Aaron Friedberg on China, the War in Ukraine, and the Geopolitical Stakes

[Music] thank you hi I'm Bill Crystal welcome back to conversations where I'm very pleased to be joined Again by my friend Aaron Friedberg professor of politics at Princeton we've had this is our fifth conversation amazingly on on China U.S U.S China relations but more broadly on China and World politics and I've got to say I looked through the transcripts and they stand up very well we had one right after the our withdrawal from Afghanistan to discuss the implications of that what lessons the Chinese might be learning and then one about a little under a year ago after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and talked about how that might play out with respect to China and as to say both stand up well um Aaron is the author of several important books most recently in 2022 getting China wrong which is not a confessional autobiography but rather a account of his colleagues in the China watching business a very fair account I would say I've had people tempted to get charter wrong so Aaron thanks for joining me again thanks very much for having me back so let's get right into it and let's maybe let's begin with Ukraine it's such a dominant story in the world don't you I think maybe the most important event in international politics of the end of the Cold War I I was just just back from Europe recently felt that way there but let's talk about China with respect to that because it's a little more distant from China and China's played a bit of a role but uh how have they behaved have you been surprised by their behavior what lessons do you think they're alerting what what is the effect of uh the war in Ukraine on on on China itself and then we can get to U.S China policy and so forth well I think um the Chinese have have sought to kind of walk a line between their support for Russia uh which in the end is is not going to change they're not going to abandon Putin despite the hopes of some people in the west When The War Began that somehow we could peel the Chinese away and appeal to their uh better angels and persuade them that they should be on our side and opposed to this kind of aggression that's that's not going to work uh Russia is essential as an ally to China and they're not going to let Russia or Putin go at the same time at least to now to this point uh the CCP leadership has been careful about not appearing to do things that might justify further harsh measures from the United States or our allies of secondary sanctions if if China was to overtly Supply Russia with military equipment for example um I should say maybe we can talk about this there is now some discussion about whether that may be about the change uh the U.S has let it be known that we have some information that suggests that possibly the Chinese leaders are thinking about providing Russia with military equipment which would be a major and from our perspective escalatory step that we're trying to deter but it hasn't happened yet but even short of that the Chinese have found ways to help keep Russia afloat they've increased their Imports particularly of energy from Russia and they've also increased exports of a variety of of goods including so-called dual use items like semiconductors that could be used in military equipment maybe some so-called non-lethal kinds of of assistance navigation equipment and so on so they've Walked the Line they've been careful I guess the other thing to say what are the I mean just what are the considerations on each side for them because I guess on the one hand you look at what was the Putin G meeting which was at the Olympics what just about a couple of weeks before the invasion I guess and they were all they had some phrase I can't remember they were all in together right unlimited partnership yeah like that they haven't really quite behaved that way I think on the one hand and you sort of think uh and so I guess why not with the are they really are they worried at the price they would pay here or in Europe or or generally and then a flip side I guess is why not go all the way in curry favor with the west and just leave Putin alone it's not their War you know they don't like Putin there's only that much so say a little bit about that yeah well on that side of it I I think some people argue in fact that Xi Jinping does have a kind of personal connection to Putin um whether it's because they're the you know the two dictators or because he has this sort of residual respect for Russia Soviet period that Putin in some sense shares so there may be an aspect of that but of course she is pretty cold-blooded I don't think it's sentimental uh but uh from a Chinese perspective to have another authoritarian dictator defeated if only indirectly by the United States and its allies and possibly even put in a position where his regime is overthrown that's be the worst case scenario uh that's a nightmare the Chinese can't can't tolerate that also just from a kind of geopolitical point of view uh having Russia in the game is of great assistance to China in its long-term competition with the United States and the West it provides it a secure rear area it's Frontier inner Frontier that they don't have to worry about secure supplies over land of energy of grain and so on and also uh Russia as a power keeps some portion of America's energies and attention and of the West's energies and attention more broadly focused away from Asia and away from the Pacific and I think that from XI jinping's perspective is is a positive thing and you would like to keep that because he's afraid that if somehow that were to be removed then the U.S would be free to shift all of its energy and attention to him and that's very interesting he doesn't want very helpful on that side of the equation um what's clearer than most of the explanations I've seen what about the flip side of the equation why not do more than there is these the the reports now the our intelligence thinks they may be ready to do more I take it we're trying to deter them from doing more some people I know are surprised they haven't they've done some sanctions busting I suppose and and helping of Russia but not everything do you agree not not not a lot of what they could have done it's a why the relative restraint on that on the flip side of the equation the things that they they haven't done yet would be to overtly Supply large quantities of arms and ammunition and the two things that people are talking about as uh possible shifts in their policy although there's no evidence of this that I'm aware of yet would be providing Russia with artillery ammunition and maybe weapons because they're using these at a tremendous rate and possibly also specifically military drones apparently they've sold some civilian drones to the Russians but they've been careful and I believe the reason is uh that they don't want to run afoul of the United States and of our European allies they don't want to find themselves uh the targets of as I mentioned secondary sanctions that we might conceivably impose we haven't we haven't done that although we've targeted particular uh Chinese companies that we've accused of trafficking and some of this uh dual use material with with Russia but they're worried about secondary sanctions um and I think one of the things at least thus far that they've they must have taken out of how the West has dealt with Russia is uh when when sufficiently provoked uh the United States and its allies are capable of imposing pretty serious sanctions on what we perceive to be an aggressive power even at the risk of uh imposing some costs on ourselves the Chinese are never completely convinced of that I don't know if they're convinced that we're going to stick with it but they wouldn't want to be subject to that if they could possibly avoid it I guess the other thing to say there and it's related is um I don't think the CCP leadership at this point has any hopes that it can somehow persuade the United States to change course dramatically in its dealings with them uh in other words they don't think that we're going to soften uh considerably in in our dealings with them they believe the current you know the Biden Administration has continued and in certain senses even gone further in some in some respects than than the Trump Administration did there was no kind of reset of relations when a new Administration came in so I don't think they have much hope of that but I do think they still entertain the thought that they may be able to split uh are alliances and in particular that they may be able to drive a wedge between us and our allies in Europe uh some Rumblings of that on some trade and Technology issues uh the war and China's posture on the war its refusal to outright condemn Putin and oppose him in active ways has accelerated uh a the solidification of a much tougher view in Europe of China and the Europeans are now willing to at least contemplate doing things uh in dealing with China which we'd hoped that they would but they've been reluctant to uh and if they were to take this next step and really actively support Russia in the war I think they would be concerned that any hope of weakening our alliance dividing us from the Europeans would would evaporate I think on that that's very important I mean I just back from Europe's meetings and some government officials who've dealt with China directly uh and members of legislatures and so forth and they're very struck by that that I mean China is sort of given up on the US for the next foreseeable future I mean they still would like to damp down certain things and and uh confuse Us in certain ways and prevent what they would regard as the worst outcome but uh Europe is very much in the balance I think they are a little uh surprised perhaps that I want to hear you about this and the general uh Unity against Russia against Putin on behalf of Ukraine I think the Europeans to their credit are telling the Chinese that look we're sort of not where the Americans are on on you and we want to keep you know our trade relations and so forth but if you overtly help Putin in a big way in a sort of war-changing way very hard for us to sort of treat that as business as usual which is they're still sort of for now still trying to maintain some of that with Trident is that your sense yes I don't think they want to and it's Chris generalizing because Europe is many different actors they all have National policies but as a whole uh they have tried not to be seen to be simply doing whatever the United States wants them to do and that's of course for many reasons but on China as well as on other issues they'd like to pursue a somewhat independent policy certainly on economic issues the French have talked a lot about this the Germans at times have talked about it so they don't want to be completely in the corner with the United States at the same time they're being pushed in that direction further and further by Russia's actions and by the recognition of their continuing dependence on the United States for backing up their security and then also as I said by the the Revelation which should have been shouldn't have been a revelation uh that the Chinese cast in their lot with the Russians and consider themselves to be uh joined at the hip with the Russians um and that's been an I guess an unpleasant surprise for some but it's caused uh it's accelerated I think a re-consideration of European policy towards China in an interesting way um leaders in both Asia and in Europe in Democratic countries uh have started in the last year or so to kind of talk in ways that are quite similar to the way in which many people in the United States talk about the world at the moment as being divided between authoritarians and Democratic powers and clearly they see themselves on the side of the democracies and increasingly I think many see Russia and China as uh more similar than different and certainly very different from the democracies so they're they're inclined more to lump them together because of the character of their regimes and the Chinese really don't like that but I think it's it's the truth I think it's something that many Americans have felt for some time but increasingly I think people in Europe uh are take a similar view this is a problem having to do with the nature of this of these regimes and they're more similar than different no that's really striking I was struck when I was in Europe that they're less concerned with Taiwan Taiwan than we are I think but they are concerned about China a bit large they're not idiots they know it's a massive thing in the next 10 20 30 years excuse me the international politics and um they don't quite have the dependency some of them had on Russia I think do you think also I'm just curious to the Chinese look at the degree to which the some of the major European nations and Germany in particular have vanished in one year to pretty much sever themselves from an energy dependence that was pretty large a year ago and a year and a half ago they were going ahead of Nordstrom too I mean that's under in my opinion appreciative thing in the U.S believing about Europe but leaving that aside do they um look at that and think you know we have all these deep penetrations and ties and obviously your large streak of European public and certainly political leadership wants to continue a kind of economic engagement but they can do a little more there they could they could pivot a little more quickly than we thought do you get the sense that the Chinese are thinking that I think so although I I believe their reading of the implications of that is probably mixed I mean on the one hand uh what is one of the major lessons of the last year uh it is that excessive dependence for critical materials whether it's energy or Rare Earth minerals or some kind of manufactured products excessive dependence on um unreliable suppliers or suppliers who may in the end be hostile to you for strategic and ideological reasons is extremely risky and A and B uh that you would be well advised to limit that dependence and as you said the Europeans have managed to do that much more quickly than I would have expected uh this is something we've been nagging them about for years and telling them they shouldn't allow themselves to be so dependent on on Russian energy and now they've started to to reduce that dependence I think this uh experience has made people in Europe and also I think in the united states begin to focus even more on the nature of the dependence that we have on China for a variety of different kinds of manufactured goods precursor chemicals this kind of thing um it's been apparent for a while I think our sensitivity to this and the Europeans too grew in part because of the covid pandemic realizing you know we couldn't make masks and we relied on China for a lot of the precursor chemicals that go into drugs and this kind of thing but we haven't done all that much yet to mitigate that dependence and I think the experience of the Ukraine war is giving added impetus to efforts to reduce that dependence whether it's by increasing domestic production or so-called friend Shoring relying more on on friends and allies the the difficulty from our our perspective and maybe the Saving Grace for the Chinese perspective is that the nature of our dependence on China is so much more complicated and it's across a variety of different sectors it's a huge volume of materials that we import it's going to be very hard for us to reduce that dependence maybe in certain selective areas we'll do it because we're willing to pay the price uh and that's part of the issue you have to pay more to Source it from somewhere else but I'm not sure they're convinced that we or our allies are really prepared absent some huge catastrophe to take further steps to reduce that dependence I think we should I think there's pressure to do that here they're starting to be pressuring in Europe but if I was sitting in Beijing I might say well you know they talk a good game but look how much they depend on us for these uh products look how much they depend on our market for their own Goods we're not Russia we're a much bigger player and these countries are not going to be able to reduce their dependence on us of course it you know it remains to be seen but uh it's mixed I think the lessons are are mixed let's talk about then about our own policies and I guess other europes as well and our Asian allies as well I mean when we had our first conversation 2019 we were I think you were a little heartened by some of what Trump had even though in a very uh someone handed way a little hardened by the fact that on these issues Democrats are not even opposing Trump much and some of the China stuff but we talked a year ago you were struck by how much the buy Administration continued and revised but you know let's just call it a tough policy stores China generally and there was bipartisan support I just Where Do We Stand today first the US and then more broadly uh our Democratic allies and so our own understanding uh and view of China and then how intelligent are more if the policy is a more hardlined or they intelligently more Hardline or sort of just randomly water line and so forth well there's no doubt that uh the center of gravity if you like of uh discussion of U.S policy towards China at least you know in Washington in political circles has shifted markedly for lack of a better term in a hard-line direction and that's been very striking uh over I would say over the last five years uh first and secondly um the extent to which that shift appears to be bipartisan uh mentioned Trump did various things that others hadn't done uh there was not as much objection to some of these things as you might have expected you know the trade and Technology measures the world didn't end the way people had said that it might if we opposed export control restrictions on Huawei and so on uh and now the Biden Administration has continued and even gone further in some of those in some of those policies and that reflects I think this new emergent consensus but what is that consensus exactly what you know what does it consist of uh I think to the extent that there is agreement it's on the fact that China is a challenge and even a threat and across every conceivable domain military economic technological political Warfare and so on you don't get much argument about that uh for at least from people in Washington maybe not So Much from the China expert Community maybe talk about that but um you know one of the things that was striking for example about the response to the balloon episode was that the debate was you know not really down are we overreacting and you had people saying that on the outside but in Washington it was just a question of when you know should we have shot it down before it even took off from the ground or you know when it went over Alaska or uh there was a uniform or nearly uniform feeling that this was a challenge we needed to respond and that you find that across a range of areas so greater recognition of the existence of a challenge or a threat there is not yet I think a workable consensus on exactly what the response or responses should be and in that sense I think your your question suggested this we are kind of popping off in a variety of different directions and the administration is doing certain things and Congress is proposing things right and left all of which are intended in some way to hit back at China to counter things that it's doing that are perceived to be aggressive but from where I said there is not yet a coherent and well understood and broadly agreed upon strategy for dealing with with China there's not really even a full agreement on exactly what the nature of the threat is there is a threat what's it all about how severe is it and what should be our policies to deal with it so the range of discussion has has grown narrower uh but that doesn't mean that we've got you know we've reached a point where everybody agrees on what the strategy should be we're still in the early stages of this and I know yeah people you're not supposed to make these analogies to the Cold War but it's it's inescapable I think we're in the early stages as we were maybe in the late 40s early 50s uh recognizing there's a threat there's a problem not yet fully converging on how to deal with it uh so that's in the U.S and there are divisions maybe we can talk about some of those there is a question I think about whether that consensus is going to be sustainable uh there are people I think who want to take advantage politically of the China issue and would like to turn it into a partisan kind of cudgel to beat the other side over the head with right now that seems to be more Republicans than Democrats we've seen a little bit of that already um so is that going to grow and might this consensus break down it's still kind of fragile we're further along in that process than our allies certainly in Europe are but I think they're also moving in the same direction and in Asia in Asia I think they're further along uh the Japanese the Australians uh Taiwanese are starting to come along I mean there are some some differences Korea but um no I think several of the countries there have been in certain respects out ahead of us in their appreciation of the severity of this Challenge and which parts of the challenge do you think we have the better grasp on it or doing more on or which are we sort of further behind on I guess defense economics technology technological dependence maybe is the um Taiwan profession that discussed Taiwan itself which is kind of its own issue but I mean I'm just is there are you happier or I think that we've made more progress in some areas and less than others or is it kind of haphazard or we certainly made more progress in some areas than others I think overall what I would say uh about the current Administration uh is and over the last two years in general we're moving in the right direction uh we're not going fast enough and that's you know the the the speed in which we're with which we're moving is different in different areas so um in the military domain I do think there's much more widespread appreciation of the seriousness of the challenge uh to our position in the region and to our ability to support our friends and allies that's posed by China's continuing military buildup uh and I think there's a recognition that we need to do more if we're going to maintain a stable balance or a balance that deters aggression from there there's some disagreement about what exactly should be the priority um I think the biggest concern I have on that front is whether we are in fact going to increase defense spending as I think we're inevitably going to have to do and probably by a considerable amount in order both to bolster our position in Europe and also strengthen our position in in the Pacific um so we have and we haven't gotten fully into that debate yet uh but I think we're we're moving in that direction so there's recognition of the threat and the need to do something about it differences over how do you exactly to do it and this issue of resources is sort of still in the background and our willingness to pay for it on the economic front um and I think they're uh let's say the technology issue there's much more concern than there was certainly about issues of Technology theft Forest technology transfer um and the need to deal with that it took a long time to persuade people uh how serious that problem was uh there was a lot of resistance on the part of business and others actually to acknowledging it and deduce doing something about it there too there's I think General recognition of the problem although they're not uh there's not full agreement on how serious it is or how to deal with it the discussion on technology though I think has progressed pretty markedly in the last say two years it's now no longer a sort of backward looking what were they stealing from us and how should we punish them for what they did um it's more forward-looking and it's also not just about technology that's relevant for military purposes but much more broadly the extent to which China may now be forging ahead in emerging Technologies like artificial intelligence which will have relevance across all domains so we're in the process of Shifting our perception of China in the economic domain from a kind of normal trading partner and we're still sort of half in that mode to thinking of it as uh you know like a full spectrum competitor a problem not just in the military domain but an economic and technological domains as well and the Biden Administration has taken large steps in that direction uh in the last 18 months the export control restrictions on high-end semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing equipment and so on that really is uh not justified simply by a concern over the applicability of this technology or that to weapons it's everything um and that's a that's a big change the other change in the way the Administration has framed the problem although they haven't been quite as explicit about this as I think they're going to have to be eventually is to say we're not we're not just concerned with you know preventing them from getting this or that we need to slow them down we need to maintain the greatest possible margin of advantage that we can in an array of Technologies that's a kind of a revolutionary idea if you said that to people even a couple years ago and I can testify to this because I think having tried to say this to people uh many of them just they their heads exploded what do you mean you know we can't we can't treat them as a competitor in this way uh but that's really that's really shifted on the um I guess they would say on the overall trade relationship we're not um I don't think we've figured out how to deal with that it's so big uh and had so many elements that the idea of you know somehow cutting this chord and decoupling completely uh I think is a is a non-starter at the same time there are a whole variety of problems that grow out of these different dependencies that we discussed and dealing with them is going to require government intervention to change the way markets are are functioning and then there's this this big problem of the political leverage that China has as a result of the importance of their economy to us and our allies that continues to be a problem for us I think and we haven't figured out how to deal with it it's the last issue just to mention briefly is uh you know what for lack of a better term I call the ideological issue or the regime issue um we've gone through a period when it was kind of impolite to talk about the character of the CCP regime and they were in the process of changing and then well even if they don't change it doesn't really matter to now accepting I think more more broadly that the character of the regime is the root cause of the problem that we have with China as it is with Russia but then what are the implications of that for policy if you can't wave a wand and change the nature of their regime how do you how do you deal with that and again we're we're further along in acknowledging the existence of the problem we have not yet I think converged on a way of dealing with it no that's very helpful a couple of follow-ups of questions on the economic side and trade side um technology side too Corporate America I feel like they've moved some from their what was certainly 10 years ago maybe five years ago just kind of oh come on we it's totally we're all we're all in on on constructive engagement and and uh basically turning a blind eye to everything uh that might lead point the other way to more of a mixed sense yeah but how are they lobbying hard against some of this stuff are they just kind of stepping back and hoping it doesn't go too far in the direction they don't like or do they not care because some of the China Investments and trade haven't worked out too well I mean it certainly has changed I think there was a more unified uh body of thought in favor of Engagement almost not at any cost but because it wasn't perceived to have costs it was all upside um and that's fragmented and broken down and you have some Industries and some companies which no longer see their prospects in China and they are therefore less inclined to support or to oppose a hard align positions on China but it does vary I mean you have uh you have companies that still have large interests there and don't quite know what to do about them Apple this is huge investment in China as a manufacturing platform for many of its products I guess particularly iPhone an acknowledgment that that's now that's kind of a problem um partly because of the prospect of worsening relations with China but also I think in the last couple of years because of the sense that conditions in China are going to become less favorable to foreign businesses as the party State tightens its control um and so what do we do about that uh the thing that I've noticed is there dozens of people may be kind of lying low and keeping their heads down uh you don't see prominent Business Leaders for the most part condemning the Biden Administration for taking an excessively tough line on on China uh they may Lobby behind the scenes for Less stringent expert control restrictions or they may be opposed to the proposed regulation on Outward Bound foreign direct investment to China and they Lobby for that or for changes in those regulations but at least for the moment I think there's an awareness that the political wins have shifted and people don't want to be seen to be taking a a position that could be characterized as being somehow pro-china but the economic relationship remains you know it's very complicated and some people are still making a lot of money and and don't want to lose those possibilities yeah I'm struck by that I mean I'm struck by the uncertainty I would say in the business world compared to certainly five years ago where there was much more certainty on the come on are you seriously suggesting we should reconsider some of this I mean this is the future you know get with it um you don't hear that as much maybe they still thinking a lot of them I don't know um well I think that's that's very there's a big change there um the assumption that China was going to you know just keep on growing uh seven eight nine who knows ten percent that's out the window um and now the question is you know how rapidly are they going to slow down and uh how low is the growth rate going to go the notion that this is the great sort of El Dorado where everybody's going to make a lot of money I don't think that that's now widely believed plus you have this you know this backdrop of political uncertainty you know the all the arrangements that we had the so-called globalization as we grew up over the 30 years or so after the end of the Cold War um rested on certain political assumptions that kind of disappeared from at least from our perception not from the Chinese perception uh you know that uh everybody's going to do what sort of economically rational um and they're going to decisions are going to be made on the basis of judgments about cost and profit and politics just doesn't enter into it politics has come kind of roaring back both in the form of concerns about domestic developments inside China and of course some of this a lot of this focuses on Xi Jinping and his increasing concentration of power in his own hands but then also geopolitics the recognition that you know relations between nations can break down for strategic reasons and that that will have enormously disrupted Economic Consequences but the fact of those disruptions may not prevent the breakdown I think people at least in the west in the United States had kind of tuned out the politics and just sort of focused on the economics for 20 or 30 years and that you know that made a certain amount of sense for a while it no longer does and I think people are more aware of that what to do about it though um is is less clear so let's talk about the actual situation in China which maybe that will help clarify what we have to do or or not I mean uh but obviously that it's symbiotics so to speak decision our understanding and what's actually happening over there I guess just to put it simply I mean we should talk about about maybe what's happening in China and then China's foreign policy how much those have changed over the last year or how much we can judge at least directionally where they're going uh I mean where on the spectrum of look it's basically a stable kind of conservative cautious unpleasant regime but there's no evidence it's going to do anything rash either abroad and then not much evidence that it's rickety internally that would be maybe one extreme and the other would be it's you know sailing off into puttanesque governance at home whether she you know having so much power and possibly puttanesque Behavior abroad um where where's the truth about on that uh between those two caricatures I guess I I think that the regime what's happened in China uh it's happening over the last 10 years it's happened more visibly maybe over the last couple of years uh is that there is a greater and greater concentration of power in the hands of the party over all other actors in Chinese Society including the state the party dominates the state but also all elements of society including business and Xi Jinping has uh been quite explicit about this that it's necessary to tighten the party's grip on society and on the economy in order to preserve stability and to prevent uh hostile forces from destabilizing and weakening China and he's acted on that and continues to act on it and it's manifest in a variety of ways one of which is the fact that he is clearly now the maximum leader any notion that there was anything resembling a collective leadership among equals is gone I think it's been gone really since since he came in but if the 20th party Congress uh he effectively removed from all the high-ranking positions people who not that there were any enemies of his but people who even had uh alternative sources of power themselves or came from other parts of the system that weren't his gang those people are out he's put people in all these positions who are loyal to him depended on him them and in many cases Hussein whose qualifications to hold the positions that they now hold seem to have more to do with their political loyalty than with their previous experience or their obvious expertise so he's put emphasis on on control the other thing though that's that's been going on is uh and that 20th party Congress was just a few months ago right yeah October 2022 as we talked to looking forward at it in our previous conversation and wondered if what you just described happened what happened and it didn't happen it did and I think it was predictable so third term is General Secretary uh he did not identify anyone as a possible successor which Chinese leaders have done in the past which many people think means he intends to rule indefinitely because if you have a successor they can become a kind of focal point for opposition to you if you're perceived to have screwed up he's not going to let that happen so I think the the smart money would bet that we've got him for quite a while until his health fails he's not gonna these guys don't generally require retire peacefully especially if you've uh thrown as many of your enemies in jail as he has he's got to stay on on the on the tiger I think he intends to um partly because he sees himself as The crucial figure the environment that Beijing that's Xi Jinping himself faces has in many respects become more challenging over the last couple of years and I guess we'll talk about the external part but internally there's covid um coveted lockdowns uh increasing dissatisfaction with those lockdowns a sudden reversal of policy uh abandonment of zero covet letting the disease just sort of rip through the country we don't know for sure but it had probably been over a million people have died of covid just in the last month or so so they made a decision that their attempts to stamp it out we're not going to succeed indefinitely and they were willing to pay the human cost and the cost of some further temporary economic disruption to get through that and to get on with with business but uh even more important I think are the deeper sort of underlying uh challenges that China faces in trying to continue uh down the path of economic growth uh and these are not new uh but they've gotten I think more intense um you know they they still have this massive uh problem with their property sector which has been a major driver of growth they have an enormous overhang of debt they can't just keep pumping more and more money into building more and more apartment buildings to sustain growth um they have now a dwindling working age population and they're going to be experiencing an absolute decline in the size of their population and that's been a you know that big working age population has been a big element in their success over the last several decades so that's that's no longer going to be there they have all these persistent and unresolved societal problems aging population how do you take care of people uh pollution things that they haven't dealt with adequately so all of that and now they also face a less welcoming external environment so less access to the U.S market we put tariffs on we're not letting them get access to technology that they feel they need as much as they did in the past other countries are Democratic countries are moving in the direction of possibly imposing restrictions of their own on China's access to their market so the the external environment is also less conducive um at the party Congress among other things um she the two things that I think may be significant one is a change in the formulation that they use to describe the external environment to the world generally um for 20 years from 2002 they talked about China being in a period of strategic opportunity which I think met after 9 11 and after their entry into the WTO they figured they were going up we were preoccupied they could grow uninhibited um now they talk about a period in which opportunities and risks and dangers are mixed um she in his one of these long speeches used the term security multiple times talk much less about growth for its own sake um I think they're battening down the hatches and not only tightening domestic control but trying to shift their economic policies to make them less vulnerable to things happening in the outside world including the possibility of sanctions export controls and so on so they're trying to boost domestic consumption and rely more on that than on exports they're trying to move closer to so-called self-reliance in key Technologies diminish their dependence on us for those Technologies those are not policies that you pursue for purely or even primarily economic reasons they're policies that have a strategic and political motivation rather than a purely economic motivation so people in the west who have been saying for years they have to liberalize they have to rely more on markets even some of those people are now kind of throwing up their hands and in the past there's been an inclination for those people to say well this is just stupid and it's irrational uh but in fact it never was stupid and irrational it just was um aimed at optimizing different values than the ones that we assumed Economic Policy makers would be concerned with not just enhancing welfare but enhancing security and now they seem to be emphasizing Security even at the price of slower increases in in welfare and that's a new that we're in a new era Xi Jinping likes to say and it's not a promising one you do that because you're you're preparing for the possibility of conflict with your enemies and the foreign policy implications of that could be I guess conceivably a bit of a kind of not picking unnecessary fights around the world of caution nation building begins at home you know their version of that um no need to you know we've got enough problems let's just uh keep things going um we talked about that a little bit in with respect to even the way they're dealing with Russia and their worry about it too much for backlash uh if they or two for Putin on the other hand I guess the foreign policy applications could also be a tougher stance abroad and even a lashing out in an attempt to deal you know uh I don't know if it's well for various reasons and you should talk about they might be to go if you think that's plausible to go in a more aggressive Direction and then I guess Taiwan is the ultimate team right sort of but no to this discussion but which one okay well um so it's I think it's uh it's a mix as you said uh I do think their initial impulse uh uh or the conclusion to which they seem to have come after a couple of years of you know wolf Warrior diplomacy and very aggressive stance was that they needed a breather uh and you know it's kind of ironic uh that Western commentator sees on any little indication you know that that they they want to talk or they want to meet uh as an indication of a change in Direction you know they've recognized that the previous posture was counterproductive so now they're gonna move towards a more peaceful stance I think to the extent that they do that it's purely tactical it doesn't represent a strategic shift it's a reflection of the fact that they do feel Under Pressure internally and externally they would like to alleviate some of that pressure to buy themselves more time so that's what's behind the so-called charm offensive that's been evident since the latter part of 2022 so they got rid of a bunch of these diplomats who were associated with the idea of wolf Warrior diplomacy um not because those guys had done anything wrong they were doing what they were told to do but they had sort of outlived their usefulness at least for a while so they started to take a somewhat softer line as I said even with us let's meet let's talk especially with our allies especially with our allies in Europe but they're not they have not been willing to make any you know meaningful changes or concessions it's been intended to buy themselves time and unfortunately for them for a variety of reasons that does not seem to be working at least so far not working with the U.S the balloon may have blown that up it doesn't seem to be working well with the very with the Europeans incidentally if I can interrupt this is a terrific what was the truth about the balloon do we have any idea I I personally don't um you know my my best guess is that this was part of a program that they seem to have undertaken in the last few years of using balloons uh for intelligence collection purposes uh and they do apparently have some utility people scoffed at this and say oh well you know they have satellites but apparently there are things you can do with balloons that you can't do as easily with satellites so it's not totally crazy uh they have flown these things up and down along the coasts of some of their major opponents including Japan they apparently have flown them over Taiwan um so I'm very confident that that thing we shot down was an intelligence collection balloon um was it intentionally dispatched across the United States could it conceivably have been blown off course or failed in some way I don't know enough to to have a judgment on that my first impulse is to think that it was deliberate uh and purposeful although it does seem to the timing of it seems to have been you know auspicious certainly given given what happened but I think it's part of a larger campaign a very aggressive campaign in which they're engaged to collect intelligence by any means necessary uh and certainly willing if necessary to you know violate the sovereignty of other countries uh to do that to the United States uh would be pretty audacious and if they did it on purpose I think they got more than they bargained for in terms of the response among other things it's made it very difficult I think the Biden Administration as at the end of last year was inclined to you know let's yes okay we've been reaching out saying we want to meet now the Chinese seem interested they want to pursue that maybe in part because they're hopeful that something will come of it but I think they also just want to be seen by our allies to be willing to talk they don't want to appear to be the source of the problem but of course the balloon incident just has made that in terms of our domestic politics extremely difficult for the for the administration to do so if they did it on purpose the Chinese made a made a mistake having said unless they wanted somehow it's in a way to tour the Lincoln trip because it I don't know if it's they kind of puts them domestically in an odd position I don't know it seems that seems a little too clever by half but yeah I don't think so and I certainly don't believe as some people have suggested that this is a rogue pla officers launching something to Scuttle uh diplomacy I don't think anybody in his right mind in the Chinese system is going to do that certainly on ucg Payne um so uh no I don't I don't think I think they had an interest in this trip they would have been happy you know to have blinken coming to Beijing that's the the visuals of that or are favorable from their point of view so I don't think they deliberately sabotaged it but they're committed enough to that intelligence gathering that they weren't willing either to maybe they if they cancel it so to speak or to pull back the weeks before a summit that wouldn't have been a crazy thing to do right maybe just as a certain autopilot character to it they certainly weren't willing to apologize or to say it was a mistake which you know they could have I mean we did after the U2 right I think didn't we uh eventually afterwards maybe it took a while yeah right Eisenhower's caught in a lie because he originally he thought the plane had been destroyed and there was no evidence so he got up and said it was a weather plane not knowing the Soviets actually had the pieces of it and knew that it was this biplane um so yeah I you know at times they have done things that are provocative on the eve of or during visits by Foreign dignitaries uh it may be part of a strategy to keep their opponents off balance could they have been doing this in this case uh it seems pretty risky did they have reason to think that we might not detect it that's another question and I don't know enough to be sure but it doesn't it seems like these things as big as they look actually have quite small radar signatures and maybe they've penetrated in the past and we did we were sort of set up to find fast moving things not slow-moving things and so forth yeah right so maybe they thought they could do it and get away with it I mean it is also conceivable that it was something that went off course and they didn't intend for it I think we would we'll know that partly by whatever Communications we intercepted between the balloon and China partly also by an analysis of the weather patterns or whatever I mean did this thing follow just as a an unmoored balloon would have moved or didn't it so I think we know or we'll know the answers to those questions but I assume you know dealing with the CCP the current machine assume malign intent uh and you're usually right anyway so they were pursuing a somewhat kind of a gentler foreign policy for a few months after uh well I guess after the party Congress really right and uh yeah a little before that and so where do we stand now on that and implications for the future on Taiwan especially where I don't know people who seem to know something are being pretty forward-leading and saying there really could be a war I mean people who are not in the alarmist camp I would say and are more professional and Military and intelligence types so I don't know what what's your sense of that look I think overall uh the direction of their policy their assumptions about the way the world is evolving are unchanged uh they believe they're headed towards a much more difficult environment they believe the the possibility of conflict is rising they of course don't hold themselves responsible for that they see us as being aggressive and provocative and see themselves as having to act defensively in the face of that none of that has has changed um so charm offensive try to buy time um as far as uh well maybe we jumped before we jump to Taiwan just one other thing to say because we haven't talked about it at all and I so we've talked about their policies towards us and their view of us we've talked a bit about our allies and our allies allies policies towards them and their view of our allies what we haven't talked about is the whole rest of the world the so-called Global South and one of the things that I think people in this country are becoming more aware of is the apparent importance in Chinese thinking the thinking of Chinese strategists of the global South to their larger competition with the United States and the West um you know that's a whole subject maybe we won't get into today but among other things uh Beijing has stepped on the gas even harder in their efforts to cultivate support in the developing World um people have noticed that a lot of countries might have been willing to agree to a resolution that condemned Russia for invading but they weren't going to sign on to sanctions they've tried to back away from appearing to support the US and NATO and I think some people in the west have been surprised by that um and that's caused I think more attention to what's going on there and a greater recognition of the extent to which China and to a lesser degree Russia have been able to capitalize on pretty strong anti-western sentiment in parts of the developing world to strengthen their own position to cultivate their influence and access we've been worried about this for a while because the Belton Road initiative but I think people in the Biden Administration are now starting to really focus on this and get worried about it and they've had meetings with African leaders and we're well behind in figuring out how we want to respond to what China to a lesser extent Russia are doing in the developing world one of the things that's going to come out of this war is an intensification of this struggle for influence and access in the global South and China has had kind of a free reign for a while because we haven't been paying very much attention and now we're going to start because that's interesting that's interesting well that is of course a new Cold War I mean one of the characteristics of the Cold War is that it was Global you know we fought literally we fought in places that were pretty far away from both us and Russia and Soviet Union and we also competed for influence and all over the place I think what's happening uh if you stand back from it is the axis of authoritarians between China and Russia has been further Consolidated by the war there is movement towards a more coherent and and cohesive Alliance of democracies for lack of a better term backed and led by us but consisting of our friends and allies both in Europe and in Asia and that's nascent and there are reasons why it may not come to fruition but it's a lot more solid now than it was before this War began and then the third thing that's happening is the intensification of competition between those blocks basically uh in the developing world and people say well you know developing countries don't want to be pawns and maybe there should be a non-aligned movement and so on um I don't think there's going to be a non-aligned movement there are going to be some developing countries that are going to play a significant and at least partially independent role like China but overall I think there's going to be more like India I like India I'm sorry uh overall there's going to be more competition for accessing influence um so that's that's just a footnote um Taiwan um there seems to be um I don't know what the intelligence shows I'm not tribute to any of it um there does seem to be a significant ratcheting up of the concern expressed publicly by U.S political leaders intelligence officials and Military Officers about the prospect of of conflict over Taiwan um in one sense I don't think this is really something new what you know what has really changed um it's a continuation of a trend that's been evident for the better part of the last decade which is and maybe more towards a recognition that China has now lost any possibility of peacefully resolving its issues with Taiwan in a way that would be satisfactory From beijing's perspective and for years they hope that you know more economic connections and one country two systems somehow they could kind of lure Taiwan back into the fold that's dead uh partly because what happened in Hong Kong uh partly because of Xi Jinping in the general Trend in in China um and also what's happened to Taiwan where more and more people identify as Taiwanese and fewer and fewer think of themselves as part of China their democracy continues to grow and is successful so they're not going to be able to do it peacefully so the question is are they just going to give up on it I don't think they can but if they don't give up on it how are they going to handle it and if they are going to try to force it through coercive measures do they think they can do that short of all that war or do they think it eventually will require a full-scale military engagement I think that's we're down to that ends of the spectrum now and the reason that um U.S officials seem to be as concerned as they are has partly to do with the timelines that the Chinese leadership has set for the development of their military overall and the development of military options for dealing with the Taiwan issue and uh apparently you know some of this has to do with 2007 as the date at which they will achieved a certain degree of military modernization and that's what started the discussion you know some Military Officers in the U.S saying we have to be prepared for 2020s I think you may have said 2007 I'm sorry 2020. I'm always making these because you know 2027. yeah that seems to be that number seems to be that year seems to be floating around right right but now you've also got this sort of bidding war where uh people are trying to say no it's not 27 it's 25 and one uh high-ranking U.S officials said no it's it could be it could be this year so there's a little bit of um I don't want to call it hysteria but um this concern is is well founded in my view in the larger sense but there is a way in which I think our discussion of the Taiwan issue may have become too narrowly focused on some of these military questions and whether or not Beijing decides to use Force against Taiwan is not going to depend solely on their assessment of the you know the balance of military capability so that if tomorrow you know they feel like they've got just enough missiles to suppress taiwan's defenses then they're going to go to war if they do this or if they come to a moment when they're contemplating whether to do it their decision is going to depend on an assessment of a whole array of factors of which the military ones are maybe not even the most important um they're going to be asking themselves in Beijing how cohesive is the Democratic Alliance how strong is the U.S support for Taiwan to what extent would U.S allies in the region come to our assistance to what extent might our European allies do things maybe not military things but to support us and to oppose China if it tried to coerce or to conquer Taiwan they're looking at all that how effective could sanctions and embargoes be if they were imposed with force and speed as we did on Russia all of that is going to be factored into the into the equation and I guess my hunch is that the their assessments of our political resolve and cohesion May ultimately be more important even than the military uh considerations or once they reach a certain level of military capability the judgment about whether to go or not to go is going to depend much more on these kind of softer factors and their assessment of them than it is just on you know how many missiles and how many ships and so on um and I think you know it's important for us to keep that in mind in part because we should be thinking not only about how do we bolster our defenses so that they don't think the military balance is shifted far in their favor but also how do we induce uncertainty on their part or maybe certainty about the likelihood of very harsh measures that could be very dangerous for them if they do this it's an enormous gamble there's no way that you can think of it as anything else there's no Assurance of success there's no way of anticipating all the kind of second and third and fourth order consequences it's a huge huge gamble for them to take and I think they would have to feel either that they were very confident of their ability to ride out whatever the the effects might be uh or that they had no choice they had somehow reached a point where not acting was more dangerous to them than acting and I think there's still a good ways from that so I I think we have time to work on this I don't mean to be complacent about it but we should look at the broader picture and the things we can do to deter them by threatening to use or increasing our capacity to use a variety of different instruments which in part brings us back to where we started because I I had this conversation in Europe with someone who follows trying to closely who said I said what's most important thing you think we could all do he said stick with the Ukraine win the war in Ukraine make Putin's gamble really really not pay off as they are not they see the the compare the analogy and the uh and the lesson um so I was going to ask more broadly as we conclude you know what what to look for over the next months and year maybe in terms of U.S actions and other actions around the world that Chinese actions that might tip us off about where things are going but I suppose Ukraine really matters right I think it does and they're watching it closely um if Western resolve crumbles or if the Western Alliance begins to to break apart um that's going to make Beijing more confident that it can deal with whatever the consequences of their acting Against Time one might be they may be you know hoping that in the next American presidential election a candidate will be elected who will be much less supportive of Ukraine and perhaps they'll take some some comfort from that um so yes it's important if we want to if we want to persuade them of our resolve and our capacity our toughness our willingness to take some pain ourselves we have to stay the course with Ukraine even if it gets more costly and more dangerous and I hope I hope we will not only because of deterring China but obviously because of concerns about what happens what happens in Ukraine so that yeah that's extremely important um by the way I think the the Chinese preference about Ukraine would be that it would settle into a kind of Frozen conflict where the war would not exactly ends there wouldn't be peace certainly Putin wouldn't lose but the two sides would be locked in an ongoing conflict that would be even more intense than what followed 2014 and uh we would therefore be even more preoccupied with what was happening in Europe and less able to deal with them and to focus on them I think that's what they're that's what they're hoping for um the fact that they're now talking about diplomacy and kind of floating there it's not really a plan but there are ideas for resolving uh the dispute peacefully there's nothing to the substance but the fact that they're moving that piece on the board now I think suggests that they may be willing to get more somewhat more involved in trying to move in that direction maybe they'll start talking to zielinski which they haven't done uh but again the objective in my view would not be to have a peaceful agreeable solution but to drive this thing um into the mud on the other side of that equation the fact that they seem now to be contemplating military equipment supplying military equipment to Russia suggests to me that in Beijing they're concerned that the Russians might actually be losing and could actually lose in catastrophic ways I don't think that they will do that and run the risks associated with doing that unless they thought it was necessary to keep putting the float so that's kind of interesting if that's if that's what's going on you know things things to watch um I guess one would be um would be that if you know is China actually going to go ahead and Supply arms uh to to Ukraine which I mean to Russia which they could say is their Sovereign right and we're supporting these other guys they've got a friend that what who are we to say but it would intensify the competition it would force responses from us and from our allies you know if people think we're not yet in a cold war if that happens that will remove all all doubt um the fact that we're leaking this information suggests that we're really concerned about it we're trying to deter it um and so that's that's something to watch I think we'll know more about that over the next couple of months um I guess I'd also be looking at the uh success or more likely the failure of Chinese efforts to divide us from our European allies and to divide the Europeans one from the other um I think a leading indicator of the strength of our Global Democratic Coalition is going to be the extent to which the our European allies can Converge on a tougher policy towards China to match their tougher policy towards Russia and they're moving in that direction but they haven't gone as far as they need to go um I guess another thing to watch would be you know China's economic performance um opening up they seem to be hopeful that they can get back to some more reasonable level of growth uh but they have these all these underlying problems that we mentioned they're not out of the woods by any means and so I'd be interested in in the near term and seeing how successful they are and getting getting things geared up again um I guess another thing and this is medium to longer term but how far or the United States and its allies willing to go actually to put some distance between themselves and China in the economic domain we're right in the middle of a debate about this in a whole array of of areas more expert control regulations more uh monitoring of foreign direct investment uh we're just at the early stages of doing this I think we're going to go further the semiconductors were kind of the leader in this but there's going to be more how far are we going to go and to what extent are we going to get the cooperation of our allies and what we've seen uh on the semiconductor issue in particular is and that's kind of crystallized this and reminded us of the fact that as important as we are uh in many domains the effectiveness of our efforts to constrict China's access to emerging Technologies is going to depend on cooperation from at least a handful of our key friends and allies Japan and Taiwan and the Dutch and so on uh the handful may be bigger in other domains but we can't do it entirely on our own and the fact that we seem to be making progress towards that uh is an encouraging sign in my view and so I've watched that space very carefully as well no that's very interesting and I guess when I would add picking up with something you said earlier that how the US looks politically domestically all these Congressional hearings the proposed legislation is there see does the country look six to 12 months from now serious about dealing with the China thread and most of the flaky ideas on both sort of the two tougher side but also when the sort of performative gestural hawkish side have they sort of you know Fallen away and we're actually have pretty good bipartisan consensus on pretty serious policies or does it look like it's sort of all over the lot um that would be kind of yes absolutely and you know you can always tell what the CCP leaders are really worried about by the phrases they use and the things they condemn and one of the things that they've condemned for a long time and they're now saying it every other sentence is the Cold War mentality you know it must not have a you have a cold war mentality you must not have a cold war mentality well they talk about that because they're afraid that if we do develop a cold war mentality they're in real trouble because one of the things that's going to mean is there will be a workable consensus uh around a coherent set of policies for competing very vigorously with them and we're moving towards that and they would very much like to see that derailed and if it can be derailed by you know the craziness of the left or the right uh that's terrific and if if members of Congress start accusing each other of treason or of of racism which may be true in some cases but as a way of obscuring the the discussion of how to deal with China that's all to the good from China's perspective they would like to you know breathe life into that and see us divided over this question of of how best to deal with them and they'll try to encourage those things to the extent they can if on the other hand they see you know coming out of this new select committee uh sense that you know we're all in this together we have our differences over this or that issue but there's a broad bipartisan consensus on the severity of this problem and now on an emerging consensus on how to deal with it in different domains despite all of the partisan divisions in American society right now that's a very concerning indicator from by Chance the beijing's perspective because it means that we are once again developing a cold war mentality and the sooner the better as far as I'm concerned yeah I know I mean the Cold War for all of its difficulties challenges and they were real and mistakes and prices we paid of various kinds you read a lot about this but uh you know at the end of the day we had no direct conflict with the Soviet Union really for 40 years I mean for the Cold War and and uh and we won it so and Soviet Union collapsed so I mean it's not the worst outcome ever in world history in in terms of a foreign policy right right so yes and and the latter part especially democracy was promoted several parts of the world and so forth and defended and then promoted so right yeah you can't say that we want a new Cold War but I don't know it's not the worst it's not the worst alternative on the other hand so that's true and the other thing you have to of course remember is it took a long time to get to that outcome and there were a lot of bumpy and scary moments along the way um we can't just aim at stabilizing this relationship no matter what the cost who wanted to do that you know we withdraw our support from Taiwan and close down our alliances and bases in East Asia so stability is not the only objective the avoidance of conflict of course is extremely important but we have to be willing to take some risks and pay some costs in order to continue to deter conflict and to compete successfully with China over the long run I think we're much closer to being at that point now than we were a couple years ago maybe even then we were when we first started talking about this in 2019 we've moved a long way it's a good note in which to end and we'll but we do need to reconvene in six or twelve months to see where we are because it is very fluid and certainly the last few years fast moving situation and and been unpredictable obviously um Aaron thank you so much for joining me again today uh Aaron Bieber Professor politics at Princeton this is just for the record March 2nd 2023 because things are moving so fast goddess will happen next week and I just want to make sure people that when this conversation has taken place uh so thank you Aaron uh and thank you all for joining us on 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Channel: Conversations with Bill Kristol

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Length: 74min 59sec (4499 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 03 2023