🇨🇳 $20 for Chinese New Year

GM everyone. This is 2036, the newsletter that pays you.

Sunday night was Chinese New Year. 新年好 and 恭喜發財 to all of you celebrating out there!

(Sunday was also the release of Wandering Earth 2 - the sequel to a Chinese version of 'Armageddon'. It's on Netflix, and is quite amazing - just saying.)

We've now officially moved from the year of the Tiger to the year of the Rabbit.

🐯 ➡️ 🐰

The transition wasn't entirely smooth...

Next year, we're moving to the year of the Dragon. Poor rabbit.

Now - China is highly controversial yet really important.

What China does influences the foreign and domestic policies of:

• countries and blocks trying to stand up to total Chinese control - like the US, UK, EU, India, Japan, Israel, and Brazil.

• countries cozying up to China, like Russia.

This affects pretty much everything - from the US dollar to global growth, liquidity in the markets, and of course - crypto.

These days, you'll find China in the news almost everywhere.

Last year, everyone was talking about the impending collapse of Evergrande, a Chinese real estate company.

And this year, for the first time since 1961, China's population is shrinking.

On top of that, they recently posted economic growth of just 3% - the slowest since 1976.

So what's happening? Is China out?

Or is this just a bump in the road?

One possible outcome is centralized East, decentralized West. One where the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is hard power, and BTC is hard money.

At least that's the opinion of technologist Balaji Srinivasan. You might have heard of him, but if you haven't - you're in for a treat.

Balaji's an angel investor, former CTO of Coinbase, and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. His colleagues describe him as "Einstein if he had the Internet."

I used to live in China 15 years ago to study Mandarin. Since then, I've found only a handful of people who can look at China objectively without labeling it foe or friend.

Balaji is one of them (Ray Dalio is another)

On his latest appearance on the Tim Ferriss podcast, Balaji spent a while talking about China. And to most of us who listened, it was eye-opening.

So that'll be the topic of today's task.

✅ Task: get paid $20 in BTC for a glimpse into China

Today's task will have two sources you can refer to:

• Balaji's thoughts on China directly from the source (the Tim Ferriss podcast)

• A summary of the podcast written by yours truly

Which source you pick is irrelevant. The whole podcast is 5 hours. But you can watch just the China section in the clip below (starts at 8:40 and ends at minute 39).

Alternatively, you can read a summary I made of the whole podcast which includes the section on China right here:

So - Step #1: Watch/read a summary of Balaji's thoughts on China

Step #2: Summarize them in your own words. This doesn't have to be very long, it can even be just a paragraph of your high-level thoughts.

Then submit your response via this form:

The best submission will win $20.

The goal of this task is to get a high-level understanding of China. I don't anticipate we'll cover every topic under the sun in the future. Our focus is mostly on crypto and other initially-crazy-but-technologically-feasible ideas.

But once in a while, for special occasions, we'll cover one-offs on particular countries, like China, India, Singapore, and a handful of others.

I hope you have a fantastic day. I'll speak to you tomorrow,

Alex.

P.S.: during my time in China, I participated in a TV show that was seen by 200 million people on a Sunday evening... this is what I had to wear....

That's me on the left... I also had to wear a kangaroo suit and pretend I was Australian 🦘

The joys of being 17.🤦‍♂️