Welcome to Ten Blocks. I'm Jordan McGillis, economics editor of City Journal.

In the past decade, the Chinese Communist Party has become more repressive at home and more assertive abroad. The developments

come while China remains among the most critical nodes in the global economy. Perhaps belatedly,

the American public and private sectors are reassessing linkages with the Chinese economy.

My guest today is Isaac Stone Fish, who through his geopolitical analysis group's strategy

risks has created a new tool for investors, analysts, and government officials to make those

important assessments. This tool, the Strategy Ris risks index 250, ranks America's largest publicly

traded companies by their China exposure. Isaac, thanks for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me, Jordan. Before we go in depth on your index, I want to familiarize

our listeners with your biography a bit and your career progression. If I understand correctly,

you not only lived in China for the better part of a decade. You actually traveled to every province and autonomous region. Is that right?

That is. I spent about six years in Beijing and spent weeks, months, days in all sorts of parts

of the Chinese country from a couple hours in Macau to long several years in Beijing.

What was your general method of travel? Do you fly all over? Did you take the train? What were your

preferred ways? Train, bus, and then flights. Some of the places I went to more than 20 years ago,

and it was a lot of really long buses or very cramped car trips.

So 20 years ago, that's before some of the rural parts have the sterling infrastructure they have now.

What sort of changes do you see in as you traveled over the years, particularly in those rural areas?

Some of it was this Hanification, this normalization, so to speak,

where Beijing would work to make cities look very similar in ways that in some places was positive

and in some places felt very dystopian. But I went to Xinjiang a few times, and, you know, Xinjiang in 2001 versus

2006, even in that small period, felt a lot more Han and a lot more under Beijing's artistic

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