Below is a complete transcript of the Sinica Podcast with Dennis Wilder.
Kaiser Kuo: Welcome to the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with The China Project. Subscribe to Access from The China Project to get access. Access to not only our great daily Dispatch newsletter but also all the original writing on our website at thechinaproject.com. We’ve got reported stories, essays and editorials, great explainers and trackers, regular columns, and, of course, a growing library of podcasts. We cover everything from China’s fraught foreign relations to its ingenious entrepreneurs, from the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples in China’s Xinjiang region to Beijing’s ambitious plans to shift the Chinese economy onto a post-carbon footing. It’s a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world. We cover China with neither fear nor favor.
I’m Kaiser Kuo, coming to you from Berkeley, California.
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A short show this week just to get a read on what transpired on Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s just-concluded trip to Beijing. As of the time of recording, it’s just past 11:00 AM here in California on Juneteenth — Monday, June 19th — Secretary Blinken is in the air and headed home. What did he accomplish? My guest today to talk through that, and much more, is Dennis Wilder. Dennis is the managing director for the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University, where he also serves as an assistant professor of practice in Asian studies in the School of Foreign Service. He was the National Security Council’s director for China from 2004 to 2005 and then served as the NSC special assistant to the president and senior director for East Asian Affairs from 2005 to 2009, and has quite a bit of experience with diplomacy with China.
From 2009 to 2015, Dennis served as the senior editor of the President’s Daily Brief, the Worldwide Intelligence update produced under the auspices of the Director of National Intelligence. He also served from 2015 to 2016 as the CIA’s deputy assistant director for East Asia and the Pacific. I can think of few people who’d be better placed to offer commentary on Secretary Blinken’s trip, the challenges, the atmospherics, the semiotics of the readouts, the choreography — all that good stuff. Dennis joins us from Western New York. Dennis Wilder, a long-overdue welcome to Sinica.
Dennis Wilder: Thank you very much. A pleasure to be with you.
Kaiser: Dennis, before we get into the Blinken trip to China, maybe you can tell us a little bit about the Initiative for the U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues that you head up at Georgetown and work you do there these days.
Dennis: Sure. Of course, what we are trying to do with our initiative is basically student-to-student relationships and faculty-to-faculty relationships. We run a series of programs. One of them is student fellows, where we select student fellows from the United States, not necessarily just from Georgetown, but from many good universities. In the past, before COVID, we took them to China, got them an experience of traveling all over China, meeting with Chinese officials, getting to see a few cultural spots, but more importantly, getting them together with Chinese students. There are not as many opportunities to do that today in the post-COVID environment. We’re looking to restart those kinds of programs in person. We did a lot of virtual programs between ourselves and Fudan University, Tsinghua, and Beida universities, which were quite successful. But we really want to get back to the in-person student-to-student.
Then we support faculty research between Georgetown and various Chinese universities and professors. This can range all the way from looking at the issues of strategic competition between China and the United States to the arts. We have one dance program, for example, between Georgetown and a Chinese institution. What we’re about is trying to promote the people-to-people relationships where we can, give our students an opportunity that they wouldn’t have otherwise, and in general, just be supportive as we call in our name of dialogue between the two heights, which we think is very important.
Kaiser: Well, let’s hope that after the visit by Secretary Blinken, things will improve again and that you’ll be able to rev up those programs once more. So rather than keeping everyone in suspense, let’s jump right in and get your high-level takeaways from the two days of meetings in Beijing, where Secretary Blinken met first, with China’s Foreign Minister, Qín Gāng 秦刚, and then with Wáng Yì 王毅, who’s the Director of the Party’s Central Foreign Affairs Commission, and finally with Xí Jìnpíng 习近平himself, albeit for only about 35 minutes. Dennis, what is your top-level take on the meetings?
Dennis: My top-level take is that both sides set very modest expectations for this visit, but I do think they accomplished those modest expectations. Really, what this visit was about was a reset of sorts after the balloon incident, after some of the troubles over Taiwan issue, and other things, after some of the American decisions to restrict high-tech exports to China. I think that the relationship had spiraled down, and had spiraled down to a very dangerous level. I look at this as an attempt to put a floor under the relationship to get back to some sort of engagement and dialogue between the two sides. The fact that they were able to say at the end of the meetings that it was candid and constructive, I think is a good description. I think there were a lot of issues where the disagreements are very strong, and we can discuss those, but I also think that both sides wanted a constructive start to some tactical improvements in the relationship.
Kaiser: We have talked a little bit about some of the low lights, let’s call them. They’re certainly not highlights. The obstacles that were strewn in the diplomatic path. Now, you mentioned, of course, the balloon incident. Interestingly, Secretary Blinken did an interview with MSNBC, and I don’t know if you caught this, but the reporter, Janis Mackey Frayer had tweeted that Blinken said, in reference to the balloon incident, “that chapter should be closed now.” What do you make of this? Do you think that the balloon is now water under the bridge?
Dennis: The balloon incident is fascinating to me on a lot of levels. For one thing, it is interesting how the Chinese turned it into victimization of China when actually it was an astounding act of spying, of espionage against the United States, a rather brazen act on the part of somebody in China. President Biden alluded to the fact that Xi Jinping may not have known about it. I happen to agree with that opinion. Nonetheless, the Chinese put themselves in the position of sort of saying “we were victimized by your shooting down of the balloon”, which I’m really not sure I understand clearly. I think that the United States feels that it did what it needed to do with the shoot-down of the balloon. It has proven satisfactory to itself that it was a military spy exercise.
I don’t think the administration feels there’s any value in trying to pursue this issue with the Chinese anymore. We’re not going to get an apology from the Chinese — that’s clear. We know what it was about — whether or not the Chinese are ever going to admit what actually transpired here. There is one more shoe to drop, and that is that there apparently is now an FBI report that has been given to the U.S. Congress. I would imagine, at some point, the Congress is going to want that to be made public. That may well embarrass the Chinese. it will be interesting to see how the Chinese react when that report is released.
Kaiser: The Biden administration also seems to have accepted the explanation that it was blown off course, that the original target of the balloon was not the mainland U.S. I think maybe that diminishes the significance of it as well, right?
Dennis: I buy that argument. I think this was a People’s Liberation Army program. I think they’d done it before, sailed them near Guam, sailed them near Hawaii, and in this case, somebody miscalculated and did not check the airstreams right. And this balloon just went way past where the Chinese thought it was going to go.
Kaiser: Well, I’ll be grateful for one not to have to talk too much more about the balloon.
Dennis: I am a little tired of the balloon.
Kaiser: Yeah. Coming out of the G-7 Summit in Japan, President Biden talked about the likelihood of a thaw. He indicated that it would be happening soon — his own words. How did that play out in Beijing? How was that received in Beijing? Because it was rather a cool response if I recall.
Dennis: What we hear from the Chinese, and I heard it yesterday again from a senior Chinese, they say that the United States is talking a talk of wanting a better relationship with China, but not walking the walk of a better relationship. What they’re saying is that we say we don’t want to decouple the economies, and then we take actions that look like decoupling to the Chinese. Of course, there’s still the question of the outbound investment restrictions that are supposedly coming down the line sometime this year. So, when Blinken and the President talk about wanting to improve relations, wanting a thaw, the Chinese are saying, “Well, what are you going to do to show, to demonstrate that you actually want a thaw in the relationship?”
I think the administration is now taking some steps to prove that. I think they are willing, for example, to send Janet Yellen to Beijing, to send Raimondo to Beijing, perhaps Kerry will go this year. I think that Biden wants meetings with Xi Jinping later this year. He wants to show he can manage the China relationship. I would anticipate that Biden is eager to have a meeting at the G-20 Summit in India in September, and then, of course, to have a grand meeting in APEC.
Kaiser: Right.
Dennis: I think that is motivating the U.S. administration.
Kaiser: There’s constant mixed signals. On the one hand, I’m almost in the same week, probably in May, just last month, China was refusing to let Lǐ Shàngfú 李尚福 meet publicly at the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore with Lloyd Austin. But then we also got word that CIA Director, William Burns, had made a secret trip to China. So, clearly, there were back-channel conversations happening. Do we know anything about what director Burns’ itinerary was or what his agenda was on that secret trip?
Dennis: Well, first of all, the intelligence channel between the United States and China has always been interesting.
Kaiser: And you would know.
Dennis: During the Cold War period against the Soviet Union, there was a lot of cooperation. There was a lot of cooperation against the Soviets in Afghanistan. There is actually a base on the intelligence side of mutual understanding and, to a degree, trust. One of the areas that has been productive has been in counterterrorism, where China has a vested interest, obviously, in dealing with extremism, and we have an interest, and sharing of information on that front has been important. I would guess that Burns would continue to discuss that. Another issue he may have discussed with the Chinese is fentanyl because intelligence can play a big role in discovering exactly what private individuals in China are doing in terms of sending precursors to the United States.
Kaiser: With Mexico, yeah.
Dennis: Right. And what exactly triads and other organized crime are doing. I would not be surprised, I don’t know it for a fact that Burns may well have raised fentanyl as an issue. He may well have explained the American position on Ukraine in more detail to his Chinese counterparts. Burns is a very good CIA Director, but he’s also an excellent diplomat. He could have been used in several different ways during his visit, and we really don’t know exactly who he saw. He obviously saw his counterparts, but he may have seen some people on the diplomatic side as well.
Kaiser: I would be very, very curious to know. Speaking of intelligence, though, it’s gotten almost routine to see Intel leaked to the press from people within the administration or within the Pentagon, usually just ahead of a scheduled meeting between a senior administration official and their counterpart in China. Right on schedule, we saw this whole Cuba spy station. Is it what appears to be that someone in D.C. is deliberately throwing a spanner into the State Department’s diplomatic machinery, like every time that it’s gearing up for an effort to make some progress with China?
Dennis: I am very familiar with this tactic in Washington. During the Bush administration when we were engaging the Chinese, there were people in the administration who felt that we perhaps were too compromising with the Chinese or allowing the Chinese to get away with things from their point of view. I would see leaks that attempted to put us in a bad light. I think you’re right, Kaiser, we have seen some leaks, clearly recently, that were designed to put the administration on a back foot, designed to say that the administration was weak on China. These kinds of things are regrettable, and often they’re not even accurate. In the case of Cuba, I think they hyped something that has been going on for a long time in Cuba. It’s not new that China has been eavesdropping from Cuba. Whether or not there is some new upgrade, I don’t know. But the fact is that this was going on in the Trump administration. We didn’t see the Trump administration do very much about it. So, to accuse the Biden administration of somehow missing a beat on this subject is, I think, quite disingenuous.
Kaiser: The alignment of the cycles during which China does and doesn’t want to talk to the U.S. during which the U.S. does and doesn’t want to talk to China never seemed to align, but this time they seem to have. What are the drivers, on the Chinese side right now, that may be making Beijing more amenable to high-level diplomacy than they’ve been in recent months? I’ve seen people cite this slower-than-anticipated recovery, fear of expansion of U.S. sanctions, the importance that Xi places on the San Francisco APEC meeting in November, and maybe is hoped to meet with President Biden then; what to you seems to be entering into Beijing’s calculations with why they’re maybe more open to a flurry of diplomatic activity now with the U.S.?
Dennis: To me, it comes down to one word — economics. I think that Beijing has become very worried about many different issues involving American and European corporations, Japanese, and South Korean corporations as well. First of all, all this talk of supply chains and redirecting supply chains is very real. Companies are looking at other options. They are looking at Southeast Asia, Vietnam, India, Mexico. There is a very real concern on the Chinese side that these companies are feeling both political pressure in Washington, but just in general, a feeling that perhaps we should find some new places to be. Secondly, I do think that the kinds of restrictions that the administration has been putting on emerging technologies to China has hurt and is really biting the Chinese, and they’re wondering how far the administration’s going to go with all of this, and how big these restrictions become.
I think disappointing, from the Chinese point of view, is that on semiconductors in particular, our allies are going along with us on this. That is a real concern for the Chinese side. They’re worried about Europe. They’re worried that Europe is altering its stance, becoming more in line with the United States. Not completely, but the term de-risking came from the Europeans. The United States is now using that term, but it is one that the Europeans are using, and that has to be worrisome to the Chinese. In a period where the Chinese economy is not doing well, where they’re not getting the post-COVID boost that people thought they might, I think the fact that Xi Jinping met last Friday with Bill Gates says a lot. It says they are really courting the American business community. They want American business to stay. They’re looking at the major players to lobby Washington. I think this is the really central issue for the Chinese right now.
Kaiser: I think we’ve done a pretty good job now of covering sort of the backdrop to Blinken’s actual trip. One more question. What were your own expectations going into this? What, for you, would’ve constituted a successful meeting?
Dennis: I think that I did send my standards low on this, so I would call this successful. I do think there are a couple of areas where we’ve got to make more progress quickly, in particular, on the military-to-military side, this visit was disappointing because there seems to have been no movement. The Chinese military has always been difficult to deal with. It’s never been an easy organization for us. It’s a very insular organization and a very conservative organization. The fact that all of the military-to-military exchanges have been cut off, that even the defense attaché in Washington won’t meet with certain members of the office of the Secretary of Defense at this point is very worrisome because we see the Chinese military acting in ways that are aggressive in the South China Sea, in the Taiwan Strait, and we don’t really understand who is giving those orders.
Why is the Chinese military acting the way it is? Is it something that the theater commander is deciding on his own? Are these orders from Beijing? Or is there a certain amount of leeway that the military has to act on its own? I really worry about another accident like the April 2001 EP-3 incident. I was very much part of managing that crisis. That crisis turned out well, in part because no Americans had died. But I really worry if we had an accident in which Americans died. I think the mood in Washington, the general level of distrust of China would lead to a very awful situation and very difficult times in the relationship. So, we are in desperate need of renewing the military-to-military relationship in some way.
Kaiser: Just to be clear, in the Hainan incident, one Chinese fighter pilot did die. No Americans did. You’re correct.
Dennis: Absolutely. Right.
Kaiser: I’m curious, though, I think a lot of people have talked about the big disappointment being this lack of Chinese agreement to reestablish military-to-military coordination. Actually, this is a question that I have. I’ve seen it written about as cooperation. They said they declined to reestablish cooperation. Does that mean cooperation? Does that mean exchanges? Does it mean coordination? Does it mean direct communication? All of the above? What is meant here when the reports talk about China having declined to reinstate?
Dennis: I know people are very concerned about the hotlines and about the theater-level discussions over hotlines. Personally, I really don’t think those are important. Those really don’t work with the Chinese because Chinese commanders don’t have a lot of latitude in those kinds of phone calls to be very candid or forthright with their American counterparts. While people keep pointing to that, Secretary Austin points to that, I think that is actually a road that doesn’t lead anywhere. What I’m looking for, and what I think the administration should be looking for is renewal of the kinds of working groups that used to tackle problems like incidents at sea, rules of the road in military conduct when American forces and Chinese forces are in close proximity. There were two or three committees that were set up that would meet either annually or biannually.
These were important because these were genuine discussions about how do we deal with incidents, how do we communicate when there’s an incident, how do we avoid incidents at sea or in the air? Those are the kinds of communications we need to get back to. I’m not interested in trying to do military-to-military exchanges with the Chinese. I think that is another dead end at this moment. The strategic mistrust is too great to make those things work right now, but what we need are these real working-level serious discussions between experts on both sides.
Kaiser: That’s very clear now. Thank you. I want to talk about what specifically happened during the meetings, and let’s start with day one and Secretary Blinken’s arrival. When he was greeted at the airport, some people talked about a relatively low number of ranking officials who were there to meet him. What would normally be sent to greet an American Secretary of State?
Dennis: First of all, Kaiser, the Chinese are absolutely focused and very careful on protocol matters.
Kaiser: Yes.
Dennis: I remember dealing with the Chinese when President Hú Jǐntāo 胡锦涛 came to Washington. They came with a huge book of the history of presidential visits to the United States. They knew far more about what we had done in the past than we did. They were absolutely focused on making sure it was all done to the same standards, to the point of telling me where people should be seated at the meals because that was the precedent. So, they know what they’re doing on this front, their protocol people are very, very detail-oriented. What struck me was that when Blinken came off the plane and was on the tarmac, there was only one senior Chinese official greeting him. That is unusual. Usually, there’s a delegation of senior officials to greet the Secretary of State.
If you look at Pompeo’s visit, there were at least three officials on the tarmac; Clinton’s visit, there were several officials. It was clear that they were sending a bit of a signal to Blinken of their displeasure with him. I know, from private discussions with the Chinese, that they are very angry with Blinken personally. They were angered by his decision to suspend his visit. They felt in Munich that he had grandstanded publicly on the issue of whether China would sell lethal weapons to Russia. They felt that should have been done in private, not in public. Of course, they are still miffed by the Alaska meeting.
Kaiser: Anchorage. Yeah, absolutely.
Dennis: Where they felt that the United States side was, again, grandstanding. Their history with Blinken is not very positive. I think that one of the ways they showed it was the greeting at the airport.
Kaiser: But then that was followed by a very, very long first day of talks between Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Secretary Blinken, seven and a half hours, including the dinner. That was longer than usual. One senior U.S. official who attended said that Blinken and Qin didn’t just read one another, their talking points, that there was instead really substantial back and forth. We seemed to have avoided the kind of mutual browbeating that we saw at Anchorage. Of course, the press was ushered out of the room very quickly after the initial photos. What can we take away from that first long meeting?
Dennis: Well, I think you have to say that Xi Jinping must have given the order to Qin Gang to have a very substantive meeting with Blinken. The desire of Xi Jinping to make this visit go successfully I think influenced that Qin Gang session so that there was an airing of issues, there was a discussion of issues, there was a desire, as the Chinese keep saying, to get back to the principles that were established in Bali between President Biden and President Xi. I think that was the theme for the Chinese. Let’s get back to that point. I think that the Qin Gang discussion of a lot of different issues reflected that.
Kaiser: The commentary seems to have agreed that that meeting was fruitful. That Qin was very diplomatic. He didn’t use the opportunity to just repeatedly lay all the blame at the feet of the U.S. This was less the case to judge by the Chinese readout with the subsequent meeting the next day with Wang Yi. Do you discern some strategy here that it was just simple good cop, bad cop? Because Wang used that line about the downturn being rooted in the erroneous perception of China by the United States, which, by the way, I have my own thoughts about, but first, do you think that there was kind of a good cop, bad cop routine going on here?
Dennis: I think a little bit of that. I also think you have to remember that Qin Gang wants and needs a successful relationship with his counterpart. Foreign Minister to Secretary of State is an important channel, and Qin Gang has to prove that he can manage that channel. He’s a new foreign minister. In that regard, it was probably in Qin Gang’s very real personal interest to make sure that he had a successful visit with Blinken. On the other hand, Wang Yi was representing the Party, and the Party is pretty mad at the United States. The Party feels that the United States, as Xi Jinping said quite directly, is trying to suppress, encircle China, and contain China. From the Party point of view, they are looking at the strategic questions, the long-range strategic questions, and they don’t like where this is going. Wang Yi was representing the very official party point of view of the great mistrust they have of the United States, not just of Biden, but of the U.S. Congress and the General American attitude toward China. I think that was reflected in Wang Yi’s remarks.
Kaiser: Taiwan is obviously a very important issue for both sides. This was, as is always to be expected, very, very prominent in the Chinese readout. My sense was that Secretary Blinken, across the three meetings, said what he needed to say. There were the usual sort of affirmations of the three communiques and the six assurances, and that U.S. policy vis-à-vis Taiwan has not changed, which Beijing always wants to hear. Did you sense that there was anything different this time around when it came to Taiwan in any of the three meetings that he had?
Dennis: No, I think it is always useful. In my experience with the Chinese, they always want to hear the reassurances. In fact, I used to give President Bush a five-by-eight card to remind him exactly what our position on Taiwan was.
Kaiser: Biden needs one of those.
Dennis: It’s hard to remember. He would often say to the Chinese, “Do you really need me to repeat these? Can’t I just hand you the card?” And they’d say, “No, we need you to say them out loud.” There is something almost magical to the Chinese in uttering reassurance.
Kaiser: The incantation.
Dennis: The incantation. But I think there is a bit of the problem these days because while the Chinese like hearing the words, indeed they are seeing the United States doing a lot of things that they think are not consistent with our One-China policy such as having military trainers on Taiwan again, and the increased officiality of Taiwan. People refer to Bi-khim Hsiao in Washington now as Ambassador Bi-khim Hsiao. These were things we would never have done in past years that are being done by the administration. From the Chinese point of view, it’s good that Blinken was saying the words, but again, it’s back to this question of the Chinese wanting us to walk a walk in terms of Taiwan.
Kaiser: The other issue, of course, that we would like to hear words from China on is Ukraine, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. What China ended up saying at the end of its readout was something like both sides also exchanged views on major international and regional issues of common concern, which I think we all understand to refer to Ukraine. What is the thinking behind China wanting to relegate that issue to the realm of the unspoken rather than addressing Ukraine directly? Is it just simply hedging so that they can turn to Russia and say, “See, we didn’t talk about Ukraine directly”?
Dennis: The Chinese are never going to condemn Russia for its actions.
Kaiser: Yeah. We know this, yeah.
Dennis: From the Chinese point of view NATO has caused this difficulty. They buy the Russian argument on this. On the other hand, the Chinese are very uncomfortable with the situation in Ukraine. They know that if they go too far in support of Russia, such as lethal aid, they are really going to upset the Europeans. They worry about sanctions from the Europeans as well as the United States. They would rather just not discuss this issue right now. It’s too fraught for them. They are in a very uncomfortable strategic position on the issue. They did not support, for example, Putin’s integration of those territories in the East, the Donbas, and others. On the territorial issues, they are not in sync with Putin. From the Chinese point of view, it’s better not to discuss this issue at all than to get into a lengthy discussion where, frankly, the hypocrisy of the Chinese position becomes quite evident quite quickly.
Kaiser: We’ve talked about a flurry of diplomatic activity coming up for the rest of the year. We have, I think, seen now the Blinken trip smooth a way for Gina Raimondo from Commerce and for Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and for the Special Climate Envoy, John Kerry, to go by the end of the year. We’ll probably see the G presidents speed up in India at the G-20 in September, and of course, in November in San Francisco at APEC. But there’s also the domestic front. This is not going to play well with the GOP. We have an election year coming up next year. Mike Gallagher, who chairs the House Select Committee, that we’ve talked a lot about on this program, has used this talk of reviving some kind of engagement as a partisan cudgel is to be expected.
But the Biden administration finally seems to have lost its fear of this soft-on-China attack from the GOP, or it seems to me to have taken it less seriously. Maybe I’m just hoping that that’s so. What’s changed? Did they finally come to realize that no matter what they do with China, they’re going to get attacked or do they think that this relationship with China is just simply too consequential to even care so much about what the GOP does with it?
Dennis: I think there was a real concern and a valid concern on the part of the administration that this relationship was spiraling down way too far to the point, particularly with these recent, again, activities by the PLA crossing within 150 yards of an American ship, a thumping exercise done by a Chinese fighter against an American aircraft that these sort of things were signaling a very dangerous precipitous drop in the relationship, and that we could indeed have some sort of military clash. I think Biden himself was worried about this. I think he felt that it was time to put a floor under this to try and become more constructive in the relationship. I do want to say, Kaiser, that we have to be careful because one of the problems with this relationship is it is so fragile.
That means that another incident of some sort, and, of course, we can’t predict what that might be, but another incident could, again, put us in the tank. The lack of strategic trust between the two sides means that if something were to happen, an action by one or the other side that the other found egregious, we could be spiraling down again very easily. This thing is not on a stable footing yet.
Kaiser: You talked about this fundamental mistrust in a quote that you gave recently to the FT about the visit. You said that this seemed to end the period of deep acrimony, but it really didn’t do much to address this underlying issue of mistrust. Hard not to agree with that. You cited Chinese hangover, like many, many things that we’ve talked about earlier, the post fundamentals of the trip, the warnings aimed at Beijing at the Munich Security Conference by Blinken himself about supposed Chinese plans to supply war material to Russia. There is something also on the mistrust side that you alluded to as well, which, is, of course, the knee on the neck, as China sees it, for it’s tech oxygen supply culminating in October 7th and the announcement of really across the board bands on semiconductors and equipment used to manufacture them below a certain node size.
It’s too big a question to handle on this show, but maybe give us some thoughts about what are some of the ways in which the two countries can begin to rebuild trust. You talked about, in the intelligence channel of communication, how there is still residual trust there and that that may be a one hopeful area to begin, yeah?
Dennis: I think there are a number of areas that could move forward. Certainly, one of the simplest ones is to try and get a new ERA agreement. Right now, we are only at 9% of the flights that we had before COVID between the two countries. If you priced a ticket to Beijing, you know that it is exorbitant right now. I mean, when we look at it in terms of trying to send our students to China, the price tag is just out of this world. We need to get that down. We need a new agreement on journalists. It is egregious that so many American journalists have not been able to operate in China. That should be something that could easily be fixed on the Chinese side. You have the problem of the exit bans on Americans, the jailing of some Americans.
These things could be easy signals. Another area, totally different, that could be easy signals but an improvement in the relationship — there are about 10 major economic agreements between American companies and Chinese that have not been fulfilled because Beijing refuses to approve them. For example, Boeing has deals with the regional airlines in China, but for the last four years hasn’t been able to sell airplanes to China because the Chinese government has just not been willing to approve these deals. One of the ways that Xi Jinping could signal a more positive relationship is to simply allow those deals to go through. Mastercard wants to issue in China credit cards through a Chinese bank, and they have a joint venture partner. This was approved all the way to the top of the system except for the final approval a number of years ago. Beijing could easily do that. There are a lot of areas in which the Chinese could show forward progress in the relationship.
Kaiser: And what about us?
Dennis: There are things that we can do. For example, the outbound investment executive order could be extremely restrictive on American companies or it could be rather flexible, and really only involve the companies simply informing the United States government of their investments as opposed to having to get pre-approvals, which would be a bureaucratic nightmare, frankly. There are things that the United States could do in terms of easing up, obviously on the tariffs, and to change the tariff regime in some way. That seems to have been difficult in the past, but perhaps moving forward; actually, it is a deflationary thing to do on the U.S. side. In some ways for the U.S. economy, it would be a good thing. I think there are a number of areas that each side can look at to signal to the other positive movement. I think some of these will be deliverables for APEC and the meetings between the two presidents, so they may hold them back until November. We’ll have to see.
Kaiser: That’s excellent. Let’s hope that all of these things move forward as you’ve described. The whole world, of course, was watching secretary Blinken’s trip to Beijing. I’m guessing there was a collective sigh of relief in many capitals around the world. Will U.S. allies in Europe and East Asia, countries of ASEAN, and nations of the global south, will they all feel a little more room to maneuver now and maybe chafe a little less under this pressure they’ve all complained about, about having to pick sides or to tow the American line too closely, or the Chinese line?
Dennis: Yes.
Kaiser: Will this give people a little more room to maneuver diplomatically on their own?
Dennis: Yeah, I think so. Some of the countries have been very clear about this. The Singaporeans, for one, have been quite vocal about the fact that you really can’t ask people to take sides in this issue. I think Singaporean leaders said, both nations are in our region for the next hundred years and are not going anywhere, and we need to have good relations with both of them. The Europeans, while they are with us on de-risking, are not with us on some of the harder-line intense competition ideas. I think that seeing the United States and China trying to work back to a modus vivendi that is a little less acrimonious, they’ll breathe a sigh of relief.
Kaiser: Dennis Wilder, it was so wonderful to have you on the show, and it was great seeing you in New York a few weeks ago too.
Dennis: Yeah. Thank you. I listen to your show all the time.
Kaiser: Oh, thank you. That’s very kind of you. Let’s move on now to recommendations. But first, I want to quickly remind everybody that if you like the work that we’re doing with Sinica and you want to support the work that we’re doing, the best way you can do that is by subscribing to China Access. As a subscriber, you will get an early version of this show, and you’ll, of course, get our daily Dispatch newsletter, as well as access to all of the paywalled material on our website. So, become a member. It’s very affordable and very much worth it. All right, onto recommendations. Dennis, you gave me a preview of what you’re going to recommend, and it sounds excellent. What do you have for us?
Dennis: There’s a new book out that people ought to pay attention to, and it’s called Hand-Off. This is a volume, very unusual. President Bush, at the end of the administration that I was in, in 2008, told all of us on the National Security Council that he wanted us to leave a record of what we had done in foreign policy for the next administration. Of course, it was a Republican administration moving to a Democratic administration, so that was very unusual. He had us write these on our own without the help of any other part of the U.S. government. They were to be candid documents. They were to explain the administration’s policies. What National Security Advisor, Steve Hadley, has done recently was he was able to take these top secret documents and declassify them much ahead of the usual schedule of declassification.
For me, I had three of the memos out of the 30 memos. I wrote one on Bush-China policy, one on American strategic architecture in East Asia, and one on North Korea. In addition to our original memos, which were largely left untouched by the sensors by the way. There are, also in the volume, studies by prominent exports, giving a report card of how did we do — what did we get right? What did we get wrong? Those are really interesting reading. For historians, for students, for other academics, these are very important documents. In fact, I spoke with a professor from China about this, and he immediately wanted to order copies… that I will use with my students. I love to have declassified American documents. I wish we had some of those on the Chinese side, to be honest with you. Here’s a real opportunity for people to get a glimpse inside the policymaking process at a very high level. I hope that people will buy the book, enjoy it, and reflect on it because it is a very real touch tone on American foreign policy, not only in East Asia, but globally.
Kaiser: That sounds amazing. Hand-Off, edited by former National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley. All right, thanks so much, Dennis. That’s a fantastic recommendation. I want to do something a little more frivolous. I want to recommend the current season of the Cosmic Library Podcast from Lit Hub, Literary Hub. This season they’re focusing on Journey to the West. I was interviewed on that show talking about the classic Chinese novel, but really about the period in which the story is set. It’s written in the Ming, but it takes place in the Tang. They wanted me to talk about Tang Cosmopolitanism and a bunch of other stuff, and to talk about my relationship with the Sun Wukong story, the Journey to the West, Xī Yóu Jì. It’s a really fun series. So far it’s got lots of people interviewed. It’s got Julia Lovell’s translation, her reading a lot of passages from her translation, which is called Monkey King.
It’s a very quirky show, full of tangentially related topics, often some almost unrelated tangential topics, but it’s quite a bit of fun, and it’s very nicely produced. So, give that a listen, The Cosmic Library podcast from Lit Hub. One last thing. I want to make a kind of mea culpa here. I spoke very dismissively about a book by C. V. Wedgwood about The Thirty Years War in a recent episode. I take it back. That book, I got an email from somebody who, first of all, pointed out that C. V. Wedgwood wasn’t, as I said, some guy. It was actually a woman, and a gay woman, a British gay woman who wrote about it. She was not a professionally trained historian. She wrote it when she was only 28 years old. I went back last night just sort of in a spirit of what? Guilt, I guess, and re-read the introduction from that book.
I had it on my Kindle. And I can’t believe I used the word stodgy. It’s actually really, really great and very sly. It reminds me actually of Will and Ariel Durant in this, like the easy narrative flow of it. Anyway, I shouldn’t have been dismissive of it. It’s an excellent book. So, thank you very much to the listener who wrote to me to correct me. All right. Dennis, thank you once more. Make sure that you follow Dennis Wilder on Twitter. He’s a really, really interesting guy. It’s DennisW5 — Dennis W, the number 5. Very much worth your read if you’re on Twitter, but you shouldn’t be. You have better things to do with your time. Anyway, thank you once more, and for doing this on such short notice even.
Dennis: It was terrific. Enjoyed it. All right.
Kaiser: The Sinica Podcast is powered by The China Project and is a proud part of the Sinica Network. Our show is produced and edited by me, Kaiser Kuo. We would be delighted if you would drop us an email at sinica@thechinaproject.com or just give us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts as this really does help people discover the show. Meanwhile, follow us on Twitter or on Facebook at @thechinaproj, and be sure to check out all of the shows on the Sinica Network. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week. Take care.
