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The Rise and Fall of US-China Engagement with David Shambaugh | China Considered | Hoover Institution · China Considered

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>> Elizabeth Economy: Welcome to China Considered, a podcast that brings fresh
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insight and informed discussion to one of the most consequential issues of our time,
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how China's changing and changing the world.
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I'm Liz Economy Hargrove, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the program on the U.S.,
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China and the World at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
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Today I am delighted to welcome my good friend, Professor David Shambaugh.
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David is the Gaston Seeger professor of Asian Studies, Political Science and
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International affairs at George Washington University.
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He's also the award-winning author or editor of 35 books,
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including his most recent book that we'll be discussing today,
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Breaking the How China Won and Lost America.
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David, welcome.
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>> David Shambaugh: Hi Liz, good to see you.
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Be with you.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: So you've been studying China since the 1970s when you
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were a college student.
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That's really before I think China became such a hot topic in international
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relations or such an important part of the US Foreign policy discourse.
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What drew you to study China at that time?
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>> David Shambaugh: Well, I was an undergraduate at that
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time at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and
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I had a little bit of previous exposure to China, you might say,
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in that my older brother had been in the American army in Taiwan and
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I spent a summer with him, gosh,
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the summer of 1960 in the middle the height of the Taiwan Straits crisis.
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So I had a kind of subliminal memory of Taiwan anyway in Hong Kong,
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although obviously never been to the mainland.
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But I found myself as an undergraduate at University of New Mexico and
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I took a course called the Chinese Revolution and
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Maoist Thought, taught by a fiery Marxist professor.
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And I took a history class from a cultural historian on modern Chinese history.
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So between those two, I was sort of intrigued.
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And then I took a gap year between sophomore and junior year,
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went around the world all the way.
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And when I got to Hong Kong, in fact,
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I met a British person who had just come out of so called Red China.
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Turns out she'd only been up to the Guangzhou Trade Fair.
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But that intrigued me.
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So I took the train up the next day to the border to Lo Wu and
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looked at all this, you know,
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miles of barbed wire fencing to keep the mainlanders from escaping to Hong Kong.
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And I it kind of puzzled me what is going on on the other side of these fences.
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Turns out that's where Shenzhen is today.
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Then it was just rice paddy.
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So once I returned to New Mexico, I decided I really wanted to study China.
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And that's not the place to study China.
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Latin America, yes.
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China, no.
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So I transferred to George Washington University and completed My undergraduate
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and East Asian Studies there, that was the origins of my interest.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Stay with your brother and then a later trip.
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And so just out of curiosity, when you were at the University of New Mexico and
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you took that college class by the fiery Marxist,
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were you at all persuaded by the Marxist sort of thinking?
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Did it sound attractive at all at the time?
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>> David Shambaugh: Absolutely.
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I think I might have even considered myself a Marxist at that point in time.
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I was very inclined towards [COUGH] Maoist thought and Marxist socialism.
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And this fiery Marxist professor who'd done his own PhD at Berkeley,
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he tried to simulate the Cultural Revolution, or part of it in our class.
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We had small group criticism sessions.
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And so, yeah, I was taken by the whole Maoist experiment.
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And then I got to gw, which was just the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum.
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This was the Institute of Sino Soviet Studies, which is very Cold War ish.
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And I studied under some very significant professors, Franz Michael,
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Gaston Seeger, Harold Hinton, William Johnson.
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But these were individuals who were to the far right on the China political
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spectrum in the United States.
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So I went from far left to far right.
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It was rather jarring experience, but that's how I got started.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: And then you ended up at Michigan, kind of in the middle,
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maybe, right?
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>> David Shambaugh: Well, interestingly, I actually between George Washington and
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Michigan.
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I first worked for about two and a half years in the government,
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first in the State Department for about one year.
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And then I met Michael Oxenberg and he was in the National Security Council then,
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in charge of obviously China, but also Indochina,
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which is how I met him because I was the Indochina desk officer in the Bureau
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of Intelligence and Research at INR in the State Department.
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And he asked me and shocked me and said,
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how would you like to come over to the White House and be my assistant?
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And I almost dropped my coffee at the time and said, well, yes, of course.
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Long story short, I went over to the NSC 1977, 78,
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and worked for Mike on a variety of issues.
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Many China related in the lead up to normalization.
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It turned out a lot of the pieces of the moment.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, this is kind of only second to, you know, 1972.
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This is really, you know, the pivotal moment in the relationship.
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And you were there for that, working on this issue.
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Wow. >> David Shambaugh: Yeah,
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a lot of export control work and claims assets and what to do about Taiwan.
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We were drafting what turned out to be the Taiwan Relations Act.
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We did a lot of, you know, sort of build.
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Building block, foundational things that would have to be put in place come
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normalization of relations in 1979.
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And I stayed there right until January 79.
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I met.
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I was on the South Lawn of the White House when Deng Xiaoping came.
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I met Deng three times on that visit.
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And then I returned to graduate school.
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I went to Johns Hopkins SAIS for two years for
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an MA while Oxenberg was still in government, waiting.
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He then asked me if I wanted to go out to Michigan to be his student.
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I said, well, yes, but know he said, I'm not going to be back for two years.
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So, long story short, I went to Seiss where one of my immediate classmates and
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good friends was Nicholas Burns, the most recent American ambassador to China.
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So we, Nick and I have been friends for that many years.
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But then I went to Ann Arbor and started my PhD under Alan Whiting and
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Mike Oxenberg and others at the University of Michigan.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Wow.
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So, you know, I think it's one of the things.
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And I wanna talk about your most recent book, which is so terrific.
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I think it's one of the things that comes through in the book is that
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you've actually lived history.
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You know, you've lived the history of the US China relationship,
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both as a preeminent scholar, but also, you know, in the policy space and
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through your sort of think tank work.
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In addition, you've worn many different hats and
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I think you brought them all to bear in a really fascinating way in this book.
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So let's talk about the book a little bit first.
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Why did you decide to write it?
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I know there must have been something that you impelled you written 35 books,
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written or edited, I guess, 35 books.
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And I'm sure with each one there was something that drove you, a question or
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an issue, something that's made you sit down and say, I've got to get this out.
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>> David Shambaugh: Well, I have been teaching us China relations for
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more than 30 years.
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I have an annual graduate seminar on the subject.
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And I've been puzzling every year in that seminar with what are the sources,
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the drivers of this relationship and
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the sources of the fluctuation in the relationship.
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This has been anything but a smooth, constant relationship.
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It's just oscillated wildly from amity to enmity,
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back to amity to enmity, what the late great China historian
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Warren Cohen called the love hate cycle in U.S China relations.
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So that puzzled me.
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That was sort of a bigger.
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Question. And
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I've wanted to sort of explore historically in the first half of
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the book, which we can get into is the historical part of the book.
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Then the other puzzle that I've grappled with is more recent and contemporary.
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Why, after four decades of engagement and entwining of the two societies and
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governments over the last decade, why has it unraveled to the point of today?
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So those were the two kind of motivating questions that animated me to try and
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tackle this during my sabbatical year.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: So let me ask how you understand engagement because,
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you know, different, different scholars have different understandings of
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what the United States has meant when it's talked about engagement over,
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you know, the course of the decades that we've sort of had this approach or
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policy or people may say it's a strategy.
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And did you see it change in terms of the definition and
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the understanding across administrations?
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>> David Shambaugh: Well, it has evolved.
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But I would say, and I argue in the book, that it's had some core elements
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across what, eight administrations, from Carter through Obama.
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And there is no, Liz, there's no kind of secret master document in
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the American National Archives in Washington.
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This is, this was the engagement policy.
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But if you look across those many administrations, there are,
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I think, four core elements.
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And just very quickly they were there was strategy of engagement,
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then there were tactics to implement the strategy.
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The strategy itself had, I argue, four elements.
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First, to help China modernize economically and technologically.
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Second, to liberalize China politically.
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Third, to socialize China into the international liberal order,
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to integrate China, which was outside the institutional order, as you know.
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You've written enormous amount about that.
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You wrote a book with Michael Luxembourg called China Joins the World about that
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very process.
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Anyway, that was the third element.
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And the fourth element I call engagement as process, where the two sides,
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governments and elements of society would exchange with each other.
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That's how most people think about engagement, simple exchanges.
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Well, yes, that was a, I would argue, a tactic, but
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the tactic was to support the first three goals.
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There were other tactics, too.
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You know, marrying the two national governments bureaucratically together,
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trying to foster civil society in China, trade and investment with China,
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trying to help China build the rule of law according to sort of Western legal norms,
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educating Chinese students in the United States in a variety of fields so
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that they would go back and help modernize their country, but
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also liberalize their country.
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So I'd say that was the these were the that was a strategy and some of
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the tactics that the US has been pursuing, really, for 40 years, until 2017.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Okay. But let me just push you a little bit.
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I mean, was.
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Was modernizing China the objective in and of itself or.
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Or the process the objective?
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Or what did the United States have in its mind?
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If you were to look back across, you know, what various secretaries of Spanish
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state or even presidents talked about, when they talked about what it was that
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we were trying to achieve, I think you sort of came out there toward the end.
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There was an element of liberalizing the country.
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Right. Liberalizing economically and
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politically, right?
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And having China, as I think you're suggesting,
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become what Bob Zelick talked about, right?
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A responsible stakeholder in the international system.
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Some people say it was never the US intent to have China transform or
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to move toward democracy.
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Are you in that camp, or do you think there was that element of it?
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>> David Shambaugh: Well, I very carefully use the word liberalize rather than
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democratize.
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That's very intentional because I don't think any serious American has ever
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thought that the Chinese Communist Party was going to democratize, as we know,
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democracy.
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But the reason the first half of the book is historical is because I
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wanted to dig back into previous administrations, not just to Carter,
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but I go back all the way to Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson,
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and to see what the antecedents were for the engagement strategy.
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And I have unearthed, I think, and
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dug out each of those presidents all the way through to Obama,
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what they had to say engagement was for to those three elements.
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Integrate China into the international order, liberalize it politically, and
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help contribute to its modernization.
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That, now it goes back to the 19th century.
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That's not a recent goal of the United States.
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It goes back to the Qing dynasty, and all the way through the Republican era,
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the United States has been trying to contribute to China's modernization.
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And then when Oxenberg, he's explicit about it,
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as was Carter and particularly Reagan.
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And I find quotations in various speeches and
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documents from every administration from.
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From Carter, Reagan, the two Bush administrations,
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the two Clinton administrations, and the Obama administration,
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which very specifically explicitly talk about liberalization, modernization,
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socialization, and the international integration dimension.
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So it's not just.
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That's my hypothesis, but
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I find empirical data points across many administrations to support it.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: And do you have a sense for, if you were to look back across
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the AID administrations that sort of consciously had this as a strategy,
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you know, is there one that stands out to you as being particularly successful?
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Do you see a period in which the United States was, you know, really made a lot of
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progress with China, recognizing, of course, that it takes two to dance.
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Right. And it's not all about what
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the United States is doing.
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It has to have a receptive China on the other side of things.
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But is there a period that you would consider to be sort of the golden era of
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engagement?
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>> David Shambaugh: Yes. I would identify the Reagan.
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Ironically, the Reagan administration.
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I say ironically because, as we know, Reagan,
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when he became president, was a stark anti communist.
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He campaigned on overturning the normalization of relations with China and
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restoring diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
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But after one year in office, he was in office from 81 to 89.
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That those eight years were the, you know, sort of heyday,
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you might say, golden era of engagement.
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And the Reagan administration actually completed what the Carter
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administration had envisioned, I would argue the institutionalized
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the relationship at the governmental and the societal levels.
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And so all the pieces of engagement were put in place during those eight years,
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I think that was the sort of golden era, you might say.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: I remember reading a quotation at one point by Reagan where he
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said we should simply give our technology to the Chinese to help them develop.
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Sometimes it makes me laugh.
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And I think, can you imagine any president today saying something,
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you know, along those lines?
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I don't think so.
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So talk a little bit about the level of Chinese receptivity to engagement and,
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you know, how did China actually leverage US Interest in those
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sort of elements that you discussed, the modernization and
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the integration and the liberalization?
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How did they react?
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How did they use it?
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You know, did they, you know, face problems because of it?
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Did it challenge them?
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in ways.
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What was the sort of the response on the other side?
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>> David Shambaugh: Well, the, the Chinese, you know, grand strategy,
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if you will, after dung, from dung onwards, it goes all the way back to
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the Qing dynasty again has to be wealthy and powerful modernization.
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So to the extent that any foreign country, including the United States,
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could contribute to China's economic and technological modernization,
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they would take it.
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This is the, you might say the kind of the genius of the Chinese communists.
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And they're very eclectic and taking bits and pieces from different systems.
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But for the United States, they saw, you know,
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the most modern country in the world, which they wanted to emulate in many ways.
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And so it was pushed for the Chinese, pushing on an open door.
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The Americans were offering them all of these opportunities, sending millions,
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hundreds of thousands, millions of students to our country for
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professional training, foreign direct investment.
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The United States has been, I think over time, the number one foreign direct
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investor, about $100 billion a year until last two or three years, trade,
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science and technological cooperation.
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But it also afforded opportunities for so, you know, shall we say,
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more nefarious elements of China's modernization.
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Intellectual property threat theft, forced technology transfer, espionage and,
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and theft of military technology, some very advanced military technologies,
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you know, nuclear warheads, high end fighter planes, et cetera, et cetera.
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So, you know, engagement offered the Chinese an incredible
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opportunity at technological, economic modernization.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Does it seem surprising at all?
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I mean, if you look back and
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you think here the United States was with this policy of engagement and, and
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you know, sending our companies out, welcoming Chinese students here to,
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to train and to learn that China would steal military technology?
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I mean, was there an element of that where we were still militarily,
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where we didn't trust each other, where we were security competitors even as we were,
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you know, economically, our trade relationship was, you know, booming,
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you know, during, you know, the past, you know, four decades, again,
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up until recently, I mean, does it seem a little, you know, anomalous?
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>> David Shambaugh: It does.
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And again, in the early in the 1980s, prior to the Tiananmen massacre,
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part of our America's efforts to modernize China included military modernization.
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We were exporting various weapons systems, not just technologies to China.
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The embargo on COCOM had been relaxed and then came Tiananmen.
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And from then on, the military component of America's assistance
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to the Chinese modernization was hived off, you would say, to this day.
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But other areas continue to pace.
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After about 1995, there was a sort of five year hiatus after Tiananmen,
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but the military side was frozen and has been to this day.
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But The US has been more than,
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I don't want to give the United States credit for this.
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In a sense, China's modernized their own country, let's be clear about that.
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And the Europeans and the Japanese and the South Koreans and
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many other countries have been involved in this process.
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In fact, engagement wasn't just an American concept,
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it was adapted by many other Western and Asian.
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Asian countries, >> Elizabeth Economy: of course.
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And I was just thinking about that separation you mentioned that the military
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security element was hived off, but with, you know,
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current, with, you know, Xi Jinping's policy of the military civil fusion.
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Right. They have found a way to utilize
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technology and technology that's transferred for commercial purposes.
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Right. For continuing their, you know,
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advancement of the People's Liberation army as well.
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>> David Shambaugh: That's right.
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If one studies, you know, military modern.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: You have done, I mean, you're also, let's face it,
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you're also one of the original experts on the People's Liberation Army.
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When did you publish that book that you wrote?
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It was, >> David Shambaugh: gosh, that was called
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>> Elizabeth Economy: years ago.
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Right? >> David Shambaugh: Modernizing China's
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Military.
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It was in about 2000.
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It's after I returned from England to, to the US around 2000, 2001.
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So I spent 20 years of my life studying the PLA and
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in those years it was very interesting.
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There was no, what,
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no spin on from the civilian technological sector to the Chinese military sector.
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Whereas in many other countries, the United States and others,
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that's very common.
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Technologies developed in the civilian sector are adopted,
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adapted for military ends.
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So that was one of the reasons China, the pla had such a hard time modernizing.
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There was no spin off and there was very little spin on and
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there was no very little spin off from the military sector.
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In fact, China's military industrial complex was very backward in those years.
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So, but, so
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they've only fixed that really in the last decade and now we see the results.
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They basically have a self reliant, independent military industrial base.
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They don't even rely on the Russians that much as they used to.
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And they're becoming a significant supplier to other countries in
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certain weapon systems.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah. And
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they're out there training, doing military training with,
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you know, officers from, you know, many emerging and middle income economies.
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And in some respects, you know, emulating what the United States has done,
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established their first military logistics base.
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Right. In Djibouti.
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And yeah, there's, they're, they're on, I think on the cusp,
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I think they've transformed the military already in terms of the technology.
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I think they're on the cusp of really becoming a global military player as well
22:06
in, in ways that are pretty fundamentally different from what was before.
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Because I'm pretty sure, correct me if I'm wrong, that up until about 2010,
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2011, it was PLA doctrine that they would never have overseas bases.
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Wasn't that sort of the, the rule that they were never going to be hegemonic,
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you know, the way that the United States was?
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>> David Shambaugh: That's right,
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I think it was Chairman Mao who said had something called the three nos.
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No overseas military bases, no debt, international debt.
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That's one lesson he learned from the Sino Soviet split.
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And I forget his third.
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No, but they now have.
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Well, they have one military base, of course, but
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I would still note that you're right.
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They are beginning to train and have, you know, African, Middle Eastern,
23:03
some Asian militaries, but they are not in the league of the United States at all.
23:08
What's known as security assistance.
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There's weapons sales.
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Yes, they're selling weapons, but actually training personnel.
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They don't do that much of it.
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They have an annual course at the National Defense University in Beijing.
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But compared to what the United States does worldwide,
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they've got a very long way to go.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, no, I do remember reading something about PLA
23:30
officers actually in the Philippines during the Duterte period where some
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of the Philippine military officials were talking about the contrast between the,
23:41
you know, sort of professionalism and how advanced the US military was
23:46
compared to the way that the Chinese were trying to train.
23:50
And anyway, it was just an interesting, interesting difference.
23:52
So to your point that they're not quite in the same league yet.
23:55
But, you know,
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I think if we've seen anything coming out China over the past decade and.
24:00
And bit it's that you blink, and they've kind of changed the landscape and
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are right there with us, challenging us, and competing with us in new ways.
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So let me go now to the.
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I want to talk about the book in some more depth.
24:15
And, you know, the subtitle of your book, which I love,
24:20
is How China Won and Lost America.
24:23
So talk to us about what that actually means.
24:26
It's clever.
24:27
I think it plays against the, you know, trope from the 1950s and
24:31
60s about how the United States lost China.
24:34
Right.
24:35
And so now you've kind of flipped that on its head.
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So what does it mean?
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How did you end up with this?
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>> David Shambaugh: Well, I first have to credit you, Liz,
24:44
with encouraging >> Elizabeth Economy: that.
24:45
Of course.
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>> David Shambaugh: I had come up with that as a potential subtitle.
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And then for a period of time, I was thinking about discarding it.
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You encouraged me to keep it.
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>> Elizabeth Economy: Yes, I do.
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>> David Shambaugh: That was the lost part.
24:58
But what I then began to realize is if you lose something,
25:00
you have to have won it in the first place.
25:02
So I realized that the argument of the book really is that during
25:08
the reform period, from Deng Xiaoping onwards, China won America
25:13
proverbially over different constituencies within the United States.
25:19
The U.S. government, the business community, the academic community,
25:24
you know, farmers, various elements of what I call the Engagement Coalition,
25:30
they all found a place in Engagement for themselves.
25:34
The elasticity, you might say, of Engagement was its beauty.
25:39
It had a place for many American actors, and
25:42
they all went into China physically and otherwise.
25:47
So it was in those decades in the 80s and the 90s, despite Tiananmen,
25:52
into the 2000s, where China sort of won over these constituencies.
25:57
That was the winning part.
25:58
But in the last decade, I argue, or more than last decade, in fact,
26:03
beginning around 2010 or so, each of these constituencies and
26:08
their own constituents in their own ways,
26:12
encountered difficulties with their Chinese counterparts in China.
26:17
The business community, the academic community,
26:21
US government as NGOs in particular, which you've written a lot about,
26:26
all began to run up against different obstacles.
26:29
And Chinese just began to make it very difficult for different American and
26:34
Western, including West European actors to operate in China.
26:40
And one by one, I argue in the book, these constituents peeled away or
26:44
peeled out of the coalition, and the coalition essentially crumbled.
26:49
And then Donald Trump came to power in 2017.
26:51
He just accelerated the crumbling, the atrophy,
26:55
if you will, during his four years.
26:58
So that's when Engagement died, and that's when China lost America.
27:02
Beginning in 2017, I would argue, right on through the Biden administration.
27:06
And it's still, we can talk about this.
27:08
It's a little unclear the second Trump administration exactly where they're going
27:12
with China policy, but engagement.
27:15
Humpty Dumpty is not going to be put back together again in my view.
27:18
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, so let me ask you, do you think that the Chinese, and so
27:22
you date this a little bit before.
27:24
I tend to, in the sense that I tend to look at Xi Jinping as the sort of the,
27:28
mostly the inflection point for when policy really changed.
27:32
But let's take your 2010 moment.
27:36
Do you think it was a conscious strategy of the Chinese leadership at the time to,
27:42
you know, sort of make it more difficult for US Business to do business,
27:47
to make it more difficult for US and other multinational.
27:51
I should say it's not just the U.S. as you mentioned earlier.
27:53
It's multinationals writ large.
27:55
It's NGOs, you know, international non governmental organizations writ large that
28:00
found it more difficult to do business in China, particularly after 2017.
28:05
Do you think that there was a strategy here or
28:08
was it just one off policies that accumulated over time and
28:13
made China that much less attractive and frankly less interested
28:19
in engaging with the United States and the west more broadly?
28:24
And do you think that there was debate around this?
28:27
People were saying this is a mistake, I see what's happening.
28:32
People like us in China, you know, were they writing things like we're making,
28:36
you know, a big mistake here by, you know,
28:39
this set of policies or that set of policies?
28:43
>> David Shambaugh: Excellent question.
28:44
And just coincidentally, I was, we, we all date the, these policies,
28:49
these more repressive restrictive policies of the Chinese side to the Xi Jinping era,
28:54
which began in 2012.
28:56
We're now in year, what, 13, 14 of that.
28:59
But I date them to 2010, 29, 10.
29:04
And just coincidentally, I was living in China that year.
29:07
I was a senior Fulbright Scholar at the Academy of Social Sciences.
29:11
Not my first time at Cass, actually my sixth time.
29:14
I was, I've been a resident fellow in, in, in different institutes, six different
29:18
institutes, but I was in the Institute of World Economics and Politics that year.
29:23
And so I personally kind of experienced it in the academic realm.
29:28
I mean, they did not do much to help my research, quite.
29:32
In fact, they went out of their way to impede it.
29:34
And I wasn't the only foreigner in American that was experiencing that in
29:38
the scholarly domain.
29:39
But I interact with a number of for nos.
29:42
Good friend of mine was the head of the Ford foundation at the time.
29:45
They were feeling it.
29:47
Other nos were feeling it.
29:48
The American business community was beginning to feel increased obstacles and
29:51
pressures.
29:52
So it was really that the fall, fall of 09.10,
29:55
which we now look back on, we call that China's Year of Assertiveness.
30:00
China went out and started to pick fights with all of its neighbors, Japan,
30:04
India, the Philippines, Australia.
30:08
And so, you know, each of those, I don't think, to answer your question,
30:11
there was some conscious strategy.
30:13
The Chinese leadership didn't get together in Jongnan High and
30:16
say, okay, let's go out and alienate all of our neighbors and
30:19
while we're at, let's go to Copenhagen and alienate the European Union and
30:22
the United States of the climate Change conference too.
30:25
No, I don't think it coordinated, but these, these independent dots,
30:29
you know, created a pattern that year which we in the Chinese foreign policy
30:33
world refer to as China's Year of Assertiveness.
30:37
It comes in the back end of the, of the financial crisis, global financial crisis,
30:41
and the Chinese and the Olympic Games, where I was actually with my son.
30:45
So they got through the Olympics, they were feeling really good about themselves.
30:48
In the global financial crisis, they were feeling even better about themselves.
30:51
Really hubristic, you know, so they decided for
30:55
whatever reasons to undertake all these activities.
30:59
But it added up to a qualitative shift.
31:02
And it was two years,
31:03
it was last two years of Hu Jintao's reign just before Xi came to power.
31:08
And then she just doubled down from then 2012 on.
31:12
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, I mean, I see.
31:13
I definitely take your point on the sort of external assertiveness.
31:17
And I remember learning that Xi Jinping was in fact the head of the small
31:22
group that was dealing with the South China Sea within the Chinese
31:26
leadership in that 2010, 2011 period when you did start to see so
31:31
much more assertiveness coming out of, of China.
31:35
So in my mind, I thought, well, there you go.
31:38
Wherever his hand goes,
31:40
you're gonna see more challenging behavior coming out of China.
31:46
But I also remember in 2010 that, you know,
31:49
there were 180,000 protests in the country that were documented.
31:53
And it was still a time where the Internet was quite vibrant and interesting.
32:00
And so, maybe both things were true at the same time.
32:05
You know, a little bit of still openness on the domestic front, but again,
32:10
increasing assertiveness and challenging behavior on the global stage.
32:16
Okay, so that's how China lost America.
32:22
Do you sense, you know, now in terms of, you said, Xi Jinping has doubled down.
32:29
We've seen it a couple of different points where there he seems to be,
32:33
or the Chinese leadership seems to be reaching back out to the United States or
32:38
reaching back out to Europe to try to engage.
32:41
To say, we're open for business, come back,
32:45
what do you think is the reality of that?
32:48
Are you seeing the kinds of changes on the ground that would, you know,
32:53
give life to that kind of rhetoric?
32:55
Do you think it is just rhetoric?
32:56
What, what do you think is the calculus?
33:00
You know, as we've seen China, you know, not that long ago, frankly,
33:04
even when I was just in the administration working for
33:07
Secretary Raimondo, they were really trying to get US business back in China.
33:13
Do you think that there's a rethink underway in Beijing?
33:18
>> David Shambaugh: That's a good question,
33:20
I don't really see a lot of evidence for it, it's more rhetoric.
33:23
There has been a rhetorical outreach, you might say.
33:27
You know, they say they're reforming this regulation and that law, and
33:30
they're open for educational exchanges, this and that.
33:33
But actually, if you look at, at it on the ground In China,
33:37
foreign NGOs have no greater opportunities than they've had.
33:41
Foreign companies are still running up against even greater impediments.
33:48
The US Government and consulates, they can't even schedule a meeting with Chinese
33:52
counterparts or very great difficulty, you know, just having normal interactions.
33:57
Scholars, scholarly exchange.
33:59
We have only 800American students in China today.
34:04
Used to be 20,000.
34:06
So you can just go through sector by sector by sector.
34:08
The Chinese are not, in fact, welcoming rhetorically.
34:13
They say they are, but their words and
34:16
their deeds are not congruent with one another, in my view.
34:21
>> Elizabeth Economy: I think maybe that Xi Jinping thinks things are working
34:25
reasonably well the way they are.
34:28
Right. That he doesn't need actually to change
34:31
Chinese behavior because actually his model, or the model of,
34:36
of the current Chinese leadership is doing exactly what it needs to do right now.
34:44
So I don't know, do you agree.
34:46
With that, or, or >> David Shambaugh: I think that there is.
34:49
That's a. It's a good hypothesis, and I think
34:52
there's a lot of truth in it that he's believes that his Various policies and
34:57
strategies are working.
34:58
The global Circulation strategy, the Indigenous Innovation strategy,
35:03
the counter Peaceful Evolution strategy, and his diplomatic strategies with
35:08
different parts of the world, with Southeast Asia, with Latin America.
35:14
We'll see shortly when the Chinese and
35:17
the EU have their summit later this month about that piece of the world.
35:23
But I think Xi, I think you're right, I think Xi Jinping believes it ain't broke,
35:27
don't fix it.
35:29
Their strategy is working.
35:30
I think from his and the regime's perspective.
35:33
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, and to the EU summit.
35:34
I'm sure you've seen that that does not look to be set for
35:39
a resounding success at this point.
35:42
I was just reading that the Chinese either are planning to or
35:46
have already canceled the second day.
35:49
And the Europeans have been quite critical of China in the run up.
35:54
So now it's down to a one day summit and they apparently canceled
35:58
the economic discussions that were supposed to take place in advance.
36:03
So, so I, I guess, you know, that's not looking like it's going to,
36:08
to lead to a big shift, positive shift in the China EU relationship.
36:15
So one of the things that I really enjoyed about your book was your
36:20
discussion of the state of US scholarship or, or on China or China analysis.
36:28
Why don't you, if you can just share a little bit of your thoughts on
36:33
the strengths and weaknesses of the academic and think tank world and
36:38
government world and how it's analyzing and understanding and
36:43
trying to understand China, what, what's working and what's not working.
36:50
>> David Shambaugh: Well, thank you for, for asking.
36:52
I, ever since I wrote my doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan
36:57
on China's America Watchers 40 years ago, I've been a watcher of watchers.
37:02
Not just Chinese watchers, but foreign,
37:05
foreign China studies and Russian Studies and other.
37:09
I've just been interested in how fields in international subfields within
37:13
international relations sort of evolve.
37:16
So I've been a watcher of watchers for a long time and I decided to include this
37:21
chap in the book called the Great American China Policy Debate,
37:25
which is still ongoing.
37:27
It's been ongoing really since about 2016.
37:32
17.
37:35
There was a previous debate which I describe in an earlier chapter on
37:38
the Did Engagement Fail Debate.
37:40
That was a more finite debate that ran about two years.
37:44
It was kicked off by an article by Eli Ratner and Kirk Campbell.
37:48
But then after that debate there has been a much longer running one on what should
37:52
American China policy be.
37:54
So I, I, I look at the, those who've contributed to that debate and
38:01
I put them into five different schools of thought.
38:07
And these are mainly individuals who turns out are in think tanks.
38:11
The American academic community, it has to be said,
38:14
are not really participants in this debate.
38:16
The American I've written about this elsewhere, you know,
38:21
American Sinology or American China Studies I should say,
38:25
has become so granular and it's not very policy oriented.
38:32
So save a few individuals,
38:33
the academy is not really a participant in the national debate on China policy.
38:39
It's largely driven by people in think tanks or
38:43
other private sectors, organizations.
38:46
Anyway, I put these authors and I only look at published materials.
38:51
That's the empirical basis, not op EDS so much, but you know,
38:55
substantive articles and books.
38:58
And I place them into one of five schools.
39:01
Just quickly let me take them off for, for you and those who are listening.
39:06
The first school I call the stealthy, stealthy rival school.
39:10
This is a group of individuals who believe that China has a kind of secret
39:14
grand strategy to undermine, overtake and
39:17
repl the United States as the world's principal power.
39:20
And for this school, all the dots of China's behavior internationally and
39:25
domestically connect.
39:26
And there is this sort of grand, grand plan towards that end.
39:32
Then I have a second school.
39:35
Let's see, I call the comprehensive competition school in which
39:40
I would place myself, and the term defines itself, that the United States and
39:46
China are in competition across a variety of functional domains.
39:52
Economic, technological, political, ideological,
39:56
global governance, higher education, software.
40:00
Power, you name it, the two are competing.
40:04
And competition is different than an adversarial relationship.
40:07
We're not yet fully into an adversarial relationship in these domains, but
40:12
competitions just as it is in sports, you know, each side is trying to gain
40:16
advantage vis a vis the other, and each side is playing defense against the other.
40:21
And it's kind of a continual process, a soccer match with no end and
40:26
no overtime, there is no winner.
40:28
This is a perpetual process.
40:30
I describe in the book.
40:31
I call it our relationship is now one of indefinite comprehensive competitive
40:36
rivalry.
40:37
It's gonna go on indefinitely.
40:39
It's a classic great power rivalry.
40:41
It's competitive across all these functional domains
40:44
comprehensively and so on.
40:45
So that's the second school.
40:46
Then thirdly, I find those I call the Re Engagers, the RE Engagement School.
40:53
And not surprisingly, these are individuals who are big particip,
40:56
major participants in the Engagement School previously, and they have
41:00
devoted their careers, many of them in the US Government and the State Department and
41:04
the private sector, mainly in the business community, to engagement.
41:09
And they believe that it's the United States that has actually broken
41:13
the engagement since Trump and
41:15
that the United States should simply get back to engagement.
41:19
They argue that China is not a competitor, not an adversary of the United States,
41:24
and the US Just needs to kind of take a deep breath,
41:27
re extend the hand to Beijing and reengage.
41:30
So that's a group of individuals that I discern.
41:33
And then last two, quickly, next school I call the Strategic Empathy School,
41:39
which is somewhat related to the Re Engagers.
41:42
This is a group of individuals who argue that China is reacting defensively
41:48
to American aggression and assertiveness and as America is the, you know,
41:54
aggressive party here, and that China is naturally trying to defend itself and
42:00
that therefore the strategic empathizers argue America
42:04
needs to understand China's insecurities, not provoke them,
42:09
not demonize China, and to be more strategically empathetic with China.
42:14
So it's viewing the relationship through China's eyes.
42:17
That's the fourth school and last school I call the Managed Competition school,
42:22
which is very characteristic of the Biden administration,
42:25
even though I'm the first one.
42:27
>> Elizabeth Economy: That was, in fact,
42:28
what the Biden administration called its approach.
42:30
I think that that term was actually used by maybe Tony Blinken, but go ahead.
42:34
>> David Shambaugh: Yep, no, but
42:35
I have intellectual property rights over that term, I first used it.
42:39
>> Elizabeth Economy: Let him know.
42:41
>> David Shambaugh: 17, you can let Blinken and Sullivan know.
42:44
I don't care who.
42:45
But no, I.
42:46
The point is that competition is a reality.
42:49
It's an indefinite reality.
42:51
It has to be pursued and assertively so by the United States.
42:54
But competition is not an adversarial relationship and
42:58
we don't want it to become such.
43:00
Hence it has to be managed through dialogues and other confidence building
43:05
measures and even some of the tools taken from the first Cold War toolbox during
43:10
the Daytone period between the United States and the Soviet Union.
43:14
So the managed competition school, which I also put myself in, so I'm in
43:18
comprehensive competition and management >> Elizabeth Economy: too, because I.
43:21
Was going to say, you know, do you not see yourself in that, in that bucket as well?
43:24
So okay, you can in two different schools of thought.
43:27
Okay, good to know.
43:30
>> David Shambaugh: That's how I the American debate.
43:35
>> Elizabeth Economy: So okay, given sort of those five schools then, you know,
43:39
there's been a critique made by a number of our colleagues,
43:43
mostly in the sort of academic world, not in the think tank world,
43:48
that there's groupthink in Washington and that it's very difficult if you're,
43:54
if you fall into the strategic empathy group or the re engagement group.
44:00
It's near impossible to have your voice heard because there is such group think.
44:05
Do you subscribe to that notion?
44:07
Do you think that there's no space that there's
44:10
a kind of one narrative that's accepted in Washington?
44:16
>> David Shambaugh: Well, I would say that there is a predominant narrative in
44:19
Washington, but I would say there's a predominant narrative across the land.
44:22
It is not just inside the beltway, it's outside the beltway.
44:26
You know,
44:27
there's a reason that 83% of Americans have an unfavorable view of China.
44:31
42% identify China as an enemy, 52% identify China as a competitor,
44:36
while only 6% see it as a partner.
44:39
So I would say this is a, there is a,
44:41
I would argue there's a national consensus about China and
44:44
it is about the competitive, you know, so it's not just an inside the beltway.
44:49
So there are those who argue for reengagement, strategic empathy.
44:53
They are in my view the outliers.
44:55
They are the 6%.
44:57
Their voice is valid voice.
44:59
Everybody has a valid voice.
45:01
But they are such a minority compared to the broad,
45:05
I would say consensus across the country of not just experts and
45:09
foreign policy people, but Americans on, on China as a,
45:14
as a serious competitor that has to be dealt with.
45:18
So you know, I commend, I'm not going to name any names,
45:22
those who have tried to find their voice within this dominant hedge.
45:26
You might call it a hegemonic discourse.
45:28
Yes, there is a hegemonic discourse in the United States, around China as a.
45:33
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah.
45:34
>> David Shambaugh: So the strategic empathizers and the re engagers are having
45:37
a hard time getting their, their, their voices heard because there's not
45:41
a whole lot of evidence to support their positions in my view.
45:45
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, that's probably what I would,
45:46
I would argue as, as well.
45:48
So let me just come back for a second because you put yourself in the two
45:51
buckets of comprehensive competition and managed competition.
45:55
I mean is there a different outcome for
45:58
the comprehensive competition bucket other than managing that competition?
46:03
You said there is no winning.
46:06
So do you end up anyway if you believe in comprehensive competition,
46:10
do you end up anyway having to manage that or
46:12
is there something different that can come out of it?
46:15
>> David Shambaugh: Well, if it's not managed it then it becomes
46:19
a fully adversarial, much more zero sum dynamic.
46:24
I've thought a lot about this, about competition.
46:26
I've done a lot of reading into the literature of competition
46:30
in different fields.
46:32
But competition is just that the way I think of it.
46:36
It's just that it's not fixed, it's fluid, it's dynamic.
46:40
Each side.
46:41
As I say, I sports, I love sports, but I,
46:43
I see a lot of analogy between teams, right?
46:45
They one's on offense, the other's on defense.
46:48
You have to, if best defense is a proactive defense, you try and
46:52
control the pace of play on offense.
46:56
So the meta sports metaphor may be stretched, but there is no winning.
47:01
As I say, there's no overtime.
47:03
And this is an indefinite state.
47:05
And we, we, Americans and others, Europe have, and the Chinese for that matter,
47:10
have to learn to live with this as the new normal and keep it bounded.
47:14
That's where the management comes in.
47:17
Because if we fail at the management then we really have a cold war.
47:21
I don't think we're in a Cold War 2.0.
47:23
There are some elements, but we're not quite there yet.
47:26
But competition can indeed bleed into a fully adversarial cold war.
47:31
And cold wars don't always stay cold.
47:35
>> Elizabeth Economy: Now I know you mentioned, and you have mentioned
47:39
that you don't certainly like prognostication, but
47:44
maybe just a quick assessment then of whether or not the two sides
47:49
right now are managing the competition well in your estimation and
47:55
if not, what would you say would be needed to get the relationship back?
48:01
In a sort of on a more constructive path.
48:04
>> David Shambaugh: You know, very fair question.
48:06
We're in a kind of strange hiatus at the moment, I would say in the first six
48:10
months of the Trump administration, because the administration has yet
48:15
to unveil and roll out their China strategy other than their tariff strategy.
48:20
This has become a single dimensional relationship.
48:24
Save a few other data points.
48:25
Yes, Secretary of Defense Hexath and even Secretary of State Rubio have made
48:30
some hawkish statements that, that suggest where, that the relationship
48:35
is kind of a continuation of Trump 1.0, but it's an odd hiatus period.
48:40
So I'm not going to say that they're doing things right or wrong yet.
48:43
There aren't, they're not managing.
48:44
There's no management at the moment.
48:48
The Rubio hasn't even met Wang Yi once, Heth hasn't met his counterpart.
48:54
The bureaucratic institutionalization dimension that I don't know,
48:59
I guess says except for the trade talks in London and
49:02
Zurich where Secretary of Commerce and treasury met their counterparts,
49:06
there's no high level institutionalized interaction at the societal level.
49:12
At the military level, you know, there are a few things going on, but
49:17
this is a very odd, odd kind of period.
49:19
It makes me a little nervous.
49:21
We need to, the Trump administration needs to figure out their strategy,
49:25
unveil it, which as soon as the tariff issue is put behind them, so to speak,
49:29
whatever they, they think is, is acceptable, then they will move on and,
49:34
and unveil a much more systematic policy.
49:36
And that's a question where the management piece of that comes in.
49:40
We'll have to wait and see.
49:42
>> Elizabeth Economy: So you're expecting that they will unveil a more
49:45
comprehensive, more strategic policy?
49:49
>> David Shambaugh: Absolutely.
49:50
And there are already some indicators of it.
49:52
And, you know,
49:53
the press guidance has been given to the spokespersons of the White House,
49:57
National Security Council, State and Defense Departments, et cetera.
50:01
Some of the things Rubio has said, some of the things Heath have said,
50:05
there are the components of a more systematic strategy there.
50:10
Trump himself is the wild card.
50:13
It's, you know, and we can talk about that, but I think we're, we're not,
50:17
they haven't unveiled their, their policy.
50:20
But, you know, I think they're trying to shift various assets to the Indo Pacific.
50:24
China is there, you know, kind of the pacing threat, as Hexeth has said,
50:28
the Secretary of Defense.
50:30
This is the driver of the Trump administration's international diplomacy,
50:36
international security, commercial policy, et cetera.
50:41
So they just haven't articulated it yet.
50:44
But I think that's where they're headed.
50:46
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah. They haven't articulated and
50:47
it's not clear to me they're putting in place the right building blocks with our
50:51
allies and partners.
50:52
If, in fact that is going to be the strategy for
50:55
what we're looking at is largely return to Trump 1 and
50:59
in many respects the Biden administration policy as well, you know,
51:03
what they're doing on the trade front and the talk about increasing defense
51:08
spending and the threat threats don't seem to be particularly conducive to,
51:12
to sort of strengthening our our relations with our allies and partners.
51:17
Although I do agree with you, I think,
51:19
that both Secretary of Defense Hexath and Secretary of State Rubio and
51:24
former National Security Advisor Waltz had as their inclinations to do that.
51:30
I think they're all more traditional Republican internationalists.
51:36
But I also agree with you that Trump is the wild card.
51:39
President Trump is the wild card in all of this.
51:42
So let me ask you one more sort of bigger question, and
51:46
that is if you are sitting in China and you have, as you've noted, spent a lot
51:51
of time in China, a lot of time in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and
51:56
certainly meeting with university professors, I'm sure in Beijing and
52:01
Shanghai and Guangzhou and elsewhere, if they were to read your book, and
52:06
I'm sure it probably has already been translated informally into Chinese,
52:11
I have no doubt at this point there's some bootleg copy because I'm pretty sure,
52:16
you know, the Beijing Foreign Language Press is not going to be translating
52:22
it anytime soon, you know, into, into Chinese, I guess they wouldn't translate.
52:27
But Beijing Press, nobody's translating it into, into Chinese out of mainland China.
52:33
What do you think they would say?
52:35
Would they say, I, I see this, I, I largely agree with it.
52:38
It makes sense to me.
52:39
Or do you think they would have some pretty pointed critiques?
52:43
>> David Shambaugh: I wish I knew.
52:45
It's interesting you ask because I have an appendix in the book which is really
52:50
a separate standalone chapter that explores China's America watchers,
52:55
analyses of what engagement was and
52:58
then what has happened to the disengagement period since 2017.
53:03
And I dig into a lot of internal Chinese language materials,
53:08
many of them restricted material, so called Nebu material.
53:14
>> Elizabeth Economy: But you must have gathered before, well,
53:16
before you started writing this book then, right.
53:19
>> David Shambaugh: I've been gathering them for the last three or four years.
53:22
But and I've had some excellent research assistants I have to give credit,
53:26
who also helped me.
53:29
But anyway, I thought it would be interesting for
53:31
readers because the book is really about America's China policy.
53:34
This book is about the American side of the relationship, but
53:37
I thought for readers, they would like to ask, no,
53:39
what you've just asked, what do the Chinese think?
53:42
So that's why I added this appendix.
53:44
And I find in the writings of the so called America specialists
53:49
that they take no, no acknowledgement, no blame whatsoever for
53:55
China's role in the deterioration of the relationship over the last decade.
54:02
It is, as far as they're concerned, 100% the fault of the Americans.
54:07
I found, I think one scholar from the Chinese Foreign Affairs University,
54:12
very perceptive individual who acknowledged that China has had a role
54:17
in the deterioration of the relationship.
54:21
Some agency on China's part.
54:23
But this is really stunning.
54:24
This is, I argue in the book, a major intelligence failure on China,
54:28
China's part.
54:29
These so called America specialists, which again I wrote about in my dissertation
54:34
40 years ago, they didn't understand the United States very well then and
54:38
I hate to say they still don't or they can't acknowledge it.
54:42
They're on.
54:43
They live in a highly censored system.
54:45
So to be sure, all the data I had, but NEBU materials are more,
54:49
more honest, you might say.
54:51
And, but even in the NABOO materials, there's no acknowledgment of China's
54:55
agency and the deterioration of the relationship.
54:57
It's all the American side.
54:59
So you know, if they're not reflective, they're not self critical and
55:03
they can't accept any blame on China's side.
55:06
That's a problem in the relationship.
55:08
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, that is,
55:09
that is a problem because it does take two to tango.
55:13
And if we ever are going to move the relationship, you know,
55:16
to get it more back on track and in a positive direction,
55:19
it's going to take some give on both sides and, and
55:22
some I think nuanced understanding, which you know, and it's funny frankly if you
55:27
stop to think because I know you've heard, you know, as I have throughout the years,
55:32
many, many times that you know, while China understands the United States,
55:37
United States does not understand China nearly as well.
55:41
But I think what you're suggesting is maybe that's not actually so
55:46
accurate a statement.
55:48
Okay.
55:49
I always end with a couple of really quick rapid fire questions, so five of them.
55:56
First, what's your favorite China book or article that you would like to.
56:00
Recommend that people read, >> David Shambaugh: gosh.
56:04
Well, everything Elizabeth Economy has written.
56:06
>> Elizabeth Economy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
56:07
Okay, good answer.
56:08
But let's, let's be real.
56:09
Go ahead.
56:10
>> David Shambaugh: Well, my favorite book, in all honesty,
56:13
my favorite China book is by Lucian PI.
56:15
It's called the Mandarin and the Cadre, it was published back around 1990.
56:21
Sorry, around 96, 97 or so by the University of Michigan center for
56:26
Chinese Studies, University of Michigan Press.
56:30
Mandarin and the Cadre.
56:32
It is the most singular, single most insightful book.
56:35
It's about Chinese political culture, what makes China tick,
56:38
why do they behave the way they behave.
56:41
And it is worth all of our rereading.
56:45
>> Elizabeth Economy: Right, I agree with you on that one.
56:46
I think he was fascinating, fascinating read.
56:51
What do you think we need to know as a collective, either as scholars and
56:56
think tank analysts or broader American public?
57:00
What do we need to know more about China that we don't know?
57:04
What's missing, you know, that we can't quite seem to get?
57:09
>> David Shambaugh: Well, we don't acknowledge the diversity of,
57:14
of China enough in our analyses.
57:18
There is a kind of natural tendency to speak about a unitary China,
57:22
which is one of my critiques of American China scholarship is that there's,
57:27
you know, it's a bit of a contradiction.
57:30
We know a lot about a little, you might say we know more and
57:34
more about less and less.
57:36
There are specialists on every little, you know, small area of Chinese economy,
57:41
society, technology, religion, so and so forth.
57:46
But it's putting the pieces of the puzzle together that I think is
57:50
the real problem in our analyses of China.
57:54
What are we missing?
57:55
Of course, this is a Leninist.
57:56
This is a closed, highly opaque Leninist state that prizes secrecy and discipline.
58:02
It's very hard to penetrate the so called black box.
58:06
That's intentional on their part, and
58:08
Xi Jinping has made it even harder to penetrate.
58:11
So there's a lot of questions, but I think our analytical community does
58:15
pretty well with the data and the available ability that we have.
58:20
We just don't have access to the country in the way we used to before, and
58:23
that that's a problem.
58:25
This is again, not accidental.
58:26
Xi Jinping and his regime have not.
58:31
They don't want foreign China specialists snooping around in their country.
58:34
This is all part of their fear of peaceful evolution or whatever, their xenophobia.
58:39
So it's very hard to get on the ground granular data, much more difficult.
58:45
>> Elizabeth Economy: Now than, you know, ever, ever before.
58:48
Has there ever been a time when you've just gotten China wrong again?
58:52
Knowing that you don't like to prognosticate, but written an article,
58:56
you know, or uttered a phrase and then later you look back and
58:59
like, my God, boy, did I get that wrong.
59:02
Or maybe not.
59:04
>> David Shambaugh: Sure. There have been many times in my writings
59:07
and career where I didn't get it right.
59:10
I mean, the phrase that I did not wasn't mine was the headline of that
59:14
Wall Street Journal article, the Coming Chinese, Coming Chinese Crackup.
59:20
But I think the analysis of that article, I don't disown that.
59:24
I think it was accurate.
59:25
It was the incendiary title Wall Street Journal put on it.
59:28
>> Elizabeth Economy: That does not count.
59:29
Somebody else put the title on.
59:31
That's not, that's not an admission of, of, of wrongdoing.
59:34
I, I'll, I'll tell you mine, which was I wrote a piece in Foreign affairs
59:39
that that sort of argued that Huinta was going to be a political reformer.
59:44
Right on his role at the party school, things that he'd said, written, etc.
59:48
That was that.
59:49
I wrote that article.
59:50
And that certainly did not prove to be true.
59:53
So >> David Shambaugh: my own self critique
59:54
was precisely about the end of the hu Jintao Era, 2009-10,
59:58
precisely the fourth plenum of the 16th Party Congress in October of that year,
1:00:04
which is a very progressive document.
1:00:06
And I said to myself, I was living in Beijing, I thought, great,
1:00:09
they're going to continue with these reforms.
1:00:11
And then within a matter of months, it just came crashing down and closed up.
1:00:17
So I was wrong then.
1:00:18
>> Elizabeth Economy: Okay, all right, there you go.
1:00:20
That counts.
1:00:21
So both of us got something about huge, how wrong if you were advising
1:00:26
the Trump administration, take you back to your Washington days.
1:00:30
What one thing would you say?
1:00:32
You, you need to do this.
1:00:34
You should be doing this now and you're not.
1:00:37
>> David Shambaugh: I think they need to take a page out of the first Trump
1:00:40
administration and particularly what Matt Pottinger did,
1:00:43
who I have great respect for.
1:00:46
Matt Pottinger reorganized the American
1:00:49
bureaucracy around a new competitive China strategy.
1:00:54
He turned what Oxenberg had done 40 years previous to make cooperation
1:00:59
the leitmotif of our institutional relations with the Chinese government.
1:01:04
He turned it around into a competitive set of bureaucratic missions.
1:01:09
Okay, so this government, the current one, doesn't seem to know where it's going.
1:01:13
They have no, no strategy or strategists.
1:01:17
They have no Pottingers.
1:01:19
Maybe I'm exaggerating Matt's own role, but
1:01:23
they need individuals who understand the American government and
1:01:29
can marry a China strategy to a bureaucratic strategy.
1:01:35
>> Elizabeth Economy: Interesting, interesting point.
1:01:37
Okay, last question.
1:01:40
President Trump always seems to want to meet with Xi Jinping, always looking for
1:01:44
that meeting, has already made a statement that he's going to be going there,
1:01:49
Xi Jinping is going to be coming here.
1:01:51
What are the odds that we end up with some new Nixon Mao
1:01:55
breakthrough moment with these two leaders?
1:02:00
>> David Shambaugh: Goodness.
1:02:01
Well, I think actually the possibilities of a head of state meeting between
1:02:07
Presidents Trump and Xi is highly likely and maybe sooner rather than later.
1:02:14
But that does not mean, in my view,
1:02:16
that there will be a complete reset of the relationship, nor should there be.
1:02:22
But the reset would require the, the Republican Congress,
1:02:27
the American people, the people in his administration, Rubio,
1:02:32
Hexa, all the others, they are all wedded to a competition strategy.
1:02:38
So you're not gonna get some Kumbaya between the two countries of
1:02:43
Nixon Mao reset.
1:02:45
If these two leaders meet and the Chinese side are girded for
1:02:48
a long term competitive relationship with the United States too,
1:02:52
they're not going to reset their own domestic bureaucracy.
1:02:55
So, yeah, we may have the pomp and circumstance honor guards.
1:02:58
One president goes, you know, to Beijing or
1:03:00
the other comes to the White House, or both.
1:03:03
But I don't think that's going to reset the intrinsic relationship.
1:03:07
There are structural factors that are driving this into a long term,
1:03:10
comprehensive competition.
1:03:13
>> Elizabeth Economy: Okay, well, David, on that note, let me thank you for
1:03:17
just a terrific conversation, wide ranging, so informed.
1:03:22
There is a reason that you are one of the deans of the China field, I have to say,
1:03:27
and I'm going to end with this.
1:03:29
I asked ChatGPT, I just couldn't resist.
1:03:32
I've never done this before, But I asked ChatGPT to name the top five China
1:03:37
scholars who, you know, offer foreign policy and domestic policy.
1:03:42
I did it like four times in a row,
1:03:44
and your name came up number one every single time.
1:03:48
So a privilege to have you on the podcast.
1:03:53
Thank you again.
1:03:54
>> David Shambaugh: Well, that's why they call it artificial intelligence.
1:03:57
Thank you.
1:03:58
I really appreciate the opportunity.
1:04:00
And this podcast series, China Conversation that you've initiated is
1:04:05
a wonderful contribution to our national public discourse.
1:04:09
>> Elizabeth Economy: So thanks for that, David, okay?