The Daily Stoic - Ferkat Jawdat - Fighting Against Chinese Repression

Episode Date: October 17, 2020

Ryan speaks with Uyghur activist Ferkat Jawdat about the repression carried out by the Chinese government in his home province of Xinjiang, Jawdat’s journey to the United States, and what you can do to help protect human rights in Xinjiang.Ferkat Jawdat is a Uyghur activist who raises awareness of the crackdown on the Uyghur people by the Chinese government in Xinjiang. Jawdat emigrated to the United States from Xinjiang in 2011.For more information on the situation in Xinjiang, visit the Uyghur Human Rights Project. Donate to fund their efforts at: https://uhrp.org/supportThis episode is brought to you by Neuro. Neuro makes mints and gums that help you retain focus and clarity wherever you go. Made with a proprietary blend of caffeine, L-theanine, and other focus-building compounds, Neuro’s products are great for anyone who needs help focusing in these trying times. Try out Neuro’s gums and mints at getneuro.com.This episode is also brought to you by Native Deodorant. Native Deodorant is an amazingly effective green, vegan deodorant that actually works. It comes in several amazing scents like cucumber and mint or lavender and rose, and doesn’t use harmful compounds that plug your pores. Native Deodorant 100% risk free to try because of its 30 day return policy and free shipping and exchanges. Visit nativedeo.com/stoic or use promo code STOIC to get 20% off your first order.This episode is also brought to you by Fast Growing Trees, the online nursery that delivers beautiful plants to your doorstep quickly and easily. Whether it’s magnificent shade trees, fruit trees with delicious apples and pears, privacy hedges, or beautiful flowers, Fast Growing Trees is the best place to buy your plants. And their 30-day Alive and Thrive guarantee means that you’ll be happy with whatever you buy. Visit FastGrowingTrees.com/stoic now and get ten percent off your entire order.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Ferkat Jawdat:  Homepage: https://www.uhrp.orgTwitter: https://twitter.com/ferkat_jawdatSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stood Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target. The new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. on music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom and temperance.

And here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stowed philosophers, we reflect, we prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to worker to get the kids to school. When we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring.

Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean, working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for? FTX Founder's Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes and Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air from the usual Wall Street buffs with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings.

But in less than a year, his exchange would collapse. An SPF would find himself in a jail cell, with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses. From Bloomberg and Wondering, comes Spellcaster, a new six-part doc part docu series about the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of FTX and its founder Sam Beckman freed follow spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts a prime members you can listen to episodes ad free on Amazon music download the Amazon music app today. Hey, it's Ryan all day welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoke Podcast.

I'm going to get right into this one because the guest today has a really interesting, if not harrowing story. His name is Prakat Jadat. He's a weger, a young man who came to America in 2011, basically fleeing what had been the serious threat of persecution. But unfortunately, his mother also, Oweger, would deny a passport as they tried to come to America. And so in 2017, when the Chinese government's crackdown on the U.S. population began to escalate, she was detained two months later. She was sent to,

what's essentially a re-education camp. And Prokada's been without his mother, without his family. And at the same time, he's trying to rebuild his life here in the United States as an immigrant. He's also having to deal with complete uncertainty and fear and worry about the safety of his mother. And you know, he could have kept silent about this.

He could have just tried to deal with it privately, but I think in a very stoic fashion, he stood up, he's become an international advocate, brought all sorts of attention to the plate of the weavers. And he and his family have really suffered for this and yet that has not deterred him. So when we talk about courage here on the podcast, we don't mean this in the abstract,

we don't just mean the things you say on the internet, we mean what do you do when you are faced with a really complex ethical dilemma but also a moral obligation because you see something to say something and look, we'll get into his story, but it's really a harrowing and eye-opening story about something that's happening right now in the world. We can read about the Holocaust, we can read about the Rwandan genocide, we can read about the Armenian genocide, we can read about these things, and it feels like they

happen a long time ago. Maybe we even tell ourselves, oh, I would have done something. But this is happening right now. And so I think it brings up the question of what are you doing about it? Do you even know about it or are you too busy focusing on your own stuff?

And certainly, I failed that test. It's why I'm interested in exploring it, why we're gonna have this guest and another one in a few weeks. That's one of the reasons I reached out recently to the Weaver Human Rights Project, which has been at the forefront of drawing both attention and resources towards the plight of what is it at this point, millions of people who are in concentration camps, who are being deprived of their rights in some cases, being sterilized, being used for forced labor. It's a very alarming thing. I'll let Ferricot do most of the talking here about that because I think it's better to get it direct from the source,

but I did wanna give a plug for the Weeger Human Rights Project. You can check that out at uhrp.org and you can donate at uhrp.org slash support, which I have done. There are refugees, not currently in China, but all over who've managed to get out, have passports who are trying to get somewhere safe, and it can be as little as a $3,000 plane ticket,

or the cost of a few hours of legal work to help free them, or it could just be hoping to cover some of their legal expenses when they come to a new country with little in the way work to help free them, or it could just be helping cover some of their legal expenses when they come to a new country with little in the way of job skills. Or again, these problems can seem very big and very uninfluencible, but in fact, you can help an individual person get through this act. It's like something less than $20,000. You can essentially save a person who might otherwise be re-enterned

in a concentration camp. You can save them. And you can follow Fercat on Twitter, go to at f-e-r-k-a-t underscore j-a-w-d-a-t. I asked him how we can help. He said, one reason, one way people can help is of course by you know trying making sure that the things you buy I have no association with this region of China. He said also you can donate to the the UHRP but also follow him on Twitter because he tries to get out the word about it and so he's he's looking to build his profile and platform to help the spread of this

message. So check that out there's a link in the bio. Of course, all this stuff. Again, listen to this interview. Listen with your mind open. Don't let your political views influence what you're seeing and hearing. It's really important. And we will hopefully have some more view on this issue soon. Well, first off, let me thank you for doing this. It's been a journey for me to sort of try to wrap my head around this issue. And when I was asking who might be able to help me, your name came up several times.

So I really appreciate this. Thank you, thanks for having me. So let's pretend that I'm an American that knows nothing about the weaker situation, that's maybe vaguely heard about it in the news. They know something, you know, is, they know people are concerned about something that's happening in China.

They know it's potentially kind of an international flash point. Like, what would you say to them? How would you explain what this is? So, kind of give some background. The Chinese government took over the land which called East Turkestan in 1949. And then earlier before that, on the late 1900,

they gave the name as Xinjiang, which means in Mandarin, Chinese is the new territory or new dominion. So since 1949, there have been many instances that the Chinese government oppressed or tried to integrate our identity into the the major the hand, identity of hand culture. But in China there are 56 different nations and then we go as one of the largest minority groups. and then rivers are one of the largest minority groups. So we have our own unique identity, the culture, and then we are mostly believing Islam.

And then we have our own language, the food, the closing, everything is unique. And then we even look different than the majority of Chinese people. So when I was in China, And then we even look different than the majority of Chinese people. So when I was in China, I went to university in one of the Chinese cities. And then I also went to Beijing for some other reasons. So wherever I go, the Chinese people, they came up to me and then asked me in English

while I was in China, like where I am from. So I had to reply them back and mandarin Chinese that I'm an uiger where I am from. So I had to reply them back, and I'm in China, and I'm from Xinjiang, so they just get shocked. They were like, oh, so you are Chinese? They said, yeah, I'm Chinese. So, see, and then it kind of kept going until 2009. So, June 2009, there was a hugeash between the U.S. workers, we over sent to inner Chinese cities as a factory workers, along with the Chinese workers

here. So a couple of U.S. people got beaten up so badly and then some of them had died. So, on the July 5th, the university students in Vrunchi, the capital city of East Turkistan, or as they called Xinjiang, they organized a peaceful protest. They are just sitting silently in front of the government offices, asking their response for those killings. But it was brought up lots of tension between the Chinese police and the regular citizens as well as the viewers, so it became a clash between the viewers and the Chinese, so more than 200 people died. And then

since then China started their stronger campaign and also they called as strike hard campaign against three evil forces, the extremist, the terrorist, and then the separatist. So especially after 2016, when the new part of the Secretary-Chung Dwayngo came to transfer to the Xinjiang from Tibet, he started large scale of the police state systems, like they have installed the cameras in every 50 meters, work every 100 meters of the street on every corner. And then they have set up, starting setting up

a huge or large, the camps and then start detaining people who went to Turkey or the other Islamic countries or even came to the US to visit their family members or study. On the beginning, they detained them for about 15 to 20 days and released them. And then later on, it became much longer and then more people are being detained. So my mom was one of them. And along with her two younger brothers and five different people from my father's side. I'm curious because I want to get into that. I'm curious. So your decision to come to America,

what was that like? I mean, I imagine just the journey of immigrating is stressful and scary under ordinary circumstances. Just talk to me about the decision to leave where you're from and come to a new place. Yes. So in China, until recent years, I think a couple of two years ago maybe, the hand Chinese, the head-munchlled policy, but at border minorities like Regulus and the Kauzaks, they allowed of kids. But I was the first, I was the oldest, and then I had a younger brother. And then in 1998, my mom, she gave a birth to my twin younger sisters. So since then, my father started getting lots of issues

or challenges from his work in place. And then by 2005, yeah, around 2005, that he got laid off from his work. And then he came to the US to apply for a cell phone. And then once he's case-versa-approved, he applied for the whole family, including my mom and the four kids. So at the time, all the four kids, like we were under the age of 18, so we were able to get our Chinese passports. And then, although my mom was cleared by the US government to come to US to reunite with the remaining family members, she was declined to receive a Chinese passport.

So since January 2006, it's been almost like 15 years right now that my dad and my mom got separated from each other. And then a lot of time I said my mom in person was on 2010 September. So it's been more than 10 years right now. And for really no reason, right? Like no sort of justifiable reason, it's just an arbitrary policy that, as human beings, you were found yourself on the wrong side of. Yeah, so the local police, they gave different reasons

and then the reasons kept changing as we provide documents to support our justification or to get her a Chinese passport. Like the ass, on the beginning they said that my dad, he came to the US, he overstayed his visa, and then later on after we came, the kid, the children, we came to the US, they changed, like they started saying that, oh yeah, you have your whole family in the US right now. They change like they started saying that oh, yeah, you have your whole family in the US right now and then later on The S my dad to go back to talk to the local police which my dad cannot because he applied for the political asylum

Right and then later on the S us to provide some documents Both from the US side as well as the Chinese embassy or the consul in the United States, that shows that we never committed any crimes mainly against the Chinese government even though we are living in the U.S. So which we did, we got some documents noterized by the Chinese consul or the Chinese embassy here in Washington DC and we sent to them and then they just kept changing their reasons. I feel like that would be so aggravating, but also, like, how do you not just despair? You know what I mean? Because you're not, it's like no amount of logic is going to work in this situation.

And yeah, it's fundamentally unfair at the same time. It is. And then it's really stressful for my mom especially and then as well as to us. Like every day and every time you talk about it, that's the main conversation is like, mom, when can you come to the US or she's asking us, like, son or when can we get together so we can leave normal life, like the whole family together. So it's been 15 stressful years for her specially and then especially after that in like from 2011 that she has not leaving by herself,

like she has her mom and then her siblings in the same city, but still enough to date like she has to wake up by herself, she has to eat, she has to wake up by herself she has to eat she has to cook by herself and then end of the day like she has to sleep by herself and then sometimes like if you cannot call her Maybe because of the Chinese government at the cut off the communication or we get busy The 24 hours like there is nobody that she can talk to. Like that silence within the four walls is just eating her alive. So how do you keep hope going?

Like I mean, I could see someone just sort of, you know, I could see that breaking up person. How have you guys maintained hope? It keeps changing. Before this camp started, we were hopeful because either side, like from my mother's or us in the US, we didn't commit anything against the Chinese government or the US laws. And then she was cleared by the US government to come to the US legally. So only seeing that missing is her Chinese passport. So but the

camp started and then she was detained for more than 15 months on two different occasions and then it became my challenging. So sometimes, be honest, we we lose hope, but I still got to do something. Like, sure. So I still have to find some way or try to find some ways to bring her to the US. What we through what these camps are, because you know, in the US, we have such, as you know, we have this sort of heightened rhetoric about things. So it's hard to know like what's really bad and what's kind of bad and what's sort of being exaggerated for political purposes and what isn't.

Like you're calling them camps. I've heard them described as concentration camps. I've heard people say that it's genocide. What are these camps that people are being put into? So let's start with the reasons for people being locked up in those camps So there is no like specific The court procedures or some legal process about who will be being detained for how long or when will be released. So the police, they just come to your house at random places and then just take you to some unknown places. And then your family members,

like your own husband or wife or your kid or your siblings, they cannot even ask about your whereabouts. If they get, if they question the police or the local government about their loved ones were abouts, they will also be being detained. And then some people are being locked up because that they have some family members who are leaving outside of China, like my mom, for example. She never committed any crime, but she was detained just because that she has her family members living in the US. And then my other relatives, they have

some relatives or family members living outside of China. And then some of the reasons are like traveling to abroad or growing a longer beard for the man as a Muslim, and then, or wearing a hijab, or going to mosque or train, or fasting during Ramadan, or having extra food in your house, or owning a tent, or having WhatsApp on your phone,

or having VPN on your phone, or having, like browse through the foreign media or the news outlets. Like those are the reasons that people will just get locked up in those places. And then if you go inside the camps, like from the former detainees, there have been the Uyghurs, Kazaks, both men and women, they have been detained for months, two years, and then maybe because of some outside pressure like from the governments or the NGOs, some of them have been released, and then once they arrive safely to the other countries, they start speaking up.

So there is a lady, a couple of ladies in the US right now actually, the one of them she gave a testimony in the US Congress, I think it's year or two ago, where she said that it was a really small cell where they have 64 ladies and then even though they sleep side by side at night, they don't have enough space to sleep, accommodate all the people. So they have to have one third of them to stand up while the two third of them are sleeping and then they take turns. And then there are cameras in every single corner of the woman's cell that monitor the 24

hours. And then sometimes the guards that they just come and then pick a girl who looks nice and just raping from everyone else. And then all different torture, like the food deprivation, sleep deprivation. And then also they were brought to some factories. Like they built up the camps and then along with the camps they also built some satellite factories are on them so they can directly transfer the people between the camps and

then the factories and they use them as slaves. Is that really the point of it? Like that's something I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. There is a certain illogicalness to fascism and totalitarianism. It's so often just about control and sort of domination. But is the purpose of it ultimately to create a labor force? Is the purpose of it extermination? Is it just arbitrary, you know, like, is it, what, why, why are, what are they hoping to accomplish with the re-education

camps and then, and then with, with the, the excesses or the, the, the truly horrendous stuff you're talking about. I think there are multiple reasons. So one is, like, just one example is, like when I was in elementary school, at one of the classes, we learned that in socialism, when it reaches on its peak, there will be no difference between the nations or the people. There is only one nation or there is only one group of people. But we grew up learning that there are 50-60 different nations with their own unique culture, identity in China alone, like other world, other countries. It kind of shocked me at a time, but now, if I look back, everything's happening from

the Tibets to the Sausman-Goliar recently, to the Uyghurs, the Kazaks, and the others, like everything is going in the same direction. They are forcing the other nations with their own identity to be sterilized or to be since the nice to become a hand Chinese like a people Like let them to sink in a Chinese way Let them eat the pork or the same food as the Chinese people do Let them dress up in the same way as the hand Chinese and then let them learn the hand Chinese history the culture so and then let them learn the Chinese history, the culture.

So that's one aspect, like, estimulating the different unique nations into the major Chinese society. And the second one is, as part of this one world, one belt, especially it is, the whole system, whole program starts from our region, East Turkestan. From here, it expands through the central Asia, then to the Europe and other parts of the world. So they want to get the region 100% in control, so they don't have any issues come up along

the way. That will stabilize the region or directly impact one belt, one rolled initiative. And then this might be a little crazy, but I actually heard from a pretty high ranking government person that he was sort of saying that his view of it is that it's almost like, and maybe this is historic, but I'd be curious to take, that it's almost like, it's almost practice, right?

Like that it's, if you're sort of intent on world domination, what's happening with the Wiggers is sort of a pilot program or a test run on stamping down, descent, or differences wherever you happen to be. Exactly. So they use the region, the local people as the lab rats or the test ground for their high tech surveillance or the artificial intelligence, the machine learning, the surveillance systems. on scanning in our region for the people. Later on, it was expanded to Laxanhai and then Beijing, some other major Chinese cities, metro stations and public roads. And then after this Hong Kong protest started, they started building camps around the area as well. And recently, there are a couple articles about the huge scale camps are being built in the Tibet region as well. And then also, like some other countries are looking up to China. So if they get succeeded, they will expand or export those technologies,

like facial recognition cameras, the DNA scanning, sequencing machines, and then the methods, the policies that they have implemented to war, so that we grow people to other countries. So this argument that what they're trying to do is sort of stamp out differences that they want, you know, formity, they want a singular culture, you know, a cynical person might sort of go like, well, what does it matter? Like, maybe you shouldn't just, like, you know, people go like, well, just don't grow your beard long, or just, youly. One of the things I write about in stoicism is,

with the ancient stoics, they face tyrannical leaders as well. There was this kind of insistence on being yourself, on being different, even though that would often draw the eye of the rulers. There's a stoic I was just writing about a guy named Agrippinus. And Agrippinus sort of stands out in Nero's regime. He says, I want to be the red thread amidst all the black and the gray. Like he's like, I want to stand out. The downside of course of standing out is eventually, you know, Nero has him executed. I'm walking through the courage it takes

to insist on your heritage or your religious identity when people are basically threatening to take away your freedom if you don't comply. It is, it is hard. And then sometimes it really challenges or risks your own, like, lives or the people around yourself as well. So on the beginning, they started by locking up people who are kind of heavily on their religious side,

like they pray five times, or they have, like, the beard or the other hijabs but it's not only about that it's about everything and then they just use those as the reason to walk you up like my mom as she has been separated from her husband for more than 10 years and then from her kids for like seven eight years it was about like in 2018 when she was detained. Like, she had lots of house issues. So she wasn't able to pray five times a day. She doesn't wear a scarf because she has to go to the police station, the government offices

multiple times to get some ways to find some ways to get her Chinese passport. And then she doesn't fasten her mother as well. But after all, she was detained for more than 15 months. And at some point, she was sent to prison for seven years. After I spoke out, after I became a public, they released her and then, in last November, in 2019, the Chinese government released their own statement saying that my mom has never been detained. So from a person who was criminally as declaimed, was sent to the camp to be reeducated at the end,

she was labeled or she was told that she has never been detained. So that's the logic. Like there is no way that you can prevent it from happening. Sure. Right, it's like that famous, the poem about sort of first they came for the Jews, then they came for the socialists, then they came for the gypsies, then they came for me, but there was no one left to stand up for me. Exactly. So they came for the Tibets and then they came for the Uyghurs and then right now is the Hong Kong. And then the yesterday about the South Mongolian or the other minorities within other parts of China, like they start banning their own language from the schools. And then first time, like a first step, maybe the language and then the religion, and then the books, and then the closing, and then the food, and then some other reasons

that they can just come up with is start looking up people. So you decided to speak out, and again, as I was saying, I've realized even talking to me is probably not without cost for you. There was a time where you got a message from your mother, I think last year, right, where it was very clear that pressure was being put on her to silence you. Yes. So my mom was detained for the first time in November 2017. And then after 22 days, she was released. And then we talked for another of like two or three months until February 6, 2018. And then she was detained for the second time.

They she left me a voice message asking me to not worry about her to take care of my family and then asked us to study and work harder, but at the end, on her message, she'd say, she doesn't know if she can come back or when she can come back. So a month later, five people from my father's side, my father's older sister, who was a government official, a retired government official, along with her husband, dear married son,

my father's younger brother, and the youngest brother's son, five people from four different households were locked up in one day. And then here in the US, like myself, my dad, and other relatives, we came together to discuss about what should we do? Should we start speaking out? Should we start meeting some US foreign officials or the NGOs to seek some help or just stay silent? Wait to see what will happen. At the end, we were, like we were scared because we know that if we start speaking out or if we publicly criticize the Chinese government, we will put our family members in

much more danger. So we stayed quiet. I stayed quiet from February until September 2018. But within that seven months, I wasn't able to get any information from my mom or other family members. The only thing I heard is how was those camps as I described earlier. Like there is a physical torture, there is a mental torture, a sleep deprivation, a sleep deprivation, the rapes, forced labor, forced sterilization. So everything I heard about or the say on

the news about those camps made me decide to speak out from 28th and September. So from that time, I risked, especially my mom and everything. So I knew when I started speaking out that there are some prices that I have to pay or there are some people that they will be suffered or punished because of the way I was speaking out. So which was proven to be true? I don't know your mother obviously, but is it crazy to think that your mom would probably be proud of the standard you're taking and probably want you

to be doing what you're doing? Yes. So at the beginning, I didn't know anything about my mom. And then I just wanted to do something so I can face my mom either in this world or the next world. Like, let me see each other again for the next time. Like I'm sure. I just wanted to be able to say, by looking at her eyes,

like, mom, I didn't sit idle while you were suffering in the prison or the camps. I did something as a son to save you. So after I started speaking out, there are multiple times that I was indirectly threatened by the Chinese police or the government about my behaviors or my publicity. Like, they questioned my aunt and my cousins 48 hours in the police station asked them to sign a contract stating that they will cut up

all the contacts with anyone in the US if not they will also be sent to the camps. My 75 years old grandmother was also being threatened by the Chinese police five years old grandmother was also being threatened by the Chinese police. At the end, when I sent up my kid's picture or my sister's picture along with some cash through multiple friends to her house, she declined to look at those pictures. She declined to receive that money. My 75 years old grandmother. And then a later on after I had a meeting in 2019 March with a secretive state Mike Pompeo, the three days after the meeting, I got a news that my mom, along with my aunt and uncle, they were transferred to the prisons from the camps.

And then my aunt and my uncle, they were sentenced for seven and eight years because of my meeting with the US government official. Have you felt any pressure here in America? Like do you feel like their reach extends even into America? Like, have you felt uncomfortable here or noticed things that were perhaps strange or unnerving? Not really directly to myself in the US, but the directs, I will say the directs threat will be easier than the mental threat or the threat that comes to somebody that you love.

Yeah. Because as a person that you can make a decision about what you do and then are you going to suffer or are you going to pay the price for your actions. But you don't want to put your mom especially or your family members in danger because of the way that you are speaking out or because of the way that you are doing something. So that's the really hard choice, especially after on last March that they transferred my mom from camp to prison. It took me whole week to think through what should I do next?

Should I keep doing what I'm doing or should I just get scared and become quiet? Because I didn't wanna lose my mom. I was scared and I knew that Chinese government is capable enough to do something or just let her die. Right. Oh man. What is, so the courage that it takes for you,

I get, right? There's this risk there. What should, like, what should I do? What should it, what should Americans do? Especially, I mean, I think the logic there of, like, hey, look, this is a pilot program. This is testing for a larger potential injustice. To me, makes actually ties up our self-interested,. Although the Stoics would argue that, you know, sort of the idea of sympathy, we're all part of this larger whole and the idea that you could just turn a blind eye to the sufferings of other people because it doesn't affect you is just not how it works. But like, what impact can an ordinary person listening to this have?

What should we be doing? Yeah, there are a couple of things that just normal citizens, normal American people that they can do, result, harming anything or without losing anything. Like boy cutting the Chinese products. There is nothing that can beat the free labor. Like here in the US, our Like here in the U.S. our federal

minimum wage is $7.50. In any state, the loss that you can pay to hire someone to make your shoes is at the $7.50 which is 50 Chinese yuan. Your minimum one dollar minimum wage will be 50 Chinese yuan and then all months it is maybe 1500 Chinese yuan which is like 200 dollars. So for three days salary here in the U.S. that they can use multiple people as a slave labor in China to make those shoes. That's why many of our factories or the businesses are moving back to China and I'm really glad that the President Trump, that he's trying to bring back lots of things. So China is benefiting from the people like my mom, my brother, my uncle, my sisters, using them as a slave labor to make those products, the shoes, the clothes, the Nike, like sneakers,

or the Adidas. So I ask all the people to boycott those, the Medina in China products, because you don't know which one is made in the forced camps, the camps, or the course, though, the camps, the construction camps, or the factories, is the forced labor. It's a tricky thing, right? For daily stock, we make a bunch of different products. And so that was sort of my first, although I'd worked at a company called American Apparel for a number of years that was one of the largest garment manufacturers in the United States,

but that was sort of one of my first experiences with sort of logistics and, and, you know, manufacturing. I think people, it's hard, right? Like, you're like, okay, we make these challenge coins. It's like, you could get it 10 times cheaper overseas. And so I think a lot of people just look at these things on a spreadsheet. I know I've looked at those spreadsheets and you go, hey, this is made in America and it costs, where I was just looking at the cost of printed book. It was like $17 to print it in the US from one manufacturer and it was $1.27 to ship it in, you know, to manufacture it in China. So I think people look at these spreadsheets and they go, well, there's just no way I can,

it's an obvious choice. But I think your point is what that's obscuring is massive, massive human rights violations and a complicity in a thing you would never want on your conscience. So it's actually been really hard for us to, to find, we sort of have this thing, we're like whenever we can, as much as we can,

we're gonna make everything in the US. Sometimes it's hard because you hire someone and then they subcontract it out. You can't always be sure, but it's actually been like, a lot of work to try to manufacture here in America. And so I think consumers by deciding to support people who do that, you make it easier. Exactly. So yes, and then another thing is, it's not only about the human rights or feeling pity

for someone like the U.S. that you are boycotting the Chinese products. But also, China has the strongest threat, the biggest threat to the U.S. economy, U.S. democracy, in many different ways. And then it's not only about the U.S. issue, it is about the U.S. the Tibet, the Hong Kong, the South Mongolian or any other people, like even the Chinese-Han Chinese people themselves, within the China or living under the CCP rule, but also once they get rid of the blockers as the U.S. and the Tibet, the China won't stop within the Chinese borders. Like we have a scene that they are expanding

towards the Indian borders, and then they expand through, like other countries through one road, one bill, and then they challenge the US army, the US forces or the US influence around the globe because they have economic strong ties without the country. So if we can cut their economic side, if we can at least like a hurt them dollar every day or like dollar per person, we can save our next generations as well. It's not only about my mom, it's not only about my people. I mean, we were American living in Washington DC. I work for the, as a contract with the US government, on the effortable, correct project for the Husker that go. I'm a, we've got

American, but I'm speaking out, not only because of my mom, but my people, but also for my own kids who are born in the US, who are living in Washington DC area, for the future. So, and I realize like, I don't want to get you in trouble, so feel free to sidestep this however you need to sidestep. But I'm curious too, you know, if America wants to be this sort of, this sort of beacon of freedom, if it wants to have a moral voice in saying like, hey, this is wrong. How can we do that when we also turn a blind eye to injustices here at home? Like I'm thinking about the argument of it's rather strange when you look for instance at the history of the Second World War, America goes to Europe to, you know, sort to fight Germans to stop that totalitarian state,

to ultimately end up stopping the Holocaust, racial discrimination, religious discrimination, et cetera. Meanwhile, we have what is effectively in a partied system in the American South, and we've turned an eye to any injustices ourselves. So I'm not saying that a state has to be perfect to get involved, but it does strike me as tricky that the sort of, that different political voices are coming down on different sides

of the weaker China issue, and there's some moral complexity there. Do you get what I'm saying? I got it, yes. So I'll say'll say like you don't have to be perfect enough to judge me or stop me from doing something illegal or unhuman. Like I'm not a perfect person, but if I see someone is getting beaten up on the street, should I stand up? Yes, I should. Because that's my moral like obligation to stop something from happening. And then yes, here in the US, we have lots of issues. Like we are number one on the COVID cases. And then we have more than 200, 200,000 people

who lost their lives. Every single one of them is precious. But they are family members of somebody else. We have Black Lives Matter. We have some other issues. But it doesn't mean that we have to stop questioning other people or other governments. Right. No, it's like the NBA is an interesting

to go to your point about using capitalism and business and where you're spending your dollars. The NBA is very active about Black Lives Matter and then it's been quieter on the human rights abuses in China. It's been strange because the argument, it's almost like one side is saying, they're trying to say, well, you don't care about China, so Black Lives Matter doesn't, doesn't count. And then other people are saying, how can you be mad about police abuses here in the United States? And then, you know, caching enormous

checks from a government bill explicitly on that kind of authoritarian abuses. So it's like, it's almost as if instead of saying, hey, injustices matter, it matters how we treat the vulnerable. We have to stand up even when it doesn't feel like it affects us directly. Instead of kind of insisting on general rules, we're trying to just like, we're just engaging in what they call what aboutism. We're just going like, well, what about that?

And then it's like they cancel each other out, and then we're not morally obligated to do anything. Exactly. So yeah, like NBA is a really good example, because in the US, they benefit from free speech. So they can say anything they want or stand up on the either side that they want against their own government or the political system. But when it comes to China, especially the Communist Party itself, is a big bully. So if you listen to him, it will bully you until you stand up for your own rights. And then if one NBA stands up, they will just shut down all the NBA services, the shows,

and then the selling of the air products in China. But if we have the NBA and in the other, like the night, the Apple, the like all the big corporations like around the globe, they set up on the same time. The China will feel the pain of losing everything in one shot, so they will be back down. That's maybe a good place to sort of wind down. So the stillics, I don't know how familiar I was to the stillicism, but I think you would enjoy it and get a lot out of it because it's all about these sort of really complex, difficult situations that require courage and an emphasis on justice

and but also wisdom. But the idea for the Stoics, they're sort of like, we got to focus on what you control where you can have impact and you can't get to beaten down by the hopelessness of a large, you know, complex situation. And so a lot of people maybe think that that means that the Stoic is sort of just inwardly focused or just things really small.

Like how, sort of the question of, well, how do people come to get, like, what can one person do? And then also, if we're only thinking about what one person can do, it may be prevents us from coming together as a collective whole. And sometimes that's what you need to solve a problem. So I'm just like, what do you think about, like, I get your point about sort of boycotting and speaking to representatives and stuff like that, but, you know, maybe the MBA is thinking like, what are we just supposed to take a multi-billion dollar hit, and then it not make a single ounce of difference? I think people think this too. They're like, what should I just speak out and then lose not make a single ounce of difference. I think people think this too, they're like, what should I just speak out and then lose my career over it?

And you must have thought this too. You're like, well, I'm going to speak out and really the major effect is it's going to negatively impact my mother's situation. How do you think about how this all integrates as part of a larger movement. So I have that feeling as well. And then many other people are on my self,

like especially from my own community. The people, especially the ones that are staying silent, like what can I do by speaking out or like tweeting about that, or just talking about my mom? I'm just one person. And then that's the mentality that Chinese government they wanted you to have as well. That's the exactly what that Chinese agent who reached out to me on the beach

at last year who told me like, you are just one person who's going against the superpower Chinese government. You can't do nothing. But in fact, yes, if I'm just myself, I'm just nobody. But with the people like you and your listeners and other media organizations, I become stronger, my voice becomes louder. And then that was the exact reason that after being sentenced for seven years in prison,

my mom was being released. So if only one in base stands up, yes, they will lose maybe billions. And then if Volkswagen stands up to say, hey, we're gonna shut down our factories, and then we're gonna lay off all the workers, and then we're gonna stop selling cars, or like we're gonna stop tuning business with you,

because you are forced laboringing or they're using the forced labor in the factories or you have a concentration camps and they might not lose billions. But if five companies or the ten companies or fifty companies, they voice together, it will make the Chinese government to change their policies. I think that's beautifully said. And I'll talk about this in the intro, or I will have already done that. But the history of stoicism is about,

and I think history too is about people who took a stand, and they were alone, but eventually that was no longer the case. And I mean, case in point, you've begun speaking about this and now you and I are talking. And I hope that the people who are listening, they begin to talk to someone. And this is how movements start with one person

deciding, as you said, to just not to be able to look your mother in the face and say, I did something, that can have an enormous ripple effect. And one person can change history. Exactly. For God, thank you so much. You're a true inspiration. And where would you point people to if they wanted to donate money, if they wanted to, if there was a specific petition or agency they should reach out to,

what would you, where would you leave us? I also just, the U.S. government rights project, the UHRP.org, that they are organization based in Washington, D.C, who are doing tremendous amount of job for advocating that we will write in the US government and around the globe as well. Also the U.S. American Association, and then there is a bill, I forget the exact name, I think it's each R, each R is for the house,

each R is six to 10. That's the bill about weigarett, right? Yeah, we were forced labor prevention act, I guess. We just passed from the house of representatives this week. So it is on its way to the Senate. So if the people can just call their own senators and then ask them to be sponsor or add their voice to the bill so it can be sent to the president as well as possible so we can prevent those the items from coming to the US on

the first place. Now thank you so much and look we we have this weird trend in America right now is sort of in the somewhat it's enormously hypocritical, but it's somewhat anti-immigrant bent in our society, despite the fact that my own grandparents came here as refugees from totalitarianism in Europe, but I just wanted to say, I'm proud to hear that you're an American, I'm proud and inspired by the work you're doing. I'm glad you're here.

And it's truly wonderful to talk. And we could use many more people like you. And frankly, you are holding true or to what it means to be an American with life you're leading and the actions you're taking than people who have been here for many, many generations. So thank you for that. Thank you, Ryan. If you're liking then people who have been here for many, many generations. So thank you for that. Thank you Ryan. If you're liking this podcast we would love for you to subscribe. Please leave us a review on iTunes or any of your favorite podcast listening apps. It really helps and tell a friend. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad free on Amazon Music,

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