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Slack.com-slash-dhq. This is the Friends Vista Debating Society. I'm John Batchewith,

Professor H. J. McEnter. Now the most non-transparent of capitals, Beixing. We're told that all

of the mainland is swept by variants of the COVID. We're told of catastrophe, of more of

crematoriums, without room for families outside to wait to handle their deceased. We're

told of windows being left open in apartment buildings because they can't get the dead

to a hospital or to the crematoriums. We're told of whole parts of the society now fragmented

and doubting the leadership in Beixing. At the same time, there's a war and the war attracted

enough of the leadership of the CCP to have Xi Jinping get on a call, a video call with Vladimir

Putin and talk about a state visit to Moscow, so Professor, impossible to summarize this other

than to say that that phone call looks like escalation, is it?

Well, I think it is escalation, but I think it's also opportunism in China, domestic policy

politics is the measure of all things. And foreign policy is often mistakenly, but this

is how they take it. It's seen as being an adjunct to domestic policy. So one of the

reasons that we're seeing increased belligerence from China, for instance, the other day one

of their jets flew within 10 feet of an American RC-135, a rivet joint, basically a modified

passenger plane that got a cab, there's intelligence, that could have been a crash. I've talked to

various people in the Air Force, they think that it may have been unintentional, but I think

...