nine pints of blood, four pints of plasma.
Then I came out of hospital.
I spent about 18 months with a friend who was an ex-soil marine running me up and down Skidor in the Lake District with catering packs of baked beans on my back.
And then I went down to Sutton Coldfield to register to get into the army, and I was actually going for Coldstream Guards, and they said, anybody want to go for para?
I thought, well, I'll go for para, and I was one of only three who actually got picked for para.
And then, unfortunately, though, I had still a lot of physical problems with my lower back and my pelvis not being straight, and so I had to come out.
And so I was discharged, honorably, and then I went to France with a couple of friends.
One was an ex-Rini.
And we had to break up.
We couldn't hitch as a group of three in the end, we realized.
So I went ahead and said, I'll meet you in Saint-Tropez.
Waited a couple of days for them there.
They didn't turn up.
I went to the police station in Saint-Tropez, which at that time was rather reminiscent of Doctor Who's TARDIS. You know, a little ding-dong doorbell, you know, the old black and white thing, you know, ding-dong, and a little slot opened up.
I said, I'd like to join the Foreign Legion.
And he said, yeah, go away, English.
You know, I said, well, where do I go?
He said, well, I'll just go to the police station in Saint-Tropez.
Toulon.
And so I was walking out of town, bummed into a guy coming in the opposite direction.
Turns out he had just gotten out of the Legion.
So he bought me a few drinks and so on.
Went to Toulon, sat in the police station, got the whole, go home English.
No, no, I know what I'm doing.
And just as I was driving off with the Legionnaire, my two friends turned up behind me.
They'd been behind me by a couple of hours.
And then I went off to Marseille, to the main port there.
I was there for a few days and then off to Aubagnon-et-en-Provence.
To the main training camp.
And eventually I was discharged on the same reasons, medical grounds.
You know, 56 different nationalities on average in the region.
You know, they're not short of people wanting to get in.
So, yeah, that's where that name came from.
You are an extraordinary guy.
And listen, before we go, how is your health?
I was really freaked out by this photograph you sent me.
And I don't want you to die or anything.
Are you going to be okay?
Well, I'm on the first full day of a fast.
I'm planning on fasting for 40 days.
I've done a 14-day fast before.
I thought I'd do 40 days this time around.
What happened was, I had stents fitted a couple of years ago, and then a year later, less than a year later, six months later, another one fitted.
And they put me on these various types of medications, but what they didn't do, of course, because they don't do this kind of care thing here, They don't do follow-ups, really.
And they didn't mention that one or two of the medications that I was on would actually likely, if used for too long, burn a hole somewhere in my intestine.
And then a couple of months ago, about two months ago, it was just after the lockdown, and my wife actually thought I had the virus at the time, because it was literally just after Wuhan lockdown.
I was throwing up and Is this bit going to be on air or off air?
Well, it can be off air.
I can cut the end.
Well, basically, I was on my knees in the bathroom, head into the shower, throwing up there and just squirting from behind.
And I was really ill for days.
And I had fever and, you know, I was talking gibberish.
And then the end of the week, I got the same feeling coming on again, but this time, I was actually throwing up blood, and it looked like, you know, kind of very curdled blood, and at the same time, squirting blood from behind.
And I did that three times within a six-hour period, and it was really bad the third time.
I was like, oh my God.
But I kind of laughed.
I just said, well, you know, this is it.
Because I have had a rather unusual life, and I've survived a lot.
I thought, is this actually how I'm going to die?
You know, puting my own blood into the shower, putting it onto the floor behind me in an apartment block in China somewhere.
I'd never imagined this, you know.
And my wife convinced me to go to the hospital, of course, because I didn't actually want to go to the hospital for a variety of reasons.
In the end, I went and, yeah, because she sent them photographs, which I... We showed you.
They get him down here right now.
They managed to stop the bleeding.
They didn't want to put a camera down there to have a look because they were afraid that it would actually cause bleeding or induce a heart attack.
They changed all my meds.
Although I'm a little bit dizzy still, After about, I don't know, 10 days now.
From time to time, I'm still busy, but much, much better.
And as I say, I'm fasting for a number of reasons.
One is, of course, to allow my intestinal tract to heal, give it time to heal.
The other, of course, is to induce autophagy, whereby your cells go into repair mode, and they recycle right It's not like apoptosis.
It's just a repair mode rather than the death of yourselves.
And at the same time, you know, the vast majority of your immune system is in your gut.
And we know that after only four days of fasting, your immune system is pretty much new, as it were.
It very much strengthens and balances the flora in your gut.
So, a number of reasons for doing this.
But, yeah, not better, but it was.
Very freaky at the time.
Well, Scott, I wish you the very best.
It's been absolute joy talking to you.
You've been brilliant.
And thank you very much for having contacted me in the first place and having just told me such amazing things.
Thank you.
And get well.
Thank you very much.
I've really enjoyed it.
You take care.
Okay, and you.
Right.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
So how good was Scott Arthur?
None more good, I'd say.
And there's plenty more fantastic, interesting, special podcast guests on the way.
Now please, do help support me.
Support me on Patreon.
Buy special friends, friend badges.
And you will get, you will get, if you're a Patreon donor, you will get early access to my podcasts.
And I hope that's enough of an incentive.
I'll be thinking up more incentives for the higher level donors.
I'm going to have some kind of tier structure and I promise you all sorts of goodies.
So please be generous and support my podcast until next episode, which is going to be Carbon Mike.
And I think, again, my Patreon supporters will get that early.
▲
Export Selection