Why Should We Care if China Gains Influence Because of U.S. Tariffs?
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And welcome once again to Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific, brought to you by IEJ Media, our producer and our sponsor, Bauer Group Asia. We will talk about them a little more in due course. I am the former military officer, Ray Powell. That's the former diplomat, Jim Caruso. Jim, today we have an epic day. We have the very first three-time return guest who we've never introduced our audience to.

Well, you know, this is an old friend of ours, so it's worth keep trying until it finally works. So our guest today is a mutual friend, Mark Lambert, recently retired diplomat. He was the head of China House, coordinator for China policy at the State Department until January. Longtime diplomat in Southeast Asia, Vietnam, Thailand, twice in Beijing, Japan, God knows where else. Hi, Mark.

Hey, Jim. Hey, Ray. It's good to see you both. And he's had two unsuccessful attempts to get on our podcast. The first because the previously recorded podcast was overtaken by events on the terror side. And the second because he was, for some reason, out on a boat in the middle of a harbor. But now Mark is back from the sea.

like a sailor, and came with us. And it's just a glorious day here in Seattle. So I miss you both, but I'm loving this. All right, Elwister man. All right, we're going to start with the first question. If you are ready, why should we care about increasing Chinese influence as a result of the tariff wars?

Well, one of the things that I think is well understood by folks in both of our political parties is we are in a global competition with the Chinese. And among the fields that we're competing in is influence. The Chinese are...

have some strategic advantages. They have more diplomats than we have. They have more naval vessels than we have. Uh, and they are characterizing themselves both as the friend of the lesser developed world, but also as the champion for the international order for, for, uh, multilateralism and for free trade. Uh,

In the world, the growing part of the planet is Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America. That's where tomorrow's consumers are going to be. Those are the younger parts of the planet. That's where the innovation is going to be. And in order to protect our country's interests in security or in trade and other things, we need to be well represented there.

Right now, in response to our global tariffs, in response to a number of factors that have happened recently, the Chinese are really making hay. You saw that President Xi Jinping has just been in Southeast Asia and his talking points are fairly predictable that we Chinese are the real threat.

friends to the lesser developed world. We're going to be your most important market. The Americans are in retreat. Jump with us. So Xi Jinping, as you mentioned, was in Southeast Asia. He went to Vietnam. He went to Malaysia and Cambodia. Why do you think he chose those countries?

Well, in the competition between us and them, there are countries where we tend to have more influence. There are countries where they tend to have more influence. And then there are countries in the middle. I would put Malaysia certainly in that. Cambodia, traditionally, the Chinese have had a lot of influence. Vietnam, Ray, as you know, we served in Hanoi together. The Vietnamese...

They're in a tough neighborhood, sharing a border with China. China is their top trade partner, but also they have a very strong security and trade relationship with the United States. And I think all things being equal, they'd like to maintain their independence of movement. The Chinese, for their part, would like to double down and reinforce their traditionally strong relationship with Vietnam. And as...

Jim knows much better than I do. As country companies are looking at new places to build their factories because labor costs are lower in Vietnam and another number of other factories, Vietnam's become a very attractive place for companies and countries to invest. Malaysia as well.

So the bet that the Trump administration seems to be making with Southeast Asia is, look, we're going to put these tariffs on you and you're going to deal with it because, A, we still have a good market and, B, because you need us there as a counterweight to China. So do you think that argument will carry the day? Well, frankly, I don't find it terribly compelling because...

What we were doing previously under the Biden administration, which was looking at the competition as a global competition, just as many smart Republicans look at it, we recognize that our real strategic asset is our relationship of alliances and of strong partners. Now, in Southeast Asia, our allies are Thailand and the Philippines, but we have strong partners with Singapore, with Vietnam and others.

And we tried to look at those relationships comprehensively, but always in the back of our minds was, can we work on these relationships in a way to help us with our ongoing competition with the PRC?

Well, we buried the lead a little bit because, Mark, you have a very unique perspective because you just returned from a trip to China where you had a chance to talk to people inside the government, inside their sort of think tanks and those kinds of things about what's going on. And as I understand it, while you were there, a lot of this stuff was just as you're there is dropping from the sky.

Tell us, what was the reaction? Well, I mean, there's a whole range of views. The Chinese experts that I was able to talk with, I think they weren't surprised about the ongoing tension between our two countries because that's been going on for a while. I think they were surprised at how quickly the tariffs aimed at China were ratcheted up. And then they were just perplexed. A lot of questions about

What is it the White House wants? How do we how do we walk these back? How do we have negotiations? Who do we talk to? Who is the who is the person in Washington who would be the good interlocutor for them? And then as the week went on and there were statements coming from the White House that, you

the president and his advisors expected Xi Jinping to call in and to negotiate directly with the president, that the experts in Washington did not want to work with foreign minister Wang Yi, that they wanted to work directly with Xi Jinping. That too threw them for a loop. Many of them explained, look, our president is a very proud man. And they didn't say this, but we all know his sense of personal dignity is quite strong. Remember, he's

He banned the publication of anything looking like Winnie the Pooh because netizens in China were liking his face to that of Winnie the Pooh. This is not a thick-skinned man. And now publicly, we are saying he's got to blink first. He's got to make the first overture. And we expect him to get on the phone. They're just wondering what is going on there because that flies in the face of...

normal decorum. And then the more pragmatic of them were saying, is there a middle person either in Washington or is there another country or another entity in the international community that could serve sort of as a marriage counselor and be a go-between between Beijing and Washington? So, you know, the problem with these

eventual negotiations, which we'll assume will happen, is that China has broken all the agreements we've made before, right? They continue to steal international property. They continue to subsidize their industries. They compete unfairly, dump their products, and take advantage of the international system. And I'm wondering, A, if they realize that part of the reason we are in this mess now is because they broke the system with their activities. And secondly, how do they think they're going to fix it? Or do they want to fix it?

Well, it depends on who you talk to. I think you're spot on. The real subject matter experts, the real economists know exactly the list of grievances we have, and you outlined them very well. And Jim...

there's remarkable by, uh, bipartisan understanding of the list of problems we have with the PRC. I don't think that's the problem. It's not like, you know, one, one set of Americans are saying we don't have a problem with the Chinese and the other set of saying, well, we all recognize we have a problem. Uh, how do we go forward? The other problem though, with the Chinese is I would argue just as in our country or other places, uh, the average person probably doesn't follow this that closely. There is a, uh,

perennial sense of aggrievement within China that they have been put upon. The Americans are trying to box them in, prevent them from their natural place in the sun, that these meetings and the relationships we have with our treaty allies and with other partners is aimed primarily at boxing the Chinese in and preventing them from growing. And I don't, I mean, you've got to have negotiations in order to get through that. But the sense of

China, being the aggrieved party, is a real strongman. And I think it goes up within the Chinese military and other places as well. I don't think it's well placed, but it is certainly a thing. So, Mark, I'm fascinated by this sort of failure to come to understanding over who's negotiating and who's able to negotiate for either country.

On one hand, we have China's system, which it seems to me has become more and more centralized, right? So that the number of people who are, you know, trusted interlocutors must be getting much smaller than it was before.

And then we've got our system, which obviously is operating on a completely different plane than we're used to, even a different plane from the first Trump administration, where once again, the number of people who is able to actually carry out a negotiation is kind of this small group around the president. You know, I mean...

To what extent, now these two leaders have dealt with one another before. To what extent is everything and why is everything now so completely different that they don't understand how to do this?

Well, I don't know the answer to that, Ray. I mean, President Trump does have his own unique style. He likes to be the head of a negotiation. He's comfortable doing that. I don't think Xi Jinping is. Xi Jinping is much more traditional. You know, normally within the Chinese system, negotiations take place at a lower level. They may be elevated higher.

to higher levels and then culminating in an arrangement, kind of a, a deal signing ceremony or ribbon cutting ceremony between the leaders. That's normally how these things work. I think that's, uh, that's, uh, uh, methodology. The Chinese are very comfortable with president Trump. He's, I mean, one of his, one of his, uh, um,

characteristics is being unconventional remember when he was negotiating with kim jong-un uh from north korea uh he would meet kju and at the dmz he wouldn't they met him of course in in the uh the summit in hanoi and in singapore it's just a different way of doing things and in all those meetings there had not been a an arrangement between the two parties worked out in advance um

I would I'm not surprised the Chinese are not comfortable with that because, again, going back in part to that sense of dignity, they don't want to see Xi Jinping put in a situation where he loses face or where he's treated disrespectfully. Or they certainly don't want to feel probably the way Kim Jong Un did when he left Hanoi. Well, you know, it's funny about that, Mark, is we were used to his.

diplomats or whatever you wanted to call us, we would help negotiate the outcomes of these meetings before they happened. Yeah. Trump comes in. He basically fails in his interactions with North Korea. It was good television, but there was no positive outcome. He negotiated with Xi Jinping. There was an agreement. Chinese broke it. Not a positive outcome. And yet he continues to want to go down this route of sort of freelancing or winging it

Well, you know, I don't think that's entirely fair to President Trump about the DPRK negotiations because –

At the working level and at higher levels, there were overtures made. I mean, you're right. There wasn't something already set up, already greased before the two leaders met. And just for context, Mark, you were actually very involved in that. That's correct. In your role at State. That's correct. But, you know, a trade arrangement, particularly given the long list of serious problems the United States has with the PRC,

I don't think that's going to be so complicated, and it's going to require experts in so many different fields. I don't see how you can have a negotiation at the leadership level. Now, I could be wrong, and you know more about trade, but it just – it seems – I don't see that working. But again, traditionally –

When you have two parties in an international negotiation, Party A gets to determine who will represent it in the negotiations, as does Party B. And they should be at the same level for protocol reasons. Right now, the Chinese are frustrated because, A, they don't know clearly what it is the Americans want, or at least clearly not been spelled out. And number two, they're

They don't know how we're supposed to get together to bang this out. And I don't think we've given thought yet, I could be wrong, to a face-saving off-ramp because you always need that in a negotiation.

You know, Mark, there's, you know, in these kinds of things, there's also, there are so many strands of interests involved in the outcome of these negotiations. And one of them is from a national security perspective. The United States has become, many people in the national security sector have become convinced that the U.S. has actually, in some sense, by allowing China to

so to speak, to cheat on these deals for so long and their obligations under the World Trade Organization and all of these things has essentially allowed China to build up its military

At the expense of the United States, by us sort of playing along and not coming down hard enough, they have been able to build this huge industrial complex that can now churn out ships at a massive scale and build up rockets and air force. All of these things have been happening, fueled by their economy. To what extent...

Is this view of things sort of leading us to the conclusion that we have to cripple the Chinese economy to get them to stop doing this?

Well, I don't think crippling the Chinese economy is our objective. I think having more intelligent trade with the Chinese is the objective. For instance, there's bipartisan recognition. We have to be extremely cautious dealing with emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, next generation semiconductors, biotechnology, these technologies that have huge military applications.

We just should not be facilitating the Chinese to modernize or to compete or even to be the leader in those technologies and make things that can kill Americans or kill our allies. Full stop.

And then secondly, because of the overcapacity, because the Chinese, instead of focusing on domestic consumption, continue to focus on government subsidized overcapacity and then just flood the market with solar panels or with electric vehicles or electric vehicle batteries.

There's a real frustration in our country. We're not going to let them kill General Motors or Ford. The Europeans aren't going to let them kill BMW or Volkswagen. The Japanese aren't going to let them kill their cars. The Koreans aren't going to let them kill their cars. That's part of that's you can see the the wisdom of trying to work cohesively with the Europeans, with the Koreans, with the Japanese on everything.

making sure that we don't let the Chinese succeed in becoming the global leader in these emerging technologies, becoming or killing the auto or other sectors. That said, most trade that we have, and China is our third largest trading partner, is fine.

You know, we all benefit from cheaper consumer electronics. We benefit from a lot of the stuff that we buy at the market. Almost a million Americans are employed by trade with China, you know, selling our stuff, selling our agricultural products and other sorts of things. Most of that's healthy. It's the other stuff. And that's why I have frustration with the term decoupling because decoupling suggests, no, we're just going to throw it all out. You know, like you decouple rail cars. I like the de-risking term.

So when you were in China just now, did you hear any discussion of going even deeper? Forget tariffs. China's announced they're not going to sell rare earth metals to us anymore, which we don't have. Dorsodil doesn't have. And these are critical for defense applications among others. One, two, they are first, third largest holder of US treasury bonds. We have a lot of debt coming due.

They talk about going nuclear on that, selling it or not buying additional. There's a lot more risk they could put on us. Did you hear any discussion of them? Oh, absolutely. And, you know, several Chinese, they're very angry. And they made the very points you said. You know, they said,

We Chinese, we control access to stuff that you need for your most modern weapon systems, but also for a lot of your most important civilian technologies. And of course, subsequently, they've cut off access to those rare earths. They make the treasuries point. They also, and in moments of candor, they acknowledge their economy is facing some challenges. If they were to dump their treasuries, that's going to be

hurting them as well. But all the more reason to get back to your first question of why this matters and why we need to have Americans negotiating with the Chinese about the whole range of challenges we have in the economic, in the technology, in the trade fronts.

One thing that's been clear really up until... One of the things that happened in 2017 as the first Trump administration came in and we had people like

H.R. McMaster and James Mattis are rewriting our strategic documents, right? So the new national security strategy, the new national defense strategy, a new understanding of China as a global competitor and not a country that was going to be sort of brought into the U.S.-led world order, but somebody that we're going to have to compete with. Now, that's a fairly new realization, but China has been thinking about competing with us for a lot longer, it seems.

So, you know, does China look at this period of time and think, yeah, this is a huge challenge, but maybe it's a huge opportunity for us to begin to start to actually win this competition?

I think they are. I do think that while we've been trying to reduce our own vulnerability of being overexposed to inputs or rare earths or other things that we are dependent on the Chinese to provide, they have the same thing. You know, they get the vast majority of their protein from the Americas and most of that from our country. They're diversified. They're looking at Brazil. They're looking at Argentina. They're looking at other places.

as they recognize they too need access to inputs for next generation technology. And much of the either mineral wealth or other things are in Africa or in other places. I was in Democratic Republic of Congo, and, you know, that's ground zero on this competition for very important metals like cobalt and other sorts of things. It is global. And at a time when the United States is

not going to have USAID in Africa, when we're not using Voice of America and the other ways of getting information out, when we seem to be pulling out from important places like Africa, it gives an opening to the Chinese. And I think they look at it that way. I honestly think they look at it strategically that way. So not only are we pulling away carrots, like you just mentioned, with AID and Voice of America,

There's discussion of us using more sticks on third countries that basically sort of you're with us or against us regarding China. You have to choose. Can that work? I don't have a crystal ball. I'm skeptical. I mean, I have found it in my when I was a diplomat, I did not find it effective to say you need to choose between Washington and Beijing. You know, most countries have a very strong relationship with with both of us and they don't want to choose.

You know, the Vietnamese, they have millennia of real problems with the Chinese. Yet because of geography, they do so much trade with China. They don't want to blow that up. They want to have freedom of movement. And I think that's what we have traditionally afforded is, hey, you can have a trade relationship in some things with China. Be careful about certain types of trade. But we, too, offer things that are invaluable to you, saying that you've got to choose what

Some countries may not choose us. And is that in our national interest? I would argue no. I found it a much more effective tool to

Look at countries and most countries are going to hedge. Most countries are not going to want to choose between working with the Chinese or working with Americans. As an American, I may not like that. It's just a fact of life. And geography is very important. If you're sitting in one of the 14 countries that borders the PRC, you don't have the freedom of movement, just as countries closer to our border have less freedom of movement in their own decisions about trade with the PRC or with the United States.

Well, there's a certain number of countries that at least on a security side have already chosen and they've done so through treaties. Right. So in Asia in particular, we have five treaty allies, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Australia and Thailand.

What do you think the effect of the current regime? Now, you know, we just had Secretary Hesguth go out and he went specifically to Japan and the Philippines, two U.S. treaty allies, which seemed to be a very positive visit. Overall, what do you think is the effect of the current trade conflict on U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific? It's worrisome. Ray, I think you nailed it.

It is such a strategic advantage we have of having countries with whom we have fought together or would be willing to fight together, countries who are willing to forward deploy American assets and American troops. That's just amazing. And the Chinese have nothing like it. We need to husband that and we need to look at those relationships differently.

comprehensively, I would argue, you know, in the cases of Korea and Japan, they're also big trading partners. And in some some technologies, they're competitors.

From where I sat, I always thought you don't want to tick off beyond a certain point the Japanese and the Koreans. You want to treat them with respect. Yes, when you have disagreements, you work them out. But keep that in mind. Understand why these alliances are so important. And then, too, you look at some of the success in recent years we had of having our NATO allies having deeper relationships with Japan and Korea and Australia.

That's awesome because, again, it's something that the Chinese in their wildest dreams couldn't have. We need to be careful with those things. Those alliances are not relics of the Cold War. They're every bit as important today as they were in the past. But the problem we have is as President Trump sees these things as U.S. providing a service without receiving anything in return –

and therefore wants to have greater payment for the service without recognizing the additional security it brings to us. This sort of transactional approach is going to make our allies in the region more skeptical of working with us. Are you seeing that, A? And B, what does this pose for Taiwan? Not an ally, but a place we've sort of committed to help.

Well, I do think something that we're seeing right now that we need to watch closely is, are our allies hedging themselves? You know, I look at things like AUKUS, you know, the arrangement among Australia, the UK and the United States for aid.

attack submarine technology. Well, the next phase of that would conceivably be for other military technologies, jointly develop those. Japan's interested, Korea's interested, other countries are interested. What if these allies decide, you know, the Americans just aren't reliable enough. We'll work together among ourselves.

We might benefit in some ways from deeper cooperation among our NATO and other allies without us there. But I think we would benefit more if we're there. When you talk to Taiwan, you know, most people in our country don't recognize just how important Taiwan is to our economy and to global trade. Taiwan's America's eighth largest trading partner.

It makes stuff that makes the 21st century possible. TSMC, you know, the semiconductor giant based in Taiwan, their opening plants in Arizona and elsewhere. They make a type of chip that no one else makes and that is vitally important, not just for our weapon systems, but for next generation, almost everything.

Rhodium Group did a great report that went out talking about the hit the global economy would take if there were a blockade or a hard gray zone activity around Taiwan. And it was $2 trillion.

I mean, that used to sound like a lot of money until the last couple of weeks. That's still a lot of money. Taiwan is important. And so threading the needle and encouraging the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to keep things from boiling over is really important. That sea line of communication is vitally important to Europe, to Korea, to Japan, to everyone. I mean,

And it's proximity to the South China Sea. You know, we've all worked on South China Sea issues. It's all connected. And I do think this is an issue that more Americans, more American leaders in Congress, more American citizens need to be following more closely.

So I recently saw that the TV personality Bill Maher ended up invited to the Trump White House to have dinner with some other people. And he was surprised that he actually had the opportunity to say what he thought and that he said that the president listened carefully and didn't seem to argue with him. So if you had, let's say that you had a few minutes alone with President Trump and you wanted to try to get

the most important things across to him that would maybe guide him toward figuring out how to enter into some kind of a negotiation with China. What would you want to try to get across to him in a five-minute conversation? Well, I mean...

Lord, help our country if I'm the one giving advice to the president of the United States. We've already had comedians. So, you know, well, but but beyond that, it is, you know, I think some of the things the president has said that he's known Xi Jinping for a long time and she is a proud man and his country is a proud country. Spot on. That's right. And so take that the next step. He's a proud man. Treat him with respect.

Get your best people together. And there are some real brilliant minds in our bureaucracy who have negotiated with China many times over the years. Get your best team of people together. Let's air out our grievances. I do think, Ray, that this is an issue where, weirdly enough, at a time when our people are so divided –

Most Americans aren't very divided on this one. You know, you talk to Republicans and Democrats. There's a there's a an understanding. We have a China problem. Explain that as a president. You know, on some level, I'm sure he understands that this is a, you know, being being firm in in impressing our our differences with the Chinese. That's a winning issue. Style and tactics. Maybe that's what we need to refine. But the strategic objective, it's right.

Yeah, but we had Rahm Emanuel on. He was just finishing up his Ambassador to Japan, and he's been writing a bunch of op-eds lately.

And he has this frustration that we had China sort of on the ropes in the negotiation because our economy was weakening. Other countries were tired of having goods dumped on them from China. They were looking to the U.S. to do more with us. And now we've attacked everyone simultaneously, which is not the best recipe for success. Yeah.

Is there a way to bring these countries back one side? I think there is. I mean, you know, in foreign policy, you can't discount the human factor. When feelings are hurt, feelings are hurt. And if a leader feels aggrieved, sometimes the leader, that's number one on the leader's mind. But

You're exactly right. And Rahm Emanuel was exactly right in that I think we had some real success in sharing a common picture of our mutual concerns in Europe, in Japan, in Korea, in Australia, elsewhere, of what China poses and how if we band together and make our grievances known and come up with a way of addressing them with the Chinese, that's the best way going forward.

I still think there is time to get some semblance of that together. You know, I hope desperately that the experts who are going to be negotiating with the Japanese and the Europeans and others, you know, what, 80, 90 negotiations simultaneously. I hope they get to common ground quickly because then I think you increase the likelihood we could get back to some

some level of that cooperation, which I think was a real boon to our country under President Biden's administration. So it has to be negotiation, not take it or leave it. You're with us or against us for China. If that's it, it won't work. I don't think it will. I mean, I just don't find that effective.

I want to go back to something Jim mentioned when he talked about our discussion with Rahm Emanuel, and that's this idea that the Chinese system is fragile and is sort of, you know, in a sense, you know, they are on the ropes. And I feel like this has been

something that various people have said for most of my adult life. I mean, you know, particularly since the 2008 financial crisis, when they kind of floated their way through that by, you know, forcing the banks to lend and other things that were sort of unnatural to, you know, the economics of everything. And yet, you know,

It just never seems to come to the point where that fragility manifests in a way that's beneficial to a negotiation. So the assumption going into this, it seems to me from people in the administration is this is the time to sort of push the issue because the Chinese system is fragile and they know it. But on the other hand, they're looking at us and they're saying, well, your system is fragile, too, because you have these things called elections and you have markets and you worry about all those things. And we kind of don't have to worry about that stuff.

No, you're on to something. I mean, people are calling various leaders in the West authoritarian. Xi Jinping is the real deal. He is an authoritarian. Yes, he has to listen to his citizens and he doesn't want widespread unrest, but he can take hits that a democratically elected leader just can't. They have some enormous demographic challenges.

aging population because of sex-based abortion. You have more males than females. You have a relatively wealthy coastal area and still an impoverished interior. You have a lousy education system. You have an aging population and a shrinking population. China's that's the one that always surprised me is how quickly China's population seems to be shrinking. Same things happen in Korea. Same things happening in Japan.

Those are real problems for an economy. Now, another thing that the Chinese have that historically they've been able to lie on the Chinese person's tolerance for pain. You know, for years they've had this they call it Cherku eating bitterness. Right.

They're going to take hits because tomorrow is going to be better. And I think that explains a lot of the things they were willing to put up with the grotesque pollution in the country, the the the internally internal migration, all those things that we, you know, our people would never put up with. Because if you eat that bitterness now, a better futures ahead. That's still in the culture.

And so you've seen it already with President Xi saying, yeah, we're going to do what it takes. We might have to eat some bitterness. You saw the way he approached COVID, very different from the way others approach COVID. That's just a different way an authoritarian leader can deal with things that just isn't available to us. Now, I love our political system. I think long range, it is the better way of going forward. But

For a period of time, there are some advantages that the Chinese or any authoritarian system has, and we should not just brush those over. Right. Just to add to that, when hundreds of thousands of people lost money on their real estate and youth unemployment is up to like 25% and there's the so-called lying flat where young people just say, the hell with it, I'm not going to work anymore. Right. These are real big social economic problems, which gets back to Ram's point that

It is a fragile or perhaps brittle circumstance, except for eating better. And I'm not sure our administration appreciates that resilience and the relative lack of resilience among our consumers who don't want to have to pay more for their fast fashion or

other things. Well, Jim, you're right. I mean, if our strategy is let's just wait for China to implode because of the economic turmoil it faces, I don't think that's a winning strategy. I want to kind of get you toward an exit question here. And I'm very interested. You traveled to China many times over the years, but

always before, you know, that I'm aware of on what we call the black passport, the diplomatic passport, which gives you diplomatic immunity and lets you sort of in some ways float above the, you know, common person who's there on the blue passport, the civilian passport. How did you find this trip different, you know, traveling on a blue passport in 2025 than say previous trips in earlier times on a black passport?

Well, honestly, I was curious on that one because it was my first time traveling as a normal American to China. I was very pleasant and surprised. The Chinese embassy turned around my visa application very, very quickly. I had no problems, you know, upon entry or anything like that. I do miss some of the perks that, you know,

We diplomats used to have, but it was fine. And I think that represents also a trend in China. They want more Americans to go there. They want more American business people. They're hurting badly at the lack of foreign direct investment, not just from Americans, but from others. Business people aren't going there because they're worried they're not going to be able to get their money out or that their people may wind up in jail.

Same with students. I mean, a lot of American students, even those who speak Mandarin well, are reluctant to go to China to study for that very reason. I think some Chinese are starting to recognize that and realize they need to make it easier for Americans to visit China. In my circumstance, it really was quite easy to do. So you're right. Even though Global Times likes to attack you, I'm sure they'd welcome you.

Well, hey, great. Global Times went after me. They used my middle name, you know, which is something my mother only used. But despite that, I was able to go in. So, Ray, give it a shot. Apply for a visa. And if not, we'll write. They haven't hit you with the middle name thing yet. You know they're serious, too. Exactly. So, Mark, I want to thank you for this. It's really been enlightening, especially, well, first of all, thank you for coming back twice.

Uh, because again, that's a new record, uh, in terms of, uh, people come back, especially given the record of futility and not being able to get any of those other podcasts out. We do promise this one's coming out. Uh, we're going to put it out pretty quickly because frankly, things are moving so quickly. We don't want things to, uh, to, uh, uh,

Go, go, uh, stale, stale. Exactly. I'm sorry. I'm getting a warning from Riverside that Mark's recording has stopped. So, uh, I'm not, I'm going to expect that perhaps nothing else is going to happen on this podcast. And we want to thank Mark for joining us.

And of course, as always, we want to thank our sponsor. Our sponsor is Bauer Group Asia. They are a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific and, of course, in the complicated world of the Indo-Pacific that we are facing right now. But fortunately, Bauer Group applies unmatched expertise and local experience to help its clients navigate all the world's most complex and dynamic markets. My co-host, of course, Jim Caruso, is a senior advisor with Bauer Group, and you can go visit them at BauerGroupAsia.com.

So, you know, actually my favorite part of that interview, Jim, was the fact that we were talking with somebody who just got back from China and somebody who was on the ground as all of this was happening. Yeah. And when the target moves as quickly as it does and changes colors and stripes and everything else, having someone get this recent snapshot was really useful. But what's most interesting, of course, is the Chinese are as confused as we are. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you know, and I think that there's something really in the president's mind and his approach to negotiations that this is the art of the deal. This is you want to keep your opponent, your negotiating partner off balance. You want them wondering what you're going to do next. And somehow that plays to your advantage. Well, it does if the other partner doesn't have a lot of options, right?

As we've seen from the cutoff of critical minerals and the fact that they have a lot of financial power over the U.S. Treasury market and the fact that they are a much bigger global trader than we are, I'm not sure how it's going to impact Xi's ability to

make a deal that he doesn't see as advantageous to China. Yeah, I mean, I think that's where this, you know, that's where we're sort of wondering if we're going to have to settle in for the long haul here, because, again, both the U.S. and Chinese governments are

at some level, believe that they have the advantage and they just need to wait for the forces that are operating on the other, whether it be for us, our democratic system and markets and all of those things, or, you know, looking at China, you know, what we believe to be the fragility of their economic system, you know, who gets desperate first? And I think that maybe right now both parties think they have the upper hand.

which does not bode well for a successful negotiation. Right. So maybe if we look at the bigger picture, we spoke to a businessman based in Singapore, Steve Okun, who said, if we just stick with 10% universal tariffs, except against China, businesses can deal with that and we'll adjust.

So maybe that's the goal. Maybe it's, you know, all right, get everyone back on side, all the other countries. You have 10% tariffs on them. But then we would all work together to have China boxed in more. Yeah. Well, again, that obviously is not the spirit of the age here. So we may be in for a little bit of a long haul before we get to the end of whatever this is. Whatever it is. All right. With that salary note, tell us an uplifting story.

All right. I've got a story that it's not about Mark Lambert, but it involves Mark Lambert. And we did serve together and we served together in Vietnam. And during our time in Vietnam, we used to ride together on the shuttle every morning from where our houses were, which is fairly nearby to where the embassy was. And we would get onto the shuttle and we'd

We would as we were going, usually Mark would sit and talk to my boss, the defense attache about either 49ers or San Francisco Giants sports. I would sit in the middle doing whatever I'm doing on my my iPhone. And then in the front, Mark's wife would be talking on the phone, working on business. So Mark was focused on sports. His wife was focused on on business, which was pretty much normal. Yeah.

But one day, as we're in the shuttle, I get a call from the commander of U.S. Pacific Air Forces, who at the time was General Carlisle.

And he had recently been in Vietnam and we'd taken him to a couple of different places. So we had some time to spend together. And it happened to be the day that they were announcing the results of the colonel's board. So I was lieutenant colonel at the time and I was being selected or I was up for selection for colonel. And as General Carlisle was looking out at all the people who had been selected, he noticed that my name was on there, even though I didn't technically work for him.

So he decides, why not? He's going to call. He's a general. He can call whoever he wants. So he called me to congratulate me. And as I get off the phone, my boss in the back says, was that General Carlisle? Yes, sir. Did he just tell you you got selected for colonel? Yes, sir. I was told I couldn't tell you yet.

I said, you want me to call him back? We get to work. And so the boss and Mark and others go down to the morning senior level staff meeting with the ambassador. Now, the ambassador at the time was a great guy, brilliant guy, really understood the geopolitical landscape. People came to him for advice on all kinds of things. He had one defining point.

sort of deficiency, which is he had a hell of a time with names and faces. And you could work with him for a long time and he would forget who you were or couldn't quite place you. He knew that he was supposed to know who you were. And this was not the embassy building, the chancery as we called it, was not a large building in Hanoi. It was sort of nine floors up and down. So you were always on the elevator and you'd see him all the time and you'd be in meetings with him and all kinds of things.

And I knew that he had a hard time remembering who I was. So on this particular day, apparently my boss went to this meeting, informed him that I'd been selected for promotion, and then went back and then came back. And later that day, I was down in the little greasy spoon area

you know, cafe that we had at the embassy. And the ambassador was sitting there with Mark and his wife, whom he had known for a long time, had no trouble remembering their names because he'd known them for a long time. And they were having a discussion and somewhere in this discussion, apparently Mark or Laura or his wife or somebody had, had said, you know, that guy over there, Ray just got selected for promotion.

And the ambassador stands up. I didn't hear this part. The ambassador, but I did see he stands up and he says, I'm going to go and talk to Ray. And I was just shocked. I'd not heard him only say my first name before. I, you know, I was and I certainly didn't expect him to know who I was, even though I worked with with him for over a year. And he comes down. Yeah.

So how's it going, Ray? And so that was the day that the ambassador remembered my name. And the next day?

I have no idea. I do know that when I saw him later, he had a Pentagon job later. And I brought a delegation from Vietnam when I was the acting defense attache. And I caught him at certain times just sort of staring at me, trying to place me. So, yeah, it probably went back to the way it was before. So, again, great guy, extremely intelligent. Just one of these things. He just had a thing about names. Nice.

Maybe it's just you. No, I know for a fact that's not true. All right. Well, one name you should know is that of Ian Ellis Jones, our producer. He produces those fantastic geopolitical graphics on X. You can follow him there at Ian Ellis Jones. Of course, if you like this episode, you'll want to subscribe and follow us if you're on YouTube at...

At IP podcast, you're going to want to get down to the bottom and hit that like and follow subscribe button there at the bottom. If you want to go back and listen to, for example, the episode with Rahm Emanuel that that Jim was talking about, you can go back. It was episode 49. And we said, why should we care about the U.S.-Japan alliance? And Ambassador Emanuel, who is just at the very end of his term, had some really fascinating things to talk about right here at the beginning of this year.

You can also follow us on social media. We are on X, we are on Blue Sky, and we are on LinkedIn. And finally, you can email us as somebody just did actually this morning. I haven't showed this yet to Chris and Ian, but I just got one this morning. IndoPacificPodcast at gmail.com. And then finally, don't forget to visit our sponsor, PowerGroupAsia.com. Until next time.

This time it's Ray and Jim and Ian, as it is every time. Thanks for joining us on Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific.