Is China’s Xi the new Mao?

Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove

Guest

Dr. Kerry Brown

Dr. Kerry Brown is a former British diplomat and world-renowned China expert providing deep-dive analysis of China's leader.

Episode Summary

China's leader has solidified his grip on the ruling Chinese Communist Party, embarking on an unprecedented third term in power. With now nearly limitless power, the world's biggest country totalling a fifth of humanity is now largely under the control of a single man. Who is Xi Jinping? What is his backstory - and how is he likely to respond to the growing domestic pressures in China stemming from his unpopular lockdown policies and the ticking timebomb of financial pressures?
Former British diplomat and world-renowned China expert, Dr. Kerry Brown joins us for a deep dive into the country and its leader. Our discussion, which as always features analysis from former MI6 Chief Sir Richard Dearlove, explores Xi's tumultuous path to joining the Party after nine failed attempts. We follow his political journey through to a questionable response to the most recent health, as well as economic pressures facing the country. The first in a three-part series on China, we learn more about an increasingly influential and yet not widely understood Chinese President.

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Transcript

INTRODUCTION

Mcfarlane: You're listening to One Decision. I'm your host, Julia McFarlane. At some point in the last few years, China's Xi Jinping decided he would break with long standing Chinese convention and secure an unprecedented third term in office. We don't know when he decided this, but the recent twentieth Party Congress, a once in every five years event in the Beijing political calendar, solidified his position, confirmed his extension, and made him the most powerful ruler of the People's Republic since Chairman Mao. Amid domestic crises in China, the punishing and increasingly unpopular lockdowns, the ballooning property crisis threatening millions of people's livelihoods, Xi has chosen to fill his new standing committee, the powerful seven member group comprising the Chinese leadership, not with economic or governance experts, but longtime loyalists to him and his family. And what was the central message of his long awaited speech in these difficult times? Largely continuity and the need for China to remain firm against the pressures of the West. Given the importance of China rising and the ushering in of Xi's third term in a position of largely limitless power, we're dedicating our podcast this month to looking at what lies ahead. Firstly, this week for Xi and his domestic political challenges. Secondly, what's happening with China's gigantic, complicated, but troubled economy. And lastly, we'll zoom out to the consequences of Xi's new era on the geopolitics of the region and the world. We'll speak to three experts in each of these fields. And we, of course, will be joined for analysis by my cohost, Sir Richard Dearlove, former chief of MI6. We hope you'll join us for each of these three special episodes this month. I'm thrilled to be welcoming onto the podcast today doctor Kerry Brown, former British diplomat, now author and professor of Chinese studies and director of the Lau China Institute at King's College London. He's also associate of the Asia Pacific program at Chatham House. Kerry, it's so great to talk to you today, particularly after that historic twentieth party congress. I did want to just start off by asking you what you made now that all the headlines are out. And the tone was rather set, was it not, for the next five years. And an important part of that, of course, was the importance demonstrated of loyalty, loyalty to Xi Jinping himself, and we saw that with some of the appointments made to that powerful standing committee. Talk to us just about what you made of this long awaited summit.

INTERVIEW WITH KERRY BROWN

Brown: Well, in many ways, it was a pretty predictable summit in as much as, or, or congress in as much as the key appointment as everyone expected was made. And as you said, Xi Jinping presumably gets another five years as the party boss and will presumably be reappointed as what we call president next March. So that's not unexpected. I think that there was probably a bit of surprise over some of the personnel appointments. As you said, the seven strong standing committee, there were a number of retirements, including Li Keqiang, who had been the premier. Well, he will be the premier until next March and then will be replaced. In terms of policy, though, absolutely no kind of changes at all. And so a real kind of commitment to the things that have been done, COVID nineteen, zero COVID lockdowns will presumably continue, although there have been rumors that that policy is being reviewed at the moment. I'm not particularly, you know, kind of optimistic that it will be revised until, you know, next year, probably quite deep into next year. And then a kind of, you know, sort of commitments to massive increases in, you know, kind of funding research, innovative China. What is the message from all of this? It is China's rejuvenation path is still the big, big vision. It's a nationalistic, populistic program, and China accepts now that the world does not particularly like it, and it doesn't particularly like the world. But they're just gonna have to get on with each other. And I think it's probably also pretty kind of accustomed to an outside world now, which is pretty divided, pretty chaotic, that will probably be, you know, producing some unpleasant surprises in the next, you know, kind of few years, and that is gonna be economically quite weak. So the decline of the West narrative, I think, has been recognized in this congress. There's, I, I don't think there's any shift from that kind of idea.

Mcfarlane: Right. I mean, you mentioned Li Keqiang, who is the, the premier, and he's presumably going to be shuffled off at the next session. He was one very senior sort of public figure who has, in recent months, sort of openly criticized some of Xi's policy. Is there anything you think is that we should sort of read into the fact that the, that that Xi's picks for this powerful committee include people who their sort of primary characteristics as it were were not political or governmental or economic experience, but loyalty to Xi. What, I mean, what what do you make of those appointments? Is this the sign of of Xi building on his monopoly of power, or do you think this is perhaps him digging in, and perhaps him maybe feeling the heat for some of the pressure that he's under, given that we are seeing these protests, and you know, instances of sort of civil, not civil unrest, but clearly there there is upset in China at, you know, at these lockdowns that you mentioned, and some of the the many economic problems that are currently blighting the Chinese.

Brown: Yeah. I mean, it's easy to sort of get a bit excited about whether there are protests and opposition to Xi. But when I remember the Hu Jintao period before Xi, you know, there were kind of pretty brutal uprisings in Wukan things, for instance, I think in around 2010, 2011, there were, the uprising in Tibet, the Xinjiang incident. I mean, it was a way more turbulent period. So I think it has to get pretty dramatic before we can say, okay. This is a political problem for Xi. I'm not saying that it might not happen, but I don't see that on the horizon at the moment. I mean, the problem with this group of people is they are a super boring group of people. You look at them, and you just don't know, you know, what what sort of, you know, what story to make of them because they're all men. They're all in their sixties. They're all ethnically Han. They're all from, you know, quite homogenous backgrounds. And so, you know, we all wanna kinda make a story out of these people. The only story that I can really kinda make is that having a political persona in China, unless you're Xi Jinping, is not welcome. You know? You you don't want people with any sort of charisma. He's he's the party charisma boss. Right? He's monopolized charisma. So the rest, you're right. I mean, Li, who's premier, he's number two, who will likely maybe be the premier next March because that's a government position. So, I mean, Li Qiang is number two in the party hierarchy, was, you know, associated with Xi Jinping from his time in Zhejiang when Xi Jinping was, you know, the boss there of the party in 2002 to 2007. Ding Xuexiang was, you know, his private secretary basically when he was in Shanghai in 2007, you know, and they had a kind of link. And then as as you say, Cai Qi has known Xi when Xi was his boss in Fujian at the end of the nineteen nineties when Xi Jinping was a, you know, kinda high level leader there. These particular new appointments do obviously have a tangible link with Xi. That that's clearly mean something. But it might mean nothing more than he thinks they're efficient, and he thinks they do stuff. They're loyal. Now they're loyal because they're willing to take on vested interests. So I think the battle, it seems to me at the moment is gonna be an economic one. So this group might not be the best one to deliver that. I mean, they are gonna be facing or they are facing pretty awful economic situation. Housing market is very nervous and looking like it's depressed. I mean, if you think in China, 70%, 75% of, you know, kind of wealth is tied up in property. I think in America, it's about 35%. So this is, if this collapses, that is a huge, that that's massive. You got unemployment raise, you know, rising. You've got, you know, kind of the same inflationary and cost of living issues. I mean, not maybe as serious at the West at the moment, but, you know, still serious. You have growth, which is all important at maybe three and a half percent, although the formal figure wasn't announced during the congress, although it should have been, showing nervousness maybe. You probably got a four to 5% level this year. That's low. And in the future, we don't know. You know, the the final thing is that we don't know what China in a recession looks like. I mean, we knew maybe in the, in the late nineteen eighties, there was a period when China had a year or so of, you know, kind of negative growth and problems, and that ended in, you know, the Tiananmen Square uprising. So this is a real big economic headache, and these leaders have a political background, not an economic one. So is this, is that enough for them to deal with this? It's questionable. It, at least it's questionable.

Mcfarlane: You know, you mentioned the personality cult around Xi Jinping, and you said that it was dangerous for politicians to have much of a political personality or identity if they are not Xi Jinping. And I mean, I find it interesting because given this litany of challenges that China faces, because of the way the Chinese leadership is constructed, all kind of falls on him and it falls onto his shoulders. And it's down to him, really, to to sort all these things out. And what I, what I really wanted to talk to you today is more of a sense of of who he is, what drives him, his background, and and what your understanding of Xi as a leader, and how that's likely going to drive how he steers China through these crises. And I have heard this from so many China experts, that Xi wasn't an obvious leader in waiting at the beginning. Back in the late 90s, he was this rather obscure central committee member. He had a very low number of votes into the start of his senior appointments. And he was even actually prevented, you wrote, from joining the Communist Party several times at first, when he was a young man coming out of his down in the countryside period. There was a lot of secrecy and mystery around the circumstances of his ascent to power. And of course, the fact that his family name was quite blackened when his father, a former senior figure in Mao's time, was purged. So walk us through how this unlikely leader, the son of a formerly high ranking official before he was purged, how he ended up being the most powerful man on the planet. And something that I think is so interesting is that for a good number of years, his wife, Peng Liyuan, who's a singer, was more famous than Xi.

Brown: She was indeed. Yeah. Well, so, you know, people talk about the princelings and elite backgrounds, but we have to remember that there's there's a lot of families that that would be in that group. They're not politically important. I mean, and Xi Jinping, you know, that he's got an elite background might be a bit of a red herring because he's not being particularly kind or friendly to others with elite backgrounds. As I said, he's taken them on and pretty much cleared them out of politics. So, you know, he was seen as capable from quite early on. And the other thing I think which is a bit harder to nail down, but I'm pretty sure does take a position is that he is a man of faith. He believes. He's a believer. And in China and Chinese politics, in fact, there aren't many people that believe. Now what I mean by that is that he spoke in the 1990s and the 2000s when he wasn't a prominent figure of the need for the party to be in the business of politics, not in the business of business. But that was not a mainstream view then. If you went to China, as I was doing in the 1990s and 2000s, and I worked in China as a diplomat in the 2000s, and then, you know, kind of going there quite often as a researcher or even doing business, I mean, it was hard to tell party officials apart from business people, and they were, you know, involved in massive amounts of business, and a lot of it was to look after their networks. They didn't really believe in the party or its mission. But Xi Jinping sounded like a kind of slightly prurient kind of sermonizing lecture back then, you know, about how the party should not be involved in this sort of business. So I think that's important. It matters that he had that kind of purity. His family have not been involved in massive amounts of business. They have been involved in business, but not massive amounts. Not in provinces that he was working in. And I think finally, he's a born again communist. And by that, I mean, you mentioned him trying to get into the party, you know, and I think it was 1974. I think he tried nine times, and he got in on the tenth time. I mean, the fact that his father, Xi Zhongxun, was under house arrest for a number of years and that his family did suffer, he suffered.

Mcfarlane: That's that's really interesting. I mean, that was something that I wanted to ask because he had quite a torrid time as a young boy when, you know, he was exiled from Beijing and sent to this boarding house in Shaanxi for seven years, and he toiled, and it was horrible, and it was cold, and he was hungry. His sister died by suicide apparently after years of being hounded by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. And his mother was also quite tough. There was this very, very vivid anecdote in that great podcast by The Economist called The Prince, has looked a lot into Xi's backstory, where it described this incident of where he ran away from this boarding house in Shaanxi to his mom, and his mother turned him away and cast him back out into the night in the cold and refused to give him any food. And he's now the number one card carrying Communist Party member. And I just find that paradox so interesting. I mean, you talk in your book, I think it was your, your earlier book on, on Xi called CEO China, where you, you said that Xi's power exists to serve a purpose, and it's not about his own individual aims. It's not about what he wants to do with this power that he's now amassed, but it is, it's back to that, it, it's all exists to serve the objective of the Communist Party to build a strong, rich country, making China great again. But do you think that his backstory affects any of his decision making? How do you think it has shaped him beyond the curious way he's responded to the Chinese Communist Party? Do you think perhaps he thinks that the CCP is the best way to preserve stability, and this is coming from someone who had really quite an unstable childhood.

Brown: Well, I think he thinks the CCP is the only way to stay stability. I mean, that's the kind of fervor and the zeal. Look, I mean, to be a follower of the Communist Party of China is to go through a Jesuitical kind of annihilation of yourself. I mean, that's the power of the organization. You from the day that you join administratively and you want to have a career in it, you forget who you are, and you become who the, you know, organization wants you to be. It's a remarkable organization. I mean, I've observed it as an outsider, and I am glad I can't watch it as an insider because to watch it as an insider is to become it. I mean, that's the thing. You can't extricate yourself from it. You must enter into its culture, its language, its ethos, its worldview. You are not you once you go through that door. Your whole world is, you know, kinda controlled and changed by the fact that you are a member of the Communist Party of China. As you go up the tree, your idiosyncrasies, your kind of inner life as a person is, you know, kind of fundamentally changed by this thing that you are a member of.

Mcfarlane: Yeah. I mean, sounds like what you're describing there is a mass brainwashing program, essentially.

Brown: No. I think that brainwashing is not a subtle, I mean, this is it's that you want this to happen, this conversion, and you do that because you believe in a greater cause. And you, you, you do that as an individual. You don't lose yourself as you make that choice, but, obviously, it has an immensely profound impact on who you then become. So I think brainwashing is, you know, like a kind of enforced thing. This is not, conversion is not forced. Conversion is more powerful because it is done with volition and will.

Mcfarlane: That's interesting. That's interesting. Well, perhaps, I mean, the the fervor of of what you're describing to me, see, it sounds almost stronger than than a lot of conventional religions, or perhaps it's more like a cult, that sort of energy. And I think an important, it's been so important for him to demonstrate how successful sort of adherence to those principles have. The planning of this twentieth party Congress has been in the works for years and years and years. And the issue with the property crises and all of the issues with people's mortgages around the country, that's certainly not part of the plan. We talked recently on the podcast about the protests that have been gripping China. And in particular, I was really struck by that banner across the Sitong Bridge, which is on a major intersection in the capital Beijing, and that the slogans that were daubed on it, you know, we want food, not PCR tests. We want freedom, not lockdowns. We want respect, not lies. We want reform, not a cultural revolution. We want a vote, not a leader. You know, banners were also calling for a boycott of schools and strikes and the removal of Xi. The Chinese authorities must have been working round the clock trying to censor all the discussion around, around that. So what do you make of the situation inside China in terms of how the citizens may be feeling about their leader? You know, have you been monitoring things on Weibo? Have you been seeing, you know, anything that that you think is noteworthy?

Brown: Look. I mean, I guess from twenty five years of following China that I am deeply skeptical about the messages that we like to hear in the outside world. I mean, we like this kind of protest politics, and it's important. I'm not denying that there are disgruntled people in China and and in particularly significant places now, in the middle class, in Shanghai maybe, and other places where there's been lockdown. We have to remember, though, and and, of course, in Hong Kong. I mean, but you have to remember, proportionally, these are very small percentage of the people of China. And I know as I traveled through China up till the end of 2019 when the pandemic kinda stopped things that Xi Jinping's nationalism, his populism, and beating up the party elites through anticorruption, it was something people liked. Right? I mean, people don't like politicians anywhere. And in China, they don't particularly like politicians. They quite like a figure coming along who basically sticks it to the elites, and that's what Xi Jinping did. And I think they kinda quite like this figure who creates fear in The United States. Yeah. And elsewhere. I mean, it's better to be feared than to be laughed at. I think they kinda, you know, like this idea of the vision of great, powerful, strong China. So I suspect if we kinda had a plebiscite on all of this stuff today, we'd have a nasty shock. And I think we'd probably find a significant number of Chinese people respond to that. I'm not saying that it's right that they respond to it. Yeah. I mean, I think it's, you know, kind of, we love in the outside world listening to disgruntled, articulate, pretty exposed, you know, Internet user or social media using, you know, Chinese. And they are significant, yes, but they're about five to 10% of the population.

Mcfarlane: Maybe less. Maybe less. That that's really interesting. I, I mean, I, I wasn't expecting to hear that, but I, I, you know, does that include some of the the really extraordinary things we've been seeing from China? I mean, if fair enough, you know, Chinese people will like a strong man, but the videos on social media of, you know, the residents in Shanghai, you know, screaming from their apartments, the, you know, people fighting those white boiler suit COVID enforcers from the government, you know, people screaming on camera that they don't have no food, that they can't be locked down because then they'll starve. You know, people being dragged out of their apartments. I saw a video that apparently showed a bunch of students at, at a university in protesting against the lockdown. They were telling the media who were there that their dorm hadn't had any electricity for weeks, that they weren't allowed to go out of the grounds even to see doctors. I mean, all of that stuff happening, the people who are protesting against the fact that they can't withdraw their funds from the bank, they're refusing to pay their mortgages because the values of their homes have collapsed. In many cases, they haven't even been built because their developers have been basically in liquidity crisis, some have even gone out of business. All of that stuff, you think doesn't really present much of a problem for Xi's authority?

Brown: Not now, no, no, not at all. I mean, this disgruntlement is concerning. It could build momentum. But I say again, you're talking about maybe 5% of the population. I mean, we forget. You know? I forget all the time. It's a 1,400,000,000 population, and a 100,000,000 are maybe unimpacted by this. And a 100,000,000 may well think that, you know, it's just these spoilt, pampered people in Shanghai, you know, kind of, you know, moaning again or, you know, heaven forbid, the noisy Hong Kongese, you know, kind of getting more sort of attention grabbed themselves when they've had all of the good stuff anyway. So I, I think, you know, it would be, as a realist, I'm just trying to be a realist now. As a realist, I would really love to think that there's this great liberal ocean of people in China who are, you know, kinda just ready for the balm of the Western sort of liberal message. I have to say that reality over, you know, nearly 30, near, well, actually, no. More than thirty years now in dealing with China has shown that that group does not exist. It's like we used to look for, you know, the liberal reformers in the party. I mean, we may as may as well be looking for unicorns. You know? They don't exist. So the problem is if this stuff leads to significant recession and economic pain that then reaches into that greater group, that is a problem. Okay? That is a problem because I think the expectation is that things should get better, and Xi Jinping has made promises, and that is worrying. That's why I'm a little bit puzzled why in this, you know, new leadership, there's no one that looks like they are really an economist because that's gonna be significant. So if you have a housing, you know, kinda collapse, that's gonna impact on this 100,000,000 that, you know, are the base. Now you could have a government then that's just gonna get super nationalistic, and that's a problem for all of us. You know, you've got a lot of kind of things. Xi has got a lot of things he can do and her people around him to kind of basically keep this going. But the bottom line is that if there is a recession that goes into a depression maybe, I mean, not that slightly, but if it does happen, we have a problem. They really have a problem. So I'm not saying they don't have pressures, but I don't think it's gonna be people, you know, protesting in the way we've seen them. That is, maybe significant, maybe not, but that's not where the pain's gonna come. And yet this is, as we know, an extremely complex country which is very diverse, that has extremely different, you know, voices. You know, this is all part of the mix. And to me, the fact that the government is so resistant to those having any kind of playtime is a sign of probably something significant, and I suspect that that is unease. But I don't think that it's, you know, kind of a particularly, doesn't seem to me to be a healthy way to run a system that you're just not gonna let those voices speak. And that, I think, is probably more a sign of weakness than strength. There, I probably think that the communist system in China is weaker than it seems.

Mcfarlane: I think it's so worth repeating how vast, how diverse, how complex the Chinese system and culture is. One could spend an entire lifetime and career sort of studying it and learning about it. And thankfully, we can talk to people like you so that we don't have to do that. We could just ask you questions and you can answer all of our questions, and we are left so enriched as a result of it. That was fascinating. Thank you so much, Kerry.

Brown: Great. Thank you very much.

Mcfarlane: And now I'd like to bring in my cohost, sir Richard Dearlove, the former chief of MI6, for his analysis.

ANALYSIS WITH SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE

Dearlove: Overall, I think the party congress turned out pretty much as everybody anticipated and expected. The one issue that I was interested in, and I mean Kerry Brown mentioned this sort of implicitly when he talked about the whole business of rejuvenating the Chinese economy and the policy of rejuvenation and renewal. But I think one of the things that I've gathered from talking to other Chinese specialists, I'm thinking of people like Rana Mitter, who I know quite well at Oxford, is that he said that one of the huge problems behind this twentieth party congress is the issue of reengaging Chinese youth or Chinese young people in the whole heroism of the revolution and their devotion to the sort of communist nationalistic state. And the fact that there's a vast number of the Chinese young who just, as it were, spend their time trying not to get involved in the sort of, a, party politics, and b, the sort of party vision of the country.

Mcfarlane: Yeah. I think that's so true. I mean, how do you connect to to young people who are the future when you're not even speaking on the same platforms as them. And his speech really didn't speak to any of it rather than platitudes of, you know, increasing equality and diversifying wealth, and all of these things. And what I thought was, you know, so interesting was that there are sort of fires going on throughout China. There are these boycotts of mortgages, these protests, these little instances of civil disobedience that show a lot of people are unhappy with the direction that Xi is taking China, and they feel like they are not being listened to, and they feel like the government is not taking their concerns seriously. And what I thought was so surprising was that Kerry Brown, who knows far more about this than I do, and has been following China decades and speaks Chinese and is across all social media. He doesn't think that that represents a movement which currently could be an existential threat to Xi or the CCP, but that there is a possibility that it could grow to one. What did you make of that? That sort of reality check that that he gave us on on the effect of those protests and some of the unhappiness in China?

Dearlove: This is where I slightly part company with Kerry in listening to his analysis, because he sort of gave us to understand that, you know, Xi's very much in control. Okay, he did say at the end that, you know, it's a very hybrid country, very complex, and, you know, it's a real challenge to to govern. And, obviously, the party's worked out a methodology for doing that. But on the other hand, I'm of the view that there are huge fragilities within the Chinese system. That there is a sort of risk of fracture because there are no mechanisms within the party to handle significant social change. And it's clear, I would have thought, that the younger generation in China is not necessarily at all in tune with Xi's, you know, vision for what China should be like. And I think Kerry described to us very graphically, you know, how he's a born again communist, which is I think a brilliant description of his ideology and how he sort of fits into that pattern of Chinese ideology. And he has a, you know, a location and justification for his view of this rather highly moralistic China. But that's not what Chinese youth are like. And I think there are much greater problems closer to the surface than Kerry was giving us. He did say, well, there are a few problems under the surface, but not to the extent that I'm claiming.

Mcfarlane: Well, I think he said right now, you know, I think what he was getting at was China is not about to have a Chinese spring, but that if these problems continued and exacerbated, it could very well prove really, really problematic for CCP. But I think what is going to happen to China is, as you say, something that is largely down to the changing demographics and a conflict in what different sectors of its society want and expect from their leaders. And it's something that I think may take a bit of time, and it may need a changing of the guard just in terms of time passing, where, you know, Xi Jinping is 69, he'll be 70 soon, he can't rule forever. All of his cadres are all of the same age. And I thought it was interesting that Kerry Brown, when he was talking about Li Keqiang and some others, that he was surprised had been shuffled out. He said, oh, you know, they're still very young. They're in their sixties, which I think in Europe, one might think that being in your sixties means you are not at the sunset of your career, but certainly wouldn't be referred to as young. But different in China. And I wonder if maybe the Iranian regime is perhaps a present day comparison to the Chinese leadership in which you have this sort of this cabal of old men, of the same religious minority, of the same ethnicity or tribal ethnicity ruling over a young, very plugged in country where the youth are used to living a double life in terms of living within the constraints that their elders are oppressing on them, but they find ways to get around it and live by it until it gets to a point where there's a straw that breaks the camel's back. I mean, what do you, do you think there are comparisons to be drawn between the Iranian regime and the CCP?

Dearlove: Yes, I think it's quite an interesting theory because, you know, both you could say are theocracies to the extent that the born again communist is like a religious leader. The feel you get from Xi Jinping and his cronies is that they're like a group of Shia clerics. I mean, just happen to be Communist Party clerics and, you know, Xi's the archbishop, if you see what I mean. But I think what that tells me is that they've actually built, both countries have built incredibly brittle political systems, and you've made the observation in relation to Iran, which I'm sure it applies in spades to China, particularly in the urban areas, the youth is different. The youth wants to experience a different world. And however tight your control of social media is, they do have access to all sorts of information and visions of a different way of life. I think in Xi's case, obviously we're not facing any immediate problems, but I just think the underpinnings of this regime, I mean, what people always say, the China experts say to you, always say to you, Ah, but China's different, and culturally, China's different. Yes, it is. But I'm not sure that Chinese human nature is utterly so different that they're going to put up with the sort of ghastly, controlled, regimented world that Xi Jinping looks as though he's in the process of creating. I mean, if you don't interfere with the Communist Party, maybe you can get on with your life. But as Kerry pointed out, for example, the crash in the property market in China, when 75 percent of middle class wealth, he said, was invested in property, whereas, you know, 30% of wealth in The United States is invested in property. I thought that was a really cogent observation. Wow, that's a potential for a lot of serious unhappiness with the state.

Mcfarlane: Yeah. I think I totally agree with you when you say, you know, the Chinese in, in many ways, they're not actually different. Human nature is, is human nature. But one thing I have wanted to ask you is one, one area in which the Chinese, Chinese do seem to be really quite different from a lot of Western societies is something that struck me when I was, now I didn't read the work report because I think it's tens of thousands of words long, as I'm not gonna try and make out that I read it. I didn't. I read breakdowns of it by other journalists who read it, so I didn't have to. But it mentioned the need to escape the, quote, historical cycles of rise and fall. And that piqued my interest because we in the West, we don't tend to really look past the previous hundred years when reaching for political comparisons, metaphors, lessons of the past. That's true in The UK, really, and perhaps a little longer in The US. But the Chinese are much more comfortable, aren't they, visualising the modern day as the culmination of several thousand years of history. They have a far longer period in which they frame the present day. They are very comfortable in thinking of historical cycles within five thousand year cycles rather than, you know, the last hundred years or so. How do you think that affects the day to day running of politics? Because presumably it would seem to indicate that things maybe happen slower, that strategies and goals maybe have longer to be actualized and are formulated with longer term goals in mind. And I think it's pretty clear that Xi works to a longer timeframe than, you know, the British Conservatives are trying to fit things in before the next general election in sometime in 2024. He wants China to be great again, and he's thinking much longer down the road. And one can argue that his push for an unprecedented third term is so that he is more likely to actualize some of those goals. But we've seen a lot of things, despite all that long term planning, we've seen a lot of things sort of catch up with Xi very quickly. I mean, the pandemic being one thing that no one saw coming, but also things like the property crisis and some of these other domestic problems that are happening right now.

Dearlove: Maybe it's a good moment to tell that. I'm sure you've heard the story before of Mao Zedong and de Gaulle meeting. I mean, I think it's a true conversation. And they're talking about the French Revolution. De Gaulle says to Mao, well, you know, what do you think was the significance of the French Revolution? And Mao's apparent reply was, well, it may be too soon to tell. I mean, which I think, whether it's true or not, I mean, I'm, many people, I'm sure, have heard that story. I think, and if you read Kissinger's very interesting book about China, I mean, focuses on this ability to think long term and see everything in a historical perspective. And I think that's, I wouldn't disagree with that at all. I think that's absolutely true. The only point I would make is that since the technical, technological revolution or whatever, you know, social and political time has speeded up. I mean, I remember a programmer in California saying to me, well, Richard, you know, a web year is three months. And, you know, it won't be long before a web year is one month. I mean, you know, our lives technologically move at a totally different pace. I mean, you know, we can sit down and have this conversation and it's recorded and put out on a podcast and, you know, you have no imagination. I mean, it's not, I mean, because your age, what life was like, you know, when I was growing up as a young undergraduate in Cambridge, you know, you corresponded by pen and ink through people's pigeonholes. You couldn't do anything at speed. I'm just not sure now whether those historical cycles that the Chinese have been so devoted to have the same relevance any longer. Maybe they have a bit, but they're being destroyed by, you know, the speed of technological change and the ability of everything to be done at the flick of a finger because of, you know, as computing gets more sophisticated, particularly if we get onto quantum computing, a web year will be down to a week.

Mcfarlane: I want to ask you something that I really, really wished I could have brought you in for in the conversation with Kerry, was the fact that Western intelligence agencies have really managed to penetrate into the Russian elite, the Russian government. And there was of course that amazing, there's been an amazing stream of leaked information, conversations at very high levels within the Russian elite about how the invasion of Ukraine was going. Of course, the Americans, they had a heads up that Putin was actually going to go ahead and send his troops over the border, even though a lot of the international community sort of disregarded that warning from the Biden administration at the time. What do you think is the reason why there hasn't been something similar with Xi's inner circle? Or is that just because there hasn't been intelligence made public? What can you tell us about how accessible to, you know, Western intelligence, the Chinese elite and the Chinese government is?

Dearlove: Good question, and I'm a little reluctant to give you a clear answer. You wouldn't know if the West had penetrated the Chinese elite, is the answer to your question. Look, espionage is about human behavior and human nature. If you believe the Chinese are really different, they would be inured to recruitment by the West as spies on their own society. Personally, I don't think the Chinese are insulated in any way that's different from other nations. It's just that we have not fought a cold war with China, therefore there isn't a sort of history of an espionage relationship, which is the legacy of the Cold War as far as Russia goes.

Mcfarlane: So I think we'll leave it there. What a tantalizing thread to pull on Richard. But I mean, there have been Chinese spies in the West, and spy is, I have been told by many people, a really unhelpful term. What there has been recently is there have been quite a few Chinese agents of influence, hasn't there? There's been this, the Christine Lee character in The UK. There was another Christine in The US who targeted American lawmakers trying to get access and influence. And so it's clearly something that the Chinese are doing with the West. I wonder how much of a priority it is the other way around.

Dearlove: Well, the director of the security service recently got up in The UK and talked about the threat from China espionage, Chinese espionage. I mean, made it public, which is most unusual event. So you can, as it were, extrapolate from that public statement that obviously the issue is serious. Chinese intelligence in the West is highly active and has been for years. And let's say the seriousness of it has been elevated, you know, by the public's attention being drawn to it in the last few years. Look, if the Chinese are doing this to us, all I will say is it's unlikely that the West is inert in its response. How curious, how curious. And I mean, if China is a major threat to the West, the way that the system in The UK works is we have what's called intelligence requirements. And I'm not sort of giving away state secrets here. You know, there's a process which is in the public domain, and those requirements are prioritized. And I'm sure that, you know, China has a high priority for Western intelligence generally in order to understand better what is going on in China and how we should deal with China in the future. It doesn't, you know, necessarily mean a completely aggressive relationship. Perhaps the best way to understand China and to modulate our relations with China over time, you know, is to have good intelligence on what else going on inside the Chinese leadership.

Mcfarlane: That's all for this episode of One Decision and our special series looking at Xi Jinping and his grip on China, what lies ahead for the world's biggest nation, and how it will affect us all. Having looked at Xi the man, next week we'll see where the Chinese economy is headed. What'll happen to the engine of global growth if the forces that have powered its growth suddenly collapse? Join us next week on One Decision. From me and the team, thanks for listening.