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I'm Bonnie Lin, director of the China Power Project and senior fellow for Asian security at the Center for Strategic International Studies. In this episode of the China Power Podcast, we're discussing leadership and domestic dynamics within China and how that influences Chinese foreign policy. What motivates Xi Jinping and what do we know about his decision-making process?
What does Xi view as the most pressing or challenging PRC domestic issues? And how do these domestic challenges shape or constrain his foreign policy decisions? Mr. John Zin joins us to answer these questions and more. Jonathan A. Zin is the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies at Brookings Institution and a fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center.
He is a former member of the Senior Analytics Service at CIA, where he was one of the intelligence community's top China experts. John led the IC's analysis of Chinese politics and policymaking, playing a central role in assessing and briefing senior policymakers on President Xi Jinping, his rise to power, and decision-making on an array of key issues and crises.
From 2021 until 2023, he was director for China at the National Security Council, where he advised on, staffed, and coordinated White House and interagency diplomacy with the People's Republic of China, including all of President Biden's interactions with President Xi, and played a leading role in addressing a wide range of global China issues. He also served as an advisor for Asia-Pacific Security Affairs, which is a major part of the
in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and oversees at a CIA field station in Southeast Asia. He holds a master's in international relations from Yale University, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, and studied at Oxford University. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese. John, it's so wonderful that you're now able to share your thoughts on China and Xi Jinping publicly.
Being on this podcast very much reminds me of our time together at CSIS as interns almost 20 years ago. And it's really a treat for me to be able to host you publicly. I'd like to start our conversation by asking about leadership dynamics within China. You're one of the United States' top experts on leadership analysis. What is your view of the state of the field of studying Chinese politics, especially elite politics?
Thanks, Bonnie, so much for that very generous introduction. And I have to say, this is the first podcast I'm doing since I left government and joined Brookings. And I'm just so glad that your show is the first one I'm doing because we've been friends and colleagues for such a long time. So I'm really looking forward to doing this. So I feel like I should start by acknowledging many scholars and analysts who do the real yeoman's work of developing our collective analytic frameworks and conceptual schematics for understanding Chinese politics. And to me, it's a great honor to be here.
The most consequential figures outside of governments who shaped and informed my own thinking when I was growing up in this field were people like Joe Fuse, Smith and Alex Miller, who I think quite youthfully had very different ways of conceptualizing the operating system, the political system inside China.
And inside government, I benefited greatly from some of our own senior analysts like John Culver and Chris Johnson, formerly of CSIS, as well as many others who remained anonymous. These folks not only played a crucial role in taping my thinking and my understanding of Chinese politics, but the understanding of officials across the U.S. government.
So as I came through the field, I frankly always felt like I was standing on the shoulders of giants as I immersed myself in the study of these issues. But I have to say, what's worried me in recent years as I've done this work is that I am actually concerned that the field has become more thinly populated and less dynamic than it was, say, 10 or 15 years ago. And that's very disconcerting to me, right? Because what I see happening or what I think I see happening is that as a
understanding Chinese politics has become more salient for our national security. And China, as an issue at large, has risen in our national security priorities.
the quality of not just our insights but i think our discourse about chinese politics has actually diminished and sometimes i worry that especially in the public conversation about these issues it sometimes seems almost like we're playing a test game against an opponent without really having an adequate understanding of the players around the king on the other side identifying who's a rook who's merely a pawn and who's a knight who can jump other other pieces on the board and i
And I think it's especially difficult to do this, of course, because China has to run in a system, right? It has very different priors from our own. It's very different in how it conjures and exercises power. So it really requires a robust debate to interpret and understand the system properly. So, John, what do you actually think is missing from the current public discussion about Chinese politics?
I'll be honest. I think that even in the years before Xi came to power, the China watching community on the outside missed some really crucial aspects of Chinese politics. So I think that if you go back and if you were to read the academic literature on Chinese politics, let's say the 20 years before Xi Jinping took power, the focus was entirely on institutionalization, collective leadership, regularization of the calendar, this sort of thing.
And if one followed the logic of that model, one would have never anticipated a Xi Jinping. Indeed, I think many fail to anticipate it.
And even after Xi took power, some otherwise astute observers predicted that there would be a backlash against him, which frankly never materialized. And I think there was very little evidence for it at the time. And in some ways, I saw it as a corollary of the old paradigm of collective leadership. Surely, if Xi broke the rules, then the system would produce antibodies that would retaliate against Xi. But that didn't happen. So given...
The failure of that conceptual framework to anticipate and explain Xi's rise to power, especially coming from my background, I think it's not overly dramatic to say that this was akin to an intelligence failure.
Right. But what's happened in the years since, I don't think there's been a real intellectual reckoning about what it is that the China wants to be community got wrong about Chinese politics. Instead, I think what's happened is that our conception and our understanding of Chinese politics has been flattened, right? It's gotten smushed down into two dimensions and it's centered entirely on one man, Xi Jinping. And why is that the case? Why do you think the field has changed in the way that it has?
Now, in fairness to our colleagues, I do think it's worth highlighting that I think
Even many figures inside the Chinese Communist Party have failed to anticipate Xi Jinping and his rise and the concentration of power in South Korea. So in some ways, it's a little unfair to expect folks in the Beltway and across the country to have a better handle on dynamics in Beijing than if they feel in Beijing whose livelihoods and sometimes even their lives depended on understanding the dynamics in Zhongnanhai. But I do think there were significant signs early on that Xi would not merely be a Hu Jintao 2.0.
I do think that part of the issue is that many observers were tethered to a model of Chinese politics that, at best, was incomplete. And I think part of the issue analytically is that over the longer term, many observers saw Hu Jintao and his tenure as reflective of a deeper, more fundamental shift in Chinese politics away from the old-fashioned fighting and toward greater institutionalization. And what I think is clear, especially in retrospect now, is that who
Who was the anomaly at the time, right? Rather than the symptom of a system experiencing fundamental change. Now, as far as the field in the United States goes, I think there are a few key factors at play here.
Some of it is just demographics, right? I think that part of the issue for the field is that many of the giants of the fields who I mentioned at the top of the show are now, in their own words, too old to be on the Parliament Bureau, right? And at the same time, I think what's happened is for people in our generation, Bonnie, is that fewer people have picked up this field of study. And this is just anecdotal, but I think that I would attribute it to three reasons.
First, the obvious one. It's just really hard to do, right? Especially as the information environment in China has become more restrictive during Xi's tenure. And frankly, I
I could also see how if I were a young person thinking about what facet of China to study, I could see how Chinese politics might look kind of boring, right, to somebody deciding what to study. But from my own vantage, from my own perspective, I do think that moments like the Bo Xilai scandal a dozen years ago and even the ongoing corruption scandals that are continuing to roil parts of the party and the military demonstrate that there is –
quite a bit of drama going on in the system just beneath the surface if you play close attention, and maybe even if you squint a little. And for me, I've always thought the field could be as much fun as watching The Sopranos, which
There's a drama about a closed circle of individuals, many of whom have longstanding bonds to one another. They operate by their own code of honor and often unspoken set of rules. And that set of rules includes, rather than precludes, vicious power struggles and the violent dispatch of rivals or folks who get sideways with the boss. Doesn't sound too dismal from Chinese politics, not to be glib about it. Okay, so that's one. It's hard to do is the bottom line. Second,
I think that even when China was more open and more accessible during the Hu era, the study of elite politics was just not in vogue in the academy, right? The overwhelming focus was on politics from the bottom up rather than from the top down. And I do think that bottom up perspective is extremely valuable. There should be an intensive focus on that. And I think it's really more just a question of balance or perhaps lack thereof in the preceding years.
Third, again, this is my own view. I don't really think that even though I studied political science as a college student, I don't really think the tools of contemporary political science are really adequate or useful for understanding Chinese politics. You probably hope it's better than I do, Manu, since you actually kept going after we were we interns together and pursued a Ph.D.,
But my perspective has been that if you go into political science and you study, say, comparative politics, the most analogous field, you're going to end up doing an alarming amount of math. Right. And you're going to I think which I think ends up yielding insights that I think have very little utility, not just for understanding Chinese politics, but especially in a way that might be useful for a policymaker or for those of us inside the Beltway.
John, it seems like that you're recommending for those who want to study Chinese politics that they should watch The Sopranos. But aside from that, in all seriousness, how do you study leadership decision-making within China? What evidence and what sources of information do you look at? And particularly now, after you've left the intelligence community and you're utilizing open source information, what types of information is still available to you and to scholars and the public in general?
So first off, just as a beginning premise, I will describe the approach that I take to studying Chinese politics as more humanistic than social scientific. So again, even though I studied political science when I was in school, and I think there are a lot of interesting frames in the field, but again, when it comes to understanding foreign polities and how they operate on a day-to-day basis, I do feel like parts of the discipline has really shifted away from giving us the tools to understand those dynamics and
I sometimes feel that the field is starting to resemble Voltaire's famous clip about the Holy Roman Empire, that it was neither holy nor Roman or an empire. So, too, I think a lot of the political science literature on some of these issues, it's not really about politics. And some of it doesn't feel respectfully scientific in its approach, despite some of the mathematical gymnastics involved.
So from my perspective, I think it's much more useful to take a look at what we do know about China's foreign policy or its economy and embark on the more humanistic, empathetic endeavors. Thinking through how does this look from Xi Jinping's desk?
And this is very much the approach that Stephen Calkin has adopted in his really masterful biography, Joseph Stott. Now, the big difference between somebody like Calkin, somebody like me, and there are many, right? He's a brilliant scholar, is that I can't let the varied and expansive trolls of...
our title information about Xi the way that cock and cans were selling. A lot of times I started joking that studying Chinese politics is a small data exercise rather than a big data one. But again, in terms of evidence, now that I'm out of government, I will, of course, have to rely exclusively on open source evidence in my new role.
And that, of course, will mean close reading of speeches and utterances by Xi and other top leaders, which unfortunately is just a medicinal part of being a China analyst, as you know, right? It tastes bad, but it's good for you. You have to do it. But I will say when I was at CIA and I was mentoring our more senior officers, I would tell them, if you just read that stuff, if you just read the ethical utterances, you're going to find yourself intellectually now in the right place.
And again, this is my own view on this. I do think a big part of setting Chinese politics is not about the text. It's about the context. And I think that's part of what I bring to the field after many years of a patient study of Chinese politics. It's both an explicit analytic framework, which should always be subject to update and revision based on the evidence, as well as just kind of an intuition that I've developed over time for how the system works.
I do also think, too, when you're looking at evidence, there are some observables that can be illuminating. And I recognize that can sound a bit vague. So let me provide a quick recent example. So hit the rewind button to about a year ago. And there was a bit of a parlor game going on in the China watching community about whether and when the Chinese Communist Party would convene its long delayed third plenum.
But I think what was missing from that conversation was the broader context of just how much Xi Jinping had scrambled the political calendar in Beijing and disrupted the normal cadences of political life in China. And I was really struck at the end of last year that China did not convene, the PRC did not convene a third plenum, but saw fit to have central foreign affairs work conference. And this was significant to me because
Going all the way back to the famous Third Plenum of 1978, the party had held a Third Plenum every five years with almost metronomic regularity. And by contrast, central foreign affairs work conferences, at least prior to Xi's rule, had been apocryphal rather than regular events. There had only been a few of them before Xi took power, and now they've become a regular feature during his tenure. And to my mind, this scrambling political calendar really has two implications.
The first is that I think it's yet another an important indication of just how much power Xi has consolidated in his own hands, as well as demonstrating how much he's degraded the much wanted value rules and norms that had developed under Deng Xiaoping and his predecessors by totally disrupting the cadence of political life. Right. It makes everyone everyone already feels a lot of uncertainty in that system. And that only intensifies that feeling, I think.
Second, I also saw this handling of the calendar as a signal of chief priorities going into 2024, right? He seems to be much more concerned about farm developments, such as our own election and the election in Taiwan, and probably saw them as more pressing than the economic picture at home, which the third plenum would have addressed, right? And I think that's kind of the inverse of much of the conventional wisdom as we rounded the corner from 2023 into 2024. But again, I mean,
We have to see and interpret these signals from she's perspective, not ours. So to conclude, I do think here the context is more significant in the text, right? If you look at the meetings and how they landed on the calendar, I think that actually tells us something more interesting than the text of the documents from the plenum and the Foreign Affairs Work Conference, which were honestly fairly unremarkable documents and even soporific.
You really do have to piece everything together. And given the lack of information that you mentioned, also rely on years of practice to be able to understand where China is headed and how to piece the evidence together. And John, let me transition to asking you about your understanding of Xi Jinping. I know you supported a number of high-level U.S. engagements with Xi, and you've also been in the room with him. What is your assessment of Xi Jinping? Is there anything unique or different about him compared to his predecessors?
So I do think it's useful to take a big step back here and compare the modus operandi of the leadership under Xi with that of the seldom mentioned and forgettable predecessor Hu Jintao. I think that the Hu era was defined by a nominal focus on so-called collective leadership and
Which, instead of fostering deliberative, collective decision-making, in fact, allowed top officials to engage in the kind of political empire building that erupted into public view in 2012 with the Bo Xilai scandal. And I think it's fair to say that at the top, the PRC's decision-making was characterized by drift, malaise, and lowest common denominator decisions.
And if we look at the evolution of policymaking during Xi's own tenure, I think the 20th Party Congress in 2022 was really a key moment for him. And again, I think that as he has at many important moments in his rule,
He had an opening at that party congress to refate the political landscape at the top of the CCP, and he used a crowbar to pry every advantage he could from that moment. He really cleaned house at the top in a way that, honestly, watching it at the time, it seemed like it was almost gratuitous, especially when one considers that she had long ago relegated members of the so-called Communist Youth League factions, such as former Premier Lee Koo Cheong, to irrelevance.
He got rid of these guys when he could have just as easily ignored them, which he seems to have done for a good chunk of his tenure already. And again, I think that this demonstrates something about Xi's leadership style. And I think one of the defining elements of Xi's political leadership is that he is willing to take risks. He's willing to push things to the hill, but he isn't reckless in the way that, say, Putin seems to be.
And I think that she is especially willing to take risks when it comes to the so-called Game of Thrones invasion, right? And I think he seems to have an almost innate instinct about when and how far he can press his advantage. And the way I've come to think about it over time after watching him go through these machinations is that
he's almost like a professional electrician who understands the melange of wires that's just behind the wall, right? He knows which wires he can safely cut and which ones are going to electrocute him and that should better
better be left alone right and that that's a real difference from a member of the laity like me or even you know some other figures like a hujan tao right who might have cut the wrong wire and gotten themselves electrocuted or into really serious trouble right so that's just the observation about she and how he operates but i think there's a deeper question at play not because is he different from his predecessors but why is he so different from his predecessors
And I think a big part of that is twofold. First, Xi, unlike his two immediate predecessors, took over the family business in some ways by going to Chinese politics. And I think that is an important difference for Hu and even Jiang Zemin. And I think it's important that Xi was not just princeling.
But I do think when and how he experienced the Thomas of the Cultural Revolution made not just him, but his generational peers, people like Bo Xilai, much harder men who are far more willing to take risks than Putin's talent as his cohort.
So I think for Xi, it's worth remembering a couple of well-known data points about his early life. The first is that his father was toppled several years before the Cultural Revolution even got underway. He went down in 1962. And Xi at that time, he was just been a little boy. He was nine years old.
And in the ensuing years, we know that his mother turned him into one of the authorities. He had a half-sister who committed suicide because of the persecutions he faced. And then you fast forward to 1978, right? And Xi's father is back in the game of Chinese politics. He's running Guangdong province in the early years of reform and opening up and then goes on to play a major role in elite politics throughout the 1980s.
And this is just a little bit of my own armchair psychoanalysis here, but I think there's really two salient points from this. The first is that I think she and their peers, having watched their fathers risen, fall, and then risen again...
just saw the high stakes and harsh punishments as just part of the normal vicissitudes of Chinese politics, right? I think these guys really feel like you either play with brass knuckles or you don't play at all, right? And I joke sometimes to colleagues that, you know, who knows, maybe even Bo Xilai is in prison somewhere twirling the mustache he may have grown and anticipating
and calculating about his comeback to power, because he'd be very mindful of the fact that his own father went from being disgraced to becoming one of the so-called eight immortals of the Chinese politics after the Cultural Revolution. So that's one. They've seen people rise and fall and rise again. Number two,
I do think there's a really significant difference in terms of when she experienced the traumas of this cultural revolution. And think about it this way again, right? And this is part of that humanistic endeavor of trying to put yourself in his position. If I'm she, you know, and before the age of, what, 25, let's say, I've already been separated from my father, turned in by my mother, seen a sibling commit suicide during my tender youth. I feel like a guy like this has got to think,
I'm at the Politburo, and I've been to rock bottom before in my life. Like, what else could these guys do to me, right? If I play this game and I lose, what are they going to inflict on me that I haven't already experienced and that I already experienced as a little boy? And I came through that experience and not only lifted the towel about it, but climbed all the way to the top of the Chinese political system, right? So that's kind of...
My take on she and his mindset. Right. And I think that's such a crucial generational difference between she and his predecessor, who's in town again. So I think about who's in town's experience and the data points we have about his life.
he would have experienced the Cultural Revolution at a much different point in time, right? This is a guy who was from the boonies. He had toiled his way into China's harbors, cured his good job, done all the right things, and then watched it all just get flushed away by the Cultural Revolution. And I think that experience, right, and the timing and the point in his life of what he experienced that, I think it made him preternaturally cautious and even skittish kind of political figure that he came to be when he was at the top of the system.
So I think it's very, very different from the kind of hard man that she became. And I think the key thing to always remember about she is that he's not just hard, he's formidable and he is not to be underestimated. And how do these experiences change or impact his decision making?
So does it change the motivations or shape the motivations that drive his decision making? Does it change the decision making process? For example, is he more or less willing to delegate on certain issues? So I think that she is motivated first and foremost. But what I think is a genuine loyalty to the party. And psychologically, I find it a bit hard to fathom, given what I just laid out about how much the party brutalized not just him, but his family when he was still very young.
I mean, in some ways, it's almost like Job from the Old Testament proving his unwavering fealty. But regardless of his origins, I think that his stern paternalistic approach to running the party is a primary motivator for him.
And I think what's more important for policymakers and for many of our listeners is that his confidence in the party is genuine. And he's not just confident in the party's ability to drag China into modernity and into prosperity, but to make it into a superpower. And again, I think you really have to think about his background and when he came up through the political system. And I think in particular, it's worth bearing in mind that this is a guy whose entire political career has coincided with China's own rise since 1978.
As an example, in Xiamen, in Fujian, in Zhejiang, he served in all these places that would have been at the forefront of China's development. I think that does give him confidence that the CCP is doing something right and that China is doing something right and is on a good trajectory.
Now, on your question about decision making, I thought it was very clear that early in his tenure, he wanted to send a clear signal to the system that he was everything, everywhere, all at once by establishing and taking over a number of party commissions, leading groups, including several that should have arguably been run by some of his peers on the standing committee.
But now that she's in his third term, my suspicion is that he's probably more comfortable delegating more, both because he cleaned house so much at the last party Congress and installed his own acolytes in a lot of the top position. But also just because this guy's now in his 70s and has been doing this impossibly large job of running China for a dozen years already.
So I'll just give a couple of quick examples to illustrate some of my thinking on this. So again, hit the rewind button to about a year ago, and many observers were wondering why Formula VT-1 attended the G20 in Luvzhi, who had traditionally attended that event at least before COVID.
But I think part of the reason, if not all of it, as to why she had Lee go instead of himself is that I think she was just comfortable with delegating this high-profile opportunity to Lee, who, again, unlike his predecessor, is one of few to accolade him.
Similarly, on the foreign policy front, I'm very struck that Wang Yi is the first French foreign policy official since Tianzhi Chen to hold all the top foreign policy positions in his hands at the same time. Now, there was some speculation after the former foreign minister, Chen Gong, was toppled about a year ago that
Wang would hand off the foreign minister portfolio to somebody else. But my suspicion of Wang has been that Wang will hold on to both for some time. And the fact that he has held on to it for so long, I interpret that as a sign that Xi trusts Wang and is leaning on him quite a bit on foreign policy issues. So what you're suggesting, John, is that as we go into Xi's third term term,
We could have improved decision making within China because Xi is delegating more to those he trusts instead of making all the decisions himself. Is that a possibility? It's a possibility, right?
I think the discussions about China's handling of the economy in particular are really interesting, right? Especially when you consider last month's Politburo meeting, right? I think what that shows is that I think there probably is some ossification inside the system in terms of
bad news and information getting to Xi Jinping, but the feedback loops aren't necessarily broken. I think it's worth, again, thinking about how this looks from Xi Jinping's desk or from his perspective, right? Now, when he's in a Politburo Standing Committee meeting and he looks around the room,
All he sees are a group of men with whom he's had relationships with for decades. And for them, in turn, these are guys who have a longstanding relationship with Xi Jinping. And I think they understand how to get information to him and how to deal with him and how to shape his view on certain issues in a way that, frankly, maybe their predecessors did not. And this is admittedly speculative on my part, but I think, again, it's a good thing.
In thinking this through and in thinking through how the decision-making gets made, you've got to put yourself in the other guy's chair and try to think about how does it look when they walk in that room together.
Thank you, John. You mentioned China's economic issues, and here I want to pivot the podcast to look at how Xi thinks about domestic and foreign policy issues. You know this very well, that China is a large and populous country with a range of internal issues and challenges. At the same time, China is very active globally and has a number of territorial disputes with its neighbors. From your study of Xi Jinping, how much time does he spend focused on domestic issues versus foreign policy issues?
So I do think this is one area where the open source reporting is probably helpful, even though, of course, we don't have a daily calendar of she's whereabouts like we do for the U.S. president.
And I think it's very clear if you look at that, that she, like most leaders, even of great powers, is spending most of his time on domestic politics. And within that, I suspect that he is spending quite a bit of time on party matters rather than, say, economic decision making, especially now that guys like Li Qiang and He Lifeng sit atop the relevant state and economic decision making bodies. So I'll admit that's speculative on my side. Now, when she is thinking about foreign policy, I think that he is very much a great powers first kind of thinker.
And I think the United States in particular looms large as China's first, second and even third foreign policy priority, especially since we're in an election year this year. And I think the reasons for that are pretty straightforward. That's because we're still a superpower with the capacity to undermine many of Xi's ambitions, but also because.
Through our partnerships and alliances, we are still bound up with many of the problems that Xi faces in his own neighborhood, such as South China Sea, Taiwan, the Flemish Peninsula, you name it.
She has also made a huge investment in the relationship with Russia and his own relationship with Putin. And I think one point that's worth emphasizing is that this goes back to well before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And I think what's happened in the last few years is that the fallout from the war has only accelerated and intensified that already existing entente between the two.
I think for other global issues, I actually think that Xi gives relatively thought to the other big global foreign policy issues like the conflagration in the Middle East, except insofar as it pertains to China's own narrow material interest, or if he sees some kind of opportunity to take pots out at the U.S. and undermine our role in the region.
And I think it's a little bit different from some people's point of view who see China as a ubiquitous presence around the world. But I think it's really worth keeping front of mind just how narrow and parochial China's view of its own interests can be, especially when it comes to these kind of front page news stories and global hotspots. Given Xi's primary focus on domestic issues, what are some of the most pressing domestic challenges that he spends most of his time on?
You mentioned party issues earlier. What's an example of a party issue that Xi spends a lot of time on? Yeah, I think in terms of party issues, I think Xi, since the start of his tenure, has been mostly focused on rectifying many of the problems, the lack of discipline that he sees in the party. And he's been very explicit about this throughout his tenure in office. And taking a big step back, I've had this theory for
a little while about the source of some of the problems that Xi Jinping has faced throughout his tenure, right? And I increasingly think over time, the part of what Xi is dealing with in terms of the corruption in the party and what he sees as the lax discipline is kind of a spillover effect from Jiang Zemin's three represents, which for the uninitiated or those who may have slept through that part of the movie, which Jiang Zemin's move to co-opt the rising bourgeoisie in China and bring them
into the party. And while I think one could very well argue that that policy succeeded in many ways, right, by co-opting this rising elite, I also think it created a direct marriage of wealth and power inside the party that I think caused some of this corruption. But also, there was always corruption there, right? But I think it really exacerbated the issue to the scale that we saw during the Hu Jintao administration. And I think this is something that she was aware of, but
bid his time on addressing it until he got to the top. And I think that as he was an official coming up through the party ranks in Fujian, in Xiamen, in Zhejiang, places that had major blowups of corruption scandals, right, like the Yuan Hua scandal, I think he was genuinely disgusted by a lot of what he saw, right, and saw this as deeply problematic and really troubling for the party and for its health and legitimacy over the longer term. We see a lot of reporting on China's economic problems, right?
Do you think Xi Jinping spends a lot of his time on the economy? In terms of domestic challenges, I think I've been a little bit out of step with some of the conventional wisdom on this. And honestly, until...
The September Politburo meeting, I actually didn't think that she was all that concerned about the economy. And that was primarily because we didn't see she resorting to the kind of measures that would indicate that there was real consternation on his part, such as a flood of stimulus measures. Right. We are, of course, seeing some kind of fifth to the leeward.
We'll get more details on that by the time of the NPC standing committee meeting, which may or may not happen by the time this runs. But I think the course was pretty much set at the third plenum this summer. My suspicion is that, you know, they might shift a little to the leeward or the windward, but they're basically going to stay on that trajectory. Now, this is part of one of the perils of doing analysis of Chinese politics. Watch by the time this runs, they'll have done something completely different and they'll be proven totally wrong. And that'll be duly humbling.
But bracketing that, I think, again, I think what she really sees as his key task is really rectifying a lot of the dysfunction that he sees within the party. And I think that's evinced by the continuing round of purges throughout the system.
Right. And taking a big step back here, I just want to lay out that I have my own theory on this about the nature of the problems that she faced. Right. I think that a part of what she was dealing with when he became general secretary was really in some ways the byproduct of Johnson's three representants.
And for the uninitiated or for those who just forgotten or got bored at that at that point in the movie, Towns 3 represents what's his signature move to co-opt the rising bourgeoisie in China into the Chinese Communist Party. Right. Bring the capitalists into the party, which is painfully ironic for a communist party.
And I think, well, one could argue that that policy succeeded in many ways in consolidating the party's grip on power and did effectively allow them to co-opt that growing constituency. But I think that...
Part of what happened in the decade thereafter during Su Jintao's term is that we saw a direct marriage of wealth and power that I think really exacerbated and accelerated a lot of the corruption that already existed in China. And I think that part of the story of Xi's rise through the ranks, especially in those places that were that spearheaded reform and opening up, I think he saw a lot of the corruption that was festering in those places. And I think he was genuinely disgusted by it.
And I think he's been trying to clean house ever since he got to the top job. Thanks, John. I think hopefully not much time is going to lapse between when we release this podcast and when we're recording it now. So hopefully you can't be too wrong. But pulling in threads between China's domestic policy and its foreign policy. There's quite a bit of discussion in D.C. on whether China's domestic policy drives its foreign policy.
And do internal challenges within China make Chinese foreign policy more constrained or more aggressive? What evidence have you seen watching Xi Jinping that speaks to linkages between China's domestic and foreign policy? And how does he interpret the policies? Are they linked from his view or does he view one as more important than the other? So.
I actually think the nexus between China's politics and its foreign policy was much stronger in the wake of global financial crisis when Xi was heir apparent and then when he was the new general secretary.
And then again, I go into the time machine and go back to that moment. I think at that time, many in China were wondering whether China, which had actually fared the crisis relatively well, at least compared to the other great powers, should continue abiding by former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's dictum that China should hide its capabilities and bide its time in its foreign policy. And again, it's worth remembering that China's top foreign policy official at the time tried to put a lid on this debate with a public essay reaffirming the policy.
But I think that for Xi, again, who became heir apparent at that time, I think he recognized and saw that all the energy in the party was pointing away from hide and find. And I think once he took power, I think
Instead of tamping down on that energy, he harnessed it, right? He harnessed this energy that was percolating under Hu for a more assertive, more proactive, and I know this is subject to some controversy, so pick your adjective, foreign policy, right? But I think the key thing is it was different. And I think the difference is palpable, especially for those of us who were in government and Bonnie, you and I were working together at the time. And I think by doing so,
What that allowed Xi to do by harnessing that energy, it allowed Xi to establish his foreign policy a few days early on. And it covered his flanks, right, from those who are so-called hawks in the system. And you fast forward to today, and I actually think that there is very little connection between China's foreign policy and its internal politics, at least on a day-to-day basis.
And I think the key point here is that she's I think that she's political position at home is sufficiently understandable at this point in his tenure that he really doesn't have to outflank so-called talks anymore in the party apparatus, whether they be in the PLA or elsewhere in the system. And the implication of that is that I think he's got a lot of flexibility to pursue whatever foreign policy he thinks he needs to in order to protect China's interests, including
being more restrained or more circumspect over the longer term, say 10 to 20 years, how much of China's domestic politics shape PRC foreign policy and U.S.-China relations? That's super interesting that you think the linkages between China's domestic and foreign policy can change over time.
So if you were to look out longer term, say 10 to 20 years from now, how much could China's domestic politics shape its foreign policy and U.S.-China relations? And what do you think about the peak China argument? That's a good question. I think it's a much different question.
question, because over this timeframe, that's where we're going to start to see the ramifications and the results of the choices and big bets Xi and the leadership have made, especially on technology to fuel economic growth in order to help China surmount many of its structural economic problems at home. And that, in turn, will determine the extent to which China has the capacity to challenge U.S. interests, right?
But I think, though, that even if she is quote-unquote wrong about his bet, I think it's going to be a question more of degree than a binary, he was right, he was wrong. And
I think that at the end of that process, China's still going to have a lot of capacity and the will to be a formidable contender to the United States in years to come. I think looking at this question over that timeframe also raises the question of what, or rather who, comes after Xi and the question of whether China might somehow shift to a more conciliatory foreign policy if there's a different leader in place.
It's possible, right? Anything's possible. But I frankly have a hard time seeing it barring some kind of unforeseen catastrophe or a really serious economic slump, not just not just a slowdown or deceleration, but a real serious, no kidding recession.
Otherwise, I think that the lived experience and the world view of both the current generation, Xi's peers who are still around, and of the rising generation, I think it makes it very unlikely that China will mark the change course under Xi's prospective successor.
So I think then what we're looking at is a baseline scenario in which China will likely still have both the capacity and the will to be a formidable rival to the United States. In fact, I even think at this point that it's a mistake to keep talking about a rise in China. I think it's very clear already at this point that China's
pretty clearly arrived as a great power. And we should adjust our rhetoric, at least in the public discourse, to reflect that reality. It's here. Its presence is going to be a defining feature of the geopolitical landscape for some time to come. And again, they may shift a little bit in one direction or the other, but I think that course has pretty much been set for the coming years.
Thanks, John. I'd like to wrap up this podcast by asking you about how China views domestic politics within the United States. So to what extent have you seen in the past couple of months or this year, China carefully calibrating its actions in anticipation of our upcoming elections? And what actions have you seen China do or avoid? And if I could tack on two more questions, what does China expect from a Harris presidency? And what does China expect from a Trump presidency?
So I do think that there's an irony to the discussion in recent years about whether China is peaking because
I think what's going on inside China is that they're having the same exact discussion about us, right? And it does seem like there is a school of thought inside of that the United States is the one that has already peaked in that. As we go down the downslope, that the US is going to be the one that's prone to laugh out in unpredictable and perhaps even violent ways, especially as we approach some kind of possible crossover point where the PRC might, according to some metric, overtake the United States in the coming decades.
And I think there's something about that view in Beijing that really does comport with the traditional Leninist view of the struggle with capitalism, namely that the conflicts will intensify as, in this case, the nominal Marxists prevail over the capitalist order. And so I think as we look into the next few years, I think they fully expect this more overt competition to continue regardless of who wins.
I think the question in their mind is really, what are the concepts of competition going to be and what are going to be the primary sources of contradiction or conflicts between the United States and China? Which area is going to be the most intense? I mean, clearly, if there is a second Trump administration, I'm stating the obvious here, trade and tariffs will again be at the forefront of a bilateral relationship. Whereas under the Harris administration, the focus of U.S. competitive policies might look different and have different areas of emphasis.
I think what's happened in the meantime is that China has made a number of conciliatory efforts, or a dejectory towards Washington over the past year or so. So if we start encountering narcotics cooperation and military-to-military engagements, primarily to protect its own parochial interests as it looked toward a challenging political calendar in 2024, that included not just our own election, but Taiwan's election in January as well.
And from my view, I think that this cooperation should be seen as part of China's efforts to compete with the United States, right? This is a mark of fundamental shift in the dynamic. They've undertaken these actions, in my view, largely to mollify us during an election year. And again, I think from Beijing's perspective, these engagements, these areas of cooperation, I think they don't see them as doing much to enhance Beijing's own interests. And what that means is
They don't really feel like they have a lot to lose by turning off these areas of engagement and cooperation again in the future. And I suspect there will be a half-life to this, right? At some point in the next six to nine months, they're going to find it convenient again to turn these areas of cooperation and communication off just to register their ire with Washington again.
So again, to my mind, the key analytic question is, how long is this tactical fog going to last? My preliminary assessment is that Beijing will want to avoid actions that directly antagonize Beijing until after our transition is complete and it feels like it's got a better handle on the new cast of characters in a new administration, even as they continue to do things that contravene our broader global interests, right? Like support Russia's war against Ukraine or pressuring our allies and partners in the region.
But I think, again, what's key in the meantime is that they really want to avoid actions that directly antagonize the incoming administration and escalate tensions and thereby lock a new administration into a more confrontational policy that would multiply these problems in the coming four years. And one final question. Do you expect Xi Jinping to reach out to the next U.S. president to continue direct talks at the highest level?
Absolutely. I think especially given the outsized role that we have in China's foreign policy, and I think especially at the outset of administration, Xi will want to have his own first-hand impression of a new president, regardless of who wins. But I think it might be especially true if President Paris wins, since he just hasn't
spend as much time with her. But I do think regardless of who wins the election, my own view is that the new team should wait till the new president has engaged with our allies and partners first before engaging with Xi. I do think there's sometimes a reflective
impulse in the policy community to engage with the PRC early on, given their size and their role in the world. But I think tactically, we should just put our allies first and let Xi and his team approach us first, right? I think that really does more to maximize our leverage. And I think with the goal of extending this window where it's kind of looking to mollify us, right, because they're uncertain about what course a new administration is going to go.
Thank you so much, John, for joining me today for, I believe, your first podcast, right? It's really wonderful that you can share your views now publicly. And I would recommend John as an excellent expert and resource for those who want to understand elite dynamics and decision making within China. Well, Bonnie, thanks so much for having me on. It's really been a pleasure to do this. And it's so great to reconnect with this venue after all our years of knowing each other are working together. So thanks so much.