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Speaker 3Welcome to the Cynical Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, foreign relations, economics, and society. Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I'm Kaiser Guo, coming to you this week from my home in Beijing. Listeners, please support my work by becoming a paying subscriber at CynicalPodcast.com. I know there are a lot of sub-stacks out there, and yes, they start to add up, but this one is very worthwhile. In addition to Cynica, you also get great content from partners like Trivium and the China Global South Project, and you get Jay Carter's This Week in China's History. So, let's get started. Please do subscribe so I can continue to bring you these conversations and lots more. What does China want? It's the question that never seems to go away. It feels at times like it's the question underneath nearly every other question in the discourse on China, and every year, somebody takes another serious run at it. My guest today, Ryan Haas, has just undertaken one of the better efforts in recent memory, an essay in the new issue of China Leadership Monitor called China's Great Power Vision, comes into focus, which argues that the 2020s may be remembered as the decade when Beijing finally laid its cards on the table, a vision for an international political order stripped of what some would call that order's original liberal core and rebuilt around sovereign equality and the global majority. Ryan then asks whether China is actually willing to pay for it. He's also just written a shorter piece for Brookings, where he works, that couldn't be written. It couldn't be more timely, what would Xi Jinping do in Washington for a state visit later this month. The piece is called Why Beijing Isn't Taking the Bait with Trump. President Trump has given Beijing an awful lot of what it has wanted from an American president for a long time now, 75 years. But Xi Jinping has responded with kind of a poker face. Ryan explains why. Ryan Haas is director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. The excellent, excellent Beijing Brief podcast. From 2013 to 2017, during President Obama's second term, he was director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia on the National Security Council. He's someone I've come to rely on for exactly the kind of analysis these two pieces represent. Sensitive to, but unsentimental about Beijing. Sensitive to, yet also unsentimental about Washington. And really grounded in what Chinese strategists are actually saying, rather than what we're saying. What we'd like to imagine they're saying. He's been on the show many, many times before, and it's always a pleasure and an inspiration. Ryan, welcome back to Seneca, and good evening to you.
Speaker 4Well, thank you, Kaiser. It's really, it's a pleasure and a privilege for me to be with you.
Speaker 3So, Ryan, let's jump right in, and let's start with the framing. What does China want has been asked so often that it's, you know, almost become a genre unto itself. And I have heard answers to it that seem, you know, plausible enough, and others that sound completely unhinged, or are based, as far as I can tell, just on mere projection. Before we get into your answer, what do you make of what's been suggested by major voices in the discourse focusing on the U.S. to date? Some of the answers, you know, to me, don't seem that far off. What's out there?
Speaker 4Well, I think that there's a range of views in Washington about this question, what does China want? I think some of them, as you suggested, are ideological in their orientation. Some of them are rooted in a view that only one country can lead, so if China rises, it must, therefore, displace the United States and assume the roles and responsibilities that the United States has held for 75 years. I'm arguing something different. And to be honest, Kaiser, this has sort of been a long torture journey. When I was a Foreign Service officer in the embassy in Beijing in 2008 to 2012, one of the things that I was asked to explore was exactly this question. And so, back then, you know, I would go to the policy planning department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And I would go to the universities and ask Wang Jise and Yan Shui-Tong and go to Kicker and talk to Da Wei and Yuan Peng and all these folks. And back then, there was sort of this question in Washington about whether there's some secret strategy, you know, locked in a vault deep in Zhongnanhai that the Chinese are meticulously following to assert their dominance on the world stage. And the answer I came away with back then is, it's not there. You know, it just doesn't exist. Because the answer I came away with back then is, it's not there. Because they were more consumed by more proximate issues and more proximate debates, such as whether hide-and-buy still applies.
Speaker 3Right, right, right. So, you had ruled one thing out, that there was no 100-year marathon plan. Yeah. Some of the answers that are on offer, like I said, they don't seem too far off. I mean, there was that formulation that Jessica Chen Weiss popularized, you know, China wants a world safe for autocracy. There was this Rand report from, I think, 2017 or 2018 that described China as a kind of selectively revisionist state, not interested in. hegemony beyond the region, not interested in, you know, overturning the apple cart. That seems to align pretty well with you, no?
Speaker 4I think that broadly aligns with where I ended up based upon the, you know, the research and the evidence that I found. But, Kaiser, I think that there are two ways of getting at the answer to this question. One is knowing what conclusion you want and working backwards to fill in the blanks. And the other is trying to take the evidence as it comes and use it to let it guide you. towards a hypothesis or theory. I'm hoping that this work falls in the latter category because it was really intended to try to provide as clear and accurate a reflection of my understanding of Chinese strategic thought as possible.
Speaker 3Yeah, so I would say the most common answer I would hear was one that was, you know, rooted, I guess, admirably, in uncertainty that we just can't really say for sure. But you're saying the ambiguity is now mostly gone. China has moved, in your phrase, from participant to architect, would you have answered all that differently five years ago? I mean, and if so, what has actually changed to make the vision more legible now? Is it that Beijing has said new things or that it started, you know, saying old things with a confidence that it didn't have before?
Speaker 4What's changed? I think the principal thing that has changed is that the Chinese have just become much more open, direct, and consistently repetitive about articulating what type of world they want to see emerge. And this is a stark contrast to, you know, when I was chasing this beat as a junior political officer in the embassy, you know, over a decade ago. So I think that part of this is born out of a certain degree of growing confidence that China has the capacity to not just react, but to shape the world that they want. And I think part of it is born out of a recognition that nothing's going to be handed to China, so they got to go out and make what they want. And so I think those two things are coming together in very visible ways.
Speaker 3You're pretty careful to say that China isn't trying to overturn, the whole international order. I mean, it wants to hollow out maybe the liberal core of the political order. Well, keeping the parts of the system it benefits from, it has benefited from. That's very much like what Ian Johnston said about China sort of inhabiting these multiple orders. We often hear that China's vision is, you know, revisionist. But if the replacement principle is actually sovereign equality and non-interference, respect for each country's chosen system, no bullying of the weak by the strong, that sounds to me less like a new order or revisionist order than just a return to the letter of the UN Charter, you know, back in 1945. So I guess cheekily I ask, is Beijing revisionist or could one see it, dare I say, as actually kind of restorationist?
Speaker 4That's an interesting question. I mean, first of all, any day that I get put in the same sentence as Ian Johnston feels like a win. So I'll just take that. But Ian Johnston was very careful, as you pointed out, to observe that there are actually eight international orders. What I'm talking about is one of them, which is the international political order, which is where I think China most desires to make changes. Is it restorationist? I think to a certain degree it is, but there also is a revisionist thread to it, which is a belief that in 1945, when the international system was created, it gave disproportionate weight to a small number of Western democratic countries. And now in 2026, the distribution of power has shifted and therefore, you know, influence and direction over the international system should reflect that. And I think that that is also at the heart of this project that the Chinese are on.
Speaker 3Yeah. Part of the change, of course, is this idea that America has in some sense declined. And the American decline thesis has quite deep roots. I mean, you trace it back to the kind of dialectical and historical materialism that every senior cadre has been drilled in. And then there's your figure one in this piece, which really stopped me. When you search for Meiguo Shuai Luo in the CNKI database, it went from 138 in 2021. You know, you found that mention of Meiguo Shuai Luo 138 times just five years ago, now only 28 times. You read this as sort of deliberate restraint, Beijing keeping quiet so not to. to provoke Trump, not to, you know, disrupt a trend line that it actually quite likes. How confident are you in that reading? Is there an alternative reading, maybe that the decline talk peaked with the pandemic when, you know, look, everyone was really testy. And then January 6th, when, you know, come on, who wasn't saying Meiguo Shuai Luo? Maybe it's, you know, run its course and Beijing has actually revised its view of how fast America is declining. Because, you know, we do hear. a lot of people in, you know, TG&A, people within the system, warning that we shouldn't be too quick to pronounce the U.S. system in terminal decline.
Speaker 4Yeah. So, look, I think that the hypothesis I put forward is that there is a deliberate restraint on the part of Chinese official media to not rub it in Donald Trump's face that Beijing views the United States in a form of relative decline, not absolute decline, but relative decline compared to China.
Speaker 3Very important distinction, yeah.
Speaker 4There is another hypothesis that we could put forward, which is that the Chinese are simply more confident in their relative position and feel less need to signal to a primarily domestic audience that America is declining because they feel pretty good about the sort of self-evident nature of the redistribution of power in the international system.
Speaker 3There's another phrase that the state think tank Kicker uses for where the relationship is now, and that is strategic stalemate. Sure. A student of Mao will hear echoes of unprotracted war, right? This is the middle phase between strategic defense and strategic counteroffensive. Do you read that echo as intentional? And what does that mean, practically, that Beijing now believes it is at rough parity with the United States? Does parity make China ultimately more cautious because the risks of stumble then get bigger? Or does it make Beijing. More assertive. Yeah.
Speaker 4I mean, I'm curious to hear how you sort of look at this, Kaiser. My own view is that if the term strategic stalemate used by the Ministry of State Security-affiliated think tank Kicker was a coincidence and wasn't intended to sort of graft onto Mao's views of protracted war, it's a hell of a coincidence.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4You know, my suspicion is that it probably is reflective of an internal conversation that's taking place within the party about where China is from sort of, you know, strategic defense to stalemate to offense. And they feel like they've graduated from this defensive crouch to more of a position of parity or the ability to sort of stare down the United States. And look, I understand how the Chinese have reached that conclusion. They have weathered the biggest sort of filmmakers that the United States has to throw over the past eight years, and their development model has not really. wavered or been shaken. They went through the trade war with President Trump in 2025, where tariffs at one point rose all the way up to 145%. And China was the one country in the world that said no, and pushed back and compelled President Trump to retreat. And so based upon those experiences, I understand why the Chinese leadership is reaching a conclusion that they are nearing or at some form of stalemate with the United States.
Speaker 3So is the strategic stalemate just a. About then kind of the, what I would call a mutually assured disruption of symmetrical choke points, you know, our semiconductor tech, their rare earth elements processing, or is this more about, you know, Beijing's overall sense that it's attained kind of parity and comprehensive national power? I guess that matters enormously. Is this just sort of all about just the choke point parity right now, or is this bigger?
Speaker 4I would guess, and I don't know the answer to this, but my. My sense is that this would be more of the latter, that there is a view that this isn't just about, you know, a few widgets that one side can withhold from the other. This is a view about whether or not China can sort of stand toe to toe with the United States and absorb a blow and provide a counterblow. You know, there is a risk that Beijing could overestimate America's weakness and also overestimate their own strength. So we can explore that too. But my sense just sort of, digging into the research is that the Chinese really do believe that they are in a new, relatively stronger position with the United States than they have been in a long time.
Speaker 3So the heart of Beijing's pitch really, Ryan, is that the global majority, you know, another word for the global south of the developing world, the third world, will see China as its champion, the development partner, you know, the provider of clean energy, EVs, the open weight AI models, AI capacity building. But you also note that China's export surge, the sort of failure to shed low value add industries like, you know, textiles and shoes to less developed countries, as you know, the old flying geese model had assumed was going to happen, that this failure is wiping out industries and jobs across the developing world, not just, you know, in Germany or in Detroit, right? We've seen that argument in, for instance, that Fardella and Radchenko piece in Foreign Affairs, that China, you know, is sabotaging the world that enabled its rise. Beijing's answer is to promise to be, you know, the world's market, not just its factory, $8 trillion in imports from developing countries by 2030, that's, it's held out. But do Chinese strategists actually see this contradiction? Is there any way to be, at the same time, the champion of the global majority and the world's unchallenged manufacturing juggernaut?
Speaker 4I think that this is sort of like a fundamental question. We will find the answer to in the next five to 10 years. Because the proposition that the Chinese are making is that, look, the American style of leadership over the past 75 years has sort of a spent force. It's created all this chaos and conflict around the world. As you were saying earlier, let's get back to the fundamentals of the United Nations founding charter. Let's replace what China refers to as hegemonism and power politics with sovereign equality. Let's commit to not interfering inside the government. Let's commit to not interfering inside the internal affairs of other countries. Let's dial back on this emphasis on liberalism and human rights and democracy and universal freedoms. Let's end security blocks and let's just find ways to help each other develop. That's, I think, at the core of the presentation that the Chinese provide to the global majority. Now, the question is, at the same time, if the global economy is as imbalanced as it is now, will the international environment be as receptive to the global economy as it is now? I think that's a good question. Well, I think that the global economy is as receptive to the global economy as it is now.
Speaker 3That's a really big, big question that's been explored in a lot of different venues. James King was on the China Global South podcast and talked about the problem of the $6 toaster. I've been using that metaphor for it. Nobody's going to make a $6 toaster. It's only a China thing. But, you know, when China sells this idea of sovereign equality, maybe it's helped along by Iran and it's helped along by what's happened in Gaza, but it's hurt by Ukraine. Right? There's this credibility problem. The principal says the strong shouldn't bully the weak. And yet, you know, Beijing has refused to be more explicit about Russia's violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. You know, it does, every time it talks about Ukraine, talk about China's commitment to territorial integrity and national sovereignty. And maybe that is meant to signal displeasure, but, you know, it's not really, the message is not coming across. And then there's this year's pressure campaign on Japan. You note that Chinese leaders seem. Perhaps aware, is what you said, that coercion doesn't win converts. Is there an actual argument inside the Chinese foreign policy establishment that you've been able to discern over this issue? Or is coercion simply what a core interest violation will automatically trigger, no matter what the diplomats think?
Speaker 4Yeah, I think this is one of those areas where there's just sort of a tension inside the system, right? I think that at a philosophical level, it's clearly understood amongst the Chinese leadership that this is a rare and unique moment for China to attract. followers to its vision for the future of the nervous system. But there are just occasions where China's leaders get so sort of pissed off by something that is happening that is affecting their core interests that I think that a certain emotion overrides logic and, you know, the Chinese react very strongly. And we're watching that play out with the Philippines, with Japan. There is increasing pressure directed towards Taiwan. And so at some level, I think, on issues that implicate China's sovereignty, the Chinese have one set of rules on, you know, issues further away where the Chinese can afford to be magnanimous and big hearted. They're willing and happy to do so.
Speaker 3Yeah. I feel like the Middle East is a fascinating test case for your theory, because, you know, China rode out the energy shock from the Iran war on diversification, on, of course, electrification, on, you know, pretty substantial petroleum reserves. You've written about this, too. And it presented itself tentatively as the region's peacemaker. You remember the, you know, Tsar. Iran deal before, of course, that that all went down. The Gulf's response, as you read it, as I read it, is, you know, thanks. You're an economic enabler, not a security patron. But my sense of this always has been that Beijing isn't that bothered by that verdict. It's the role that Beijing's chosen, right? It wants to be an economic enabler and wants to avoid being a security patron, right? I mean, isn't that what I'm? They watched America fritter away blood and treasure in the region for, what, 25 years now. And they have concluded that that's exactly how hegemons decline. So thanks, but no thanks. How do you see that?
Speaker 4Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think that the Chinese are very committed and are very disciplined about not allowing themselves to get drawn into other people's problems. And this is a lesson that they took from the Soviet Union, which they felt became overextended the, you know, the latter years before it collapsed. And it's a lesson that they draw from watching the United States, the Middle East, that the United States is draining its power and diverting its attention away from more fundamental issues because it can't find a way to get itself out of these problems. And China determined not to fall into the same trap. Now that comes with a cost. It means that in the Middle East and in other places, China is not seen as being able to deliver the goods when it wants to. And so I think that's a lesson that they draw from watching the It's more rhetorical and, you know, can't we all get along? Can't we find a way to set down our weapons? But limited in what it's willing to do to try to push that process forward.
Speaker 3So, I mean, in your day-to-day life, you encounter people all the time who have a more sort of maximalist interpretation of China's ultimate intentions globally. What do they say when you present them with a case like the Middle East? I mean, if you were to sort of try to have a good faith response, why do they look around the world and they see China shying away from global responsibilities? You know, there's a sort of limit to the amount of global goods they want to put into the world. Trading system, sure, great. You know, a supply chain is great, but not security provider. It seems to me, and of course I'm blinkered and I have my own presuppositions here, but it just doesn't look like China has that appetite. Where do the, does the other side see evidence for more sprawling ambition?
Speaker 4I think if I was going to represent the views of people who have a more dim or dark view of China's ambitions and intentions, it would be around an argument that the Chinese are willing to see Iran fight to its last man. In other words, they're willing to provide tools, weapons, man pads, dual use items to help sustain Iran's ability to continue to bleed the United States, but not willing themselves to get involved in the fight. Same with Russia and Ukraine. The Chinese talk a very high-minded game about universal desire for peace and yet provide Russia with the inputs necessary for Moscow to continue its fight against Ukrainians. And so I think the argument would just be, it's not that China lacks ill intent or anything. It's just that it's using a more nefarious means of trying to drain the United States and others of their power and capacity.
Speaker 3And how do you push back? I mean, I think it was an admirably good articulation in good faith about what some of these folks might say. How would you then push back?
Speaker 4I mean, it's not a fight that I get in often with people, so I don't have a well-rehearsed rebuttal. But Kaiser, I would just say that if that was China's goal, if their goal was to use Iran to weaken and diminish the United States, I think that we would see a lot more than what we do in terms of what China is doing. I don't think that the Chinese are interested in solving President Trump's problem for him. I don't, you know, I would not suggest that. But I also don't think that the Chinese have some five-dimensional chess game at work to get involved in every conflict around the world opposite the United States to try to do harm to America's interests. I just don't think that they are that invested in Iran's, that the fate of the Iranian leadership. I think that they're pretty unsentimental about it. To be honest with you about what happens, the Chinese are hedging their bets with the Saudis, with other Gulf countries. They don't have all their eggs in the Iranian carton, for sure.
Speaker 3Right. In East Asia, the picture is maybe starker. Evan Medeiros' line is that China's policies are generating exactly the reactions that they were designed to prevent. You have Japan and the Philippines now kind of doubling down on the U.S. They're raising their defense budgets. They're coordinating with one another. This isn't a new pattern, it's been happening for some time now. But why does Beijing keep doing this? Is this a learning problem? Is this specific to its immediate neighborhood? Is this a sort of sui generis thing when it comes to Japan? Is it sort of systemic to China? I mean, it's hard to tell because the big boss's approach, if we see it as in producing the very encirclement that he's afraid of, it's kind of hard to tell him that. Or does Beijing simply calculate that regional is a price that's worth paying?
Speaker 4Yeah, I think that the category in Northeast Asia is just sort of a category of its own. I think that China feels very strongly that these are issues that implicate sovereignty and territorial integrity. They're not issues that are up for compromise. And that it's better to just sort of maintain a firm, hard line to try to disincentivize countries from challenging these fundamental interests for China than it is to try to find some middle ground of compromise with these countries. The other thing I think that is at work is there is a sort of hardwired belief in Beijing that if the United States can be compelled to pull back, loosen its presence and the strength of its commitments to these countries, that they will take the cue themselves and also decide to mellow out a little bit in their willingness to challenge China because they'll realize that they're on their own in doing so. So as the United States is flowing resources from Asia to the Middle East, as senior Defense Department officials are moderating and softening their rhetoric on issues related to Taiwan, South China Sea, East China Sea, Japan, etc. I think that the Chinese are learning that sort of trends are beginning to move in their favor. And now's not the time to loosen up or pull back. Now's the time to show strength. And so this is a dynamic that's feeding on itself.
Speaker 3So now maybe there's a central tension in your piece because rhetoric without resources is just an expression of ambition. It's not an actual plan. Your chart in your piece shows China's foreign aid is essentially flat. It's like $4 billion. Even after the Doge cuts, after Trump went after foreign aid, the US foreign aid still sits at about $50 billion annually. BRI policy bank shrunk. Beijing looks to some analysts in China like it's caught between ambition and restraint, to quote you. So I want to ask which it is. Is Beijing's relative parsimony these days, is it a constraint? Is it slowing growth, local debt, deflation, low consumption? Or is it a choice? Is it deliberate refusal to repeat what it sees as America's mistake of underwriting a other people's problems? Maybe it's just making a virtue of necessity. Maybe we're looking at the wrong metrics and it's not foreign aid or BRI, you know, policy bank lending that we should be looking at, but maybe private sector activity under the Belt and Road or, you know, even trade. What are we, where are you at on this?
Speaker 4So Kaiser, I'm so glad you brought this up. I think this is the central riddle for understanding China's sort of global vision right now. It the same time as China is becoming more outspoken and direct in articulating what it wants to see happen, it is not matching its words with deeds. It is not sort of stepping in to underwrite the type of world that it wants to realize. And so this is sort of the great question of the moment, I think. Why? Why is Beijing not doing so? And I don't know if there's a single explanation. I Uh, you know, it's probably. due to the fact that Beijing has a deep belief that sort of taking on other people's problems of their own is not a wise course of action. Part of it probably is that the United States is pulling back on the resources it is providing. So that puts less pressure on China in a comparative sense. I think part of it is also just sort of a recognition that China has a certain economic squeeze at home of its own and sending wheelbarrows of cash abroad while 20% of the population in China is working in the gig economy and the youth unemployment rate is around 20% is probably not a popular thing to do. And so I think it's probably a combination of all of these things, but it most likely will put a bit of a constraint on China's ability to realize its ambitions until and unless it decides to put money where its mouth is.
Speaker 3I guess where I land is that maybe the post-war American model of global leadership, you know, pay through the nose with aid, these, you know, very rigid alliances, you provide these public goods. Is it really the only way to lead? I wonder. I mean, maybe Beijing is trying to figure out a way to lead cheaply through, you know, trade and investment and provision of technology. I mean, I think if you even look at, you know, China's own social welfare model, it's very different than what we've seen in the West. Maybe it's sort of taking some clues. There is this aversion as, you know, famously in Xi Jinping to welfareism, right? He has this kind of like. Tiger father approach to it. So maybe it's a species of that.
Speaker 4It could be that as well. I mean, you know, I think that we're sort of trapped in historical precedent, right? And so traditionally when countries are rising and want to reshape the international political order, they put resources behind those efforts. It could just be that China has a different theory of the case, as you're suggesting. The question will be whether that's the lead that China is trying to offer.
Speaker 3Yeah. At the very beginning, you laid out this zero-sum case that a lot of people think that there can only be one global hegemon. I do not see any reason why that should be the case. Why should there be only one power in the world that's a major provider of public goods? I mean, I think that it's entirely possible.
Speaker 4Can I just offer one view on this, which is that I was very struck watching Xi Jinping go to the SCO summit, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit, which he did, you know, like a week or two after I finished writing this piece. But it sort of made clear for me that the SCO, in a way, is sort of like a testbed and a proving ground for China's vision of how it wants to relate to the world. The SCO is an organization where China is the agenda setter. China is the first among equals. There is a deep consensus amongst the participants on the non-interference in each other's internal affairs and respect for each other's sovereignty. They organize them around what is referred to as the three evils, terrorism, separatism, and extremism. And China doesn't have any security obligations for any of the other members in the organization. And finally, the SCO headquarters is in China. And so I think at a lot of levels, this is the type of organization, the type of structure, the type of way that China relates to other countries that I think that they're very comfortable with and would love to see sort of take root and broaden
Speaker 3out. Ryan, that's the beginnings of a very good essay. And I look forward to reading that one because I think it's a solid thesis. The SCO as the model for China in the world. One last question on this piece before we move to the other one about why Beijing isn't taking the bait with Trump. The Pew Global Attitude Survey finds that people in many countries now view China actually more favorably than the United States. And yet, as you know, there has been no genuine swing toward China in Europe, not in the Middle East or East Asia. What would it actually take for China to fill in? And, you know, obviously, a huge piece of this is just America's misbehavior in the world, Greenland and threats to Canada and all of this. What do you, what do you, do you think that people are over-interpreting the Pew survey results or that maybe China is missing an opportunity or what, what's your take on this?
Speaker 4Well, I think that the, I would not be dismissive of the Pew results. I think that they tell a pretty extraordinary story about how quickly public sentiment has shifted around the world, not just in one country or one region, but literally around the world in the direction that is favorable to China and unfavorable to the United States. We should stand up and take note of that and understand what's driving it. I also think that some of this is being driven by dissatisfaction with President Trump. The same thing happened during his first term, but to a lesser sort of amplitude than is occurring today. But it goes back to what we were talking about before. How is China going to sort of cement and capitalize upon this shift? Or is it just going to be sort of this, you know, ephemeral shift in sentiment that will go back when President Trump leaves office? Yes. And who knows?
Speaker 3There's been a lot of, there's been a lot of discussion in there. I listened to a really interesting conversation on the Foreign Affairs podcast in which Dan Kurtz-Phelan interviewed Rush Doshi and Kurt Campbell and Mark Leonard on the question, you know, can it, can it come back? You know, Kurt and Rush have been big advocates of allied scale and now are positing that it won't be so bad, that things might snap back, not maybe like they were in the Biden administration, but that it's not quite so dire. And you know, part of me very much hopes they're right.
Speaker 4Yeah, time will tell. I'm not sure that I would place my bet there. I think that the world is just different today than it was before. I think that Joe Biden was probably the last restorationist president in the United States. And I would not sort of blithely assume that things will just snap back in 2028. I think it's going to be a long term reconstruction project for the United States to rebuild trust with allies and partners. I think the allies and partners are rightly going to have to conclude, based upon the fact that the American people elected Donald Trump twice in non-consecutive elections, where he performed better in the second one than the first one, that some form of hyper-unilateralism and America first foreign policy is going to be a feature of American foreign policy going forward as power shifts between Democrats and Republicans. And so against that backdrop, to assume that countries will just sort of wash away four bad years of memories and just sort of pick up where they left off, I think
Speaker 3that's going to be a hard sell. You're probably right. So on the second piece, why Beijing isn't taking the bait with Trump. Like I said, it's very timely because of the upcoming summit here. Here's the puzzle you set up. It's a very good one. Trump is, in many respects, the American president that Beijing has been waiting for. No moralizing, no democracy promotion, no effective China. He's pulled carriers out of the Pacific. He's got a secretary of war who doesn't dare to say the word Taiwan at the Shangri-La summit. He floats a G2. He seems to want, have a preference for a sort of G2. He comes to Beijing and he praises Xi in every room with a camera in it. And Xi's response, like I said in the opening, is sort of stone-faced. There's no signing ceremony. Putin's state visit, you know, is announced while Air Force One is still over the Pacific. Why not take the win? What is the logic of this non-reciprocation?
Speaker 4Yeah, I mean, it is interesting to observe. I mean, the sheets has hardly cooled in President Trump's suite, presidential suite in Beijing before, you know, Putin's visit was announced. I think that there are a few things at work. The first is that Beijing has growing confidence in its relative position with the United States and doesn't feel like it needs to some of the, some of the flourishes that it, that it did before during President Trump's last visit in, in 2017. The second thing is that I think that there's just a degree of skepticism about how durable this moment is. You know, President Trump's a mercurial guy. He changes his mind. And it's not clear that whoever succeeds him in 2028 will adopt the same approach to China that he has. I think that, that there's probably still, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't a lot of skepticism that the United States has really abandoned strategic competition as it's sort of, it's North Star for dealing with China. Yes, President Trump says a lot of nice things, but members of his administration and, you know, different departments and agencies still do things that, that, you know, poke the Chinese in uncomfortable places. And so there, there may be sort of a sense that the rhetorical softening that Trump and others provide is symbolic, but on substance, the Chinese, the Americans remain, pretty competitive towards, towards China. And then the other, you know, feature, and these are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but the other feature is that President Xi's pretty preoccupied. He's got a lot of his own things going on right now as well. And as much as we in Washington like to think that we are the, you know, the first, second, third priority on President Xi's mind when he wakes up in the morning, I think the observable reality is that that is not the case.
Speaker 3That's right. That's right. One thing though, that Xi Jinping did take is the framing, from their meeting in May. Since 2012, he's tried to get successive American presidents to sign on to various formulae, a new model of great power relations, and then mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, win-win cooperation. They've all been sort of refused. Trump signed on to constructive strategic stability. Reciprocal, he adds reciprocal to it. But why does this phrase matter so much to Beijing? And what does it lock in, actually? Your colleague, John Zinn at Brookings, described it as a trap. But I guess I haven't been able to see that. I haven't heard anyone, including John, articulate what this trap would actually look like if it were sprung, right? I don't get why we call it a trap. And then the flip side, Trump offers this G2, which you'd think Beijing would love. Wang Yi publicly rejects that. Yeah. Help me think through what's going on here. Why is, well, first, let's start with why, speaking for John, or maybe if you have similar ideas, is constructive strategic stability something that somehow locks in some commitment from the United States?
Speaker 4Yeah, I have to be honest, Kaiser. I can't speak for John, so I'll let him represent his own views on this. Okay, I'll talk to him about it. We don't have a house to do on these questions at Brookings. Every scholar has a house to do on these questions. I don't have a house to do on these questions. I don't have a house to do on these or has his or her own views. I'll tell you what mine are. Mine are that constructive stability is a concept that we can see in the writings that Da Wei is publishing with Foreign Affairs that Beijing attaches a lot of importance to. I can tell you just living in the ecosystem in Washington that there hasn't been a lot of conversation around constructive stability from May until today, from President Trump's state visit to Beijing until now. And I don't have a lot of concern that the Chinese leadership will be able to go to President Trump and say, no, no, you can't do that because that would be a violation of our understanding of the framework of constructive stability. I don't think that anyone is under any illusion that that's the way that President Trump's mind works or that he would reverse a decision to maintain fidelity with the concept of constructive stability. I think what happened is that President Trump realized that this was something that mattered to President Xi, and it did not come at a high cost to him. And so, you know, being the transactional leader and dealmaker that he is, he saw an opportunity to sweeten the deal. And we'll see when President Xi comes to Washington at the end of this month, if the two leaders spend more time fleshing out what the concept means and what it does not mean. My guess is that President Xi will nod to it as something that is important and meaningful, and President Trump will not. Just now, you talked
Speaker 3about how preoccupation is probably a very, very important reason why Xi has not been so sort of gushing about the opportunity here. You know, he's had this purge that's removed roughly half of the PLA's senior leadership since 2022. You have this problem of cadres who are kind of cowed into not being, you know, willing to show any initiative. The economy clearly, you know, is not going to be able to do that. And so, you know, I think that's a very, we still have a problem with the real estate market and much more. The 21st Party Congress is coming up next fall. You know, Xi Jinping is setting up a possible fourth term. You describe a Beijing that is simultaneously more confident about its external position and more anxious about its internal one. I'm curious what your theory is about how these two things interact. Does domestic anxiety actually make Xi more inclined to keep the relationship? Quiet? Or is he more likely to reach for a foreign policy win to sort of, you know, distract from domestic woes? Do you have a theory of that?
Speaker 4I'll tell you my theory. I welcome you to challenge it. My theory is that against the backdrop that you just described of the challenges that President Xi deals with on a day-to-day basis inside China, being able to demonstrate visibly and sort of empirically that he has a situation with the United States under control. Is he going to be able to do that? Is the object of value to him? Because it removes a potential point of challenge or criticism that others could levy against Xi Jinping. And it provides a certain degree of confidence that if Xi Jinping is strong enough to manage his relationship with the United States, he's strong enough to lead China forward towards its great rejuvenation. And so I think that against that backdrop, it makes a presentation of stability in the relationship even more important. Even more valuable to Xi. It does not make him more aggressive towards the United States.
Speaker 3Yeah, no, I fully agree. And I was hoping that you would say the same. You raise a second reason. I think it's a very, very astute one. That is memory. Beijing remembers early 2020. Trump went from, you know, touting the phase one trade deal to, you know, blaming China for the pandemic. I mean, you know, Kung Flu just from the podium using this overtly racist language. And then later that spring, just sort of. Letting slip the hounds. Every agency, every department was basically told to go out and get China. So it knows that in January 2029, there's going to be a president who may be far less accommodating. Chinese leaders are pricing every deal with Trump as, you know, provisional, as anyone should. What does that do to American leverage, though? If nothing that Washington offers is truly believed to be durable, what does that do to American leverage? Is there anything at all that Beijing would, you know, pay real money for? Are we just watching two sides calculate the minimum cost of just like not blowing shit up?
Speaker 4I think that the relationship right now is being managed largely by pursuit of small gains and conflict avoidance. For all the reasons you just described, I think that Beijing views this moment as a moment of fragile stability that is not guaranteed to outlast President Trump's time in office. And because of that, they're not willing to let their guard down, because they're worried that if they do so, they could take a punch to the face. And so I would be surprised if there are any dramatic breakthroughs in a, you know, sort of upside direction in terms of a big upswing and improvement in the US-China relationship in the period to come. But there's a flip side of the coin of this as well, which is that I think part of the lesson of 2025 for both countries is economic escalation dominance over the other. And so both countries have sort of tested the limits and realized that doing so is painful. And so that also, I think, creates an incentive to try to sustain this fragile stability, to buy time and space, to reduce vulnerability and dependence upon the other side.
Speaker 3That's, yeah. I mean, one thing is obviously you want to buy time and space to reduce, I mean, so that, you know, we can stand up in the United States, rare earths processing, you know, China can finally master EUV lithography, right? And the bet is who gets there first. But you lean on this definition of economic escalation dominance by Dalip Singh. I mean, I think it's important for people to realize this. You have to supply something the other side can't replace at pace and scale, and you have to be able to absorb the retaliation. Neither side has this right now. Your conclusion is, right? Rare earths on one side, you know, chips and jet engines, on the other. I discussed the rare earths side of this with Gloria Xiong and Jessica Chen Weiss recently. I'm not sure their show will come out before or after this one, but their frame was, you know, an action-reaction spiral. Is mutual vulnerability right now actually a stabilizer? I actually think it is. It's allowed us to let the temperature come down, and the temperature clearly has come down, right? Yes. At the same time, both sides are racing to escape that vulnerability. Maybe that ends worse than where we started. Maybe not, though, right?
Speaker 4Right. You know, the big debate that people are having in Washington right now, Kaiser, in the China watching world, is whether or not this fragile stability or uneasy calm, or whatever term you want to use to describe this moment, will last. Yeah. Will it outlast President Xi's state visit in September? How will it make it to the end of President Trump's term? And I think that the dominant view in Washington today, I would posit, is that we're likely to see a breakdown in the uneasy calm sooner rather than later, and sort of a snap back to a more adversarial dynamic. I'm a contrarian on this. I'm probably in the minority. But my argument is that, you know, both countries are dominated by strong leaders. Both of these leaders attach value to sustaining the fragile stability in the relationship today. Both leaders recognize that they have vulnerability. And I think that's a good thing. With each other, and that they need time and space to deal with them. And they both have a host of other issues to deal with beyond just the United States and China, particularly in the case of Xi, for the reasons that you described at the party Congress on the horizon and everything else. I think that there's a real value for him and being able to demonstrate that he has a firm handle on the relationship. And I think the same is true for Trump. I think that the American people are reassured when they have a leader who can demonstrate that he has, you know, a firm hand on the relationship. On the steering wheel and has things under control.
Speaker 3Words I never thought I would use to describe Trump. But what I wonder about is, look, he's many things, but one thing that he possesses is that kind of low animal cunning and this sense for the shifts in political winds. And surely he sees that in this key demographic that helped him into office in 2024, Gen Z, there's been a massive shift away from hostility toward China. I cannot see the GOP now thinking that China bashing is a good election strategy. And I'm feeling like I'm seeing less of it right now, or I'm seeing it sort of laughed down anytime, you know, the tech bros talk about how opposition to data centers is ultimately sort of because of Chinese psyops that they've gotten these bot farms that have, wow, 200 whole accounts that have been spreading. It's very sad. And nobody seems to take it very seriously. It looks like ineffective electoral strategy right now. I think that's actually a very good sign. It makes me think that maybe temperatures could continue to cool well beyond the midterms.
Speaker 4Yeah, I think that they will because it's in the political interest of both leaders for their own respective reasons to have it continue to do so. And in the case of the United States, just to try to build on your point for a second, I think that the big issue today. It is only going to grow in the next two years is AI, how AI is going to affect society and every individual lives and everything else is going to be downstream of that, including China.
Speaker 3So, I mean, I wonder if that is out of reach, though. I mean, they're going to sit down in the days before the actual summit for this AI dialogue. What do you see coming out of that? Do you see real AI guardrails? You see sort of at least shared language on what constitutes alignment or loss of control or what the priorities should be? What would count as a win for you that seems sort of attainable and realistic?
Speaker 4I think at this state, I mean, I would like to see the United States and China, each for their own self-interest, find ways to reduce risks around misuse of AI for malicious purposes. We're now just a couple of weeks away and it doesn't seem like there's a lot of process in motion. And so to the extent that President Trump. And President Xi can continue to identify this as an issue where the United States and China as the two leaders in this space have a unique responsibility to the world and to their own people to find ways to reduce risk. I think that that would sort of keep space open for creative thinking to emerge down the road.
Speaker 3So I guess I'm going to wrap up here just by asking you to kind of give us a viewer's guide to the coming summit tree. What would be a big surprise in either direction? What would be the tell, for example? Trump actually gave way more on Taiwan than his advisers have been willing to admit so far. So like with your old NSC hat on, if you were on the staff prepping this visit, what's the one thing you'd be fighting to get into the president's briefing book?
Speaker 4Well, look, I would love to see more ambition around AI. I think that the American people would welcome a leader with the temperament and the willingness to sit down knee to knee with their Chinese. counterparts to work out how the two countries can find ways to reduce risks and harms to people and build guardrails around uses of AI. That would be my aspiration if I was still in that chair, but I'm clearly not. My expectation is that the summit will probably not have too many surprises. I think that we can already begin to see the outlines of what is about to emerge. There will probably be references by the Chinese side to constructive stability as a framework for the relationship. I think that there will probably be some type of extension of the trade truce that the two leaders agreed to in Busan a year ago.
Speaker 3That expires in November, by the way, right?
Speaker 4Right. Some sprinkling of Chinese purchases of American goods. I think that there could be a agreement to exempt some products from tariffs to show that the new board of trade is functioning. And I guess like on a upside opportunity, Xi Jinping could find a way to address some of the concerns that U.S. CEOs brought to. To him, when they visited along with President Trump in May. But as important as what is addressed, I think it's worth dwelling for a moment on what won't be. And this is sort of the opportunity cost of the two leaders that we have. I don't think that there's going to be a dramatic progress on principles to reduce risk of AI. I don't think that there is going to be meaningful progress on reducing conflict and accelerating the process towards a ceasefire in either Ukraine or Iran. I don't think that there will be. I don't think there's going to be any new confidence building measures around space or cyber capabilities or any progress on arms control. And we can sort of keep on going down the list, but we will invariably spend time looking at what was achieved. It's also worth bearing in mind what is being left out because that is equally important.
Speaker 3Ryan, what a pleasure it always is to talk to you. It's late for you there. I want to move now on to paying it forward and thence to recommendations. So who do you want to nominate? Anyone whose work has caught your attention lately?
Speaker 4Well, I would just observe that there are a lot of kick-ass women in the China-watching space these days that are really doing important and valuable work. I'll identify two of them that are coming out with books this fall. Emily Mattson at Georgetown University is coming out with a book on China's date debate about the start date of World War II. Xu Xianluo at University of Hawaii Manoa is coming out with a book on simmering seas. About how China approaches crises in the maritime domain. And they're doing just great groundbreaking work. But I also want to just squeeze in one sentence, Kaiser, to acknowledge the engines of the China Center at Brookings. Our two research assistants, Allie Mathias and Joyce Yang, who just do amazing work every day to drive every aspect of our center forward.
Speaker 3Fantastic. Great, man. What about recommendations? You got a book you read recently that you want to plug or anything at all?
Speaker 4Well, I have read fiction recently. I read The Three-Body Problem, finally. Oh, you finally did? What did you think? I'm familiar now with references to Trisolaris and things like that. So, Fonz. Yeah. But it stretched my mind. I actually wanted to flag two books. The first that I am late getting to, but it was pretty poignant to read, is The Guns of August. Oh, wow. Very late. World War I. And it really sort of brought home to me the folly of waging war during industrial revolutions. You know, during the start of World War I, you have troops doing bayonet charges, cavalry on horses. They're just getting mowed down by machine guns. There's some eerie echoes to what we're watching today in the battlefields, particularly in Ukraine. But the other one, and I'll stop here, is a book that recently came out called Regime Change. It's an inside account of how the Trump administration operates. Yeah, yeah. And it's a harrowing read, but it really sort of brings home the point that Donald Trump is a world-class checkers player. He's not guided by vision or grand strategy. He's an old man surrounded by sycophants.
Speaker 3Maggie Haberman and… Jonathan Swan. Yeah, Jonathan Swan.
Speaker 4That's right. That's right. And so I think it's just important for us to keep that in mind as we interpret and anticipate future behavior.
Speaker 3I've heard them talk about the book quite a bit. I have not yet read it because… This whole summer, I swore off of nonfiction. So now that is finally over. Not that I wanted it to be, but it is finally over. If you've read Guns of August, the book that you really would, you should definitely check out is Christopher Clarke's The Sleepwalkers, How Europe Went to War in 1914. If you have not read that, it's astonishing. And if you want parallels to what we're living through today, I mean, my God. It's… Times in the world, I just had to put it down and deep breathe for a little while because I was just sort of entering panic mode. It was… It's an amazing book. I will check it out. So much detail. Yeah, yeah. You'll love it. That is not my official recommendation. My official recommendation is sort of my last gasp of my time reading fiction this summer. It's Robert Harris's Agrippa. It just came out on the first of this month. I devoured it. Really, really greedily. It's written as the memoir of Marcus Agrippa, who's Octavian's closest friend. You know, the general who actually won all his battles, including Actium against Anthony and Cleopatra. And, you know, there's a lot of resentment over that because Octavian takes all the credit. Augustus, right? And he actually built like half of Augustan Rome. He built all these aqueducts. He built the Pantheon. But anyway, it's just fantastic. I think Harris is just a master of historical. He wrote this trilogy I've recommended on the show before about Cicero. And I've also recommended his outstanding historical fiction novel on the Dreyfus Affair, which was just great. He's just great. He also wrote Munich about the Munich conference. It's a more sympathetic telling of it. Sympathetic, that is, to Neville Chamberlain. Anyway, this, of course. Agrippa is the story of the pivot, you know, this pivot point from Republic to Empire. higher. And there's a lot that feels relevant to the moment we're living in right now. So Agrippa and Octavian would have had some thoughts on this. Ryan, thank you so much for taking the time to chat. Let me again remind everyone that the two pieces we discussed were first in China Leadership Monitor, a piece titled China's Great Power Vision Comes Into Focus. And second for Brookings, Why Beijing Isn't Taking the Bait with Trump. So do check those out. They're outstanding, as is all your work, Ryan. So congrats. Thank you, Kaiser. I really appreciate this. You've been listening to the Seneca Podcast. The show is produced, recorded, engineered, edited, and mastered by me, Kaiser Guo. Support the show through Substack at SenecaPodcast.com, where there is a growing offering of terrific original China-related writing and audio. Or email me at SenecaPod at gmail.com if you've got ideas on how you can help out with the show. If you are one of those PR companies and want to send me a guest who has nothing whatsoever to do with China, ignore this email and delete it. Don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Huge thanks to my guest, Ryan Pass. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.
Speaker 2Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care.
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