Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Rush Doshi
Rush Doshi is a former Deputy Senior Director for China and Taiwan at Biden's National Security Council and author of 'The Long Game'.
Episode Summary
All eyes are on Beijing as President Trump meets with President Xi Jinping for the first US presidential visit to China in nine years. This week, Sir Richard Dearlove and guest co-host Rosanna Lockwood sit down with Rush Doshi — former Deputy Senior Director for China and Taiwan at Biden's National Security Council and author of The Long Game — to break down what's really at stake.
What does China want from this summit? How far will Trump go on Taiwan? And why is artificial intelligence now the defining battleground between the world's two superpowers?
We also cover the latest from the Iran ceasefire collapse, the Russia-Ukraine stalemate, and what sweeping local election losses mean for Keir Starmer's future as Prime Minister.
In this episode:
1:02 – Sir Richard’s Secret China Mission
3:11 – Iran Ceasefire Collapse Explained
7:19 – Russia-Ukraine War Stalemate Update
10:50 – UK Elections: Labour's Sweeping Defeat
17:13 – Rush Doshi on US-China Strategy
22:46 – China vs US Economic Interdependence
35:47 – Taiwan: Invasion or Economic Pressure?
43:11 – AI Regulation: New Nuclear Arms Race
44:51 – Sir Richard and Rosanna Discussion
Show Links:
The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order
Iran's Regime Won't Fall. It Was Built for This. Iran Expert Trita Parsi on Regional Ramifications
Obama's China Advisor on Why China Wants the US Stuck in the Middle East | One Decision
Will China Invade Taiwan in 2026? Expert's New Insight Reveals "Perfect Storm" | One Decision
Hosted by Sir Richard Dearlove (former MI6 Chief) and Rosanna Lockwood (International Journalist)
Listen & Subscribe
- Watch on YouTube
- Listen on Apple Podcasts
- Listen on Spotify
Transcript
COLD OPEN
Dearlove: Here we are where the two global superpowers are about to meet.
Doshi: Never have we had a summit under these kinds of circumstances. The future of the next industrial revolution is essentially made in Taiwan, and that's why the stakes enormous.
Lockwood: It's almost like it's the new form of nuclear proliferation.
INTRODUCTION
Lockwood: Hello, and welcome to One Decision. I'm your guest cohost, Rosanna Lockwood, I'm joined as ever by my cohost and former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. Hello, Sir Richard.
Dearlove: Hi, Rosanna. I can't think of a week that is in front of us which was more dynamic in terms of geopolitics.
Lockwood: Absolutely. We've got Iran. We've got China meeting, which is what we're gonna discuss today. We've got Ukraine and Russia really taking the headlines again as well, and a small issue called a hantavirus. But we can't get to all of that in today's episode. We'll get to some of it. But I do wanna ask you, Richard, have you been to China?
Dearlove: Yes. I have. I've only been to China significantly once when I had the privilege of going to negotiate, let's say, some of the more sensitive aspects of the Hong Kong handover, which dealt with the future intelligence relationship, security relationship, but also the winding up of Western intelligence interests and Western security organizations in Hong Kong before it was handed back to China. My hosts were the Ministry of State Security. And to go to China as their guest when you are the head of a significant intelligence organization, you realize the power of that organization in China, that I've never been given such VIP treatment in my life. And, you know, it was driven around in flashing light convoys, and roads were cleared and taken to the Great Wall and all the tourists were cleared off it because of the VIP visit. I mean, it was a unique experience. And some really strange things happened, but maybe those are not for the podcast. You know, I've been obviously pre handover and post handover. The way that Hong Kong has changed since the handover is also very interesting.
Lockwood: Absolutely. Following umbrella, revolution, national security law, all of that has changed enormously. Still fantastic place, and I keep looking for an opportunity to go back. We have got to get to so much. So there's so much breaking around the world as we mentioned at the top of this episode. We've also got a formidable guest joining us this week to talk about the Trump Xi Summit. And, dear listeners, if you're not already subscribed to One Decision, now is the time. Subscribe to our YouTube channel or wherever you listen so you don't miss out on any of our interviews. We'll get to that conversation shortly. But let's start with a bit of in brief, shall we, where we make sense of the biggest geopolitical news. First, Richard, let's start with the war in Iran ongoing seventy something days at this point. A lot is changing all the time, especially from as usual, for us, the time of recording to the time this episode ends. But as we're speaking, Trump has rejected, Iran's response to The US's peace proposal. Things aren't looking that sound. But you have a theory that we're not gonna see much development this week.
Dearlove: Well, I can't see Trump ending the ceasefire with an attack, let's say, on infrastructure in Iran whilst he's traveling to Beijing and whilst he's speaking with Xi. So maybe there's a postponement for a week before we go back to the war. But frankly, I'm not the slightest bit surprised that the negotiations over the ceasefire have broken down because I can't see from what we know and what we guess to have happened that the Iranians have made any real serious concessions in the negotiations to The US, which is pretty much, I think, what I've been predicting because the negotiation as seen from the Iranians is a way of, let's say, prolonging the crisis without going back to warfare and allowing them to continue to play whatever cards they've got left in terms of their strategic position in the Straits of Hormuz. But I think I agree with some of the analysis here in The UK that the Iranian side really has pretty much run out of cards. They're trying to negotiate as if they've got cards, but in fact, they really haven't got many left at all. And the blockade of their economy, I think now is really beginning to hurt. I mean, the inflation was high before the war started. That's very high now. And their oil storage facilities are almost certainly full. If they're full, they're gonna have to shut down production. Inflation is going even higher. So I just can't quite get my head around what the Iranians think they're doing by, as it were, rejecting out of hand all of the plan that the Americans put to them. So it looks like a return to conflict.
Lockwood: Which beyond, the access to the Straits of Hormuz is, of course, the main sticking points being the proxies, the armed proxies, Hezbollah, etcetera, but also the highly enriched uranium that they don't seem to be wanting to budge on when it comes to those negotiations, which ultimately, as you said, brings us back to, the conversation we have with Trita Parsi a few weeks ago here on One Decision, 1decision.com available. That conversation on the YouTube channel and across the platforms as well, where he basically said it's an existential threat for Iran at this point. It's just that the only thing they've got left in their deck of cards there is survival, which is worrying when you think about the military confrontation possibilities and Trump still threatening that he could go in for more weeks and do every single target quote. We have certain targets that we wanted and we've done probably 70% of them, but we have other targets that we could conceivably hit that sort of bombing them to the boardroom approach again with, his sort of Trump truth social posts, but it could get pretty nasty if Iran really feels like it's got nothing left but military.
Dearlove: The other thing which I think is significant is that Netanyahu made a statement in which he said, no deal with Iran without the enriched uranium. So as far as the Israelis are concerned, that is an absolutely essential part of any future package. And that means either they hand it over by negotiation or it's removed militarily. Those are the only two options.
Lockwood: Well, all of that likely to provide an interesting backdrop for the summit that we're currently seeing happening in Beijing this week between, The US and Chinese leaders. What else might be an interesting part of that backdrop is what's happening in Russia Ukraine, which is very much hitting the headlines. Again, remember that war, the years long war? Well, we had prior week on Friday, President Donald Trump announcing a three day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. There have been many attempts to ceasefire up to that point, of course. And let's remind ourselves that Trump promised to end the Ukraine war within twenty four hours of getting into office. We're now far beyond that point, but it sounds like, Sir Richard, in reports carried by Reuters, that the Kremlin could be ready to negotiate. Putin could be ready to negotiate with everyone according to his spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. But what they're asking is that the Europeans are the ones that come forward first for that conversation because Russia feels like they were sanctioned out of existence by the Europeans. So they want to see the Europeans come to the table first. What did you make of all of that?
Dearlove: It's pretty clear that things are going badly for Putin in Russia at the moment. The war is virtually at a stalemate. The Russian losses continue to be huge, thirty five thousand fatalities and casualties a month. They've actually gone backwards in various areas or points of the frontline. They've lost territory. The Ukrainian sophistication of using robots and drones to cut their military fatalities has clearly been successful, plus their ability to strike deep into Russia as their drone technology gets more and more sophisticated. So suddenly, what's changed in Russia is that there is published criticism appearing in various places. And I think that a lot of Russians are waking up now to the reality of the war, the downside of it, which hasn't hitherto necessarily affected them. So I'm not suggesting that Putin's position is fragile, but there's a real change of mood, and maybe a change of mood precedes a more significant shift politically against Putin and his, quote, unquote, special military operation. And maybe that's what's pushing these statements. The other was a ceasefire announced, but nothing actually happened. The only thing that did happen was the parade to commemorate the end of World War Two, the victory over Nazism in Germany. But, of course, we all know it was a massively reduced event with no hardware on show. And I think Putin put himself in a weird position because he was virtually saying unless they had a guarantee, they couldn't hold the parade, which is an indication of even Moscow's vulnerability to Ukrainian attack. So we've seen a lot of, let's say, nuanced activity, which may have a much deeper significance in looking at the future of this conflict. And I wouldn't be at all surprised within the next two, three months, we see some sort of negotiation starting, which isn't driven by Trump's apparent support for the Russian position. And that really for Europe is what would be important.
Lockwood: So let's watch this space. Let's see where things head. Look, Richard, I'm not in The UK at the moment. I'm in The US, but you're there in The UK and there were some very important elections just last week where Labour, the incumbent government at the moment, lost seats at the local level across the country. It's a sweeping defeat causing Keir Starmer to face, leadership concerns that have been on the table for some time. How has this changed the dynamics over there at the moment?
Dearlove: Well, it's really raised two issues. One is Starmer's future as prime minister and whether there will be a leadership challenge from within the Labour Party. And the other, which I think is perhaps more significant, is the apparent disintegration of the two party system in The UK, which has dominated British politics since the previous century. We see Labour losing massively to parties on its left and to parties on the far right, and we see the Conservatives also doing badly. Usually, opposition parties in midterm council elections do well, and they are the main opposition party. But of course, the party that emerges from this in by far the strongest position is Reform led by the controversial Nigel Farage. The prospect, if you extrapolate from the local council results, if there were to be a general election, but we haven't got one due for nearly three years, then Reform would be by a significant margin the largest party. Therefore, they would be asked to form a government which would, at the moment, if you judge the voting, would be a coalition with what's left of the Conservative Party. So this is hugely significant. And on a day to day basis, all the talk on the media is whether someone in the Labour Party would challenge Starmer for the leadership, and therefore, he would have to stand down as prime minister. But there are no obvious candidates. So at the moment, he is trying to hang on in there, and we have a pretty chaotic political situation.
Lockwood: It does seem existential for the Labour Party whether or not they get to continue and in what form and those aggravating within the party to lean harder left, and that might have been the failing of this current administration. But then you've got, like you said, the existential well, they've already gone through this. The threat for the Conservative Party, now they could just come back as Reform because there's a lot of former Conservative members of parliament became Reform members of parliament. So it's coming back in a new form and a new face if they do, and certainly with the coalition. Just on a slightly lighter note, Sir Richard, this weekend, something I personally look forward to every year, is the Eurovision song contest. My whole family sits around. We watch it. We have got dressed up in previous years. It's one of favorite cultural events. Are you as enthusiastic as I am about this?
Dearlove: I'm afraid I'm not. But on the other hand, I do think it's a fascinating phenomenon. It's become a sort of super kitsch TV event, which is particularly appealing in The UK to the LGBTQ community who've made a fetish out of watching it. But it's so strange because it's always had a slight political dimension. But of course, this year, because of Israel participating, it's got an even stronger political dimension. I think four European countries are boycotting appearing. And you know this balance between extremely kitsch, but very watchable. I have to say, I have watched it in the past. Of course, I have, and I know exactly what it's like. But I didn't watch it last year. So what am I doing instead? I am actually going to the opera this week. So my choice is opera rather than Eurovision song contest.
Lockwood: Good for you. Some real culture, one could argue. Yeah. No. It is a massive there's always something political going on. It was hosted in Ukraine, you might remember a few years ago. So there was a lot of issues about, you know, whether Russia could participate. There's always big arguments happening geopolitically. It's a soft power tool for a lot of countries. We see lots of political voting. It's just fascinating. I tried to explain this to my American husband recently. And I made him sit through the Eurovision movie, the one starring Will Ferrell. And, he watched it with good humor, and he sort of thought, okay, I've married a Brit. I'm gonna have to get on board with this little Disney thing. He's actually gonna sit and watch Eurovision next weekend. And I'm quite entertained that The UK entry this year, it's by this electronic artist. His whole skit, his whole performance is about wanting to leave Britain and essentially go to Germany and how everything's better in the continent. We The UK doesn't generally fare well post Brexit, so it'll be interesting to see if that gets any votes from Germany or elsewhere.
Dearlove: No. We've been the victims of prejudicial voting, I think. We always end up somewhere near the bottom, which I think is a very distinguished place to be actually because it shows probably your entry song is really rather good.
Lockwood: Look, we do have some serious stuff to get to. It's all part of the fun. We do have a lot of serious news to get to this week as we mentioned, especially with regards to China. So let's get to our interview because all eyes are on Beijing as President Donald Trump meets with President Xi Jinping this week. The two global leaders presumably talking tariffs, Taiwan, rare earth minerals, all against the backdrop of the war in Iran. Our guest this week has sat in the rooms where The US's China policy was shaped. Rush Doshi worked under then President Joe Biden's China strategy as a deputy senior director for China and Taiwan at the National Security Council. He now heads up the Council of Foreign Relations China Strategy Initiative. His book, The Long Game, China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order, gives us the big picture on how China seeks to edge ahead of The United States. Welcome, Rush Doshi.
INTERVIEW
Lockwood: Rush, we really want to speak to you about this summit. You've worked in the past, for the Biden administration preparing and staffing for these types of summits. What would be the main points you would be communicating to the president right now?
Doshi: Well, thanks. First of all, let me just say it's a pleasure to be with you, and it's a privilege to be on the podcast. There's a lot to say about this summit. I think we have to take a step back and realize this is the first time an American president has been to Beijing for a summit in nine years. The last time was actually President Trump in 2017. So this is a completely unique moment. And I think that the main thing that I would caution is that the PRC will be pushing hard to extract from President Trump concessions in a few areas, and they're gonna basically try not to give up anything in a few other areas. So the key question for the president is how much does he give and how much does he get in return? There's a lot of questions about the pomp and the circumstance. It'll be far more toned down from what we saw nine years ago. The big issues on the table are going to be the economic and technology competition, Taiwan, Iran, potentially arms control or nuclear weapons, although I think we'll be the ones making those requests, and the Chinese will not exactly be forthcoming. And then finally, artificial intelligence. That's a pretty full package for about a day and a half.
Dearlove: You mentioned Iran in that list, but of course Trump's rejected Iran's ceasefire terms, so we must be on the cusp of maybe a further escalation and back to, you know, kinetic exchanges with Iran. I mean, surely this is the most extraordinary context in which this visit can be taking place. I mean, my own feeling is that it would be better for Trump, you know, to delay any return to conflict until after the visit, but I mean, how do you see this? Because I can't think of a situation parallel to this in recent times.
Doshi: Well, absolutely. I mean, we've never really had a summit where a US president was in Beijing while he was also blockading China's ships from leaving or entering the Strait of Hormuz. So that's a very unusual dynamic. I mean, often in the past, we'd be thinking, well, the Chinese pulled down a summit because somebody says the wrong thing or sells something that they don't like to Taiwan. We'd do it anyway. But we'd think, okay, maybe this will be an issue. Never have we had a summit under these kinds of circumstances. What we did hear from the administration just Sunday that essentially that President Trump was supposedly going to apply pressure to China on Iran. We don't know exactly what that means in practice. We know roughly what he wants. He wants Beijing to basically, you know, limit purchases of Iranian crude. He wants Beijing to basically limit dual use sort of sales to Iran. And he wants to basically ensure no weapons themselves are transported or sold to Iran or the satellite imagery that's used to target US forces. Some of that might be easier to resolve than other issues. But the idea that The US can pressure China into producing an outcome that we want with Iran, that may be wishful thinking. It has often been the case in the past.
Lockwood: Without being able to step inside the minds of the CCP and Xi Jinping at the moment, Rush, I remember the onset of the full scale invasion of Ukraine back in 2022. Everyone was saying, well, will China be watching this and seeing an opportunity when it comes to what they say is the reunification with Taiwan? Are they watching what's happening in the West saying this is our moment? Actually, it's been years now since that happened. But then with the new Trump administration, we're seeing the action in Venezuela earlier this year. We've seen what's going on with Iran. How much are China watching what's happening with regards to other big military assaults around the world? How the West is handling it? How other Western allies are responding? And how is that affecting their calculus?
Doshi: Well, it's a fair question. And I think there's probably some complexity to how Beijing looks at this. On the one hand, it looks at this in the larger geopolitical environment. The fact that The US successfully used force in Venezuela was surprising, and the fact that The US can enforce a blockade of Hormuz suggests it's the only superpower with a truly blue water navy that can project global power. That's something that China has now taken note of, and it has implications potentially for other choke points in the future. But at the same time, I think Beijing is also aware that The US ability to sort of project power also leads it to sometimes do so more often than it should. And that can create quagmire like dynamics where The US gets bogged down potentially in regional conflicts. I think I would just note that when The US invaded Iraq, and this came just after China's WTO accession back in 2002, China announced a period of strategic opportunity that they thought would last for twenty years. Twenty year period of strategic opportunity. And the idea was that The US would be distracted, then China's economy had a chance to now grow. Whether or not there's a sort of second period of strategic opportunity created by Iran is something I think many in Beijing may be considering. They may not use that same phrase, but they definitely suggest, you know, to their interlocutors in their writings and in public that US involvement in Iran might basically weaken American power and give Beijing more of an opportunity. So the picture is mixed. At the tactical level, they're impressed with what the US military is capable of doing, the decapitation strikes, the success against some Chinese radars and systems, as well as the ability to project global power. But at the geopolitical level, they think that maybe this overextends The United States.
Dearlove: Rush, can I ask you maybe a more long term question? To what extent now do you see The US and Chinese economy as being inextricably intertwined? I mean, the fact is it's impossible for two trading nations not, as it were, to have closely linked economies, but at the same time, you can emphasize, or you have emphasized the many points of tension and conflict. So really, we're looking perhaps to both sides to try somehow to strike a balance between these conflicting pressures. How do you see that?
Doshi: Well, I think that the discussion of interdependence between The US and China is obviously sensible, and there's a factual basis to it. But we should watch the trend lines. What I don't see is balanced interdependence in the future. What I see is asymmetric interdependence, a kind of interdependence where The US may ultimately become more dependent on China than China is on The United States. So for the last well, really, maybe more than twenty five years, China has been pursuing greater, I think, independence where it can. That's really accelerated in the last ten years, maybe the last twelve. And the point of that effort, and they call it dual circulation at times more recently, again, is to make the world more dependent on China and China less dependent on the world. If you look at the statistics, right, we can look at the fact that China's more than two times The US share of global manufacturing value add. That's actually more than the next nine countries combined. And when we think about rare earth minerals and magnets, where China restricted the flow of to others, we see pretty clearly that they're willing to weaponize those industrial choke points over other countries. So how interdependent are we versus how asymmetrically interdependent are we is the important question. I think that for The US and China, both sides are working to unwind some of those interdependencies. But China is moving faster and more successfully to doing so, whereas The US, and the West writ large, in fits and starts. So already, China has basically worked hard to gradually reduce its dependence on imported petroleum, on imported food. It has a long way to go, but it's making significant progress. The US efforts, for example, in rare earth minerals and magnets, they are underway, but they may take time, and they may not benefit from consistent government support. So long story short, yes, there is profound interdependence, but, again, neither side is comfortable with that interdependence, and that ultimately creates the potential for leverage.
Dearlove: Can I just ask a follow-up question there? Because China is really great at creating dependencies, but really with smaller nations. So, you look at its European trade, the dependencies are quite striking, where, let's say, the German automotive industry relies heavily on the Chinese market or there are aspects of The UK's trade with China where, you know, we have strategic dependencies which look quite frightening. But on the other hand, it's very hard for an observer like myself to say, well, US Chinese trade can be judged in the same terms, because you don't think of, as it were, The United States economy being dependent on anybody. So isn't this a rather unique trading situation between the worlds to, well, one emerging superpower and one established superpower?
Doshi: Well, and I think China is an emerged superpower. And I think really that what we saw last year proved it. I mean, what we had last year was The US moved, you know, tariff rates up to 145. President Xi had to reach for his break glass tool, which was rare earth minerals and magnets. The total value of those minerals and magnets imported into The United States is probably less than the price of one F-35 aircraft. And yet, they support more than 20% to 25% of all GDP in The US and all manufacturing activity. They're very difficult for us to do without, even though they don't cost very much. And so the global economy is full of these choke points. One is these minerals and magnets. And the other, you could argue, is pharmaceuticals. There's probably more in different industries that we could talk about. So China, because of its incredible role in a lot of this low margin manufacturing, is sometimes the only place, the sole source supplier for a lot of these goods. And so even though The US economy is large and has scale, scale alone is not the most important factor in these dependencies. And as for Europe, you're right. Europe has certain dependencies. Although, it's interesting. Europe's dependency on The US market has really risen. You know, the European export share to The United States has gone up. Its exports to China have gone down. It exports more to The United States than it does to China. That includes the German automakers. And you look at Japan and Korea, it's a similar story. Japan, for the first time, now exporting more to The US than to China. And Korea, basically pulling even between The US and China. That's all new. I mean, in the past, China was willing to buy from a lot of these countries that were also manufacturers. Today, it's less common because China is basically pursuing dual circulation, indigenization, and trying to limit its dependence and imports on others. It's a pure mercantilist policy, and it's working. So increasingly, the West is dependent on itself or on each other. And The US still, however, along with our allies and partners, dependent on China for certain essential inputs. Now once those are phased out, Richard, the picture you've painted maybe comes into focus. But for now, we're not quite there yet. And that's actually the backdrop to this very summit. We're in the midst of a broader US China detente, and that's largely been brought about by the fact that China was able to reach for that break glass tool and use it to unwind American economic pressure. Again, for the first time, really, in The US China economic relationship.
Lockwood: And that's something I wanted to ask you about is what China really seeks to get out of this meeting other than the kind of ascendance towards dominance, towards economic superpower dominance over The US. But this meeting itself, I mean, you spoke about in your book that China likes to kind of take part in international institutions, from a point of view of kind of being instrumental about it but not potentially ideological? Is this in a sense what it's doing by doing this face to face meeting with President Trump over there in Beijing? Is it just showing face?
Doshi: Well and thanks for referencing the book. Yeah. Five years ago, I had this book come out called The Long Game, China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order. And, really, it's a book that focuses on two things, what China says and what China does. It's internal party texts and then the key puzzles in its behavior. And here's the bottom line. I mean, I think that the key conclusion of that book is that the most important variable that affects what China does abroad, how willing it is essentially to take risk vis a vis The United States, is its perception of American power and threat. When it thinks The US is essentially in decline, it's much more confident about acting on the international stage. And we see that reflected in the way the party makes judgments about the international stage, as well as in how they issue grand strategic guidelines to guide Chinese foreign policy itself. And the bottom line is that today, China is as confident, maybe more confident than it's ever been. Right? The East is rising. The West is declining is a phrase we keep hearing from China. But more than that, we're seeing top Chinese officials, like the head of the Ministry of State Security, which in US terms would be a combination of our CIA, NSA, and FBI all rolled into one. I'm not exactly sure what it is in British terms. Maybe a combination of MI6 and GCHQ and a few others. But the bottom line is that that institution does a lot of assessment, and it has assessed. And there's a speech given by its top minister that The US is basically finished, a spent force. And there's a lot of overconfidence right now in China. So they come into this meeting, I think, wanting basically two or three things. The first is they wanna buy time. They think they have our number, and they wanna make sure we don't do anything to upset a fragile detente. Because if they've got more time, they'll be able to fully consolidate their position economically, technologically, and militarily, maybe even diplomatically. The second thing I think that they want is they want a few tangible concessions. They may not get them. We just heard from the administration on Sunday that the administration isn't gonna make a big change on Taiwan policy, but the Chinese want a change on Taiwan policy. And then third, they probably want some relaxation of the economic protective actions The US has taken, but they're not gonna necessarily give up some of their own economic protective actions. So we're not gonna see any big structural economic changes from this meeting. And I think China is using the meeting, if I could put a point on it, to basically manage The United States at a time where China feels very advantaged.
Dearlove: Rush, you mentioned that phrase, the East is rising. And I've heard you, in another interview speak about Chinese strengths and weaknesses. Aren't we a little bit misled by China's strengths into not thinking about China's weaknesses? I mean, let me sort of illustrate a little what I mean there. Okay, we've had this massive change at the top of the PLA, People's Liberation Army, where I think thirteen, fourteen, fifteen of the top generals have been sacked recently. Towards the end of Covid, you had this really significant uprising, perhaps the biggest social meltdown since Tiananmen, which was, you know, suppressed in the Chinese media, but there was a massive reverse of policy very rapidly at the center of China. And I know from my own experience that the Chinese leadership sit down every morning and worry about losing control of this massively complex country which has lots of hidden social and industrial problems which we never see the light of. Aren't we very often in danger of sort of over egging the rise of China and forgetting the brittleness of its political and economic circumstances?
Doshi: Well, it's a great point. And in fact, you know, Beijing has an interest in making sure that we overestimate their strengths and underestimate their weaknesses. That said, I think there's two dimensions in which I look at this, which is, you know, what are their strengths and weaknesses relative to Western strengths and weaknesses? And I think the second dimension is, do those weaknesses manifest on a timeline that matters for us strategically? Or will the strengths be more relevant in that strategic time frame? And so when I look at the larger story, you're right. They've got political challenges. They have some ability to deal with those through their repressive apparatus. They have a PLA that's been purged. That's true. So they probably aren't in a position immediately to take a significant military operation. But it's also the case that those generals will eventually be replaced with people who might be more willing to follow Xi's guidance on key issues, and they may be quite competent. There's also generational turnover where the younger generation may be a bit more militaristic or more willing to use military force. We see this dynamic in other rising powers in the past, Imperial Japan or even Germany. Could that be here as well? And then I think on the economic and technology side, it's an excellent point. I mean, we have a we didn't even talk about this, but a massive property bust in China that is wiping out trillions of dollars of wealth, a massive demographic problem where there were probably fewer births last year than any year in the last two hundred years. And the population might fall by a half in just seventy five years. That's all significant. At the same time, because of the property bust, they're channeling a lot of credit into their export machine, their industrial policy efforts. Right? They're spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year to dominate and sort of corner the market in industry after industry. And the question is, you know, will The US and the West say no to that production? We said no to Soviet excess capacity because we didn't have free trade with them. We don't quite say no as easily to Chinese excess capacity. So the result is that that could put US companies and industries out of business. Just today, there's a Chamber of Commerce report suggesting that some of these industrial subsidies from China put more than 6 or $700,000,000,000 worth of industrial activity in the West at risk, which I think is a pretty telling sign of how dire the industrial competition is. And then you put that aside, you look at the demographics, it's a real problem. But it does look like it might manifest itself, not today, but maybe in fifteen or twenty years. Because today, China's dependency ratio is still lower than Japan's dependency ratio, and it won't quite catch up for another fifteen years. At the same time, you know, demographics is lumpy. They had a baby boom under the Mao era, and the grandchildren from that baby boom, like the echo boom, are flowing or have flown through the lower parts of China's labor force. And so that bought them some more time. After that demographic, there's a real cliff. So I hear the point, and it's absolutely right. China has enormous weaknesses, and anything could go wrong at any time. At the same time, those weaknesses might not manifest on the timeline that's preferable for all of us. Our industries may not stay solvent long enough for us to benefit from those weaknesses materializing.
Lockwood: So they're sort of hoping to play the long game in that sense and with regards to weaknesses. Look. I can't contest that judgment.
Doshi: Yeah. Exactly.
Lockwood: Look. And as you say, the longer that we have the impression that there is opaque or powerful dominant sort of super authoritarian superpower that is you know, never going to stop, then that sort of works in their favor in the narrative sense. Look, the other point that you brought up with what China could be looking to get out of this meeting, this comes into how they read President Trump and you know his slightly erratic movements I think we can say at times. Is on Taiwan and a colleague of yours there in Washington DC former US ambassador to China under Biden Nick Burns spoke recently quoted in the paper saying that he's worried that the Chinese will try to convince the president to agree to a significant change in US policy towards Taiwan. If so, quote, it would be a major historic miscalculation for President Trump to do so. Give me your thoughts on that and how likely you think that is to happen.
Doshi: Well, it's interesting. China did not bring up Taiwan at the Busan meeting in October. So when President Trump and President Xi last met, for the first time in a lot of summits that I can remember, Taiwan really wasn't on the agenda. And I think one reason for that was they had a bunch of economic and technology issues they had to get through. But another reason was they wanted to save Taiwan perhaps for Beijing. And now here we are, just a few days out from when President Trump is going to see President Xi in Beijing. And I think what the Chinese are gonna ask is for three things. One, they're gonna say, could you please change your declaratory policy on Taiwan? The US policy is to not support Taiwan independence. I think the Chinese side would prefer that we say we oppose Taiwan independence, and maybe even that we support unification between China and Taiwan. Now The US position is that these are issues best left to the people of Taiwan and the people of China, rather than ones in which we take an issue. They'd like us to lean, put our thumb on the scale. The second big issue is arms sales. The US has sold arms to Taiwan for a very long time. It's sometimes been a contentious issue with China. I think the Chinese side wants a bit more say over what we sell, what quality, when, what frequency, what quantity, etcetera. That's against US policy, going back several decades, including The US, what's called the Six Assurances, that were basically created in the nineteen eighties to ensure The US could carry on some of these activities with Taiwan, and indicating that it would not accept Chinese intervention or pressure to basically vet those sales of weapons. And then the third issue is that President Xi might ask President Trump, although it would be unusual to imagine this happening at the leader level, but it is possible. You might ask President Trump to meet the leader of the Kuomintang or the KMT in Taiwan. This is the opposition party in Taiwan. It's led by a woman named Cheng Li-wun, and she met President Xi earlier. Now to get that meeting with President Xi, she had to ensure that her party obstructed Taiwan's own willingness to defend basically spend money on its own defense material. Its indigenization of cruise missiles and drones. She basically obstructed a major defense package in Taiwan, and that was the price for the meeting with Xi. Now if she meets President Trump, she'll be able to send the signal to Taiwan that she can see both leaders, and she's the right person to lead Taiwan in the period ahead. So President Xi might say, hey. Could you meet with her when she tries to come to The US in June? And President Trump, in his natural way, might be inclined to say, sure. I'll meet anybody. In this case, a meeting would have significant political implications. And frankly, The US probably should have the same kind of linkage that President Xi did. If she wants to come see President Trump, they should pass the full special budget in Taiwan that includes billions of dollars for Taiwan to increase its own defense production of critical munitions rather than just buy them from abroad. That's what Taiwan wants to do. It's what it needs to do. It's what we want it to do. It's what President Xi does not want them to do. So these three together, I think, are gonna be the big asks. And right now, the president's team is suggesting he's not going to make any change on Taiwan policy. Again, we heard that on Sunday when senior administration officials spoke to the press. They said, you know, we expect no change on Taiwan policy. So perhaps the president will hold firm, but, of course, he is the president. He can make any decision in the moment that he sees fit, and it's possible he'll say yes on some of these requests.
Dearlove: I mean, I think it's possible to argue despite the buildup of the Chinese armed forces China isn't really a militaristic nation. It's a trading mercantile nation, and it's based its expansion really on economic dominance. I mean, to undertake an attack on Taiwan really prejudices much of what it says and does globally at the moment, and it seems to me that it's much more likely to go down other routes, like, for example, a different political relationship. You mentioned the KMT and their different attitude towards Beijing at the moment. So how do you see the sort of choice of policies that China has at the moment in terms of what it said about Taiwan and the timelines that Xi has expressed about Chinese dominance or control of Taiwan?
Doshi: It's a great point. And I would say that right now, China feels a bit better about the trends in the Taiwan Strait than it did a few years ago. And that's largely because it's seeing the KMT potentially more successful electorally. And that party is believed to be more friendly towards China. Maybe many of some of its supporters support unification between China and Taiwan. Not all of them. And so it generally favors the KMT over the DPP, which is the governing party in Taiwan. So those trends have given China some confidence. They're hoping that maybe in the next election in 2028, there'll be a KMT government, not a DPP government. All that could lend itself to some degree of stability. I don't think China is in a hurry to invade Taiwan. They are building the forces to do that at an incredible speed, and we should talk about that. But they are not ready to do it, I think, partly because of the purges, partly because of the difficulty of this amphibious operation, which would be the most complex amphibious operation ever attempted. But they don't have to use an invasion. They can use other forms of military force. You could imagine joint firepower strikes on Taiwan, combined with a quarantine or a blockade, daring The US or others to run the blockade or challenge the quarantine, basically, to strangle Taiwan like an anaconda. They could do that every now and then, going, you know, maybe every week or every few weeks or so until Taiwan capitulates. They could combine that with cyber attacks on Taiwan's critical infrastructure. And all of that would potentially achieve an outcome they would like, capitulation, but it would be a combination of political and military pressure along with economic and cyber pressure. So I think there's a lot of area between the big invasion and other ways to your point, sir, that they can kind of force Taiwan to unify with them. For us, the implications are all quite significant. I mean, the most notable one is that there is no AI. There's no artificial intelligence, period, without Taiwan's chips. There's no AI data centers. There's no buildup of capacity for training and inference without those facilities on Taiwan. So the biggest economic bet the world has made, the future of the next industrial revolution, is essentially made in Taiwan. And that's why the stakes are enormous. I guess I'd end with this. Your point about China being a trading nation is true, but Japan was the true trading nation. Right? Because it didn't really invest in its military and went all in on the industrial side. China does seek industrial dominance and manufacturing dominance, and they may yet achieve. But they're also focused on the military buildup, and we can't ignore that fact.
Lockwood: Rush, we simply must ask you, as we do with all of our guests here on One Decision podcast, what One Decision you are looking out for with regards to this summit?
Doshi: Sure. A big question I'm looking at is going to be on artificial intelligence. What kind of announcement do we see between The US and China on AI? Right now, there's a few possibilities. There's some discussion of a possible dialogue between the two sides. We began a dialogue like that in 2023 under President Biden. So that would be useful, but it hasn't happened. A second possibility is some kind of crisis communication line on artificial intelligence. That's been previewed by the Chinese side and in some press stories. It's interesting, but we have to remember that the Chinese never picked up the phone when there was an EP3 incident where one of their fighter aircraft collided with our EP3, nor did they pick up the phone when this balloon of theirs overflew The United States. So I don't have a lot of confidence that that will work. And as for the AI dialogue, they never quite sent the right people to our dialogue. So I wasn't sure how seriously they took it. And finally, there's the possibility that you might eventually see some kind of shared regulatory approach on artificial intelligence. I think that's a little unlikely at the moment. But AI is a transformative technology of the moment. Obviously, The US and China are the AI superpowers. And the big question is, how do these two countries meet on this issue, and what do they decide? What the administration is suggesting is no big things are gonna happen. They're gonna basically take it one step at a time. So what I'm hoping to see is that The US and the Chinese side take a first step. And then from there, there's a possibility of building together on ways to govern this important technology.
ANALYSIS WITH SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE
Dearlove: Rush, that was a great exposition of the situation around this.
Lockwood: I felt like we could have spoken for much longer to Rush, an absolute mine of information, but he's high in demand with this summit this week. What landed for you most from that?
Dearlove: I'll pick out one thing which I think is particularly significant, the emphasis he placed on AI. And if you think back to the Cold War, you know, the issue would have been nuclear disarmament or nuclear control, strategic arms limitation. And here we are where the two global superpowers are about to meet. And what do we have in the back of our minds, all the experts, is probably some sort of regulatory framework for the development of AI because its implications are so far reaching if there isn't a global regulatory system. So I think to hear that emphasized by someone who is so expert really gives us a feeling of what the framework for future relations between China and The United States will have to focus on. And I really was very, very struck by that indeed.
Lockwood: Yeah. It's almost like it's the new form of nuclear proliferation, but the mutually assured destruction that we need to have, the sort of tension in place, the regulatory framework to stop runaway technologies. I mean, I was gonna say absolutely the same thing that that's his takeaway because anybody who sort of works in foreign policy circles or news or is vaguely interested in either, you know, has been speaking about Taiwan for years and years, but it seemed to be there. And maybe I'm misquoting him, and I don't want to do that. But the situation obviously still simmers away. But so long as semiconductor manufacturing is so important, a place in Taiwan, this issue is just gonna keep rolling over for another, you know, few years potentially. Is that what you read?
Dearlove: Yes. Absolutely. And I think that the general consensus now amongst the Chinese expert commentators who I talked to, including Rush now, you know, they're saying, well, military invasion is impractical and unlikely. They're not discounting it, but they're saying, you know, there are other means of, let's say, pressurizing Taiwan into a different relationship with Beijing. And I think we all feel at the moment that's the most likely path. But then right at the end, you know, he did say that we can't ignore China's military buildup, which, of course, is absolutely huge, particularly its buildup of naval power where the rate at which they're building a deep blue water navy is massively faster than The United States. I think The United States plans to build in the next year somewhere between six and nine naval ships of significance, whereas the Chinese are building 60 in a year or plans along those lines. The discrepancy is massive, and they're already talking about the Chinese Blue Water Navy being 50% larger than the US Navy, which is a pretty staggering figure. But I thought that his analysis was very striking, and clearly, he's counseling against expecting any big outcomes from the visit and saying that on the American side, the decision in Washington is to proceed into the relationship incrementally and slowly, I guess, and to see where it leads and what it might or might not deliver.
Lockwood: More than anything else, we'll have to see how that goes. And the body language experts will be out in force. I'm sure. Look. That is all for this episode. Join us every Thursday for more exciting conversation about world events that goes beyond the usual headlines. Subscribe to One Decision on YouTube so you never miss out on a conversation putting the global news in context. For more conversations with leading decision makers and thinkers, do check out 1decision.com where you'll find additional commentaries, conversations, and explainers. I'm Rosanna Lockwood with Sir Richard Dearlove. Thank you for listening.
