Trump's Re-election, The Future of US-China Relations, and Chinese Youth Take to the Streets
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Welcome to China Insider, a podcast from the Hudson Institute's China Center. I am Myles Yu, Senior Fellow and Director of the China Center. Join me each week for our analysis of the major events concerning China, China threat, and their implications to the U.S. and beyond. It's Wednesday, November 13th, and I'm Phil Hegseth alongside resident expert Myles Yu. Apologies for the delayed release, but thankfully nothing of note happened since we last spoke.

Just a presidential election with massive global ramifications. So we'll start there this week with Miles' take on the how and why of President Trump's re-election and what it says about the state of the American people and American democracy. We then dive into what Trump's re-election means for U.S.-China relations, how the Chinese Communist Party might react, and we predict where Trump and Xi Jinping might butt heads first.

We then close with some brief insight into a viral cultural phenomenon unfolding inside China, which saw tens of thousands of young people harmlessly riding bicycles overnight to go get dumplings. What's so bad about that, right? Well, the CCP shut it down, and Miles details why the CCP's paranoia of this large gathering of lighthearted youth could be a sign of things to come. Oh, Miles, it's good to see you.

Good to see you again, Phil. It's been too long and a few things have happened since we spoke last. So why don't we start with the big obvious one? President Donald Trump has been reelected for a second term in office. And I think I'm dying to ask you and a lot of people are dying to ask you, Miles. We've got a largely international audience. So why don't we start just with a brief explanation for them and others of exactly why and how Trump won office.

Well, President Trump won re-election with a tremendous mandate. I mean, from every aspect, every swing state, he won decisively. That's why it is really stunning. Yet, it's not really that of a surprise to me because if you look at the campaign system,

over a year long, you see three things. I think this will explain why Donald Trump won over his opponent. Number one is really the record of the incumbency because the Biden administration's record in the major areas were not really that great. First of all, inflation. Secondly, illegal immigration.

And thirdly, it's the law and order. And I think that the other one, which is also very significant, is the excess of so-called social justice. This is about abortion, LGBT, and gender identity issues.

men posing as women in sports contests, those kind of things. And I think there's a large coalition of people from different walks of life that will also identify with the Trump's campaign message that is inflation is the creation of the Biden administration policies. And we got somewhere between 15 to 20 million illegal immigrants in this country. That was just insane.

And then, law and order, during the Biden administration, many big cities, which used to be pride of America, become ungovernable. And petty crimes rose up dramatically. On the major issues...

About the records and I think you know people identify with President Trump's messaging much much more than the incumbent candidate of Vice President Conor Harris Secondly in addition to policy and record I think there are also tactics the two campaigns around on totally different tactics one on the Donald Trump side it focuses on overwhelmingly specific issues

President Trump campaigned rigorously, go to the communities, go to the Rust Belt states, the swing states, talk to the voters, and posing as a McDonald worker, which is very, very interesting. On the Democrat side, Vice President Harris focused overwhelmingly on

on personal attack on President Trump. His qualification as a president, he'd been a felon, he'd been sort of impeached twice. All those things were viewed by many, many Americans as excess of the incumbency, as weaponization of state power against one single political opponent. So it didn't work really well. So tactically, that was a backfire big time on the Democrats.

I think another reason actually is about the personal capability, personal virtues. Presidency is about the decisiveness.

and the courage to make tough decisions for the American people and for global peace. Also, you have to really have the idea, ability to deal with the press and social response. And I think on Decide 70s and the ability to deal with the media, President Trump was way ahead of his opponent. So I think in all these reasons combined,

created this landmark avalanche victory for President Donald Trump. So I should not be surprised. Yeah. So it was an overwhelming victory. And for our primarily international audience, because we do have listeners all around the world, he also won the popular vote. What is this election and this mandate that you're talking about

say about where the American people are, especially with respect to international affairs? What do our international audience need to know about the state of where the American people are right now? I think this, once again, demonstrates to the world that American democracy works fantastically, and there is no reason to be disillusioned about the process of democracy in America. You can see in 2020, there are a lot of questions about the election itself.

That was very, very dangerous and not very good for America. But now you can see this year, after four years, I think each state has strengthened their election integrity. And either Democratic-run states or Republican-run states, and there is virtually no major incidents of cheating and voter fraud. And so the election result was,

was respected by all sides. Nobody was challenging about fairness and

Open transparency of the election. So that's actually is a very very good and I think you know, it's not the system It's actually the quality of policy is your messages that really resonated with with the voters and that's why I think the globally people should not give up on hope of America and we are actually the beacon of freedom and The lighthouse of democracy and I should continue and it's been here for 250 years now

Right. Is there anything else that you want to say just specifically on the election before we shift to how it's going to impact China? I think also demonstrate once again that overwhelming majority of Americans are fair. Any excess of legal procedures, media unfairness will backfire. So people focus on

the messages, the issues, rather than personal attacks. I think the Democrats should learn the lesson that attacking on your political opponent ad hominem would never work. If you mobilize the

legal system to achieve political election result, that would also backfire. Because it's not about whether Donald Trump is a perfect person or not. It's about how laws should be fairly applied to any individual. So from the president on down to ordinary people person. So that's why I have unfailing faith in the Americans

fairness, a sense of common sense. So that actually is very obvious throughout the whole election. Well, with that pretext, we'll shift to how this election and new presidency is going to impact China policy. So we have the advantage of being able to look back at Trump having had policy on China, and some of it's still in existence, still operating. So let's start with

What his policy was, is there going to be continuity for what there was going into his second administration? How does China also react to this? If the Trump administration's first term's China policy is a tie-in and all, the second term will be a maximum strength tie-in and all.

because that's going to enhance the course that's already been set during the first term of which I was a member. There's a tremendous continuity of...

a China policy during second term, that's because we have re-prioritized American strategic focus. We see China as the number one threat to the American system, American national security. And I think most of the world has come around to agree with us on that particular point. It's not because we are trying to pick China for a fight. China has been picking the fight

with America, with the international order for decades. We just realized that and put China as the focus of our foreign policy, our security orientation. China no longer is just a card to be played. Playing China card strategy has just been silly and give China a lot of opportunities. China called a strategic opportunity. So no longer going to be the case. Now, of course,

Many of the things that was achieved during Trump's first term was not implemented, mostly because of a limitation of time. I think this next four years during Trump's second term is going to implement many of the landmark decisions made by the first Trump administration. Yeah. Could you highlight a few of those? I will say, for example, trade.

We concluded trade deal with China, and China never implemented that. That's going to be another focus of second term, and they're going to see massive tariff on China's unfettered trading practice with the United States. And also think that on security ground, we're going to beef up our defense strategy

against Chinese aggression in the region and beyond. And also, I think we're going to see a little bit of a readjustment in America's policy toward Russia because once again,

As President Trump said many, many times, Russia was a troublemaker, but the biggest troublemaker in the world is not Russia, it's China. Russia is just a proxy of China. China is the one that has the economy more than 10 times than Russia's, has the technology much, much more sophisticatedly advanced than Russia. China is the one that has been sort of bankrolling all those rogue states in the world, creating strategic destruction for the United States.

States like Russia, Iran, North Korea. So those policies will continue. And I think President Trump will also keep a strategic dialogue with Xi Jinping on so that we do not have unnecessary kinetic fight. So if the first administration kind of served to highlight

the threat of China and to shift that focus. What changes do we see for the second administration to change the momentum in the great power competition with the CCP? Maximum strength versus ordinary strength. Number two, and I think there will be new grounds that we're going to challenge China, particularly on human rights, for example, on economic system, on

Strengthen export control. So China threat the manifests itself in multiple fronts and I think we're gonna engage China a full spectrum as we tried in the first Trump administration That is China no longer expect the United States to say nothing If it's like a millions of people in constant camps China should expect you know, I said to engage with Beijing and

Full spectrum on all aspect that has any impact on US China relationship So and also most importantly I would say if there is one single most important accomplishment of the Trump first term on China policy it is this that is we gave China the Chinese Communist Party is due agency and

So the relationship between the United States and China is no longer just for Americans to adjust our policy. We have done our maximum. It's up to China to make the decision to change its behavior and its practice. Again, as I said many times in this program and many other platforms,

The most important factor deciding the direction and nature of a US-China relationship is not in Washington, it's in Beijing. It's in China's hand. Obviously, it's going to change the US-China calculus. How does this also impact...

the alliance structure out there? When you talk about U.S.-Taiwan relations, U.S.-Japanese relations, all of our allies and potential regional partners, what are they seeing and how are they reacting to this? Oh, they reacted to this with welcoming arms. I mean, I think, you know, most countries in China's neighborhood

Feel the common threat from China. Yeah, you can you can name all the countries over there You cannot find a one country that is openly present China for its behavior So everybody feel this a common threat not common threat unites United States with those countries

U.S.-Japan, U.S.-Korea, U.S.-Philippine relationships are bounded by a mutual defense arrangement. Beyond that, U.S. also has a very robust security, economic, and political relationship with India, Australia, New Zealand, and several other countries in the region, too. But I might also say, though,

There's no such a thing called regional security anymore. It's all global. What happens in Taiwan is not just a regional Taiwanese issue, Chinese issue. It's not Western Pacific issue. It's a global issue. Just like what's going on in North Korea, what's going on in Gaza, what's going on in Ukraine are no longer just regional issues. It's a global issue. So this time, we have this global alliance of some sort because NATO...

has strongly endorsed the idea that somehow peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, in the Indo-Pacific is their business too. Because China has allied itself with the number one dis-development source of security in Europe, that is Russia. So the Russia-China quasi-alliance

is the transcontinental threat to global peace. And that's why there is some kind of a global alliance information right now. So I will see all the stuff that's going to come to fruition during the second Trump term. If you were to place a bet on the first...

Issue, topic, conflict, where are Donald Trump and Xi Jinping going to butt heads first? I would say trade, number one. But trade is no longer just a very simple economic and commercial matter. It's a security. Right. It's a military strength. And it's really a...

a linchpin of US-China competition of some sort. So I would say that's going to be much more complicated. Secondly, it depends on who's in charge of the State Department. Looks like Senator Marco Rubio will be the new Secretary of State. Yeah, that's the rumor. And that's going to be a very important position because Senator Marco Rubio is very strong on China's human rights and on the systemic abuses of human rights.

Senator Marco Rubio is of Cuban descent, and he understands what socialism, communism is all about. So I'm very hopeful that with Congressman Michael Waltz in the National Security Council, and I think it will have a very robust China policy team. So I'm very pleased.

All right. Well, shifting to a little bit more of a lighthearted topic, I'll just set the scene here. I just got back from Disney World for my daughter's birthday and I was standing in line probably for Ratatouille or Nemo or something like that. And I got a push notification that people were riding bikes. A lot of people were riding a lot of bikes in China. And I thought, why am I why am I getting this? What does this have anything to do?

But here we are, Miles, and we're talking about it. So why don't you tell us exactly what happened? We've got a lot of young people riding bikes late at night, clogging up highways, and

What triggered this? And then we can get into maybe what it actually means. It looks like a very bizarre, but it has some inner logic of its own. So what happened is there's four young girls, college age, and they rode the bicycle from the Chinese central provincial capital of Zhengzhou.

to the nearby city Kaifeng, which is about 30 miles away. So they rode in the middle of the night and... That's legit. Yeah, so they rode in the middle of the night and went over there, had a great time, and they had some kind of a steam buns. They posted a video on Chinese version of YouTube. YouTube, of course, is banned, but the Chinese Weibo. And this basically ignited a prairie fire, as we speak in China. That is, on that weekend, on Friday evening,

Tens of thousands of college students rode this bicycle. They don't have bicycle of their own. There's a bike share company. And they basically rented bike share bicycles and rode...

30 miles to Kaifeng from Zhengzhou. And this is an amazing event. And people should be familiar with Zhengzhou as well because if you happen to be a owner of the iPhone, chances are your iPhone is made in Zhengzhou. That's basically, it's the number one manufacturer base of Apple's iPhone in the world. So that is a phenomenon.

And not only that, when this horde of college bicyclers went to Zhengzhou, they basically abandoned the bike over there, and there's thousands of them, there's mountains of abandoned bikes over there. And they will go back by trains and high-speed railway. And this is a really bizarre system. Now, why this is happening?

Well, it is very intriguing. China is a highly controlled society. And the Chinese Communist Party has an iron grip on people's movement. Yeah. And you cannot really do anything openly as a group.

And that's basically you're going to face severe consequences. That's why doing this gave the young kids a much stronger sense of purpose in life and belonging because they go as a group by the thousands.

And Chinese Communist Party cannot really punish individual. And plus, on the surface, they're not overtly political. They send the Communist songs and Chinese national anthem. It's college kids riding to get steamed buns. Yeah, it's just like doing so. It's fun and fun. It's whatever the Chinese Communist Party doesn't want them to do, they do it. So with the purpose to spook the authorities. So this rebellious age, they try to do it.

But there's a far more, far deeper reason for this. This reminds me of the novel written by the Czech

author Milan Kundera. In 1982, he wrote a novel called "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" describing on the eve of the 1968 Prague Spring, the open rebellion against communist rule in Czechoslovakia, where people basically were bored and were

Not really that motivated by for anything. Yeah, that's why the title unbearable lightness of being And so it's kind of a bleak descent sense to me now more importantly this bizarre movement in Henan has caused ripple effects all over China number one

People just go to Zhengzhou and join this ride for the following days. The veterans and the public servants, they all go there. But more importantly, in other cities like Beijing, Xi'an, Chengdu, and Wuhan, you have similar night bicycle riders. They're really night riders, if you will.

So this has a political tone because the party authorities, they were in a panic mood in the cities because you were not allowed to have any mass groupings of any kind. - That's wild. - This also remind me of this historical movement back in the Manchu dynasty.

In the 1790s, which was the zenith of the Manchu dynasty power, and the economy was booming, and the country seemed to be stable, yet people were restless. So there was this sudden eruption of a massive movement

It's called White Lotus Rebellion. It was not supposed to be rebellion. People just get bored. They have no sense of purpose. So at the high time of the regime, millions of people just tried to do something different and not really met with severe resistance and suppression from the regime. So it took the regime...

eight years to suppress this White Lotus Rebellion. And that's the beginning of the decline, the beginning of the demise of the Manchu dynasty, which lasts for a couple hundred years. And this reminds me of that. So that's why mass movement could erupt anytime into desert China, because it is a high-pressure society. So people ask me, is this a protest or is it a youth sport? I think kind of both. Well, it just seems to highlight the...

intense level of paranoia within the CCP that any gathering of a large amount of people that isn't political, they have a huge reaction on it that it could become political. The CCP ends up becoming the fun police. You can't gather in a large group and do anything, even if it has nothing to do with actually protesting. It becomes that because they have such a

aggressive reaction to the potential of anything growing. And actually, they manifest exactly what they wanted to avoid. Yeah, yeah, you're right. You're right. I mean, China is a society that is not very fair to a lot of people. People's social mobility routes have been cut short. And there's a massive unemployment, particularly among the youths.

So if you're a college student in the second tier city like Zhengzhou, and you really don't see much of a bright future for your education, for your hard work. So I think there is a sense of rebellion and a sense of outrage. And those sense of rebellion and outrage can only be expressed

in a very, very indirect way because open expression of your discontent will meet with severe punishment. This is very much like, you know, during the 1960s, the decades of protest. It's like Woodstock.

The difference is that Woodstock obviously is a music festival, but it's really the social protest that masqueraded as a music festival. The difference is that Woodstock, there's no cops, there's no National Guard to kill them.

Here in China, if you have similar kind of protest events, you will meet a totally different ending. So I would say this is something that we should keep our eyes on. It's a very, very strange society yet. If you understand the inner logic, everything makes sense. Well, there's a long list of things you can't do under the CCP's China, and now you have to add...

riding at night with your friends to go get steamed buns to that list. And all of a sudden, the things you're allowed to do that gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And that's a little frustrating that can boil over. So I appreciate this, Miles. Love the lighthearted ending. It was great to catch up. We're going to have more in the weeks ahead. Look forward to next week. All right. See you next week. Thank you for listening to this episode of China Insider. I'd also like to thank our executive producer, Philip Hegseth.

who works tirelessly and professionally behind the scenes for every episode to make sure we deliver the best quality podcast to you, the listeners. If you enjoy the show, please spread the words. For Chinese listeners, please check our monthly review and analysis episode in Chinese. We'll see you next time.