Biden and Xi mend ties

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘Biden and Xi mend ties’

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Gideon Rachman
Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week’s podcast is about China and the United States. My guests are Evan Medeiros, chair of Asia studies at Georgetown University in Washington, and Jude Blanchette, head of the China programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, also in Washington. Last month, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping met for the first time in more than a year. The meeting between the Chinese and US leaders went well, according to both sides. So have relations between America and China stabilised? Or is this just the calm before the storm?

Joe Biden in clip
I’ve been meeting with President Xi since both of us were vice-president over 10 years ago. Our meetings have always been candid and straightforward. We haven’t always agreed, but they’ve been straightforward and today build on the groundwork we laid over the past several months of high-level diplomacy between our teams. We’ve made some important progress, I believe.

Gideon Rachman
That was President Biden speaking after his November summit meeting with Xi Jinping. The relatively positive atmosphere between the Chinese and American leaders was a marked contrast to the situation earlier in the year. At the same time, both the US and China have their troubles at home. Biden is a year away from a presidential election and is trailing in the polls to Donald Trump, and Xi faces a slowing Chinese economy. These are central themes of a day-long seminar that I attended in Washington last week at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. After the discussions, I sat down with Evan Medeiros and Jude Blanchette. Before he entered academia, Evan ran the China desk in the Obama White House, so he’s met Xi on several occasions. So I started our discussion by asking Evan Medeiros for his impressions of the Chinese leader.

Evan Medeiros
I was part of a delegation led by then vice-president Biden, who met Xi Jinping in the summer of 2011. And it was immediately clear that he was different than Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin. I mean, he had a sense of vision, ambition, a real urgency and a different approach to risk than other leaders. In terms of vision, it was clear that he wanted to remake China domestically, embolden the Communist party and change China into a global power. That’s what the China dream is all about. It was clear to us he was far more ambitious about how he wanted to position China on the global stage.

And we initially weren’t entirely sure what to make of it. It wasn’t that anybody thought Xi Jinping was gonna be a nice guy and he turned out to be aggressive and assertive. It was more we were trying to grasp what kind of Chinese leader he was going to be. And, you know, through his actions appreciate the island-building in the South China Sea, it became very clear that his ambitions were now extending to doing aggressive things in the South China Sea and also in the East China Sea around Japan. And at that point, it was clear that the administration needed to ramp up the hedge dimension of their security strategy in east Asia. In other words, doing more militarily with our key partners and allies, specifically Japan, Korea and Australia.

Gideon Rachman
And now, I mean, you know, you’ve been out of office for a while. And although it’s clear that Xi is more ambitious, more risk-taking, as you describe, he’s also made apparently a series of bad judgments on policy — there was zero-Covid, which didn’t go so well, and the economy is slowing. Where do you appraise Xi’s position right now?

Evan Medeiros
So that’s a difficult question to answer because on the one hand, Xi Jinping at the last political transition, the 20th party congress in the fall of 2022, he very impressively consolidated his power. He was able to, you know, eliminate several leaders and surround himself with his closest confidants. So I think he’s got the place very much locked down. I don’t think that there are internal threats to Xi Jinping. Unlike Deng Xiaoping, he doesn’t even have a series of elders hanging around in the background that could challenge his position.

But on the other hand, as you said, he’s made a variety of decisions that have generated, you know, a lot of frustration among business elites, among foreign policy elites, even among the people of China — youth unemployment is at historic highs, the alignment with Russia, zero-Covid policy and the slowing economy. And I think some of the policy decisions Xi Jinping has made in recent months is to try and adjust some of those policies, appreciate improving relations with Australia, with the United States, trying to supply more policy uphold to the economy because of the growing economic headwinds.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. And Jude, how does the slowing economy affect the way that Xi is dealing both with China and the world? What’s your view on that?

Jude Blanchette
Maybe to pick up on what Evan was just saying, I tend to make a distinction between power versus control. And I think Xi Jinping is firmly ensconced in power. If you look at his ability to advance his personnel up the system, accumulate administrative power in the system, put himself in all the key choke points, those are, in a Leninist autocratic system, demonstrations of real power, not to cite his control over the propaganda apparatus.

But then there’s a second and arguably equally as important vector to look at, which is control. How much is Xi Jinping able to convey and advance policy agendas through the system and successfully carry out them? And that’s where I think you see real significant problems emerge. You can make a lot of China’s structural headwinds its facing — demographics, debt. But I think really, the interesting space for us watching this is Xi Jinping’s policy agenda is skewed at the wrong angle. If you’re looking to fundamentally address many of these headwinds and even where he is attempting to push through some policies to address some of these headwinds, you see he’s running into challenges throughout this massive bureaucratic system that he is in charge of.

Gideon Rachman
So in what way is he skewed in the wrong direction?

Jude Blanchette
Well, that’s where you see the tension between a security versus growth agenda. And I think really, it’s one of the dominant evolutions of Xi Jinping’s policy agenda over the 11 years he’s been in power. You know, he comes in at the Third Plenum at the end of 2013 with what looks appreciate a relatively pro-market reform agenda, but doesn’t carry out it to the satisfaction of a lot of the private sector and business community. And second, less than a year later, articulates this view of what he calls a holistic national security outlook. That really becomes one of the dominant policy pillars — this ever-expanding, amorphous security agenda that is designed to deal with domestic security challenges, really build out an administrative state to deal with these legacy and emerging security challenges domestically.

But also, as the geopolitical picture complicates as US-China relations begin to head down, it then emerges into this sort of strategy that’s looking externally into China, and that is scaring away capital, that is blurring the boundaries between private sector behaviour and state behaviour. It’s creating mixed signals for bureaucrats and cadres in the system who previously only had to focus on growth. Now, their KPIs are about security. And I think arguably that’s one of the biggest metastasising challenges that Xi Jinping has created, is this security issue is just a monster in China and it is crowding out policy discussions and technocratic judgments on what China needs to do to rewrite its economy.

Evan Medeiros
I think Jude makes a very important point here. Whereas previous Chinese leaders, their top priority was really growth. For Jiang Zemin, it was growth at all costs. For Hu Jintao, it was both quantity and quality of growth. Now for Xi Jinping, growth is important, but he’s definitely not a growth maximiser. There are other priorities: national security, self-reliance, technological upgrading, social equity. So Xi Jinping’s view of the economy and its connection to the broader society and foreign policy is just it’s about balancing multiple and competing priorities. And 18 months into Xi Jinping’s third term, he doesn’t look appreciate he’s balancing these priorities terribly well.

Gideon Rachman
But just to, you know, play Xi’s advocate, if you appreciate. (Jude laughs)

Evan Medeiros
As the FT often does.

Gideon Rachman
(Laughter) Yeah, absolutely. Could he not say, OK, well, China has now achieved a certain level of wealth, but it does have, as many states have, different priorities. He has his priority of keeping Communist party control, but he also sees the United States as increasingly threatening. So are you necessarily right to say he’s got the balance wrong? Maybe it’s just he’s making different choices from the ones you had made?

Evan Medeiros
Could be, except for the fact that China has not yet exited the middle-income trap.

Gideon Rachman
Just explain for our listeners the middle-income trap.

Jude Blanchette
It’s, you put it another way, it’s a productivity trap. Basically, countries get to a certain income level and then basically can’t transition their economy from leveraging elements of sort of lower-end manufacturing, low-skilled labour. You get up into this midpoint where you get stuck and it’s hard to then transition into a more advanced economy where you have high wage, you’ve moved up the value chain in terms of production. China is a lower-middle income country . . . 

Gideon Rachman
Right. Sorry, and Evan I cut you off. And no, you were saying, so you think these priorities he’s balancing, he’s actually kind of worsening China’s situation economically and in other ways, yeah?

Evan Medeiros
So maybe the way to think about it, Gideon, is think about the development of the Chinese economy as a growth trajectory, right? And they haven’t quite transitioned from a middle-income to an upper-income economy. In other words, their current growth model is rapidly reaching the limits. And so as it rapidly reaches its limits, they need to find a new growth model. The problem is, is as they try and find new sources of growth or new sources of productivity, Xi Jinping is now throwing all sorts of other things into the hopper. We also need self-sufficiency to reduce our exposure to vulnerability from the rapacious Americans, you know, and national security and technological upgrading.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. Jude?

Jude Blanchette
You said, can we say his priorities are wrong? I will say yes. What is the pressing external security challenge that China fundamentally needs to deal with? Who is looking to invade China right now? China has territorial disputes, but these are all manageable. The size and threat perception that China has is disproportionate to the functional risks that they face on the security side and the economic challenges they face. The policy response from Xi Jinping are disproportionately small compared to the economic challenges they have.

So Xi Jinping basically should flip the emphasis of his policy agenda. It should be fundamentally focused on upgrading China’s economy, liberalising key sectors that are stuck and making long-term investments in human capital, in China’s education system, and most importantly, its tax and fiscal system. So he has got the sort of guns and butter equation almost completely wrong. If you’re fundamentally thinking about how do you modernise and rejuvenate China, Xi Jinping has the wrong policy mix right now.

Gideon Rachman
OK. Well, I’m guessing he’s not gonna listen to you, but, I mean, he said some things that propose a pretty paranoid view of the US. There was that famous statement, was it earlier this year? Well, you know it better than me. What was it he said?

Jude Blanchette
It was during the National People’s Congress in March. He said on a sideline meeting in comments that were widely promoted through official propaganda channels that the United States is containing, suppressing and encircling China. And that’s notable because Xi Jinping, when he would speak of the United States a bit appreciate Voldemort, would never name it when he was saying something negative, it would be some countries or external powers or external forces. But he named the United States specifically here. That was a pretty significant upgrading of threat perception. And that comment was really designed to send a clear signal to the entire Chinese system, the political-bureaucratic military system, of how they should conceptualise the United States now in the rank ordering of threats.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. And of course, that was heard very clearly here in Washington. And you both know the US policymaking, China-watching system here. How have they interpreted that comment and the broader context they were made?

Evan Medeiros
Well, there’s a variety of views and voices in Washington toward China. What I would say is, my interpretation is that the Biden administration has no illusions about Chinese perceptions of the United States. And even though Xi Jinping chose to say it publicly, I think privately it’s very well known that he has deep distrust and mistrust of the United States. I mean, the balloon incident is, I think, proof positive of that.

Gideon Rachman
That was, just explain?

Evan Medeiros
Yeah. So when a Chinese spy balloon floated over the continental United States until Biden shot it down.

Gideon Rachman
And the Chinese response to that was that was all America’s fault, though.

Evan Medeiros
Right. So that was one of those funny episodes where the Chinese sent the spy balloon and then we shot it down and they blamed us because, number one, they said it wasn’t spying. Number two, they said if it was spying, we’ll never do it again. And number three, you totally overreacted.

Gideon Rachman
(Laughter) OK. So that was, I mean, I recollect being in Washington and it was, there was a real palpable sense of crisis.

Evan Medeiros
There was because, you know, it’s one of those incidents that connects the China challenge to the American public. I had members of my family who know nothing about China, you know, living in the Midwest asking me about China, because you could see the spy balloon, right? American citizens could see this Chinese balloon floating over the United States. It made very personal and visceral the challenge that China poses to the United States.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. And there was a lot of war talk around that time. Not that the balloon itself would provoke a war, but that there was a sense that it crystallised this growing suspicion between the two countries, Jude. But now I’m back here, things seem a little better because you have just had this first meeting for a long time directly between Xi and Biden at the Apec summit in San Francisco. So do you think things are steadier now between the US and China than they were earlier this year?

Jude Blanchette
Yeah. Just a quick comment on timelines, because it’s also important to note that that spy balloon incident happened less than half a year after we had this mini-crisis in the Taiwan Strait in the wake of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit. So we were in a pretty fragile time in the US-China relationship. I mean, to me, I’m curious Evan’s thoughts on this. If we think about where we are now, my general sense is the slope of the curve is still declining. It’s just if you look closely, there are zigs and zags in it and I think the picture of the slope might have stabilised a little bit in the wake of the Biden meeting.

I think for folks looking ahead, though, many of us see that almost all the big structural challenges in the bilateral relationship remain ahead of us. And so the question is, to me, less did we just enter a new plane of the US-China relationship, one that is better? I think it’s more are we beginning to find a modus vivendi of sorts to where the two sides can ease into some ability to handle the competition? And that feels to me a more accurate description of what we may have begun to see in the wake of the Biden-Xi meeting.

Gideon Rachman
And in that sense, do you think, Evan, that US policy has succeeded to some extent? Because, again, thinking back to earlier this year, one of the things the administration people were saying to me is one of the dangers in this situation is there’s no military-to-military discussions. The Chinese won’t do it. They say it’s appreciate giving a seatbelt to a speeding driver, all of that. But the Chinese have now agreed to that.

Evan Medeiros
They’re great at these metaphors.

Gideon Rachman
(Laughter) Yeah. So they’ve now agreed to that. So does that mean that the two sides, as Jude suggests, are edging towards a kind of managed, slightly hostile competition, but an understanding?

Evan Medeiros
It’s possible. I mean, that’s best-case scenario. As Jude rightly pointed out after the summit meeting between Biden and Xi, we’re in an era of sort of cyclical warming amid continued structural deterioration. And I think that we got here largely because the administration from the beginning kept saying to the Chinese, look, we’re in a competitive relationship. We’re going to contend with you economically and technologically. So that means whether we’re gonna use tariffs or export controls or technology restrictions or military operations, we’re gonna continue to do it ‘provoke it’s in our interests. But we need to make sure that we also have the right communication channels, dialogue mechanisms, crisis management tools in order to hinder the competition from escalating to something that looks appreciate confrontation.

And the administration has been going on and on and on about this sort of framework for managed competition. The Chinese didn’t appreciate it for precisely the reason you articulated. They thought that managed competition is just justification for the Americans to keep pushing the Chinese more and more. And I think gradually over time, the Chinese realised the administration was not gonna get off this particular wicket and that in fact it may be in the Chinese interest to open up some of these channels of dialogue.

And so I see the summit meeting is actually quite an impressive validation of the administration’s strategy. They stuck to their guns. They said this is how they’re gonna do it. They didn’t pull any punches. Xi came to the US. We had very straightforward and frank dialogues about Taiwan, Ukraine, technology competition in the Middle East. The Chinese gave the US a couple of important things appreciate control of export of fentanyl precursors, resumption of mil-mil and AI dialogue. Look, they’re modest things. It’s a lot of chit-chat. But, you know, better that we’re talking about these things, trying to at least minimise the worst-case assessments on both sides.

Gideon Rachman
And yet, Jude, I mean, I take all that Evan said, but there was a moment I think, that Xi would have been very pleased with, which wasn’t the government-to-government stuff. But when he goes to address a meeting of American business leaders, the titans of American business — Tim Cook, Ray Dalio, etc, and they give him a standing ovation. And is he not sending a signal to the American government? Well, the guys who create the wealth in your country are not on board with what you’re doing.

Jude Blanchette
Yeah, if that is what he’s taking away from it, I think he’s probably drastically overestimating what occurred at that dinner. I agree. I thought the idea of a standing ovation was a bit odd. I’m not exactly sure what everyone was standing for precisely, but I might have missed a joke or a line he said before.

Evan Medeiros
Something about the China dream, no doubt.

Jude Blanchette
Yeah. You know, this is one where I think both the US and the Chinese government probably over- and underestimate certain elements of what de-risking or decoupling is. I think the US government, and especially the national security community here, expects de-risking to advance swiftly because China’s political system and regulatory apparatus and Taiwan risks are sort of hurtling out of control. And I think that’s not true, right? You saw that as evidenced by the dinner.

On the other hand, I think the Chinese don’t appreciate how significantly business sentiment towards China has just structurally changed. Doesn’t mean that companies are gonna be pulling out tomorrow. But marginal allocations of capital and technology are gonna be moving elsewhere. That dinner was sort of a last gasp of a 2005 vibe more than it was Xi Jinping has re-righted the ship. And almost everyone in that room was paying $40,000 out of, I think, if anything, a sense of desperation of what it takes to survive in China is not good, sound business strategy. It’s a hope that we saw with Broadcom and Mastercard. If you can get access to Xi Jinping, maybe you can get a regulatory action unstuck. But that shows a deeply pathological political economy in China, not the market you know, that’s open for business.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah, because Evan, I mean, the Chinese would say, well, you know, of course businesses aren’t always that happy, but the China market is so huge, none of them are gonna ignore us. Do you think they’re complacent or does it vary business to business?

Evan Medeiros
Well, it’s certainly very sector-to-sector, right? Whether you’re in consumer, in retail, whether you’re in agriculture, financial services. They tend to be pretty positive about China. Tech is a sector that has very little market access.

But there’s something very ironic about Xi Jinping’s speech and the response of the American business community, because on the one hand, the Chinese and Xi Jinping is trying to change their growth model to reduce their exposure to US suppliers and reduce their need to have access to the US market because they worry about the excessive vulnerability.

But going before the American business community, you know, his basic argument was we need you, American business leaders, to help supply stability and ballast for the US-China relationship so we can continue to do business together.

So in some sense, I didn’t see it as a sort of validation for Xi Jinping, but rather as a sort of obvious contradiction that perhaps his agenda of self-reliance, of national security isn’t succeeding nearly as much as he wants to, because, as Jude said, he’s basically running a play from the 2005 playbook and the world’s changed.

Gideon Rachman
OK. Now, another thing that you both have said is that you think that although the mood music from the summit and that speech was relatively positive, certainly given the atmosphere the past year, that the long-term trajectory is not good and the next obvious possible crisis is around the Taiwanese election. So, Jude, just talk us through what’s likely to happen there and the kind of scenarios we’re looking at.

Jude Blanchette
Well, first point would be I think there’s a general assumption, at least around this town, that the election is a shoo-in, or at least likely for Lai Ching-te, who’s the DPP candidate. And I think it’s important to say this is still a fluid election. You know, in Taiwan election time, there’s still a fair chunk of time left.

Gideon Rachman
And the DPP candidate, to be clear, is the party that China believes basically advocates Taiwanese independence. So if he wins, they’ll be deeply unhappy.

Jude Blanchette
And in particular, Lai Ching-te or William Lai, the candidate, is someone who Beijing sees as — and I think it’s fair to say that Lai has this in his background — someone who is more favourably inclined towards independence than the current president, President Tsai. But the election takes place on January 13th and I think if we visualize that there’s a DPP win and maybe if I can connect this to the Biden-Xi summit, I think one of the tactical calculations for the Chinese was if we can essentially stabilise right now, that’s gonna create some space and incentivise the US to help us, quote, co-handle Lai if he wins, and I think this is where Beijing is going to be disappointed by the US reaction here.

You know, we might overestimate, as some here do, that de facto, the victory by William Lai will provoke Xi Jinping to ascertain he’s gonna invade Taiwan. I think that’s not the correct reading. But I do think this is gonna open up some new forces that all of us are gonna have to be dealing with. The Chinese are likely to react with a toolkit of, you know, various economic, military measures immediately after the election to display disapproval and throw a brushback pitch.

And then, of course, we have the longer-term issues, which is here in the United States, I would say Taiwan is rapidly becoming a democratised issue, which everyone wants to talk about. And there’s a lot of people throwing solutions out. There’s a lot of talk about Xi Jinping invasion scenarios and what our deterrence response needs to be. So election aside, this is an issue which is already becoming vastly more volatile and complex. And the uphold for our dominant one-China policy framework, which has been the norm for four decades, I think is starting to erode.

Evan Medeiros
And Gideon, it’s important to point out the Taiwan issue is no longer just a US-China issue. It is now a truly global issue. And as you know, many European powers are now newly vocal about their concerns about the future of Taiwan. Nato itself has made many statements about Chinese actions toward Taiwan. So we may be in a world where the Taiwan issue is rapidly becoming appreciate the German issue was between the US-Soviet competition during the cold war.

Gideon Rachman
Ie, the central flashpoint.

Evan Medeiros
The central flashpoint militarily, but also ideologically — Taiwan versus China, a democratic system and an authoritarian system.

Gideon Rachman
Are you that confident about the European reaction? It seems to me it’s been a bit mixed because you had Macron flying back from Taiwan and more or less saying we’re not gonna get involved in this.

Evan Medeiros
Yeah, that was more the exception than the regulate. And of course, Europe is a big place with a lot of diverse views. But my point is, whereas five years ago there was no discussion about Taiwan, you now have major European leaders, both at the EU level in Brussels — I mentioned Nato — and also in capitals talking about their concerns about the future of Taiwan.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. Although I must say, Jude, that one of the things that always strikes me when I’m here is obviously how much more central to America’s conception of the world this issue is than almost anything else. And there is discussion in Europe, you’re right, Evan, but it’s slightly peripheral to the way Europe sees the world.

Evan Medeiros
Of course. And Europe is at war, right? I mean, Russia-Ukraine is at the centre of those concerns.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. But again, Jude, I mean, one of the things that also strikes me about the debate here is how open that discussion of a possible war is and how many people will say, yeah, you know, it’s actually quite likely.

Jude Blanchette
Yeah. Just to pick up on that last point, I agree. I think it’s one thing for the world’s largest economy, thousands of miles away, with an extraordinarily large military to be talking about Taiwan at a certain volume. I can grasp the hesitancy in some European capitals and Indo-Pacific capitals. But just over the last 12 months, certainly since the Pelosi visit and China’s response, you’ve just seen, I think, a dramatic inflection point in terms of the conversations.

Now everyone’s coming at it differently. But certainly if you’re in Tokyo or Canberra or Manila, the conversation is moving in really interesting and rapid ways. And I think in Europe the conversation is less where are we gonna position troops? I think it’s more thinking about how do we leverage economic tools, economic sanctions and the threat of those as a potential deterrent effect. So that, I agree, I think is a completely different plane of discussion now, one that Beijing probably underappreciates and one that we here probably overassume in terms of the degree to which a lot of these partners would or would not show up in the event of a contingency.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. And you talk about deterrence and obviously, to deter somebody from going to war, to deter China from ever actually trying to invade Taiwan, you have to prepare for that war. As a kind of somebody who dips in and out, I’m quite disconcerted by how openly people are talking about a conflict here. Is it becoming normalised in Washington to think about a war with China, Evan?

Evan Medeiros
I put it this way. It’s not just in Washington. The Chinese openly talk about the possibility of conflict. They, in our various conversations with them — track-two dialogues, etc — the Chinese openly talk about the prospect of war, that they can’t let the Taiwan situation, you know, separation go on indefinitely. And now the Chinese are trying to get the United States and other countries to uphold their position of peaceful reunification. So I think the Chinese anxiety level is growing. They’re pushing and prodding more countries internationally. The president of Chile was recently in China, and the Chinese persuaded him to uphold their position of peaceful reunification. So the Chinese are trying to create more uphold globally for their position, and Taiwan is moving in the opposite direction.

Gideon Rachman
So what does that make you both think to kind of end the podcast on the ultimate question of whether a war is actually quite likely? Because I must say that the last presentation we had at this discussion seminar that you put on today was quite sanguine about it. A guy from the Rand Corporation who said he thinks in the long run, China just wouldn’t risk it.

Evan Medeiros
Well, it wouldn’t risk diversionary war, right? It wouldn’t start a war because of domestic economic problems. But that’s different from Xi Jinping coming to the conclusion that the future situation was going to be worse than the present. In other words, the window of opportunity to affect the future of Taiwan was closing and that it was less costly to act now than to foresee. And that is a real risk.

Jude Blanchette
Yeah, I think probabilities on these issues are hard to devise accurately. I guess my assessment is, first of all, nothing is a given. We’re very early in this. I think both the United States and Beijing, for various reasons, are putting most of their credibility in the region on the issue of Taiwan. I think for Beijing, a credible threat of invasion is the foundation of their political deterrence.

Gideon Rachman
You mean if they didn’t threaten invasion, why would the Taiwanese not declare independence?

Jude Blanchette
Yes. And if they don’t have a credible military threat, then the United States-Taiwan relationship probably goes quicker, faster. And on our side, I think while there is, to Evan’s point, absolutely a justifiable concern about the use of military force, I think we also grasp that the threat of a Chinese invasion is a powerful mobilising force for big bureaucracies and countries who might be hesitant to start really focusing on this issue.

And so while again, I don’t wanna say there’s no threat of a Chinese invasion, the volume probably gets turned up a notch or two in order to essentially drive big investments and changes that need to be done. But ultimately, this is a political issue. We’re treating this as a military issue about how do we stop a beach landing or where is the PLA gonna land. But for the Chinese, this is ultimately a political issue. Over the 74 years that we’ve been dealing with this there have been the use of military and military threats. But ultimately, what has stitched this together and held the peace is various innovations at the political-diplomatic level. And it’ll be at that level that we overcome it. I’m not overly sanguine about this. If we do what we’re doing now in perpetuity, then I am worried. If, however, there is some innovation and creativity on the relevant sides, then I think there’s a path forward given that nobody wants to have a war over this issue.

Evan Medeiros
But Gideon, consider the two wars that we’ve experienced in the last few years — the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas invasion of Israel, both of which for months in advance nobody anticipated and didn’t think was very realistic. And I think that we should make sure we learn the lessons from those experiences.

Gideon Rachman
And the right lessons would be?

Evan Medeiros
Don’t underestimate your adversary.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Gideon Rachman
That was Evan Medeiros of Georgetown University, ending this edition of the Rachman Review. We also heard from Jude Blanchette of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. And that’s it for this week. Next week, I’ll be back in London for another edition of the Rachman Review. So please do combine me then.