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The Chinese national payment card John Kiriakou encountered in Hong Kong, where he found few places willing to take Mastercard or Visa. Asked why, he was given a one-sentence answer about routing: Visa and Mastercard transactions pass through New York, Panda card transactions pass through Shanghai, and so fall outside the reach of American sanctions. He treats it as both an instance of Chinese strategic competence and an argument that the American card duopoly is a racket.
The Panda card is a Chinese domestic payment card that John Kiriakou uses to illustrate how sanctions exposure is being engineered away.
Finding it
“I went to Hong Kong last year for a conference, and I was struck at how few places took Mastercard and Visa — but they took this thing called the Panda card. And finally I asked, what is this Panda card? And they said, oh, it’s our national credit card. It’s like Visa and Mastercard.”[1]
The answer he got
Asked why they did not simply use the American networks, the explanation was routing. “Visa and Mastercard, every transaction goes through New York. Panda card, every transaction goes through Shanghai. And so then we’re not subject to American sanctions.”[2] Kiriakou’s assessment of the design was one word — “brilliant” — and his assessment of the American position another: “we are idiots.”[2]
The wider argument
He does not stop at sanctions policy. His objection to Visa and Mastercard is that they are a private toll on every transaction: the United States “should have some sort of nationalised system, because there’s a couple of bucks on every transaction and it just goes to the stockholders of Visa and Mastercard. It’s rent seeking.”[3]
That is the ground on which he expects China to win the economic contest: an American economy “so overpriced because we have all these toll booths up,” in which “all that capitalism has become is a series of rackets.” His explanation for why the White House and the Treasury do not act on it is campaign finance — “they don’t campaign on the basis of the public interest, they campaign on pleasing people with money, and the people that have money are the people that own rackets.”[3][4][5]
Sourced from John Kiriakou's on-record public statements. See his profile for the full body of his interviews, podcast appearances, and short-form video.
