How China Might View a Second Trump Administration: A Conversation with Mr. Rick Waters
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I'm Bonnie Lin, Director of the China Power Project and Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic International Studies. Today is November 6th, and we are discussing the results of the U.S. presidential election and what they mean for China. How could the 47th President, Donald Trump, alter the current trajectory of U.S.-China relations? How does China view President Trump, and what does China expect?

To answer these questions and more, Mr. Rick Waters joins us to discuss. Rick Waters is the Managing Director of Eurasia Group's China Practice.

Drawing on his decades of experience in the U.S. Foreign Service, Rick leads the firm's China expertise and client offerings. His research interests include China's global and regional diplomacy, U.S.-China relations, and China's domestic political economy. Rick joined the Eurasia Group after a 27-year career as the U.S. State Department's top China policy official, overseeing the creation of the Office of China Coordination, informally known as China House.

and concurrently serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for China and Taiwan. Rick also held multiple roles at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, including during the period between the accidental U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 and the Hainan Island incident in 2001. Rick, thank you for joining me today. Yeah, it's great to be here.

Rick, so you were in Beijing and then in D.C. working on China issues at the State Department during the first Trump administration. I'd like to start off with your understanding of how China viewed the first Trump administration. During these four years, what did you see as Beijing's overall assessment of President Trump and his team?

Well, I think the assessment of Trump at the end of the president's first term has evolved a little bit for two reasons. One is I think they viewed his first term in two parts. There was the early period where they viewed President Trump and particularly the trade channels as a transactional relationship that was seeking a deal. So while the phase one agreement unraveled for reasons that we can discuss,

There was the transactional Trump, and then there was a separate period in 2020 after COVID when the Chinese concluded that because President Trump was angry at them over what happened, there was a lot more space for more ideological, perhaps, members of the cabinet to pursue agendas that maybe Trump himself was not

all that aligned with, but that had a lot of consequence for Beijing at the time. But I say that's evolved a little bit, Bonnie, because I think they had also expected Biden to do a reset and it never occurred. The tariffs stayed in place. And so now I think from a strategic perspective, they view the U.S. quote unquote consensus on China as extending through both parties with the differences being mainly tactical.

Rick, focusing on the early period first, what type of relationship did Beijing initially seek to establish with the Trump administration? And did you see any variation in how China tried to reach out at the leadership level versus the working level?

Well, I think the US-China relationship is managed at a strategic level by Xi Jinping. So I think the strategy is very disciplined on the Chinese side. It's very much top down and not bottom up. And so after the 2016 election, my recollection is the Chinese worked very quickly to send protocolary greetings and then to send emissaries. Because what they really wanted, and I think this is going to be true today as well, is

is to open a channel to the new administration to understand their specific intentions. So that was the initial phase.

The second phase really played out more after the new administration's decision in that transition period to accept a phone call from then Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen. And that basically unsettled everything. And so there was a period of time between the Trump-Tsai call and February 9th, I think it was, of 2017, when things had unraveled. And they were only put together again when the president

reconfirmed his adherence to the US-1 China policy in a call with President Xi. And in these early days of China trying to reach out, what was Beijing's intention? And what was China trying to get President Trump or his new team to agree to? And did you see that evolve in the next four years?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think this evolved for a number of reasons, one of which is that you had a different U.S. team in place at the beginning of the administration and later on. So, Bonnie, you'll remember the president invited Xi to Mar-a-Lago in April of that year for their first face-to-face meeting. And, you know, in that meeting, I think that was a period of time

where the Commerce Department, and particularly Wilbur Ross, who was secretary at the time, had a much more central role in the economic relationship than would be the case later. Similarly, Rex Tillerson, who was secretary of state, was more central in setting up the architecture. So they had their meeting at Mar-a-Lago, and what emerged on the back end was a

slimmed down version, not of the old S&ED or security and economic dialogue framework, but rather a slimmer framework of cabinet level meetings built around diplomacy, around economics, around law enforcement and other issues. And this was meant to be the supporting structure to the leader level diplomacy. But again, for reasons we'll get into later in the podcast, that structure didn't really prove durable.

So Rick, you mentioned the trimmed down dialogue that was formed during the Trump administration that was a lot less than the SNED. I remember the new diplomatic and security dialogue that was put in place still requires significant effort to organize, despite the fact that it involved a lot less meetings than before. But if I could shift gears a bit, I'd like to ask you about, from your perspective, what

What really worried Beijing the most during the first Trump administration? Were there particular periods where you felt more anxiety in U.S.-China relations? Well, I think there was certainly a lot of anxiety in 2018 after the trade war escalated. And I think just to preface this,

You know, you had two senior level engagements in the first year. You had Mar-a-Lago and then, of course, you had President Trump's state visit to Beijing. The Chinese called it State Visit Plus. And this for them was a really big deal. It was meant to kind of solidify understandings from their view at the presidential level. But I think that was also the first time that the Chinese started to realize that the economic agenda

that Trump was going to advance was really being driven less by the U.S. Commerce Department and more by then U.S. Trade Representative Bob Lighthizer. So they came out of that visit feeling like they were in a relatively improved position, at least understanding the depth of concerns on the U.S. side that trade was going to be the major point of friction, probably less concerned in some ways about human rights and

you know, values related issues that I think for the CCP often cut to the core of their legitimacy and their domestic and international narratives. But that's how 2017 rounds out. And then I think what happens, you know, to sort of oversimplify a bit is they're surprised and perhaps stunned a little bit by the tariff escalations over the course of 2018.

And, you know, some of that is also interspersed with rhetoric, which from the Chinese side, and I'm not taking a normative view on this, started to harden against the CCP itself. You know, Vice President Pence gave a speech, I think it was in October of that year. And so you kind of alternated between these periods of stability, relative stability, and then an event or an escalation that would catch the Chinese off guard. And I think it all culminated towards the end of the year with

the detention of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei, and her extradition to the U.S. So, you know, by the time you get to 2017, the transactional view that I mentioned at the beginning, this idea that Trump, you just sort of deal with him as a business person, that was already starting to erode.

But again, I think it largely held through the end of that year and ultimately through the conclusion of the phase one trade deal. It's in 2020 where things took a very different turn.

Rick, you mentioned already one factor that contributed to a turn in 2020, and that was COVID. But we also know that in 2020, and this was discussed by General Milley publicly, that he had responded to what he saw as concerns within China of a potential U.S. desire to attack China. And that led him to call his Chinese PLA counterpart twice, once in October 2020 and once in January 2021.

Could you describe what happened during this period in 2020 that contributed to these misperceptions and this heightened Chinese anxiety about the United States? Well, I think it all started with COVID. And, you know, of course, you had a fissure in the relationship, including at the level of

you know, basic people to people ties when COVID broke out, when the U.S. barred the entry of non-U.S. citizens on, you know, medical grounds. And then the war of words began over COVID origins and China virus and all of this stuff. And so basically by that spring, the U.S. and China are in a period where the formal channels have frozen and even the informal channels are not functioning because no one can travel.

That's where things started to unravel. You had tit for tat expulsions of journalists in March of that year. Again, that story may not sound as central, but I think it is because from the Chinese perspective,

You know, they don't tend to have a lot of introspection about why U.S. concerns about press freedom and about journalist access are there. But the expulsions that they had done against, I think, a few Wall Street Journal reporters were met by the U.S. with another – with a reciprocal move. And then the Chinese made another move. And so you had these tit-for-tats playing out in –

in various areas of the relationship. And it got worse in July when, because of the very consequential erosion of Hong Kong's autonomy, President Trump signed an executive order ending most aspects of the preferential treatment that the U.S. had given to Hong Kong as part of the original autonomy bargain after the reversion in 97. And then by July,

Because of some very deep and I think well-founded concerns about espionage and intellectual property theft emanating from the Chinese consulate in Houston, the U.S. closes the Chinese consulate and the Chinese retaliate by closing the U.S. consulate

in Chengdu and Sichuan province. So again, this is all setting the stage. You've got a relationship where there are really no management channels and where each side is starting to take actions that are responded to reciprocally.

And the environment is getting pretty poisoned. And so by the fall, and I think this is sort of the prelude to the Milley call, you know, you have former Secretary Mike Pompeo in a speech out at the Reagan Library in July actually declaring the failure of the engagement strategy with China.

And, you know, there are a lot of things in the speech that were meant to signal that the U.S. was kind of looking around the party to Chinese citizens to press for changes in their system or at least changes in its behavior that I think the party saw as an attack on the system. But again, I don't, Bonnie, want to link this too directly to Milley. I think this is scene setting. I think the Milley call, my recollection of that is that the Chinese were so in isolation at this point that

They were so devoid of good information in their system, they started to put one and one together and get three. And they convinced themselves somehow that the U.S. was planning a sneak attack.

And while I'll let, you know, former Chairman Milley's words speak for themselves about his motivations in making the call, I do think the lesson that I took away from that period is that when these channels erode to a certain point, the bureaucracies will start doing things to each other and misunderstandings can escalate.

And Rick, just on the point of how these channels of communication are quite essential to preventing or reducing miscommunication, do you think since then, since the end of 2020, we have restored or repaired either some of these official channels or unofficial channels? And are you...

relatively confident that as we enter the second Trump administration, that there will be desire from China's end to maintain those channels.

Well, I think that a number of things have changed, but a number are consistent. I think, again, the leader level channel is the most essential one. Because without leader level authorization, the US-China relationship right now is at a point where no one in the Chinese system will take the initiative or feel empowered to engage a US interlocutor. So everything will have to be kind of rebooted and reauthorized.

The second thing is that the leader level piece of this will be key. I mean, only Xi Jinping can make that authorization. And so I think the Chinese are going to look at this picture and they're going to look for a channel and they're eventually going to look for some leader level engagement in order to figure out, one, what the Trump administration wants.

And by that, what I mean is, do they want a deal or do they want, conversely, a sort of unilateral decoupling? And two, once they have made that evaluation, they will then, you know, want to either make a calculus about what channels to open and preserve to negotiate. Or conversely, they may well be inclined to just shut a lot of channels down if they think that, you

The next administration strategy is really more of a unilateral decoupling and not an effort that aims to eventually achieve a new negotiated equilibrium.

Thank you, Rick. I know this is probably a bit hard to think through at this point on November 6th, but do you have a sense, based off of your conversation with Chinese colleagues and interlocutors, that they are more confident that the Trump administration wants a deal, perhaps, as you were discussing earlier, a more transactional relationship with China? Or are Chinese experts more worried that the new Trump administration might want unilateral decoupling?

Well, I think the honest answer is probably that they don't know. They'll need to hear from the next administration in an authoritative channel. I do think that there's a lot of misinformation. I think there's a lot of analysis going on in their system. But I think there are some elements of their debate which most of us would agree with, which are that in any administration, people will matter. And so who goes into the key cabinet positions?

What that means in terms of how they translate their views on the U.S.-China relationship into strategy, that will matter immensely. But I think the first step will be finding an authorized authoritative channel. And, you know, Bonnie, I don't want to predict the future, but I do think it's entirely possible that that channel doesn't emerge until after January 20th.

In addition to areas that China was worried about, did you see particular areas that China really wanted to work with the Trump administration on? And did China offer anything in terms of the types of coordination or cooperation it was seeking from the United States? From their perspective, they did. I mean, we can debate how significant it was. But I think one of the best examples, Bonnie, was when President Trump went to China in November 2017, he

He didn't just talk about trade. He talked, including at his press conference with Xi Jinping, very forcefully about the impact of fentanyl and synthetic opioids on American communities. And I think the Chinese took notice. And there were a number of subsequent engagements where the Trump administration sent messages or signaled they would take strong actions.

But there was also a diplomatic component that was complementary that was run by former Senator Lamar Alexander and a bipartisan group of senators who came out to China the following year and walked the leadership through the specific actions the U.S. thought would be helpful to help stem the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. And the specific action basically was to ban fentanyl

as a class of drugs because the ease with which fentanyl producers could modify a compound slightly to get around existing law meant that if you don't ban it as a class,

You're not doing anything effective. And ultimately, the Chinese took that step. And I think they did that basically in an effort to stabilize the relationship and because they weren't eager to have the reputational sort of black mark of being seen as the supplier of fentanyl to the globe. But unfortunately, I think the nature of the drug flow evolved after that. China became the producer of precursors that were

assembled and reconstituted in Mexico. And second, during that period of the downturn in the relationship, I do think that the Chinese simply didn't apply political will for a long period to addressing that challenge.

Thank you, Rick. Looking at the first Trump administration as a whole, do you get a sense that as Beijing looks across those four years, China assesses that it came out either better positioned than before internationally or worse than before? I'm trying to understand how China looks at these four years as a whole and what that means for their assessment of the next four years.

The answer to your question depends on when they form that assessment. Because if you recall, in 2020, the Chinese were on a little bit of a hubris high, thinking that their system had done a better job of managing COVID than anyone else. And the U.S. was in a bit of disarray over questions of masking and testing and all of this.

I think their economy was holding up reasonably well. And so I think that during that period, the Chinese assessment would probably have been that they were in a better position. But I think the more interesting question now is how that has changed. I think the Chinese today probably wouldn't put it this way. But given that they're –

COVID strategy ultimately was seen by many in the country as a failure, or at least one that went on too long at too high a price. Given that the structural slowdown in their economy coincided with the end of the COVID period, and you had a cyclical slowdown on top of that driven by the property sector, you now have a China that I think is going through a very difficult period economically. And while I don't think that the leaders would frontally admit that,

that their relative position is not as good, I think you see it in their behavior to some extent through the desire to stabilize ties, not just with the US, but with Japan, Australia, to some extent recently India, etc. And so I think that's going to be a big question going forward is how long do these domestic Chinese drivers of the stabilization imperative persist?

And to what extent are they overridden by nationalism and other factors if we end up in another period of trade escalation?

Thank you. So I now want to move from the first Trump administration to the recent campaign and the elections. Rick, I want to get your views on what China assessed were the main differences between Vice President Harris and President Trump. And if you sense either way, that there was a Chinese preference for one U.S. presidential candidate over the other. Because if there was any preference, I think that shows a lot in terms of how they actually think about President Trump and his team. Yeah, well, I think, Bonnie, you know, here I'm...

I am a little bit sad to admit that I think the trajectory of how the Chinese leadership and particularly Xi Jinping see the U.S., you know, if you go back 12 years ago to when he first entered office, it was during the aftermath of the Arab Spring. And I think we have to remember the party is in disarray. The Arab Spring in China is seen as an effort by the U.S. to topple authoritarian regimes.

And another factor that I think is important in setting the stage is the impact of Vladimir Putin on Xi Jinping's thinking, because they do have frequent conversations. And I think Putin has been as big a factor as any in shaping Xi's view of the world and view of the U.S.'s ultimate intentions. So with that, by way of setting the stage, you get through the end of the Obama administration period.

And the Trump administration, I think, is where a much darker view of the U.S. starts to ossify. And it's hard to be too precise about when that occurred. But I think that's when this kind of fatalistic conclusion may have set in among the senior leaders in China, that the U.S. and China are destined for some sort of a fissure. Now, I think you can debate whether that's

One that the Chinese view as something that will be inflicted on them or one they may well cause if ultimately they decide to retake Taiwan using force, for example. But the clear signals, the clear manifestations of that are not just in the U.S. relationship. They are in the way in which the party talk about their global role and in the way that they talk about U.S.-China competition.

Now, to the point that you're asking about during the campaign, how did they see things? Well, again, they viewed the U.S.,

political parties, both sides, as having basically adopted a similar strategic view of China. And therefore, from their perspective, the big questions now are tactical. What level of tariffs? Is it full decoupling or de-risking? But the intentions at this point are seen as very hostile. And that is why I think a lot of Chinese strategy at this point is

is built around insulating their system from geopolitical risk, or as Jimmy Goodrich has put it in a very good recent paper, building a fortress economy and much more. Since we don't see too much differentiating between Chinese experts between the two U.S. political parties, and they seem to assess that the differences are mainly at the tactical level, are you aware of any Chinese efforts to interfere or influence the recent U.S. presidential elections?

Well, I think, Bonnie, the short answer is it depends on how you define it. I think the Chinese system is always very actively asserting through propaganda and other channels

a view of the US political system in disarray as part of their global narrative effort to create a better, more conducive environment for the success of their model. So at one level, that's going on constantly. I think a second thing that's going on is they do a lot of cyber operations in the US and I think Microsoft has had some very good analyses of what they're doing. But these operations, I think, are not necessarily about

interfering in the US election in the sense of how the Russians do it in support of one candidate or the other. I think these operations can often be traditional espionage. They can be cyber theft for economic gain, or they can again fit into that first category, which is the always

present effort to push their narrative of the relative disadvantages of the US system. And so that is more of what I have seen. The last thing I'll say on this is I do think the Chinese leadership took a decision early on not to express a view of which candidate they preferred. And so what you saw in their debates was actually a lot of debate. Different parts of the system had different views. And I think that probably was true up until the US election.

And now Rick, I want to go into a bit more speculative territory and ask you what you think China might be expecting in a second Trump administration. In your conversations with Chinese colleagues, have they flagged anything that really stood out to them as what they expect in a second Trump administration? Is there anything that they're really worried about or really excites them?

I think they've been watching the statements by candidate Trump and by people who are seen as close to him or possible members of the future cabinet. I think that the way that they view these debates is not quite as tactical as I think we often debate them even among the China community. It's not about level of tariffs or whether it's 301 versus revocation of permanent normal trade relations.

It's about the overall goal. And I think the question that is circulating in Beijing is, is the goal to achieve a new deal or conversely to unilaterally decouple and perhaps even weaken our system? And so I think this is really going to be the judgment the Chinese are trying to draw. Is there an effort to bargain? Is that our tariffs meant to be leveraged?

Or conversely, are tariffs part of a decoupling strategy? And so, you know, they're aware of the fact that these debates are not fully resolved here. But what I would say as a personal assessment is that I think the Chinese are too open to the possibility that this time it's all transactional and perhaps not attuned enough to how far the debates have evolved in the U.S. about the difficulties of getting to a new economic agreement

in a system that has in recent years redoubled time and time again around an economic strategy that is built about geopolitical isolation, state industrial policy, and oversupply at the expense of domestic demand. And unless they're willing to revisit some of those core elements of their strategy, I don't think that a deal is likely in the near term. And therefore, we're likely to be heading into a period of significant volatility.

And when you mentioned a potential new deal with the Trump administration, have Chinese experts mainly talked about a new deal in economic terms, or have they also discussed the possibility of a deal at the larger strategic geopolitical level in terms of foreign policy? You know, again, I think they don't neatly disaggregate quite as often, but I would say it's more in the economic realm. I think

There are some in the Chinese system and certainly among their academics who acknowledge that

the problem of overcapacity, even if they don't like the word. You know, I think they've looked at their own growth data. They realize it's just unsustainable. I mean, the last quarter, you know, very little of their economic growth is coming from domestic consumption now. It's coming from investment and largely into sectors that are exporting at unsustainable rates and lower profitability abroad. They see this reality of tariff barriers going up. And so, you know, they're starting to talk about

how the US and Japan manage their trade issues in the 1980s. They talk about the tools of voluntary export restraints. That I think is an area of greater tactical flexibility than the geostrategic realm. And I think the challenge

geopolitically, is that for China, a lot of their strategy is driven by the view I described of the US. So it's very difficult to conceive of China creating significant frictions with Moscow, even though I don't think there are plenty of voices in the Chinese system that are unhappy about the direction of the war in Ukraine, about how China is tied to Russian strategy, and particularly about this newer element of DPRK troops

now being present on the battlefield inside of Russia's borders, and what that means for this perception of a bloc or a coalition forming with them at the center. They don't like it, but I don't think that's going to lead them to take significant action against those countries so long as their primary fear is an existential threat from the U.S.,

I will follow up on Russia and North Korea, but before that, I want to ask you more about tariffs. So President Trump has repeatedly stated his desire to impose significantly more tariffs.

And you also mentioned that if tariffs were to be imposed, there are at least two different ways that China could interpret it, whether the tariffs are part of a new deal with China or a part of a new U.S. unilateral effort to decouple. Given these different views within China, what does that mean in terms of how China would respond if these new tariffs are imposed? Does it mean that China would hesitate to retaliate or does it just mean that there will be more uncertainty within the Chinese system?

Well, I think they're typically they are very reactive to U.S. tactical moves. So they will wait and they will not act on the basis of what they think is coming. They'll prepare.

But I don't think we're going to know China's retaliatory decision-making until China first sees the Trump administration's first actual moves. But, Bonnie, I think before we get to the retaliation piece, we also have to back up to the bigger picture. The Chinese, I think, have been preparing at a certain level for decoupling for years now. In fact, they've been driving it in parts of the ICT sector. They were shocked and surprised by the advanced computing restrictions imposed

President Biden imposed two years ago. And so a big element of their domestic industrial policy build out, and they're signaling that they will remain open to other markets.

as a hedge against losing the US, I think those pieces are well underway. They are now baked into China's longer-term strategies. And I think a good example of this was just this week when the premier at a big economic and trade conference reiterated the points about China remaining open and trying to position China as the guardian of the global trading order with, you know, not a lot of introspection, to be frank, about

what has happened at the WTO that makes it impossible for that system to protect other countries against China's industrial policy. So that's the overall frame. Tactically, we're going to have to wait, I think, until the Chinese see the Trump administration's first moves.

And switching gears to Russia and North Korea, I think we still need to see how President Trump's Ukraine policies unfold. But assuming that the United States shifts our position on Ukraine and we try to end the conflict there as soon as possible, and also at the same time we're reaching out to Russia, how would all of these moves cause reassessment in China? How does it actually matter, or how much does it matter, in terms of China's overall thinking of its relationship vis-a-vis the United States and its foreign policy orientation?

My sense is that, you know, China probably doesn't mind the U.S. being bogged down in the Middle East or to some extent having to channel resources militarily to a European battlefront. But I do think that there are deep misgivings in various parts of the Chinese system about the war in Ukraine and about how that has affected China.

China's relations with Europe. I just don't think they've gotten to a point where the Chinese are feeling that they're in a hurting stalemate. I mean, the Europeans have not been thus far willing to inflict significant pain on China through sanctions against dual use transfers or even through the trade channel. In fact, the negotiations over electric vehicles have ended up at a level of tariff that is not trade prohibitive. So China will still be able to export.

So I think there are a lot of factors that go into China's Ukraine policy beyond just the U.S. But my sense is they will want to be involved in whatever peace mechanism emerges. They will not want to be seen as aligning against Russia, although they might be willing to use their channels effectively.

to bound elements of the conflict, such as how far DPRK troops are allowed to go now that they're in on Russian soil. But my sense is that, you know, there will be multiple factors that play into

Beijing's thinking, not just the question of U.S. strategy. And with the U.S. reaching out to Russia and the shift in our position on Ukraine, would that in any way change China's assessment that it needs to continue to deepen its strategic relationship with Russia?

Yeah, although I'm not sure at this point how much further you go. China has rebuilt through, you know, dual use transfers, the Russian defense establishment, to a degree that it has not just changed the dynamics on the Ukraine battlefield. This is going to be an issue for European security for years to come. So, you know, I think it's not a formal mutual defense treaty, but I think the depth of the China-Russia relationship at this point is pretty profound.

Rick, you mentioned North Korea a couple of times, and there's a lot of development on this front. And it seems that China is uneasy about the growing Russia and North Korea relationship. Is there any worry in China that in the next couple of years, under a second Trump administration, that we might see NATO expanding to the Indo-Pacific? Well, I think you've hit on the real key concern. It's the idea that there could be an Asian NATO or NATO expansion to Asia. But it's really the, from the Chinese perspective, the

The last couple of years, they may feel some trends have worked in their favor geopolitically, certainly the value they have leveraged from the tragedy in Gaza in parts of the global south. But it's in their own neighborhood where trends are moving arguably in the wrong direction. What they see in their own neighborhood is the enhancement of some existing structures, the quad, a

among them and the creation of new ones, whether it's the trilateral mechanisms between Tokyo and Seoul or between Tokyo and Manila and the US or AUKUS itself. And so you see this arc of new and existing but repurposed mechanisms that looks to China as if it's a containment effort in their backyard. And I think where the DPRK fits in is both in terms of their traditional concerns about the risk of nuclear sable rattling on the peninsula,

and how it could affect the behavior of the ROK in Japan, but also more broadly, whether the perception of a growing block between the DPRK, Russia, and China

gives additional oxygen to the broader NATO, Asian NATO containment efforts. So I think they've got concerns at both levels. I think where the new troop deployment comes in is that my sense, and I could be wrong, is that the Chinese, you know, again, are very much aligned with Russia on Ukraine, but they're not consulted on every tactical decision. And with the DPRK, they've never felt confident.

in their influence over an unpredictable and mercurial leadership. So the Chinese don't like the feeling that they've lost control. And I think they really, you know, at this point are anxious about making sure that they are dealt in to whatever is happening between Moscow and Pyongyang, whether it's technology for weapons deals or now the deployment of North Korean troops on Russian soil.

And Rick, one issue that we haven't discussed is Taiwan. President Trump has said a number of things about Taiwan on the campaign trail, including the use of tariffs to deal with potential Chinese military operations around Taiwan. Trump's advisors have also taken different positions on Taiwan. What does China expect of President Trump with respect to its Taiwan policy? I think this is an issue on which the Chinese are probably still debating aspects, but my sense is that they don't

ultimately believe that the US will play Taiwan as a transactional card for reasons that actually don't have that much to do with Taiwan itself. I would really go back to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action over Iran that the Obama administration struck.

and that later the Trump administration moved away from. And the reason I mentioned the JCPOA in this context is that I think among the Chinese leadership, they formed a view, and I've heard this from a number of people in their system, that if you enter into an agreement with a U.S. administration that falls outside of the U.S. foreign policy consensus,

It won't be durable between administrations. And so the linkage to Taiwan is interesting because I've heard a number of people say, and these may just be isolated views in their system, but I do think they reflect a strand of leadership thinking.

that a similar type of deal that somehow brought in Taiwan would fall outside the U.S. domestic political consensus, the strength and affinity of the ties between Washington and Taipei and the unofficial relationship, and therefore it wouldn't be transferable after Trump steps down. So for that reason, I don't think Beijing's primary focus right now is Trump himself. I think their focus is more on dynamics on the island, on

under President Lai's tenure. And we can talk about what their concerns are, and I'm not taking a normative judgment about the validity of those concerns. But I guess my assessment would be that Beijing's primary concerns emanate from Taipei, not Washington.

Fascinating. Thank you, Rick. I do want to ask you one final question on what you predict in terms of next steps from Beijing. But before that, I also wanted to get your sense of, obviously, we haven't seen the full House results yet, but we're seeing a likely Republican control of the Senate. To what extent will the final makeup of the House or the Senate impact China's assessment of the second Trump administration?

I have to say, Bonnie, I think the Chinese system doesn't.

understand Congress all that well. I think they tend to overestimate the likelihood of a given bill passing into law. They don't like the narratives, particularly that are coming from the House Select Committee. But I think if I were to view that question more objectively, the one key issue will be that if the Republicans control both the House and the Senate, is there a serious move to repeal PNTR, Permanent Normal Trade Relations, legislatively?

And I think the reason this matters is that that, you know, to the Chinese was the original bargain. It's the foundational economic pillar of the relationship. And so it would be seen, I think, politically in a way that goes beyond the actual resulting tariff levels as essentially an economic divorce. And so when we talked about how the Chinese are preparing...

You know, I think we have to remember that they've taken the last four years to super copy a lot of the tools that the U.S. has developed against China. Not just against China, but entities listings by the Commerce Department and export controls, sanctions, including individual visa designations, anti-foreign sanctions legislation. There's a pretty robust toolbox that the Chinese have put in place

over the past four years. They are only, I think, starting to experiment with its use against Taiwan, U.S. defense contractors on Taiwan or their component suppliers against PVH, the holding company of Calvin Klein over implementation of U.S. restrictions on Xinjiang-based

forced labor. So the point here is, I think the Chinese have got a lot of tools they could use. It's difficult to predict which of them they will use.

Thank you. One final closing question. As we look to the weeks ahead, both in the period between the election and the inauguration and the immediate months after the inauguration, what do you expect from Beijing? And what do you think the second Trump administration should be looking for in terms of either outreach or requests from Beijing?

I'd anticipate, as the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson mentioned overnight, they will operate according to past precedent. So we should expect congratulatory messages and we should expect a very early effort to find some authoritative channel to the transition team. They may not be successful. I do think there will be a lot of planning for different possibilities that could emerge on January 21st. And I don't think that we should rule out

That if they conclude the U.S. strategy will be largely unilateral in terms of its initial moves, they will take unilateral responses. The question I'm left with is, will they be symbolic or will they be more significant?

Perfect. Thank you so much, Rick, for sharing your insights about China's views of President Trump based on your experience interacting with Chinese officials daily in Beijing and D.C. I know it's hard to predict how China may act, but looking at China's assessment of the first Trump administration, as well as comparing China's assessment of President Trump versus Vice President Harris, at least provides a useful baseline. Your recent conversations with Chinese interlocutors also give a good sense of what they expect.

Thank you so much for joining me today, and I really appreciate your insights. Great to be with you, Bonnie.