GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer
The (Complicated) US-China Relationship
4/12/2024 | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
GZERO unpacks the complex state of US-China relations with US Ambassador Nick Burns.
How stable is the US-China relationship? Are we adversaries? Frenemies? Toxic codependents? Relations have been improving since the Biden-Xi summit in November, but there's still a lot of daylight, and no trust, between the two countries. Where do the world’s biggest economies and strongest militaries agree and where are they still miles apart? GZERO sits down with US Ambassador Nick Burns.
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GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer is a local public television program presented by THIRTEEN PBS
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GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer
The (Complicated) US-China Relationship
4/12/2024 | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
How stable is the US-China relationship? Are we adversaries? Frenemies? Toxic codependents? Relations have been improving since the Biden-Xi summit in November, but there's still a lot of daylight, and no trust, between the two countries. Where do the world’s biggest economies and strongest militaries agree and where are they still miles apart? GZERO sits down with US Ambassador Nick Burns.
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And we certainly wan maintain American military superiority, particularly in the Indo-Pacific.
[upbeat music] - Hello, and welcome to "GZERO World."
I'm Ian Bremmer.
And today, we are talking about one of the most consequential relationships between any two countries in the world.
It's the United States and China.
Both sides have committed to reengage with each other diplomatically after hitting a low point during the infamous spy balloon incident last year.
Remember?
Balloon goes over the US, US shoots it down?
Oh yeah, we were worried about that for a while.
Not anymore, there were signs of a thaw after presidents, Xi Jinping and Joe Biden, met at a summit in San Francisco last November.
No balloons in sight.
But there is still a lot of daylight and really no trust between the two countries.
Both have engaged in tit-for-tat tariffs and trade restrictions.
Washington pushing to ban or force ByteDance to spin off China-owned TikTok.
While iPhone sales in China are plummeting.
Militarily, China continues to increase its presence in the South China Sea.
And Taiwan's defense minister recently confirmed US Special Forces were training on its outer islands, right next to mainland China.
So how stable is the US-China relationship really?
Are we adversaries?
Are we frenemies?
Are we toxic codependents?
Do we hate each other?
What do the world's two biggest economies and largest militaries agree on?
And where are they still nautical miles apart?
I'll get into all that and more with my guest today, US ambassador to China, Nick Burns, who joins me straight from Beijing.
[dynamic music] Don't worry, I've also got your "Puppet Regime."
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[bright music] [transition whooshing] [upbeat music] - [Ian] On April 10th, 1971, nine ping-pong players inadvertently became America's most important diplomats.
- [Reporter] The name of the communist leader, Mao Zedong.
- When the Communist Party came to power in 1949, China closed itself off to the Western World.
And the ping-pong players, they were the first Americans to officially enter the People's Republic in a quarter century.
The national teams met at the World Championships in Japan, and the Chinese government invited the Americans for an exhibition match and a week-long visit.
The infamous ping-pong diplomacy incident was a powerful symbol of cultural exchange and openness.
[crowd cheering and clapping] I mean, they all liked ping-pong, so how different could they be?
The next year, Nixon made his historic trip to China, and sent a clear message that the period of Chinese isolation was over.
- I think one of the results of our trip we hope may be that the walls that are erected, whether they are physical walls, like this, or whether they are other walls of ideology or philosophy, will not divide peoples in the world.
[upbeat music] - [Ian] The walls came down and China opened up, integrated into world economy and expanded its global ambitions.
Foreign investment flooded in, exports skyrocketed, its economy ballooned to the second largest in the world.
And today, the People's Republic is again emerging from a long period of isolation.
This time, a little different, from COVID, with a stagnated economy in desperate need of a boost.
But instead of openness, China's most dominant leader since Mao Zedong is building its walls back up.
Outside China, President Xi Jinping has been on a charm offensive, inviting Western CEOs to have more foreign investment.
But inside China, Xi's vision is one of nationalism and greater centralized control.
China emerged from the pandemic more insular, more regimented.
The Chinese Communist Party has implemented major crackdowns in the technology, finance, real estate and medical sectors, targeting anything perceived as too powerful.
The messaging inside China right now, Western influence is a threat to national identity.
English language has been significantly restricted in schools and entertainment.
Social media is flooded with bloggers attacking anyone remotely perceived as non-Patriotic.
Sweeping new security laws on the mainland and in Hong Kong make even basic interactions with foreigners dangerous.
President Xi's nationalist vision has become so dominant it's written into the constitution and official history of the People's Republic.
His idea of a singular Chinese identity is used to justify mass deportation of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and enforce unification with Taiwan.
None of this is to say that China will return to the isolation of the Mao era.
That seems impossible.
The world needs China, and Xi has said he has no intention of decoupling from the global economy.
[Xi speaking in foreign language] - Xi doesn't wanna lose the economic benefits of globalization, but he has also made the country more hostile to some of the ideas that fueled its transformation in the first place.
Modern China was built on openness and global connection.
Forgetting that could be what prevents President Xi from continuing his country's miraculous rise into the future.
What does Xi Jinping's vision mean for the future of one of the most important bilateral relations in the world, the United States and China?
Can the two countries overcome their significant differences to find areas of cooperation with so much geopolitical conflict?
I'm talking with the US ambassador to the People's Republic of China, Nick Burns, who joins me today from Beijing.
Ambassador Nick Burns, so good to see you, sir.
- Good to see you, Ian.
- US-China relations, always the big sort of animal in the room.
Wondering right now, how much better do you feel about how well managed that relationship is compared to when you showed up a couple years ago?
- Well, Ian, as usual, when you talk about the US-China relationship, it's complicated.
On the one hand, I think we do have a somewhat more stable relationship since President Biden met with President Xi back in mid-November in San Francisco.
But here's the big button, here's what makes it complicated.
We have a systemic rivalry between us, and a very competitive relationship on technology, on military security in the Indo-Pacific, on trade and investment.
And of course, we have a profound difference between us on human rights and on human freedom.
So like anything else in this relationship, it's a question of balance.
I think it's more of a competitive relationship, much more than it is a partnership relationship.
But we try to work with the Chinese where our interests are aligned.
Climate change, fentanyl are two good examples of that.
- Maybe the issue that's gotten the most headlines between the US and China over the last few weeks has been TikTok, the idea that the Americans are gonna require the Chinese ByteDance, the firm, ByteDance, to spin off TikTok, sell it, if they wanna continue to operate in the United States.
It's been a bipartisan push.
And the Chinese obviously unhappy about this, this is one of their crown jewels technologically.
Take us through what it means.
- Well, it's interesting, I think we'll have to see what the Senate does and what Congress does before we'll know what the prescription here is.
But the discussion here has been fascinating.
Lots of people, actually, millions of people in the nationalist netizens online essentially decrying the fact that there might be limits or a change to TikTok in the United States.
I find that to be interesting because, of course, TikTok itself is not allowed in China.
There's a Chinese version of it, but the version of the United States is not allowed.
Facebook is not allowed in China.
Google is not allowed in China.
Instagram is not allowed in China.
X is not allowed in China.
So for Chinese to complain that somehow the United States wants to have an American company, may wanna have an American company running TikTok, I find that a little bit surreal because of all the blockade on American technology here.
It's difficult to get American media here.
And so it's a little bit like the pot calling the kettle black.
- It's interesting, I mean, the Chinese response to that would be, "It's not that Facebook, it's not that American firms are banned, it is rather that the American firms do not want to adhere to the censorship rules that the Chinese impose on any firm that wants to distribute information and collect data and the rest on Chinese citizens."
How do the Americans respond to that?
- I don't think it's a convincing argument.
The fact is there's been a technology blockade here in China for many, many years against all the leading American technology platforms.
I think it's really about competition from those firms, and it's about the firewall that has been set up here to insulate the Chinese people from the rest of the world, from the internet in the rest of the world.
So I think that's really what it's all about.
- Now, we're just coming outta the China Development Forum, and you had some 17 American CEOs, among many others, that made a trip out to China to meet with Xi Jinping, among other things.
The report that I'm getting is a little bit more confidence on the part of Chinese officials that the economy is not collapsing, that China's power has not peaked.
Are you feeling that on the ground in your conversations with Chinese officials?
- Well, obviously, the economy is a big, big part of what I do here as the American ambassador, what my team does.
We have a $575-billion, two-way trade relationship.
China's our third-largest trade partner.
We have thousands of American companies working here, so it really matters.
And I think there's no question that the economy here is not gonna fail, but they are heading towards a future of lower-single-digit growth.
Most of the American companies, if not nearly all of them, are staying.
China's a huge market.
And a lot of these companies have been here for decades, so we're not seeing companies just leave.
On the other hand, you're not seeing many big new investments by American companies.
And I think, Ian, it's because there are two messages that they're hearing from the government here in Beijing.
One which was heard very clearly during the China Development Forum last week and from President Xi and the premier, Li Qiang, "China's open for business, China wants foreign businesses, investments will be protected," that kind of thing.
On the other hand, the government has made no qualms about the fact that national security is their highest goal.
And that could mean things like raiding American firms, which happened a year ago, several American firms raided.
Some of their employees, Chinese employees, still unfortunately and unjustly in jail.
It's also the amendment to the Counterespionage Act, which went into effect here in China on July 1st, 2023, which defines espionage in such an opaque, non-transparent way that it unnerves people about coming here, some executives.
And so I think there's a tension, if you will, between these two messages, "We're open for business," but the national security state, control of data's another example of that, is really the imperative.
And that confusion about the message has stalled, I think, a lot of investment here.
- There's a term of art that we hear a lot from the administration, the Biden administration, "De-risking," that American corporations should de-risk their exposure to the Chinese economy.
Now, that doesn't mean ending the trade relationship, of course, and as you just suggested, it's very large.
But is it fair to say that the Biden administration would like to see, overall, reduced US exposure to the Chinese economy?
- Our message is a little bit more specific than that.
Message number one is, we don't favor a decoupling of the two economies, as I described to you, it's a huge economic trade and investment relationship that in many ways and in many areas, benefits American companies and American workers in our economy.
So that's decoupling, we're not in favor of it and we're not practicing it.
But we do use this term, "De-risking," originally coined, by the way, by the president of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
And it means that we're trying to alter our supply chains and critical materials and critical minerals so that they're closer to home.
That was a fundamental lesson, I think, that everybody learned during the pandemic.
And in our case, what we've specifically done, in October, 2022, for instance, by the Commerce Department, is prohibit the sale of advanced semiconductors, American semiconductors to China for use in AI research because that kind of technology can be used to assist the PLA, the People's Liberation Army, to achieve a qualitative improvement in their military capability to compete with us.
And we're not gonna do that.
So in critical areas essential for our national security, we're not gonna permit trade.
And here's what's interesting about it, China's doing the same thing.
In fact, China started to de-risk well before the United States did, years before.
China does not permit the sale of its most advanced technologies that could be dual-use, used for military purposes to the United States, and hasn't done so for years.
And the Chinese are very rapidly de-risking themselves, trying to make sure that they're self-sufficient, or near so, in areas that are critical to them.
This is a very rational choice that the two governments are making.
What makes it a little bit strange is that there's a lot of complaints that I receive from my Chinese counterparts about our de-risking strategy, and I remind them, "You're doing the same thing."
I think you know, Ian, in fact, we've talked about it, there's a race for who's going to become superior in the next phase of military development that comes out of these new technologies, including artificial intelligence, including quantum systems.
And we certainly wanna maintain American military superiority, particularly in the Indo-Pacific, particularly as we are compared against the qualities of the People's Liberation Army.
So there's just no way that we're gonna allow the sale of these dual-use technologies, and our actions have been limited to a small yard.
So we're gonna stick to that.
It's the only way forward to achieve what we need to achieve, and that is fairness in trade, but also keep out of the hands of the Chinese leadership our most sensitive dual-use technology.
- Let's move on to a couple of the most challenging issues out there, Taiwan and South China Sea.
We had the Taiwanese election, there were so many journalists that said that if Mr. Lai, the vice president, outgoing vice president, were to win, that it was gonna lead to more confrontation between the US and China.
So far, it doesn't appear that that is the case.
I mean, he won pretty convincingly, but the relationship seems reasonably stable.
Is that a fair assessment or are there things we're not seeing?
- Well, I think it's been reasonably quiet, and that's a good thing.
I mean, we've adhered, Ian, as you know, to a specific one-China policy ever since President Nixon went to China in 1972.
It's evolved over time, but we've been very consistent that we think that the only solution to the cross-Strait tensions between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, a peaceful solution.
So that's our mantra, and we do everything we can to encourage dialogue and to encourage especially the government in Beijing to focus on what they can do to enhance communication with the other side.
And we'd like them to commit unequivocally to a peaceful solution, which they haven't done.
But I think that has to be the standard.
In terms of the basic stability of that critical waterway, I think you know, that more than half the container traffic in the world flows through the Taiwan Strait on a daily, weekly basis.
And so consider if the Taiwan Strait were ever to be closed because of conflict, the catastrophic implications for the global economy, that's just on the economic side, but also the war and peace consequences for basic strategic stability in this part of the world is obviously a front-order priority as well.
Taiwan is a thriving democracy, with an extraordinary economy, and that economy is very important.
As you know, think about TSMC and semiconductor, the most advanced semiconductors in the world, it's really a critical place for global economic, as well as political stability.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
I will say that I'm a little more concerned these days about the status quo not holding in the South China Sea, at least near term, than I am in Taiwan.
Do you believe that we are closer to conflict between the United States and China on this issue than we have been before?
- So our policy is that China should not seek to coerce or intimidate the government of the Philippines at Second Thomas Shoal.
Nearly all countries support the Philippines, including the United States.
And so we regularly talk to the government of China about this and suggest to them that they should cease their intimidation of the Philippines.
We also have said, and you've heard Secretary Blinken say this just a couple of weeks ago when he was in Manila, that the Mutual Defense Treaty that we have with the Philippines from 1951 applies.
And so we hope very much that the Chinese are gonna understand there is acute international interest here, and the Philippines has an absolute right to resupply in that particular shoal and other areas where they have part of their exclusive economic zone or their sovereign territory.
- So is it fair to say that there's more risk given the lack of precedent and the lack of a existing structure between the United States and China on Second Thomas Shoal than there is around Taiwan right now?
- It's hard to compare the two, I think they're both very important for stability in this region.
We're always concerned and have been always concerned about Taiwan, and that's why we message that to the government of China routinely.
But, Ian, I would grant you, the tensions around Second Thomas Shoal over the last several months have been really palpable.
So the United States and the rest of the world expect China, the People's Republic of China, to commit to a peaceful resolution of this problem on Second Thomas Shoal.
We have no doubt that the Philippines is in the right, and so we expect China to act responsibly here.
- So before I close, you're working with, engaging with a government run arguably by the most powerful man in the world.
Xi Jinping has consolidated an incredible amount of power since he first took over the Communist Party.
I'm wondering what's it like, what's it been like for you to be America's lead diplomat engaging in that system?
- Well, it's a really compelling time here in China because it's been clear since the 20th Party Congress that the rise of the party here is quite significant in terms of recent Chinese history.
And certainly we're dealing, well, I'm dealing on a day-to-day basis with an extraordinarily powerful government, and as you say, a powerful leader.
And so it's incumbent upon us to be talking with them about all these challenges to global security, as well as to the challenges of our bilateral relationships.
So my role is to be point of contact on a daily basis with ministers here, with vice ministers, with members of the National People's Congress, with leading business people.
I mean, one job that we have obviously is to be keenly analytical about what's happening here.
But a a top-order priority is to communicate the kind of messages that we've been talking about in this show, on very difficult issues, so that they clearly understand our policies, our motivations, and where our red lines are.
So I think this is a largely competitive relationship.
If I think about the US-China relationship, it's a systemic rivalry.
It'll likely to be a systemic rivalry well into the 2030s between the two largest economies in the world, the two strongest militaries in the world, the two strongest technology and AI societies in the world.
And so what happens here is very consequential, and I hope that we'll be able to conduct this relationship in such a way that we defend our interests, obviously, but as President Biden often says, that we act responsibly and drive down the probability of any kind of conflict, because that would be, of course, catastrophic.
So that's how I see my job representing President Biden.
And the United States has an interest in making sure that our interests are met here on all these national security issues.
So fascinating time to be ambassador here.
And I must say, Ian, I wanna say this, we have one of the largest embassies in the world here.
We have 48 US government agencies, government and diplomacy are a team sport.
I have a terrific and highly motivated and highly skilled group of people working with me, and that gives me confidence when I get up in the morning to negotiate all these complex issues with the Chinese.
- Ambassador Nick Burns, thanks so much for joining us.
- Thank you, Ian.
[transition whooshing] [futuristic music] [transition whirring] [transition whooshing] Now that we've covered political regimes and economic regimes, it's time for your "Puppet Regime."
Roll that tape.
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♪ Puppet Regime ♪ - That's our show this week, come back next week if you like what you see or you just wanna hang in China a little while, wanna check us out, we'll bring you there, gzeromedia.com.
[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music continues] [bright music] - [Announcer] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.
[upbeat music] - [Announcer] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains, with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform, addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.
Learn more at prologis.com.
- [Announcer] And by.
- [Announcer] Cox Enterprises is proud to support "GZERO."
We're working to improve lives in the areas of communications, automotive, clean tech, sustainable agriculture, and more.
Learn more at Cox.career/news.
- [Announcer] Additional funding provided by Jerry and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and.
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GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer is a local public television program presented by THIRTEEN PBS
GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer is a local public television program presented by THIRTEEN PBS. The lead sponsor of GZERO WORLD with Ian Bremmer is Prologis. Additional funding is provided...