In this episode, Anita interviews renowned China expert Dr. Shaun Breslin of Warwick University. We discuss the worrisome aspects of Xi’s consolidation of power. We also consider whether some of the rhetoric that perceives all Chinese activities as being a national security threat has gone too far.
We begin the episode by assessing the surprising midterm results and what they suggest for the future of U.S. foreign policy. Then we move on to the first in-person meeting between Biden and Xi as national heads of state. Can they find areas to cooperate on? Finally, in a significant blow for Russia, Russia ordered a retreat from the city of Kherson, the strategically important provincial capital of Ukraine. We discuss the significance of this event and the possibility of a negotiated end to the conflict.
Shaun Breslin is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. He is also co-editor of The Pacific Review. Having first studied in China in 1984, he has spent the subsequent years studying China’s changing domestic political economy and China’s place in the world (and how each impacts the other). He also has a side interest in comparative studies of regional integration processes. His latest book, China Risen? Studying Chinese Global Power, was published by Bristol University Press in 2021.
Topics Discussed in this Episode
Articles and Resources Mentioned in Episode
Impact of U.S. Midterm Elections
Biden-Xi Meeting at G20
Russia-Ukraine Update
Interview with Dr. Shaun Breslin
Follow Us
In this episode, Anita interviews renowned China expert Dr. Shaun Breslin of Warwick University. We discuss the worrisome aspects of Xi’s consolidation of power. We also consider whether some of the rhetoric that perceives all Chinese activities as being a national security threat has gone too far.
We begin the episode by assessing the surprising midterm results and what they suggest for the future of U.S. foreign policy. Then we move on to the first in-person meeting between Biden and Xi as national heads of state. Can they find areas to cooperate on? Finally, in a significant blow for Russia, Russia ordered a retreat from the city of Kherson, the strategically important provincial capital of Ukraine. We discuss the significance of this event and the possibility of a negotiated end to the conflict.
Shaun Breslin is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. He is also co-editor of The Pacific Review. Having first studied in China in 1984, he has spent the subsequent years studying China’s changing domestic political economy and China’s place in the world (and how each impacts the other). He also has a side interest in comparative studies of regional integration processes. His latest book, China Risen? Studying Chinese Global Power, was published by Bristol University Press in 2021.
Topics Discussed in this Episode
Articles and Resources Mentioned in Episode
Impact of U.S. Midterm Elections
Biden-Xi Meeting at G20
Russia-Ukraine Update
Interview with Dr. Shaun Breslin
Follow Us
Welcome to Kellogg's Global Politics, a podcast on current events in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. My name is Dr. Anita Kellogg, an international relations scholar specializing in the relationship between economics and national security. I'm here with my co-host, Ryan Kellogg, an expert in energy investment and policy. Thanks, and glad to be here. This is Episode 22, and we're recording this on November 13, 2022. On this episode, I interview Dr. Shaun Breslin of Warwick University and one of the top China experts in the U.K. We discuss the worrisome aspects of Xi's consolidation of power, but also consider whether some of the rhetoric and actions on perceiving all Chinese activities as a national security threat have gone too far. First, however, we look at the midterm results as we have them today and what they suggest for the future of U.S. foreign policy. Then we move on to the first in-person meeting between Biden and Xi, a Biden's presidency. Can they find areas to cooperate on? Finally, in a significant blow for Russia, Russia ordered a retreat from the city of Kherson, the provincial capital. This marks one of the most significant victories of Ukraine's efforts to appeal Russian forces since the February invasion. So you and Becca talked to me into decorating for Christmas yesterday. Well, yeah, I don't think we really discussed it with you. We just kind of sprung it up where the Christmas tree was already set up in our living room here. But yeah, it was a good weekend. There was my work schedule. So it was this window. We don't want to wait too late because it feels a bit like a waste, especially if you end up traveling during the holidays, if you set it up post Thanksgiving and just have three or four weeks just because there's a amount of effort. We don't live in a big place, live in a condo, but still I have to go down 12 floors and drag up all the Christmas stuff. We're trying to move up to an elevator. Yeah, still. You see two off floors. I think that is the room. Yeah, I know. It's nothing compared to living in the suburbs and decorating a five bedroom house and the outside and all that. That's a three day undertaking. So this is less than half a day. This is my sister does. She has to take a whole weekend. Oh, I know. That's what I'm talking about. We take like two hours. My parents are at least a full day. And they're doing it basically for themselves. So it's an effort is what I'm saying. You're complaining. I'm just saying, let's maximize it. And besides, there's a family tradition for you, right? Well, my mom did decorate very early. Yeah. So I'm just on that tradition. This would be the earliest range though. You made it sound like it was right after Halloween. So the second, like November 1st, you guys are setting up and it was there solid two months. No, I said that we listened to Christmas music on November 1st. Well, she would have decorated probably. Like two weeks before Thanksgiving though, it would have been. Oh, okay. That one. So we are aligned with that tradition. Yeah. It just feels early, I guess, because Thanksgiving is early this year, the way it fell. Yeah. It's early. And we didn't, we didn't have the weather to match until today because it was in the 70s here for, for several days. I was feeling pretty balmy, short sleeve shirts, but now big cold front has moved through. So there's snow in the mountains. So now, yeah, it's feeling a little bit more, more wintery, more Christmasy. I don't know what it is. I've had trouble getting into Christmas this year. It's just everything has felt early. November 1st, you went into Starbucks and made a tree and Christmas music and I've just mentally been not ready for Christmas yet. Yeah. Well, this will help get you in the mood. But now I walked out and I see the Christmas tree. So all right. So going on to the midterms. As we are taping, we still do not know the fate of the house, but we figured we know enough to be able to talk a little bit about will foreign policy change on the basis of the midterm results or we'd likely to seem more of the same? Yeah. So starting off, in in case there are any non-American listeners, just a little background on the midterm. So the midterms take place in the U.S. every four years. It's halfway through the president's term. And typically two years before the next presidential election. And in most cases, the stakes are one third of the Senate seats because those are six-year terms, higher house of representatives, and then the governorships and a lot of state and local offices. So what we know being almost a week out from election day, which was last Tuesday, is that as of Saturday night, as of yesterday, Democrats will have control of the Senate. So they'll maintain control and potentially expand on their very thin one-seat lead that they had for the last two years, depending on the runoffs in Georgia, which will be early December. And it seems like, although there's still a lot of vote counting going on, the Republicans will likely have a very thin margin of two to six seats, maybe. I've seen the projections I was looking at last night were like one to two seats. Yeah. And they're extraordinarily thin. I don't remember a Congress that closely divided before. So we'll see how that falls out. But I think that the big thing that's emerged that all the US media is focused on is the defeat that this represents of Trumpism. So it seems like most of the candidates that he's specifically endorsed within the governor's side, House races and the Senate have lost. Including some very safe seats for them. Yeah. There's been some very safe seats. I think there was a district in Washington that 538, which is a projector of election modeling that had the Republican having a two and 100 chance of, so just a 2% chance of winning the election and they ended up being defeated by their Democrat opponents. So you've had some major, major upsets. But from a foreign policy perspective, I think there's a couple of things that stand out. One, ironically, this may give the caucus within the House more outsized power just because if the Republicans do end up retaining the House that in order to have any sort of discipline around voting, they may have to appeal to the freedom caucus, which is the very far right Trumpist part of the party that were promised quite a bit in the lead up to the election. Unfortunately, it looks like all the core members, the core leadership, if you're doing quotes for leaders of Marjorie Taylor Greene, so the firebrand from Georgia, Laura Boubert from Colorado, unfortunately looks like she'll pull it off. And then Matt Gaetz, who frankly should be locked up, had overwhelming victory in Florida. So you have the core loudest, most obnoxious members of the freedom caucus who were promised certain things by Kevin McCarthy, the presumed speaker of the House, if he can manage to get this freedom caucus on board and they end up having the majority. So I think that they may have more of a voice. But the overall consensus is that there shouldn't be a lot of major changes within foreign policy. I just wanted to say one thing because this applies globally too. I mean, it was important that there were several states where the Republicans were running election deniers, people who were saying that Trump really won the election and we're going to make sure that Republicans essentially never lose an election in the state. And that included like Arizona and states like that. And they all lost every single one of them. So I mean, it was still a good night, also a good result for democracy in this sense just before we go. And that's important. I mean, I think it's not like a victory for democracy like, oh, there are no more problems, but it was a good victory in that there'll be less questions around the next election. Yeah, no, I think there is definitely a wave of relief with our allies seeing the results of the election. It probably took the steam out of you had a definitely the past couple of months with the gains that the far right have made in Italy and in Sweden. It takes some of the momentum out of those movements as well. So I think it overall, I mean, it's the significant victory for democracy, like you said, in terms of like people thinking about foreign policy and the voting booth, Americans never do that almost in any case, only if we're actively at war, does maybe it become a factor? We saw that obviously with Bush and the war on terrorism with the 2004 elections, but otherwise One terrorism meaning war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Exactly. Yeah. All kind of under the umbrella of the war on on terrorism. Yeah, that's a big term though. It was intentionally. Yes. But yeah, when it because US troops aren't actively engaged, the American public tends to be disengaged. And instead, you know, it ended up not being exclusively about the economy either. That was the focus primarily for Republican voters and certainly issue a concern for Democrats, but instead domestic issues like abortion about the threat to democracy ended up being the key strategy or key topic that brought people to the polls. It's pretty shocking because if you study elections in the United States, the economy pretty much always tops out. And so with the economic struggles, the same American people, you would people expected that to be the only thing people would vote on and were surprised to see that these other policy issues again, kind of in countries that have increased restrictions on abortion have been more going to the right. It's not exclusively the far right, but it is more authoritarian leading countries that have imposed new restrictions on on abortion. And so that kind of fits into the US restrictions in certain areas, sort of being on the extreme part of the party, the Republican Party that does have more authoritarian leanings and far right leanings. So again, I mean, you saw a lot of people try to repudiate a lot of the more far right aspects of Republican policy and that people cared about the threat that people care about January 6. And that this factored into the election so much is really surprising. It just doesn't happen. I mean, I'm not an Americanist, but certainly through my political science training had to go learn a lot about American elections. And this is a really, really, really unexpected result. And again, I think good for democracy, good that the more far right agendas have been kind of repudiated. But like you said, it doesn't mean they won't have a loud voice and a loud influence, but where they could have increased their footholds, they were unable to do that. Yeah, so I think an important result and we'll see what the implications of that. You know, there's a lot of chatter on this result in a civil war among Republicans where this will be the finally the wake up call because January 6 wasn't enough of a wake up call that will break the spell cast on by Trump and populism. But then you get the Santos to just a different version of Trump. I mean, it's not like you go back to. Yeah, it's true. Although on the on the foreign policy side, I think the Santas will be more aligned with establishment Republicans rather than the isolation less pro-Russia element that exists within Trumpism. That's always existed within the isolationist. Yeah. Pat Buchanan sort of element of the Republican party. It's just been louder under Trump. Right. And in almost empowered. You saw it on the trade side. You didn't see it as much of Steve Bannon. I mean, that's his whole project is this. And he's been a feeder of the far right and Europe as well. So, so yeah, it's unknown. I think everybody fully expects Trump will announce his candidacy for 2024 on Tuesday and we'll see kind of what follows out of that. But going back in terms of the assumption that if the Republicans have a narrow majority in the house, the most important thing about that is they will have control of the committees. So with this divided Congress, most of the articles that have come out around foreign policy all focus on the one area that both parties will agree on. And that's around China. So, you know, for example, the U.S. could introduce a screen process for outbound investment and really focus on kind of setting these new ground rules for Chinese investment in the U.S. were both. So in a F.P. article with Emma Ashford and Matthew Koenig, they talked about, you know, some of the likely new chairmen's coming out of the Republican caucus. So Mike McCall, who is likely chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is looking at strengthening the export controls to prevent Chinese IP theft. And the New York Times ends up reporting that, you know, some of these restrictions, for instance, could be applied to the Xinjiang region, which would impact companies like Tesla, which actually opened a dealership in the region, which I wasn't familiar with. But you just get an idea of kind of this growing front in terms of the economic war with China. That's fully likely to expand beyond what we've seen with semiconductors to other products, to these export restrictions to companies like Tesla, at least in certain regions of China. And then the other elements of it, so on the House Intelligence Committee, you have another Mike Turner, who will likely be the future chairman there. His focus is on depoliticizing intelligence, which felt like it got politicized under Trump. So take that with a grain of salt. But the reorientation, which we, I think, received throughout all of Washington towards a great power competition with China. So those are the elements on the House side. So I do want to say, in the next episode, we will be talking to Sarah Danzman, and she's pretty much the expert on outward Chinese investment controls and expert controls. So we'll be able to talk about those in more detail. You'll get a first-hand account of kind of maybe what's in the pipeline. Yeah. And I agree one thing everybody is united about is you can't get tough enough on China, which some of it is warranted. But later on in the episode, when you hear my interview with Sean Breslin, talk about are we going too far in looking at all Chinese activities as a national security threat? So I worry, I've expressed my reservations on many occasions. I worry a little bit about, OK, let's get even tougher on China, because then you're just weakening any ability that we have to ever cooperate with China on any issues. And we'll talk about that later too. Yeah. Yeah. So I think along those lines, the other policy that may get brought up again is the revival of the Taiwan Policy Act, which is seeking to upgrade bilateral ties between Taiwan and the United States and offer greater military assistance upwards of $10 billion a year, which the way that they framed it, and if this was first brought up in the Taiwan Policy Act, but I think this part of it actually got moved to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2023, which I'm not sure if that's past Congress already. But that was talking about mounts up to $10 billion over a seven-year period would involve joint military training and increase the US-Taiwan interoperability in terms of equipment. And then if Republicans, again, do come to power, Kevin McCarthy has expressed interest, similar to what we saw at Pelosi, of having a visit to Taiwan, which of course we talked about how China reacted to that, the military drills. So I think we could expect another flashpoint of McCarthy and subfoiling with that. Just like why? I mean, we're like forcing China's hand to do something about Taiwan by making these provocative acts, then China pretty much has to respond. And there were provocative ways for their own coalitions, which they made a big point about Taiwan reunification. But I mean, from the China side, there hasn't been any more movement towards a military resolution. But with these kind of acts, China has to respond. And one thing also in that interview with Sean was that he mentioned, because he had been there during the 90s during that Taiwan crisis incident, he said, like, today things aren't going back to normal before you would have these provocations and things would get very tense and you'd have this move our military ships over there. But now it's sort of like it isn't going back to normal. Tensions decrease a little bit, but they don't decrease all the way. And so we're kind of, I mean, I think our actions are kind of winding the Chinese up. And we don't have a good reason. It's a very poor way to go about it, to go about strategy. Yeah. And it's, I mean, the White House tried to stop Pelosi because of those actions. The thing is, I mean, the way the US government has set up Congress, it has its own agency, its own power in regards to foreign policy. So it makes its own decisions. If you can't stop a member of your own party going, you're definitely not going to step Kevin McCartney. He's not going to be outdone by Pelosi. It's just really disappointing that these political leaders aren't looking at the big picture of it. They just rather make some big... Yeah, they're not going to suffer any domestic political ramification. If anything, they get points for being tough on China. But they're not thinking about the strategy. That's good for the country overall, it's good for the country of security. So what's good for Taiwan security? Taiwan doesn't want an invasion. And we're just, like I said, we're just winding the Chinese up. If you're trying to, of course, you have to respond to this. You can't just be like, it's okay that the US is making these big political stunts by going to Taiwan and stuff. And we don't want that. There's no reason for it to have to happen. Yeah, regardless. I think it's going to happen. So wrapping up the views on the midterms, I think the other, the House committees will also be investigating under Biden's business dealings in the Ukraine and China, as well as the fallout from the Afghanistan withdrawal. I don't think there's any greater implications. I think this will be very similar to Benghazi, where they'll use this to drag in people to testify in front of Congress, but in terms of actual implications towards Biden himself or people within the administration, I think will be, will be pretty minimal. You know, one thing that you didn't bring up as part of this is the funding to the Ukraine and negotiations. Yeah. Maybe do that a little bit later on, but I get the consensus is probably things won't change, but there definitely will be a discussion about it. There'll be discussion if we're just writing a blank check to Ukraine. Yeah. I don't think there'll be the, I think the military equipment will continue. I mean, everything that I've read on the interpretation, but some of the financing and the so-called blank check, I think there'll be more discussion and debate around. I don't think this will affect Ukraine's ability to conduct operations in May 4, Europe, to fill in the gaps, because again, it's not clear in terms of what we've provided them, what the split is between military equipment, direct military aid versus financial aid, and if that's substantial or not, or if that you would struggle then in filling, I guess, the financial part of it. But it seemed to be given the sickness of the margins, given that this isn't a major driving issue, given that the majority of Republicans are in support of providing aid to Ukraine, that in terms of Ukraine's ability to implement its strategy on the ground, it doesn't seem like it's going to be. I think it's worth mentioning. I mean, that freedom caucus that you were talking about, they're the ones who would like to... It could cause issues. Yeah. It's really unclear how that power dynamic... I mean, there's still a chance that the Democrats may win the House too. So we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, but... Well, we can help it. We put it on the outline and it's not resolved yet. But I think that's important to note that that will be before it's just been like, okay, we're all unified and we're going to do this, but I think you're going to start hearing a lot more discussion about it, more debate about it. Yeah, especially if it drags on for another year, yeah, for sure. So now on to President Biden's meeting with... Upcoming meeting with President Xi. We don't know a lot about what it's actually going to happen during the meeting. It happens tomorrow, right? Yeah. So all we can really do is speculate. They're meeting at the G20 conference in Bali, Indonesia. You may have seen that Biden has been over in that area, first stopped in Egypt and then Cambodia for different conferences. So it's been kind of a time for Biden to meet, you know, in this post-COVID world, meet a lot of world leaders. But this is a very high profile meeting that you haven't had since Biden was president. They did meet on several occasions when Biden was vice president and Xi himself was vice president. So that was kind of interesting. And there's always been a lot of tension, apparently, between the two men. Particularly President Xi has been isolated since COVID and so it's his first time kind of really out. He's met with leaders in China, but I don't think he's met with leaders outside of China before this. Yeah. I think he's taken one trip. It may have been to Central Asia, which was, maybe don't quote me on that, but it was fairly provocative to Russia because it was seen as, because obviously they've been having problems with the exoliat republics. There's always been concerned about some elements of the Belt and Road investments there and kind of infringing on traditional Russian power. So it's a little bit of a provocative, but obviously Russia is kind of weakening in a number of those provinces. So I think he's maybe made one trip outside, but this is like his first major kind of international conference since COVID. So one of the disappointing things that's happened ever since that Taiwan visit that the US and China have completely stopped talking about climate change cooperation because they had an ongoing dialogue about that. And I remember Biden emphasizing in previous talks that he had with Xi over the phone that they were really trying to focus on these areas where they do need cooperation. And when the problems with all the climate change, which actually I think that was the conference in Egypt, something to that effect, is that it's almost impossible to do if you don't have cooperation between China and the United States. Yeah, we've created this really hostile environment. And as such, like I said, since Taiwan, China refuses to talk about it with the United States. So it'll be important to see if they can find some way to move forward on that in this sort of environment. Yeah, that's definitely, I mean, the White House in terms of their goals is, and they're quoting multiple places, but finding a floor in the relationship. So what are the bottom line things that they can actually cooperate on? And I think the three focus areas have been climate change, like you mentioned, food security, and then illicit drugs, which I assume refers to the import of fentanyl, which has been enormously destructive to the US population. But that being said, China has basically signaled that they're not open to any discussions around this until the US agrees to some sort of concessions around either Taiwan or the technology export. So we talked a little bit about before having real engagement on these three areas. I think that's the thing to look for maybe in this discussion is, is there anything? Because it seems unlikely beyond, maybe beyond the tariffs, the Trump tariffs. Could that be something, some element that they're able to relieve on? But Taiwan is obviously a non-starter as our private export controls. Well, one thing I think that's notable about this problem with climate change is using the Defense Production Act to try to build a homegrown solar panel industry has met putting huge tariffs on Chinese solar panels, which is where we get most of them from because they're so much cheaper. And he wants to encourage building a domestic industry, which it's a lot of people have, whether that's a good, necessary idea. It's not for national security. And can we ever have a competitive advantage in it? But beyond that, I mean, so you're trying to try to find ways to cooperate in climate change, but even your initiatives, you have initiatives like that, which aren't, again, national security, but just your own industrial policy. So I mean, there's all these little ways. Honestly, if I was China and like the last six months is just seeing the US place one restriction on multiple restrictions in terms of technology, I wouldn't be so gun whole about things I was going to cooperate on. And yet, I mean, one of those things that we should think about because climate change is a national security threat as well. And, you know, how we're prioritizing what we're doing and thinking through long-term strategy. I don't know if we always look enough at the big picture. Yeah. No, I think it is difficult. I mean, I think the biggest thing around climate change is kind of agreement on emission reductions. And that's been, I mean, obviously China has domestic incentive to reduce its emissions just from kind of an air pollution standpoint, as well as I mean, a security of supply has interest in reducing maybe not so much the coal, which it has a fairly plentiful domestic supply of. But even there, it's having to import in a lot of coal from Southeast Asia, from Australia, places where that relationship is getting increasingly contentious. So it has its own domestic motivations on climate change. But in terms of a uniform promise around emissions reductions and the fact that all the growth in global emissions is going to come from primarily China and to a lesser extent India. If you can't get them on board with a certain amount, then you have basically just a certain amount of additional emissions, regardless of what the United States and Europe does to reduce it. So that's And then you can't get these other countries on board either, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah, you can. I mean, So like the biggest polluters aren't going to commit to anything. Why in the world would we? Right. You know, the way China argues it is that, you know, we're a developing country that in terms of historical emissions and their development, Europe and the US have added the most to the atmosphere. It's unfair that you're now restraining the development of these poorer countries. So a lot of countries will see that argument made by China, which doesn't necessarily fit because it's already developing. But the thing is, right, that's been the traditional argument, but that China was making moves in the Paris Accord and things like that, too. I mean, there were agreements between the US and China. Yeah, not bound agreements like any of these. But yeah, there were verbal agreements and I don't know if they ever worked towards specific targets. But yeah, it was definitely a conversation and cooperation around it. People are actually progress, right? I mean, it was progress and people had hoped that it would go further. And this environment has created, I can't imagine that they'll make any progress on it. Yeah. And I think that's the other concern around this is why is there so much on meetings between the big national leaders? And I thought the, I think it was the Washington Post brought up a good point that because of COVID, because of the relative isolation at like an academic level, policymaker level, you haven't had those contacts between the US and China. So you have begun to see kind of the renewal of those efforts. In fact, the Washington Post, they talk specifically, China expert from CSIS, which again, normally these would be before COVID, these are trips all the time. You had entire institutes, exchanges. China scholars are going crazy because they can't go to China, you know, and they're used to going frequently. And, you know, again, talking to China didn't come up in this interview, but other conversations I've had with them. Yeah, it's just a detriment when you're saying, well, all I can say is what it was like before COVID hit. But then it's in this environment of, so you had COVID that stopped it, but now you have increasing tensions that also harm those possibilities. Those institutes that you're talking about with, you know, cooperation with us are in danger. I know a lot of people recently have left NYU has a big school. I think in Shanghai, I can't remember exactly what. Yeah, a lot of them have, yeah, joint programs. And I know personally, some people who've left that program just in the last couple of months. Don Hopkins is a big one there. I don't know what this is going on, but you had these really all kinds of different exchanges, even just the everyday exchanges, like our people being able to go out to dinner or have friends in China and meet up with them. I mean, it gives you a much deeper perspective and an important perspective for both countries to understand where they're coming from. Right. Yes, I think that's the hope, although, you know, the other thing I didn't mention in terms of what Republicans potentially want to target is these sort of exchanges that be a lot more scrutiny around Chinese scholars studying or people engaged in these instances. Institutes and having them to register as foreign agents essentially. So that's what's kind of crazy. I mean, it's terrible on all ends, but yes, they want to stop even these American educational institutes. I mean, which have always previously been looked at as having influence in China, having some American ability to influence China and getting good scholarship on it and such. So it's always seen as being very beneficial and I think it should still be seen like, you know, China wants to open like Confucius Institutes in the US and we already have these premier institutions. Yeah, let's not compare those two. I mean, Confucius was a propaganda. Right. And ours are Western universities. But I'm saying China would love to have some sort of university. Oh, yeah. Right? I guess that's what I'm trying to say. Yeah, yeah. To be able to have that in that knowledge. Yeah, we're not taking advantage of that. Yeah. If nothing else from an intelligence standpoint, you want that influence, then at least you could know more. It's so important to have exchanges. You know, everyone looks at China as this unitary actor. I also talk about, but Sean and his work and some, it's not a unitary actor and how much foreign policy is made at the provincial level or even the city level of these big cities is enormous. We lose our complete inability to understand these things. With having these restrictions, we create a more and more tense environment that creates more chances for conflict. The actions bothers me so much because these actions are the kind of actions that lead to war, right? That not that just increase the chances of misunderstanding. We lose so much from this. Right? We just tremendously and the Republicans do want to stop this. And you know, the environment from the Chinese side is not very favorable either. Right. So yeah, it's very upsetting. I think so much is lost if we can't bring back these exchanges. Yeah. And I think that's really the only hope for finding areas where we can potentially cooperate because I think it has to come from that bottoms level sort of approach and those relationships, those non-political conversations around things like climate change where yeah, maybe you're going to find those elements of cooperation and that can come up from the provincial level because there's enough benefit from both parties. Yeah. And another thing is too is you meet all these other international Chinese scholars, right? And you also get to have a form for that to see, you know, to meet the ideas of like what China policy is in Brazil or how they look at things, right? Because I was just thinking my own participation, you know, at a conference held the University of San Diego with its partnership with Food and University. I mean, the most memorable part of that was basically it was all the other international scholars Eastern Europe, all these places where we don't think about. And it's useful to know what their scholarship is, what they're thinking about China is, and then even with our allies, how are they processing these things? And being able to understand the full gammon of this, that's really important as well. And if they're not having, yeah, and they're going to continue to have these exchanges with China. And if we do not, that also I could go on all the negative things about it. And it that is the worrisome thing that they might be able to do something about it in the house, although I don't know that how they can do it with just the house. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking is that they'll be blocked. And I mean, of course, we'll always make the case that the Democrats are weak in China. But I think I thought it was encouraging that these engagements like with this CSIS and others are starting up again, that the COVID restrictions are being eased. It's definitely not COVID zero is still like it's pretty much, you know, I saw, you know, additional lockdowns, some manufacturing areas. So that certainly hasn't hasn't gone away following the the CCP meeting. But at least, you know, these engagements are starting again, because it's extra, there used to be so many. Yeah, I mean, it was just the standard. Well, you see, you went to conferences there or I mean, younger scholars would spend time there to work on their dissertations and stuff. But you just would have all these conferences and have a chance to meet with Chinese colleagues or make Chinese colleagues really. So all these people I know, whose work I really admire in China, I've not been able to go there. But you also see sometimes, I think, because of the attitudes and stuff in the environment, people wanting to go there less, the people that I work with, there's been several comments of like, yeah, I went to Shanghai, you know, but I increasingly don't like going there and such. You know, I don't think that's your bad. I mean, if you really approach it just from a trying to do what's best for the United States, and for, you know, our our objectives, then you should still want to go. I mean, if you really view China as an enemy, I mean, I don't know the words, either competitor or enemy, however you want to frame it, you should want to go there and understand their thinking and and all of that. That's just basic, basic intelligence gathering, if nothing else. But there's so much group think and a lot of the group think I think is like, well, we don't want to have anything to do with China. Yeah, no, I don't get that. But even like I said, even if you view them fully as your enemy, you should know your enemy. Yeah. I mean, I don't think you should do the most your enemy. But yeah, even if you do, just consider a number that just it's that way. I mean, it was important that we had all that dialogue between the US and Russia. And it was really important, the academic exchanges that we eventually developed. And and then you have those, I believe the article says low level officials and things because again, a lot of foreign policy decision is made at very lower levels. Yep. So we'll see, you know, very low expectations, I think for this meeting, but notable for the fact that this is the first time that they've both met as national leaders. And the I guess because expectations are so low, maybe any if anything comes out of it, it'll be it'll be something it'll be significant. That's true. Very true. There was big news. Russia, Ukraine update. There's a loss for Russia. They ordered a complete retreat from the city of Kyrshen, provincial capital, the only one that they were able to hold. Yeah. So this, you know, obviously, there's been a lot of focus on Kherson and just it being so strategically important to the Ukrainians efforts and the southern part of the country bordering the Black Sea, taking it as seen as, you know, one of potential way to block off land access to Crimea and to eventually form a kind of a staging ground for further pushes to the south to take Crimea, which we've talked about is ultimately the probably the whole war and the potential flashpoint for additional escalation on on the Russian side, given its symbolic and strategic importance to Russia. So obviously huge victory. We've seen the videos of the celebrations of the end of the nine month occupation. And there's still a lot of concern about as the Russians, which had a fairly organized pullback and retreat. They're clearly digging in for more defensive position to the south of the Dene Pro River. And it's not clear if, you know, similar to other areas like in the northern part of the country where you've just seen some, you know, horrible evidence of genocide, of atrocities. But it was a very intense program of of Russification. So, you know, they were using Russian currency, they made changes in the school curriculum, language, forced migration of children, just all of these very harsh, cruel things. So obviously big victory for Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. That being said, we've seen over the last week, New York Times broke a story on November 10th about Mark Milley, who's the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was seen at least privately in these meetings, pushing for negotiation that was basically his assessment that the Ukraine is unlikely to gain much more territory beyond what it has currently. And I think that was was really driven by the analysis showing that Russian forces were digging into the area south of the river, and that, you know, this will represent too strong of a defensive line. There's already been a lot of pushback kind of against that. I saw Colonel Alexander Vindman, his brother, was also a colonel, tweeted out that, this is very basically unimpressed with Milley's military interpretation of it. The Ukrainians themselves are morale is extremely high. They've had a number of victories, obviously, in the fall. So I think they're very optimistic, even heading into the winter of continued offensive gains to the point where, you know, Biden was questioned following his midterm press conference. He was questioned a lot regarding, is this true? Is the White House pushing for negotiations? And he pushed back pretty strongly saying, you know, this is in the hand of Zelensky and Ukrainian people, and that we're supportive of that effort. So at the end of the day, it seems like it'll be interesting. I think because this wasn't much more organized, they've obviously, we talked about before Russia had a change and the highest level in terms of leading this operation, whether the Ukrainians now will see a lot more resistance for further advances to the south. I know they've already destroyed the bridge and connecting Kyrslan to kind of the southern part of the region. Russia did that strategically to prevent that being used. So I don't know how much that will affect the operations. The other big element, which we talked about last time, was the hydroelectric dam, which is about 50 miles north. That's still, to my understanding, has not been secured by Ukraine. The Russian troops are still there. So there's still that threat, potentially, of Russian sabotage to the dam. I think, well, I can see where Tremiley is coming from, looking at the sort of digging into trenches and what he knows about World War I and the sort of just trench warfare that went on. But at the same time, it seems crazy that you would think that a country that just had a big victory be like, okay, we're going to go and negotiate now. That doesn't usually work out that way. So I think you'd have to definitely see things stall before you'd get Ukrainians wanting to negotiate. Yeah. And I think it is. And I get, they're attempting to set the table because I think everybody agrees that this will have to be a negotiated solution. You're not going to have very unlikely have total capitulation and regime change within Russia. So it's also important to note that Zelensky is saying that they will negotiate with Putin. They won't demand that. Yeah. And that was a big concession on his part because before you'd said, yeah, you know, I'm only negotiating with his predecessor. We're not negotiating people who commit war crimes. With the successor. With the successor, yeah, sorry. Which is to mean that you're not going to negotiate at all. Right. So he made that small, but I think it was only we'll negotiate for complete withdrawal from all Ukrainian territories, including the pre-2014. Right. Crimea and the Donbass region. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So we'll see. I mean, I see huge, huge victory for Ukraine, a real credit to the impact that some of the more advanced military equipment and continued intelligence support from the U.S. military and its NATO allies have had. But yeah, we'll see how this progresses. Yeah. It all sounds good. So are we ready to go on to the interview? I think so. Yeah. I hope you guys have listened, stayed with us this long because I think you'll really enjoy this interview. Right. Here it is. Welcome to Kellogg's Global Politics, a podcast on current events in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. My name is Dr. Anita Kellogg and I'm here with Dr. Sean Breslin at Professor of Politics and International Studies at Warwick University in the UK. He is also the co-editor of the journal Pacific Review and a renowned scholar on China. His most recent book, China Risen, studying Chinese global power was published last year. Hi, Sean. I'm so excited to have the opportunity to talk to you. Welcome to the show. Thanks. It's great to be on this program. I've listened to quite a few of them and I'm always impressed by the conversations that you have. Well, thank you. Thanks very much for that. So to get started, I wanted to begin with the 20th party congress that happened last month and the changes to the Communist Party's leadership and what it means for the expectations of future Chinese foreign policy. Were there any notable surprises that came to you out of the Congress? Yes and no. I mean, the no is I think we sort of have an idea of the direction that things were going to go in for the consolidation of Xi Jinping's control. Yes, in terms of some of the specific individuals. So you couldn't have sat down and named all the individuals. Well, if you had managed to do that in advance, you should have had a bet on it. But I think we more or less knew where things were going. But also, there's been this process of what I've referred to as the securitization of China's future. I think Xi Jinping preparing by these people for rocky times ahead, both because of domestic problems that need to be resolved, COVID, but also the financial system and changing the sort of growth model to something that is based more on quality of life and things like that. But also because of the changed international environment. So eventually I get around to answering your question. And yeah, I think there's in previous party congresses, we've seen the international system described as creating opportunities for Chinese to operate and get things done. And that's gone. So the international environment is now being depicted as being hostile, very difficult, antithetical to China, with the real possibility of other states, probably of course, the US, doing things to try and prevent China's rise. So I think we're in for a period of perhaps a consolidation, but also acceleration of those sort of trends that we'd seen over the previous five or so years towards a more defensive position. And yeah, an identification of the world as not one that wants China to be a leading global power within it. As you know, in international relations, we have this idea that different types of authoritarian countries act differently in the world, so that there's a big difference between like authoritarian partieship versus like more of a personless authoritarian regime. And the way that Xi Jinping is consolidating his power, do you think we're in any danger of having more to personalistic China? Yeah, I guess so. I mean, Steve Zhang at the China Institute of Surveys has made this observation that if there's a group of people making decisions, perhaps it's harder or slower to go toward than just one person making the decision. So the more personalized control gets, the more perhaps it creates an opportunity for the individual women factor to influence politics. And indeed, a lot of the institutional reforms put in place in post-Mao China were explicitly to get rid of the possibility of one person to do that. So I do think it concentrates power in a way in which perhaps reduces some of the checks and balances that have previously been there and we might want to be there in the future. But in terms of the overall sort of directional personality of China as an international actor, if we can call it that, I think it's again, probably just a concentration and acceleration of where we've been over the last five, perhaps even 10 years longer than that, you know, real emphasis on the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, China seeking status and approval within the global order. So I do think it creates perhaps some concerns at times of crisis about the ability of one person to act versus a more institutionalized and more balanced and shared leadership. But in terms of the sort of day-to-day direction of policy, there's not too much of a difference. That's really kind of reassuring. I know definitely conflict is certainly a concern. And if China is more willing to engage in that, I personally am a little bit skeptical of people who really think there's going to be a war over Taiwan any day now. But yeah, but that's definitely a concern. But it does, yeah, that does worry me. What particularly worries me about Taiwan is that over the years, every time things seem to have been getting out of balance and getting a little bit worrying, I was there in the Taiwan Straits crisis in the 90s, it always seemed as if it was okay to go back to the status quo. So there'd be some problems and there'd be some tensions, but then it'll go back to the status quo and okay, then the PRC would talk about the One China principle and would get back to Taiwan saying, okay, acting like an international actor, even though it wasn't officially recognized, one of that was okay. And when the Kuomintang loss power, there was always talk about move towards independence, but that caused problems and it comes back to the status quo and that's okay again. What worries me is that the status quo, which seemed to be okay for most people for such a long period of time, now doesn't seem to be okay as an indefinite solution for Xi Jinping. The sort of maintaining this sort of relationship of pretending is too strong, but where each side does what it does and sort of acknowledges different things and acts in certain ways and everybody knows what the reality is, doesn't seem to be acceptable for a long period. Now whether that means war as the solution is quite a big step to take, whether it means war now is also quite a big step to take, but it does suggest that it's tenable unless you know, this is a long blip and things do go back to some sort of status quo in the future, but it doesn't sound like it to me. It sounds as if the agenda has now shifted the status quo, whilst it might be okay for now, it's just not okay indefinitely as it sort of seemed to be before. So one of the things or my argument has been that it would really jeopardize the economy in China and that's been such an important part of legitimacy. Do you think that with the moves that Xi Jinping has made, do you think that maybe there is a shift in where the economy does not seem as primary as some of these other notions of Chinese power? Now it's still important, but we've seen this talk about dual circulation and reducing the dependency or the interdependencies. A lot of people in the West are concerned about dependency on China in terms of trade and investment. Well, actually, in China there's a lot of people who are saying the same things about dependence on the global economic flows and how this makes China a little bit vulnerable and moves, you know, let's see what happens in terms of the market chip ban that's recently been put in place by Biden, right? And there has been this goal for a few years now to make China less vulnerable to those sorts of shocks that might emerge exogenously from either things like the global financial crisis or deliberate action by other states. But it's not that easy to do. You can't just turn the super tank around quickly, you know, it's going to take a long time. The amount of exports that are produced, Chinese exports that are produced by fine-invested companies, it's down from its big peak, but it's still quite significant, right? The amount of imported components that are in Chinese exports, things that they made in China down from the peak, it's still important. The amount of Chinese technology and leadership in some sectors is increasing, but it's still not at the level that the others would want it to be. So I think there's a real goal of making China less vulnerable to whatever might happen outside the country in terms of disruption to flows and weaponized into dependence has been called. But that's not happened yet. So that provides, I think, both in some respects an impulse to do more to do that, but also at the same time, perhaps a constraint on doing things that actually might cause problems as well. At least, let's hope so. I know a lot of people don't buy this sort of liberal argument of interdependence, sort of reducing the prospects of war. But there's certainly a lot to be lost from China if it does end up in a very disrupted global trade and investment system because of whatever happened. And all this talk about decoupling is really interesting. I talk about decoupling on both sides. And yet, investment in China increases. People here in the UK, China's never been such a topic in domestic politics. And I don't think there's ever been a period where people have been so negative about China. And yet, trade with China increases. British investment in China increases. And there's a lot of talk, but it doesn't seem to be filtering through to the sort of business people who actually make economic decisions on the ground at the moment. No, I agree completely. And I'll bring that up to people and they're like, no, it's changing. You're looking at the wrong numbers. But it's true, right? And the people who are really emphasizing that talk. I mean, so you definitely, I mean, you even have these larger events where, I mean, I believe you have a Chinese nuclear design reactor, Hulong One, I don't know if I'm saying that right. You have the investment in Hamburg port. And I know they've gotten a lot of attention too in these countries. But then why is trade increasing? Right? Why are these companies not pulling out but seeing China as this opportunity? Yeah, I mean, there is a lot of concern over in Europe about where Chinese investment is going. I think the overall percentage of Chinese investment over here is tiny. The total stock of all Chinese investment of all foreign investment in the UK is not 0.2%. I mean, it's tiny. It rose very quickly from 2010 to 2016, which made people take notice. But then it's dropped off again. And part of the issue is the sectors that it's gone into. And you said nuclear power. In fact, at the moment, it's only Chinese money. There is question about whether there will be a Chinese designed nuclear power station. It looks as if that will probably at some point be rejected. And at that point, we wonder whether the Chinese will pull their money from their other projects as well. But certainly concern about Chinese investment in Europe, I think, runs ahead of the reality of its significance when you compare it to investment from other countries. But the sectors that it's going into do raise some questions. But basically, there's just a fundamental lack of trust about long-term ambitions. And people don't even really take very seriously the individual firm. It might be a private firm that's doing the investing for commercial reasons, but there's a suspicion somewhere that the state is behind this. But that said, as you say, trade keeps going up. I asked somebody recently who used to be involved in promotion of British economic interests with China, whether he thought that companies really thought about the big political issues when it came to investing in China or signing contracts with China. And he said, no. But the one thing that's changed is that now you don't just have to think about Chinese politics, but you have to think about politics in the US and politics in Europe as well. So it's not just what the Chinese are doing. If I invest in China, is there a possibility that then I'll get my access to the American market will be blocked or the European market. So it's generating that way. But they tend to still look at the short-term commercial logics and people can talk about reshoring or moving production. But unless the economic incentives are there to do it, then people aren't going to simply act because it seems to be in keeping with the political tone of the time. So there's often quite a big gap between the rhetoric and the sort of economic policies that need to back up that rhetoric if the real change is going to take place. I mean, these problems in terms of trade is because of the pandemic, right? So the pandemic did change the sort of things that were being imported into Europe. But even so, I mean, it's notable that there's not been a significant decline in that trade relationship as the discourse of China has shifted in Europe. And in fact, it's trade relationships tended to become even more important in a number of countries. Yeah, I think it would actually be kind of weird if businesses took political stances like that. I mean, businesses are mostly to make profits and compete with each other. So yeah, unless there's government and then all the talk about reshoring, you know, I hear that all the time and I'm like, who's going to pay for it, right? Because there aren't economic incentives just inherently in the market. So if you were going to do that, you have to subsidize it, subsidize their differences. And someone has to pay for that. Yeah, I mean, the things that governments can do, of course, is send signals about potential future actions or inactions and things like that. But where they do, of course, have a lot of power. He's over investment screening inwards. And I think that's where the changes will already have taken place, but are much more likely to occur in the future. Controlling things coming in is much more easy, I think, than sort of trying to control the overall trade relationship or outward investment and so on and so forth. Yeah, one thing that's interesting that's happening in the US is this idea that maybe you would control outward investment into China. And there's just a lot of talk in Congress and even the possibility of an executive order of trying to set something up like that. I mean, how possible that is, how you actually do it is a big question. But I know that's one of the issues here has been in the past is export credit guarantees. So you need those sort of guarantees to be able to with some security, sort of dip your toe in the Chinese water, particularly if you're moving things. But there are also regulations in the UK now about technology exports and things like that that might help dual use within China. And there are quite significant changes there in terms of people really being wary about the sort of interactions with China that might look like they are commercial, but have more than commercial consequences in the long run. So you can, because it's not usually an investment project in China isn't usually just about money flowing. There are other things that flow with it as well, often technology and technology controls are one way to which states can do this. And I suspect we'll see a bit more of that in the future. Yeah, I think the thing that gets hard about that, particularly dual use is like, maybe the expansion of national security into being thought of sometimes even just like economic competition itself, and that I worry a lot about too much decoupling. I'm actually, my work actually looks at economic interdependence and conflict in the business community. And I think there really is something to that. And it sort of concerns me because I do think maybe some of this rhetoric, and if too many actions result from it, it does create a bigger chance for conflicts, simply because there aren't as many economic constraints on it. Yeah, right. I mean, and it's very tricky as well. It's important to make it clear that this isn't to say that there aren't any problems, that there aren't any threats and there aren't any challenges, because it's clearly off. But it's being precise about them. So the Rhodium Group, and I think it was the Bertelsmann Foundation in Europe, did this sort of fine-grained investigation on trade and investment into Europe. And I think they did it using the statistics for 2019. And the point that they were trying to make was, look, not all of these interactions are problematic. Let's try and work out which ones are okay, which they said was called a green list, and which ones aren't. And they came out at about 50-50. I can't remember which way it was, but I think it was slightly more of them were on the green list and slightly less were sort of considered to be problematic. But then when you look at what they're talking about as being problematic, and this is a very nuanced investigation, a lot of the time it's still based on the, well, what if in the future? So this isn't necessarily trade and investment in sectors, which are immediately clear to pose a challenge. But they're in the sectors that if the Chinese government in the future decided to do something, then they might become problematic and therefore were risky. So the word potential, I think, emerged before security implications in their list of problem areas. And that's, it's a great report, actually, but it just raises how difficult it is to make these fine-grained assumptions because they're all based on this idea of what could happen and what might not. And they were talking about data collection, infrastructure, technology, and I wrote it down, I think I can find it here. Critical economic sectors needed for survival or basic economic life of all citizens, well, that encompasses a huge amount of different areas. And it's really worth digging out this report because it's very impressive the way they go about doing it. But it still leaves all these what ifs and maybes and all based on the assumption that there is an opportunity, not just an opportunity, but a clear ability for the Chinese state to impose itself, even on private actors at some point in the future, if the time arises for them to do so. So it's tricky, right? Because if you start saying some of this discourse has gone too far, it makes it sound like you're saying there's no threat. But you're not, you know, we're saying there is. But it's just so difficult to work out where it is because in a lot of cases, it only becomes a security issue if something happens in the future by this untrustworthy government. And if the same investment was being done by another country, I'll come in from another country now, we probably wouldn't even be blinking. And it just raises all these uncertainties and areas of gray and business doesn't really like gray. I don't think very much. It's much easier to operate in the world of black and white. Yeah, I completely agree. I feel like I do run into that problem when I say, I think things are too far because it is absolutely not saying that there aren't these problems. It is kind of, I think a problem to be facing everything on this kind of almost extreme what if, right? One, I think it makes it then more likely, I think actions towards an economic war only increases sort of the risk of this conflict. But then if it's like any economic transition that might could be used this way in the future and kind of over estimating, I think, what China can actually do. I have this case study that looks at the rare earth mineral ban on Japan and in fact, like China wasn't able to use that to really get concessions from Japan. It didn't really get what it wanted. Captain was four days earlier than what Japan had already said, but they didn't get any long term acknowledgement of the speeds of the island. And in fact, they lost out because countries so quickly worked to diversify and see that vulnerability. But one of the other interesting aspects of that just real quick is the role of smugglers and that even China acknowledges that almost twice as much of the official selling of rare earth minerals comes from smuggling and they haven't been able to tamp down on that. And it makes it simple because it's not easy even for China to be all powerful in these things. No, I mean, look at the size of the place and the diversity of it. I mean, one of the things that I started off studying center and local relations in China, that was what my PhD was on in the 1980s and the diversity of different types of center, local relations was one of the conclusions to try and say, this is the nature of the provincial relationship with central government is impossible because different provinces have different types of relationship based on a whole range of factors. And then that's before you go beneath the provinces down to the counties and the townships and so on and so forth. When we look at Chinese outward investment, I wonder if we're perhaps still a little bit influenced by this vision of that first big wave of investment in the early 2000s, which was driven by the big centrally state owned enterprises searching for resources overseas, often in places that companies from other countries didn't really want to go or couldn't go. And that's not really the same profile today. But even if we just stick with state owned enterprises, the majority of investment doesn't come from overseas in general, doesn't come from these big central state owned ones, it comes from locally owned state owned enterprises, which often have really quite narrow objectives and goals. And often in the commercial ones quite close to the, perhaps they're more akin to some of the commercial objectives of private sector investors than they are to the goals for the big central state owned ones or even the big multinational non state owned ones like Huawei. So there is a diversity in these forms of investment and to treat them all as being the same and trying to do the same thing and controllable by the state, I think is all the central state at least, it is a bit problematic, but it does seem to be increasingly driving policy agendas. And I guess that's partly because of the way in which in the Xi Jinping era, the state and the party has sort of moved to find new channels of control over society and economy as a whole and enterprises and some of the regulations that Chinese companies have to sign up to. So there probably is, it is true now to say that there is sort of more of an ability to the state to in short compliance with its overall arching goals and objectives than was the case in the past. But ultimately, I think, you know, I've been playing around with these ideas for quite some time. I think there's probably five different types of concern with China that I hear quite a lot and I sometimes think they get conflated together. So I'll try to mount and see what you think. So the first one is the general dislike of China, the nature of its political regime, the way that things are done, perhaps combined with the frustration that China has not changed towards the sort of more liberal polity that a number of people sort of hope for are expected back in the 80s. So that's sort of, it's not a threat, but it's a dislike. So there's number one. Number two would be immediate and direct threats to a country now. But I guess that would be sort of sanctions or putting talent on the side. It might be sort of immediate forms of sort of economic disruption that could have immediate impacts. And it's actually quite difficult to identify what they are. And in terms of the immediate threats, we're probably talking more in terms of things like interference with politics. Yeah. I just wanted to comment on that real quick. One thing, case study I have is China and South Korea. One of the things I found really interesting about it is you sort of had this official party line, although they couldn't make official policy, but sort of like, here's all these, we're going to make all these regulations to close down, no latte stores and such. But the local leaders had more economic incentives to kind of, in those areas, what had a lot of South Korean investment to sort of do what it could to protect those firms from the political consequences affecting their bottom line because they wanted that investment so much. And so I think that kind of goes to you too. The central government kind of has this stance, but it does conflict sometimes with the incentives for the local leaders to... Like what activity? Actually, I wish I knew a little bit more about China-Korean relations because there's a whole range of interesting things going on there. I mean, you were talking before actually about sort of, I can't remember the exact phrase you used, but losing sort of national economic advantage or something like that to try to... I mean, that could be seen to be a clear and present threat. I don't want to say the word threat, but let's count it anyway. So you've got things we don't like about China number one. Direct threats from China number two. The biggest one I've already referred to is things that might become a threat in the future if certain things happen. And that seems to be the biggest area of the threat. Number four, I would say, is world order type challenges. And this could be changes in economic geographies and flows, but also could be the promotion of non-liberal norms and so on and so forth around the world. And then the fifth one is a very non-specific idea that anything that helps make China bigger, richer, and more powerful simply cannot be a good thing for the global order. So even if an independent Chinese company becomes richer and more powerful and stronger because of transaction, at some point down the line, that's probably not going to be a good thing for the world. And I think some of these are vague, right? The third one and the fifth one are very vague, but also they can lead to contradictory sort of directions. Because if you focus on the direct and immediate threat to the country, then you might think in sort of economic nationalism sort of terms in ways of rebuffing it, protection, investment controls and trade flows and so on and so forth. But if you're focusing on world order type challenges, then actually a more internationalist sort of strategy and trying to talk to those potential countries that potentially might become Chinese followers or might be persuaded away from your sort of pre-existence sets of relationships might make more sense. So if we can try and be a little bit more fine-grained about what we think is specific issue and challenges in any area and think about the solutions to them, I think it's probably just makes common sense and that's going to be more realistic and effective and sort of lumping everything together into this sort of single almost generic common sense China threat. I agree. It makes it harder. I think some of the protectionism in name of national security actually results in less national security. There's kind of like crazy things. One thing Ryan and I have talked about is like the ban of natural gas exports to China, whereas you think maybe that if China is dependent on our natural gas, then that would be better for us than... What's happened in Europe are the politics of gas supplies. Yeah, exactly. I mean, so Russia using that, you just, I don't know, to me it would seem like that would be logical and people aren't always thinking in those terms because they're thinking that nationalism, economic nationalism is always good for national security. Yeah, I mean, I guess as well, I mean, we probably shouldn't take our eyes off the ball somewhere down the line that the global financial crisis dealt a massive blow to the sort of Western liberal, neoliberal sort of economic system and beliefs. And if you put yourself in a Chinese position, they look and the argument often is here's a West that's in decline, that's trying to find ways of maintaining its leadership and hegemony as it declines. And if perhaps you don't accept that argument fully, but the idea that the sort of Western liberal has faced a number of crises of its own making be they economical, perhaps also to do with supposedly humanitarian intervention that turned out not to sort of protect too many human beings along the way, then we sometimes perhaps need to look a little bit more inwards at challenges rather than just outwards as well. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with that. And one thing I think is kind of problematic towards other countries and their relationship with China is, you know, you see in Latin America and South America, the US will go to these countries and be like, this is the problem if you allow Chinese investments, so you should worry of it, not offering any other deals. And those leaders are saying, you know, what China comes and meets with them, they talk about specific projects, we want to invest in this, you know, infrastructure project and stuff. And so I think that we that's the kind of really problematic attitude that the West has also taken. Absolutely. And we can, you know, I'm sitting here in Europe, you're there in the States, we were surrounded by European or American perspectives on the consequence of China's rise. And we just have to accept that it's not always seen the same way in other parts of the world, other parts of the world, which perhaps share a lot of Chinese dissatisfaction with the nature of the existing international order. And quite like the fact that somebody is taking on the challenge of trying to undermine the legitimacy and authority and power of the status quo. I mean, a few years ago, I was in China with my friend Franklin Lisk and he arranged a meeting with a number of ambassadors from African countries in China. And what we wanted to ask them was, because a lot of people were focusing on what does China want from Africa? Or we said, well, what do you want from China? Right? Because also we shouldn't forget that other countries have agencies, not as if they're forced to start taking investment or anything, right? They decide what to do. And there was a group of people there from West Africa who were trying to set up this transnational development zone across Sierra Leone, the Makona River Development Zone, it was called. And they said, look, we know the only people that will take a risk on building the infrastructure and seeing if there's actually the resources that are exploitable in a profitable way are the Chinese. You know, it's an option for us to say, is it the Chinese or the Europeans or the World Bank? Because the other options simply aren't there. You know, they weren't stupid. They knew that if the things would have to be paid back, they knew that if there were resources there, then some of those resources or some of the profits of those resources would flow back to China. But it wasn't either or. It was this or nothing. And if people are really concerned about the global order type consequences of Chinese expansion across the world, then there are obvious ways of dealing with it. And if we've seen here the European gateway as a sort of sorry, European global gateway is a sort of response to that and a way of rethinking that. I'm European, seeing in Europe, reading European newspapers, reading either European analyses on China or American analyses on China, you go to other parts of the world and China looks really quite different. Yeah. And I like that it's not either or two. One thing I was doing an interview with the CEO of Afrobarometer, which does a lot of basically surveys on democratic attitudes, but also attitudes to China and the US and their systems. And the thing was like there were positive attitudes towards both China and the United States. Yeah, right. And just because the country does business with China or goes to the to the FROCAT meetings doesn't mean that it doesn't do things with other countries. And if one thing that's really good that's emerged from China's engagement of the development world is it's just creating more opportunities for leaders and elites to operate within. Surely that's a good thing. And it's up to leaders of other parts of the world to try and provide alternatives to the Chinese offering if they don't like that offering to try and perhaps change their way of doing things in ways that are more attractive to Africa. And of course we have to recognize the fact that the agency of the developing countries means that sometimes they will make mistakes too. And when things go wrong, it's not always the Chinese fault. It can often be the fault of the people that they're dealing with as well. It's because we focus on China. I focus on China, you focus on China. We spend a lot of time thinking about what China wants clearly. But it comes back to this question of what others want as well. And perhaps a little bit of time, more time thinking about potential followers than putative leaders would tell us a bit more about the way that the world might evolve in the future years. Totally agree. And I think we've seen this also with Russia that and why you know, being puzzled that why so many countries and even democracies did not take the West side and just didn't want to take any side. And I think the way we see things in our perspective, we think the order we created means that everyone wants to follow it or wants to participate in it rather than having their own independent agendas and making decisions based on what seems best for them and their country and not like support for a general world order of any sort. Yeah, I mean, if just look at those votes in the United Nations on Ukraine and it tells you that you can't take as automatic the support for the sort of things that European government have preferences for, not just when it comes to Russia, but perhaps more generally, and I guess the same for the proponents of the liberal order, if we can call it that more generally too, right? There's a lot of countries that are dissatisfied with the nature of the global order, the distribution of power within it. Perhaps the norms are some of the norms and principles that underpin it. They might not all agree on what they would want to replace it with. But when it comes to situations where they are asked really to show more dissatisfaction with it rather than build an alternative to it, then there's quite a lot of countries that are prepared to line up in that in that country. Yeah, and I think they also feel like maybe that they benefit from this competition between the US and China. Maybe so. I mean, as I said, it's opening up that space, it's opening up the opportunities, it's providing more actors to give them a choice to sort of engage with. And as you said, it doesn't have to be one or the other. You can interact with them in different ways. But yeah, I can't remember who it was now who was saying, and if you look at the countries that have been invaded by the United States and by the European powers in their colonial past, history does seem to have a tendency to not go away and sometimes reappear in the international relations of the contemporary world. Yeah, absolutely. And countries feeling vulnerable to Western sanctions for human rights violations and things like that, which we think is very justified. But obviously, those countries don't appreciate it. And certainly China is not holding any promotion of human rights or interference in that way. That's right. I mean, to call it a no strings attached sort of relationship is a bit too far. Obviously, that's not at Taiwan. And increasingly now, I think because of what's happened with some of the contracts that went wrong on the Belt and Road is more of an insistence on sort of financial poverty and things like that than perhaps had been the case. But certainly when you think of the sort of political conditionalities that can be attached to certain forms of economic relations with Western countries versus what China has an offer, well, yeah, it really does provide an alternative for countries to think about, right? Yeah, definitely. Definitely. One thing before we wrap up, we talked about this a bit or it's come up, you know, sort of the US moving towards an economic war. Certainly actions recently go way beyond and have way more impact than, you know, Trump's tear for, which are still in place and kind of bad economics and national security. But these actions have been more towards national security, I would certainly say, but that they don't just affect American companies. So the export ban of these high level semiconductors includes then any country from anywhere in the world that uses American technology, software, machinery and tools and even American workers. And I know that this is seriously impacts the multinational companies in Europe, such as the Netherlands based ASML, which had to immediately after that past or was announced, tell its American workers to go home to make sure they didn't violate any of the regulations. So what sort of are the general reactions, you know, of like in the UK and the rest of Europe to kind of having the US to impose these even on their countries, their companies? Yeah, I think in the rest of Europe, in fact, there was probably more attention to it than in the UK. It's not that it was totally ignored in the UK, but we have had this very weird summer where we've had the death of the Queen and then we had the resignation of Boris Johnson, an incredibly long leadership campaign that brought this just a power for a very short period of time, an almost self-inflicted implosion of the economic system and then a new, new Prime Minister Sunak. So perhaps for understandable reasons, the UK has probably been more concerned about its own domestic politics than it has with things that have taken place between China and America. But certainly, yes, in the rest of Europe, it's something that set the level of alarm bells ringing and people who are directly involved with those sort of industries here are very concerned about it too. I mean, this has been a significant shock to the way that people have been operating for quite a long time, right? And I think the extent of that shock isn't really evident yet. And over the next weeks and months, as people come to terms with what it means, as you say, all these sort of knock-on consequences of it, we're going to see a little bit of a scramble for people to try and put it in the place for immediate action and questions perhaps asked about the preparedness or the way that there didn't seem to be sort of any preparation for non-Chinese partners for what was going to happen. So I think it's almost of wait and see. But yeah, there were some headlines in the UK, but these are massive banner headlines that they didn't quite get. So I think the full extent of this will only become clear over the next weeks and months, and it's going to be really significant. Yeah. I mean, I agree. And I think one thing that is interesting, I mean, I know Europe has been really unhappy with other measures the US has taken such on green energy, I always say green, clean energy, sort of electric cars, emanating against their own brands. But I wondered if Europe is more okay with this because they share the same sentiments about China or if they are frustrated that a country like the United States can affect their own companies to operate. So there is this sort of dilemma within Europe. Let's leave the United Kingdom out of this, I think for a minute, because even though we're so heavily connected with the EU economy, much to my annoyance, we are not part of it. But so you're right, there has been a growing congruence of sort of basic approaches to understanding the natural consequences of China's rise in Europe as was already in place, I think in America, partly because of the debates in America and also what's happened in Australia as well, but also because of the changing nature of the European-China relationship. And as I mentioned before, that boom, a rapid decline of investment from about 2010 to 2016. So there has been a moving towards that China, American position, more concern about Chinese political interference, and so on and so forth. But at the same time, I don't think there's any strong desire simply to be a 51st status type partner in American policy towards China or towards anything. And yes, some concern the way in which unilateral American policies impact on Europeans and Europe as a whole. I mean, what's interesting is the way in which that comprehensive investment agreement was being agreed at a period of growing sort of concern about China, then when it comes to the exchange of investment into rebelling because of the political differences, not least over Xinjiang and the fact that there were tip-tap sanctions and so on and so forth, there was some talk that the Schultz in Germany might take a much tougher line on China than Merkel, and yet now it seems Schultz is actually acting to sort of strengthen the German commercial relationship with China. So yeah, it's a bit sort of Jane has traced on the one hand, yes, perhaps a need for a more common sort of liberal approach of countries that share an overall concern, but at the same time, no desire simply to become part and parcel of the American policy process, but to remain strong, independent. And also, as I said before, concern when things that might make sense for economic nationalism in the US don't necessarily correspond with the economic nationalist sort of impulses of Europeans. Yeah, I definitely something that I've been wondering about. I could talk to you all day, but I know you have things to do and to get going, but thank you so much for this conversation. I really appreciate it. It's been great. I like these sort of free-forming sorts of conversations where you sort of would go off in different directions, but ultimately, I think one of the things it comes back to is something that I think we share. I mean, what I noticed over a number of years is a sort of divergence between those who study Chinese domestic politics, economics, domestic dynamics on the one hand, and those who look at the consequences of China's rise in the global order on the other, they often seem to sort of talk past each other. And I think we're both interested in how these two things come together, how the domestic influences the global and how the global feeds into the domestic. And having these conversations just reinforces to me the importance of understanding the dynamic relationship between the two rather than treating them as two sort of separate spheres of inquiry. Yeah, I absolutely think that's been a problem. Basically, the way I could, it would be comparative politics that do focus on these elements of domestic. And then IR has been just this high structural level. And one thing I think I try to do in all my work, and I think has been a problem for IRs, is not to take into account how domestic politics, I mean, just assuming all states behave in a certain way and that they have the same motivations without considering the role of domestic politics in making those decisions. I mean, I sent a piece off to a leading American based journal once and one of the reviews was really useful. They said, oh, this is good. Maybe think about this. This second review had, let me think of the words, four words in it. And the four words, second review is this is area studies. And that was it. Later, got it, you know, took into account the first review's comments, and then sent it to another journal that got published without any visions whatsoever. But this idea that because, you know, this is area studies, therefore, it doesn't even get considered any further. Yeah, that was a long time ago. And as you can tell, it's still... No, it's frustrating. And that these divisions sometimes people hold onto divisions that are just problematic. They're not useful ways of looking at the world and still have to make the case that in many venues that, of course, economics affects national security. And why are we talking about them as if they're completely separate things? But also trying to look at the domestic foundations as well. Because, you know, if you start digging into the state of the Chinese financial system, then your conclusions about the stability and strengths and power of Chinese finance over the long term might be slightly different than if you simply look at the outside expression of Chinese finance, which looks somewhat different. Yeah. And the idea of time is not this completely unitary actor, right? That you meant to that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you again so much. I really love this conversation. I really like to have an opportunity to talk with you. It's been great. Till the next time then. Thanks very much. Bye bye. Bye.
So I really hope you enjoyed that discussion. And that will bring us to the end of this episode of Kellogg's Global Politics. You can visit our website at www.kelloggsglobal.com and follow us on Twitter @globalkellogg or me at @arkellogg. You can also reach us by email. So anita@kelloggsglobalpolitics.com and myself, ryan@kelloggsglobalpolitics.com. And as always, please see the show notes for the articles that we discussed in the episode and leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast provider. Thanks everyone. Thanks. Bye.