Global Affairs Expert Webinar: U.S. China Strategy
Rana Mitter, S.T. Lee professor of U.S.-Asia relations at Harvard University, leads the conversation on U.S. China strategy. This webinar is presented in partnership with CFR’s China Strategy Initiative.
Speaker
Rana Mitter
S.T. Lee Professor of U.S.-Asia Relations
Harvard University
Presider
Irina A. Faskianos
Vice President, National Program and Outreach
Council on Foreign Relations
FASKIANOS: Thank you. Welcome to today’s session of the Fall 2024 Global Affairs Expert Webinar series, formerly known as the Academic Webinar series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR.
Today’s discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on education.CFR.org if you would like to share these materials with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.
We are delighted to have Rana Mitter with us to discuss U.S. China strategy. Professor Mitter is the S.T. Lee chair in U.S.-Asia relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. He’s a fellow of the British Academy, and previously directed the China Center at the University of Oxford. Professor Mitter regularly comments on China and media in forums around the world, including the World Economic Forum at Davos, and his writing on contemporary China has appeared in Foreign Affairs, published by CFR, the Harvard Business Review, The Spectator, The Critic, The Guardian, among many others. He has also authored several books, including his most recent entitled, China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism. And that was published in 2020 by Harvard University Press. And his documentary of contemporary Chinese politics, entitled “Meanwhile in Beijing,” is available on BBC Sounds.
So, Rana, thank you very much for being with us today. I thought we could begin with you giving us an overview of America’s—or, U.S. China strategy, and how America’s relationship with the country has evolved over time. And perhaps you can also touch upon how China sees the United States.
MITTER: Thank you very much, indeed, for that welcome and for having me here today on this CFR webinar. It’s a great pleasure to be here, particularly with an organization which does so much really astonishing work in terms of trying to maintain global stability and peace at a time when it’s in, perhaps, shorter supply than it might be. And thank you to everyone who’s taken the time to join us for this lunchtime webinar.
I’d like to take up your invitation and spend perhaps ten minutes or so, no more, just outlining some of the points that you’ve made, because I’m sure there’ll be a lot of Q&A, and I’d love this to be as interactive a session as we can manage. Just before I say anything else I’d just add that, as I hope is clear, I’m here as an academic analyst. I do not represent any government of any variety, nor do I have any standing to do so. So everything I say is on the record, but it’s very much my opinion. And opinions may differ. And I hope, perhaps, in our discussion perhaps they will. And that would be fine.
What I’d like to do is to start by just saying a little bit about how we got here. And when I say, “here,” I mean the current quite fractious state of U.S.-China relations. I then want to give a quick little kind of handy life hack as to how we might think about U.S.-China relations. A little mnemonic. I’ll get back to that. And finally, a minute or two on how it looks from the other side. I was in Beijing just a couple of months ago, had a good chance to chat to think tankers there who are involved in trying to formulate China’s America policy. And a couple of thoughts from what they had to say I think might be useful to put into the discussion before we open it up.
First of all, though, let me say something about how things have changed in, let’s say, the last ten to fifteen years. For many people on the call, particularly since I know there are quite a few undergraduate students, fifteen years ago may seem like a lifestyle, and you probably don’t—lifetime. Not lifestyle, but lifetime. You probably won’t have huge memories of things that were happening during the presidency, say, of President Obama or President George W. Bush. And yet, for some of us they are within living memory.
And I would say that fifteen, twenty years ago was probably the last time—now we can look back a little bit—the last time when the U.S. and China were basically on the same side in a whole variety of really key questions. And the example I give of what I mean by that is something, again, that you may be vaguely aware of or very aware of. But we came to an accommodation in the year 2001. So, actually, nearly a quarter century ago. And that was China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Now, the details of that don’t matter right—so much right now. We might come back to that in terms of talking about where trade policy is. But I want to bring it up because I would say that probably the entry of China to this big, international trade regulatory body, a global organization, was the last time that the U.S. really pushed hard to bring China into an aspect of the international system, and that China really wanted to be brought in. So much so that I remember when I was in Beijing in the late 1990s there would be people—you know, young people, students—wearing T-shirts that just read: Give China a Chance. Get China Into the WTO.
Now, American undergrads and schoolkids wear a whole variety of T-shirts, but I’d never seen one before advocating entry into a trade organization. And yet, it was a big deal in China at the time. And the U.S., both under the administration of President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush, both pushed really hard to get China in. And in retrospect, that may be the last time that we saw policy of that sort, in which both sides agreed that they had the same goal. Now, fast-forward more than two decades, and for a variety of reasons we’re no longer in that situation.
Some people have referred to the current relationship between China and the United States as a new Cold War. And, again, we can debate a little bit as to whether or not that’s an appropriate term to use, but I quite like the term that—it’s been used by a variety of China scholars. But I’ll give you one name, Professor Wang Jisi, a big professor at Peking University in China. And he said: It’s not a cold war. It’s a hot peace. Now, that’s an interesting phrasing, because it does suggest that we’re not at war—and we very much hope, all of us, that that would remain the case—but that we can’t deny that there are frictions and tensions that simply weren’t there in quite the same way twenty, twenty-five years ago.
And there are a variety of reasons that that situation has changed. But if I had to essentially give one, it is the changing power balance, the changing power relationship between China and the United States that has shifted. In terms of everything from the share that each country has of the global economy—I mean, fifty, sixty years ago the United States occupied something like 40 percent, four-zero, of global GDP, gross domestic product. In the present era, it’s still big but it’s close to 15-20 percent, depending on how you count it. And China, of course, has come way up, having been a very small part of global GDP during that time.
Or, in terms of military security, the number of nuclear missiles that each country has, or the ability of each country to build up capacity in areas like naval power. China now has a navy that’s only rivaled in the world by the United States. You could think of lots of other examples, and we will talk about some of those in just a little while. But the competition between the two sides certainly has the capacity, even now, to be a competition where both sides can gain as well as lose. But it is a very open competition, in a way that wasn’t quite so obvious a couple of decades ago.
So that shift has been very notable. In fact, my brilliant colleague at Harvard, Professor Graham Allison, has written a book called Destined for War—which really should have a question mark in its title. It doesn’t, but it implies that it does—arguing it’s possible that China and the United States may find themselves in a situation of confrontation if both sides do not act to manage the relationship to prevent that confrontation. So Professor Allison is clear, he’s not saying that, in fact, the two sides are destined for war, just that if they don’t watch out that could be the way that things go.
So let me now shift a little bit to some specifics. And, you know, if I were to talk about every relationship—every aspect of the China-U.S. relationship, we would be here for all of our CFR hour and beyond. So I’m going to stick to three aspects. They’re not the whole story, but they’re very important. By the way, I can see my face shading here as the mic changes. I’m going to have to—I’m just going to move around a little to make sure that—(inaudible)—have the haunted mirror or something. So, anyway, let’s say that you get some sight of where I am at the moment.
I’m going to characterize this by the—a little—a little mnemonic. Which is that in some ways you could talk about the things that are really driving the U.S.-China relationship and U.S.-China competition as three Ts. And the three Ts I’m going to mention are Taiwan, technology, and trade. And even though each of those does not necessarily encompass everything around its subject, they symbolize something bigger. In the case of Taiwan, it is a particular island off the coast of China, but also be a question about military security. In the case of technology, it’s very much about the competition between both sides to essentially become dominant in a sphere which is going to be incredibly important in the next fifteen, twenty years. And in terms of trade, it’s very much about how much there is a tension—another T there—between the idea of mutual benefit from trade and trade as something where both sides are essentially looking to outdo the other.
So let me say a word or two about each of those, just for a minute or so. Taiwan, many of you will know this, but worth saying. The island of Taiwan is the only part of the wider Chinese empire, as defined, perhaps, over the last 150 years or so, that has never been under the control of the People’s Republic of China, the communist government which was established by Mao Zedong, Chairman Mao, in 1949 at the end of the communist revolution, when Mao’s communists defeated the incumbent nationalist party, the Kuomintang, under their leader, Chiang Kai Shek, and took over the mainland. And Taiwan at that point, being couple of hundred miles off the coast of China, was never actually conquered.
But the current government of China, the Communist Party, regards Taiwan as the last unfinished business of the Cold War. And although, essentially, it’s been left autonomous, although not recognized by either China or the U.S. as a separate independent state, but nonetheless it has been autonomous in terms of being able to govern itself. And the Chinese mainland has essentially, you know, allowed it more or less to get on with that for the last few decades. But right now the situation has changed, and China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, has made it clear that he regards the, as he puts it “resolution” of the Taiwan problem—in other words bringing it into the governance of the PRC—is a question that, in his words, should not be left to a future generation.
So whether all that’s going to change we are likely to see in the next decade or so. But the United States, certainly under the last couple of administrations, both President Trump and President Biden, have made it very clear that they regard this as an aim on which they do not regard China’s position as one that the U.S. will accept. Broadly, there are two reasons. One is that Taiwan has become a democratic state with a very free media, free civil society. And the destruction of a democracy is something that the U.S. feels it can’t tolerate. And the second reason is a security issue. Taiwan is what you might call an unsinkable aircraft carrier, and anyone who controls Taiwan can send naval power off its coasts with great ease—whether that’s its current non-communist government or, of course, in the future if it were to become part of mainland China, the People’s Republic.
The second issue is technology. And many will be aware that China is currently the subject of a great many restrictions from the Biden administration in terms of what technology, particularly high-level chips, can be exported to China for use there. And essentially, American manufacturers or American-linked manufacturers are being placed under more and more restrictions, on the grounds that the U.S. government argues that giving China technology that can be used to build up its military strength is no longer something that the government feels can be tolerated.
China, of course, pushes back against this very hard, and argues that it’s using its technology for civilian uses, and this is an unfair restriction. But technology restrictions are now, and will continue to be, more and more at the cutting edge of the discussion between the two countries, or even confrontation between the two countries, about how it will be possible to cooperate in some areas but also compete, or indeed be in conflict, in others. And a good example of that will be one of the most crucial technologies the next ten years, energy transition, where China is currently very dominant in many areas that are important to green energy provision. And in particular I would single out solar panels, where China has a very, very strong manufacturing advantage, not least because it puts lots of subsidies into producing those solar panels.
The final T is trade. And again, U.S.-China trade is worth billions of dollars every year. There’s a huge mutual dependence between the two countries. But both are trying to separate out. In China, this is called zili gengsheng, meaning self-sufficiency, self-reliance. And on the part of the U.S., the terms “decoupling” or “de-risking,” in terms of making sure that key technology and manufacturing supply chains for goods that are sold to American consumers no longer are put in a bottleneck that goes through China. That is a very, very important part of both countries’ strategy. If you look at a company like Apple, or the, you know, biggest and most prestigious and most profitable American companies, large amounts of its manufacturing of the iPhone you may have in your pocket right now are, of course, made in China. And that proves the kind of pedal to the metal kind of practical problem that comes with either side wanting to separate off. So that third T, trade, is going to be a really big issue.
Let me finish my thought, Irina, with a very quick flip to the other side about how folks in Beijing may see some of these questions. And the way I’ll do that is just by telling you a little bit about what happened when I asked people there in think tanks what outcome they wanted from the upcoming U.S. presidential election. And a little like American citizens, actually, they came up with different answers. But very broadly speaking, very simply, there were three strands. The first were what you might call the traditionalists, the people who might be—I know, the equivalent to the CFR on the Beijing side, the people who are interested in foreign policy and interested in stability. And they said, well, we’re not necessarily that keen on President Biden and the current administration, but we feel he’s predictable. We kind of know what his government’s going to do, what his administration will do. And sticking with that, probably simpler for China because it means kind of no change.
The second group, probably the largest group, actually said: We regard the confrontation of any American administration, President Biden—this was back in June, before we knew that it was actually was actually going to be Vice President Harris as the candidate—President Biden, President Trump, doesn’t matter to us because actually any U.S. government now is going to confront China in areas crucial to us. So doesn’t make a big difference. And the final group, which was fairly large—not the majority, but fairly large—said, actually, President Trump being reelected could be good for China. Yes, his language is very strong. Pushes back against China when he does speeches. And he has some very pro-Taiwan people surrounding him. But he’s also a deal maker. He is someone who we think maybe we could try and get some kind of, you know, deal going in terms of reorienting the kind of status of East Asia at the moment.
Now I make no statement and hold no standing in terms of which, if any, of those analyses are correct. But they are all viewpoints that you will hear in think tanks in Beijing at the moment. And they reflect that wide sense perhaps worth noting that even in China, a highly authoritarian country with a very limited public sphere, there are different debates and viewpoints about foreign policy, just as there are in Washington, DC or in the wider Western world. And remembering that as we analyze China is perhaps worthwhile. There is, of course, a country called China which has its own foreign policy view. But within that, there are many different strands. And it’s worth trying to find out as many of those as possible.
So, Irina, with those thoughts, let me throw back to you so we can open up for some discussion.
FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Thank you, Rana, for that analysis. Really terrific.
(Gives queuing instructions.)
So I am going to take the first question from Emily Matson. Raised hand, if you accept the unmute prompt and tell us who you are.
Q: Hi. Can you hear me? Hey, Rana. It’s good to be in touch again. I hope you’re well. This is Emily Matson, Georgetown University and a CFR Education ambassador.
And so my question is coming at the perspective from a fellow historian of modern China. So I really admire how in your career you’ve been able to kind of meld together the fields of history and foreign affairs. I share with you the conviction that understanding history is so important in terms of geopolitical considerations between the U.S. and China today. So I was wondering if you could give us a little bit of your perspective on why is history so important when we are having these conversations about U.S. and China right now? Thank you.
MITTER: Thanks very much indeed, Emily. Great to be in contact with you again. I should say to the audience here, Dr. Matson is a massive expert, amongst other things, on the way in which history is used in today’s China by the Communist Party as a means of creating new sorts of political narratives. And well worth looking at things that she has written on that—on that subject.
I think that if there is sort of one line that I could give anyone going in for a discussion or negotiation with China—with Chinese officials on a whole variety of subjects, I would say know your history is actually the best way to get to it. Because although history is, of course, not the only thing, or even always the primary thing, in terms of shaping the discussion that’s going on—whether it’s about trade or about educational exchanges, or whatever it might be—everyone on the Chinese side will nonetheless have a consciousness of their own historical circumstances in a way that simply, I think, doesn’t always operate on the Western side.
And I would say that although there are many aspects of history that I think are very much important to kind of understand in terms of the wider framing, let me just—well, kind of bullet point three. Just give a couple of things that I think are useful. The first one is the importance of remembering that China’s own experience in the wider—the wider world, the global community, has often been a very unhappy one. You know, China was invaded in the mid-nineteenth century. And much of the century that followed, up to the mid-twentieth century, culminating in the horrors of World War II, were essentially stories about China having lost its sovereignty, lost its capacity to make its own decisions, and trying to get those back.
And China today is in a very, very different situation. It’s an immensely strong country. It’s not a country that I think could meaningfully be attacked or invaded from outside by anyone. But much of that mindset that comes from the historical background of invasion and occupation still in some ways shapes the way in which China’s thinking establishment, as it were, thought establishment looks at questions of policy. And even very contemporary issues such as trade, for instance—we mentioned it more than once and I’ll mention it again—are shaped by a memory that for a long time China was not in a position to control its own trade.
So whether it’s the issue of invasion in the nineteenth century leading to the Opium Wars, or whether—an occasion where, basically, you know, China’s barriers were broken down by the British, initially, to sell opium into Chinese territory. Or the mid-twentieth century, when an organization called the Maritime Customs Service, now almost forgotten by many other than historians, but it actually held tariff autonomy on China’s behalf. It decided what tariffs could be charged on goods coming into China until the year 1930—you know, very late in the day.
And when we hear debates in the current U.S. presidential debate from, you know, President Trump and others about tariff policy, it’s worth remembering that that policy has its own particular resonance in China in a longer history that simply isn’t very well remembered in the Western world. That doesn’t, I hasten to add, mean that China’s position on these things should be taken literally or simply agreed with. There’s actually lots to argue with China about. But I would argue that a more successful argument with China comes from a basis of historical knowledge. And that’s why it can be very, very useful. So thank you for that, Emily.
FASKIANOS: I’m going to take the next question, written question, from Neomie Hinanay, who is a graduate student at San Francisco State University. And I’m going to shorten it a bit. The question concerns a mutual defense treaty between the United States and the Philippines. In the wake of the recent flashpoint contentions in the Sabina Shoal, how should the U.S. approach planning and strategy with the Philippines moving forward, in your opinion?
MITTER: Sure. Well, one of the things that’s worth noting is the relationship between the United States and the Philippines is, of course, a very longstanding one. I mean, first of all, the Philippines, of course, was ruled, essentially, as a U.S. colony for the best part of fifty years, and then when independence came to the Philippines in 1946, treaties of mutual alliance were signed at about the same time, and pretty much afterwards as well. So there’s a long history stretching through the Cold War and beyond in terms of that relationship.
Things are different today. Essentially, when the Philippines and the U.S. signed those agreements back in the 1940s and 1950s, it was probably felt, at least initially, the old Soviet Union during the Cold War was the greatest problem that might emerge in Southeast Asia. And that was linked to fears that culminated in the wars in Indochina—Vietnam in particular—about the nature of communist confrontation with the capitalist world. So it’s worth remembering, again, there’s a longer history in terms of the U.S.-Philippine relationship. But in this particular case, it obviously relates now to the issue of China and its wider role in the region.
The major issue, I think, is that both sides are very, very keen to try and push forward a position about how maritime space can be used. The Philippines puts forward a position, which actually has been backed up by the International Court of the Hague back in 2016, that it has the right to use quite an extensive part of the territorial waters around the Philippines and beyond, including for freedom of navigation operations. China makes a claim that essentially the majority of the waters that enclose the South China Sea should be regarded as Chinese waters only. And this is clearly a mutually, you know, irreconcilable position.
What I think seems likely to happen now is a combination of what has emerged over the last twenty, thirty years, which is significant actors in Southeast Asia, many of whom also have a claim on that sea, continuing to leverage their alliance with the United States. The Philippines, of course, is a formal U.S. treaty ally. Countries like Vietnam have a working relationship, short of a full treaty or alliance, with the U.S. And other countries, even those who are neutral more explicitly, such as Indonesia, are concerned about China becoming dominant in the region.
At the same time, there are discussions which, you know, sometimes have run somewhat into the sands, both literally and metaphorically, about a code of conduct in the South China Sea, in which China has a wider interest. So I would say that making sure that all of those diplomatic moves—all of the diplomatic pathways that are available that can be used to try and address that Southeast Asian question are very, very important, indeed. But the other actors in the region, including the Philippines, will want to have the security of the U.S. presence for a very long time.
There’s one other factor I’d add, though, which I think is underplayed and is worth thinking about. It goes back to one of my three Ts. That’s trade. Even if the security presence of the United States is going to be a longstanding presence in the region, and I think it will. And I think the Philippines and other countries are keen that it should be. It is now very notable that the major trading partner of every country in the Asia-Pacific region is now China, and not the United States.
And, therefore, the U.S., as well as the Philippines and other partners, will have to think seriously about how it’s possible to maintain an environment in which the major trading partner is China but the major security provider is the United States. Because that, if it’s not managed, could lead to a situation where people are put in a position where they’re forced to choose one way or the other. And that could lead to, obviously, a very dangerous confrontation. So well worth the next administration thinking very carefully about that, I think.
Irina.
FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you.
Let us go next to—well, I just want to—there are many questions in the chat and raised hands. Cesar Mendez, who’s a student at Sharpstown International School, asks: What is the future of U.S.-China trade relations amidst ongoing tariffs and trade restrictions? Since you were just talking about trade, maybe we could just—could answer that, and then I’ll take a raised hand.
MITTER: I don’t think U.S.-China trade is going anywhere, because for a very long period to come it is going to be very, very difficult for any Western country—and the United States certainly sits at the top of that category—to divert all of its production lines and supply chains from China. Just to go back to a company I mentioned briefly before and say again, Apple. You know, Apple has invested, you know, millions—billions of dollars, I suspect, over the last twenty or thirty years in manufacturing of high-quality components and assembly of iPhones and other products in China. Although, some of that has been moved to India, some of it to Vietnam.
It’s not possible, in a very short period, simply to move the whole of that production. And in that context, it’s worth noting that there is a very strong sense that while you can, on both sides, mitigate the control that the other side, the Chinese or the American side, has over your trade relationship, it’s not possible to avoid it completely. On the Chinese side, even though, of course, there’s a great deal of talk about self-sufficiency, as I’ve mentioned before, the bare fact is that the major consumer markets of the world which China sells into are still in the Global North. They are the United States. They are Western Europe, the European Union, and other rich countries. China is doing better in emergent economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. But even now, those don’t add up to a replacement for the rich consumer economies of the West. And even though China has cut out of some of the high technology elements of those, it will not want to lose those markets completely.
There’s another reason why I suspect—this is just my judgment—but I suspect that China is not going to move to essentially squeeze all American or, indeed, Western trade out of China. The reason being that it’s still very important for China to try and persuade people in the political and business worlds in the U.S. that a good relationship with China is still worthwhile, at a time of heightening tensions over military and security issues. And if essentially all American business was chased out of China, then there wouldn’t be much weight to that argument. The same actually goes for countries like Germany in Europe, which are very dependent on China trade.
That said, I think there are signs, and they’re becoming increasingly evident on both sides, that the trade relationship, while it won’t go away, is going to become more difficult. On the American side, again, if we do have a second term for President Trump, then it has been stated, certainly by people in his circles, that—you know, that high levels of tariffs may well be imposed on Chinese goods coming into United States—60 percent tariffs and plus, and more. Already there are heavy tariffs both in the European Union and the United States on electric vehicles from China, which are now basically being heavily raised in price for precisely that reason. That’s happening now. That’s not even in the future. That’s happening under the Biden administration.
On the flip side, China is doing much more to squeeze Western service providers, for instance, who are trying to get a foothold in the Chinese market. So recently you have seen that major accountancy firms, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, have been—PwC—have been put with massive fines and suspension of business in China, essentially for being involved in auditing a major Chinese property firm called Evergrande, Hengda, which, you know, went bad pretty quickly. And, you know, one could argue that, of course, it is the job of accountants to make sure they do their job. But it’s notable that Western firms, who obviously want to maintain that foothold in China, are currently very publicly being given that kind of pushback as well.
So I think that we will see that kind of pushback on both sides increase in the next few years. But nonetheless, there are still, for the short term, some irreducible elements that make it very difficult for the U.S. and China simply to separate themselves from each other’s streams of trade.
FASKIANOS: Thank you.
I’m going to take the next question from Stockton University. You can unmute yourself.
Q: Hello. Good afternoon. My name is Kenny Casa. I’m a first-year student at Stockton University.
And my question is, as you know there is an upcoming generation in China that wants to explore their rights and freedoms. What do you believe a leader like Xi Jinping or his Politburo Standing Committee would do to try to silence the citizens? Or what would they do to address citizens like that?
MITTER: Thanks very much. Great question. So I think one of the things that is most interesting about the emerging, changing Chinese society as a whole is demographic shift. And it’s worth noting that its top leadership grouping—Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the party, the president of China, and those around him—are in the kind of oldest leadership generation, who grew up during the Cultural Revolution—that terrible time in the 1960s and 1970s when, essentially, you know, under the very kind of inward-turning policies of Chairman Mao, Mao Zedong, China basically launched a civil war against itself, with huge amounts of violence. You know, young people rebelling against their elders, smashing up buildings, you know, murdering their teachers. It was an absolutely deadly and bloody time.
And I think the experience of that chaos and destruction, caused by the Communist Party itself, has massively shaped the mindset of the top leadership generation in China today. The thing that I think they fear more than anything else is luan, disorder/chaos, which I think they saw in their teenage years. And everything they’ve been trying to push back against an idea that chaos might return to China. Later generations don’t feel that. The Cultural Revolution was over a very long time ago, more than half a century. And people who grew up who are now, say, middle aged, who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, and people who’ve grown up in more recent years have actually living memories of a relatively more liberal China.
So the era of Jiang Zemin, the president of China between the 1990s and early 2000s, 2002—although, you know, still very much China as an authoritarian society with a lot of oppression of, you know, civil rights, freedom of press, all of these things being very heavily censored—nonetheless, also allowed a great deal more space for personal expression. That was a time when, you know, Chinese youth were allowed to kind of explore social media and discuss personal identity and issues like, you know, gender, region, language. All these sorts of things became, you know, very much—particularly as Chinese social media took off—very much part of kind of wider discussion.
One good example, actually, was a bit more recent, a couple of years ago, but many people will be aware of this, was what became known as the rice rabbit movement. And if you haven’t heard of that, then it’s worth putting in the direct Chinese translation, which is, mi-tu, which means rice rabbit, or rice bunny, in Chinese but, of course, is a cross-lingual pun on the Me Too Movement of young feminist women basically pushing back against sexual harassment from male elders. And this also hit China as well. So, you know, for people who say that actually there’s no sign of political pushback in China, it’s simply not true. There are plenty of social movements where it’s evident that there is that kind of shift.
Now, the current administration under the Xi Jinping has been very keen to try and push back very strongly, essentially provide a—provide a way in which there is almost no capacity on social media or in the kind of wider press to be able to actually express what ten or fifteen years ago was quite easily stated. But that doesn’t mean that those feelings aren’t there. And I think that when you think about the way in which young people in China—if you look at Chinese social media, there are slogans probably put out, as far as we can tell, by younger people which say something about wanting to push back. I mean, one phrase that became quite well known was the phrase wǒ mén shì zuì hòu yī dài, we’re the last generation. In other words, if we don’t get to change society, we don’t even want to have kids. You know, this was a big deal in a country where the demographics mean that there’ll be fewer and fewer younger Chinese year by year.
Or one that’s been, I think, circulating more recently, which was wǒ bù xū yào tīng huà, I don’t need to do what you say/I don’t need to listen to what you have to say. In other words, just saying, I don’t simply want to do what I’ve been told. And I think the COVID generation is also going to make a difference, having been subjected to a lot of lockdowns. That generation, I think, do want to hear their voices heard. So learning about how you can manage in a system that is not a Western liberal democracy but which has plenty of space to allow a lot more free expression than now, that’s going to be one of the key tasks for the next decade.
FASKIANOS: Thank you.
I’m going to go to a written question that’s gotten several upvotes from Eric Haegele, who is a student at the U.S. Air Force’s Air War College. Asks: From your perspective, what is the U.S. getting wrong about China’s global ambitions? And what do you think we can do to improve our perspectives of China’s strategic aims?
MITTER: I’m not sure I’d use the expression “getting wrong,” because it’s very hard to know whether, you know, a wrong decision has been taken up until, in retrospect, you find out the sense, which is a slight cop out. What I would say is that I think that there is too little attention to the internal politics of China when considering its foreign policy. It’s not to say that there shouldn’t be, and there should absolutely be, tremendous American concern about, you know, China’s trade policies, about the growth of its navy and army, and all of these things that continue to concern people about the power balance in the Asia-Pacific region.
But I think, particularly at this moment when actually China’s economy is really not doing fantastically well, it’s worth noting that in China itself a very great deal of political discourse is looking very inward at the moment. It’s very much about how we’re going to pump up our model to get to the next phase of economic growth and the next phase of where the country needs to go? It doesn’t mean that that sort of wider sense that there is, you know, competition with the United States is wrong. It’s not. There is very much that sense in large parts of China’s thinking classes. But that’s not the only thing that I think drives and dominates the political class. A very large part of it is actually looking at where the problems are today.
Let me give you a quick sort of sketch example of what I mean. If you are a kind of top-level Chinese political leader, you might want to think about, say, a typical thirty-something younger woman, living in a kind of fourth-tier city out in the kind of relatively provincial central parts of China. Maybe she’s a single mother, which is not that common in China but it’s becoming a lot more common than it used to be. She works in financial services, but her job is not very secure. She has some savings, but they’re in a bank which may or may not be very stable. She’s really worried. She doesn’t have much health care. She’s got elderly parents. She has an apartment which can’t afford the mortgage on. It’s not really easy to pay the mortgage. She needs to put her parents somewhere, maybe they need to go into a kind of care home.
This is the person who the Chinese communist leadership really need to sort out at the moment. If this sounds a little bit like the troubles of certain people in parts of the U.S., who are currently being fought over for votes by the Democratic and Republican parties, that isn’t necessarily such a strange thing because, actually, although China doesn’t have elections it has an awful lot of people who want to see performance from their government. And when they see that there are problems, they’re not sitting there thinking, you know, what? It would be great if we could get Taiwan back tomorrow morning. Or, oh my gosh, it wouldn’t be wonderful, you know, if the leadership went and confronted the United States and showed those Yanks what’s what?
I mean, if that happens they’re probably not that bothered about it, don’t get me wrong. But they really want to know, what are you, the Chinese Communist Party, going to do to make my future better tomorrow? And that is the message for which the current leadership really needs to get an answer. So understanding that that is a core need, and trying to work out in terms of U.S. policy what is the best way to make sure that this can be done in a way, on the one hand, clearly doesn’t allow the U.S.-China confrontation to become either something that spills into conflict or one that undermines the U.S. position, but at the same time also understands that the domestic drivers of Chinese policy are potentially ones, if done the right way, that can lead to wider stability. It’s a really tough road to walk along, but for subtle and skilled policymakers in the West, in the U.S., it’s a very important one.
FASKIANOS: Thank you.
I’m going to take the next question from Kelly Gibbs, who has a raised hand. If you can unmute yourself. You’re still muted. There we go. And tell us what college you’re at.
Q: OK, hi. Good afternoon. My name is Kelly Gibbs. I’m a junior at University of North Florida, a political science major, international relations minor.
My question to you would be, what do you think would need to come to the table as far as our foreign policy to maybe get back to good relations between China and the—and the U.S., from going extremely to the left? Just in case, if Trump does not win the election and it goes to Kamala Harris, how do you think we might be able to mend those tensions that are existing to be more cohesive?
MITTER: It’s actually fair to say—thanks, Kelly, for the great question. I think it’s fair to say, Kelly, that that viewpoint that I mentioned from a lot of people in Beijing, that actually they don’t feel convinced that whoever wins the U.S. presidential election makes a huge amount of difference, may have something to it. I mean, I think it’s fair to say that, at least in the near future, the likelihood that there are going to be very significant tensions, at the very least, between the U.S. and China is simply going to be a fact of life for a while. So I think managing those tensions is really the key thing.
How does that happen? Well, actually, I would say that the key things that need to happen are probably happening already and might well happen under a Trump administration or a Harris administration. It wouldn’t necessarily be that different. So look at things that were actually put into place about a year and a half ago, after Xi Jinping and Joe Biden met in San Francisco in November 2023. One of the things that came as a result of that meeting was the reopening of military-to-military dialogues, is maybe one—perhaps too strong way to put it—but, at least, conversations on both sides.
Prior to that, they had a long period where actually it was very hard for U.S. military folks to be able to get in touch with their Chinese counterparts in a hurry. One of the reasons the Chinese, you know, implied that this was the case was that they didn’t want to make it too easy for the U.S. to be in touch, which they thought might then create a situation in which the U.S. would take more risks. I think there’s a kind of reverse logic to that myself, but that was the argument that was used, to some extent. Anyway, that’s been calmed down a bit by the opening again of that sort of hotline, and the capacity for militaries on both sides to talk to each other. And you see more delegations going both ways at the moment.
Then take probably one of the issues where both sides are going to have to deal with a lot of sudden changes in the next few years whether they like it or not. And that’s climate change. Clearly, for a long time climate change was one of the few areas where the United States and China theoretically should have been on the same page. But even there, partly because the technology issues, that T that I mentioned before, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. China has become very, very powerful in terms of supply or materials, such as solar panels, for post-fossil fuel green technology. And that has now become another part of the challenge or the confrontation from the U.S. side.
So, for instance, looking to make sure that China is not the only actor in the energy transition space, the provider of green energy, could be a really important part of making that competition manageable. Nobody is going to suggest, I think it’d be impossible, that China should be cut out of that market. You know, lots of countries around the world do want to buy Chinese technology on energy because it’s cheap and it’s easily available. But it should be the United States and other leading countries at the scientific cutting edge who should be saying, but actually, as in everything else in life, there should be competition to make sure that everyone has the fullest choice possible.
So in those areas, such as energy transition, in areas such as military-to-military conversations, we can already see the signs of how the next administration can find ways of making sure that U.S. national interests remain paramount. But that doesn’t have to be incompatible with finding ways to manage the relationship with China.
FASKIANOS: Thank you.
I’m going to take a written question from Ryan Weidman. Has got a lot of upvotes. Ryan’s an undergraduate student of political science at Framingham State University. The question pertains to the role of investment in the competition between China and the West, particularly regarding that of Africa and the Belt and Road Initiative: What are the opinions within Chinese think tanks regarding these programs? Do they regard these as successes or failures?
MITTER: Ryan, thank you. I would say that the famous Belt and Road Initiative, you know, in other words, this huge sort of aim to seek to invest in infrastructure and other development framework over the last decade or so, is in a period of transition. I mean, to answer your question briefly in two parts. First, how has it seemed so far? And I’d say that it’s a mixed record. And Chinese analysts will tell you it’s a mixed record. There are some projects which have gone actually pretty well, such as if you look at the connectivity in Southeast Asia, you know, high-speed rail in Southeast Asia for instance, that’s something where they feel actually there has been a decent outcome. It provides genuine public goods for a large—for a large population, but beyond that, also there’s been a decent return on investment from China’s point of view.
Other areas have really not worked out well. So the Kenya-Uganda high-speed railway would be a good example of that, where China sunk a lot of investment into a railway project that ultimately has not been completed, is not successful, and won’t make any money anytime soon—unless the project is restarted. So, you know, you can call hits and strikes and see, you know, which ones have worked out. What we do know is that right now, in the last two or three years, China has shifted track away from what you might call Belt and Road version 1.0, which was the sort of large, often very opaque, non-transparent loans given by Chinese development banks for these sorts of infrastructure projects. And for the most part, that ain’t what China’s doing anymore.
First of all, the name’s changed. BRI, Belt and Road Initiative, first, this description is being faded out. And in place of that, you get this term GDI, Global Development Initiatives. So look out for those initials a lot more. We’ll hear a lot more of them. And partly because, as I mentioned before, I’ll say again, China’s economy has taken a bit of a downturn, the amount of cash to splash when it comes to investment is not as much as it had been. That said, there is still an interest in China in sending that investment outwards. Why? Because one of the reasons for the economic downturn within China—let me go back to my previous point that China’s domestic economy is a really big issue for their leadership at the moment—is that China, because of the one child policy, is no longer having lots of young kids. And that means that all of those apartment blocks where the infrastructure money was going, they don’t need to build them anymore. You know, there isn’t that scope for big building projects in China.
So you’ve got this capital, what are you going to do? You’re going to send it overseas. What are you going to build with it? Well, that’s where some of the shift comes. There’s been a move away from the classic bridges, power stations, railway lines. They’re still there, but they’re not at the heart of what’s being done. Now, there are three areas where essentially China is locking into what it thinks it can best do in terms of its skills, and its capacity, and its investment. Number one is 5G, and technologies that come beyond that. You’ll have heard of companies like Huawei. For security reasons, these companies no longer have any particular footprint in North America, or even much of Europe. But in Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, these Chinese companies are still very big providers for 5G and the technologies beyond that.
And that, of course, creates a tech path dependency, which is very helpful to China in terms of future investments. Once you start with one technology, it’s very expensive to rip it out and change it. So that’s one area. The second I mentioned before, is the green energy transition. Huge amounts of work on solar and other post-fossil fuel energy is coming through Chinese investment. Again, much of it in these emerging markets. The third, we’ve forgotten a little, but if the pandemic comes back or a different pandemic comes back we’ll be looking at it quite carefully, is global health, pharmaceuticals, vaccinations, these sorts of areas. And China’s putting a lot of money into life sciences in particular, not just within China itself but externally as well.
So I would say that when you’re looking for where Chinese investment is going, look for life sciences, look for cyber or 5G, look for green energy, and you will see how the new version of Belt and Road is moving away, perhaps, from the bricks and mortar and a little bit more towards those technology-driven, path-dependent options instead.
FASKIANOS: Thank you.
I’m going to go next to Eduardo Gomez, who has raised his hand.
MITTER: Hey, Eduardo.
Q: Hello. Thank you very much, Professor Mitter. My name is Ed Gomez. I’m a professor at Lehigh University.
And just pick up on your—on your point there about investing in health. I’m just curious what your thoughts are about the future of U.S.-China relations in the area of health. Do you see a lot of cooperation, especially what we experienced from COVID-19, in our relationship with China going forward? Or will there be some tensions in the future?
MITTER: I think that the—I mean, the question of whether or not there can be further scientific cooperation with China in these areas is going to be a very fraught one in the next few years. On the one hand, we know from our previous pandemic experience that when a pandemic becomes a global problem, you need global solutions. And that includes, of course, vaccines as part of that, no question. And one of the very mistaken moves that China made during that period was not to accept the offers of Western-derived vaccines, Moderna, Pfizer, and so forth, essentially for reasons of nationalism.
However, China has now developed since then the capability to create mRNA and other advanced vaccine types that didn’t exist, right, during the middle of the pandemic. And the question becomes—I think your question, then, is about how much space there is for cooperation in these areas. I would say that it will be real, but limited. And the tension comes from the following two things. And I think, you know, there’s a live debate going on right now about how far they go.
On the one hand, there is no doubt that life sciences, like other sciences, have all sorts of really important wider security issues attached to them. And you’ll find that life science materials in China are very heavily restricted in terms of what could be discussed, precisely because so much is defined by China as being under national security legislation. And so in that sense, from the Chinese side, doing extensive amounts of cooperation will become probably more restricted. And I think it’s just inevitable that from the U.S. side the amount of hard scientific collaboration is going to become narrower in the next two years because it’s going to be harder for U.S. scientists to work with China, a country with which there’s an increasingly confrontational relationship.
However, it’s worth noting what the sunk costs are on this. Just to give, again, one quick example. In one particular area, antidepressants, which are not particularly national security sensitive necessarily, there have been huge, long, multi-person trials, because—basically cosponsored by Western pharmaceutical companies and universities and by Chinese institutions and companies. There aren’t that many places in the world where you can get basically a million people who have, you know, mental health issues that they want addressed and are willing to go on multiyear clinical tests. But China is, and has been, one of those places. And the data that emerges from those huge, you know, clinical trials has been immensely useful to medical researchers around the world.
Now, I suspect the likelihood of new research of that sort really taking off is probably relatively limited with the U.S. in the near future, for national security reasons. But the fact is, that data already exists and the using of it is still going to be a key issue. The question I think then comes up, I think interesting and unclear one, about whether there are any other partners out there who China can meaningfully work with to build up its own scientific base. And while China’s own domestic science is now at a very high standard in many areas, it’s still well behind the United States in a whole variety of areas. And I don’t think there is another obvious scientific challenger who could actually fill the place that collaboration with the United States has—that the collaboration with the United States has provided in the last ten to fifteen to twenty years.
So to finish the thought, I think what we are quite likely to see in the next five, or ten, fifteen years, is a growing separation of U.S. science and Chinese science. And the level of scientific achievement will be somewhat lowered in both because of the inability to cooperate, but in both cases national security prerogatives will mean that the collaboration that might have been possible twenty years ago will be less likely to reemerge.
FASKIANOS: Thank you. I’m going to go next to a written question from Susan McLaughlin, who’s a lecturer and executive fellow at Yale University, and has a lot of upvotes.
In addition to history, I think an understanding of culture and language is very important in managing relationships with other countries. Do you feel there’s sufficient expertise and literacy in Chinese language and culture present in the U.S. intelligence community today to ensure that our elected officials are getting an appropriately nuanced understanding of how Chinese policymakers and intellectuals are thinking about the U.S.-China relationship and the Ts, your three Ts. And if not, how should we be addressing the deficit? And let me just add on to that and say, what do you think students who are on this call, you know, students who are interested in this issue and pursuing it as a career, what should they be thinking about?
MITTER: Well, first of all, I would encourage anyone to go out and learn Chinese, because it’s a fascinating language attached to an absolutely fascinating culture, that’s just well worth knowing about anyway. It’s not an easy ride, but it’s certainly a very worthwhile one.
In terms of the U.S. intelligence community, that you’ve mentioned, I mean, I’m afraid I don’t have enough intimate knowledge of what they are able to provide in terms of that kind of language training. Now, certainly, I think the U.S. like many other countries does produce a cadre are very well trained and very fluent specialists in Chinese, along with other, you know, important languages. So does the UK, so does Germany. And I hope that that will continue and deepen. It’s more difficult at the moment because, of course, getting to China to study is trickier than it has been, say, you know, it would have been, say, ten or fifteen years ago.
But I would sort of answer the question a slightly different way. I think that something that’s very important is not just that there should be a small group of people who have extremely fluent Chinese and, you know, speak the language. That is very important. But more that there should be an awareness of Chinese society and thinking throughout wider society in the U.S.—in business, in media, and elsewhere. And the way that I—you know, when people say, well, that sounds great, but how can we do that in practice? I say, go on YouTube and watch some Chinese TV shows. They will have English subtitles actually provided for them. You don’t need to know any Chinese to watch them.
But just as you might sit down in front of, you know, Netflix and watch, you know, a few episodes of Stranger Things, or, you know, Yellowstone, or whatever your particular streaming choice is. Maybe you’re one of those three people who still watches network TV. I don’t know. You know, you’ll find out something about how America works in a way that simply reading lots of State Department documents will never tell you. Lovely though State Department documents are. In the same way, going and watching a couple episodes of Nothing but Thirty or The Knockout, Kuangbiao, or, you know, generation ago, it would have been Rénmín de Míngyì, In The Name of the People, a kind of big cop thriller that was a massive hit in China, just tells you something about the way in which China thinks about itself and reflects itself back in terms of its own society.
It doesn’t answer all the questions, but if you’re talking about intelligence in the wider sense of trying to have an understanding of how a very different sort of society operates, then I would say that that’s not something for a small cadre of people in Langley, Virginia. That’s something that anyone can and should sit down and do as part of their wider cultural understanding. And if the message you get from this is CFR is telling you to go and watch more TV, then let the record show that I’m quite happy to accept that responsibility.
FASKIANOS: (Laughs.) Well, thank you very much, Rana.
This has been a terrific hour. And I am sorry that we had so many questions, both raised hands and written, that we couldn’t get to. My apologies. But of course, you can follow Rana Mitter’s work on the Harvard Kennedy School website at hks.Harvard.edu. And we also have launched, under the leadership of Rush Doshi, here a China Strategy Initiative. And you can find more information about that on CFR.org.
Our next event is a virtual public forum, election 2024 forum, on Wednesday, October 2, at 1:00 p.m. (EDT) with Kat Duffy from—who is here at CFR, and Elaine Kamarck, who is at Brookings Institution. They’ll be talking about technology and electoral dynamics in the election 2024. And we are also hosting four election events on four college campuses across the country that are meant to be nonpartisan discussions about U.S. foreign policy. The first one will be on October 9 at Arizona State University, October 17 at Georgia Tech, October 21 at Grand Valley State University, and October 22 at Franklin and Marshall College. So if you are in those states and attending those universities, you are welcome to join. We will also be livestreaming them.
So, again, thank you, Rana Mitter. And the final plug is, again, we have CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors CFR.org/careers. So please go there. And you can follow us at @CFR_Education on X, and our website, CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org, for research and analysis on global issues. So thank you all. And thank you, again, Dr. Mitter. We really appreciate your time today.
MITTER: Thank you, Irina. Thank you everyone for coming and joining today. It’s been a pleasure to be part of the discussion.
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