Overreach: How China Derailed its Peaceful Rise

so maybe let me just get you going we we're not going to have any big speeches here but I wonder if you could just describe for us what was the Odyssey I mean you like many of us were was once a big engager and you wrote a book fragile superpower now we have overreach seems to me there might be a book missing in the middle there about when China gets to the top of the pyramid and then uh but what's your Odyssey been like and how do you look back on your posture and attitude towards China and Kevin I think I'd like to ask you the same question because I think you've been through a very similar uh you know transmigration of the Soul if you will Susan well um we're all China hands or of all you and I I think Kevin you might be a little younger um but uh for most of my career studying China has been a very happy experience because people's lives in China were improving thanks to reform and opening and even not just economically but also greater personal freedom and China's relations with the United States and the rest of the world were remarkably good considering that we have such different political systems and China was the rising power the United States was the incumbent superpower and yet um we managed to get along in a pretty constructive manner and then in the mid 2000s everything seemed to change so this is really what your book is about right and so uh you know I was very puzzled because it was actually before the Olympics and the Olympics of course should have been the peak of China's confidence and in a peaceful really it's peaceful rise this is 2008 2008. and um and then of course the global financial crisis came which seemed to further mobilize this more aggressive foreign policy and a more tighter self social control over Society media and internet you know in the uh beginning of the 2000s I edited a book called changing media changing China and at that time you know there really was a tremendous amount of debate on the Chinese internet we had investigative journalism and the commercial media was really stimulating uh I I call it a period of peak Freedom of Information in China at that time so you know and it's important to remember that that wasn't so long ago that we had that and so things have really changed quickly so why did so what I tried to do in my research and in this book is figure out what changed and you know I don't believe any of it was inevitable and it's not just the result of China growing stronger economically and militarily but there were choices that Chinese policy makers made and they operated in a certain political environment so it it was a puzzle that this Turning Point occurs during a period of collective leadership under hujin Tao which and we normally think that Collective leadership would bring about restraint but instead of continuing the restrained foreign policy that they previously had we saw China starting to push other countries around in the South try to see um and uh you know uh and domestically tighten up control over society and information so I sought to figure out why did that happen what was going on open up the black box of Chinese politics to see how that Collective leadership worked but then uh one of the results of collective leadership was a tremendous amount of corruption and so Xi Jinping comes in he's the anointed successor in training he comes in in 2012 and there was an open split in the leadership and a crisis of foreign policy crisis with Japan over the islands in the East China Sea and a tremendous amount of corruption in the party so she was able to make the case that China needs a more concentrated uh Stronger core leader to for one to salvage the party clean up the party so they could restore the populist support for the party and that was actually very popular with the public the elite uh welcomed stronger leadership but they had no idea what they were going to get in Xi Jinping nor did we but uh it took very little time for him to launch this massive anti-corruption Campaign which uh helped him Purge rival leaders his potential rival leaders imagined rival leaders and uh and that created a real atmosphere of fear among the political Elite which uh also led to a new round of overreach which was much more extreme than what we had under hujin Tao but the collective leadership had kind of laid the groundwork for this direction of a more aggressive foreign policy and a more repressive domestic policy which then Xi Jinping took even further and you know maybe we can talk a little bit later about the dynamic that drives overreach under the XI jinping's concentrated leadership but it is for a social scientists like me it's um it I'm I find it puzzling and not completely satisfying to see that Collective leadership and personalistic Leadership both lead to overreach but uh uh driven by very different Dynamics we want to get back to that but Kevin I I want you to either reflect for a moment I mean you began your whole uh uh sit back I'm sorry um you know with uh with your your Mentor Simon lays who was a deep Catholic a deeply moral man and I should also say very anti-communist and yet you did go through a a long period where you were very hopeful about uh things uh sort of converging with China and you more recently written a book about the avoidable war which certainly depends on the Chinese doing certain things in order to help avoid war how do you look at the sort of the Arc of your own attitudes towards China uh through your lifetime and particularly of late well um first of all it's great to be on the stage with two formidable sinologists I mean you two have been um in the field for a very long time and I'd like to like to acknowledge your own contribution to scholarship which is formidable um and talking about uh historical Reflections oval times the other day that as a student you're in Taiwan in the 60s is that right early 60s and uh this guy actually spent uh went to a reception at the zombie so that dates you have a photo of him and me together which I I don't think I can find but I'm looking for it it's okay I'd love to see that we need a photograph of Shankar sheka and a young Orville and Susan here when I was last with her at her great Center at um in San Diego has this marvelous photograph of herself and Joe and Lai right so uh look I'm just a creature of the dung period so you guys are you're out there with serious history but you're ought to ask the question about our respective Odysseys on on China because why are we the three of us vastly different people fascinated with the Middle Kingdom all the classical reasons I mean it's big it's 4 000 years of continuous history not five thousand I think that's a propaganda line that's four thousand which is longer than European settlement in Australia certainly uh and uh and you know we're all taken in by the depth breadth and continuity and disruptions of the civilization as well it's intoxicating all of us have experienced that and most of us we all have Stacks and stacks of Chinese friends um and uh and so therefore it's not just an arid academic study it gets into your blood literally uh and it's uh it's therefore something we don't approach dispassionately right um so therefore it's something so big that you throw yourself into it and yes you refer to my uh early electors at the Australian National University Pierre Rickman similes uh formidable sinologist very few like him in the world of Synology were such a comprehensive knowledge of the Canon but also deep insights into contemporary China and certainly led the early Western critique of the cultural revolution it was way ahead of everyone way ahead of everybody else so um and uh and there we were as a bunch of country bumpkins from rural Australia thrown into our initial Chinese language classes with this extraordinary synologist and polymath the poor guy having to put up with us as undergraduates I still feel sorry for him actually um but we learned so much from the from him um so this stuck in my mind is uh classroom presentations on the Dynamics of the cultural revolution even though our Chinese was not up to it he was uh remarkably patient so then we go through the whole dung Xiaoping Revolution myth University thesis was on uh weijing Shang and a democracy wall mean in 79. and uh and I was right a lot of progress Kevin having studied the complete works of Xi Jinping and writing his Oxford defel thesis on the political thought of yeah it took me 40 years to finish it so no I went back to school a few years ago and I've just graduated with my default in Oxford something which uh oval regularly ribs me about so uh yeah I've sort of come full circle on this thing so I looked at remember weijing song's famous essay which is it's not democracy it's a new dictatorship and he spoke about the fifth modernization not beyond the economy it was about political democracy so we went through the dung period and the Jung period in the who period and we saw its ups and downs I was in 10 I'm in probably a week before everyone was blown away hopeful then I mean before 1989 I I mean you had Simon lays Pierre rickmonds in the back of your brain but did you actually think there was a possibility that China might change not completely but become convergent enough to slowly be soluble in the world as it was absolutely yeah I was there in the high days and holidays of Reform which is uh in the 80s when everything was possible it seemed huiabang was uh Rising uh High Riding High jobs young was the premier the whole early discussion of the reform of the political system was in Vogue the Shanghai World economic Herald was a a newspaper one of its early correspondents was a guy called Wang huning before he discovered propaganda and so in those days there was a a wide and vibrant discourse on where this country could go both in terms of the reform of the economy a more open Society even a more open political system and so post Tiananmen I mean the thing which struck me also even about 92 and Dong xiaoping's Southern Expedition nunchin because if you look through the rest of the 90s again there were sets of opportunities for the country to proceed through yet another period of let's call it wider reform and opening then as Susan just says we then come to the naughties the 2000s and by this stage I've slid down the food chain of life to become Prime Minister in my own country I'm saying to read the reports coming out of our Embassy in Beijing and I'm heading off to the Beijing Olympics in 2008 as a guest to the government I'm starting to get worried about what I'm reading did you think intelligence and the reports coming in from the embassy were accurate at the time and I couldn't confirm or deny and now what do you think I couldn't confirm or deny the uh I think we know there but the uh I'm still under oath anyway the um uh but the bottom line is uh Susan's right something was in The Ether around about Olympics time and remember the massive repressive actions in Tibet at the time yeah uh remember obviously that crackdowns to ensure that there would be social stability around the Olympics but also you began to see changes in the shall we say the operational postures of the pla and we produced a defense white paper in Australia in 2009 which for the first time publicly attacked quite directly China's change in military budget and change in military posture and that formed the basis of the new Australian submarine project Chinese didn't like what we said so it to back up Susan's thesis about this time we were picking up changes in the posture um but I also add to it that under Xi Jinping if this was overreach on trainer Wheels uh who Jintao late hujintao this was hoverreach on speed since we've seen the rise of shirada so Susan I mean you first went to China what 71 was it or 72 71 71 before Kissinger in Nixon and you were on the committee of concerned Asian Scholars which you and I both were involved with now at that point what did you think I mean this is the middle of the Cold War we didn't even have the Kissinger Nixon rapproche mode yeah what what did you think what what kind of a baseline did that set for your assumptions and and and then compare them to where you are now yeah well um before that trip I was in Hong Kong interviewing refugees who'd been students at Chinese middle schools for my PhD dissertation at MIT at MIT and um so I was actually learning a lot about how a system and I CL that was the time that I coined this term virtuaocracy which now I'm happy to see in newspapers people are using it like it's not giving me credit of course but um but it's America they don't but um so what does that mean what it means is that people get promoted get into the best universities through their political behavior and at the time their family class background and not just by virtue of their academic grades and things like that so were you a little little sympathetic to what Mao was doing well I had the idea sounded good but when I started interviewing people I discovered that this uh type of System created tremendous interpersonal tension because people were criticizing one another and regular small group sessions and um and so the activists the youth league activists many students would try to keep their distance from the youth league activists because that was the person who would criticize you in order to get ahead and so when I see today the return of a system in that rewards people with opportunities by virtue of their ideological loyalty and criticism self-criticism has returned to it's just so depressing to me because as I said it's really been a very positive experience to see uh the end of The Mao era the end of the cultural revolution uh virtualcracy and the move to a more meritocratic type of system in which the party puts Economic Development as number one and also decentralizes Authority down to firm managers private Farms you know all this sort of thing so let me ask you both I mean when Deng Xiao ping came along it I think it seemed to a lot of people that he had just as if he had some kind of magic wand waved away the Revolution and we were in some new era that you sort of just alluded to Kevin um do you think that there is something that's really so deeply rooted about the mile period And The Mao Revolution that China will not for Generations get it out of its system I mean you're you're talking about the record essence of something that's familiar to you from then from the 70s I mean some people say that the leninist system the leninist party that all done Xiaoping did is take the plug out and now Xi Jinping put the plug back in do you think that no I don't think that I think Doug Xiaoping he's he's the hero of my book really because he uh he understood that the problems of the Mao error were not just about now the individual but this system of personalistic dictatorship in which you had what dung diagnosed as over concentration of authority but he did not oppose a one-party system in fact he affirmed it right but he said you can the party if you have Collective leadership and he was kind of hearkening back to 1956. uh which was the height of collective leadership in the earlier era that you know you can have a regime that makes better quality decisions but over concentration of authority in his mind was the biggest problem and because it leads to arbitrary decision making but clearly dung did not take demalization far enough and that's the conclusion in that I think we should draw from how easy it was for Xi Jinping to achieve consolidate power once again and create a system which has a lot of resemblances to the mouse system you know dung uh he he felt that the collective institutions of the party like the Central Committee would be sufficient to check the over concentration of the leader over concentration of authority of the leader but really the Central Committee is not up to the job for a whole range of reasons which I explain in the book instead and he didn't want to give the legislature the national people's Congress or the courts independent authority to check politicians and I think that was really the limitation because he felt that smack too much of western style separation of powers and well it does yeah and so he was not willing to go that far so Kevin how do you look at the the I mean the maoist period I mean do you think that China is just going to have that in its system for a long time to come and do you see she as a as a kind of like a recessive gene re-expressing himself are we in some different era fascinating question you know the extent to which here we are in 2022 debating Mao Zedong as the organizing principal for contemporary Chinese politics yeah it's kind of a fascinating proposition and so it's a bit like saying we're here debating Dwight D Eisenhower you know as the organizing principle for Contemporary American politics because it's a while ago that Mao was in office but the core thing is I always go back to the party's seminal decision in 1981 through the second historical resolution where they reflected on particular questions in modern Chinese history this was the summing up of the experience of the cultural revolution we're all familiar with the document and it took five years to put this thing together Mao went in 76 you have the removal of the rest of the maoists um by late 78. going before that's right so you therefore have three years of a drafting process to work out how do we sum up this atrocity we've all just been through it wasn't just a cultural revolution to remember it was also the anti-righteous movement of 1958 and was also the Great Leap Forward this was a three-pronged reappraisal and Mao singularly with those three had led the charge to frankly destroy millions of lives physically or politically or both and so what they did was come up with a decision which obviously a retained a one-party state they're a revolutionary party they're a leninist party so it was unrealistic to expect they're going to change that secondly the huge conclusion was that we must reinstitute the principles of collective leadership and we must prevent the return of the cult of personality and we must prevent the return of lifelong tenure that's exactly in the language so I read it recently when they produced the third historical resolution last year and so if you look where we've just got to last week with the outcome of the 20th party Congress it is a total repudiation of the 1981 resolution on the lessons learned from the cultural revolution because we now have no Collective leadership we now have the abolition of term limits which is de facto a return to lifelong tenure and if you've read if you've watched recently the new Snappy 16-part television series on Xi Jinping which is uh navigating the future with comrade she I think you may be the only mortal within a radius of several thousand miles I'm recommending It Go on Netflix because it's right out there because I'm already up to episode 14 and the plot thickens but Xi Jinping is still doing pretty well uh and uh but it's it's uh Cult of Personality stuff do you know that I know that it's girl and trong by Dubai and so as a result of that you have these bookends if you like 40 years later 2022 what we've just been through last week um we haven't even touched what happened with the standing committee of the Polar Bureau and then after 1981 which was the summing up of the previous disasters between 56 and 81. uh of 50 60 57 81. so to go to your point it is still the organizing principle I don't think by the way that Xi Jinping is a cardboard cutout of marsadong but that's a false analysis um but in terms of these core elements of the governance of the party then it Remains the framework within which the debate is conducted yes so Susan in the end of your book you have I think I I feel that you're trying to uh sort of bring a little light and optimism into that we call it help we call it hope okay fair enough hope and you you suggest some things that they could do you suggest some things that we could do I want to ask you both if you really think that given the system that we now confront uh those things are realistic the the things that that you suggest could actually come to pass and Kevin I want I want you to ruminate on that same question you is there the the catalytic possibility within what we have in China to get someplace else well are you talking about the role of the United States and diplomacy or are you talking certainly that would be part of yeah do you think in terms domestically in China I really don't think the current situation is stable I really think this degree of concentration of power in the hands of one man without Collective leadership without power sharing um to other parts of the party is never mind the bellicosity to the outside world yeah and and the poor quality of the decisions that are resulting as a result as a consequence of this system in which the subordinates are feel that to prove their loyalty to Xi Jinping they have to carry out his wishes to the extreme which is the dynamic and they're afraid of giving him real accurate information about the costs of those policies the international backlash the unemployment caused by the Crackdown on the private sector the consequences of extreme zero covid all of these things people don't really give him the straight story about because they're afraid that he'll get mad at them and they'll find themselves targeted by The anti-corruption Purge just like many of their colleagues have been so the system is really an overreach Machine by nature of the system but but I don't think it's stable because of the lack of power sharing and uh even though it is very difficult in this type of cistern to organize resistance I really don't think this can last it certainly can't last forever and it may not even last out the next term so I can't the way I put it I can't predict what will happen but when it happens I won't be surprised yeah that's what um as to the international side you know this backlash uh the organization of the rest of the world now led by the United States to try to balance against a more threatening China I mean obviously that's not good for China either and um there are many people in the Chinese government and the foreign Ministry and other parts of the government who they understand that they know that so you know I wanted to ask the two of you I remember in the Mao era we would look at Leo Chi dung Xiaoping going along with MAO in the cultural revolution and it was really a puzzle because why did these comrades and arms Long March comrades why did they go along with MAO in in a direction that then turned out to be disastrous for themselves and their families we're afraid of him yeah so what happened to puncta why yeah so they were afraid of him so do you think that the politicians in China today are as afraid of Xi Jinping as they once were of Mal well not having been around for the Mao era but having observed the behaviors after Luciano 61 which was the party Congress sorry the party plenum which uh sought to sum up experiences from the failures of the Great Leap Forward we're Pung dewire took the argument up to Mao and that was the end of puncture why never to be heard of again I mean that's a searing experience so it only took one person questioning and they were I mean they just they followed him off the cliff that's true and um so if you're asking you know what happened I think the panda Hawaii experience as the bookend at the 61 from what began as an experiment if you like in wider internal party democracy with the 100 flowers movement back in 57 and the evolution between that time what you saw was Mao really from 61 punishing all those who had spoken out right between there and the end of the cultural revolution and that's the dynamic which set in was set in place I think secondly um to go to both your question and to Orville's um and what's the basis for sort of long-term hope here there is a recurring theme about centralization and decentralization of political power what we have seen I think in terms of the actions of Xi Jinping is someone who has studied acutely party history we know he's an acute party historian we know also that he's a dialectician and if you're a dialectician looking at the internal leninist dynamics of your own political party you know where the reaction is coming from against you and Mao was a master Machiavellian and knowing where the opposition was coming from and took people out systematically Xi Jinping in the period since 2012 I think it has an acute consciousness of where the reactions were going to come from against him internally and externally internally of course it wasn't just the the three groups who have been purged in the polyp Bureau and intelligence and security apparatus over the last 10 years that's significant but externally it was his concern about non-government organizations it was a concern about where religion would go unless you brought it back under control both Christian and Buddhist it was concern about where the internet would go in the absence of strong party control and so he actually had to go into the economy which is private Enterprise because that was going to ultimately marginalize the party it wasn't just because his party secretary and judge young he could see that Jack ma was more popular than he was but because he could see these massive corporations and the private sector writ large now representing 61 percent of GDP and much bigger than soes in the party and so the predisposition what we describe as overreach in the book or you describe as overreach in the book is him acting dialectically against those who he sees to be a threat either to himself or to the party's long-term hold on power but in executing it he does engage on what we would legitimately Define as overreach so my next point is this he must be also sufficient of a dialectician to know where the next wave of reaction will be coming from against what he has now just done you're going to have a slowing economy you're going to have a lot of grumpy people who are going to be underemployed or unemployed China while not a feminist Nation now Witnesses a polypureau which doesn't have a single woman in it um you also see a whole series of reactions to the constriction of people's private space and so it's going to engender a new set of forces seeking to self-correct over the next five ten years we shouldn't assume that these won't achieve some critical mass by the time the next party Congress convenes or the one after that so wherein lies the hope I mean I think understanding that despite the enormous resources of an authoritarian State and the surveillance Technologies and the facial recognitiontology Technologies and his ability to control this pla the police and security apparatus underneath all that the forces of Social and economic reaction domestically will continue to build so uh because I want to get to questions from you all and we don't want to take up all of the time let me ask you this you've both written books which are fundamentally about China but also how that impacts foreign policy so given all that you you say that you've concluded what should we do as a as a country our country yeah your country I mean what's the proper posture you Susan I mean Susan and I have been co-chairs of a task force in the U.S China policy for for eons and I remember you talking so hopefully about shaping China is that still alive and if not what's the what's our fallback position what should we do how should we Deport ourselves in the face of what you have just described well in in the last chapter and in some recent writing I've done you know I've argued that we shouldn't give up on diplomacy we haven't had any real diplomacy for six years any real attempt to identify a set of issues where we have big differences with China but we think the Chinese government might be able to moderate its policy in other words not xinjiang and Hong Kong I mean one of the well Pearl John Kerry has been slaving away to not much yeah but I mean uh you know economic policies there are issues where we that might be amenable to negotiation and I I don't know whether or not Xi Jinping especially given how costly his uh Hardline approach has been whether or not he's amenable to moderating it if he recognizes the costs and sees that it might achieve something good for him like the stabilization of relations with the United States peaceful rise well I mean one thing I would say is that a stable relationship with the United States should be one of China's core interests that should be a core interest for China because but that's you speaking no but I'm saying that well I'm saying that uh I don't know what I'm saying is I really don't know whether or not a diplomatic effort after the midterm now after the 20th part of Congress hopefully after as we see some tapering uh down of the extreme zero covid approach will it work I don't know if it'll work but I think we should at least test it instead of giving up all hope in uh negotiating disputes and decide that it's basically we're we're just trying to trip up China slow it down and you know we've concluded that China is an enemy and where a lot of our policies now especially related to the economy and Technology do seem to be counterproductive from the standpoint of American competitiveness and designed to um really to contain China I mean they accuse us of that but I think we have really evolved to that type of policy because we're not uh we don't threaten sanctions and say let's sit down and negotiate your behavior in the South China Sea and if we can get somewhere we won't sanction you we're not using it as leverage we're simply whacking them first rather than trying to induce greater moderation in their policies all right well that's an interesting thought Kevin do you think that I mean you you've written the book about how to avoid war how have you reassessed your thesis in the last fashioned I'd rather like peace I'm not sort of in favor of war and I kind of like diplomacy as well um and uh because I didn't like shooting people so that's kind of my software but I'm a foreign policy realist [Music] so first thing to do in crafting a national strategy is to understand what China is actually doing and under XI jinping's leadership this party is now led by a Marxist leninist who has reinvented ideology and has a defined view about where he now wants to land the party as the center of everything a much more Marxist lean on the economy with a greater role for state and Enterprises and then on top of that a foreign security policy which houses its stated objective China becoming the preeminent Regional and Global Power by mid-century that's what XI jinping's strategy or strategic objectives are you don't have to invent those they are actually there in the print so if that is what we're up against in terms of XI jinping's stated objectives the question becomes one of what is an appropriate set of responses for both United States its allies but frankly a range of other countries in the world as well it strikes me that it falls into two phases one and why I wrote his book a devotable war is we are now in a strategic competition where the China recognizes it or not between China and the United States where the prize is who is the preeminent Regional and Global Power by mid-century that's what's underway at the moment if you look at the instruments of Chinese and American states craft that's what's underway so the question I have and why I wrote this book is do you have unmanaged strategic competition without any diplomacy or do you have managed strategic competition using diplomacy to Define certain rules of the road certain guard rails to prevent dangerous escalation coming out of individual incidents or miscalculations on the way through in other words War by accident that's what that book's about the second element of American strategy and allied strategy is I see it um and and understand it is in the meantime to build and rebuild deterrence in relation to China uh both militarily technologically and economically and with Taiwan and with friends partners and allies to cause Xi Jinping if he is still in power to conclude in the early 2030s that the risk of actually a war by Design to take Taiwan at that stage is too risky because the deterrent capabilities have in fact kept pace with China's own military modernization efforts and the financial and economic risks of proceeding with it are too great I don't think there is a different way of handling it between now and then so long as XI jinping's strategy remains in place which means so long as Xi Jinping remains in place before we get to questions let me ask you both one final question um in just a few sentences if you had the the ability to address uh Xi Jinping what would you tell them would be the best thing he could do to signal that he'd like to have a course correction Susan let's start with you um open up dialogue with Taiwan do you think that's possible absolutely well I know I know it's possible robust dialogue probably was the word I was searching for well I'm discouraged about it because the white paper that the new white paper on Taiwan that they put out right after speaker Pelosi's visit and those exercises surrounding Taiwan the white paper dropped the assurances of how peaceful unification under one country two systems could work the pledge not to put military forces or government administrative personnel uh on the island of Taiwan so that worried me because that narrows the possibility of pursuing a path toward peaceful integration of Taiwan with the mainland so I don't see any sign that Xi Jinping is interested and really pursuing that that root so then you're if I may say no I suggestion is not not a very good suggestion well I I thought you said just what would be the one thing he did fair enough okay I don't think he's likely to do it but actually it's not that hard no because there are recent precedents all you have to do is give up this silly thing about the magic words of 92 consensus which really has no meaning it's just basically forcing the leader of Taiwan to cow Chow to say the magic words just the way you want them to be said yeah yeah that's not enough some of you it's not a lot different but um on something that he might do and what I would advise him to do um and we'll be selling it sending a telegram off to Beijing to make sure it gets through I think it will probably get through anyway Kevin it's too sad no no is along these lines is uh notwithstanding the fact that we now are witnessing this systemic spiral down of the Strategic relationship for those who have watched it closely like us for half a century um is because neither side in my judgment has an interest in going to war now that there is I think a deep interest underpinning both sides to stabilize this thing now we're talking about Taiwan here I'm talking about the bilateral relationship Taiwan yeah at the center moving to the Bali Summit between Biden and Xi Jinping in a couple of weeks and therefore um I don't think I think there is a deep interest on both sides in putting a floor under this thing right now they know that they can't agree they know they're on long-term railway tracks towards a potential conflict but not in the immediate future but they're both legitimately anxious about this thing spiraling out of control through bad Incident Management and the rest so therefore some language from Xi Jinping which will begin to creatively Embrace principles like cooperation competition and necessary strategic guardrails because that then opens the door for a discourse or a discussion a diplomatic engagement between the most senior officials about what rules of the road are we now about to put in place around the Taiwan question in particular which prevent this continued slide towards armed conflict that's number one number two I completely agree with Susan I think her Insight is great and I come out from a slightly different perspective it's not just pressuring Xi Jinping to walk away from this mythical status of the 92 consensus this language which is used as if it's somehow been handed down on tablets of Stone from the Chinese equivalent of Mount Sinai that there it is the 1992 consensus and all truth proceeds from It Old Testament New Testament the whole shebang it's there it's just nonsense for those of us who've studied the document how it came into being anyway but it's a parallel piece of work as well which is to encourage our friend on Taiwan to open up a diplomatic track as well because at present I think our friends in Taiwan have too much of a political leave pass not to do that I do not for the life of me think that a political or Diplomat can't be diplomatic because it's one country after a haunts but a political line between the two sides the mainland in Taiwan is likely to produce an outcome but in the absence of a political Channel now everything automatically defaults back to the U.S China relationship and given how brittle is it defaults automatically back to the military and that is dangerous so causing Beijing and Taipei to say there is an interest on the part of the world not just the United States for both of you to reopen a political dialogue is I think in all of our interests so that'll be the second thing I'd suggest to shirada but also his best friend saying one so you both agree in the fact that that would be a really good place to start and I might tell the audience that the former president in Taiwan my angel is initiating your book translation today right and he was the last person who really did have an effective dialogue with the mainland what if tying on tying one was to say to him and he he's in the opposite party I'd like to deputize you to go to Beijing to see what you can do absolutely that'd be great because you know what I'm saying when I think those of us who have observed her carefully as a president has been remarkably responsible yes cautious sensible about uh managing their own red lines in the relationship with with Beijing what we're all concerned about is what happens with the next and upcoming DPP primaries for the presidential election in Taiwan which is due in a year or so's time and so saying when can't go for a third term therefore she uniquely has both the opportunity and a responsibility to find a creative way to for the dialogue mechanism and she's short so she she could before she leaves office she could actually maybe do something that's the point because she's now lame dark effectively I think there may be an op-ed here have been trying to get out we could quietly Crawford on the stage here if you'd like but I but I think the oval shell Coda on this which is and send money and Joel to do do the Emissary work is kind of kind of elegant you want me to raise that with money Joe tonight I think you should okay good okay all right so listen um let's have some questions for you all [Applause] um it's difficult for us to see you so I know there are microphone somewhere maybe uh there's a handbook right here uh okay right here sitting in the front so speak uh tell us who you are and ask us to succinct questions I think it's on it's on you can hear me yep good um I'm an interested Observer no more than that I like most of you studied China and college and then kept an interest up but that's not the point here I I think that you are not discussing this and the terms in which Beijing really understands it which is that this is they only want Taiwan for one reason and one company um the Taiwan Semiconductor Company is the leading company in the world that semiconductors the fact is that the Chinese have fallen way behind in semiconductors and unless they make a gigantic leap which they're capable of intellectually but they haven't done so far they're unlikely to catch up and that means that they are always going to be second-class technologists now if you take that as a view the question is how you deal with that question if we were to tell Beijing that if they ever began a move across the the Chinese Straits we will bomb that company in such a way that there won't be anything left horrible but nonetheless a serious deterrent or does it me make them say well if they're thinking about this we ought to move more quickly because I do think it's much more economically determined than than the cultural determinants that you're describing okay so let's let's have time constraints you want to take quite a number of questions we forget the questions Kevin piece of paper okay let's quickly do succinct answers I'll do a quick one on this I disagree with you entirely yeah I think the overwhelming CCP interest is to complete Mao's 49 Revolution and to overcome at their internal perception of the loss of Taiwan going back to 1895. um obviously they're preoccupied also with their semiconductor race but that's not their primary secondary or even tertiary motivation for doing what they want to do and bringing Taiwan back into Chinese sovereignty um so I disagree with the hypothesis and I disagree with the solution okay and let me add we have a great project on this with Stanford and the Huber institution and I would say one thing as I understand tsmc makes 92 percent of all the Leading Edge chips in the world over 50 percent of all the Legacy chips however if the Chinese Communist Party sends the pla across the Taiwan Straits tsmc would last probably not a week because it's completely dependent on gases from Japan on its equipment from asml and Holland and it's not technology updates computer updates so it is a fragile institution that could not simply be run by an alternative group of people that decoupled from the world okay uh Susan no no let's go to the news there's a guy over here thank you I'm Craig Charney formerly of China beige book I remember Gathering In This Very Room around 10 years ago with um Orville shell Evan osnos and a couple of other people and oval then you said I can't tell you what it's going to be like in 10 years but everyone in the room knows that China will be politically different in 10 years time but will be different in dangerous time well we've just met the new boss and he's the same as the old boss so I'm just wondering if any of you would like to take the questions so what went wrong listen to me but let me hand it off to my I mean no but it is 10 years ago was the end of the huge entail era in the beginning of Xi Jinping era and China is different now than it was then I don't think Orville was necessarily saying that it was going to be better or worse but it was going to be different and as we enter the third term the third term is going to be different I mean look at the composition of the standing committee uh I'd say most observers were surprised what a complete takeover power play Xi Jinping has pulled off here he has now abandoned not just term limits but age the age parameters which are have been really important since the dung Xiaoping era in structuring political competition at every level inside China and basically now she says age doesn't matter you know if you're loyal and you know I like you and maybe and you're capable then it doesn't matter what age so he kept on some people who were past retirement age and he got rid of the pragmatic uh highly respected kind of more technocratic leaders who had already been in the standing committee uh Wong young and wika John and who just 10 years ago was considered a potential successor to Xi Jinping has been uh he's not even in the pilot Bureau anymore and he's a young a younger man so he's uh kind of reshuffled the deck and he's put all of his loyalists around him so what that means is that if his Circle of advisors the people he really trusts is getting narrower and narrower all of the Dynamics in the system which have caused overreach are going to operate even more strongly and it it's not a good uh Prospect for for the third term quick thought Kevin no let's go to another question let's see uh I I can't see anybody but just get a good one here just speak I'll just speak I'm just speak um about a month ago at a conference in Lennox Massachusetts I interviewed um an Admiral Harry Harris who was the commander of Indo paycom based in just outside Pearl Harbor and he had three things that he then went on to be ambassador to South Korea and he had three things to say one that all senior military officials in the United States are frustrated by the White House and the state departments policy of strategic ambiguity towards Taiwan or U.S Taiwan China Taiwan relations and it should be it should become strategic certainty there should be no doubt whatsoever what the United States would do if China moved against Taiwan and the second thing he said was that were a shooting War to begin because of some accidental event in the South China Sea or elsewhere there would be no doubt whatsoever now that the United States would prevail handily and that China would be overwhelmingly defeated but that that situation would change by 180 degrees after 2027. which as far as the Pentagon is concerned is the crucial year so I just wonder if the three of you can comment on those three assertions made by an admiral with some experience of what goes on in the indo-pacific theater let's start with you yeah I know Harry quite well and um and before he would set off to South Korea he was announced as ambassador to Australia and uh and then they flipped him to Seoul and he's a formidable uh leader point one on strategic ambiguity I disagree with Harry and the reason is not to do with military strategy by the United States it's to do with the impact of the communication of a 100 publicly defined Rock Solid security guarantee to Taiwan on the domestic Taiwanese political process and that is if the Taiwanese Democratic progress party believes they have got a complete Security guarantee under any circumstances then moving towards incrementally a Taiwanese unilateral Declaration of Independence step by step becomes more probable under those circumstances you cross Chinese internally politically driven strategic red lines that's why I've always supported strategic ambiguity secondly that doesn't mean that operationally the United States Navy and its Armed Forces do not prepare for a comprehensive military response to any Chinese invasion of Taiwan that is already part of American war plans and therefore I do not see it as as an impediment for the United States Navy as an act of deterrence but as an act of actual War fighting to be fully prepared for that contingency in everything that it does so you can do that operationally without running the declaratory risk of giving sucker and comfort to the independence faction within Taiwan on the other two propositions that you just put which is the outcome of wargaming now as opposed to 2027. um I haven't heard the granularity of what Harry had to say but um there are multiple opinions among Chinese and American commanders about the outcome of all the desktop wargaming that has occurred on Taiwan scenarios over the last 20 years and it is not as clear-cut as you've just suggested and in fact others would argue the reverse as for 2027 I think the misreading of that is as follows Xi Jinping recently in the last several years adjusted the timetable for the modernization the pla back from 2035 to 2027 and there's reason for doing that was because there was a lack of urgency in the pla to execute the reform program which he first announced in 2015 collapsing the number of military regions from Seven down to five turning them into joint operational commands for joint joined up operations in the battle space and and for them to be able to conduct what they call fully informationized Warfare so what he's done is put a huge rocket literally under the pla to get themselves ready and there is not a real operational expectation that they will have completed this by 2027 it's still a very large process to be done with I'm more concerned with about where the pla would be by the early 2030s and I think for us to assume that there will be a radical change in who wins a war between 2022 and 2027 I don't think is correct okay yeah okay next and I want to mention maybe that our task force that we co-chair uh a couple of weeks ago issued a little policy paper on Taiwan which I think lays out the logic of what Kevin is saying uh very clearly yeah I think diplomats tend to be for strategic ambiguity the military tends to be for strategic Clarity and I'm all forgiving the military private strategic Clarity but not public strategic clarity through a change in the declaratory position because that just creates a whole bunch of new strategic realities on the Chinese side which is what we don't want okay next question hello yes yes um I first went to school in China in the early 80s first beta then Fudan and smuggled a lot of things out for aiwei and his father and brought them back to you Yale in China or well too in that group and so then I was allowed to go back and so but I was working on Don Wong and was spending a lot of my time taking the trains from Pizza to through the entire silk route at that point in 1981 82 83 I was allowed to do that right it was very cool okay then I came back was it Asian site for a while Japan Society the met and then back in the Buddhist world then the job the Chinese said you may not come back right and then Mr Rood I should say prime minister we met I moved to India as the Dalai Lama's Tibet house and we met there numerous times my point of this is that I was observing every time I was stymied to try to do work and projects right and working with tribal groups and this and that and I worked with tribals in Taiwan also and it was always being moved by given what was going on in this way also and so I kept hoping things would change I'm still working with a lot of curating I've moved back from India a few years ago and still working with a lot of Chinese artists so is there a question hiding in that so my question is having met a lot of you before my question is history really matters culture really matters you know and they always used to say this in China and India too yeah no no but it is a question how can we go forward from here well by not going into reverse I mean I think that's pretty much what our two guests here have been trying to suggest it's very arduous but diplomacy but deterrence it's the way I read your conclusions but also the kinds of cultural work that you describe and which has been I assume quite collaborative um you know it's really important to try to keep these things going um and all of the academic cultural social people-to-people activities uh you know really also help us see one another in a different way if we have I really think covid in addition to the geopolitical hostility have really had a very harmful impact because the separation of people and societies for so long is uh it is making more and more likely and it's making diplomacy much more difficult as well yeah I mean I think we're losing not only diplomatic connection trade connection we're losing friends right we're losing musculature between the two Society okay we have time for one more question let's make it a good one wherever whoever whoever's got the mic has got the mic up here if that's okay with you all yeah okay tell us who you are uh yes my name is Margo salz I'm an analyst at Ergo Global intelligence firm and I was wondering now that Xi Jinping has Consolidated all this power underneath him and that during the 20th party Congress he has got rid of those who were part of the Communist youth league and have that pedigree is there anything his colleagues can do to limit his power short of him passing away is there anything his colleagues can do to limit his power to limit it everything they can do to bring back Collective leadership yeah no that you know ah that's really an important question and um I did have this fantasy of how the other senior leaders in the party before the party Congress might have approached Xi Jinping and said you know it's so unfair they're so all China has so many difficult problems and you're just bearing the brunt people are blaming you oh it's all you know only you we would be happy to share more of the responsibility with you to help defeat well obviously that did not happen Xi Jinping is the author of China's version of the prince but it said yes Susan we really believe you yeah right so um you know I think uh for subordinates not people at the same basically the same level as him not people in the standing committee or the Paula pero um there's passive resistance you know one there are two ways that subordinates behave now one is to over comply because they're in competition with one another and they want to show how loyal they are but the other way is to do nothing because you might protect yeah and just drag your feet and do nothing and there's been a lot of discussion uh by Xi Jinping himself about implementation problems because people are many people are doing nothing so I'd say the most prevalent form of resistance will be passive resistance um but then a lot also depends on whether or not she's popularity with the public holds up or not because uh the political Elites are going to be very cautious about challenging Xi Jinping if he remains very popular but if people uh in the ordinary public allow by Shang you know really get frustrated with him become disaffected as we saw seem to be starting to happen with the Shanghai lockdown then that will also change the calculation of the other top level politicians these two levels are related right now we don't know whether or not public opinion has really turned against Xi Jinping or not we have some surveys that are out now that may tell us a little bit more at the China data lab of 21st century China Center but it up until recently his popularity with the public seemed to hold up final thoughts Kevin 60 seconds from me um I think the uh the dictum of Chinese politics for the next five years will hang on the proposition it's the economy stupid um and that is because with the overhang of demography the overhang of ideology that is the move to the left on economic policy settings the overhang of covert the overhang of geopolitics in the in the international market for Chinese exports as growth slows next year if we end up with two to three percent growth in the Chinese economy for the years to come over the next five years this will generate its own dynamic in the internal political debate within the country which will embolden those who have a different view to express their view in one form or another so I think the core variable for the next five years both in geopolitics does China grow or contract or remain static but in domestic politics will be whether the Xi Jinping economic model defined as the new development concept succeeds or fails well join me in thanking uh [Applause]

Channel: Asia Society

Views: 173,867

Keywords: asia society policy institute, center for china analysis, program, current affairs, chinese politics, china wise book series, overreach: how china derailed its peaceful rise, susan shirk, kevin rudd, orville schell, u.s.-china relations

Id: 6Ss7JBBc5EQ

Length: 76min 37sec (4597 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 01 2022