Welcome to the China Compass Podcast on the Fight-Lafs Feast Network. I'm your China Travel Guide in exile, missionary bin, back in Malaysia. Follow me on xTwitterX at China Adventures where I share a new Chinese city or county to pray for every single day. I just finished preparing the cities and counties and districts to pray for this coming week. Feel free to write anytime. ChinaCompass at PrivacyPort.com. ChinaCompass at PrivacyPort.com is the way you can write and contact all of my books. The Substack, Patreon and the Ministry that I'm helping to lead all the different things we're doing can be found really easily by going to one website, PrayGiveGo.us. PrayGiveGo.us. You can get links to all of the things. I'll mention a couple of the books right now for those who might be new listeners. I've worked on a couple of missionary biographies. I've written one myself. I'll a memoir of my my own deportation and from China seven, almost eight years ago now, in a month it'll be eight years. That book is called Unbeaten, Arrested, Interrogated and Deported from China. You can get that as well. PrayGiveGo.us is the link to where you can get all those things. I've also worked on the autobiography of John G. Payton, which is in the public domain. It's been redone numerous times. I think I did a good job on my version where I got the chapters in such a way that are very easy to read, easier to read than they were. I've organized the front matter, the back matter in a way and pulled in some different things that were before found only on all kinds of different publications. So I brought a lot of things together into one small volume. One of my friends there in Moscow, Idaho, has used my little book for his missions class. He taught there. I think at NSA, I believe if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, the autobiography of John G. Payton Part One is available at PrayGiveGo.us as well or JohnG.Payton.com. We have that domain as well. I'm going to be working on Part Two later this year. I'm going to visit the islands once again with my daughter here in a couple of months and we'll hopefully have Part Two ready for publication later this year. Finally, Borden of Yale, the millionaire missionary. There's two versions of that book. Borden of Yale is the original published by Hudson Taylor's daughter-in-law over a hundred years ago and the millionaire missionary is my newer abridged edition, slightly abridged with a slight more focus on the mission's aspect of what he who he was and what he did. He was known for his devotional life, for his devotion to Christ and his testimony as a student at Yale and Princeton in the ministries he helped to lead as a young man. But his main focus was to be a missionary and to serve and to reach the Muslims of Northwestern China, especially which is where God called me 90 years later in the early part of this century. And so the millionaire missionary is really a close to home for me because of where he was called. It's the same place God called me many, many years later and we've walked many of those places and served in many of those places where he wished he could have served but never actually made it to that field. He he died on his way there and that's part of the story I won't give away anymore but it's really a fascinating read. The book is free on Kindle from the publisher Borden of Yale is my version is free on PDF, the e-book, but you can get the print copy of both editions, both the original and the abridged are all available. You can get all of that through the link at PrayGiveGo.us. Bordenof Yale.com also is a direct link that'll take you there. A couple things I want to mention as we get started today, there's a there's a lot to talk about a lot of things that I've got listed here who knows what I'll actually get to. But I want to mention first of all I'm hot I'm standing here hot. I need to turn the air back up. It's getting hotter here in Asia obviously it's that we're north of the equator barely but I was wondering why my thermometer on the wall is higher than it was a month or two ago. It's just the air condition is on. It still shows it being warmer and I think I figured I think the sun has moved enough that now the sun is shining on that side of the building and it's warming up even the walls of the building and so it's causing the thermometer to be higher all the time. So it's warmer in here than I would like it to be. I'm going to probably turn the air back on and here in a second even though I can hear it over my shoulders a little bit annoying there. I got it done. I stopped for just a second turn the air back on. Again it's a little hot here. It was nice in India in some places in the north where I was up near the the foothills of the Himalayas. I had a couple nice days. The weather was decent there. Didn't need AC so much there. But the day that I went back to Calcutta and then flew back home I was all over Calcutta that day. It was really, really hot and it was a blessing in one sense that the trains, the local trains don't have doors and the air is just blowing by. It's also makes you a little bit nervous. You're looking around making sure the guy standing next to you doesn't look too to off or if he looks angry or anything because you're just standing there by this open door. You can hold on to stuff but it still makes you wonder especially with some of the videos that came out this week in North America. I believe where people were being pushed into trains. There's some crazy awful stuff and so I was definitely thinking about that as I was writing the trains in India this past this past week. But I'm back in Malaysia and this week is gone by so fast. It feels like just yesterday or two days ago that I was recording kind of my combined podcast of different different recordings from India where I was last weekend and so I'm back here but the week has gone by super super fast and I'm going to be here for a while not too long and I've got a trip to Indonesia in early April just after Easter and then I'll be in the middle of the month heading to Africa for a little while. I wanted to mention you know today I almost forgot because of how fast the week went I almost forgot to do the podcast today. I was I usually prepare my pray for China cities first on Friday and kind of prep and read read up a little bit on what's going on in China for the podcast on the weekend that I record on Saturday morning over here Saturday morning or afternoon and then it goes live by the evening here in Asia which is the morning Saturday morning there. So I'm a couple hours behind today. I just didn't realize what day it was. I went to the airport this morning here about 20 minutes from our house and I needed to go the airport to get a vaccination done. So I got vaccinated for my Africa trip coming up. I needed to have a yellow fever vaccine. It's been decades. I think I've had any kind of a vaccination type shot and so I was a little not nervous by I guess a little bit nervous that I'd feel sick or something. I don't feel anything so far. It was a tiny bit sore at the first after the first you know little few minutes it was sore for a little while but it didn't feel anything right now. So hopefully there won't be any after effects but evidently I can't travel into Kenya from Uganda or into Ethiopia from Kenya or Uganda without having the vaccination card for the Yefra Yellow fever. And so anyway I had that done this morning but at the airport I realized what day it was. I was like oh it's Saturday. Oh I need to be preparing for the podcast. I didn't even realize what day it was. I was supposed to go with my daughter this afternoon here to watch the third movie of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's showing in theaters here in Malaysia for this past month. One one movie every week or two. It's not exactly one week at a time in the theater. It's the extended edition versions of the movies and so we went and saw one before I went to India we saw two the other day when I got back and that was the last day it was showing and then three is now showing up through early next week I believe but we were gonna go today and then I realized I had a bunch to do today and it wasn't gonna it wasn't gonna happen so we're gonna go tomorrow Sunday afternoon or evening I believe to watch the third Lord of the Rings the extended it's I've never seen the extended editions. I barely watched all the way through the the main films. I know some people don't watch them on purpose. I know Indie Wilson has said that he's purposely avoided watching him because he loves the books too much and so I've seen most of the movies before I saw them on the plane recently I went ahead and watched through them but that was a little tiny you know five six inch screen on the plane and so this has been kind of fun with my daughter watching the movies in their extended editions and I've been telling because I just watched the movie versions recently on the plane I kind of could see okay that's definitely wasn't in the it wasn't in the original movie so this is the extended part so I was kind of whispering saying this is this isn't because it's been a while since she's seen the movies either so we're doing that here in Malaysia and we'll probably go tomorrow but a couple things I want to mention about China that have been on the news recently one I've got sitting here on this screenshot from my phone and it came up just the other day and it looks really bad to some people but it's really not a huge change if you understand how China works so this is what the Bitcoin news this is where I'm reading from it came up on different networks be where traveling to Hong Kong with Bitcoin hardware wallets Hong Kong has updated enforcement rules under the national security law as of March 23rd 2026 just a few days ago refusing to provide passwords or decryption assistance to police is now a criminal offense covering all personal devices including phones laptops and likely likely not guaranteed hardware wallets the rule applies to everyone in Hong Kong including US citizens even if they are only transiting through the airport authorities have also expanded powers to seize and retain devices they claim are linked to national security investigations travelers are to understand are to advise to understand the risk before entering or transiting through the region so this this comes across is like very ominous and very very scary they can check and they can reinforce you to give away your passwords and give away your stuff and so this has something directly to do with me so this law first of all say this this is now an effect for Hong Kong but this law has been an effect for China I think all along so if you've been in Hong Kong most people who go to Hong Kong also go to China if they're tourists and so it's been the case in China all along by law they can they can ask you to do that and they can they can go after you if you don't but that doesn't mean they can force you or they're they're are going to actually put you in prison or hold you just because you refuse to comply and give your password over that's not what that means and I know that from experience because I did that myself eight years ago when I was being deported from China they they asked me numerous times in China to give the password to my phone and I refused many many times that actually led to one of the well led to the title of my book I'll explain that in a minute I've told that story before on the podcast but I refuse many times they said we need your password to your phone and I looked at and said no no I'm not gonna tell you and I didn't say it in a in a snarky way I didn't say it in an angry way I didn't say I just said it in kind of a matter of fact way like I'm not sure how to say this nicely but no I'm not going to tell you and I said that again and again and again I had to keep repeating myself and they would say other they would ask in different ways and I would just ended I ended up just saying over and over again I'm not speaking I'm not saying basically pleading the fifth in Chinese you say well Bushuot well Bushuot I'm not going to say I'm not speaking I know speak if you want to translate it literally the Chinese I know speak I'm not talking no no no I just kept having to repeat myself over and over again and there's not much they could do they weren't obviously I didn't even know it would have been a lot I didn't even think about that being a law I thought I guess you have the right to refuse and they have the right to punish you if they want to but the only punishment they threatened me with was the punishment of potentially being held until I complied or the punishment of being deported which I knew was already kind of in process and in in progress and so that didn't really scare me either they tried one other thing they tried to say well we know your wife is a student she had a student visa at the time different from my visa and they said we will cancel her student visa too and I thought to myself whoopie you know I didn't say it out loud I didn't I didn't row my eyes at least not I tried not to but like if I'm getting deported it's likely my wife's gonna go with me we're not she's not gonna stay all by herself in China studying and so that wasn't a really big threat either but that's what they tried to tell me as well so in the end I never gave my password to my phone over and they never even checked my computer they never even went to my house and asked for my laptop I'm not even sure what kind of security I had on my laptop that would have been a little more risky I had some sort of password on it I'm sure but the phone they didn't they didn't I didn't give it to him and they they tried maybe they tried to get it but I think they knew that it's almost impossible to break into these iPhones and whatever and so I had an older iPhone at the time but even then even with the pen you know the four digit pen or whatever it was they would have it would have been nearly impossible for them to break in I think I remember seeing that even from the FBI in the US having a hard time getting access and begging Apple to help them to break into these phones from terrorists or what not that have shut up different places so I knew I had that behind me so I said no I'm not gonna give you my password and I didn't want to give it to him because I didn't want them to see the context I didn't want them to go through my whole list and say no who is this and who is this and who is this and who is this and who is this or to call all of them in for questioning on their own and find out other things about them or to see other Chinese connections or church connections or I mean there's just a million things when I started to even think a little bit about what was on my phone and the potential risk for those people and annoyance for those people I just thought there's absolutely no way I'm gonna give them the password to my phone just no and they kept asking and I kept refusing and and I almost started laughing when they would ask I almost started laughing saying no you must think I'm crazy you must think I'm nuts I'm not gonna give you the password of my phone again this is all in Chinese why would I do that to my friends why would I put them through what I'm going through why would I force them to do that no if you want to find them go find them yourself but I'm not gonna give you the password to my phone and I just kind of kept saying over and over finally this one guy and this is where I'm getting to the title of my my little book unbeaten one of the officers looked up at me and they were sitting there three or four of them in different chairs kind of across the room halfway across the room and he kind of laughed to himself he also kind of chuckled down I guess he was trying to be be not nice what's the right word he's trying to be more casual he kind of laughed to himself and Chuckle and said come on come on friend what what are you so afraid of it's not like we're gonna beat you or anything haha he laughed again and he said that and and something just struck in me something snapped I guess you could say and I I stopped looking I was looking at the floor when he said it I was just trying to avoid eye contact because you do get tired of saying no no no no no no no and I looked up at him and I pointed my finger in some sense at him and the others and I said what did you say you're not gonna beat me you're not gonna beat me I said I said of course you're not gonna beat me I'm an American I've got a blue password sitting over there on your table you don't want to cause a scene an international scene not gonna beat me but I know what you have done and what you do to Christians in this country Christians in this country like me and those they're beaten many times that's your hands and some of them have been killed at your hands and I said it more in a in a flustered way I was a little bit flustered at the time I was talking fast in Chinese and I said my peace and and they looked at each other and instead of you know obviously admitting what they done and what they knew happens in their nation they kind of looked at each other and kind of chuckled nervous laughter this time and they said oh no no who no we wouldn't have no of course not we wouldn't do that and I thought oh I thought yeah you're saying that you're telling me that you're lying to me but God knows God knows but I stopped and I just thought I'd look down again and I said my peace and I let it be but that's where I take the title of the book from is unbeaten yes us Americans who we risk a little bit we risk a little bit of our uncover comfort and freedom to serve in a place like China and to go but they're not gonna physically harm us they're not gonna physically torture us in generations past they did missionaries in the past were killed in China were martyred in China for serving faithfully there even when communism began to come in many died at their hands but not today not Americans not today not for Christian work for sure they they would prosecute you for doing real crimes and for doing for murder and for for rape and those can they'll prosecute you for those things and put you in prison for life for those things or even execute you potentially for those things but not for Christian work they're not gonna do that for Christian work but they do they would do that and they do do it for Christian work for the Chinese citizens they treat them differently and a Chinese person in that same seat would have been beaten would have been physically harmed and man handled sitting in my same seat for doing the exact same things that I had done evangelistically in China and so again unbeaten I'm unbeaten but the Chinese church and the Chinese ministers are not unbeaten as a matter of fact later on I read from Pastor Wang Yi one of his letters that he was writing later that year before he was arrested he talks about being beaten physically harmed and beaten and stripped at a similar police station one province South of mine during the same month that I was being held by the police in May of 2018 same month one province over same kind of police officers but with him they physically harmed him and his and his coworker and his friend but with me of course they they were trying to threaten me but they couldn't anyway I'm getting a little bit outside the topic here but the point is even in China where this has been a law for a long time you can get away with just refusing and yeah you might risk threats and you might risk this or that but what can they do are they actually gonna go unless they had real evidence that you were doing something awful some sort of crime and real reason you're gonna be okay and other that brings me to the other topic the other part of this thing is admit this article about checking passwords in Hong Kong makes it sound like they're gonna be stopping every single person show me your password give me your phone give me your computer right now and the chances of you getting picked out of a crowd to have you give over your phone are I mean needle in a haystack at the most one in one in ten thousand one and a million I don't know that this looks to me like a rule that's on the books but it gives them the ability to actually look for you if you're doing something wrong and I think this are this law seems to be targeting people who would try to come in if this is from Bitcoin news China Hong Kong has become China's sort of Bitcoin hub so this is targeting people that China thinks it's trying to steal Bitcoin from from China or trying to get in there manipulate in some way the China's Bitcoin system they're trying to set up within the Hong Kong which is sort of under China but sort of independent as well so again I wouldn't were personally worry about this it does make me want to have a password on my phone maybe more going into Hong Kong in the past I would have more security on my phone going into China maybe an extra layer of security and less so in Hong Kong this makes me at least go to Hong Kong maybe with the idea you know what I'm gonna treat this as if it was China even though it's really not functioning quite like China yet but it's close and treat it like China and don't have anything on my phone that I wouldn't want them to see for one and number two have a password have a cold passwords and then just be ready to refuse if something were to happen be ready to refuse or at least know that that's a that's a potential point and don't have anything super secure on there that you would want to keep hidden so we know people that go into China Chinese people who don't carry their phones at all into China they take fake phones they take phones that just have only what they don't mind being seen by the government they're into China and they keep their real phones with their real contacts and their real history outside of the country completely so if you if this worries you you can go to Hong Kong just leave your nice phone at home leave your laptop at home whatever it is that you're worried about getting getting searched you can leave it at home but this is very very unlikely to happen to you this is a law potentially out there but it's very unlikely to be put or asked of in the average person I do see occasionally you see and hear about well the only place I've ever actually had my phone where they asked to see my phone the only place in the world of all my travels where somebody said hand me your phone over and let me look at something on your phone I wasn't even thinking as if it would be a big issue so I just handed it over thinking what's the big deal it was actually going into Canada in the Vancouver Canada from the Seattle area with my father 10 years ago little over 10 years ago now 2016 we were traveling to Vancouver by land and we're gonna fly from Vancouver to China and we had a load of Chinese tracks that we were taking into the country smuggling into China yes and we were carrying them into Canada as well but there were Chinese tracks no harm to Canada but Canada was curious why two Oklahoma's were traveling into Vancouver with these big bags full of Chinese literature and they were searching and they thought we were hiding drugs or something really we got stopped for an hour or two there at the border I've told this story before I think on the podcast and they were going through and the one poor lady was out there in the car parking area like literally taking every box apart and taking off she eventually had to put it all back together again because nothing was there obviously was just a bunch of booklets in Chinese and they were asking me all kinds of questions and they asked for my phone at some point and I guess I thought you know I'm not even in the country yet so the the the consequence for not giving it over at that point would have been okay you can't come go back to America and so I didn't have anything to hide on my phone I didn't think she found something that I that later I thought well I should have thought of that but so I handed the phone over and she's looking through some of my message history and she saw where I had given some tips to another team member that we were gonna meet in China about how he could avoid getting pulled over by immigration and customs when he would travel into China with bags full of tracks so it was just some simple stuff about how to avoid getting getting pulled over you know don't make eye contact with the people just walk on through pretend like you don't have anything I forget what exactly was written but this lady saw this on my phone coming into Canada and she said what is this you're telling somebody how to avoid immigration and customs and I said well this is Christian literature going into China where it's illegal but not Canada so I made that point and she didn't contradict that she said yeah it's true but if you're willing to do that there how do I know you're not willing to do the same thing here with something illegal here something like that is what she said and I said because it's it's China and I you know I've got tracks it's nothing else so they were looking for drugs they never found any drugs of course and we were eventually allowed into Canada and we made our flight not by too much and we flew to China with our literature and used much of that literature in China on that particular trip and so that's the only place I've ever actually had somebody asked to look at my phone so that's the kind of situation if there's she's got suspicion of me right there on the spot and says you know what maybe I'll find something on the phone that'll show that this person is doing something illegal so you can imagine flying into Hong Kong with odd bags full of full of who knows what compute like computers and computer all kinds of computer equipment and it looks like maybe this person is doing some sort of Bitcoin mining operation or maybe you got extra cash that you're not supposed to have more than the permitted allowed amount of cash and they say well let's look and see what this person's up to and they asked to see your phone that's where they can ask you and if you refuse they could deport you or send you out or or find some other way to try to encourage you you know scare quotes encourage you to give your thing over but not just a random tourist coming in or going through the country so I'm not too worried about this particular law. One other little screenshot that I pulled up here that really doesn't have to do with China directly but I wanted to mention it's fast global petrol price, global gasoline prices and it's a graph and it shows how much it cost on average per liter which is about a quarter of a gallon as well as how much it has risen percentage wise compared to what it was on a baseline since the war started since about the last month or so and it's fascinating to see which countries are high and we're always high but haven't gone up as much in which countries are lower so just by sheer price the most expensive countries in the world for gasoline are Norway, Denmark and then the Netherlands and then Singapore and then Germany is right after so those will be the five most expensive on this particular list Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Singapore, Germany and the price for gasoline in those places is about two and a half dollars per liter so that's close to ten dollars a gallon in those countries again Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Singapore, Germany, close to ten bucks a gallon and it's gone up about 20, 15 to 25 percent in those five countries since the war started so that's higher than what it was it would have been you know eight-ish dollars a gallon a month ago in those places. Now if you go down the list the countries that have seen the most increase close to 50 percent increase in price in the last month although they were cheaper to begin with are the Philippines have seen the most 55 percent increase in the Philippines, Cambodia, 50 percent Nigeria, almost 50 percent Australia, 40 something percent Zimbabwe, almost 40 percent so those five countries have seen the most increase from the baseline a month ago but the prices overall are still less so for instance Nigeria even with the increase is still under a dollar a liter which is under four dollars a gallon Philippines is a little more it's closer to five or six dollars a gallon and Zimbabwe is pretty high it's close to eight dollars a gallon eight or nine dollars a gallon with the increase now the countries that are on the lower end of this particular scale here Venezuela and Iran gas evidently is just free in those countries and I knew it was because they produce and they're trying to make their own people happy in different ways so like literally the the dot on the scale here is at zero point zero for both it's like zero zero no increase no decrease but the price to begin with was literally just like a quarter or nine and a quarter just less than a quarter per gallon I'm not even sure how it's possible so Venezuela and Iran if you want cheap gas those are your places to go further down the list you've got in in Qatar, Saudi Arabia the United Arab Emirates those are all really low on that particular scale prices relatively cheap you know a couple dollars a gallon there it's gone up a little bit five or 10 percent but not that much Egypt has gone up a little bit more up 15 percent but it was the price was already really low less than two dollars a gallon and then in the middle of the graph kind of in the middle where the prices is reasonable average but it has gone up as well you have the US Canada right next to the US actually you have Vietnam Vietnam has a similar cost and a similar increase in the last month a little lower you've got China so China's cost is about the same as the US per gallon at least currently with but it hasn't gone up as much gone up 10 percent whereas the US price has gone up about 30 percent in the last month and then and then you also have here Japan India and Russia have tried to keep their prices about the same and so the prices were reasonable around four dollars a gallon three fifty to four fifty a gallon three fifty for Russia up to four fifty or so for India but the prices have not increased much they've stated that all the say the government is subsidizing those prices there's a fascinating little graph and this is already about five days old so it could have changed even more and you can have prices even going even higher I'm going to be in Australia in May and so I'm looking at these price Australia oh good grief I was going to drive part way across the country when I'm there from Melbourne up to near Brisbane if you're from Australia and other some listeners in Australia I'm going to be in Melbourne for a couple days speaking in a couple churches feel free to email me if you'd like and I can give you the details on that China Compass at privacy port dot com I'll be visiting a couple churches in the Melbourne area in mid May and then I'll be in Brisbane for a day or two to Wumba as well which is near Brisbane right after that but we'll be probably driving up that way and trying to see some things and some people on the way and so yeah let me know if you're in Australia you want to you want to you want to meet up and talk about China or whatever I will be there for my with my daughter for all together about a week there and then we'll be heading from Australia to Vanuatu which is where I'll be working on part two of the autobiography of John D. Peyton which I mentioned earlier anyway Australian gas at least according to this it's up to six something dollars US a gallon there and it's still rising so it was already going to be expensive even paying for whatever it was before now it's going to be a lot more to drive there on Australia but we'll figure it out we'll make it work another couple screenshots I found this is from Facebook there's a guy named Chris Martt some of you probably follow him he's he's a meteorologist but he's kind of he's like the opposite of woke he's kind of outspoken and is pushing back against the global warming stuff and he has some interesting takes and I I follow I like I like the weather like following weather stuff so I'm it's fun to see and follow him he's a pretty young guy but he says this the other day on a post this is just from yesterday or today China isn't turning into a quote green superpower any renewable energy systems they're installing only add to existing energy sources they are not replacing fossil fuels at all China is increasing their use of all energy and here's a graph here that he posted China primary energy consumption by source and it's really covering the last 60 years and again the graph I'm I'm I can describe it to you a little bit but it's very accurate it's true just basically what he says is true we hear all kinds of stuff about China's increased solar increased wind and they're doing all this all this clean energy but that's not taking the place of any of their now they didn't do that they would have to produce more more coal power and more of the natural power those kinds of things but they they it's not replacing they're just growing in their consumption by far so the number of of their consumption number I don't know what exactly this is kid terawatt hours back in 65 it was just minimal just a couple thousand terawatt hours of electricity now we're up to 48,000 so it's gone up by oh you do the math 25 times as much in the last 60 years 25 times higher energy consumption and and if you look at the graph again the the amount of each type of consumption oil coal those are the two bit whether the biggest one is coal coal has always been the biggest and it is by far the biggest still and it's continuing to increase as the biggest amount of China's consumption probably close to two-thirds definitely one-half if not two-thirds of China's overall energy consumption is from coal powered energy and then after that oil and then natural gas is smaller and then you have hydroelectric which is pretty good but still really small compared to the others and then you have tiny slivers for nuclear wind and solar and those are actually really small those three combined makeup maybe maybe 10% not even 10% little less than 10% it looks like of China's overall energy consumption by source the the ones that we see in the news all the time the ones that go viral the videos and articles about the the huge solar plants that just cover mountains all over China is covering the mountains covering the mountains that's still only just five or 10% of their overall amount and their coal use is still increased they're still building coal plants they're still building coal fired electric plants they're still building lots of hydroelectric stuff and damning up rivers in the west as well and as well as as nuclear lots of nuclear plants I think I have an article I'm going to read in a minute that mentions the nuclear stuff and then another screenshot that I had from a few weeks ago that I never actually talked about the green China narrative is misleading and there's a picture here of solar panels in Jiangxi province there and this is actually an article from the New York Post I think it was published in and I'll read just a portion of this many in the west gays in all at China's apparent dominance in green energy China is becoming a green sewer power read a BBC headline last month China's green triumph trumpeted the New York Times China is indeed turning out solar panels wind turbines electric vehicles and batteries that flood global markets proof they say of an inevitable green transition yet these supposed marbles are forged to mid-overwhelming surging use of fossil fuels particularly coal so yes they're going up but they're still surging in their use of coal even at the same time and using more and more of that than they ever have before China has massive coal deposits it's real energy achievements dramatic energy rampups to fuel prosperity and advances in nuclear power remain overlooked in 2025 though as the world invested 2.3 trillion in green energy more than a third of that investment 800 billion came from China nearly matching the US and EU combined but spending isn't the best measure of investment quality moving on down it says here China added unprecedented solar and wind capacity in 2025 but it also planned an unprecedented number of new coal power plants China remains the world's top coal consumer with fossil fuels supplying over 87% of its energy that's what I was saying just a minute ago and on down it talks about nuclear as well kind of fascinating here it says the US has built only three new nuclear plants this century at enormous cost with 11-year timelines contrast this with China where reactors are completed in five years and costs have halved cut in half since 2000 China has expanded from three reactors in 2000 to 60 today with 37 more under construction that'll be 100 soon nearly half of the global total 42 planned and 146 proposed I'm not sure if those numbers don't match the previous numbers but 100 or more and then it talks about how the US only has just a handful at the same time I forget the exact number I don't see it here in the particular article so nuclear is growing in China but they're still relying on coal if coal was cut off in China China would completely grind to a halt the solar stuff is just helping helping along the edges 10% total of the solar and wind combined is 10% total of China's energy production and the vast majority is still fossil fuels it might feel like we're on a sea solid bit here because we're going back and forth you know praising China a little bit on one side and criticizing them on the other side but there's an article here from an Indian that I saw as I was leaving India this past week that I thought was really really well written and really fascinating and I don't even know what the main word in the article in the title even means but it doesn't make it doesn't matter because the article itself is very helpful so it says China is a sleeping kumbh karna whatever kumbh karna is in Hindi or for the Indian people I have no idea but this is the subtitle China may have all the attributes of a superpower money minerals missiles manufacturing plants digital skills and even AI wizard wizardry but it lacks two things so it has all these things but it lacks two things and and the articles against really well written and I like the way it's worded it was fun to read again from an Indian there the Indians are really good with English you know there's a lot of these writers are our native English speakers you know they're not people that have learned English they've grown up speaking and reading and writing English and say we're children just like we have in the west two centuries have passed since lord amherst made a pit stop at st Helena on his way back from a failed trade mission to china and was told by the exiled emperor of the french let china sleep when she awakes she will shake the world so this is evidently from lord amherst speaking much water has flowed down the yellow river and other streams since Napoleon died shortly of shortly of suspected poisoning amherst became governor general of india and expanded the british empire beyond the brama putra that's the big river on to the banks of the ira wadi to me and mar to make the famous remark that the emperor of china and i govern half of the human race yet we find time for breakfast the empire collapsed after a century and a half of lording over a quarter or more of the world talking about the british empire the us rosemites ruins as the western superpower and held sway for half a century and in half of the world soviet russia challenged it over stretched itself and collapsed communists took over china and are now claiming to be making it a superpower militarily scientifically technologically and geostrategically again i like the way this is written a good explanation of how the superpowers of kind of uh manage themselves for the last 100 or 200 years yet the wake up and the shake up that bonapart talked about hasn't come about at least with with china wake up signs were detected early this century after china caught the global optics within a limpix in beijing some bullying about in the south china see a bit of saber rattling in the tywan straight and a little muscle flexing against india on the himalayan peaks geopolitical and strategic scholars have since been spending much of their waking hours analyzing china's every factor and action that could make it a superpower it's techno excellence it's fast growing missile might it's ocean going navy it's command over strategic minerals it's control of the global trade chains it's fast growing economy it's ever running factories and it's overall socio economic resilience all of these we are told would soon give the us a run for its green backs industrial might stealth bomber space missiles and it's much-resented political will to command lesser lands into submission china's going to be a rival to the us and they're going to they're going to be going after but the dragon is still sleeping like a giant kumbakarna whatever again that might be some sort of a indian dragon or at best yawning the problem of this some some the lens is easily diagnosed china may have all the attributes of a superpower money minerals missiles manufacturing plants digital skills and even AI wizardry but it lacks two things there's back to the subtitle one the political will to command countries the political will to command countries to the soft skills that a superpower needs for making the rulers of submitting states feel comfy in its tent a sort of packs sineca instead of packs romana packs sineca much like packs britanaca or packs americana look at how Beijing is responding to the Connecticut Yankees war against the a canemian aiotolus the iranians who had been their friends so look how Beijing's responding to the iran situation they had been friends previously the stealth style is a cell can't talk the self styling superpower hasn't been able to lift even a diplomatic finger let alone a military one to save iran or even to persuade the trigger happy dawn dawn trump to stop shooting and try talking this despite china being hit directly by the blockade of the hormone straight much of the oil that greases china's much fabled industrial machine comes through the straight yet china has meekly accepted the fate accompli and started looking towards the its only strategic ally russia for oil indeed cold war history tells us that superpowers are low to confront each other militarily but fight only through proxies so it might be with china but where are china china's client states and who would take up cudgles on its behalf the good point you we talk about china taking up for all these other rogue states but which of those states is actually going to reciprocate at some point and would defend china which were those maybe russia is like the only one potentially china is yet to develop strategic stake in distant lands and defend them against others till it does it will remain a sleeping rip van winkle with its true it's with his trusty musket rusting away and decades of eventful history passing him by so that's a take it's a poke in the eye at china from an indian but it's really well written and it's a good take it's a solid take china we talk about china being so scary and so big and so much but they're they're showing their weakness when in situations like this where they just don't have the will or the desire or the capability they're fearful maybe of being shown up to actually defend these countries that have been their partners so long and it doesn't help that they choose the countries that are the worst basket cases in the world you know you got north korea and iran and venezuela and kuba as your friends you got issues like how are you going to actually help them and and it makes me annoyed and i've talked about this in the past that's the friends they choose because china literally has no moral compass whatsoever it's just about how how it can benefit you so even the friends they do have only exist sort of as political prostitutes for china to rape and to take advantage of and then they do not care about the well-being of the iranian people for instance or the russian people or the north korean people or the venezuela people or the kubans they don't care they just want to have some way to continue growing their own nation their own power and holding on to that power as long as they possibly can now since we're already criticizing china i want to read through a really well written article by a chinese guy running for a japanese newspaper so again chinese name e fuxian it's written it says from medicine wisconsin but it's in the japan times and it's about china's housing crisis that the housing crisis in china is worse than it seems and it's a good history actually of what happened in japan and their crisis back in the eighties in early nineties and how what's happening in china is similar but maybe even worse and it's not too long and it's really well written so i kind of want to read most of this with you just to talk through it a little bit but to hear it it was it was it was fascinating to read china's economy today bears an unsettling resemblance to japan's in the nineties when the collapse of a housing bubble led to pro long stagnation but japan's lost decades were not the inevitable result of irreversible trends they reflected policy blunders rooted in a flawed understanding of the challenges they faced will chinese policy makers make the same mistakes japan's housing bubble was preceded by sharply rising ratios of home prices to annual income with tokyo's surging from eight in nineteen eighty five to eighteen and nineteen ninety what does that mean so again the the cost of a home related to how much money you actually make eight years of salary for one home in eighty five eighteen years of salary for a home in nineteen ninety that was a massive increase in price china has seen the same thing in the last a couple of decades and that's what this article is referring to the similarities between japan and china this train was driven by a number of factors including land tax policy financial deregulation and poor coordination of fiscal policy but also demand from first time home buyers who were aged around forty on average made a substantial contribution because homeowners felt wealthier this is talking about japan they consumed more this drove up the prices of good services and stocks leading to more jobs and less unemployment so it was kind of like a peak in the economy but demand for new housing began to fall soon after and demographic demographic shifts were a key factor in ninety one as the share of japan's population eight sixty five and older reached thirteen percent the number of first time home buyers began to decline property values plummeted the stock market collapsed and japan fell into a deflationary characterized by falling fertility rates and rising unemployment so it peaked and then the bubbled burst and it began to collapse in the nineties skipping on down a little bit home prices continued to soar marriages decline further and burst plummeted even more last year japan's fertility rate amounted to just one point one five birth per woman in the past japan welcomed a low interest rates in a week yen because this economy was highly dependent on exports but the aging and shrinking of its labor force has generated upward pressure on wages fueling domestic inflation weakening manufacturing and transferring to pan from surplus country into a deficit country and again this is getting into a lot of economic kind of details here and we skip on down this should serve as a cautionary tale for china which is confronting real estate and demographic crises of its own in recent decades rapid urbanization policy induced artificial land scarcity and dependence on local governments for land sales for revenue and heady expectations of future growth caused real estate prices to soar let me translate that to the ground i've seen that first hand in china you had cities in the west especially primarily in the west growing and so you have these little tiny towns that were just all houses surrounded by farmland that ten years later were urban cores with massive high rises and an urban field where you're walking on sidewalks and stuff whereas you used to be walking through wheat fields and corn fields in western china and south china would have been rice paddies and whatnot and you see this massive push and it was local governments trying to make more revenue and money for themselves selling land to developers to build these apartment complexes and different things and then you had people in those areas putting all their savings and it's going to mention that in the article here in a minute putting their savings into buying real estate Chinese people would buy real estate as a way to keep their money saying because the price of real estate was always always rising and rising and rising more and more and there was no thought that it would ever go down because it's just so low and it's going to keep rising on for infinity is what they act like of course that's impossible strong demand from first time home buyers also helped young chinese typically have no siblings owing to decades of fertility restrictions they tend to purchase their first home 11 years earlier than the japanese count count of parts around 30 but the number of chinese urban dwellers aged 28 to 32 peaked in 2019 and the real estate bubble burst shortly thereafter so this is all happens inside left china eight years ago when i left it was it was at its peak then it was still growing they were still building there was no talk of a burst at that point and after that it really began to burst and even during covid as well that didn't help the situation now the real estate sector which contributed 25% of total gross domestic product and 38% of government revenue before is blighted by weak demand falling construction and severe over capacity that's where you see all these buildings empty in pictures all over china it's been going on now for years and years the crisis that is brewing in china is more severe than the one japan faced for starters china's housing bubble is much larger for example residential investment as a share of gdp was about 1.5 times higher in china than in japan in 1990 and it goes on with some other stats about that comparing japan and china china's fertility rate is also lower it's hard to imagine being lower than 1.15 but china is actually lower japan first experienced the second surge the first time homebuyers a decade after the first china can look forward to no such thing the share of the population over the age of 65 is increasing in china much faster than it did in japan it took japan 28 years to get where china will get between now in 2040 so twice as fast china's population is aging twice as fast as japan's was during those years and japan's growth was very very slow for those years 0.6% annually finally China faces much greater deflationary and unemployment pressures than japan did we're almost near the end here chinese household consumption accounted for only 38% of gdp in 2020 compared to 50% in japan so they don't even have the internal commerce the internal gumshan to buy and sell as japan did to keep the economy afloat from the inside out china everyone there saves they save they don't spend and so the economy is a downward spiral for the local economy there but perhaps the most ominous portent is that china's government continues to tout a potential growth rate of 5% with some prominent figure suggesting it could achieve rates as high as 8% china loves to have 5% growth every year 5% 5% they keep for decades they've said this and back in the day it was true maybe maybe true maybe not we don't know for sure but recent years they keep saying that but it's not been true the recent year they've been fudging the numbers to get their policy makers are pursuing measures with high short term returns such as expanding the supply of affordable housing and carrying out quantitative easing while all but ignoring the economy's weak fundamentals as famously put it the only thing we learned from history is that we learn nothing from history again this is a chinese guy i fu xian i didn't read this earlier a senior scientist at the university was constant madison who spearheaded the movement against china's one child policy and is the author of big country with an empty nest from china development press 2013 which went from being banned in china to ranking first in china publishing today's 100 best books of 2013 in china so china right around the time he wrote that book china actually did change its policy and began to allow people to have more children it hasn't really worked like some people are in some urban areas they are and they're not finding people anymore they're not forcing abortions like they were in the past but it hasn't made it like you know double or triple they're still having a hard time encouraging people to have more babies even with the rules changing and so this guy evidently evidently he's seen as as not pro china but he's not on the black list evidently because his books are were published in china and became one of the most best books in china back in the time it was published i'm not sure if this article will help or not it depends i guess on if china thinks he's actually trying to help china and warn them from a good heart or if he's actually trying to depoke them in the eye like the indian guy was earlier you know i didn't realize that that guy was the one quoted in another article that i had saved i was originally planning on sharing it today but i put it aside it's a lot longer piece it will probably do a whole episode at some point dedicated just to the the changing one child policy in china what i want to do next is look at the pray for china cities of the week as we close out today's podcast the china compass podcast is brought to you by pray for china quick question how many chinese provinces can you name i'll wait while you make your list everyone has heard of china's most famous cities in and regions Beijing Shanghai Hong Kong but few could name even one inland province Hudson Taylor founded the china inland mission in the 1800s for precisely this purpose because so few ventured into the heart of the middle kingdom our goal at pray for china is to promote prayer from every u.s state for every chinese province and eventually every county click on your state on our clickable map on our website to see which chinese province to adopt in prayer and for more info on how to begin praying and interceding for china that's pray for china dot us pray the preposition for f.o.r china dot us there we go so i'm gonna go through the cities pretty quick here today some of these are more interesting than other sunday march 29th here we're gonna be praying for Zhongshanman sub district and central Tianjin provinces hudong district so hudong district Zhongshanman sub district and central Tianjin there's pictures again you can check all these out in my sub on my substack china call that substack.com you can get there also through praygivego.us you can also follow on twitter x at china adventures as well and you can see these posted individually every single day or once a week on the substack as well so Zhongshanman sub district in Tianjin Tianjin is the little province right next to Beijing there it's a port city there Tianjin is paired up with Maryland for prayer in our china pray for china scheme here and the next one monday march 30th it pray for lienjiang city which is in jian jian prefecture in Guangdong province Guangdong is the southern chinese province right there by the border of hong kong and shinjin and reading this this name again Guangdong province reminds me of something earlier when i was talking about my deportation story and when i was being interrogated and all that and i talked about how the the canadian police were looking at my phone and were looking at me give tips on how to go through security and how to go through without being caught and it reminded me it was actually how many years ago 12 years ago this week that i had the only time that i was literally caught red handed and i and i was caught and i i had no way out crossing the border i'm talking about and there were many many times i went through the borders in china and i made it through and i was able to carry materials in countless times there were a few times i had i had some some things taken but not all well even things that weren't even necessarily related to the bible once i had a bunch of avocados taken from me because i was evidently legal to carry from hong kong into china my wife was upset about the avocados and other times but i never got truly busted or had everything taken away that i can remember except for this one time and it was april the second 2014 and i was crossing from hong kong back into china and i had gone down to hong kong specifically to bring more literature back because we'd run out and we we needed some more and that was the nearest place i could go to get some in a relatively safe way and i had a couple bags pretty full of literature and i remember the way we would generally go through security again just to be careful usually they wouldn't make you scan every single bag coming through as you went through and you get your passport stamped and then you had a little bit of a there's a back scanner thing over there but there's a lot of people crowds of people and so you're not always waiting in line to scan your bag you just kind of walk on through and pretend like you own the place and just go through and the goal is this and this is where it usually works but this day it didn't actually work as long as you don't make eye contact with any of the security guards who are usually standing off away they're not right in front of you necessarily as long as you don't look at them if you look at them in the eye they might say they might point and say hey your bag put your bag on the scanner if you don't look at them in the eye they're unlikely to walk over to you and say hey hey tap you on the shoulder or grab you and pull you back over they're likely to just especially if you're a foreigner you can play that foreigner card and they just let you walk on through especially i'm keep adding layers on it especially if you're wearing headphones for instance then they know you can't even hear they might be talking to you but you don't even hear them and especially if you're looking down at your passport at your ticket or whatever you're holding in your hand and you act like you're really busy you're dragging a bag with one hand you're wearing a backpack over here and you got your passport and tickets and stuff in your hand or your phone maybe in your hand and you got your headphones on and you're just totally immersed in that stuff and you're walking right on by but you're doing it all on purpose so that they won't bother you and force you to put your bag on the scanner because if the bag goes on the scanner and there's a bunch of bibles and tracks in there and it looks odd and there's somebody actually paying attention to the screen sometimes they're not even looking to the screen so it doesn't even matter but usually they're at least looking at the screen and then you would get stopped and they would say what is this and then they would confiscate the materials if they find it they will take it away they're not going to arrest you on the spot maybe today they're more strict I've heard rumors of that being the case today maybe they would cancel visas and be more strict back in the day there was never a risk of that it was always hey you can't take these in it's illegal here take two or three little booklets and leave the rest with us and you get a receipt and then you could pick them up going back into China on a future trip but the receipt they'd haven't sitting in an office there and you could take them back into Hong Kong sorry from China and so but that had never happened to me until this day so I'm walking through the security thing doing just what I tell everyone else to do and what's basically what I had written to my friend as well in the message that the Canadians were reading at the border all this happened two years previous this was two only fourteen and that was twenty sixteen there so it doesn't always work and I knew that but I walked on through and I thought I did everything right and I was doing everything right and I saw out of the corner my eye somebody seemed to be waving at me to put my bag on the scanner but I didn't make eye contact and I just pretended not to see them and and I had earphones on or ear headphones or whatever and so I think I might have even heard something I knew they were trying to call to me but I figured they're not going to chase me down there's just no way and so I just ignored it I didn't look at it didn't make eye contact I just stayed busy with my hands and my in my on my passport whatever I had in my hand and I headed for the door and I walked out the door onto the street and I'm trying to remember now if the street was right there I think I had to go a little ways out across some sort of a parking lot some sort of an open area to get to a busy street where there were taxis and whatnot but I realized once I left the building was outside somebody was serious because somebody was actually still hollering at me and still at some point I realized they had actually followed me out and this somebody was chasing me down and was actually going to come and get me so I forget how long it took them to get to me but by the time they actually got to me and were talking to me and I actually acknowledged that they were there I just kept ignoring them and walking and walking I was at least a block away from the place like down on a busy city street inside of China taxi going by I'm trying to wave and get a taxi and I realized I was in trouble and I had no way when the the police person security person with their uniform on would not let taxi stop because I was still trying to ignore them and say hey no I didn't do anything wrong what do you follow me for I just trying to play dumb and what do you do and follow me and I was trying to get a taxi hop in a taxi and take off but they kept waving the taxi no no get out of here don't don't stop don't stop they wouldn't let the taxi put me up so I really had nothing to do there nothing nothing I could have done at that point other than just I guess leave the bag and run I don't know that wouldn't have made sense either so after all that I finally said what do you want you know and they they ended up walking me back all the way back to the place and they opened up my bags and of course they found all of the stuff and they were frustrated with me why did you walk away why did you run away I don't even remember the conversation at this point and and I had some excuses and different reasons I need to catch my thing I need to go somewhere whatever I'm on my way and and I had whatever it was and they finally did do do the receipt they let me go let me go back into China but they took the materials and and it wouldn't have been that big of a deal except for I really did have a place to go that day so I didn't even have a chance to pick it up like I didn't have a chance to go back into Hong Kong pick up my stuff and then make another attempt the next day I had to go I had to catch a train or plane or whatever it was to go back home and where we lived at the time was 30 something hours by train from Guangzhou from Hong Kong and at least two or three or four hours by plane so I don't know if I was going to fly or take a train I don't remember that day but there was no way I could get it so I knew I was losing the stuff basically there was no way I was going to get it back either then or even in the future I didn't have any plan to come back to Hong Kong anytime soon and so that was annoying to actually lose a pretty good stash of material that I could have gotten I can't remember now if I managed to send the receipt with somebody else in the future to pick it up I think I tried but couldn't quite find anybody that would do it so it just didn't work anyway so that was the one time I got caught I'm going to write that down at some point more detailed I'm just trying to tell it off the top of my head but that was April 2nd 2014 and out of dozens and dozens and dozens of attempts that was the only time I got truly caught red handed and they took basically everything that I had in my bags and confiscated them now March 31st Tuesday pray for Lin Gao County which is in Hainan Island which is China's tropical province in the far south Hainan is paired up with Hawaii for prayer that's Tuesday March 31st Wednesday April 1st pray for this is hard to say Gui Chi District which is the most populated district in Anhui provinces Chi Jo prefecture so it's the same Chi he had Gui Chi and Chi Jo Chi by the way it's spelled CHI it's not what it looks like it's not Chi it's CHI pronounced like Chi Gui Chi District Chi Jo prefecture in Anhui province in central China Anhui is paired with Iowa for prayer again if you want to see these see pictures if you want to see the pronunciations check it out China call dot sub stack dot com or praygivgo dot us Thursday April 2nd pray for Chang Ting County which is in Long Yan prefecture in Fujian province Fujian is paired with South Carolina for prayer on the southeast coast of China and the southeastern coast of the U.S. Fujian and South Carolina Friday April 3rd pray for Yutren, Yutren town which is in Zhao Yuguan city in my old home province Gansu province this is in the neck of Gansu Gansu has kind of like this this neck that sticks way out into the goby desert there Yutren town in Zhao Yuguan city I went through this area on a train a couple of times didn't actually get to go out and see and explore the town we had friends that were arrested here at one point for for doing similar work with literature back in the day again check that out Gansu is paired up with my home state of Oklahoma that's where this all started Gansu and Oklahoma are sister states officially sister states according to Gansu and the state of Oklahoma our governors have met and they made that a deal so that's where this idea all began pairing up each province and state with one another pray for gansu.com is the dedicated Oklahoma Gansu website that we've created to pray for that place pray for the number four gansu.com one more Saturday April 4th pray for Hup Hup County and bayhai prefecture near the coast of southern China's Guangxi province way in the south of China not far from the other island province bayhai is known for its beaches Hup Hup County is down there near the beach in southern China it's also paired up with Guangxi provinces paired up with Mississippi and Alabama for prayer Mississippi and Alabama each one of these prayer profiles has links to other information to the previous podcasts I've done about these places again if you go to praygivago.us you can find the substack you can also find patreon and on patreon I've got all of the different provinces I've got all the different podcasts grouped into different collections that's the right word I'm looking for collections of the podcast on patreon I recommend checking that out if you're interested in a certain particular topic to do with China and there we go thank you for listening today to this long podcast I know it's long for me it's long to try to cover I had to leave out some things even subscribe and leave a review on your preferred platform if you'd like to support our China ministry everything else can be found at praygivago.us there's a couple different things you can give to there some really needy things as well check the show notes as well you can see some different means that I posted Luke 10 verse 2 the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few let's ask the Lord for more laborers for the harvest God bless talk to you later