Transcript
Host (0:00)
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Elizabeth Economy (0:19)
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News Elizabeth Economy.
Interviewer (0:26)
The Hoover Institution at Stanford University changed our dialogue on China where their Michigan graduate school book the River Runs Black and has done the rarest thing. She had a triumph in graduate school and then continued forward with book after book after book. She's the only one who's read all of James to region and as well. Dr. Economy, thank you so much for joining us. Because of you, I am buried in a nerd book. Joel Wolf now and Philip Saunders, China's Quest for Military Supremacy Elizabeth Economy do you have any idea idea the makeup and the power of President Xi's China military force?
Elizabeth Economy (1:10)
I mean, if you're reading the book, then you know that Xi Jinping has made radical changes to China's military over the past 13 years. Since he came into power, he's reorganized it certainly he's reshuffled the top Chinese military. He's modeled it in many cases on the US Sort of joint structure. And he certainly increased and advanced China's military hardware, capabilities, abilities. So he's transformed. He's been a transformative military leader. That being said, of course, we've also watched these purges of the senior military leadership, most recently at the fourth Plenum, and it's very unclear, you know, sort of the readiness of the Chinese military, certainly at the top, to take any kind of military action moving forward. So just the constant roiling of the senior Chinese military leadership, I think, is a real challenge challenge for the for Xi Jinping and the party leadership.
Interviewer (2:07)
Liz Paul Sweeney brought this up brilliantly this morning. The basic idea is we all have a perspective of Taiwan, and maybe it's Chiang kai Shek and Mrs. Chiang Kai Shek coming to Washington and then on to this and Nixon and Kissinger and all that. Is this a fulcrum point where Taiwan is actually under threat?
Elizabeth Economy (2:29)
Look, there's no doubt that Taiwan is is under threat. And over the past several years, the rhetoric out of Beijing and the sor of the military activity around Taiwan, the air flights, the sort of crossings in the Taiwan Strait over the median line have only increased. And I think what we saw, you know, just over the past few weeks was Prime Minister of Japan Takaichi when she said that if China were to take military action against Taiwan, Japan could be forced itself to take some sort of military action. That China came out very hot and said Japan had crossed a red line and that it started banning boycotting Japanese seafood, Japanese films, et cetera. And so I think there's no doubt Xi Jinping has said he wants the Chinese military to be prepared to take action by 2027. That doesn't mean that they're going to launch any kind of military invasion in 2027. He's just put that down as a marker for when he would want the military to be prepared to take Taiwan. So I'll just say I was in mainland China, just came back Saturday, and one of the things that our delegation heard was from a retired senior foreign policy official that China is not prepared to wait 200 years, that it is prepared to take any form of military action. So I think the heat is it's only getting hotter for Taiwan at this point.