Speaker 1: I Bill Cunningham, the Grant American, a coortanate flight between
Speaker 1: the Trump administration and Harvard continues oun debated along with
Speaker 1: other universities. It used to be in the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: there might be three percent of Cordon students at the
Speaker 1: Harvard or Yale or Columbia. Now there ranges between twenty
Speaker 1: and thirty three percent of students. And it might be financial,
Speaker 1: which means they're willing to pay full freight, especially Chinese
Speaker 1: students paid for by the generally the Communist Party of
Speaker 1: China to commit or learn and to report back to China.
Speaker 1: That's a different story. But Harvard students right now are
Speaker 1: subjected to a bunch of anti Semitism, which I did
Speaker 1: not think was possible on Columbia campus or on major universities.
Speaker 1: And Greg Rabbidue is an award winning filmmaker, author and
Speaker 1: cultural commentator. And Greg Rabbitue also has a calumn up
Speaker 1: as har is Harvard still committed to Veritas, which means truth. Greg, welcome,
Speaker 1: I think for the third time to the Bill Cunningham Show.
Speaker 1: And first of all, let's go back in time a
Speaker 1: little bit a long time ago, maybe the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: was the Harvard and other these elite campuses fundamentally different
Speaker 1: then than they are today.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. So the short answers, I don't
Speaker 2: think so, But I don't think they were doing the
Speaker 2: kinds of things they're doing now on the scope they're
Speaker 2: doing it now.
Speaker 3: And I also when you look back at.
Speaker 2: Some of the tuition and the fees and where they
Speaker 2: were getting their money, they were hitting the alumnus hard.
Speaker 2: They were getting a lot of big expansion of their
Speaker 2: endowment fund, which is fine, but I think somewhere along
Speaker 2: the line by probably a serendipitus for them, connection between
Speaker 2: what countries like China wanted to do and accomplished strategically
Speaker 2: and what Harvard felt they needed, which was a kind
Speaker 2: of a perpetual injection of money because they wanted to
Speaker 2: continue to balloon up their tuition, which they have eighty
Speaker 2: five thousand dollars a year bill for an undergrad to
Speaker 2: attend Harvard. And it was a marriage made, I guessed,
Speaker 2: in Harvard and Chinese CCP heaven because from that point,
Speaker 2: like you said very accurately, in nineteen ninety to now,
Speaker 2: we're looking at well over three hundred thousand Chinese foreign
Speaker 2: national students in the US second only to India. But
Speaker 2: India is a democracy and not necessarily at all our adversary,
Speaker 2: and we know China is. And then the third is
Speaker 2: coming from the Middle East. So I just pose the question,
Speaker 2: when you look at these numbers, even if you do
Speaker 2: a shallow dive and you start saying, hey, over thirty
Speaker 2: percent and some of our college campuses, Bill, do you
Speaker 2: believe it are over fifty percent foreign? I think you
Speaker 2: have to ask the question who's coming, why are they coming?
Speaker 2: And do we know anything about these folks and what
Speaker 2: they're doing while they're here and what they're going to
Speaker 2: do presumably when they graduate. In other words, are we
Speaker 2: getting our end of this trade swap? Or is it
Speaker 2: just universities and colleges are getting the full freight and
Speaker 2: they're fine with that no matter what, no matter the radicalization,
Speaker 2: no matter the damage, no matter the anti Semitism, no
Speaker 2: matter the rampant technological cheating, stealing, taking the proprietary information,
Speaker 2: because that happens all the time, and I don't think
Speaker 2: your most Americans realize the scope that that happens at
Speaker 2: our universities from some of these foreign countries, particularly China.
Speaker 1: Greig Ravenou, Is there something I'm unaware of? Are Chinese
Speaker 1: universities and colleges elite? And do they want American students
Speaker 1: to come to Commonist right China? And what's good for
Speaker 1: the goose is good for the gander? Are there three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand American students can't wait to go to the
Speaker 1: University of Beijing? Does China welcome Americans with open arms?
Speaker 1: Come on in? Does that happen?
Speaker 2: No, No, it does not happen.
Speaker 3: And I'll give you I'll give you a quick anecdote.
Speaker 2: So what they do certain nonprofits again that get a
Speaker 2: whole boatload of money from China, They encourage a lot
Speaker 2: of American students who may not know what to do
Speaker 2: with that sociology major or that gender study major, to
Speaker 2: come to China and teach English. But I can tell
Speaker 2: you from secondhand experience from a source I know very well.
Speaker 2: Two friends of mine went there and did that, and
Speaker 2: they said that they were scared out of their mind
Speaker 2: for nearly the entire time once they realized that they
Speaker 2: were absolutely under constant surveillance. And they said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: welcome to China. This is not new. I mean, they
Speaker 2: surveiled their own people. You don't think they're going to
Speaker 2: surveil you. And then when they got.
Speaker 3: Back to the US and.
Speaker 2: They get on their Facebook or they're texting friends or
Speaker 2: they're chatting, they realized that they're still being surveiled. So
Speaker 2: again you got to ask yourself the question if it's
Speaker 2: this idea. At one point, I think that was very
Speaker 2: maybe naive, but altruistic of this idea of we're going
Speaker 2: to get students from other countries and they're going to
Speaker 2: experience our culture and we're going to experience theirs, and
Speaker 2: it's going to lead to a win win, and we're
Speaker 2: going to know more about them and vice versa. You'll
Speaker 2: recall the Confucius institutes, right, that was.
Speaker 3: What was driving them.
Speaker 2: And then you have conservative voices saying, wait a minute,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of evidence to suggest this is not
Speaker 2: just a.
Speaker 3: Nice cultural exchange. We'll get closer.
Speaker 2: We may be going into that part of the bargain
Speaker 2: with that idea, but I can guarantee you they're not.
Speaker 2: The CCP doesn't do anything, though you know it's better
Speaker 2: than most, They do not do anything on a whim.
Speaker 2: It's all strategic, it's all calculated and it all.
Speaker 3: Serves their greater good.
Speaker 2: So they would not be paying these students and the
Speaker 2: dollars flowing into our universities if it wasn't benefiting them.
Speaker 2: And the short answer to your the question is no.
Speaker 3: Now the door is not swinging open the same way
Speaker 3: to Beijing you, nor do they want it.
Speaker 1: I can't see a mom and dad, and I was saying,
Speaker 1: you know, Susie, you need to get to the University
Speaker 1: of Beijing and learn that. She'd say, what, And for
Speaker 1: every spot taken by a Chinese student, that's one spot
Speaker 1: not given to an American student. So if it's eighty
Speaker 1: five thousand per head from China, and on top of
Speaker 1: that living expenses, the Chinese government has an account balance
Speaker 1: with each of these Chinese kids of about a half
Speaker 1: million to a million dollars each that they spend on
Speaker 1: these students to come to America to learn to stay here.
Speaker 1: What does the Chinese government want in return for all
Speaker 1: that money invested in each of these three hundred thousand
Speaker 1: Chinese students, what is Beijing wan from them? Because it's
Speaker 1: a quid pro quote.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, a great question. And here's what I would
Speaker 2: just sort of submit. If you look at the kinds
Speaker 2: of colleges they're going for. So they target the elite
Speaker 2: colleges and universities. Why because they know those are very
Speaker 2: ripe based on the faculty as well, based on the
Speaker 2: radicalization that occurs at those campuses. So they target Harvard, Columbia, NYU.
Speaker 2: They're targeting these kinds of schools because they know that's
Speaker 2: a ripe to do.
Speaker 3: What to divide, to.
Speaker 2: Create these sort of fissions between people, to bring issues
Speaker 2: that are only going to create this sort of chasm
Speaker 2: between people, and then they can go on their propaganda
Speaker 2: and say, look at the US, look at their campuses,
Speaker 2: look at the future generation. The fabric of the US
Speaker 2: is being torn apart. Yeah, because you're injecting a lot
Speaker 2: of that in and not just China. But like I said,
Speaker 2: the third area that we get the most foreign nationals
Speaker 2: are are from the Middle East, where you have radical
Speaker 2: in many cases, radical Muslims coming to the US. Now, look,
Speaker 2: I'm not against the we learned from them, they learn
Speaker 2: from us, the.
Speaker 3: World gets better. That's different.
Speaker 2: But when you start looking at where these students are
Speaker 2: coming from and the kind of schools they go to,
Speaker 2: Illinois Tech, Illinois Tech is fifty two percent foreign, forty
Speaker 2: eight percent American students Carnegie Mellon, Stevens Tech, Northeastern Columbia,
Speaker 2: Johns Hopkins Stamford, NYU where I did my film directing
Speaker 2: training and script writing, Clark University, Rochester. What do these
Speaker 2: all have in common? They're heavy duty tech. So you
Speaker 2: have a lot of these students coming in and we know,
Speaker 2: certainly in the film industry, China does not respect intellectual properties.
Speaker 3: They know, respect.
Speaker 2: Proprietary information, trade logos, trademarks, copyrights.
Speaker 3: They grab.
Speaker 2: Basically, they walk in and with arms open and load
Speaker 2: up as much as they can and go back to China.
Speaker 2: In many cases, that's just what's happening, not me saying it.
Speaker 2: FBI directors have been saying it, National Intel has been
Speaker 2: saying it.
Speaker 1: You know, unlike the USSR that had a great we
Speaker 1: thought military and great missile technology, they never had any economy.
Speaker 1: They're never worth behaving like the Chinese Party and Chinese behaving.
Speaker 1: And so this is both it is a great military
Speaker 1: power expanding and it's also a monetary cultural power that's expanding.
Speaker 1: With the Silken Road initiative, they want to pay off.
Speaker 1: For example, the Nation of Columbia, as along with Panama
Speaker 1: and Venezuela, has struck deals with the Communist Chinese Party
Speaker 1: to build roads and bridges and sewer systems in exchange
Speaker 1: for what they own the countries, and then they have
Speaker 1: the foreign policies and votes in the UN they require.
Speaker 1: Kevin o'larry have had on a couple of times from
Speaker 1: he's on Shark Tank, this Canadian he's wonderful, talks about
Speaker 1: there's no right that a Westerner has in China. Do
Speaker 1: it to do anything. For example, if you if you complain, hey,
Speaker 1: my trademark, my trade name was violated, they would look
Speaker 1: at you and say, well, what were you talking. They
Speaker 1: ignore American law, they ignore are requirements to get listed
Speaker 1: on stock exchanges, and they just they know they're protected
Speaker 1: once they're inside China. So I'll ask you a big question,
Speaker 1: Greg Raby, how do how do we confront this?
Speaker 2: I don't yeah, so yeah, Well I'll use a little
Speaker 2: bit of the film industry to answer question. Look for
Speaker 2: the film industry, China strategically targeted the film industry targeted
Speaker 2: Hollywood set up a lot of co production agreements, and
Speaker 2: they do the same thing.
Speaker 3: They'll agree to things.
Speaker 2: They'll sign things, and then the inks barely dry and
Speaker 2: they violate it. And then for well over fifteen years,
Speaker 2: the Motion Picture Association of America, led by Joe Biden's
Speaker 2: former good buddy, best buddy, Chris Dodd, we're complaining and saying, gee,
Speaker 2: all these violations, all these violations, and essentially, in about
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen twenty sixteen, Joe Biden did a number of
Speaker 2: agreements that basically just said we'll forget everything you did,
Speaker 2: we won't follow up and the violations. Just essentially promised
Speaker 2: to be better and promised to let Hollywood films in China.
Speaker 3: Oh, yes we will, Yes we will. Well what happened?
Speaker 2: Inconsistency, yep, violating agreement.
Speaker 3: They let a few in, they close the door in others.
Speaker 2: They change premiere times, they change, they rig the box
Speaker 2: office numbers. They do everything you think of, and one
Speaker 2: of the most nefarious things like for me, for example,
Speaker 2: the independent filmmaker, if I want to do to your question,
Speaker 2: if I want to do business in China, I got
Speaker 2: to use the co production company and a code well
Speaker 2: distributed from China. But as soon as I do, it
Speaker 2: becomes a Chinese film, and so then I go from Hey,
Speaker 2: this is my product, this is my script. I'm the director, producer,
Speaker 2: this is our studio to you are now at best
Speaker 2: a junior partner.
Speaker 3: You have no say and you have to open up
Speaker 3: your books.
Speaker 2: And any proprietary information or techniques or technology used for
Speaker 2: the film now becomes common usage from their perspective.
Speaker 3: And you're so right, they don't respect it. I've gone
Speaker 3: I'd live this.
Speaker 2: They don't. They basically laugh at you. There's no way
Speaker 2: what it trademark? What is that but a piece of paper?
Speaker 2: So how do we confront it? Well, we enforce agreements.
Speaker 2: First of all, we hold them accountable.
Speaker 3: And in my.
Speaker 2: Book, The Insatiable Dragon, I'm China to control the Hollywood
Speaker 2: of Cautionary Tale on Amazon.
Speaker 3: I'll just get that and.
Speaker 2: Quick because I getting a lot of people asking about it.
Speaker 2: What I say is stop thinking China is the end
Speaker 2: all be all.
Speaker 3: There are other ears.
Speaker 2: I can film India, a democracy that's film crazy, and
Speaker 2: if you put the investment there, it is so much
Speaker 2: more open. They have shared laws, shared values. Places like India.
Speaker 2: Place is outside of China. We've got to wean ourselves
Speaker 2: from the addiction that is China. For all these years
Speaker 2: or we're just going it's not going to end well
Speaker 2: for us.
Speaker 1: Trump's the only one to put the thumb in the dike.
Speaker 1: A friend of mine, I'll call it a widget because
Speaker 1: that would identify the business. But he had a widget
Speaker 1: that he put together in the medical industry, had all
Speaker 1: the trade names, trademarks, all the patents, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: it was costing him nine dollars to produce this widget.
Speaker 1: After success for two or three years, he was contacted
Speaker 1: by Chinese company and said, look for nine dollars. We're
Speaker 1: going to make it for one dollar. And he said
Speaker 1: one dollar instead of nine dollars, I'll take that deal.
Speaker 1: Transferred the production of this so called widget, I'll call
Speaker 1: it to communist Red China. It worked for about a year.
Speaker 1: They got access to all of his customers, all the hospitals,
Speaker 1: all the doctor's offices, and then dealt with them directly.
Speaker 1: And eventually my friend had to file bankruptcy because he
Speaker 1: gave to them the ability the technology. But he thought
Speaker 1: he had trademarks and trade names, he thought he had
Speaker 1: patents and copyrights. Nothing was recognized whatsoever. A brand new
Speaker 1: entity sprung up in China knew it exactly the same thing,
Speaker 1: called it a different process. Put my friend out of business.
Speaker 1: And that's repeated one hundred thousand times a year by
Speaker 1: small businesses who think they're getting a great deal from
Speaker 1: Bom Desroy China for a year and it collapses the
Speaker 1: country because they don't pay attention to their own agreements.
Speaker 2: Bill, You're you're absolutely on spot on with that. And
Speaker 2: again I call it like that a llure of the
Speaker 2: Chinese market. Well, the Chinese market now in Hollywood, for example,
Speaker 2: in film has taken so much that now it is
Speaker 2: so difficult for films to make it if you're not
Speaker 2: Tom Cruise, the Sky Dance or Fast and Furious to
Speaker 2: the Avengers.
Speaker 3: That's about it.
Speaker 2: And what they do now is their domestic box office.
Speaker 2: They bragg the largest in the world. They buy up
Speaker 2: our theaters. I mean, Chinese company owns American movie theaters
Speaker 2: like AMC for example.
Speaker 3: They own it.
Speaker 2: People may not realize that I'm not saying, but it
Speaker 2: doesn't work reciprocal. Like you said before, if you and
Speaker 2: I said, well okay, let's you and I we've got
Speaker 2: some venture capital, let's buy some Chinese theaters, it's not allowed.
Speaker 3: It's not allowed.
Speaker 2: So we got to stop doing business, Bill one way,
Speaker 2: and we got to look for other areas that are
Speaker 2: more conducive to American business, American know how, and in
Speaker 2: this case what I do of filmmaking, We've got to
Speaker 2: wean ourselves from there because it never ends well. It
Speaker 2: never ends well because you don't have a partner that
Speaker 2: respects to say, mores and values and laws as you do.
Speaker 3: So how do you make it work?
Speaker 2: I mean, you can be super vigilant, you can try
Speaker 2: to hold them accountable, but ultimately even your accountability has
Speaker 2: to come from other sources because again, it's not like
Speaker 2: they're in the same system that you can slap on
Speaker 2: and you know, bring them to court and then they're
Speaker 2: going to pay a fine or they'll change their ways.
Speaker 3: They just again they laugh at that.
Speaker 2: So we have to be a whole lot smarter and
Speaker 2: a whole lot going into open eyes. And the other
Speaker 2: element I'll just share with this is also when we
Speaker 2: start looking at our universities, Bill, and we're looking at
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, thirty thirty five percent or more faculty
Speaker 2: that are not starting out as American faculty, and they're
Speaker 2: coming from other countries like China, like the Middle East,
Speaker 2: is it any wonder why again, some of the different values,
Speaker 2: the radicalization happens. I mean, it's a toxic brew that
Speaker 2: we're mixing. And you know, universities also need to realize
Speaker 2: that their endowment fund fifty two billion at Harvard, thirty
Speaker 2: eight billion at Columbia, thirty billion at NYU comes with
Speaker 2: a major.
Speaker 3: Price, and one of the big prices is a loss
Speaker 3: of control.
Speaker 2: They can't control it, and it spins out of control,
Speaker 2: and the damage. It's like a tornado, man, it whips
Speaker 2: through and leaves a whole lot of damage in its wake.
Speaker 1: Greg Rabdu, thank you. And the colleges now are are
Speaker 1: encapsulated inside the Chinese government and also the most radical
Speaker 1: elements in the Middle East. I'm watching it in real time.
Speaker 1: I'm watching what happened in Boulder. I'm looking what's happening
Speaker 1: around the world. It's frightening. But Greg Ravedue, you're a
Speaker 1: great American and once again, thank you for coming on
Speaker 1: the Bill Cunningham Show. Let's keep the lines of communication open.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Greg, absolutely, thank you.
Speaker 2: Bill.
Speaker 1: God bless America. Let's continue with more. And there's Chinese
Speaker 1: police stations in America, policing. They're citizens in our country
Speaker 1: to make sure they follow the Beijing line. Bill Cunningham
Speaker 1: on seven hundred WLW