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The widespread protests against the Chinese government are the most extensive since Tiananmen Square in 1989. The demonstrations are against both the severe zero-COVID policies and Xi Jinping’s rule. But the consequences of protesting in China are harsh. Andy speaks with two China experts, Xiao Qiang at the University of California Berkeley and Michael Beckley at Tufts University, about whether COVID rules will loosen, why these protests could mark the start of an even more authoritarian era, and what a coming crackdown on the Chinese people might look like.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Andy Slavitt, Xiao Qiang, Michael Beckley

Andy Slavitt  00:18

Welcome to IN THE BUBBLE with Andy Slavitt. And our Friday conversation. Today, our focus is on China, where we are seeing something quite unusual, widespread protests against the Chinese government. The demonstrations are the most extensive series of protests, since the pro-democracy movement culminated in the clash of tenement square in 1989. Now, depending on what numbers you want to believe, somewhere between several 100 and 1000s of people died at the hands of the Chinese government in 1989. So we’re gonna find out where this is headed. As a result, protests are very unusual. In China, of the scale. At one level, the protests are about the severe and ongoing zero COVID policies of the Chinese government restrictions which have made China in many respects a ticking time bomb, not only in terms of a population, frustrated by very harsh measures, but also a ticking time bomb should COVID really take hold among the population, the very limited COVID protections that could be quite costly to the Chinese people, and could also result in another and the new type of wave of COVID around the world. But in addition to the COVID protests, there seems to be something deeper happening here. She’s approach, as a leader in China, is clearly a touchstone for younger Chinese. But the consequences of protesting, not unlike what we’re seeing in Iran, are quite harsh. So these large scale protests in cities around the country just don’t happen. When they do, they don’t always end well. So what is causing this to happen? What do they think is going to result from this? And what is this really saying about cheese hold. There’s another element, of course, worth focusing on here, which is the criticality of China, to the world’s economy, and specifically, supply chains that the world depends upon. So instability in China destabilizes the globe further. So our Friday conversation is gonna dig into understanding all these things better. We have two different China experts with two very important lenses. Xiao Qiang serves as the Director of the China Internet Project at UC Berkeley, and is founder and editor in chief of China Digital Times. Xiao, welcome to the bubble.

Xiao Qiang  02:54

Thank you.

Andy Slavitt  02:55

And our second guest, Michael Beckley is a non-resident senior fellow at the think tank, American Enterprise Institute. And he’s a professor at Tufts, where His research focuses on US China competition, long term trends in the US China power balance, and he’s the author of the book danger zone, the coming conflict with China. Michael, welcome to this program.

Michael Beckley  03:19

Thanks so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Andy Slavitt  03:22

Good. Okay. Well, let’s get into it Xiao, tell us what we know about these protests. What news is getting out? How are we piecing it all together?

Xiao Qiang  03:32

Well, I suppose every of our audiences has seen the headlines from the media around the world. But how do we get to those news? Primarily, if through the internet decentralize, not so much of the reporters on the ground can get to some of the protests there aren’t like Shanghai and Beijing are very few. But there’s nationwide protests on the street, primarily being reported by citizens in China using their smartphones, and a computer VPNs circulating inside of a Chinese Internet, and a circulating to the social media platform but outside of China, including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, you name it, Instagram. What does it tell us? It’s already clear, which is Xi Jinping stepped down. And Chinese Communist Party stepped up is being openly shouted by the crowd in the largest facility of China, Shanghai, and being anchored in Beijing and many other places.

Andy Slavitt  04:42

Give us a sense of the scope. We could put together, how many cities, how many people are we talking about, the size of the crowds, how people are protesting?

Xiao Qiang  04:53

Well, the size of crowds, judging just by those videos and the reports that ranging from dozens and hundreds and the 1000s in a different cities. So the scale is quite incredible.

Andy Slavitt  05:08

So it’s your impression that this is nationwide, this is not just in a couple of the major cities, and that the crowd sizes are quite large. And that these protests, people are, you know, that we hear reports, people are holding up blank pieces of paper and so forth. But they’re ranging up to even people vocally calling for Xi in the Chinese Communist Party to be replaced. That’s the sense that you have?

Xiao Qiang  05:34

That’s the sense I have, and the ranging from, we don’t want to Emperor, we want a democracy, to freedom, expression, free press. We don’t want rulers, we want the right to vote, we don’t want to call it a test, we  want to freedom. And now these messages are being all over these protesters, particularly across the canvas. And in large cities. These are people’s voice. And this is Chinese People’s lungs suppressed message.

Andy Slavitt  06:10

So you think this is more than just a handful of outspoken people on the edge. But do you think that the protesters are speaking for the majority of the Chinese population, or at least very large numbers of Chinese people? Who are of course not protested?

Xiao Qiang  06:25

I sent in a very large proportion of Chinese not only changes to people, but including even the party members, and a member of the leads inside of the party, which live in a different condition, they cannot say anything like that. Xi Jinping is facing an unprecedented, but well, well deserved opposition.

Andy Slavitt  06:48

Okay, Michael, let’s talk about how the Chinese authorities and xi are reacting. What are we seeing in what’s surprising you about how the government is responding to these protests so far?

Michael Beckley  07:02

I don’t think it’s that surprising. So far, because they have a pretty set playbook. You have this enormous surveillance apparatus that they’ve cultivated over the last 10 years or so that allows them to identify people, and so they don’t have to come rushing in. You know, I think one thing they learned from Tiananmen is we don’t want to have to constantly rely on rolling tanks into the street, we need to develop more insidious methods in order to track people to discipline them. And so the regime has invested heavily in internal security building this apparatus, they started spending more on internal security than on their military in around 2010. And the internal security budget has gone up, way beyond that they’ve put most of the major cities under what they call grid style management, where you basically have, you know, they have hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras, and every block in the cities, you know, you have a team of security officers. And it’s an incredibly powerful system, it’s sort of like, you know, one foot in the 1950s, with like, the traditional security services and a heavy presence, combined with sort of a 21st century Orwellian surveillance state. And it gives the regime options and ways to disrupt civil society and prevent it from forming because what the regime I think fear is more than just sort of people running their mouths or dissent is organization. You know, in fact, there’s been studies on what the regime censors online, and what they tend to focus on are any element of civil society that can emerge as a counter to the regime. And they disrupt that, even as they allow some people to voice dissent, especially with local officials. So what we’ve seen so far is, you know, there’s they’re establishing security, barricades in areas where protesters are meeting and the top security service body in the country, the one that’s in charge of all the law enforcement says there’s going to be a heavy crackdown coming in. And I would assume they’re able to actually track down people that they can spot, you know, at these protests, and they can either cut them off from basic services, or they can just go give a knock on the door with the traditional security services. And they’re combining that with their standard sort of censorship, trying to prevent things from going viral now, right now, they may be overwhelmed, just given the volume of protests that are going forward. And because this is a fluid situation, you know, anything could happen. But my sense is that they have a playbook that they’ve developed and are pushing forward to implement it right now.

Andy Slavitt  09:36

So far, we haven’t seen reports of mass arrests. Do you sense that those are coming or the Chinese aiming to show some sort of restraint and hoping that this dies down on its own? And then what would trigger a more aggressive response?

Michael Beckley  09:52

The security service has said that there is going to be a crackdown, and that’s why they set up this system so that you don’t have to come rushing in Guns hot you I mean, if you give a knock on the door two months from now, and you can detain or disappear people that are inconvenient, then that’s another way to go about it. I mean, I think it’s important to know, we saw some semblance of this and you had these massive protests in Hong Kong and people were worried it was going to be a Tiananmen Square event all over again. But the regime has developed so many other options for containing and suppressing dissent. And another thing we’ve seen is that, yes, these nationwide, protests are large in scale, but you’re this is part of a global trend, where, because of social media, it’s a lot easier to quickly for things to catch on. And so you get these large protests, but at the same time, in some ways, it makes the movements weaker, because they’re not coming out of years of development of some, you know, counter power to the regime now expressing itself, they tend to be more spontaneous, and people reacting and coming out, but without sort of a broader plan for taking on the regime. So I think, you know, anyone that thinks this is the beginning of a massive revolution against the CCP, is probably engaging in wishful thinking, just given the nature of these type of protests that we’ve seen in the modern age, and then just given the massive surveillance and repression apparatus that the CCP has set up.

Andy Slavitt  11:16

So you think this is destined to be clamped down on but perhaps in less visible camera friendly ways? More subtle maybe after the fact. Xiao, do you agree with that assessment?

Xiao Qiang  11:30

I agree that the state has enough capacity as a repressive apparatus. But that’s not a part of the full story. The story of one is that the state Xi Jinping has to make some concessions, because these protests are so deeply related to the current and has been for over three years injury and hurting the Chinese people daily life, across the country across a social level across the economic classes of that brutal condition of the zero COVID restriction, but he’s had no easy way out. Furthermore, this COVID Zero COVID policy is so wedded to his own image and own legitimacy. And that’s his own DOJ, he has been putting himself as a target of this decision. And people see, he’s doing that not for a public health reasons, at least for the last 12 months it’s served for his own power. And it’s expensive, a national economy at the expense of China being closed up and expensive of everybody’s livelihood, and hurting people so much. But in that case, Xi Jinping is a target, no matter how you crack down, this thing’s not going away.

Andy Slavitt  12:49

So let’s take a quick break. And I want to come back and talk about what life has been like in China under the zero COVID policies. And what really has been brewing here. So let’s take a break. We’re gonna be right back with Xiao and Michael. We’re talking with Xiao Qing And Michael Beckley, of Tufts and UC Berkeley, about these protests in China. Let’s get into how these protests started and what life is like in China under the zero COVID policies. Can you explain so that people can understand what the zero policies have felt like to the Chinese people? You know, we saw that the spark that triggered these protests was an apartment fire. And there were reports that the people inside the building 10 people died, three of them children were locked in and unable to get out because of zero COVID lockdown policies. And so that and we also heard reports that zero COVID policies made it more difficult for the fire department to reach them. So I think when people hear zero COVID and when they hear locked down different parts of the world may have different interpretations. This is more like imprisonment. Can you tell us what we know about what is really been going on inside China?

Xiao Qiang  14:27

Well, what’s happening in China is quite a different than many, many lockdowns happen in other parts of the world. So this makes that Chinese people in the past particularly 12 months or so seen that their life has no end of the darkness. We’re talking about urban people, meaning 10s of millions, hundreds of millions that had at any moment, couldn’t get out to their residence compound. or it can take a separate public transportation, or anytime that your house code that’s the QR code on your everybody’s smartphone could turn from green to yellow to red. And then you have to do this intensive frequent test every 48 hours and sometimes every Sunday to hours, days after day, week after week, month after month, that’s not including when there is real lockdown, which is almost half of China’s population have been through this. There’s could be the people being ignored, has no food to eat. People have no incomes, people have no sort of medical assistant or cannot get medical access, when they have emergency medical emergency, whether you’re giving birth a baby, or you have a heart attack or anything like that, and people die from that. People losing their livelihood for that. And we’re speaking about nationwide, millions of people have been under that kind of condition. And that kind of uncertainty from the richest city like Shanghai and political center, like a Beijing to Xinjiang, Tibet, the border towns, and everyone suffers.

Andy Slavitt  16:14

And from my trips to China. People from what I recall, do not have a lot of living space.

Xiao Qiang  16:24

China is the most popular now one of the most populous country in the world, right. And it doesn’t have enough livable land. So it’s people sort of crowded on the more coastal areas.

Andy Slavitt  16:35

So Michael, this is all happening at an interesting time in China, you we just saw this sort of a re-coronation, if you will, of Xi, I don’t know if that’s the expression you would use at the party conference. And then we just saw this week the death of Premier Zhang, who relative to she was associated with economic growth, more prosperity, perhaps more opportunity. So Michael, can you put the protests that we’re seeing now in the context of this Chinese Communist Party and their grip on power the country?

Michael Beckley  17:17

Yeah, I think in addition to everything she just said in terms of just how draconian and long lasting and extensive these lockdowns are, it’s coming at a time where Xi Jinping, you know, is has made himself dictator for life. And so he’s made himself the target, because the buck stops with him. And it’s also taking China potentially back to a past that people view with a lot of fear just that when you vest so much power in one person, and there’s this cult of personality built up around them. It can end in disaster because you know, the dictator sets an ambitious target and the entire system just goes into motion trying to meet that one way or another regardless of the costs imposed on the Chinese people we see that was zero COVID, you saw that was something as horrific as the Great Leap Forward where Mao says he wants to, you know, outpace Britain and steel production and, you know, peasant start melting down their pots and 30 to 45 million people starve to death. So I think there’s this fear that it’s not just that the government doesn’t have an answer to COVID It’s that the government itself is decaying from a policymaking standpoint and these lockdowns are happening at the same time that the economy is slowing, which severely undercuts the regime, a key pillar of the regime’s legitimacy because a big part of the bargain they essentially struck with the Chinese people is, look, you may not have, you know, civil and political rights, but we’re going to make you better off than your parents and certainly better off than your grandparents. But at a time when you know, even according to Chinese statistics, the economy is only growing at something like 3%. And I think those numbers are heavily inflated. You see youth unemployment at 20%. massive debt, you have the mortgage crisis, where people have sunk their life savings into apartments that aren’t finished and may never get built. And so it’s the combination of there’s no end in sight to these lockdowns. It seems to be at the caprice of this one guy. And it’s also happening at a time where our livelihoods seem to be going down the drain. And there’s no real prospect of it getting better anytime soon. I think all of these things come together and are being expressed in the frustrations of the Chinese people right now.

Andy Slavitt  19:32

So Xi’s choices appear to be create the kind of response government response that squelches this and says we’re going to ignore public opinion or to what I believe Xiao said a little earlier, that he has to respond in some way that in fact, in a, you know, in a quote unquote run dictatorship, you have to be even better at understanding the public sentiment, or you risk ending your government. And so you have to imagine that then his other option is to relax his euro COVID policies, which, you know, the thing about the zero COVID policies, if you just think about it mathematically is it less, you could keep them going forever. As soon as you end them, then you have all of the built up potential for death and misery that you’ve been avoiding, you know, unless you’ve been able to magically vaccinate the population with very high quality vaccines, which, which I don’t believe we believe to be the case in China. So as he raised his options, and I’ll ask you this first, Michael, how does he look at his options? And what does he choose?

Michael Beckley  20:44

I mean, I think it’ll be a somewhat mixed approach, but leaning very heavily towards maintaining an iron grip on the situation. So I think you could see some minor relaxations. At the same time that the central government will probably blame the most draconian steps to the extent they can on local leaders who they’ll try to portray as being overly zealous and not paying attention to the better policies that the regime had in mind. But at the same time, a huge increase in repression and probably some attempt to find ways to stir up nationalist sentiment anything to get the public to try to rally around the regime. I think this is why these are dangerous times, not just for the Chinese people, but for the rest of the world because this is a leader who is under severe threat and feels pressured. And in those kinds of circumstances, you know, if you can’t rely on pandemic performance or economic performance for your legitimacy, nationalism, enemy creation is also a way to rally the people around the leader. So I would expect some minor relaxations. They already in fact tried to do that prior to the outbreak of these protests. But I don’t see a major reversal in policy simply because as Xiao said I mean; he has stuck his legitimacy to this idea that China has gone through COVID better than anyone else. And if you do open up given the lack of efficacy of Chinese vaccines, the lack of natural immunity in the population, in a regime that’s just for pride reasons unwilling to import Western vaccines, you know, if you have more than a million deaths, and a hospital system that suddenly becomes overwhelmed, that’s not something that she I think is willing to tolerate.

Andy Slavitt  22:34

Yeah. He sounds like he’s between a rock and a hard place, Xiao?

Xiao Qiang  22:38

I actually agree. I think Michael’s comments are right on point. His political legitimacy is actually really fragile. Anything can cause the challenge to his power, right? For example, even just watch World Cup, Chinese people suddenly being reminded that why the people outside of the world that without a mask farm, having a great time, doesn’t seem like that’s one of the official propaganda was telling us every day, which they are massively dying, we are the only one doing the right thing to control the COVID. So anything will trigger people’s discontent and reminding them not only that they’re suffering but they’re living under a government a major lie, the government has been not a touting them the choose, then it’s an old target to this one person, which leading China to the direction exactly the entire China doesn’t want to go that way anymore. China has been through mouse time; China has been through cultural revolution. Chinese people know that’s not the path they want to go back, this person, if leading China to that direction, and cutting China from the rest of the world. While he is the enemy of the people that he’s putting. He’s putting himself right there.

Andy Slavitt  24:01

Let’s take one more quick break, and come back and talk about how all of this affects the US and the rest of the world. Let’s turn to talk about the US Chinese relationship and how this impacts in other ways. You know, we are bitten in the midst of heightened tensions over Taiwan, and increased saber rattling. We also have a global economy that relies very much on Chinese manufacturing and exporting for a lot of its supply chains. Help us understand how what we’re seeing in China is impacted by this broader picture?

Michael Beckley  24:59

Why I think it’s compounding the pressures on the regime. So anti-China sentiment around the world has soared to levels we haven’t seen since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, and some of this is obviously COVID. And, you know, responsibility for COVID. And the way that China acted during the pandemic, you know, threatening to cut countries off from PPE, for example, if they, you know, didn’t do what China wanted them to do. But it’s also just a reaction to China’s increasingly repressive and aggressive policies. And that’s been a trend for more than a decade, I believe, actually starts under the Hu Jintao administration, but obviously accelerates under Xi Jinping. And so you know, this anti-China sentiment is now manifesting itself in ways that are making life increasingly hard for the Chinese Communist Party, you have the Taiwanese increasingly seeing themselves as Taiwanese and not as Chinese and not even considering peaceful reunification, especially after what they saw happen to Hong Kong with the supposedly, you know, one country two systems approach that that obviously, is a complete charade. You have the Japanese doubling, planning to double their defense spending and their training with the United States, you have the cropping up of these explicitly anti-China alliances with the quad, which brings together India, the United Kingdom, and Japan and Australia, you also have […], and even the Europeans, you know, they suspended their investment treaty with China, and they’re sending token warships into the South China Sea to contest China’s territorial claims. So there’s just this growing ring of strategic and circumvent at the same time that China’s economy is slowing at the same time, that zero COVID is clearly extremely unpopular with the Chinese people. And so the CCP, I think, rightly sees enemies all around it. Unfortunately, I don’t think that means anything good coming out of Chinese policy, both domestically and in terms of foreign policy.

Andy Slavitt  26:57

Does this make an attack on Taiwan more likely?

Michael Beckley  27:00

I think it could heighten tensions that could make a war more likely yes. Because, you know, we’ve seen this throughout history where you have a country that’s been growing rapidly and expanding its ambitions, and obviously taking back Taiwan as a long standing national goal. But if you have a slowing economy, you have domestic unrest, and you see your international rivals starting to militarized and gang up against you. And there’s no peaceful reunification options, really on the horizon with Taiwan, the Chinese have to start thinking, Well, is it time to start flexing some of that military muscle that we’ve spent, you know, $3 trillion, building up over the last two decades, and I think we’re already seeing that. I mean, China’s been carrying out the most sustained and provocative show force in the Taiwan Strait. And I don’t think this is just for fun and games, I mean, they’re clearly building up the capacity, and they have to worry that they have a favorable but finite window of strategic opportunity. Because if the United States and Taiwan push through these defense reforms that they’ve been talking about the island could be essentially unconquerable by the 2030s. Because the Taiwanese military be much more robust, the Americans will have spread out their bases and be able to bring in a lot of firepower in and around the Taiwan Strait, whereas right now, they’re prone and they’re, they’re vulnerable. And so, you know, if you’re Xi Jinping, and you’re looking at the situation, you’ve staked your legitimacy, not just to the zero COVID, but also to bringing back Taiwan onto your watch, then we just have to worry that he might take a risky gamble. This is what we tend to see throughout history that these powers that come under pressure like this tend to become much more risk accepting, because they feel like if they don’t make bold moves in the short term, longer term trends will eventually drag them down, their enemies will rise and gang up against them, their economies will slow, their people will rise up. And so they have to be really aggressive in the short term. So I have become much more worried about China’s assault on Taiwan for all those reasons.

Andy Slavitt  29:01

Xiao, do you agree this is dangerous for the people of Taiwan.

Xiao Qiang  29:05

I do have equal concerns. We cannot underestimate how insecure Xi Jinping actually is. We now seen the Chinese people already expressed their messages, right, the message of no to President for life, right, with the Communist Party. But then we cannot also underestimate that this is also an opportunity to […] numerous enemies inside of the party. I don’t think most of the people in the party happy that they have a permanent leader. Not even for ideological reasons. It’s not even for their own benefit. Therefore, they will fight back and push back some way. Maybe she feels to only himself against everyone else always need to control always need to suppress. Always need crack down, but how long you can keep on going like this, you have a channel large economies that build up over the decades that he can expand. But the best thing he can do is create an external enemy, to shift that attention to reunite it, the people.

Andy Slavitt  30:17

So Michael, I’m gonna give you the last word, tell us about the long term implications of what we’re witnessing to China as a global power to the Chinese Communist Party to Xi, and to Western response.

Michael Beckley  30:30

I think unfortunately, it means we’re in for a very bumpy ride in the years ahead for all the reasons that we’ve just talked about. I mean, this is a regime that feels like it’s surrounded by enemies. If you just read the text of xi’s report that he reads out at the party congress, he’s talking about stormy seas ahead. And I think that’s correct on all fronts, and so nothing good tends to come out of a dictatorship that feels that it’s survival could potentially be at risk unless it makes bold moves in the short term. So I think, you know, I know the Biden ministration is trying to put a floor under the US China relationship, but I think it’s the flimsiest of floors, and that there’s gonna be provocations coming from outside of China. So you know, Kevin McCarthy, the Speaker of coming speaker, the house is going to be probably traveling to Taiwan in March. So it’s going to be like a Nancy Pelosi sort of situation all over again, you have elections in both the United States and Taiwan in 2024, where politicians are going to be competing to look tough on China and the United States to express solidarity with the Taiwanese, so there’s gonna be plenty of provocations that I think she who’s incentivized to seize on these things will have available to them. And so I expect a pretty rough ride in terms of international relations. And then I’m very concerned about the coming crackdown that I fear on the Chinese people just given all the you know, the sophisticated nature of the surveillance apparatus, and just the huge amount of boots on the ground. I mean, China, you not only have local law enforcement, you have the Ministry of State Security, you have a sport as essentially an army directed at the Chinese people, the People’s Armed Police, you have millions of troops where their sole purpose is internal security. And then as the final backstop, you have the military, which China has deployed against its own people, not even just in Tiananmen, but in 2008, in Tibet, 2009 in Xinjiang, so this is a regime that has no qualms about doing whatever it has to do to secure itself. And so I just I fear both for the Chinese people as well as for the rest of the world.

Andy Slavitt  32:38

Well, let’s leave it there. We’re gonna have to watch this situation closely. There’s clearly a lot of people that immediate risk and reverberations that I think you both pointed out to us, that we’re going to have to watch for within China and around the globe. Michael Beckley, Xiao Qiang. Thank you both for joining me IN THE BUBBLE.

Andy Slavitt  33:15

We got a great series of shows coming up next week. Monday, we are going deep inside Ukraine, as they face a very brutal winter, Nic Kristof will be my guest, he spent nine days inside Ukraine. On Wednesday, we’re going to talk about the changing face of COVID, particularly in the face of new variants, and what’s happening in China. We talked, of course, just today about what’s happening with the zero COVID policies. But that has the potential to lead to some pretty explosive outcomes for COVID and new variants, if not handled well, so a COVID conversation on Wednesday and then Friday, antisemitism, Ye or Kanye, as I think used to be called Donald Trump, Kyrie Irving. There are some serious concerns that I think should be raised about how blatantly openly and directly people are making antisemitic comments. And that’s causing and driving as we know, violence every time someone makes hate. Okay. Somehow we seem to follow with someone and more toward taking a message like that, and really hurting people and I think we’re gonna go deep into that on Friday. So Kristoff, Katelyn Jetelina, a great conversation, a troubling conversation that we’re going to have about anti semitism. Thank you all for listening all week. It is great to be back in the bubble. I’m so glad you could join me. Have a fantastic weekend and we’ll talk next week.

CREDITS  34:52

Thanks for listening to IN THE BUBBLE. We’re a production of Lemonada Media. Kathryn Barnes, Jackie Harris and Kyle Shiely produced our show, and they’re great. Our mix is by Noah Smith and James Barber, and they’re great, too. Steve Nelson is the vice president of the weekly content, and he’s okay, too. And of course, the ultimate bosses, Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs, they executive produced the show, we love them dearly. Our theme was composed by Dan Molad and Oliver Hill, with additional music by Ivan Kuraev. You can find out more about our show on social media at @LemonadaMedia where you’ll also get the transcript of the show. And you can find me at @ASlavitt on Twitter. If you like what you heard today, why don’t you tell your friends to listen as well, and get them to write a review. Thanks so much, talk to you next time.