The World According to China with Elizabeth Economy | Uncommon Knowledge

from the Trump administration's National Security strategy of 2017 quote China challenges American power influence and interests from the Biden administration's National Security strategy of 2022 China is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and the power to advance that objective if Trump and Biden agree that China is a threat China is a threat today a scholar who has devoted her professional life to the study of that threat Elizabeth economy on uncommon knowledge [Applause] [Music] now welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson Elizabeth economy did her undergraduate work at sworm Moore earned an MA here at Stanford and holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan she served at the Council on Foreign Relations and at the world economic Forum before coming here to the Hoover institution in 2020 Dr economy is the author of half a dozen books including her most recent volume the world according to China and she has just returned to Hoover after a leave of absence in Washington where she served as senior adviser for China to Secretary of Commerce Gina ramundo Liz welcome back thank you Peter great to be here if Xi Jinping could have everything he wanted if he could adjust the entire world to his liking how would life here in the United States be different yeah I mean think it would be radically different but maybe I'll take a step back first and just uh describe a little bit uh what XI jinping's Ambitions actually are uh because I think it's important to understand just how transformational his vision is uh for for reordering the world order uh I think you know to begin with uh if you look back to 2017 uh xinping when he was reselected as General Secretary of the Communist party for his second five-year term uh delivered a three and a half hour speech right without break uh in which he uttered the phrase China has stood up grown Rich become strong and is moving toward Center Stage and that part about uh becoming strong and moving towards Center Stage really reflects she's ultimate ambition it is about the great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation or reclaiming chinese's centrality on the global stage uh what does it mean in Practical terms I'm just I'll just tick off I think the main points uh first uh it means reclaiming the territory that shi jinin considers to be Chinese Sovereign territory you know in the first instance Taiwan Hong Kong the South China Sea but you know the diuse and Kaku islands that are administered by Japan obviously you know a border territory with India all told China has 14 different uh border conflicts uh so making China whole again really redrawing the map of China in a pretty significant way uh he wants China to be the dominant power in the Asia Pacific right send the United States back across the Pacific to be an Regional Atlantic Power uh he calls for the dissolution of the us-led alliance system right not only in Asia but also NATO calls it anachronistic and and targeted against China um he wants the the world the rest of the world its rules its Norms the policy choices of other countries to reflect Chinese interests and values and priorities right and you see that through the Belton Road initiative right which has become not only an infrastructure a hard infrastructure initiative but really an effort U by xinping to transfer to transmit uh Chinese political values Chinese military interests establishing bases globally um you know helping other countries authoritarian Ian States learn how to you know uh control the internet and suppress Civil Society so it's a really Grand scale effort uh to shape the world in ways that will serve Chinese interests so that's the ambition I think um so what does it mean for the United States What would life look like I think above all and you know maybe the the recent events um uh the attack against Israel um by Hamas um sort of I think serves to illustrate this um you know the world would be without its policemen right um China would be the dominant the preeminent power uh you wouldn't have the system of alliances that underpins the liberal uh International order you know to the extent that we think about the world as as chaotic and disorderly it would be magnified tenfold right if China were the dominant power because we've seen China's reaction right to the Ukraine to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to uh the attack on Israel China is unwilling to stand up and do what's right right it's unwilling to to make a claim about what is right in the International System so I think that would be one pretty significant difference uh in the world um second I think for the US economy uh probably it would it would suffer uh I think um you know first if the Yuan were to become the world's uh Reserve currency to replace the the dollar um the cost of borrowing the cost of capital would go up if China were setting technology standards globally then you know companies would become sort of second tier uh players if China's laying the fiber optic cable and dominating e-commerce and satellite systems and Cloud uh right that that you know would make life much more difficult so we would be we would be we would no longer be top country we would live in a much more dangerous world we would be poorer than we would be otherwise and can I ask another question a few years ago I probably shouldn't name the name because because Beijing is watching that's the the question in a certain sense there was a Chinese scholar from Fudan University here at Hoover for a year and I asked this scholar what's the best part about being in California and I thought that he would say oh the weather we were just having a cup of coffee and the answer was internet searches because when I'm at home every time I do a search I know two things one they're filtering the information they give me and two they're keeping track of the questions I ask and I I I have to say I just found that I stort of made my blood and rud cold for a moment even though it was an informal cup of coffee but that would be the case is is it not so that if chy if he had everything he wanted it would be orwellian we would feel as though or am I overstating the case does Google already know everything about us well Google Google may or may not know everything about us but one thing we can count on is that we have a legal system that will you know protect our rights right and and we can go after Google if we feel like Google is abusing uh the use of our information and we know that Google's not going to turn that information over to the government if the government simply asks for it so I mean you're absolutely right I think that issue that that sort of uh cross-section of uh technology control that China would have along with uh its belief that the state should determine you know the rights and its surveillance system and that there's no recourse against the state no rule of law right in the Chinese system maybe it wouldn't affect you know internal discussions within the United States but certainly crossborder you know zooms with people um I mean you can see the way when darl Mor right the general manager of the Houston Rockets tweeted you know Fight For Freedom stand up for Hong Kong uh you know the Chinese then you know went after the Houston Rockets they stopped televising all of the NBA games for a period of over a year so that ability to use its economic leverage to use its technology to coers right individuals uh to try to adjust what they say and how they behave they are real the technical term they are real bastards um so I try to avoid words like that you you've laid out this uh uh the breathtaking scope of what he wants to accomplish I would like to know if it's possible to get to the answer to this question why does he want to accomplish that and the argument that comes to my mind is China has done pretty well in the world order that the United States and our allies established after the second world war hundreds of millions of Chinese have been brought out of poverty a not insignificant number of Chinese have been made Rich truly really rich at Silicon Valley levels that country has been prospering educational levels on and on it goes they've been doing just fine so why does he want to turn it all upside down I mean I I don't I think there probably two things behind that um question maybe first is that I don't think Xi Jinping looks at China's success and believes that it is the result of its you know integration into the International System I I would say he would argue that it is the result of the Chinese Communist party and the resilience and industriousness of the Chinese people so I think first of all he see a different I think he would read the facts um very differently and second xiin ping you know looks back you know in history to a time when China was really the Central Center of the world it's the point I made at the outset about you know the great ambition is reclaiming Chinese centrality on the global stage and so bringing that that back requires a different International order right China is not going to be the center of the world if it's values and if it's the way that it trades and invests and uh it's you know doesn't have military bases it's not going to be the center of the world unless it has all those things so that's why the world needs to transform so that China gets What It Wants now that leads by the way you're doing my job you just set up the next question beautifully um but but it take a moment here because I'm going to read you three quotations right one from our Hoover colleague Steven cotkin the Chinese Communist party is a leninist organization you can't be half communist just like you can't be half pregnant our Hoover colleague Frank toot quote the constants of Chinese leadership the leninist principle of a monopoly on Power and state ownership of the means of production which is a very good Marxist principle now here's my third quotation and this comes from my Hoover colleague Li economy one of x's foreign policy Innovations has been the promotion of China's political model and the export of some of his authoritarian elements close quote okay so whereas Stephen cin and Frank dick Cotter both say they're Communists and that's tremendously important to grasp you I'm not I'm well this is the question do you disagree or you place a different emphasis on it I mean in the old days the Soviets were Russian and that explained part of the picture but you couldn't understand the full picture unless you understood that they were also communist all right so how do you wait this to what extent is Xi behaving the way he's behaving because he's a communist and to what extent because he's working in a 1,000-year imperial tradition yeah um so I'm glad you put it as Xi Jinping is opposed to the Chinese right because I think it's important to remember that there are as many different perspectives within China about what the Chinese political system should look like as there are in the United States um and so I just um you know the the Chinese Communist Party represents only about 7% of the Chinese population it's a very small number so imagine all those other people what they might think and even within the Chinese Communist party there are people that are not what I would call True Believers as far as xiin ping is concerned um you know it's a really interesting question I think xinping is certainly an imperialist and if you look at the belt and Road initiative if you look how he uh discusses it with reference to the you know Silk Road right which takes you back to the Han and the tong dynasties when China was kind of at the Apex of its economic influence and and its cultural you know influence um China doubled its territory during the Han Dynasty I think that's very appealing to xiin Ping and you know the belan road is all about trade routes it's about establishing military outposts it's about exporting uh China's cultural influence so imperialist yes right communist I think is a different question so xinping yes he uses the rhetoric of you know class struggle right he talks about um the fact that socialism will triumph over capitalism uh and he certainly as um uh uh both um Steve and Frank mentioned U believes in the centrality of the Chinese Communist party and he believes in an enhanced role for the state in the Chinese economy but I think if you if you try to look at what communism also says about you know from each according to uh you know his uh um one ability according to his needs right if you look at that or if you look at um you know efforts to develop a social welfare in that to to uh make China more equal Society right then you see that Xi Jinping has not really done much over the course of the past 11 years and so I think that the overlay of a sort of authoritarian is M veering toward totalitarianism over communism gives you Xi Jinping but when you start to move past that that overlay of what cons we would consider to be authoritarian and totalitarianism into what would be distinctly communist yes I think at that point Xi Jinping does actually not represent much of what we consider to be Communists so not much explanatory power if you if you not not to my mind okay could I try this one more I'm searching for analogues here which is the only way I can go about this so again the old Soviet Union kushev we know from his Memoirs he's toppled from power and he writes Memoirs which are almost touching in their naive T he really was a believer that communism would usher in this wonderful New World from kusf is one thing a True Believer let's use that term and then you get brv who knows what brv I mean in the end who knows if he was even even sentient but he represents decadence from the Communist point of view they're not they don't believe anymore it's just the bu it's just the system chugging along because it can't figure out what else to do does does If This Were a spectrum does she fit on it or is he something completely different so Chinese that he just those analoges aren't useful no I mean I think he's he's different because he is um so he's centralized power to a degree that Kristof and bnv could only have dreamed of centralized power in his own hands so in that sense probably more an analog would be more like a Stalin um and and he's and what he's driving toward does not seem to be again doesn't seem to be you know a new egalitarian society a new form of of you know of of economic relations and political relations that resemble true communism um he also is someone who and I I think for this you know there's a some degree of credit that he deserves he's someone that's gone after all that corruption that certainly plagued the the brn years for example um in the Soviet Union and so he's attacked um uh you know party members uh for their corruption now part of it is self-serving he's eliminated his political opposition through this but it's also true that if you look over the course of Xin King's career he was always about anti-corruption so even when he was a lower level um you know sort of civil servant Rising through the party he always talked about how people should not use the Communist Party their membership as a means for sort of political or economic personal gain so I think that part is real so you have I'm now I'm going subjective here so just reach across and slap me because I'm answering question she's no good grad student I'm sure you wouldn't tolerate this from a grad student but when you look at brv you have a feeling of the end of something something is tired something is spent momentum is running out and with XI jingping you have the feeling of a project that is just beginning I mean I'm not delighted to say that but it does it feel that way you know or am I saying things that just don't even make sense to a scholar so um you know my first I've served twice in government you know first was right after I finished my masters at Stanford I was the gorbachov Analyst at the CIA and so I came into the job right as almost he took power just a few months after that 85 85 uh summer of 85 and you know at that time time nobody thought gorbachov was going to be anything special nobody would have predicted right the change in the Soviet Union really uh that he ushered in nobody would said that the Soviet Union would become defunct by 1990 La exactly so you know even as we look at Xi Jinping and you know he seems so powerful he has so much power in his own hands you know I think you can look beneath the surface you know inside China and see a country that is incredibly polarized equally as polarized as the United States along gen gender lines along ethnic lines along you know income uh inequality um gaps between what you consider to be the bureaucratic class and the creative class you know what has happened to the entrepreneurial class in China to scholarly class in China anyone who colors Outside the Lines uh in the country right their worlds have become so small um Jennifer pan here at Stanford in Communications Department has done amazing research um doing survey research of urban middle class Chinese and she found the majority uh want uh uh freedom of speech they want the right to assemble they want private property uh we saw when Dr leean Yang died uh during coid right remember a million people went online calling for freedom of speech so just because we can't see beneath the surface as easily as we did Preen ping because of the repression because of the tight controls on information doesn't mean we might not be surprised at some point in the future that he is at least pushed back to the second line kind of like what happened to madong after the cultural revolution after the Great Leap Forward sorry um where he became just sort of one leader among many so you know I'm somebody who you were going to insist on the contingency of History nothing here is pre-or exactly all right um yes you said it in you know five words I said it in 500 so sorry you know it's it's my job to try to hold an audience's attention it's your job to write the the books that matter um another couple of quotations the late more Hoover colleagues the late Harry Rowan Henry Rowan writing in 1998 imagine a prosperous China with an educated well-informed home-owning population now imagine that this population is still ruled by a party with something like the Monopoly of power and controls over behavior that exists today the combination simply doesn't compute close quote now our colleague Larry diamond in 2012 for some time I suspected that Henry Rowan's projections were a bit optimistic now I suspect he's writing in 2012 that the end of the CCP rule will come much sooner than I used to suppose China cannot keep moving forward to a middle-income country without the pressures for Democratic change that Korea and Taiwan experienced more than two decades ago Liz dog gon it Korea starts out a country run by tough bad guys it introduces economic growth and it becomes a democracy Taiwan is rung by people much friendlier to the United States but these were not sweethearts these were tough guys economic growth and now it's a democracy why hasn't that happened in China to the contrary XI jingping we thought we knew of course Harry and Larry brilliant people they weren't misreading things that's the way it looked to inform people in in those days and ji shinpin comes along and pulls a UI why yeah I mean look you can look back into the 1980s right into the late 1980s which is really when South Korea and Taiwan kind of made their transition from you know roughly authoritarian states to more resilient uh democracies um and see that China was actually almost exactly the same point right because if you stop to think about it you had uh a rising middle class that was demanding uh greater political reform uh you had an event just like you did in Korea and South and South Korea and Taiwan you had events that triggered Mass protests in this case you had the death of huya bang who was a much beloved uh former General Secretary of the Communist Party extremely uh politically reform oriented um that led to the tenan square protests right 1989 1989 right that was this huo bang died in April of 1989 uh and then you end up with these Mass protests calls for political reform you also have Jiang who like his you know Taiwanese and South Korean compatriots felt that the time was probably right for some political reform he was prepared to negotiate with the protesters but Jau wasn't really the power the power behind the throne was D sha ping and dun sha ping was not interested right didn't feel like his back was up against the wall was not inclined uh toward political reform and so you did get that moment that moment didn't translate into a transition uh you know fast forward to 2010 2011 and you had again massive protest in China around the environment you had an extremely active internet with people calling for political reform you had salons with billionaires and reform oriented Scholars and lawyers meeting you know weekly to talk about how China could transition exactly incredibly exciting vibrant uh political Society during that time but you got Xi Jinping um and so again I think leaders matter a lot um and Xi Jinping never has never demonstrated uh an interest in opening up the political system barely demonstrated interest in in economic continuing economic reform can I jump ahead that to to to on this stage what was it four years ago I interviewed Jimmy lie Jimmy lie the Hong Kong business figure immensely successful ful man um who at that point had taken a lead in the Democracy protest and I said to Jimmy lie aren't you afraid great big country up there little tiny City down here China Hong Kong and he said no 60% of foreign investment into China flows through the banking system in Hong Kong and today Jimmy Li is in prison and they did move on Hong Kong so is it a simple as this that given a choice between economic growth and the party's power the party will choose power every single time um I think it's yes I think that is true I think it's also an issue of of sovereignty so if you extrapolate then from Hong Kong to Taiwan I think what we don't want to do is you know make the mistake in thinking that just because China is you know reliant on tsmc right for tsmc is these semiconductor industry in uh company in Taiwan in Taiwan right um that produces most of the uh Advanced chips you know in the world um just because China is extremely dependent on Taiwan uh for those chips that it would not be willing to take military action against Taiwan so I think it's not just about party power it's about that issue of sovereignty as well okay we'll come back to that in a moment um I began with Trump and Biden let's go through this a Trump and Biden quickly and then you the question is where is their continuity or where would you criticize either Administration and where would you criticize either administr I'm gon to ask for grades here's Trump uh the Trump Administration places a series of tariffs on Chinese good I couldn't resist this the tariffs are so stiff that during the July 2019 presidential debate Joe Biden said president Trump may think he's being tough on China all that he's delivered is Americans paying more close quote the Biden Administration retains the Trump tariffs that Joe Biden attacked but has also placed limits on the transfer to China of advanced graphics processor units by the way the first thing you can do is correct me because you know this in detail I don't that per Place limits on the transfer to China of advanced graphics processor units these are important in AI applications and plac new limits on the transfer to China of American ships and American tech technical expertise quotation this time from our Hoover I set myself a little challenge that I would only quote Hoover fellows I'm impressed our Hoover colleague Neil Ferguson quote in short the Biden Administration aims to Halt technological progress in China Trump did nothing so radical close quote okay yeah okay so you want me to grade them is that what you're saying yes from the look on your face would far rather you grade them than grade my question well I think the question perhaps is a little bit narrow if we're thinking about these things as being the sum total of uh the administration's approach and policy and strategy toward China so it wasn't doesn't really only boil down to the tariffs for Trump and the controls on uh technology for the Biden Administration um so maybe I'll just say Okay so no no wider let's open the aperture to be fair here yes to be fair uh what do we need to do and how have we been doing yeah okay I mean I think look the Trump Administration did um a really um uh a good thing when it kind of looked across the landscape and said you know China is posing really significant threats in a whole array of areas and we need to change the way that we're doing business so in in many respects what the Trump Administration did most effectively was simply to write the ship to write the American ship um beyond that I think in terms of sort of setting an agenda and then executing uh you know on a strategy to to realize set of objectives I think the the Trump Administration was really of two minds so it's difficult to to kind of give them a grade on the one hand you had sort of President Trump who had a much more personalistic and idiosyncratic approach uh to policy and toward China you know embraced authoritarianism authoritarianism at times sort of devalued our allies uh pulled us out of a lot of international institutions so that in many respects and as you said kind of made the the singular effort um of his China Focus really um about the bilateral trade deficit and saying and putting the tariffs on in the phase one trade so that was kind of his um effort um at the same time you had a kind of Shadow government operating many who people are now here at Hoover right so secretary Mattis and and National Security adviser uh McMaster and my good friends Matt poer and Matt Turpin all of whom I think approached China in a much more traditionalist way right continued to value our allies uh continued to work to keep us in international institutions um you know sort of proclaimed the free and open Indo Pacific worked with our Asian allies um and partners to strengthen the quad to strengthen those relationships those are really important you know um and lasting impacts uh of the trumpet Administration so you know if I this sort like a group project I'd have to give two different grades one for Trump and one for those guys I won't say what those would be so um for the Biden Administration um I would say that um probably it has not been as uh clear in its overall objective with regard to China I think managing competition or managed competition doesn't probably get us where we would want in terms of having a very clear strategic objective however I think it's done a good job uh of putting in place the um the sort of uh things that we need uh to be able to compete effectively with China over the 21st century so you know investing at home chips and science Act and the inflation reduction act and bipartisan infrastructure law you know all of these all the investment in in R&D I think all of these things are essential for us to be able to compete um you know you mentioned uh the controls I mean there's export controls but there's also rethinking our supply chains right there's the friend Shoring and the reshoring and uh there's the new outbound investment restrictions so really trying to modernize our foreign policy tools in ways again that will protect us you know in fact from Chinese uh actions but wait and I think critically critically you know repairing uh relations with our allies particularly in Europe uh and bolstering our ties because trying to deal with China alone will get us nowhere right whether we're talking about those technology controls or we're talking about competing with belan Road or whatever it is we have to do these things in concert with our partners and our allies and I think that's been a real strength of of the Biden administration's efforts so can I again correct me if I'm wrong about this but it does strike me that between Trump and Biden one remarkable thing has happened probably a very good thing I think uh and that is that although we're polar ized in all kinds of ways and you could tell from the debate stage that Trump and Biden could barely be in the same room together even if it was a very big room all of that the notion that China is a danger and must be dealt with details to follow is now bipartisan that's an amazing thing in a in in the in the polarized state in which we find ourselves no yes but devils are devil is in the details right details Details Matter Details Matter to you of course you all right okay so to Taiwan then Neil Ferguson again cutting China off from high-end chips today seems a lot like cutting Japan off from oil in 1941 economic sanctions so boxed in the Imperial government of Japan that there seemed no better option than to gamble on a surprise attack close quote okay you're not going to go for that what the question here is sovereignty you've already explained that Xi Jinping is very concerned about reasserting his notion of Chinese sovereignty is there now an economic re at how much risk is Taiwan today yes look from the from the minute that xiin ping came into Power uh he talked about the necessity of reunifying with Taiwan he's talked about Taiwan as one of the 14 Musto items to achieve his great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation uh this is not about the Technologies this is you know about a belief that Taiwan is an integral part of mainland China so um how how great a risk is Taiwan at a serious risk uh because I don't think that Xi Jinping will be satisfied ever leaving office without having made substantial progress toward reunification now that doesn't mean that he necessarily uh is going to launch an invasion we have the Taiwanese elections coming up in January 2024 so just in a few months uh so we need to look at what the outcome is there I think what chin ping is probably hoping for is that somebody from the kmt from the previous uh ruling party the one that is has more Affinity has more openness to some form of closer ties with the main with Mainland some of whom actually believe that reunification ultimately should be an objective that if one of those candidates of which there are three wins uh then you probably get the temperature taken down a little bit right I think xinping would be interested to see how does it play out do you get another mind Joe who's willing to to think about increasing economic ties who's willing to go back to the 92 consensus which acknowledges you know which which claims that Taiwan is part of China there is but one China and Taiwan is part of it so do you get that or do you get William Li right who says there's no need for Taiwan to declare independence because it's already a sovereign country it's already independent so no need to declare it again um and you know has been in the past a fire brand he's taken you know the temperature down himself a little bit uh but you know that will send a different signal to the mainland okay so our interests we have uh there's an argument uh Elbridge Colby back in Washington is has a book out and he's been making this argument maybe he's the leading uh or the most articulate proponent of this argument that the defense of Taiwan is in our interests he even goes so far as to say whether the Taiwanese want to defend themselves or not that's one argument here's another argument the Biden Administration has passed these uh the chips act to establish manufacturing of very modern chips here in this country many billions of dollars at stake you will no more again just stipulate I'll say it for the last time you know more than I do but in talking to people here in Silicon Valley the general feeling seems to be that we're about 5 years out of the game that it will take five years of spending this money and hiring the best people and getting a Fab plants up and operating for us to either close the gap substantially with what's taking place in tan or a couple of knowledgeable people have told me that actually it's time for us to just LeapFrog them to go to next generation one way or the other five years single digit number of years and here's presidential candidate vivec ramaswami quote I would defend Taiwan vigorously until the US achieved semiconductor Independence close quote well those are two different views can I add one other one other point back to Jimmy Li as far as I can tell Jimmy lie and Martin Lee if I recall the name are really the only two prom minent members of the Hong Kong business Community who defied the mainland the Hong Kong business Community by and large once it was clear that that Xi Jinping was going to move on Hong Kong said well okay let's figure out how to live with these people why wouldn't the T why wouldn't the Taiwanese do the same what what what importance does that Island have to us if indeed we can achieve semiconductor Independence within a single- digit number of years I mean look you know going back to you know 1979 and the Taiwan relations act right we have a commitment right a law we have a commitment uh to provide Taiwan with uh material that is adequate for its defense uh also in the Taiwan Relations Act uh is stipulated that the United States retains the capacity to help defend it doesn't commit us to defending Taiwan but that's also in there this is well before there was any consideration of semiconductors right right this there was no technology element to any of this it was based on security calculation at the time it wasn't even based on a democracy calculation because Taiwan at the time was not a democracy right so it was based on security calculation and anti-communist uh calculation um you know that holds true today and now I think there's an ad and I think you talk with members of Congress Taiwan is a thriving democracy right and a very strong partner for the United States so to me the the semiconductor issue is an icing on the cake uh from this we have a longstanding commitment again bipartisan commitment uh to uh uphold uh taiwan's what what is the security calculation aside from the semiconductors what is the security calculation security calculation is that it it goes unated so often it positions it positions China that much you know closer uh to the United States that that whole first island chain second island chain chain then becomes much more uh in China's you know China's control so there's no um uh there's no benefit to us right for China to assume control of Taiwan now having said that it is up to the Taiwanese people to decide right that is that is also you know that's part of the sort of agreement that we have with China if the taiese people decided that they wanted to have uh unification with the mainland you know based on our own agreements we would allow that to uh to take place whether Elbridge uh kobby thinks so or not so you want to stand on the 1979 Arrangement it's a law well laws could be Reed yeah it can be but it is the law um Dan Blumenthal and Fred Kagan in an oped this past March China is pursuing three roads to unification it seeks to persuade the Taiwanese people to accept unification peacefully it seeks seeks to coerce such acceptance through means short of war and it is preparing direct military action the US must block all three how are we doing yeah I mean I don't know that that we block all three I think the Chinese themselves are doing a terrible job of persuading the Taiwanese I mean they've you know basically cut off a lot of the trade they've gone after taiwan's um allies and partners uh you know bought them off um you know they reduced the tourists they they've made everything very difficult they've had you know 200 sorties Air Force sores into taiwan's airspace uh just in September um sorry 200 sorties last month alone correct um so there there's no persuading the Taiwanese that that you know sort of a soft power persuasion at this point in time um in terms of coercion similarly it's clearly not working you can look at public opinion polls in Taiwan there has not been a major spike in the number of people that you know view unification with the mainland is you know ultimately their positive uh kind of outcome for the future of of the island um and you know the the rest of it is you know to defend Taiwan right to protect Taiwan that's the part where the United States would actually play a role um and I think the Biden Administration uh has has this as a major focus of of effort both in terms of you know working with training with the Taiwanese military encouraging the Taiwanese military to invest more encouraging the Taiwanese government to invest more in its own military um I think uh you know we've also uh sought to broaden uh the number of countries to enhance the number of countries that view taiwan's security as uh essential to their own security so you see Japan stepping up in a very new and different way to make exactly that claim and to send a new defense atache to Taiwan so um Australia also has said that it can considers Taiwan security to be related to its own security so and you you have you know Europe becoming much more involved in the indopacific not necessarily with claims to Taiwan security but nonetheless uh at least a commitment to free in an open Indo Pacific so all of these rais the cost right they rais the cost uh for China of launching some kind of military action so we're doing pretty well that it's intelligent yeah there are good people hard at work on all this all right so a few last questions before we before we close and all these questions are about this country February 2022 Russia attacks Ukraine last Saturday Hamas attacked Israel on one argument the Chinese are watching both and in our own interest we must ensure that Ukraine and Israel Prevail uh the defense of Taiwan and the the entire International order runs through Ukraine and now through the Middle East that's one argument here's the second American forces are are designed to sustain oper major operations on two fronts the Pacific Ukraine Israel makes three it may all be happening in slow motion but the United States of America is already overstretched I mean I think I think that's probably true the United States is overstretched um and we can only do the best that we can do we are heavily committed in Ukraine uh that probably has already uh slowed down some of the military transfers that we might want to be making to Taiwan um you know the role that we play right now in Israel will certainly be shaped or constrained to some extent by what we're already committed to uh in in Ukraine um I don't I don't know um but uh you know I think that's also where our allies and partners are going to have to step up uh and you know Europe has stepped up uh more in Ukraine uh they've pledged more um but it can't all be dependent entirely on the United States right this this has to be a multilateral effort so you just returned a week ago as you said from a couple of years in Washington what did you make of Washington did it seem like a world Capital that is up that's up to it or did it seem so polarized by the way I I think I'll do the stipulating so you don't have to make the argument the person you were working for Secretary of Commerce Gina ramundo is one of the few people in the Biden Administration who gets very high marks on both sides of the aisle so so so I'll stipulate that so you don't have to stick up for your for your boss what did you make of the capital of the tenor of the tone of its General ability to get important things done uh I I found um H such an interesting question I I think um I I found people in Washington overall to be very committed to doing the right thing um and uh you know there can be debates about exactly how to go about doing that um political battles about it uh but for the most part whether we're talking about the federal government or congress um people want to do the right thing by uh the United States I think one of the most heartening things I found um was and sitting this is sitting you know in the Department of Commerce is that a lot of our strategy um for the indo-pacific in particular involved uh calling on the private sector to work in Partnership uh with the government and I I can tell you that uh you know 201 one uh American companies you know big major you know multinationals would stand up and say just tell us what you need us to do do and we will be there you need us to do something in Africa okay we'll be there you need us to provide you know digital upscaling opportunities you know to all the emerging economies of the indopacific economic framework you know 14 companies signed up to do that right huge initiative um you need us to uh to adhere to your export controls just give us Clarity and consistency and we'll do it so I I actually left Washington if if I had one like the most positive takeaway really was witnessing that kind of patriotism and the ability of the United States once again to to bring the private sector you know in and to work hand inand to realize sort of broader uh us strategic objectives and and I'll say I think there were people in the Biden Administration um that did not believe that that would happen that did not look at us business as patriotic actors and um so I'm I'm was really you know proud and pleased to be part of efforts that actually brought that to fruition last question we've been talking so far about mostly economic and Military matters question of morale is is what I'd like to get at in this last question so let me give you an episode from our own recent history and then a quotation here's the episode it's a decade in 1979 we suffer the humiliation of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and by 1989 we've so reversed Cold War dynamics that the Berlin Wall comes down in one decade this country underg goes a renewal so sweeping that it spills over and changes world history there's one episode here's the quotation and this comes from The Economist this is a couple of years ago The Economist could run the sentence today and it would uh it would seem pertinent China is increasingly sure that America is in long-term irreversible decline China is now applying calculated doses of pain to shock westerners into realizing that the old American Le order is ending close quote what do you make of this country is it capable of the kind of renewal that it needs or is the old order Vanishing I think we're already in in the process of renewal I mean I think that's um that's what I was trying to describe in terms of the Biden Administration efforts to to rebuild America you know reinvest at home um put money back into R&D partner with the business sector have our allies on board I think all of these uh reflect American dyn dynamism and and renewal and I will point out that I'm not sure when that quotation when you got that quotation 2021 is the 2021 so I would say in the past few years years right we've seen a big change in China you don't see xiin ping and other members of the Chinese Elite uh saying as much the East is rising the West is declining right their economy uh is having trouble you know uh multinationals are not investing in the same way as they were in China um again they're politically polarized they face a lot of challenges their Bel and road is very bumpy right so they're facing a lot of their own challenges so I think some of that hubris uh some of that certainty about the decline of the West and the rise of China has been tempered you're supposed to be a jaded World weary scholar you bet on you bet on this country I bet on America Elizabeth economy thank you thanks for for uncomon knowledge the Hoover institution I'm Peter Robinson [Music]

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 220,724

Keywords: elizabeth economy, uncommon knowledge, peter robinson, hoover institution, The world acording to china, washingotn, china, internet security, international internet laws, Chinese centrality on the global stage, China policies, donal trump, joe biden, trump administration, biden administration, china is a danger, taiwan

Id: 7OKo0l7xzVs

Length: 49min 7sec (2947 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2023