Sinocism Live: A chat with Jon Czin about US-China, Xi Jinping & some other fun topics
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Okay, so we are now live. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this edition of Cynicism Live. We have a great guest, Jonathan Zinn, who is joining us here. He's also in D.C. He is now the, just reading your bio, the Michael Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. And before that,

He was for many years at the CIA as one of the US intelligence community's top experts. He was on the National Security Council as director of China for two years during the Biden administration. And so he staffed all of President Biden's interactions with Xi Jinping and so was really in the room. So really looking forward to an opportunity to talk to John tonight. I laid out some questions in the announcement I made, but I think we'll start off the conversation with

So let Jonathan, let John give a little bit of a background about who he is and how he got where he is. And then we'll jump in some questions. And if we have time, we'll try to get to some audience questions as well. I know some of you posted in the chat. So anyway, John, welcome. We have people filing in and really looking forward to this conversation. Thank you.

Thanks so much, Bill. Thanks for the opportunity. This is great. I'm excited to do it. And hello to everybody who's watching. So I guess a little bit about myself and how I got into the China watching business. It was a slightly circuitous past, I think, as it is for many people. But yeah.

You know, what happened for me was, and the way I actually got interested in the whole national security space is that I, 9-11 happened a week into my freshman year of college, just to date myself. And I'm from New Jersey and I grew up in Fort Lee, side of the Bridgegate scandal with Chris Christie. So I grew up with a view of the Manhattan skyline. And so when 9-11 happened, I had been one of these kids who showed up on campus. I was really interested in politics, poli-sci. And I really thought,

This was the thing that I wanted to do. Fast forward a little bit, I started studying Arabic. I realized that was not really what I wanted to do. I spent a little bit of time at Oxford and I started studying the Sino-Soviet split, which will be germane today's conversation a little bit, right?

Right. And I realized what I was really interested in was was great power politics. Right. I started studying Chinese when I got to grad school and I've kind of been been drinking through that same soda straw ever since. Right. So really, 9-11 was kind of that pivot point for me as a person and then how I ended up getting getting into this whole lineup.

work. And I ended up at the agency because I realized after 9-11, you know, I wasn't going to probably join the special forces or become a Marine or a sharpshooter, but I was pretty nerdy and I like studying. So becoming an analyst seemed like the natural thing to do for me. So that was how I ended up where I am.

Great. Well, I have to say, we only met recently. I had heard great things about you over the years. And so it's been a real pleasure getting to know you. And it's great that you're now on the outside and you can share your wisdom and knowledge with all of us. Because, you know, when I started CITIZEN, one of my goals is to help people get smarter about China. It's obviously a massively complex and challenging field.

Issues the wrong word, but just sort of a multi-dimensional topic. And so the more that we can get folks like you to sort of give us some guidance and some of your wisdom, I think is really helpful for everybody. So I wanted to jump in. First question, simple question. You know, given your experience, especially most recently in the Biden administration,

And I know you wrote a good piece for Brookings recently about sort of US-China relations and where, you know, I think it was recommendations for the Trump administration. Where are US-China relations headed under President Trump? And how do you think the PRC views the current president? And how do you think they view the state of the relationship?

Yeah, I mean, I think the glib short answer is that it's on a downward trajectory, right? But I think right now in this moment, the way I've been describing this current moment in the first couple of months of the administration, well, two things. Number one, I don't think that the administration early on has hit the Chinese kind of as hard as I expected them to, and maybe as hard as the Chinese feared that they would. And the way I've been describing this initial moment, Bill, is that we're basically in the

in the second iteration of the trade war. - Sorry, in the phony war? - Phony war, kind of like the run to World War II where there's some skirmishing, there's some diplomacy going on, but we're not really into the full show yet, right? And I think that analogy applies to where we're at in the current moment between the two administration, between the two sides. And I think for Beijing, you know, you see this debate out there sometimes, well, maybe Beijing thinks that Trump is good for them because of the dysfunction at home, but I think,

There might be some underlying confidence in China's trajectory, but I think on a day-to-day basis, the volatility of the Trump administration, its policymaking and the unpredictability, that just breeds a lot of anxiety in Beijing. They don't like having that kind of volatility in the relationship.

I'd offer two thoughts, though. I mean, just kind of looking at a slightly longer arc in the relationship, I would say, number one, like I wrote in the piece, I would say that at the end of the Biden administration, the relationship was actually at a relative high point in this new era of kind of more overt competition, right? There was some cooperation. There was a fair bit of communication. There wasn't the same kind of animus and hostility. We were doing things on fentanyl, et cetera. So it's

I think it's a better starting point to kind of start from a more elevated point and then go downward than to be, say where we were in the middle of 2022. Right. And then have the relationship take some, take some additional hits from there. Um,

But the big thing for me actually is not about a downward trajectory in the relationship. And we can talk a little bit more about this. What gives me a little bit more concern is actually that there could be some kind of, you know, quote unquote, grand bargain between the two sides. Right. I think there's a lot of ambient concern about that in the China watching community in Washington. And I think I think that that is actually potentially more disconcerting in this moment.

When you say grand bargain, I guess the one date where everyone we're all waiting for is April 2nd, where we're supposed to get the set of tariffs and the White House is certainly signaling they're going to be on everybody.

When you say grand bargain, because I know I've written a little bit about it. A lot of people are sort of talking about it. There's lots of, as you said, sort of chatter. And I think some of the folks who are more hawkish who were excited or looking forward to President Trump being tough, being pretty tough on China, there is some concern that actually maybe there'll be this bigger deal. What is this idea of a grand bargain? Because I've heard various iterations. It seems like it's a very kind of amorphous and...

Potentially unrealistic but still out there kind of idea. Yeah, I mean, I think that's totally fair It is still kind of a Rorschach at this point, right? It's kind of floating in the ether but right to insert their own hopes and dreams into it I think the way I think about it And the way I try to distinguish it from what happened in the in the first Trump administration is that a grand bargain would basically be something some kind of deal that crosses

that wasn't just about trade issues, right? And that jumped streams and included both trade and economic issues and security issues, right? And I think that's where you see and feel a lot of the anxiety in Washington, right? Because if we get- And security issues specifically would be something potentially like Taiwan.

Taiwan. Yeah. And so the way I think about it is in three tiers, right? There would be the trade issues would be at the core of the conversation, I think, obviously, but I could see a scenario in which Beijing then goes and starts sniffing around about things that are adjacent to it, like scrutiny of Chinese investments into the United States, right? I think there's a strong sense that they want to go back to the future, the way things were at the end of the Obama administration, where there was a lot of Chinese investment and

They were very interested in investing in our high tax. Well, there was the, what was it, the bilateral investment treaty was being negotiated, right? Yes. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I think there would be interest in going into that. And that's kind of the first rung out. I think the next rung out would be proactively looking for a rollback of the export controls that were started in the first Trump administration and then dramatically expanded in the Biden administration.

That would be a natural thing for them to probe for. And then I think for issues like Taiwan and our commitment to allies in the Indo-Pacific, but also our other partnerships and relationships like Taiwan, that would be the furthest ring out. And I think I get the sense when I talk to Chinese counterparts, there's a whiff of eagerness to have that conversation. Right.

you can tell that they're cogitating about and they're thinking about like, well, is there an openness to a grand bargain on the US side? And for Beijing, there are other security issues that they could put on the table. And I know we'll get into this like,

potentially being helpful on Ukraine, right? So you could have this bigger conversation. But I think it would be challenging. I think what's disconcerting is what would we end up trading away in the process and what would we really get from Beijing? What would they actually be willing to offer in exchange for those concessions, right? Right. And also, even if they offered it, how would they be...

maybe enforce isn't the right word, but how would they be, what would the mechanism be to make sure they were followed through on? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the really challenging thing, even if it's just a trade conversation, right? Because again, if you look at the history of the first trade war, and I know people in the Trump orbit have learned some important lessons from them, but this whole process of having the tariffs implemented and then having a discussion and negotiation,

It's going to take, what, 12 to 18 months. And I think there's one school of thought that Trump would probably want to have something to show for his efforts before the midterm election. So let's say you plot a course through then, right? By the time you have an agreement, you put it in place, you give both parties time to actually implement it. You're rounding the corner into the end of the Trump administration. Right. You're into 2026. Yeah, exactly. So I think, you know, if I had my, you know, my job on the Chinese side, I would, you know, my counsel would be to string it along for as long as possible. Right.

Right. Play for time. And I think that's actually one of the real advantages that Beijing has in all this. Right. They they can play for time in these negotiations and draw up the process. And the more they do that, the more they just run out the shot clock. Well, and so far, you know, President Trump has added to two rounds of 10 percent additional tariffs for fentanyl related tariffs. So an additional 20 percent.

you know, that's not great for China, but they can deal with it. And their responses have been relatively restrained, I think.

Yeah, I think that's fair to say, right? And I think part of what's happened for Beijing is that they got ignored to these first two rounds of tariffs because there had been talk last year about 60% tariffs. Right. So anything that is south of that... Less than 60% is good, right? Yeah, they can breathe a sigh of relief. And I think that's what we've seen so far. Not quite relief, right? But there is a certain...

they've built up some calluses over time. Right. And so if you come in while low expectations, then that gives them, makes them feel like they have room to breathe.

And so, I mean, you were in the government during the first Trump administration and that sort of the first, the phase one deal, which was the Chinese, you know, didn't, wasn't, you know, there was all this talk in the beginning of the Trump administration about this grand deal, not a grand bargain, but a big deal on trade that would involve not just purchases, but also structural changes, right? And I think effectively the Chinese seem to have given the Trump administration the hand and ultimately the Trump administration said, okay, we'll just do purchases and we'll kick the hard stuff into phase two, which of course is like, you know,

never happened. Is there a reason, though, to think that any trade negotiations, the Chinese are willing to do anything structural? Or are they going to just go right back to, yeah, we'll buy a bunch of stuff, but there isn't even enough for them to buy at this point?

Yeah, I mean, I think that would be their inclination to try to go, you know, to, you know, phase one subcategory B, right, or phase one prime. My sense is that the Trump administration wouldn't go for that because they got their own scar tissue from the first war, right, and they'd want something bigger. I think the real challenge in my mind is, okay, let's say what you were talking about structural forms and you're putting those on the table and you're talking about those in a meaningful way.

How it's not clear to me how that would be substantially different from what they already agreed to when they did the WTO session 20 years ago.

Right. Wouldn't we just be getting the same series of promises? And then again, you have the shot clock problem, right? By the time anybody can appraise this, give them time to implement it a reasonable amount of time, you know, give them another year or two to implement it because these are going to be big, hard changes. It's going to require legal changes insofar as those are a significant factor in China. Right. Regulatory changes. But it'll just take time.

How do we not end up in the exact same position that we're in already? I agree with that. Also, though, you look at the way Xi Jinping has changed the Chinese system and his focus on the economic structure and the focus on really building out this massive modern industrial capacity.

Which, of course, the U.S. and other developed countries say, oh, China has this massive overcapacity, they're exploiting their overcapacity. But what Xi is doing is so fundamental to how he views the development of China, it seems like he can't possibly make the kind of structural changes that, say, the U.S. would want him to do.

Yeah, I think that's another part of the challenge, right? I mean, if she has already been under domestic pressure, right, the economic data hasn't been great for the last couple of years since the end of zero COVID. If he hasn't made changes over the last couple of years, right, I mean, now they're starting to pivot a little bit towards enhancing consumption. But if they haven't made some of these bigger, deeper structural reforms in the last few years, it's not clear to me that external pressure or that tariffs and increments of 10% are going to push him on the right path.

especially because I think he's, you know, just dispositionally, he's going to be loathe to say, well, I didn't make it before when everybody was grumbling about the economy. But now that I'm under U.S. pressure, now I'm going to pivot toward becoming a reformist. That's just that's just very hard. It doesn't. Yeah. I mean, everyone has their domestic politics. Right. And so and so I think that would be.

That would be really hard. Yeah. You know, one of these we've seen recently in the media, there have been a few stories sort of, oh, you know, they will, you know, there's talk of a birthday summit between Trump and Xi or, you know, Xi might come to the U.S. in April. Other like Dmitry over the FDA said, no, there's really no conversations going on. I mean, you having, you know, staff these things and worked on these issues, you know,

How much lead time do you need to set up a leader-to-leader meeting with someone like Xi Jinping? And what does the Chinese side need to be able to agree to have a meeting? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, usually it takes a fair bit of time, right, of course, to do these. You can do them in shorter order, right, if there's something kind of pressing. But I think what the Chinese side need, it's twofold, right? I think they need...

some kind of reason if they are going to move more quickly, something compelling. Right. And I think they want to know that, you know, these these meetings, I think, for the Chinese side, by definition, are good meetings. Right. Right. And they want to set it up that way. And I think that's no surprises. Right. No surprises. Right. So and so I think that's what they need. And I think that's probably something that they don't have at this point.

in the administration. I think you see this in the press and you hear from people too. They're not sure what the Trump administration really wants out of them, right? You even see it kind of on the smaller issue of fentanyl. What do you guys really want from us? Um, and there's a discrepancy there. Um,

But I think the other issue is, is that there there seems to be this real asymmetry in how the two leaders are approaching the relationship. You know, my colleague Ryan has this great phrase that Trump seems to be seems to want to be his own China desk officer. Right. And he wants to negotiate this mano a mano with Xi Jinping. And I don't think that's true for Xi. Right. For him and for their system. He doesn't want to touch this with a 10 foot pole until, you know.

guys like me have done and, you know, and others in the system have done all the fighting behind closed doors. Right. And it's all hashed out and then he can come in and put a bow on it and they can have a positive. And they can have a nice, like a, like a, like have a stroll in the garden like they had at which side or like they had at the, um,

Exactly. The famous Winnie the Pooh stroll with Obama at the Sunnylands. Yeah, exactly. Right. So the happy the happy imagery where everyone looks like a, you know, looks like a great statesman and it's a relatively positive. Yes. At least they can be presented in a relatively positive way. Yeah. They don't want something that's going to be embarrassing or some kind of.

public spat or something along those lines, of course. And it's not that she is going to wait until everything is all sorted out and figured out, but I think it's more that he wants to wait until things are on a positive trajectory and that they can inject into the process and say we have our hands on the wheel and both sides are headed in the right direction on these negotiations. Today's March 20th, so we're 13 days away from April 2nd.

It is going to be interesting, right, if actually on April 2nd or on or about April 2nd, the Trump administration announces something closer to, say, 60 percent tariffs on the PRC. Yeah.

You know, does that sort of set the relationship in such a downward spiral that then it even pushes off the prospect of a meeting? I mean, it's going to be like the Chinese system. I just wonder how they're going to react if while they've been trying to have these discussions with the Trump team and it doesn't seem like they've made a ton of progress.

progress, everything I'm hearing, what you said, what's been the press, if then in 20 days or so they're blindsided, less than 20 days, they're blindsided by this, how do they react to that? Well, the answer to this question is always poorly, right? Yeah.

And the real question is, what flavor of poorly are you going to get? Right. I could see a scenario where they just go quiet for a while. Right. I think they and you've seen this so far where they've taken their their tack and all this has been so noticeably different from what the Canadians and Mexico have done. Right. Where Trudeau and Scheinbaum get on the phone with Trump right away and they try to talk him down. And she did not do that. Right. I think that was by design. Right.

All right. He doesn't want to touch this. He wants to show resolve, especially in the opening moves of this. But I think the fact that Canada, Mexico were then on the X weeks later only validates the approach in Beijing. Right. And I think they feel like this is a traditional negotiating tactic for them anyway, which is to just play keep away. Right. Because it breeds uncertainty on the U.S. side. And that's what they did. Sorry. That's what they did after the balloon. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They, yeah, we, there, there was no discussion for a while and, and, you know, to some extent it's a negotiating tactic, but on the other hand, there's also an element of it too, where it's kind of,

you know, churlish and even a little childish to do that, right? Just take your ball and walk away from having any kind of serious discussion when there's a dispute. When there's such serious issues at stake. Yeah, exactly. But I think what they might bank on is because all the indications I think we have at this point in the Trump administration is that Trump does want to get towards some kind of deal, right? And that is the mindset, right? So playing keep away is

for a while and just going dark for a while, that could be the most effective way to respond in this instance. And then that plays into the playing for time part of this too. Because then you don't have negotiations getting underway until even further along to the administration. It's

I mean, having only watched from afar and sort of been as part of the commentary, it has been fascinating to watch, but I have nothing but respect for the people who are trying to figure this out because it is such a hard issue. And even with sort of a more of a focused or sort of coherent set of policies, they're still really hard to deal with.

We work hard for our gray hairs. So I want to switch gears back to what you said you studied earlier, the Sino-Soviet split, because, you know, this idea, there's the grand bargain idea. And then there's also and I think, you know, I think Vice President Vance and I'm not sure, I think even Rubio, Secretary of State Rubio, referenced this idea of kind of, I mean, they haven't called it the reverse Nixon or the reverse Kissinger-Nixon, but this idea that somehow, you know,

the Trump administration can repair the relationship with Russia enough that it creates some distance between Russia, the PRC, and Putin and Xi.

Is that at all plausible? So what I started joking is that, you know, a reverse Nixon is when you get outmaneuvered by the Russians instead of outmaneuvering them. Right. And that's what I worry about in all this. And I actually, kidding aside, worry that even uttering this.

only reinforces Beijing's calculation that doubling down on their relationship with Russia is the right move. Because what are you saying in effect? You're saying if China and Russia are teamed up as partners, it's too much for the United States to take on, right? It's going to leave us strategically insolvent. And you see elements of this floating around in some of the debate. So if I'm sitting in Zhongnanhai, to my ears, that sounds like we have a winning approach. We have a winning strategy. The U.S. is going to try to peel us apart.

I think the other element of this, and I think people don't appreciate this, there's this is not like the Sino-Soviet split. They are not. They are. There's not natural animus between. They didn't just almost fight a war three years or four years before. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. I would say, if anything, they may be closer to each other now than at any period since before the Sino-Soviet split. Right.

Right. Since before the early 50s. I think I think I think it's a fair analog to go for. Right. Interesting. There's a lot. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot going on there. And I think I think the war in Ukraine, I think, really did two things. I think number one, I think it brought the fact that there was this entente between the two sides to the service and made it more conspicuous. Right. Especially with the no limits partnership. But the reality is you go back even 10 years before that. Where was Xi Jinping's first day visit? It was to Moscow.

to hang out with Putin, right? They had already met dozens of times at that point by the time the war broke out. There was already a very close relationship there, but it was kind of in the background of people watching international relations and geopolitics. And the Ukraine war did two things. It brought it to the surface and made it very prominent and conspicuous, blindingly conspicuous to everybody. Right.

At that point, but it did also accelerate it too. So all we've seen that's happened in the last few years, far from there being a rift is that the relationship has just gone, gotten deeper and deeper, right to the point where the main role that China has played in Ukraine, and in this conflict is, is to reinforce Russia's position.

Right. I mean, now they're much more closely linked even than they were several years ago. So I don't see how you you peel them away from each other. And they're sending clear signals overtly that that's unlikely to happen. They talked on the day of Trump's inauguration. Right.

They talked again. Right. She and Putin. Right. And they've said explicitly that external factors are not going to disrupt this relationship. And she's going there, going to Moscow in May for the sort of the 80th celebration of the 80th anniversary of World War Two. Yeah. One of the things you hear is sort of this, you know, there's.

Trying to understand what's going on between Xi and Putin and Russia and China is there is a school of thought that, you know, basically Xi, the U.S. forced Xi in this position because we were mean to him.

And so he had to sort of go huddle with Putin because they were both being squeezed by America. My view is not that. I mean, this is just it really does seem like there's something much deeper going on there and that it's gone back even before the first Trump administration. And then it's a much more of a.

you know, to be simplistic, it's, it seems like there's a shared worldview and then they really do see a shared enemy and a shared desire to, um,

basically undermine the U.S. position globally. Is that too strong a statement? No, I think that's right. I think, you know, like I said, the invasion of Ukraine accelerated the dynamic, but you're right. It goes back to into the Obama administration where they were already latching up, right? And they were getting close to each other. So this notion that we somehow have

You know, it's almost kind of solipsistic to think that it's just always about us and that we were this, right? She came into office, I think, with his own suspicions about the United States, with his old worldview, with his own worldview. And yeah, I mean, that relationship between the two of them goes back to 2013. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, you know, I feel...

Like, you know, when you're talking about the Russia-China relationship, like many aspects of China policy, it's like you almost have to have a preamble that cites the serenity prayer, right? There are just some things you have to accept. And I get the impulse and fairness to the administration, right, that it is inconvenient and it is burdensome, right, that two great powers like this are aligned. And there is a triangular dynamic and we are the odd man out in this, but I don't really see a path toward changing that.

I don't either, but I assume that Putin will probably happily go along and see what he can pocket. Maybe he and Xi can coordinate on what they can pocket. It wouldn't be surprised. I will say, to your point, I was living in Beijing when Xi Jinping came to power.

And I remember early 2013, I lived there until 2015. I was there for 10 years. I was in Beijing, had a lot of interesting friends, you know, over the years. I remember being warned by more than one person that you really should leave. Xi Jinping does not like Americans and he thinks we've become too westernized. And, you know, it was like, really? OK, you sort of. But now looking back almost 10 years later, it's like, OK, that's

There was something going on behind the scenes that we couldn't really see, but that certainly at least some people in Beijing were able to sense early on what was going on. And that colors in some ways how I view this, but I do find it, I guess I find it a bit fast. It'll think that somehow we can just cut some grand deal with Russia and then they'll suddenly turn on the Chinese when they have a multi-thousand kilometer border and

I think they've withdrawn most of their troops to go fight in Ukraine. Yeah, I think that's right. And it's not clear to me what we offer in return. Yeah. So, well, I mean, again, we'll see, right? This is, this is the Trump administration obviously has a different view of the world than the Biden administration did. And, um,

I guess we're going to have to watch and see how it plays out. But I really, I've yet to find anyone who can articulate a reason why this idea of sort of a driving wedge between Russia and China would actually work. And so it's a little bit sobering to hear you say that too. So now I'd like to switch gears, talk a little about domestic politics. You know, the big question, Xi Jinping, he's now in year...

13 of, of, uh, being general secretary. Uh, he's, he is, um, he's third party Congress. Uh, how powerful is he and how did this happen? Given what I think a lot of people thought had been some sort of a routinization or normalization of PRC politics, where you had, uh,

two-term party secretary, then they'd step down and there'd be some sort of a relatively, relatively is a strong word, but there's some sort of a predictable succession path. And all that's out the window, it seems like.

Yeah, well, I mean, to start with the present moment, I mean, I'll go out on a limb and say, I think, you know, she is pretty unassailable, I think, at this point, politically, right? And I think there's a couple of reasons for that at this point in the movie. I think one, it's just late in his tenure, right? He's removed any kind of focal point of potential opposition from the party, especially at the last party conference.

I mean, it almost felt gratuitous the way he got rid of Li Keqiang and Wang Jiang. Yeah, no, I think it was gratuitous. And Hu Chunhua, I mean, you know, who was...

anyway, maybe popular, but yeah, no, it did feel gratuitous. Yeah. I mean, all these guys were already marginalized, right? So I got rid of them. And I think it just underscores she's mindset about Chinese politics is that power exists in its exercise, right? So there's a time factor here. There's a lot of good political science literature about this, that if you're going to, to, to strike at a potential strong man like this, you have to do it early on. Right. And it's almost like a, like a bad game theory problem, right? Like it's like, you know, if, if,

If Andrew and I were going to conspire to overthrow you from cynicism, Andrew would have every reason to sell me out, right? But who's Andrew? What am I not hearing about? I know, exactly.

But that's kind of how the logic works. The more power they accrue, the more everybody has an incentive to fold for that. So I think, you know, there had been talk about backlash over the course of his tenure in office. But I almost see that as a symptom of how much power he's accrued, that there's grumbling. I think probably by the end of his first term, it was already too late.

Right. So it's time. And it's also, like I said, who would be the focal point of opposition? Jiang Zemin is dead. Hu Jintao is, you know, immobilized. Nobody else has been sick, has been sick for a while. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So there's not really a natural rallying point for for opposition.

opposition to him. And I think the way that we got here is that, you know, there was a lot of talk. I mean, it is striking if you read all the academic literature, most of the academic literature with a couple of acceptance like Joe Fusemith for the quarter century before she took power is all about

collective leadership and institutionalization of leadership. And I know, I think there were some people at the time who saw she basically taking over the top three positions concurrently as the apotheosis of that model, right? This is the first time we're having- No, my grad school advisor was Alice Miller. Right, right. Yeah. Very much of that school of thought, right? And it was very right for a long time. And then she sort of

threw the table over. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. But, you know, I think there was always a certain thinness to that explanation, right? Jiang Zemin held on to his position until it became politically untenable. He still had a lot of friends, both in the high command and in the Politburo Standing Committee. And, you know, he was still always kind of lurking on the scene. So the extent to which we had institutionalization, I feel like we had more of the facade of it than some kind of real, really meaningful institutionalization.

Some of that is just because it's hard in a political system like that. Well, and there were, the thing is, is that, you know, there weren't actual like written rules, right? This was just sort of these norms, which we've learned now were not actually norms.

Right. And what the norms were predicated around too was that it was almost like their own version of checks and balances, right? So you're going to have a standing committee, you're going to have the security services represented on there. But what that means is that everybody is basically supposed to be guarding their own turf, right? Right. And I

I think what happened under Hu Jintao was that was the model, but Hu Jintao couldn't really get anything big done because of that. Right. And I think it bred a lot of the infighting among the top leaders. And it also means that corruption really set in in that time period, too. Right. Right.

because everybody kind of had their own baronial fiefdom that they were running without accountability to other members of the leadership. And I think one of the other important norms that was related to that was that going back to the 80s, there was this kind of informal gentleman's agreement.

Nobody on the Standing Committee or on the Central Military Commission had been touched for corruption until Xi Jinping came into office. So when you combine those elements of what were institutionalization, those are all the ingredients for really serious pathological dysfunction. And I think that's basically what was existing by the time

she became the heir apparent. Like I have this feeling that she got to Beijing and it was like, you're walking through Rock Creek Park and you pick up a rock and you see, pick it up and underneath there's nothing but worms and gross stuff, right? So there was this facade that the place had been institutionalized. It looks smooth and shiny on the surface, but when you put it up, there's a lot of rot underneath, right? And some of that is endemic. Even the logic of how institutionalization was supposed to work still allowed for that. It was even predicated on having a certain element of that.

No, I remember when I was living in Beijing, I mean, we knew some folks who were sort of princeling-ish. And, you know, I remember people saying, oh, you know, Xi Jinping's like the last hope for the party.

People in Beijing, it was really, it was coming apart by 2011, 2012, the corruption was so bad. And so I think there's a logic to what she did. Of course, I think it's again, multidimensional. On the one hand, it was useful because of all the problems that corruption was causing. On the other hand, it was also quite useful for consolidating power. So here we are, again, in his 13th year,

He is, I think he turned 72 in June. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, in previous, like, like with Hu Jintao, you know, there was at least in their second five year term, uh,

Right. You could point to people in the Sanders meeting who said they're the likely successors, right? Is there any sign of a possible successor? Is there anyone that sort of, I see people speculating, but is there any credible reason to believe anyone around him is a possible successor or he's grooming anybody right now? No, I think at this point it's not. And I think that's by design. I don't think he wants to. And I think it's worth remembering for people too that, you know, it's a possibility.

it's a problem because he doesn't want to designate a successor yet. I think he still thinks he's got plenty of runway to go with and be the top leader. Right. But the other thing to keep in mind too, is that, you know, before Hu Jintao getting named Arab parent in China was like getting the kiss of death. Right. It was like a one way ticket to being dead in a ditch in Mongolia or

or purged, or marginalized, or put under house arrest. It was not a happy fate to get dubbed the heir apparent, because everybody had the knives out for you from that point going forward. And I think she doesn't want to get into the politics of it yet at this point. This is, again, one area where I think the political science literature does do us a favor. There's this conundrum, which is basically, how do you give somebody enough waster and credibility to credibly succeed you, but not so much

that they become a threat to you. Right. Or they can succeed you before you want to be succeeded. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's the real conundrum. And I think she doesn't even want to start countenancing that or letting other people really think about that in any kind of meaningful way at this point.

Which is interesting because I guess on the one hand, he's 72. You know, there's certainly possible we're looking at another decade or more of Xi Jinping. And, you know, 10 years from now, he'll be basically the age Joe Biden was when he stepped out.

There's no reason that he-- I think President Trump is what, 78, 79? There's no reason to think he can't be fully functioning for many more years. Then I guess that's the question is, this really is Xi's China. His vision, back to the discussion about Putin and Russia, Putin and Xi and Russia and China,

This doesn't seem like, from an American perspective, this doesn't seem like a challenge that we can sort of wish away or hope we sort of run the clock out on.

Yeah, I think that's right. And even if, you know, she were to drop dead tomorrow, anybody who would be a contender to be in that position is somebody that he would have brought up and somebody that he probably would probably be somebody that he's known for decades and where there'd be a fair bit of overlap in worldviews. Right. I don't think there would be the same kind of.

maybe heterodoxy that you had, say, like at the start of the Deng era, right? Where there had been such suppression and there were other people with different perspectives on how China should be run. I don't think we're at that point right now. It's really quite amazing. Just think about how he...

He was able to outsmart all these people. You know, I mean, the knock, you know, again, you hear people with sort of, I mean, especially in Beijing, people are always grumbling. The knock for Waz, oh, you know, he was not very smart. He didn't do well in school. And you're just like, yeah, but look where he is. He outsmarted everybody.

Yeah, yeah. No, as a China analyst in Washington, I would console myself if I got something wrong. It's like, well, you know, clearly Zhou Yonggang missed the ball too. He's got the benefit of the security services and intelligence apparatus at his fingertips. No, what's your lie? All these guys got to just completely misread him. Yeah.

No, he's like the paradigmatic example of hide and buy, right? Where he held on to it for a long time. But I do think part of what facilitated his ability to do this, like the way I think about the way he operates in that political system, a lot of it is about the heritage of being a princeling, right? It's like an electrician walking into your home, right? They know what wiring there is behind the wall to make this thing work. And they know which wires they can safely cut.

And they know which ones are going to zap you. Right. Whereas if you, you know, you and I tried to do it, we would we would be zapped. And I think early on. Yeah. And Hu Jintao got zapped a couple of times. Right. But I think I think he has an intuitive grasp of that and of those power dynamics and an actual firsthand knowledge of it, of who is connected to whom inside that system and where he can push and where he needs to hold back.

Interesting. Well, certainly in an area that he's pushing, he's obviously pushing quite hard on the PLA. Yes. He had the, which year was it? He had the second Guthian meeting. 2014, yeah. 2014, right? And then, which launched not only a big corruption campaign, but some pretty significant reforms, structural reforms at PLA that had been talked about for, again, to your point about how he knows he has this

He's able to get stuff done, stuff that was talked about by his predecessors that can never get past the obstacles within the PLA and the power centers of the PLA. Here we are, 2024, even after this decade-long or decade or so corruption crackdown, these

He's still, you know, he's lost two ministers of defense and a member of the Central Military Commission. What do you think is going on in the military? Is it just so corrupt that it's going to take a couple of generations to...

Sort of root through all the corruption or is there something else going on? Yeah. Well, I think the way I've been trying to think about it is to try to see it along the longer narrative arc of how the anti-corruption campaign has played out in the military. Right. Like I'm very struck that the, that the starting two things, number one, I think he started with the military and,

for political reasons, right? I don't think it was necessarily just because it was the most corrupt part of the system. I think he knew that if you go back to the 80s, Deng never had the top party position, but he was always CMC chairman. So I think

He wanted to get them under his thumb early on, and corruption was the way to do that. And I think within the PLA, where did he focus his attention early on? It was on the political commissariat, right? Because that was the most natural place to engage in empire building inside the PLA, because you control all the promotions, you control all the anti-corruption investigations at that time, which means those are the first people that you grease, right, if you're going

going to engage in corruption. And I think that was no accident, right? That was a way for him to get a hold on the PLA politically, right? And it was kind of the opposite of the quote everybody likes to use of killing the chicken to scare the monkeys. This is the exact opposite. Go right for the monkeys? Yeah, go right for the monkeys. Well, because it sends a powerful signal, especially if you're talking about a guy like Shu Tsai Ho, who would have been involved in every general officer promotion for nearly a decade.

Anybody who had ever done him a favor, anybody who benefited from his largesse would have been terrified after that moment. Right. So that was a natural place to start. There were other things going on around that time, too, like actual just like kind of, you know, what I call like New Jersey graft and corruption. Right. Like people just skimming off the top because they were focused on the general logistics department and other parts of the system. Just a natural breeding ground for corruption. Right. You're catering meals. You're you're providing various services, that kind of thing.

I think what's interesting is that if you look at the arc of it, when it started to accelerate again,

you know, in the last few years, the focal points of corruption were again, kind of places where you could, where you could see people just skimming off the top or where it would be obvious, right? Because they were the places that were getting a lot of resources in the PLA, namely rocket forces, right? With their huge nuclear buildup that's been documented by the China military power report for the last few years, right? And if you're seeing a program of that scale, I, you know, I could, I could imagine a scenario in which somebody says, well, nobody's going to notice if like, you know,

20 grand goes missing over this huge multi-billion dollar project. And I think it was that and equipment procurement, right? And so those are kind of natural places for there to be slush funds or people for people to just engage in kind of normal graft.

I think what's really interesting and different is about the about the Mia Hua scandal, though, is that it goes back to the origin of the story. Right. It's why is he hitting the political commissariat again now, especially because if you look at Mia's career, it looks like his his career really got on the on the fast track after she became CMC chairman. I mean, his last job with CMC would chair before she became CMC.

chairman and took over the top job. Miao was like deputy political commissar at Manzhou MR, right? So like out in Western China, out in the boonies. And all of a sudden he's moving up very quickly through the system. He gets into the PLA Navy top commissar job, which is an unusual move.

And so he's clearly associated with him. So I've still been chewing through what does this actually mean? My pet theory, and I don't really have enough evidence for this, but I think among the available hypotheses is that he was probably engaged in something that could have been considered mountaintopism, right, back in the day, that he was using his position.

his position to build up his own network. And it was hard to find, I took a long look at this before writing my last piece on this, to find a sprawling network of people from the 31st Group Army, which is where he grew up throughout the PLI high command. Except the only other person on the CMC who's from the 31st Group Army is He Wei Dong, around whom there are rumors now swirling that he's been talking

Right. So there could have been something there. I'm not I'm also open to the possibility that maybe they were engaged in some kind of funny business. But, you know, this is this is Game of Thrones in Beijing. It could be that somebody else accused him of that.

Right. And he's got some kind of rival because of the position and because he got these helicopter promotions. So we just don't know. But when I try to think this through, you know, and try to think about the context and where he fits into the organizational structure, that to me jumps out. So what I've been on the lookout for since I can't find evidence of a network going downwards, it's not, you know, I think I said in my piece, it's not about who goes up, it's about who goes down.

Right. Start to see other people from the 31st Group Army go down. I think that then provide, you know, there's something else going on, especially if it's the CMC vice chairman. And it's hard because they don't you know, when when when folks in the PLA go down, they don't always announce it like it's some sort of like a like a like a sort of a civilian official.

Sometimes you just all of a sudden they're missing or they're replaced and you have to connect the dots. Right? Right. Like Lee Shantzu. When missing, people started to know, "Hey, where did the Minister of National Defense go?" Yeah. I missed Rahm Emanuel's tweets when he was ambassador. He summed it up best. You mentioned this other Central Military Commission member, Hoidong. I actually have a question about him, but also about rumors and how you look at rumors.

About a week ago, we started hearing that Huey Dong had been taken away at the end of the National People's Congress. He was there. He was part of a meeting with Xi. He had his own meeting with the PLA, People's Armed Police delegates. It's not like he shows up in the propaganda media, propaganda reports on a regular basis. He's been out of sight for 10 days, but that's not at all abnormal given the... If you look back over the last couple of years, there are plenty of longer absences.

But so the rumor is that for whatever, no reason given why, but that he was taken away, that he's under investigation. So I have two questions. The first question is,

I mentioned the newsletter a couple days ago. I usually try to avoid these rumors, but I started hearing from enough people asking, why aren't you talking about this? What's going on? Then I asked around. I heard from a couple people who are usually pretty good that they're hearing that maybe it actually is true. But how do you, when these rumors pop up, I mean, how do you

How should we look at like what to take seriously and what to wait on? Because now you've got Newsweek reported on it. Politico had it in their newsletter this morning. So it's like out there that it's a done deal when it's not official. Yeah. And and that's the first question. The second question, if it's true, what does it mean? Yeah. Yeah, that that that is the easier question in some ways. I mean, for the rumors, part of it.

It's just doesn't doesn't make sense. Right. Like there was all this chatter after Miao Hua went down that the next candidate was going to be Dong Jun. Right. The current minister of national defense. And that turned out not to be true because he's, by all accounts, alive and well still at this point. Right. But I think that.

what's important there, right, when you're trying to look at the rumors is not just looking at the source. Like, I know a lot of the Hou Weidong rumors first started flying, I think, maybe over the weekend, and it was largely, like, you know, basically, like, disimpressed, right, that might be hoping for his... Right, it was this one, this one Chinese reporter, I think he's out of the country now, and I don't think he's following Golden Link, but then there were a lot of following Golden Link accounts that were sort of amplifying it, which is always a little bit of a yellow flag. I mean, they're not always wrong, but...

They're not always right, put it that way. Yeah. So, I mean, it's worth paying attention to them. But I think the reality is, you know, you have to think about what would this make sense in this context, right? Number one. But number two, I do think the more interesting questions to think through when you start hearing these kind of rumors is about what does it mean, right? Or what if he does go down? Because the reality is, especially observing it from the outside, you're not going to know until there's some kind of announcement.

Right. But I think for from my perspective, what you want to do when you're when you're studying Chinese politics and trying to pay attention to it on a regular basis, you don't want to be engaged in post hoc analysis. Right. You don't want to just find like the most recent data point and then you're working backwards to explain what happened.

And maybe this is just my training as a CIA analyst, but you want to have an intellectual schematic in place before something like this happens so that as information arrives, you know what cubbyhole to put it in. You want some kind of, we would call it signpost and indicators. Okay, if we see the following things, we know we are living in this universe. And if we don't see them,

that means we're not, we're headed in a different direction. Right. And I think being able to do that rigorously and kind of have that a priori framework ahead of time is that's how I try to triage the information. Right. Some of these things you're just not going to know until you actually know. But I think for the real questions about what does it mean? You can have that, you can do that homework ahead of time because it just requires, you know, kind of chewing on a pencil and really thinking of thinking it through. So like,

Like, I know that's a little abstract in this context, but like, you know, the way I like to think about it, too, or like explain it to people, like if you go back in the time machine to 2011, 2012, right before she takes office and you want to do an exercise, say, OK, what if the next ruler of China wants to return China to strongman rule? What would be the things that he'd want to do? Right. OK, he'd want to get rid of other factional groupings on the Politburo Standing Committee and CMC. He'd want to be named the core of the leader of

He would want to have his own personal name associated with the ideology, unlike Zhang and Hu. So you can make yourself this kind of checklist so that there are observables and you're not just kind of chasing around rumors. So that's a little bit of a long-winded answer, but I think that's the best way to approach some of this. And the challenge too is also, even if it does turn out to be true, there's something going on with the way they announced something

you know it's like xinggang do we ever really know what happened like what they announced doesn't necessarily have to be what actually happened yes exactly yes there there there is that there is that you know i think a couple of things like my initial thought with like ho ho weidong and some of these other guys that have gone down is that i think this is my own view on this initially is that she has gone from in his first term going after his rivals to now he's going after his

His friends. His own people, right. Yeah, yeah. Which, I mean, if you're inside... Quote, unquote, own people. Own people, yeah. Yeah.

Right. Which if you're sitting on the inside, that's pretty disconcerting. Right. It really keeps everybody on their toes. And I could see it's not that I don't think he picked these people to necessarily set them up. But if their rumor starts rolling around them or there are accusations made, I think that that would explain why he's comfortable then with getting rid of them. Because what it shows to people in the system is that even if she has promoted you and you have this relationship with him,

you're still disposable at the end of the day. And regardless of your position, he'll still dump you if he thinks that that's the right thing. And that goes to the question of the fact that, say, he took out Myung-ho. I mean, is that a sign of weakness or a sign of strength? And the reason I ask that, actually, I'm tying it back to US-China relations, is I hear some people in this town saying there's chaos in the PLA. It's a sign that Xi's under threat. It's a sign that he's weak.

And I worry that that may feed into this idea that somehow the US has more leverage or more ability to pressure C because they perceive weakness when in fact

she and the other people in the system may have the opposite view of what she's doing. Yeah, I'm skeptical of that argument. And I debate this with friends regularly. But, you know, this isn't this isn't Dragnet or Law and Order where they're just following the CDIC is just following the facts and then they publicize it. I feel like if it were really embarrassing to she write or politically damaging to him in some way, they would just keep it under wraps. Right. Or

Or they, you know, he would be deprived of his privileges, right? Things could quietly happen. You could just marginalize the person. Get sick. Yeah, exactly. There's a variety of other ways you could play it, especially since the system is so opaque. They don't have to publicize it and say that something bad happened. So that makes me skeptical of that argument that this somehow...

weakens him. And then there's also that's also buttressed by the political logic of how is this going to be interpreted by everybody else in the system that, yes, it is scary. I think from a U.S.-China perspective, though, I don't think it means that Xi is necessarily weaker. But I think what it does indicate is that, you know, and this has been true now for since Xi has come into office or since he's been CMC vice chairman, really, he doesn't have confidence in the PLA.

Right. And he doesn't think that they're up to snuff. And I think that it would also provide a logic, too, about why he's been so tough on them. Right. There are political reasons to do that because they're the guys with the guns. But you think you might really need them because the competition with the United States is intensifying. You're going to have very short patience for graft and corruption and the kind of shenanigans that you had seen previously. Right.

Right. No, that makes a lot of sense. And I want to be respectful of your time. It's been terrific. Just the last question, and it comes in the chat, but it's related to this, is how important do you think Xi views having Taiwan become part of the PRC to his legacy? And it's related to, though, in terms of he's not going to live forever. If he does think it's important, but he also doesn't think the PLA is up to snuff,

what are his options or what do you think he'll do? Yeah. So I know this has become like a, like almost more of a theological than an empirical question. I got to watch in community. My own view on this is right. And I think about this through the prism of she's biography that, you know, I think it was 11 years ago. Now he met with my Ying Joe at the Boal forum. Right. And that was the first time the head of the CCP and the KMT had met since the Marshall mission in 1946.

Right. So I think for him, I think what she needs as he gets older and his time goes on, he does want to be part of his legacy. But I don't think he necessarily needs to, quote unquote, solve the problem. But I think as he gets towards the end of his life or towards the end of his tenure in office, I think to have less than what he had in his first term is probably unacceptable to him.

Right. He can't have Taiwan have drifted further away from some kind of notional unification towards the end of that time period. So I think for right now, he doesn't have confidence in the PLA. I don't think he's not a gambler. He's not violent the way Putin is. Right. And not willing to take the same kind of same kind of risk that he is.

And so I don't think he wants to go there, but that calculus could change. He could get answer as he gets older, as the PLA becomes more capable. But I don't think that's where we're at right now. Right. I think for now he wants to find a pathway. I think the problem is,

that it's not clear to me. I feel like the military equation is very important. And I feel like in some ways, as much attention is devoted into Washington, there's still not enough done really necessarily. I don't know how much we've done enough to really grapple with it truly because we're so focused on other global priorities and other global hotspots.

But I think the discussion about 2027 and about timelines and about the PLA to some extent has overshadowed the fact that it's not clear to me that Xi really has a viable political strategy for realizing that objective. They're now on their third DPP presidency. There's not any evidence that they're talking. So what is the political strategy? I don't think anybody outside of Beijing really thinks that one country, two systems is a really viable pathway for Taiwan in the future.

And I don't think they've I think I think what happened in last year's election in Taiwan, where you had the split election, the DPP won and then the KMT won the legislative yuan.

I think it was stabilizing in the sense that it did just enough to keep hope alive in Beijing, that maybe they still have a viable strategy for moving in this direction. But I think the objective reality is that if you go back to the Hu Jintao era, who had this very kind of Marxian notion that the changes in the economic structure were going to drive changes in the political superstructure, and Taiwan was just going to fall like a ripe apple into their lap, right? You'd have more people-to-people exchanges, more economic exchanges, right?

That clearly wasn't working. Right. She has taken a tougher, more coercive approach. That doesn't really seem to be working either. Right. So the lesson of Hong Kong hasn't helped.

Yeah. And it hasn't helped at all either in that sense. Right. So I do worry that like that, that there's that there's kind of an intellectual bankruptcy at the heart of their approach to this problem on the political dimension and that they haven't really been forced to reckon with it yet. And that was one of the things that I worried about going into 2024 was if, you know, if it's DPP sweep, are they going to have that moment of reckoning? And then what happens?

after they go through a process of thinking about like, well, we don't really have a clear strategy for getting towards this. What do we do next? No, I mean, it's such an important question for so many people and it's unanswerable. And I mean, I remember your colleague, Ryan Haas at Brookings and then there was Jude Blanchett when he was at CSS. They had a piece in Foreign Affairs maybe last year or the year ago, which I mean, was sort of the most sensible statement

article I saw talking about sort of prospects for Taiwan, but basically the answer was like kick the can down the road as long as possible and hope something changes. I mean, I'm simplifying, but that sort of seems like the sort of where the best we can hope for at this point.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, especially because they don't seem to have a viable strategy. And it's interesting because you see this idea floating around now, too. And maybe it's just because this happens episodically at the start of every new administration that we should have a fourth communique with China. But it's kind of like the discussion we were having at the outset about the trade war. It's not clear to me that if we get into some kind of negotiation over this.

How do we end up in a better position? You know, the balance between the two countries, you know, it's only gotten better for China than the ensuing 40. Right. And how do you, you know, how do you do this communicate? I mean, Taiwan is not a client state. Taiwan has 20, 25 million people. It's, you know, democracy. You know, they have agency. Right. What's their seat at the table? Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But, you know, it's, you know, what we're what we're building this edifice on, you know, is basically that, you know, we acknowledge China's claim, but we don't recognize it. Right. Like that verb is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Right. That's a lot of weight to put on it. But it's proved remarkably resilient. Well, yeah.

So I think we're about an hour. I really appreciate your time. Is there anything else you'd like me to ask you or you want to say? I mean, I feel like I've learned a ton from you. This has been great. Thank you. No, no, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks so much again for the opportunity, Bill. I really enjoyed this. So just so everyone knows, John is on...

He doesn't write yet. I'm trying to get him to do more. And he might start publishing his work, like republishing his work from Brookings. He is he is working on a bigger project that we will all benefit from over the next few years as he sort of works through Xi Jinping. And because because I think we like we talked about earlier, Xi Jinping is likely to be with us for a long time and we do not understand him nearly as much as we need to.

So, yeah, yeah. Thank you, John. Thanks, everybody. There will be a recording that I'll publish either tonight or sometime tomorrow. So you guys can watch it offline if you want. Really appreciate it, John. Thank you and have a great night. Thanks. You too, Bill. Thanks again. Cheers.