What Comes After the Communist Party in China?

and welcome i'm raleigh flynn the president of the foreign policy research institute we have a great program for you this morning uh featuring a conversation with robert kaplan and uh stephen cotkin who is a fbi senior fellow in our eurasia program and also a professor at princeton they're going to be talking about china post communism uh before we get started and i introduce uh bob kaplan who for whom most of you don't need an introduction i just want to briefly talk about some of the great programs we have coming up uh in next week the this week and next week um we have on monday uh we have um we have our asia program director jacques de leo talking about the regional comprehensive economic partnership the rcep this is the new trade agreement in economic agreement in in asia which has at least 15 asian and south east asian countries coming together to form a free trade area that's uh december 4th from 10 to 11 a.m that's tomorrow excuse me uh next week we have charles ray talking with our our trustee ambassador charles our trustee not trustee trust he's also trusting our trustee charles ray uh who's also um the the chair of our brand new africa program is going to be talking with ambassador hank cohen on that's december 7th from 3 to 4 p.m talking about u.s policy in africa and how it's evolved over the years and and ambassador cohen has a brand new book that he's going to be talking about as well u.s policy towards africa eight decades of real politics on december 8th from 2 to 3 p.m we'll have bob kaplan back again talking with our um other fpri uh senior fellow john naugle uh who's also the host of our main line series so you all know him too they're going to be talking about the uh the new administration and uh how they're going to approach um the geopolitical challenges they face and finally on december 10th from 9 to 10 a.m we're going to have a program on china's growing role in central asia and that's going to be moderated by our eurasia program director chris miller again that's december 10th from 9 to 10 so we have some great programs um uh robert kaplan really needs no introduction but he is uh the holder of the inaugural no inaugural holder of the robert strauss who paid chair in geopolitics at fpri and member of our board of advisors and a prolific author of 19 books including the forthcoming this spring early spring i think january's update uh the good american um it's a story of robert garcony who was the usgs greatest humanitarian that you may have never heard of uh bob's a prolific author as i mentioned he uh is constantly in the major press writing op-eds and articles and he was also notably the recipient of the benjamin franklin award given by fpri for outstanding uh scholars soldiers or statesmen before i turn the floor over to bob i just want to very quickly do a few housekeeping uh notes one if you have questions please start putting them in the q a box at the bottom of your screen uh not the chat box that's for technical issues if you haven't and please uh tell us if you do don't wait till the end because maybe we can help you solve them also in the chat window we'll be placing some maps uh to the regions that our speakers are going to be talking about this morning if you'd like to orient yourself during that discussion uh we'll also be making a video of this call so if you want to watch it again or if you missed part of it or have friends you think uh should see it you'll be able to avail yourself of that finally i would like to thank our supporters and our donors and our board for their generous support uh and assistance to fbri we can't do what we do without you if you're not a member yet uh there will be links in the chat uh box to become a member and i encourage you to check out our website www.fbri.org so without further ado let me turn it over to bob kaplan thank you raleigh and likewise uh stephen cotkin a professor at princeton needs little introduction he's justly famous for three monumental uh volumes on the life of joseph stalin that makes him a historian on the history of so communism and also very knowledgeable on with a sense of historical periods moving from one to the other that the ground is always moving under our feet whether we realize it or not well as a young reporter in eastern europe um i i assumed at the time that the cold war would never end because i was young and i had not known any previous errors well it did end i was wrong and that brings me to china and the history of the of the communist party of china is it just another passing dynasty what will the next phase of chinese history bring us i'll turn it over to steve to get us started thank you so much bob i thank fpri uh for the honor of the invitation it's a remarkable venue uh whether in historic philadelphia or now in princeton or in new york or now on zoom uh it's always been a great platform and it's an honor as i said for me to be on again with fpri i'm gonna make a three-part presentation today uh the first part is going to be about how china is communist then i'm going to talk about the vulnerabilities and then i'm going to talk about what a post-communist china could potentially look like and how we might get there so a part what how china is actually communist we're seeing a lot of bashing of china by using the communist label and it's taking on a a political tinge one of the great things about fpri is it's a non-partisan venue for discussing foreign policy and so my assertion that china is not i'm sorry my assertion that china is communist is not a political one it's an analytical one and i've been making it all these years including the years where people forgot that china was communist and so how is it communist and why is the support well it has a leninist party structure the leninist party structure is one of the greatest inventions in the history of totalitarianism and it's not just a regular one-party authoritarianism we have many one-party authoritarianisms where the political party is more or less a sham it's just a vehicle for a certain personal regime and for certain corruption to flourish within that particular regime this is something different this is where the communist party is inside every organization of the country every part of the economy it's in the school system as well as the bureaucracy the party is a shadow institution which mirrors every other institution but ensures communist party control so inside the state bureaucracy there are party officials inside the school system as i said there are party officials inside the military party officials this leninist structure you can even see in the private economy where there are communist party cells inside private privately owned companies more so now even than just a few years ago as they revive the leninist party structure this is very very important because it enables a degree of communist party control over the country's institutions social life and economy which is very different from a garden variety single party authoritarianism that doesn't permit other parties to organize or that permits them only within very narrow limits so that they can never threaten the regime this is much more pervasive and much more powerful than that there is something called the nomenclature or the list of appointments in order to be the director of a state-owned factory in order to be a provincial official in order to actually achieve any significant career position even at the university you need to be approved by the party you need to be on the list of approved appointments known as the nomenclatura this is a very powerful tool for centralization and as i said for political economic and social control the second piece of how china is communist is yes there's an ideological component we have been very dismissive of communist ideology in china we've said that they're transcended it they're capitalists now they're cynical about any communist ideology they talk about socialism with chinese characteristics wink wink and they don't really mean it however that's also not true it turns out that there are components to the ideology that remain powerful and that it's very important for us to understand if you think about the left in the long sweep of the modern epoch it's got three planks one is anti-capitalism one is anti-imperialism and one is anti-statism the anti-statist plank proved to be a failure because it's very hard to impose anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism without the state as your main instrument so for the most part anarchists and syndicalists have been squeezed out of power in the few instances when they've come to power and they've also been erased largely from the history of the left the plank still arises every now and then we'll see it with some elements of defund the police for example and other expressions where the state is seen as inherently evil or inherently captive captive by malevolent interests but for the most part we're talking about anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism on the left there's a little bit of a civil war that flares sometimes very severely between those who are anti-capitalism full stop and will buck no compromise on getting rid of markets and private property and those who are in favor of just regulating redistribution and regulation of markets and private property they don't like capitalism but they understand that they need to accommodate to capitalism and that they should regulate it make it in their minds fairer more just but not eliminate markets and private property this civil war on the left are you a full leninist or you are a revisionist are you someone who believes that capitalism needs to be eliminated or are you someone who believes it needs to be ameliorated because it has problems this civil war on the left is a global phenomenon and it plays out inside communist china today as it did across europe uh in the time when lenin was alive and even before lenin what's important about this ideology is it's linked to the leninist structure and communism turns out to be an all-or-nothing proposition you cannot be half communist in fact when you begin to open up a communist system when you begin to liberalize a communist system you actually are beginning to destroy your communist system unwittingly we saw this in hungary in 56 we saw this in czechoslovakia in 68 and we saw it under gorbachev as well because if you say let's democratize the communist party and have discussion inside the party some people will say well i don't like the communist party i want to have other parties besides communism and so there's no way to stop a liberalization of communism at a point that's stable once you open up politically it begins to unravel and you lose the communist party's monopoly which as i said is an all-or-nothing proposition the communist chinese understand this very well now they have pivoted sometimes on the anti-capitalism many people inside china including top party officials have embraced capitalism in part they have not pivoted on the anti-imperialism and the the so-called century of humiliation and the idea that china has been mistreated by outside powers never mind that more chinese were killed by chinese rulers than any outside powers in chinese history anyhow so this is my first proposition that china is a communist system and that this has very considerable real practical implications for us understanding the possibilities and limits of that system let me get to my second point the vulnerability ironically the area that we thought was dead the area that we thought was cynical the area that we thought we didn't have to pay attention to ideology is the area of greatest vulnerability with a communist regime and that vulnerability comes in two parts one some people really are marxists and they really do believe that china has gone too far in liberalizing the economy and allowing legal markets and private property to a certain extent if you've read jude blanchett's book on the new red guards you will see that is a very significant part of the chinese landscape today the people who are adherents to communist ideology in its purest form but even a greater threat to the regime is reform communism and reform communism is a threat because it's naive once again it says that if you open up the system democratize the system you can improve its function you can make a one-party system better more responsive to the needs of the people allowing internal debate allowing possibly even public debate the problem with this proposition for the chinese communist regime and why it's vulnerable is that there is no reform equilibrium there is no point at which you begin a reform and then you reach a stable equilibrium when you open up politically you unravel the system or you have to stop the opening up and crack down again because as i said communism is an all-or-nothing monopoly proposition and you cannot be half communist if you lose the party's monopoly right the entire regime unravels and so this vulnerability reform communism is very well understood by the current chinese regime because they've studied their chinese communist history and they've studied their global communist district all right let me get to point number three which is the landscape of post-communism and then try to bring this all together uh with a concluding statement we have a lot of historical cases now we have a full picture of the landscape of post-communism across much of eurasia and it looks like we can discern general patterns when you lose a communist regime once again by this unwitting opening up on the political side which gives you a vision of reformed communism that is an auto liquidation unintentionally we see that the end product the point that they reach is a kind of xenophobic ultranationalist authoritarian right-wing regime we see this for example in putin's russia we see it throughout central asia we see it in much of eastern europe even hungary poland we see it in southeastern europe with the post yugoslav regimes we see everywhere not an identical regime we don't see everything being exactly the same but we see a pattern where they've gone from a communist monopoly to a more amorphous party of power usually with a personalistic regime usually with rampant corruption where they've stolen the property and they have a lock on the economy in addition to the politics where they ramp up the xenophobia and the ultranationalism and the enemies whether that's internal enemies like liberals gays jews roma external enemies like the great satan the united states george soros or you fill in the blank right we see a pattern here and that pattern is an authoritarian replacement of communism which has some version of markets and private property they've given up the communist economics because it's much better for the elites to own the property rather than just to manage it and we see redistribution among the elites rampant corruption among the elites and so we see a pattern that we might see in the case of china as well should this regime at some point end for whatever reason either internal implosion which has been the case across most of eurasia or because of external uh pressure and so what this means is if you want to go from communism a communist regime with a leninist structure and a certain ideological framework that has not disappeared even though it's gotten very hollow if you want to go from that to putin or from that to orban or from that to fill in the blank you have a problem and the problem is gorbachev that's what's in the middle between your current regime and china and what they might be satisfied with that is to say a hyper-nationalist chinese authoritarian regime that was based on traditional values ownership of the property and was not vulnerable to dissolution because of the one-party monopoly so the chinese communist regime has studied this history they know it at least as well as i do they teach it at the party school xi jinping speaks about this in public frequently as do other top officials this is not something they're going to let happen to themselves they're not going to let a gorbachev politically liberalize that system because they know the outcome nor are they going to let the ultra marxists regain power to undo the private economy completely and that's because they need the private economy to generate the growth and the jobs the gdp growth and the jobs come from the private sector at the same time the private sector is a threat to them because it's an alternative source of power it's an alternative source of wealth and independence and so you see in china an opening on the economic side and then a fear that they've opened too much on the economic side and trying to strangle the private sector again by having the state-owned economic sector expand and also by inserting communist control through party into the private sector you see this now proliferating across the private sector making sure that communist officials are on the boards of private companies for example and giving contracts to state-owned companies at private companies expense and having the banking sector make loans to the state-owned economy rather than to the private sector you see a tremendous worry over the dynamism of the private sector because it is a threat to communist party monopoly at the same time they cannot strangle the private sector completely because then they lose the economic dynamism the growth and the jobs and so this refusal to engage in political liberalism because it's suicide and this back and forth like an accordion on the economic liberalization more less more less this is the dynamic we've now had in china for some period of time because to repeat it's a communist regime and so the other side of this is not necessarily a less competitive problem for the united states the other side of this is not necessarily a country which will become an ally of the united states a non-communist or post-communist china is still a challenge for the united states the societal dynamism the economic dynamism and the nationalism will all still be there in fact they're there now one of the things you see in the current communist regime is the post-communist political possibilities are already rampant inside the existing structures they need to maintain the communist monopoly yes because it's all about the survival of this regime but at the same time they're filling up some of the hollowness of the ideology to retain the leninist political structure they're filling up some of the hollowness of the ideology with a post-communist style xenophobic ultranationalist ideological political uh proliferation and so china is a challenge for us even in a post-communist light it's not the communist regime itself that's the challenge for us in fact my argument today is that the communist regime is the challenge for china because it's limiting how much private economic activity they will allow and it's inherently unstable because it doesn't permit accountability and political opening without liquidation the challenge for the united states is china the spectacular achievements of china in our lifetime going from the maoist self-destruction and per capita gdp in the low hundreds to a post ten thousand dollar plus even at nominal rates of exchange per capita gdp with the second biggest economy in the world is an incredible achievement very very impressive and that's not going away and that is something we will have to confront here in the united states whether or not the communist regime survives this dilemma that it has of not being able to open up politically without destroying itself and worrying about how much it can open up economically also without undermining itself anyway that's my message today china is a challenge and the communism is a challenge for the chinese bob we're back to you right yes um i think that china is the idea that china is somehow going to be easier to deal with exactly as you suggest in a post-communist era is is is nonsense i mean russia was not easier to deal with after um you know after communism fell and so were a number of other places but i think what we need to do is we these are large internal forces that we cannot stop um you know there already is an ideological component to our uh conflict with china china's has gone from being an elite issue to a popular issue in the united states but i think what we need to do is and this is what diplomacy and geopolitics are all about steve it's about dialing down the temperature if we can now so the first thing the biden administration needs to do is not to make concessions to china but to try to get the us and china from a pre-cuban missile crisis situation to a post-cuban missile crisis situation by that i mean before the cuban missile crisis there were no test ban treaties no hotlines um you know not the regular cemetery that happened in the 70s no dayton the cuban missile crisis showed both powers that just made both powers stare into the abyss and they didn't like what they saw so they drew parameters around the cold war some rules of the road some way to keep the cold war from becoming a hot war and that's something that the biden administration needs to do after the disorganized craziness of the trump white house it needs to say we've got these difficulties with you let's set some rules of the road um you know so that the chances of getting into an accidental hot conflict in the south china sea or in the east china sea are less lessen those chances um so that we can have a tense dialogue without and and and at the same time prevent the ultimate catastrophe in geopolitics which is great power war uh you know that's what so i think that's where the biden administration has to go not towards concessions not to dialing up automatically the ideological component because that's already there and we need to tone it down and to try to make the conflict less existential after all we we we conducted negotiations and had agreements with with communist china before under mao with the soviet union under brezhnev um this is where we should be headed not solving this problem but but you know but setting a few markers and rules of the road so that the parties are less likely to go from cold conflict to hot conflict and again i don't want to over over emphasize this cold war element because it's happening under an entirely different context than the original cold war um uh was so i think that's where we have to go um um at this point um with um with china because and it will be difficult because as i said before it's no longer an elite issue that elites argue about um you know it's become a popular issue because of trade and other things um so why don't i uh stop it there and you know and steve do you have any remarks about that so um the the idea that we have to coexist with china is clear they're not going away russia has collapsed twice and is still there the tsarist regime collapsed the soviets collapsed and they're still there but one could say something similar about iran and all other ancient civilizations they occupy the same planet and we do need to co-exist the issue of restoring deterrence and restoring balance in the relationship and then having diplomacy and dialogue simultaneous with that one of my problems with the hawks is not that they're hawks but that they don't have a strong enough diplomatic component if you're going to apply deterrence restore deterrence and apply pressure what is it going to get you what are you looking to achieve what's the diplomacy part of it where you get to a better situation as you outlined it managing the differences managing the tensions one of the thing i don't things i don't like about the doves is they're all in favor of diplomacy but they don't understand leverage they don't understand the need to restore deterrence sometimes and to apply pressure in order to negotiate from a position of relative strength rather than relative weakness and so for me i sign on to everything you just said with the proviso that we restore the deterrence and we store the diplomacy simultaneously yeah um i would just add that based on your three points the next 20 years in china could be far more tumultuous and interesting than the last 20 years because as china creates a larger middle class middle classes are notoriously ungrateful and they hold government to a higher standard they have wants and needs and desires and complaints that they voice that peasants never did when under subsistence agriculture so i think china becomes harder to govern rather than easier to govern in the years ahead despite all the electronic digital behavior monitor monitoring that's going on um raleigh why don't i turn it over to you for to monitor the q a okay thank you thanks thanks again for a fascinating discussion we have a lot of questions uh first one from joseph de la penna who says i was excited about the end of communism when the ussr collapsed yet remind myself of the history of buddhism it died in the land of its birth more than a millennium ago yet it continues to live on to thrive and to heavily influence china and other other countries any comments on that so when we talk about the collapse of communism in the soviet union it has those two components one is the political structures uh the communist party held the union together the soviet union was actually a federation the communist party was not a federation the loss of the party the elimination of the party's monopoly also eliminated the control over the federation it became voluntary and it dissolved and then you see traditional values uh traditional russian identity as well as westernization and liberal ideas compete in post-communist russia as well as the other successor states around eurasia i expect in china something very similar i expect a grab bag of competing values which are rooted in chinese history and revival of them including buddhism but not only as a package to find a usable past and a usable set of values that can be taught in schools and that can be shared by a nation now will there be a democratic version of this or an authoritarian version of this where there's the freedom to practice certain religious tendencies there's the freedom not to believe in certain ideas that's always the big question when authoritarian regimes give way are we going to get yet another authoritarian regime to replace them unfortunately there are very few cases where an authoritarian regime has given way to a stable prosperous peaceful rule of law constitutional order right taiwan is one of the great examples and taiwan is probably the single most important piece of real estate in east asia right now for that very reason yeah i i would just add though that um you know something an overarching um real reality of this discussion is that there's an assumption an assumption among the american elite and people that somehow china will be easier to deal with it when it's not communist and it could be the reverse it could be even harder to deal with if it's nationalistic xenophobic and feels itself under siege and dials up nationalism in the south china sea and in other places remember we probably had an easier time dealing with janos khadar the liberal communist or so-called when he when he ruled hungary than we have with victor orban and we certainly you know have more problems with putin one could argue than we had with late brezhnev or early gorbachev etc so don't you know we shouldn't assume that for that you know that there's some sort of um you know uh you know theological end point where china will suddenly become friendly and we will get over this problem and we will move to a new phase of history that is easier um you've sort of answered some of our questions in here but i'll ask them because they're little pieces of them that you might want to comment on first jj malutus asked would a nationalist post-communist regime in china be more dangerous than a communist structured regime to the western world would it be easier for the u.s to deal with a strictly nationalist or quasi-communist regime and i'll also go down and add to that um uh carlos rivers asks if prc commits military aggression no excuse me i'll there was another one that was more on um u.s relationships sorry uh william borham what are the chances of china miscalculating u.s resolve and strength and tumbling into the world and we also have a ques uh anonymous attendee asks uh while taiwan was never communist it did see democratic transition from one party authoritarian regime to multi-party democracy and the president li tung we essentially pushed the country towards democracy rather than russia like authoritarian regime is it possible a similar lee-like figure in china could potentially push china in a similar direction and i will add again how would the u.s deal with this um well let me start off by saying that what i i fear is an explicitly nationalist regime in china more so than now because the pro some of the problems we have with china china have to do with territory with taiwan with xinjiang uh with other with its treatment in hong kong and an explicitly more nationalist regime than the current communist regime you know could be more militant in those areas especially if it felt itself weaker under siege because remember there are examples in history when it's weak regimes that get into war rather than strong regimes uh the turkish invasion of cyprus occurred was driven by a very weak minority uh left left of center uh socialist prime minister bulan echevid precisely because he was under siege from his political opponents on the right um and was driven into this so this is my fear you know of a more explicitly nationalist regime uh we have an interesting question from tristan matthise uh who asked why should a post-communist china remain a single country and not instead break up into rivaling states during as it did during most of its history would wouldn't this be a reduced threat to the west i would just say that china is not only a threat china is not only a challenge china is also an opportunity to repeat they have a gigantic talent pool they have fantastic universities and laboratories they have a very dynamic society an entrepreneurial people a dynamic market sector inside their their country they have a large diaspora they contribute to american universities you know across the continent yes some of them are involved in activities which are illegal like for example theft of intellectual property and that needs to be prosecuted in in the cases where it's happening but china is not only a threat or not even predominantly a threat necessarily the biggest threat to the united states is the united states we're the only country that can undermine our way of life our political system our standard of living all that we've achieved no other country has the power to do that to us we alone have that power over ourselves and so in managing the tensions and relationship with china and avoiding the hot war there have to be areas of cooperation because they're beneficial to the united states the last 40 years of u.s china policy have been very naive but they have not been without benefits to the american people myself included and others on this uncle and so i want to see a smarter application of policy so that the challenges and the opportunities are both present in our policy that doesn't mean we go back to the naivete but it also doesn't mean that we push confrontation to the point where we back them into a corner and or we fail to take advantage of all that they have to offer to the world not just to the united states but in their immediate neighborhood this is why it's much more difficult to imagine a successful china policy than the containment policy we had vis-a-vis the soviet union right when you're one percent of global trade which is what the soviets were and when your global trade is only hydrocarbons which is what the soviets were and if you are excluded from the world economy the others don't lose very much in fact let's buy your oil and gas but otherwise not allow technology transfer into your country legally right here with china it's a much more difficult proposition obviously and so we cannot get into a situation where we imagine that we're going to be able to contain and hold china down that's a self-defeating proposition and it also feeds a politics inside china that we don't want to encourage having said that i i do think taiwan is a critical case study for us what happened in taiwan over the course of a long period of time is the taiwanese taiwanese people democratize their country we didn't do that for them they did that for themselves and the way they did that was that the ruling party lost its monopoly and didn't use force to try to hold on to its monopoly that's something we cannot really determine inside communist china if the communists willingly relinquish their monopoly that would be a way to move from the current communist regime to a post-communist regime potentially democratizing and having political competition pluralism although the rule of law question would stick out in a really big way because taiwan had rule of law in market terms over the economy before it had full rule of law in the political sphere something that china is nowhere near right now but you know if you look at the challenges to the regime in china if you look at for example manchuria or mongolia they overcame those challenges with massive assimilation and culture and migration there is very little manchurian mongolian separate identity flourishing even in those historic regions because they've been overrun by han chinese settlers that was less possible in the case of xinjiang in tibet it has the chinese have tried through han migration and settlement to pacify these regions but they're not as attractive to farmers to settlers xinjiang and tibet as manchuria and mongolia were and so they're much more difficult for the chinese regime to assimilate and in fact there were periods in history when they were not part of china for for important periods of time but it's the political challenges it's the hong kong and the taiwan that are the deepest challenges for this regime because those are places that speak the chinese language and partake in larger chinese culture but our democratic rule of law as a challenging political system that's essentially indigenous the chinese communist regime is undoing the rule of law democratic hong kong because it is a threat as an alternative model to the mainland chinese communist monopoly they would be keen to do the same with taiwan and it's up to us we have much more leverage much more opportunity in the case of taiwan to protect an alternative indigenous rule of law democratic system there than we did in the case of hong kong hong kong is not over yet and we shouldn't give up but taiwan is a critical place for us to make a stand to be less ambiguous to be more supportive but as bob said not in provocative ways that elicit the opposite behavior in beijing that we're looking for um i would just add that the chinese are going to be looking for early signals from the biden administration whether there will be a continual debate among american elites about whether we should or should not defend taiwan in the case of war or whether the biden administration at some point says we will defend taiwan it's in our national interest it's uh uh you know like we defended uh berlin during the cold war um kind of the chinese will be looking for a signal on that because this is a debate that we shouldn't have after the china after the mainland chinese start some sort of aggression against taiwan i mean this debate's been going on for some time and unless it's resolved in a way that uh where we recognize the importance of taiwan it's gonna it's really gonna weaken our leverage throughout east asia from japan to australia i should point out to amplify what bob just said that the republicans in the senate are very strongly in favor of defending taiwan and that it's not solely the biden administration the executive which will have a voice here and so that's going to be important in the american political system that we get on side and build a consensus over taiwan and not be across purposes domestically i should also add that the status quo in taiwan works for us we're pro-status quo it doesn't work for the communist regime in beijing because they were just as naive as we were we thought that if we integrated communist china economically it would become more like us politically it would evolve in our direction in fact it didn't the chinese communist regime looked at taiwan and said if we integrate with them economically they'll want to join with us politically and in fact the opposite has happened the deep economic integration has coincided with a deepening of separate taiwanese identity not chinese identity on the island however that's a problem for beijing not for us we are pro-status quo and we should be unambiguously pro-status quo it's the chinese who are revisionist on taiwan and they're the ones who are talking about claiming taiwan by force we don't want to change the status quo we want to maintain the status quo that taiwan does not get incorporated into the mainland china by force uh we have a lot of questions and not a lot of time so i want to uh turn two topics first is economic the the the second is human rights but uh jerry rubinstein asks a question he says from an economic point of view the perils between china and prior communist regimes failed to recognize the power of china as the world's marketplace represents a place of 1.4 billion people a marketplace that corporations cannot ignore the new trade agreement in asia represents a third of the world's population uh if china does have a growing middle class it will become a world economic powerhouse how do we in the u.s face this potential new competitor on the world scene for example will the u.s dollar remain as a reserve currency if not what are the implications and i'm going to add another question from mark walters who says you make a great point about physical conflict but what about monetary conflict is there such a thing as mutual assured destruction in an economic sense that we can address with our tools of power yeah um what i would say is keep in mind even were china democracy a stable democracy given its size and its cultural and economic dynamism it would still be a competitor probably uh just think about trade tensions with germany which only has about under 100 million people china has 1.3 or what at 1.4 billion people are or whatever so these problems are not going away i think um monetary policy like military policy will be determined above all by our political um uh you know uh the federal reserve or whatever is not gonna go down an independent provocative path on china without coordination you know with you know with with congress and and the executive uh on on that field you know it just it probably just won't do that especially in an era where the federal reserve is more politicized and under more pressure from the other two branches of government and from the popular mindset than it ever was before well china's economic dynamism its wealth is the best argument i've heard for us to invest in ourselves and compete let's invest in our human capital let's invest in our infrastructure let's invest in our good governance let's raise our game let's compete with china china doesn't have a lot of friends china's a lonely power authoritarian regimes don't do alliances very well because they require trust the united states has got more alliances than any country has ever had in history those alliances require care they require reshaping in some cases they can't be left on autopilot but that's a very powerful instrument for us one of the great things about the trump administration and its disruption has been that it's raised a lot of questions that were either implicit or dormant and it also showed us what the issues are and in some ways what our strengths are or need to be in addressing those issues and so trump has changed the conversation in part it hasn't been trump alone but he's played a big role in putting competition with china squarely in front of the american public but how we gonna do that and the answer is not the way that he did it the answer may be better than the way he did it uh but he was right to put that on the agenda and so once again let's not be afraid this we're the united states of america right we invented silicon valley we invented biotech we're there with the vaccine we have all the capacity we need to compete with china our political system is superior to them the dollar is far superior to the chinese currency who is going to hold trillions of dollars in chinese reserves right now who in their right mind is going to trade the dollar and the deep capital markets of the united states for the chinese ones in the immediate future very few people are going to do that and benefit and prosper from them we have tremendous assets we have tremendous capabilities china is doesn't scare me what scares me is when we forget about our own advantages and we undermine ourselves i'm ready to compete with china all across the board avoiding the hot war like rob said you know what the beauty of a cold war is it's not a hot war uh questions on human rights uh we've already talked a little bit about hong kong but of course the uyghurs uh comes to our attention as a human rights issue and david graf asks what leverage does the u us have in getting china to reduce its human rights abuses um i question the degree of leverage we have i'm worried rather i should say i'm worried about it i first went to xinjiang in 1994 interviewing people there and i can tell you the atmosphere was awful it was very intense there was hatred of han chinese was expressed openly and since then and the chinese policy has simply been to um to gradually eat away at their culture while overwhelming them with han migrants into the into the cities of xinjiang like urum kashgar and other places i was there as recently as three years they've taken all the turkic uigor muslims in kashgar and put them in into apartment buildings um which are not very nice and they're just trying to control and eat away at their culture to erase their culture in the way that a man should erase their individu their cultural identity in the way the chinese have been able to do with uh manchurians and and inner mongolians however um the united states being the united states is going to bring this issue up at the table but they're smart we shouldn't demand any dem any public declarations of improvement on the part of the chinese government we should be you know we should be satisfied with with with agree with an improvement in this situation without public statements about it so the way we might be able to get them to move on the issue provided we don't want to take the credit publicly for having them move on the issue um that's that's the best that i could say because the the uh the regime sees the uyghurs as a kind of an in-kuwait threat the uygours don't have to the degree of the tibetans the kind of global elite leadership would like the dalai lama has um they're more unformed more prone to eruption or explosion in the case of an environmental catastrophe um um so there's more of uh a more of a and also the wigors are muslims um uh and that that's another thing that that scares the um that scares the elites in beijing so it's it's going to be a hard issue to get beijing to move on but in the context of talks private talks where we don't demand a public refutation of what the of what beijing has done we might be able to get some movement um have a comment and a question from scotty scottsdale first of all he says a bravo performance and we have several other comments like that um he asks is there a potential for a struggle for prominence between the ccp and the pla and i would broaden that are there fissures within some of the the the power uh the power elites in china yeah excellent questions all of them i wish i had the more time to be able to answer them at the length that they deserve the pla serves the communist regime this is the thing about communist regimes the institutions are not state for the country therefore preservation of the regime and so that is a potential source of conflict and tension if the interests of the regime and the interests of the nation as perceived by the elites in the army diverge and if preservation of the regime comes at the interests that they that army men perceive as more chinese interests or chinese state interests or chinese nation interests let me just say that there is debate in china it's not always public debate but there is significant debate among the elites about whether xi jinping's hard line abroad is serving chinese interests about whether the relationship with the us has gone off the rails not because of the us but because of chinese actions about whether the forward position vis-a-vis other countries like for example punishment of australia the punishment of south korea before that punishment of norway whether those served chinese interests in the long term just like xinjiang doesn't enhance the reputation of the beijing ruling group either at home in with some constituencies and certainly abroad so many other issues that we regard as misbehavior or miscalculation generate debate inside china for us once again no pygmalion right we're not going to make communist china into america right by putting on new clothes and teaching different manners in a kind of george bernard shaw pygmalion fashion here we are instead going to manage the challenges and seize the opportunities so that we don't have a hot war but we're not afraid to prosecute a cold war as provided it is in american interests rather than solely to punish someone we perceive as a threat we still have 19 20 open questions so clearly we're going to have to have a kaplan cotkin 2.0 and have you both back so before i close out any final comments uh bob or stephen um i would only say that there was a time 10 or 15 years ago where where china had friends in washington it had friends in the media it had friends in congress it if they were not exactly friends but people you know people's level of excitement or dislike about china was very toned down and it was nuanced china has no friends in washington now really um the media has turned against it congress has turned against and in fact it's one of the two things that one of the the main thing that nancy pelosi and donald trump agreed with agreed on was the hard line against china um so um that's going to be a challenge going forward in terms of the biden administration if it seeks to carve out a more nuanced policy i should say that they've also lost the american business community yeah which used to go very much lobbying in favor of a softer line vis-a-vis china that would evolve and and losing the american business community was a very significant self-inflicted wound that beijing inflicted on itself let me conclude however by saying let's remember there's australia let's remember that there's japan let's remember that there's india let's remember that we're not alone let's remember that there's a transatlantic relationship that has been cultivated over decades in bipartisan fashion let's remember that there are all regions of the world the middle east africa south america which want to benefit from china's dynamism and entrepreneurialism but also don't want to fall under china's sway that's our opportunity to seize at this moment and that opportunity must coincide with being a better example and a better as well as a better friend to all of those countries that would like to see us engage more over this china challenge challenge plus opportunity reinvestment in america remember our friends fix those relationships and not be against everything china does but figure out how to live with china on a single planet thank you bob thank you steven that was a fascinating discussion and we have many comments and with apologies to to those who ask wonderful questions but we just don't have time um so thank you to our viewers thank you for your support if you're not a supporter remember please consider becoming one and we wish you well take care be safe during these difficult times

Channel: Foreign Policy Research Institute

Views: 23,611

Rating: 4.7124181 out of 5

Keywords: China, Robert Kaplan, Communism, USSR, Communism in China, Capitalism, Economics, post-communist, Stephen Kotkin, FPRI

Id: bV7PuqlMOzI

Length: 63min 23sec (3803 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/devilslittlehelper]

TL;DW..?