My eyes just rolled out of my head:
And finally, [1989] was also the year that Taiwan ceased to be a Leninist dictatorship and became a democracy.
🤣
That’s incredibly funny to me on so many levels
27:30 [referencing imperialism] Whether or not they [China] will fall into the same trap that we did
This part comes across to me like he thinks the US being imperialist was some kind of accident of circumstance that China might stumble into as well.
Overall, seems clear to me that even as he talks (in some cases correctly) about points of confusion the US has about China, he has a hard time (maybe intentionally) wrapping his head around the idea of what AES ideology is and what it produces, and is reduced a lot to comparing it to his euro/US-centric capitalist understanding of how the world works.
For sure, you can see the biases leaking out there and it’s not surprising from a US diplomat. Overall, I did find it to be fairly sober.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
