Inside China Business started on YouTube two years and two months ago. I’ve been in China since 2012, since May 31, 2012. These [holds up two books] are my prayer books. And I—the most important people in my life are in here: my family and closest friends, my business associates and colleagues, and it’s also a chronicle of my Christian walk in China. I put prayer requests down here and I write down as they’re answered and move on. I pray to Him every day, and every day I pray for also the peace of countries and nations, the leaders back home and the leaders here.

And for many years, I was praying, among many other things, that God would bring reform to China. That there would be a lot of changes here. And it was just something that I was—something I did for years and years. And one day I was in my living room, in one of those buildings behind me, and I was praying there, and God spoke to me. He said, “I need you to stop doing that right now. I am using China to bless the world, and I need you to start paying attention.” And He spoke to me as clearly as if you were sitting there right me in my living room. I heard it audibly. “Stop doing that right now. I’m using China to bless the world, and I need you to start paying attention.”

And at the time it happened in my life, where—it was a funny time. I had been asked to teach a course in university here in supply chain management, supply chain optimization. And it was from University of Arkansas. And University of Arkansas in the United States partnered with Walmart, the huge retail supergiant. And as I was putting information and material together to teach the course, I wanted to find case studies that the Chinese students would apply to them, so they could see how Chinese supply chains work. And I came to realize that I had everything upside-down. That it was actually China who owned the supply chain, it was China who did supply chain optimization. And all our companies are doing—our top companies were just taking product designed, manufactured here and put our companies’ names on the side

I started looking for examples of products that we made in other markets that we did not need China for. I know that there’s guys who can chop down trees in North Carolina and Pennsylvania and make good furniture. I’m talking about mass-produced manufactured products. It became kind of an obsession of mine [chuckles] when COVID came and I had a lot of free time. I wanted to find examples of products that we didn’t need China to build…and I’m still looking. And that caused me to examine everything else. I started going through old notes, people I met in Shanghai—people who are the architects of the financial system. And remembering the things they would explain to me, and the things that were right in front of me that I saw but didn’t understand. I was talking without listening to what was happening.^[1]

I know how it looks, I know how it sounds that we explain that I put prayers on, that we are praying for you, that in the closing scenes especially you can hear us praying for the viewers of this channel. And it’s because we cannot afford—you cannot afford to waste years of your life the way I did, where you’re—I have the benefit of standing here, in China, seeing it for myself, and I still wasn’t seeing it properly. I hope and pray for you that you do not waste decades of your life as I did, because we don’t have decades to lose anymore. So…I get messages and emails—phone calls, even—from people saying, “It looks strange that you do that. You shouldn’t do that.” And I don’t care—they’re staying on.