Sinocism Podcast #5: 20th Party Congress and US-China Relations with Chris Johnson
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Welcome to the Cynicism Podcast, where we will talk to experts from around the world to help us all better understand China. I am Bill Bishop and I write Cynicism, a newsletter that helps you get smarter about China. Welcome back to the very occasional Cynicism Podcast. Today we are going to talk about the recently concluded 20th Party Congress and what to expect ahead in U.S.-China relations.

I'm pleased to welcome back Chris Johnson, CEO of Consultancy China Strategies Group, Senior Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute Center for China Analysis, and former Senior China Analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. This is the seventh party Congress that Chris has analyzed professionally. So we have a lot of experience here to help us understand what just happened. Chris, welcome back and thanks for taking the time.

My pleasure. Always fun to be with you, Bill. All right. Well, why don't we jump right in? I'd like to talk about what you see as the most important outcomes from the Congress, starting with personnel. What do you make of the leadership team from the Central Committee to the Politburo to the Standing Committee? And what does that say about Xi? Yeah, well, I think clearly Xi Jinping had a massive win with personnel. I think we see this

particularly in the Politburo Standing Committee, right, where on the key portfolios that really matter to him in terms of controlling the key levers of power inside the system. So we're talking propaganda, obviously, we're talking party bureaucracy, military less so, but security services, you know, these these sort of areas all up and down the ballot he did very well. So that's obviously very important.

And I think obviously then the dropping of so-called communist youth league faction oriented people in Li Keqiang and Wang Yang and Hu Junhua being kind of unceremoniously kicked off the Politburo, that tells us that he's not in the mood to compromise with any other group. I prefer to call them rather than factions. Right.

So that sort of suggests to us that, you know, models that rely on that kind of an analysis are dead. It has been kind of interesting in my mind to see how quickly, though, that, you know, analysts who tend to follow that framework are already talking about the factional elements within Xi's faction. Right. So, you know, it's going to be the Shanghai people versus the Zhejiang army versus the Fujian people. I think there's a Tsinghua. Some people say there's a Tsinghua.

Right, the infamous, non-infamous Tsinghua clique and so on. But I think as we look more closely, I mean, this is all kidding aside, if we look more closely at the individuals, what we see is obviously these people, you know, loyalty to Xi is sort of like necessary, but not necessarily sufficient, right, in explaining who these people are.

Also, I just always find it interesting, you know, somehow over time, Wang Huning has become a Xi Jinping loyalist. I mean, obviously, he plays an interesting role for Xi Jinping, but I don't think we should kid ourselves in noting that he's been kind of shunted aside, right, by being pushed into the fourth position on the standing committee, which probably tells us that he will be going to oversee the Chinese People's Consultative Conference.

which is, you know, kind of a do nothing body, you know, for the most part. And, you know, my sense has long been that one of Shijun, there's a couple of factors there with Wang Huning. One is, you know, yes, he is very talented at sort of taking their very expansive theoretical ideas and coming up with snappy ideas.

snappy sort of catchphrases, right? This is clearly his sort of claim to fame. But, you know, we had that article last year from the magazine Palladium that kind of painted him as some sort of an eminence grise or a Rasputin-like figure, you know, in terms of his role. You know, my sense has always been, as one contact put it to me one time, you know, the issue is that such analyses tend to confuse the musician with the conductor, right?

In other words, Xi Jinping is pretty good at ideology, right? And party history and the other things that I think the others had relied on. I think the second thing with Wang Huning is, in a way, Xi can't look at him, I don't think, without sort of seeing that change. There's a guy who's changed flags, as they would say, right? He's served...

three very different leaders, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and now Xi, um, and, and continued on. And I think at some level, uh, and we look at the rest of the appointments where it appears that, uh, loyalty was much more important than merit, um, where that's also a question mark. So there's those issues. I think on the Politburo, you know, you mentioned the, the Ching Poc clique. It was very interesting. You had shared with me, uh,

Desmond Shum of Red Roulette's famed Twitter stream sort of debunking this Tsinghua clique and saying, well, it turns out, in fact, that the new Shanghai Municipal Party Secretary Chen Jianying can't stand Chen Xi, even though they both went to Tsinghua and were there at the same time and so on. You know,

who knows with Desmond Shum, but I think he knows some things, right? And it's just a reminder to us all, I think, how little we understand, right, about these relationships, especially now with Xi's concentration of power and also a situation where we've had nearly three years of COVID isolation for the country. Right, and so it's really hard to go talk to people.

Even the fewer and fewer numbers of people who know something and can talk. To the standing committee, I think certainly just from friends and contacts and just the biggest surprise was

I think Li Keqiang and Wang Yang not sticking around. And as that long explainer said, sort of without naming them, sort of they were good comrades who steps aside for the good of the party in the country. Because that happens so often. Whatever that means. But really the bigger surprise was that, oh, Tai Chi showing up on there, who I think when you look at the standing committee, I think the general sense is, okay, these people are all, they're loyal, but they're also,

Right. I meant Li Qiang, the new likely new premier, number two on the standing committee is actually pretty competent. The Shanghai lockdown disaster aside. Tai Chi, on the other hand, was just looks more like it's a straight up loyalty to Xi. And I think he was not really on anybody's short list of who was going to make it on there. And so it does. No, I think that's right. It does feel like something.

Yeah, well, a couple things there. I think, one, let's start with the issue you raised about the economic team, because I think that's actually very important. You know, at some level, sometimes I feel like I'm sort of tiring my...

of my role as official narrative buster or windmill tilter, whether it's pushback from Li Keqiang or the myth of the savior premier, as I was calling it, which we didn't see, or that these norms actually aren't very enduring and it's really about power politics. Right.

I think I'm kind of on to a new one now, which is, you know, Xi Jinping's new team of incompetent sycophants. Right. That's kind of the label that's come out in a lot of the takes since the Congress. But to your point, I mean, you know, Li Chang has run the three most important economic powerhouses on China's East Coast, either as governor or as party chief. Right.

He seems to have had a good relationship with both domestic private sector businesses and foreign. People forget that he got the Tesla plant built in Shanghai in a year, basically, right? And it's responsible for a very significant amount of Tesla's total output of vehicles.

Likewise, I hear that Ding Xuexiang, even though we don't know a lot about him, was rather instrumental in things like breaking the logjam with the U.S. over the delisting of Chinese ADRs, that he had played an important role in convincing Xi Jinping.

It would not be a good idea, for example, to, you know, we're already seeing sort of decoupling on the technology side. It would not be a good idea to encourage the Americans to decouple financially as well. So the point is, I think we need to just all kind of calm down, right, and see how these people perform in office.

Hu Lifeng, I think, is perhaps, you know, maybe more of a question mark. But here, too, I think it's important for us to think about how their system works, right? You know, the political report sets the frame, right? It tells us what, okay, this is the ideological construct we're working off of our interpretation, our dialectical interpretation of what's going on.

And that, I think the signal there was what I like to call this fortress economy, right? So self-sufficiency in technology and so on. And so then when we look at the Politburo appointments,

you can see that they align pretty closely to that agenda, right? These people who've worked in state firms or scientists. Aerospace, defense. Yeah, aerospace. Very close alignment with that agenda. I'm not saying this is the right choice for China or that it even will be successful. I'm just saying it makes sense. And it's not necessarily just sycophants. It's actually loyal, but some either expertise or experience in certain of these key sectors. Yeah.

Yeah. And of interest as well, you know, even people who have overlapped with Xi Jinping, how much overlap did they have? How much exposure did they have? You know, there's a lot of discussion, for example, about the new propaganda boss, Li Shuling, being very close to Xi and likewise, sure, Taifeng, right? Both of whom were vice presidents at the party school when Xi also was there. But remember, you know, he was understudied to Hu Jintao at the

time. I mean, the party school thing was a very small part of his portfolio and they were ranked lower amongst the vice presidents of the party school. So how much actual interaction did he have? So there are two, I think obviously, yes, these people will do what Xi Jinping wants them to do, but that doesn't mean they're not competent. On Saichi, I agree with you. I think it's difficult. My speculation would be a couple of things. One, proximity matters, right? He's been sitting in Beijing the last five years, so he's had the opportunity to

be close to the boss and impact that. I've heard some suggestions from contacts, which I think makes some sense. He was seen as more strictly enforcing the zero COVID policy, right? In part because he's sitting in Beijing than say a Chun Minar, right? Who arguably was a other stroke better, you know, candidate for that position on the Politburo Standing Committee. And there, you know, it will be interesting to see, you know, we're not sure the musical chairs have not yet finished, right? Post-party Congress for people getting new jobs, but

you know for example if Chen Minar stays out in Chongqing that seems like a bit of a loss for him right I mean he's been yeah he needs to go somewhere else if he's got any hope of um sort of but so one thing sorry one thing on the Politburo I thought was really interesting I know we've talked about offline um is that for the first time the head of the Ministry of State Security was was promoted into the Politburo uh Chen Minar and now he is uh

He's the secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, which basically over the party body that oversees the entire security services system and legal system. Yeah. And what do you think that says about priorities and where she sees things going?

Well, I think it definitely aligns with this concept of Xi Jinping's of comprehensive national security, right? We've seen and heard and read a lot about that. And it seems that the number of types of security endlessly peripherates. I think we're up to 13 or 14. Everything is national security in China. Yeah, everything is national security. That's one thing. I think it's interesting, perhaps in the frame of, you know, in an era where, you

They are becoming a bigger power and therefore have more resources and so on. You know, is that role that's played by the Ministry of State Security, which is, you know, they have this unique role, don't they? They're in a way, they're sort of the U.S.'s central intelligence agency and an FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation combined, and that they do have that internal security role as well. But they are the foreign civilian anyway, foreign intelligence collection army.

So perhaps over time there's been some sense that they realized, yes, cyber was great for certain things, but you still need human intelligence. We don't know how well or not Chen Wenjing has performed, but obviously this has been a relentless campaign, the search for spies and so on and so forth. I also think it says something about what we seem to be seeing emerging here, which is an effort to take what previously were these, you know,

administrative or ministerial factions, right, of the Ministry of Public Security, MPS, the MSS, and even the party's discipline watchdog, the Central Commission on Discipline Inspection, you know, in an effort to sort of knit those guys into one whole. And, you know, it is interesting that Chen Wenjing actually has experience in all three of those. He started off, I think, as a street cop

He did serve on the Discipline Inspection Commission under Wang Qishan when things were really going in that department in the early part of Xi's tenure. And then he's headed the Ministry of State Security. I think even more interesting probably is

the formation of the new secretariat, right, where we have both Chen Wenqing on there and also Wang Xiaohong as Minister of Public Security, but also as a deputy on the sea plaque, right, and a seat on the secretariat. And if we look at the gentleman who's number two in the discipline inspection space, he was a longtime police officer as well. So that's very unusual, you know.

His name's escaping me at the moment. But, you know, so in effect, you have basically three people on the secretariat with security backgrounds. And, you know,

That's important. It means other portfolios that might be on the secretariat have been dumped. Right. So it shows something about the prioritization of security. And I think it's interesting. You know, we've we've often struggled to understand what is the National Security Commission. How does it function? You know, these sort of things. And it's it's still, you know, absolutely clear as mud.

But what was interesting was that, you know, from whatever that early design was that had some aspect at least of looking a bit like the US style National Security Commission.

They took on a much more sort of internal looking flavor. And it had always been my sort of thought that one of the reasons Xi Jinping created this thing was to break down, you know, those institutional rivalries and barriers and force, you know, coordination on these, on these institutions. So, you know, bottom line, I think what we're seeing is a real effort by Xi Jinping to, uh,

knit together a comprehensive, unified and very effective, you know, stifling really security apparatus. And I don't expect to see that change anytime soon. And then, you know, as you and I have been discussing recently, we also have another Xi loyalist, Chen Yixin, showing up as Chen Wenqing's successor, right, at the Ministry of State Security. And he remains the Secretary General of the

legal affairs commission too. Exactly. So, you know, from, from a Xi Tong where Xi Jinping five years ago arguably had very loose control, if at all, we now have a situation where he's totally dumb. And just, I think the official on the secretariat, I think it's Liu Jingguo. Does that sound right? That's the one. Yes. Thank you. I'm getting old. No, no. He also has, has a long history of the ministry of public security system. Um,

But yeah, it does seem like it's a real... I mean, I don't want to use the word securitization, but it does seem like this is an indication of a real sort of... It just sort of fits with the general trend towards much more focus on national security. I mean, what about on the Central Military Commission, right? Because one of the surprises was...

Again, and this is where the norms were broken, where you have Zhao Xia who should have retired based on his age, but he's what, 72? But he's on the Politburo, he stays as the vice chair of the CMC. Yep.

Yeah, no, at the ripe old age of 72, it's a little hard to think of him, you know, mounting a tank or something to go invade Taiwan or whatever, you know, whatever the case may be. But, you know, I think here again, the narratives might be off base a little bit. You know, it's this issue of, you know, well, he's just picked, you know, these sycophantic loyalists.

he's a guy who has combat experience, right? And that's increasingly rare. Um, I don't think it's any surprise that, uh, that himself and, uh, the, uh, uh,

gentleman on the CMC, Lee, who is now heading the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also has Vietnam combat experience, not from 79, but from the border incursions that went on into the 80s. So it's not that surprising, really. But obviously, you know, Jiang Youxia is very close to Xi Jinping. Their fathers fought together, right? And they have that sort of

blood tie and she is signaling i want uh i want political control and also technologically or or um you know operationally competent people i think the other fascinating piece is we see once again no vice chairman from the political commissariat side of the pla i think that's very interesting you know a lot of people including myself were betting that meow hawk right would would would

get the promotion. He didn't, you know, we can't know, but my sense is in a way Xi Jinping is still punishing that side of the PLA for Xu Caihou's misdoings, right? You know, and that's very interesting in and of itself. Also, it may be a signal that I don't need a political commissar vice chairman because I handle the politics. Right. And he, yeah. And in this, this new era that the, the next phase of the Xi era, it is, uh,

Everybody knows, right? It's all about loyalty to Xi. Well, we just saw, right, today, you know, yet more instructions about the CMC responsibilities, chairman responsibilities. Unfortunately, they didn't release the full text, but it would be fascinating to see what's in there. No, and they never do on these things, which is tough. But, you know, I think we have a general sense of what will be in it.

But even that itself, right, you know, is a very major thing that people, you know, didn't really pick on. So certain scholars, certainly like James Mulvaney and other people who are really good on this stuff, noticed it. But this shift under Hu Jintao was a CMC vice chairman responsibility system. In other words, he was subletting the operational matters, certainly to his uniformed officers. Xi Jinping doesn't do that. Yeah.

Well, and here we are, right? Where he looks. He does. I mean, I had written in the newsletter that she had... I think he ran the table in terms of personnel. Oh, completely. Yeah. And that's why it is interesting why he kept around folks like Wahine. But we'll move on. The next question I had really was about the She's report to the party Congress. And we had talked... I think you'd also... You've talked about it on a previous podcast, Ed.

I mean, there seems to be a pretty significant shift in the way that she is talking about the geopolitical environment and their assessment of how they see the world. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think definitely we saw some shifts there and, uh, you know, you and I've talked a lot about it. You know, there are problems with word counting, right. You know, and when you look at the thing and you just do a machine search and it's like, okay, well, security was mentioned 350 times or whatever, but, but the, you know, in what context, right. Um, and, uh, our, uh,

Mutual Admiration Society, the China Media Project. I thought they did an excellent piece on that sort of saying, remember, it's the words that go around the buzzword that matter just as much.

But what we can say unequivocally is that two very important touchstones that kind of explain their thinking on their perception of not only their external environment, but really kind of their internal environment, which had been in the last several political reports are now are gone. And those are this idea of China's enjoying a period of strategic opportunity and this idea that peace and development are the underlying trend of the times.

And, you know, on the period of strategic opportunity, I think it's important for a couple of reasons. One, just to kind of break that down for our listeners in a way that's not, you know, sort of CCP speak. The basic idea was that China judged that its external security environment was sufficiently benign that they could focus their energies on economic development. Right. So obviously, that's very important.

I also think it was an important governor. And I don't think I've seen anything out there, you know, talking about its absence in this political report on this topic. It was an important governor on sort of breakneck Chinese military development, sort of like the Soviet Union. Right. In other words, as long as you were

you know, sort of judging that your external environment was largely benign. You didn't really have a justification to have a massive defense budget or to be pushy, you know, in the neighborhood, these sort of things. And people might poo poo that and sort of say, well, you know, this is all just rhetoric and so on. No, they actually tend to stick to this. Oh, that's interesting. Well, then that fits a little bit, right? Because they added the wording around strategic deterrence in the report as well, which is seen as

you know, modernizing, expanding their nuclear forces, right? Exactly. Right. So, you know, that's an important absence. And the fact that, you know, the word again, word searching, right? Strategic and opportunity are both in there, but they're separated and balanced by this risks and challenges. Right. Now, the language is very starkly different.

Yeah. And then likewise on on peace and development, this one, as you know, is is even older. Right. It goes back to the early 80s, I believe, that it's been in in these political reports. And, you know, there again, the idea was sort of not only was this notion that peace and economic development were the dominant, you know, sort of trend internationally, globally, but.

they would be an enduring one. You know, this idea of the trend of the times, right? Now that's missing. So what has replaced it in both these cases is this spirit of struggle, right? And so that's a pretty stark departure. And that, in my mind, just sort of is a real throwback to what you could call the period of maximum danger for the regime in the 60s, right? When they had just split off with the Soviets and they were still facing unremitting hostility from the West after the Korean War experience and so on.

So, you know, there's definitely a decided effort there. I think also we should view the removal of these concepts as a culmination of a campaign that Xi Jinping has been on for a while, you know, as you and I have discussed many times before.

From the minute he arrived, he began, I think, to paint this darker picture of the exterior environment. And he seems to have always wanted to create a sort of sense of urgency, certainly, maybe even crisis. And I think a big part of that is to justify the power grab, right? If the world outside is hostile...

You need, you know, the strong man. Well, and that was a lot of the propaganda going into the party Congress about sort of the need for sort of a navigator Helmsman like figure because, you know, we're close as we've ever been to the great rejuvenation, but it's going to be really hard and we need sort of strong leadership, right? It was all building to that. This is why she needs to stay for as long as he wants to stay.

Yeah. And I think we saw that reflected again just the other day in this long People's Daily piece by Ding Xuesheng, right, where he's talking again about the need for unity. The throwback, as you mentioned in your newsletter to Mao's commentary there is not to be lost on any of us. You know, the fact that the Politburo Standing Committee's first field trip is out to Yan'an, right? I mean, you know, these are messages, right, that aren't coincidental.

No, it is. And the thing that's also about the report that's interesting is that while there was, speaking of word counts, there was no mention of the United States, but it certainly feels like that was the primary backdrop for this entire discussion around the shifting geopolitical assessments and this broader... And I think one of the things that I want to talk to you as we get into this a little bit about the sort of US-China relations, but

Is it possible that she has come to the conclusion that the U.S. is effectively implacably hostile? Yeah. And that there is no way that they're going to get through this without some sort of a broader struggle or... I don't know if they, you know, feel that conflict is inevitable. In fact, I kind of assume they don't think that because that's a pretty grim picture for them, you know. But I do think there's this notion that

they've now had two years to observe the Biden administration, right? And to some degree, I think it's fair to say that by certain parties in the US, Xi Jinping, maybe not Xi Jinping, but a Wang Qishan or some of these characters were sold a bit of a bag of goods, right? Oh, don't worry. He's not Trump. He's going to, things will be calmer. We're going to get back to dialogue and, you know, so on and so forth. And that really hasn't happened. And when we look at

When we look at measures like the recent chip control chip restrictions, which I'm sure we'll discuss at some point, you know, that would have been, you know, the wildest dream, right, of certain members of the Trump administration to do something that that's that firm. Right. So I think the conclusion of the Politburo then must be this is baked into the cake. Right. It's bipartisan, right?

The earliest we'll see any kind of a turn here is 2024. I think they probably feel that. And therefore, suddenly things like a no limits partnership with Russia, right, start to make more sense. What would really make sense in that if that is your framing, and I think it is, and you therefore see the Europeans as like a swing, right, in this equation.

This should be a great visit, right, for Chancellor Scholz. And I can't remember if it was you I was reading or someone else here in the last day or so, but this idea that if the Chinese are smart, they would get rid of these sanctions. That was me. Well, that was in my newsletter yesterday. That was you, yeah. Parliamentary leaders...

And, you know, absolutely. Right. You know, that's a no brainer, but I don't think they're going to do it. But but, you know, this idea definitely that and when they talk in the political report, you know, it's like, sir, not appearing in this film. Right. But we know who the people who are doing the bullying, you know, is in the long arm jurisdiction and so on and so forth.

And I mean, all kidding aside, I think, you know, they will see something like the chip restrictions effectively as a declaration of economic war. I don't think that's going to say that basically is it goes to the heart of their sort of technological project around rejuvenation. I mean, it is a pretty significant sort of set of really kind of, I would think, from the very aggressive policies against them.

Yeah. And I mean, enforcement will be key and we'll see if, you know, licenses are granted and how it's done. And we saw, you know, already some backing off there with regard to this U.S. person restriction and so on. But, you know, it's still pretty tough stuff. There's no two ways about it. No. And I wonder and I worry that here in D.C., you know, where the mood is very hawkish, if people here really fully appreciate sort of the shift that's taking that seems to be taking place in Beijing and how these actions are viewed.

Well, I think that's a really, you put your hand on it really, really interesting way, Bill, because, you know, let's face it, really since the Trump trade war started, right? We've all analysts, you know, pundits, even businesses and government people have been sort of saying, you know, when are the Chinese going to punch back? You know, when are they going to retaliate? Right. And we talk about Raros and we talk about Apple and Tesla. I mean, they slap some sanctions on people, but they're like, they're kind of a joke. Yeah.

And I guess what I'm saying is I kind of worry we're missing the forest from the trees, right? You know, the work report tells us, the political report tells us how they're reacting, right? And it is hardening the system, moving toward this fortress economy, you know, so on and so forth. And I want to be real clear here, you know, they're not doing this just because they're reacting to the United States. Xi Jinping...

presumably wanted to do this all along. But I don't think we can say that the actions they perceive as hostile from the U.S. aren't playing a pretty major role in allowing him to accelerate. Right. Well, they call him the great accelerationist, right? As long as... Exactly. You know, Trump was called that as well. And that's what worries me too is we're in this...

kind of toxic spiral where, where they see us doing something and then they react and we see them do something and we react and, and it doesn't feel like sort of, there's any sort of a governor or a break. And I don't see how we figure that out.

Well, I think, you know, and I'm sure we'll come to this later in our discussion, but, you know, yes, that's true. But, you know, I'm always deeply skeptical of these inevitability memes, whether it's, you know, Thucydide Trap or, you know, these other things. Last time I checked, there is something called political agency.

In other words, leaders can make choices and they can lead if they want to. And they have an opportunity to do so in Bali and we'll have to see. Some of the early indications are perhaps they're looking at sort of a longer meeting. So that would suggest maybe there will be some discussion of some of these longstanding issues. Maybe we will see some of the usual deliverable type stuff. So there's an opportunity. I think one question is,

Can the domestic politics on either side allow for seizing that opportunity? You know, that's an open question. Interesting. So let's jump, if we can, right back as a couple of things in the party constitution, which I think going into the Congress, you know, they told us they were going to amend the constitution. There was expectations that

The amendments were going to reflect sort of an increase in seized power, things like this idea of the two establishments, which for listeners are to establish the status of Comrade Xi Jinping as the core of the party, central committee of the whole party,

and to establish the guiding role of Xi Jinping thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for the new era. The thinking, and I certainly believed it, I thought that they would write that in. There was some talk that Xi Jinping thought the longer version would be truncated to just Xi Jinping thought, and that possibly he might get sort of another title like people's leader. None of those happened. One thing that did happen was,

this, what's officially translated by the Chinese side in English as the two upholds, so the uphold the core status of General Secretary Xi Jinping within the CCP and uphold the centralized authority of the party, those were written in. And so the question is, was there some kind of pushback or to see, are we misreading what mattered and actually two upholds are more important than two establishes?

Yeah. Well, and I think this may be a multiple choice answer, right? There might be elements of all the above in there. You know, I think it is important that he didn't get the truncation, Xi Jinping thought. You have to think that that was something he was keen on. You know, in retrospect, it may be that it was something akin. I've always felt, you know, another thing that was on the table that didn't happen was reestablishing the right chairmanship. Right. Right.

Um, I, my view had always been, he was using that largely as a bargaining chip that, you know, in some ways it creates more trouble than it's worth. You, if you're going to have a chairman, you probably have to have vice chairman. And what does that say about the succession? I mean, of course he could have, you know, a couple of geezers on there as vice chairman too. But I, my view was always, he was holding that out there to trade away, right. You know, at, at the last minute, um, maybe that's what happened with Xi Jinping thought, I don't know, you know, uh, there have been some media articles, one of which, uh,

You and I were discussing yesterday from the Japanese publication Nikkei, you know, that suggested that, you know, the elders had, this was their last gasp, right? So the Jiang Zemin's and the Zeng Qinghong's and Hu Jintao and so on.

I'm a little skeptical of that. It is possible, but I'd be a little skeptical of that. It's not at all clear that they had any kind of a role even at Beit Aichla this year and so on. Jiang Zemin didn't even attend the party congress, so clearly he must be pretty frail or he thought it was not worth his time. Or he knew he'd be humiliated. You never know. Yeah, a little hard to say. But I kind of –

struggle with the notion that, you know, the 105 year old Song Ping gets up on a chair or something and starts making trouble, right? You know, the poor man's probably lucky if he stays awake, you know, during. One question. And again, because of the just, you know, how much more opaque Chinese politics are than really I think they've ever been. But just one question. I mean, is it possible, for example, that, you know, it's more important to get the personnel done?

And then once you get your, so you stack the central committee, you get the Politburo, you get the standing committee, that these things are sort of a next phase? Yeah, it's entirely possible. And I think it does dovetail with

This idea that, you know, another reflection from both the political report and the lineup in my mind is Xi Jinping is a man in a hurry. Right. And he's kind of projected that, as you said, the great accelerator since he arrived. But I think he sees this next five years is really fundamental. Right. In terms of breaking through on these choke point technologies, as they call them, you know, these sort of things.

And so maybe therefore having the right people in place to handle, you know, speedier policy execution, you know, was more important. Likewise, I mean, he's sort of telegraphing. He's going to be around for a while, right? No successor, no visible successor. Which no visible successor doesn't, it means, you know, a successor would need, likely need five years on the standing committee. So we're looking at 10 more years. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. And so there will be time. The other thing is Xi Jinping is a sort of determined fellow, right? So of interest, even before the 19th Party Congress, I'd been hearing very strong rumors that the notion of Ling Xiu was out there, that he was contemplating it.

it. Right. And so then we see the buildup with Renmin Ningxiu and so on and so forth. And, you know, it didn't happen clearly at the 19th. It didn't happen again, but it doesn't mean it won't, you know, at some point. And I think it's really important also to think about, you know,

We just saw a pretty serious enterprise of the, you know, quote unquote, norm busting. Right. So what's to say that midcourse in this five years, he doesn't hold another sort of extraordinary conference of party delegates like Deng Xiaoping did in 1985. Right. To push through some of these. You never know. Right. In other words, these things don't necessarily have to happen just at party congresses. So my guess is, you know, this isn't over yet. Right. But, you know, at some level, give

given how the system was ramping up with those articles about Navigator and the People's Leader stuff and so on, you know, that's usually a tell. And yet it didn't happen. It's really interesting. There's something interesting there. And so far, you know, now they're in the mode of they're out with these sort of publicity, propaganda, education teams where they go out throughout the country and talk about the spirit of the party Congress and push all the key messaging. Yeah.

You know, so far, none of those like people's leader truncation have happened in that, which is, I think, an area where some people thought, well, maybe that could sort of come after the Congress. What is interesting is it's all two establishments all the time in those discussions. So that's been very interesting since it didn't make it into the document. I guess the other thing is, at some level, is it sort of a distinction without a difference? You know, I haven't done the work on this to see, but my guess is

Short of, you know, the many times they've just junked the entire Constitution and rewritten it, this is probably the most amendments there have been, you know, at one time, you know, to the 1982 Constitution. And most of them are his various buzzwords, right?

And, you know, I think you've been talking about this in the newsletter. There may very well be something to this issue of, you know, which is the superior thought to establishments or to uphold stroke safeguards, you know, and I think... And even if two establishments were...

And then it didn't go in. Then somehow it will be theoretically flipped to what God in the Constitution said. It looks like he won. Anything's possible. We may never know. It is very frustrating. I mean, I guess the thing, though, where it's fair to say that maybe this wasn't his ideal outcome. To me, there's been a very...

a clear and structured, stepwise approach on the ideology from the word go. And the first was to create right out of the chute this notion of three eras, the Mao period, Deng and those other guys we don't talk about anymore, period, and Xi Jinping's

new era right and then that was you know sort of crystallized right at the 19th party congress when you know xi jinping thought for horribly long name went into the constitution

And so, you know, the next step kind of seemed like that should be it. And as we've discussed before, you know, if he's able to get just thought, it certainly enhances his ability to stay around for a very long time. And it makes his Dick tots and so on even more unquestionable. But, you know, you can say again, matter of prioritization, um,

with a team where there's really no visible or other opposition, does it really matter? In other words, no one's going to be questioning his policy ideas anyway. I mean, just to decide, but on his inspection, the new standing committee will go on a sort of a group trip right after their party congress and sort of sends key messages. And this group went to Yan'an. They went to the caves and

In the long readout or long CCTV report of the visit, there was a section where the tour guide or the person introducing some of the exhibits talked about how the famous Mao song, The East is Red,

was written by a person, written by the people sort of spontaneously. And it was sort of injected in there. And it definitely caused some tittering about, well, what are they trying to signal for? Are we going to be singing some She songs? And I certainly, I think we all hope we don't. But it is just that there's some kind of really interesting signaling going on that I don't think we quite...

have figured out how to pass through my takeaway on all this has been i i need to go back and do a little more book work on you know what was what was the content of the seventh party congress what were the outcomes i mean i have the general sense right like you i immediately you know started brushing up on it but you know she delivered a an abridged

work report, right? A political report, which is exactly what Mao did then. I mean, in other words, they're not kidding around with the parallelism here. The question is, what's the message? Just for the background. So at the visit last week to Yan'an, the first spot that was in the propaganda was the site of the Seventh Party Congress.

Right. Which is where I think with the big picture behind of a call and Judah and the banner. And I think, too, and I'll put all this in the show notes, but but I think, you know, to be very simplistic, the seventh party Congress was really the moment, you know, at the end of the Yan'an rectification came in. It was the moment where sort of Mao fully asserted his dominance throughout the system, Mao thought, etc., etc.

So again, the symbolism and the signaling, you could certainly take a view that he doesn't do these things by coincidence. And this is signaling both of we can struggle through anything because they lived in caves and ended up beating the Japanese and then won the Civil War.

you know, this, and we can, and by the way, we have a dominant leader. I mean, there are ways, again, I'm being simplistic, but the symbolism was not, I think, one that would, for example, give a lot of confidence to investors, which I think is, you know, one of the many reasons we've seen until the rumors earlier this week,

a pretty big sell-off in the Hong Kong and mainland stock markets right after the Party Congress. No, most definitely. And I think, you know, this is the other thing about what I was trying to get at earlier with forest and trees, right? You know, in other words, he's been at this for a while too. You know, there's a reason why he declared a new long march, right? In the depths of the... And a new historical resolution, only the third and...

Yeah. And they have been stepwise building since then. And this is the next building block. And the last thought, I mean, he is 69. He's, he's 10 years older than president Joe Biden. He could, he could be around for a long time. Yes. Well, just quickly, cause I know we don't have that much more time, but I, can you say anything about your thoughts on who in town, what happened? You know, I, my first take having had a father and a stepfather had dementia was I

you know, maybe too sympathetic to the idea that, okay, he's having some sort of a senior cognitive moment. You know, you can get kind of fussy and easily agitated and you can start making a scene. And so therefore it was humiliating and symbolic of the end of the Communist Youth League faction, but maybe it was more benign as opposed to some of the other stuff going around. But I'd love to hear your take on that. I think I might be wrong. Yeah.

Well, I think, you know, I kind of shared your view initially when I watched the, I guess it was an AFP had the first, you know, sort of video that was out there. And, you know, he appeared to be stumbling around a bit. He definitely looked confused. And, you know, like what we were discussing earlier on another subject, this could be a multiple choice, you know, AFP.

or whatever type scenario as well. We don't know. I mean, it seems pretty well established that he has Parkinson's. I think the lead pipe censure for me though, was that second video. The longer one that came out a few days later. Channel News Asia put out. I mean, he is clearly tussling with Lee Jeon-soo about something, right? Something in the red folder. Yes, very clear. And,

And, you know, if he was having a moment, you know, when they finally get him up out of the chair and he seems to be kind of pulling back and so on, you know, he moves with some alacrity there for an 80 year old guy. I don't know if he was being helped to move quickly or he, you know, realized it was time to exit stage. Right. But I think, you know, as you said in your newsletter, we probably will never know that.

But to me, it looked an awful lot like an effort by Xi Jinping to humiliate him. You know, I mean, there was a reason, right, why they brought the cameras back in at that moment, you know, unless we believe that that just happened spontaneously in terms of Hu Jintao had his freak out just as those cameras were coming back in. The stone faces of the other members were

of the senior leadership there on the rostrum and, you know, Wang Huning pulling Li Jiangxu back down, kind of saying basically, look, buddy, this is Paul. You don't want to, that's not a good look for you trying to care for Hu Jintao. You know, I mean, obviously something was going on. And it does, it does feed in the idea. Okay. Well, Hu Chunhua, we all expected he'd at least be on the Paul Pier again. And he's, he's off. It sort of feeds into the idea that, well, maybe something,

something was going on that we don't know about. - I think what we know from observing Xi Jinping, right? We know that this is a guy who likes to keep people off balance, right? Who likes to keep the plates spinning. This is definitely the Maoist element of his personality, you know, whether it's strategic disappearances or this kind of stuff.

And I think it's entirely plausible that he might have made some last minute switches, right, to the various lists that were under consideration that caused alarm, you know, among those who thought they were on a certain list and no longer were. And others who were smart enough to realize that if he made those switches, they better just go with it. Yeah.

Yeah, go along with it. Exactly. I mean, you know, in some ways, the most, aside from what happened to Hu Jintao, the most disturbing or compelling, depending on how you want to look at it, part of that video is when Hu Jintao, you know, sort of very delicately taps Li Keqiang on the shoulder. He doesn't even look at him. You know, he just keeps looking straight ahead.

And that's tough. And as you pointed out in the newsletter and elsewhere, you know, how difficult must have that have been for Hu Jintao's son, Hu Haifeng, who's in the audience watching this all go on. And then two days later, he has to attend a meeting where he praises Xi to high heaven.

Yeah, exactly. So, so if the darker narrative is accurate, I guess one thing that concerns me a bit is, as you know, well, I have never been a fan of these memes about comparing Xi Jinping to either Stalin or Mao in part, because I don't see him as a whimsical guy. They were whimsical people. I think because of his tumultuous upbringing, he understands the problems with that kind of an approach to life. But this was a very ruthless act. If that more malign, um,

you know, sort of definition is true. And that, I think that says something about his mentality that perhaps should concern us if that's. No, because it has real implications, not just for domestic policies, but also potentially for his foreign policy. Absolutely. I mean, what it shows, right. To some degree, again, man in a hurry, this is a tenacious individual, right. If he's willing to do that. And so if you're going to, you know, kick them in the face on chips and, you know, things like that, um,

you should be taking that into consideration. Yeah, and I think preparing for a more substantive response that is more thought out. And it's also, whatever happened, it wasn't very Confucian for all this talk of Confucian ideals and values. So just, I think, one last question, and it is related, is what do you make of this recent upsurge or talk in D.C. from various officials that

the PRC has accelerated its timeline to absorb Taiwan. Because nothing in the public documents indicates any shift in that timeline. No. Well, first of all, do they have a timeline, right? I mean, the whole idea of a timeline is kind of stupid, right? If you're going to invade somewhere, you don't say, hey, we're going to invade on this day. I mean, 2049. Yeah, the only timeline that I think you can point to is

what is it, the second centenary, and Taiwan getting, quote-unquote, returning Taiwan to the motherland is key to the great rejuvenation. Yeah, you can't have rejuvenation without Taiwan. And so then it has to be done by 2049. So it has to be done within 27 years. But they've never come out and specifically said 27 years or 2049. But that's what people... That, I think, is where the timeline idea comes from. Oh, yes, definitely. And I think some confusion of...

what Xi Jinping has clearly set out and reaffirmed in the political report as these important operational benchmarks for the PLA, the People's Liberation Army, to achieve by its 100th anniversary in 2027. But that does not...

a go plan for Taiwan make, you know? And so it's been confusing to me trying to understand this. And of course, you know, I, I'm joking, but I'm not, you know, if we, if we listen now to the chief of naval operations of the U S Navy, you know, like they're invading tomorrow, basically. And, you know,

My former colleague from the CIA, John Culver, has done some very useful public work on this for the Carnegie Endowment, where he sort of said, look, there's certain things we would have to see. Forget about a D-Day style invasion, any type of military action that you don't need intelligence methods to find out, right? Canceling conscription demobilization cycles, those sort of things.

We don't see that happening. So I've been trying to come to grips with why the administration seems fairly seized with this in their public commentary. And so what I'm confident of is there's no smoking gun, unlike, say, the Russia piece, where it appears we had some pretty compelling intelligence. There doesn't seem to be anything that says Xi Jinping has ordered invasion plans for 2024 or even 2027.

So I'm pretty confident that's not the case. And so then it becomes more about an analytic framework, right? And from what I can tell, it seems to be largely based on what in the intelligence community we would call calendar int, calendar intelligence. In other words, over the next 18 months, a lot of stuff's going to happen. We're going to have our midterm elections next week. It's pretty likely the Republicans get at least one chamber of Congress, maybe both.

uh that would suggest that things like the taiwan policy act and you know really uh things that have uh beijing's undies in a bunch uh you know could really come back on uh the radar pretty forcibly and pretty quickly obviously taiwan nobody talks about it but taiwan's having municipal elections around the same time and normally that would be a very inside taiwan baseball affair nobody would care but the way the kmt looks like they will not perform i should say

in those municipal elections, they could be effectively wiped out, you know, as a as a sort of electable party in Taiwan. That's not a good news story for Beijing. Right. And then, of course, we have our own presidential in 2024 and Taiwan has a presidential in 24 in the U.S. case. I mean, look, we could end up with a President Pompeo, right, or President DeSantis or others who have been out there sort of talking openly about Taiwan independence and recognizing Taiwan. And similarly, I think whoever succeeds

President Tsai in Taiwan, if we assume it will likely be a Democratic Progressive Party president, will almost by definition be more independence-oriented. So I think the administration is saying there's a lot of stuff that's going to get the Chinese pretty itchy over this next 18-month period. So therefore, we need to be really loud in our signaling to deter, right? Right.

OK, but I think there's a risk with that as well, which they don't seem to be acknowledging, which is you might create a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, frankly, that's what really troubles me about the rhetoric. And so, for example, when Secretary Blinken last week or the week before, he said it twice in one week. Yeah. You know, the Chinese have given up on the status quo. I've seen nothing, you know, that would suggest they have called it a couple of times. At least I see like the so-called status quo.

Well, fair enough. Yeah. Okay. That's, that's fine. But I think if we look at the reason why they're calling it the so-called status quo, it's because it's so-called now because the U.S. has been moving the goalposts on the status, right? And we see them as moving the goalposts, right? Yeah. In terms of erosion of the commitment to the one China policy and the administration can say all at once that they're not moving the goalposts, but they are. I mean, let's just be honest, right? No. And they have moved it more than the Trump administration did, don't you think? Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. You know, no president has said previously, we will defend... Four times? Five times? Multiple times, right? You know, and things like, you know, democracy. I mean, this comes back also to the framing, right? One of the risks, I think, of framing the relationship as democracy versus autocracy is that it puts a very heavy incentive then for

for the Biden administration or any future US administration to, you know, quote unquote, play the Taiwan card, right, as part of said competition. Whereas if you don't have that framing, I don't think that's necessarily as automatic, right? In other words, if that's the framing, well, Taiwan's a democracy, so we have to lean in, right? You know, whereas if it's a more, say, you know, straight, realist or national interest driven foreign policy, you might not feel that in every instance, you've got to do that.

No, and it's an interesting point. And I also think, too, that I really do wonder how much Americans care. Right. And whether or not we're running the risk of sort of setting something up or setting something in motion that, you know, again, it's easy to be rhetorical about it, but that we're frankly not ready to deal with. Well, and another thing that's interesting, right, is that to that point.

Some of the administration's actions, you know, that are clearly designed to show toughness, who are they out-toughing? You know, in some cases, it feels like they're out-toughing themselves, right? I mean, obviously, the Republicans are watching them and so on and all of that. But, you know, interesting...

something that came across my thought wave the other day that I hadn't really considered. We're seeing pretty clear indications that a Republican-dominated Congress after the midterms may be less enthusiastic about support to Ukraine. You know, we're all assuming that they're going to be all Taiwan support all the time. Is that a wrong assumption? You know, I mean, in other words,

Ukraine's a democracy, right? And yet there's this weird strain in the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party that doesn't want to spend the money, right? And would that be the case for Taiwan as well? I don't know. But, you know, the point is,

I wonder if the boogeyman of looking soft is, is sort of in their own heads, you know, to, to, to some degree. And, and even if it isn't, you know, sometimes you have to leave. That's just. And, and, um, it's not clear the allies are listening. It doesn't sound like the Europeans would be on board with. I think very clearly they're not. I mean, you know, we're about to see a very uncomfortable bit of Kabuki theater here, aren't we? In the next couple of days with German chancellor Scholl's going over. And, um, you know, if you, uh,

read the op-ed he wrote in Politico, you know, it's, it's painful, right? You can see him trying to, uh, trying to, uh, you know, straddle the fence and walk that line. And, and obviously there are deep, deep divisions in his own cabinet, right? You know, over this visit, the foreign minister is publicly criticizing him, you know, and so on. So I think this is another aspect that might be worrisome, which is the approach, you know, my line is only sort of

A stool, if it's going to be stable, needs three legs. Right. And on U.S.-China relations, I think that is, you know, making sure our own house is in order, domestic strengthening, these guys call it, coordinating with allies and partners, certainly. But then there's this sort of talking to the Chinese aspect. And through a policy, what I tend to call strategic avoidance, we don't talk to them that much.

So that leg is missing. So then those other two legs need to be really strong. Right. And on domestic strengthening, OK, chips act and so on. That's good stuff. On allies and partners, there seems to be a bit of an approach. And I think the chip restrictions highlight this of, look, you're either for us or against us. Right. Whereas I think in, you know, the good old Cold War one, we seem to be able to understand that a West Germany relationship,

could do certain things for us vis-a-vis the Soviets and certain things they couldn't. And we didn't like it and we complained, but we kind of lived with it, right? If we look at these chip restrictions, it appears the administration sort of said, look, we've been doing this multilateral diplomacy on this thing for a year now. It's not really delivering the goods. The CHIPS 4 framework is a mess. So let's just get it over with and drag the allies with us, you know, and we'll see what ramifications that will have. Oh, on that uplifting note,

I think I'm out of questions. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Well, I think something just to consider is this idea, and maybe this will help us close on a more optimistic note. Xi Jinping is telling us he's hardening the system, he's doing this fortress economy thing and so on. But he also is telling us, I have a really difficult set of things I'm trying to accomplish in this five years. And that may mean a desire to

to signal to the U.S., let's stabilize things a bit, not because he's having a change of heart or wants a fundamental rapprochement, so on and so forth. I don't think that's the case. But might he want a little bit of room? Yeah, buy some time, buy some space. Yeah. Might he want that? He might, you know. And so I think then a critical question is, how does that get sorted out in the context of the negotiations over the meeting in Bali? If it is a longer meeting, I think, you know, so that's encouraging for them.

Right. To some degree, I would say, you know, if we look at what's just happened with the 20th Party Congress and we look at what's about to happen, it seems with our midterms here in the United States.

who's the guy who's going to be more domestically, politically challenged going into this meeting and therefore have less room to be able to seize that opportunity if it does exist. And yet it might be there. So, you know, hopefully both sides can see that. And the more politically challenged is President Biden is what you're saying. Exactly. Because I think, you know, the issue is the way I've been framing it lately, you know,

supposedly our position is the U S position is strategic competition. And China says, look, that's inappropriate and we're not going to sign onto it and forget, you know, my own view is we kind of have blown past strategic, uh, competition. We're now in what I would call strategic rivalry. I think the chip restrictions, you know, are, are a giant exclamation point. Uh,

Under that, you know, and so on. And my concern is we're kind of rapidly headed toward what I would call strategic enmity. And, you know, that all sounds a bit pedantic, but I think that represents three distinct phases of the difficulty in the relationship. You know, strategic enmity is the cold, the old Cold War, what we had with the Soviets. Right. So.

we are competing against them in a brass tacks manner across all dimensions. And if it's a policy that, you know, hurts us, but it hurts them, you know, 2% more, we do it, you know, kind of thing. I don't think we're there yet. And the meeting offers an opportunity to, you know, arrest the travel from strategic rivalry to strategic enmity. Let's see if there's something there. Let's yeah. And if, and if we don't, if it doesn't arrest it, then I think the U S government at least has to do a much better job of explaining the

to the American people why we're headed in this direction and needs to do a much better job with the allies. Because, because again, what I worry about is we're sort of heading down this path and it doesn't feel like we've really thought it through. You know, there are lots of reasons to be on this path, but there's also needs to be a much more of a comprehensive understanding of the, of the costs and the ramifications and the solutions and have a, have an actual sort of theory of the case about how we get out of the other side of this in a, in a better way.

Yeah, I think that's important. I want to be real fair to the administration. You know, they're certainly more thoughtful and deliberative than their predecessor. Of course, the bar was low, but, you know, they seem to approach these things in a pretty dedicated and careful manner. And I think they really, you know, take things like looking at outbound investment restrictions. You know, my understanding is they have been.

you know, seeking a lot of input about unintended consequences and so on. But then you look at something like the chips piece, and it just seems to me that those in the administration who had been pushing for, you know, more there for some time,

had a quick moment where they basically said, look, this thing's not working with multilateral. Let's just do it. And then, oh, now we're seeing the second and third and other order consequences of it. And the risk is that we wind up, our goal is to telegraph unity to Beijing and shaping their environment around them as the administration calls it. We might be signaling our disunity. I don't know with the allies. And obviously that would not be a good thing. That's tough.

That's definitely a risk. Well, thanks, Chris. It's always great to talk to you. And I hope, you know, like I said, thank you for listening to the Occasional Syntheticism Podcast. We may be back more. There's a lot going on, but I appreciate you listening. Check the show notes. There'll be some links to some of the various articles we talked about. And again, thanks everyone for reading, listening, and thank you, Chris. My pleasure.