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- [00:00]
Kevin Hsu
That truth post of him admiring the Great hall of people saying they have a great ballroom. We're building ours too. It's going to be done soon. I bet. It has to be done before she visits. He's going to.
- [00:10]
Jordan Schneider
No way did they do the building in three months. This is America.
- [00:15]
Kevin Hsu
I mean, I'm not saying it's going to be a well built building, but
- [00:19]
John Zinn
it will be tripping on them.
- [00:22]
Sergei Radchenko
They should just ask China. They should ask China to build a Chinese deliver quality in no time. You know, I mean, if we could,
- [00:29]
Jordan Schneider
if we could, if we could have a Dubai Air Force One, why not have a Chinese ballroom?
- [00:34]
Sergei Radchenko
I think they probably.
- [00:35]
Kevin Hsu
It's funny, if the East Room is actually like the ballroom, is it the first joint venture between us and China of the Board of Investment?
- [00:42]
Jordan Schneider
Okay, let's start. So Trump went to China. First time American president's done that in seven years. It deserves a podcast, even though, as Trivium said, the outcomes of it could have been an email instead of a summit to discuss. We have on the great Sergei Redchenko, author of To Run the World Kremlin, the Kremlin's Cold Bid for Global Power, which won a ChinaTalk Book of the Year award and got the four hour podcast treatment as long, as well as two ChinaTalk standbys, Kevin Hsu of Interconnected and John Zinn, formerly of the Deep State, now with Brookings. So to me, the most remarkable thing was the affect of all of it, of Trump going to China just. And Rubio looking up at the People's hall, kind of just being amazed at how wondrous it was. Trump being really impressed that he got to go deep in the Politburo? Maybe let's start with Sergei for some historical context. Like, is this as odd as it felt to me, having a US President just, just like kind of being, you know, goosed up by, by getting the, getting the sort of CCP red carpet treatment.
- [02:05]
Sergei Radchenko
Yeah, Jordan, yes and no. I mean, obviously we get a lot of the, you know, we get a lot of images coming out of this visit and add to this Trump's own proclivity or his, you know, just desire for fancy things like this. You can see how this has come together. But if you look, historically, if you look back to any summit, they always entail some element of pageantry of this kind. And some actually has had great resonance. Consider, for example, Nixon's visit to China in February 1972. And remember that image of where he was walking down the stairway from the aircraft and Joan Lai was down there to greet him, and he extended his hand to greet Joan Lyon. Those are images that just reshape people's perceptions at that particular moment. It was important to show that it was Nixon who was making that step to visit China. And then, you know, Nixon going to see the Great Wall, Notably, probably the funniest quip of the Cold War where Nixon was asked about the Great Wall. What do you think about the Great Wall? Remember that moment where Nixon was said, what do you think about the Great wal. And I think we can say that this is a Great Wall or something like that, you know, so. So we always had that. You know, remember when Clinton went to China, he would go, you know, visit, like the south, you know, southern parts of China, would tour China and would, you know, go to different places. So in other words, you always have that sort of element where the Chinese are trying to showcase their best, the architecture, the pageantry, the, the, the, you know, receptions and so on. And that has a certain propagandistic effect, not least for China, of course, that shows its glory to the world.
- [04:05]
John Zinn
The visuals and the optics are probably some of the biggest takeaways from this meeting. And I think the pageantry is always an element of this. And one thing that I'm mindful of, especially watching some of the pictures where the US Side seems to be, you know, really taking it all in, is that I don't think they did a great job of. Of playing it cool, frankly. Right. Like, China rolls out the red carpet. But I think, you know, the, you know, the affect you kind of want in these meetings is to be businesslike and, you know, perhaps a little stoic about it, because this is serious stuff. Right. And it's one thing to take it in and appreciate it, but I think the. The clips of. Of some senior officials gawking at it. I mean, it is cool. It's. It's cool when you're, when you're inside those buildings, but, you know, you kind of have to maintain your guard for the purposes of those. Of visuals. Right. Because I don't think anybody, you know, on the inside or the outside would think like, that's really the pose you want to strike in that kind of moment.
- [05:02]
Jordan Schneider
Well, yeah, well, Sergey, I mean, we. You wrote an entire history of Cold War, of the Cold War through the lens of prestige. And it felt like this is the way the Americans comported themselves in China over these two days is like you could not be giving more prestige points to.
- [05:21]
Sergei Radchenko
More. More to face. Yeah. To the Chinese. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, Just think about it. Try to flip this and imagine, let's say, I don't know, let's say some Chinese newspaper, let's say Renmin Wang or one of those newspapers publish or presenting videos of Xi Jinping being blown away by his reception in the United States and looking in awe at Trump's. What is it? Ballroom or something that is going or not going to be constructed, you know, that sort of thing. This would be a little bit. I would kind of feel that it's a little bit humiliating. I don't think the Chinese would ever do that. And so to see Trump do that, almost sort of Koto to the Chinese Communist leadership, not quite physically, obviously, but, you know, expressing this level of admiration, I think this was over the top, frankly. I mean, if you look at any of this stuff that the White House, I mean, it's one thing for the Chinese propaganda to Trump put up, right? To show it on the Chinese news, et cetera, or in or any of those, you know, Chinese media. And it's another thing for the White House account, Twitter account X account, to sort of recycle this images as if to show, you know, to basically, basically showcase China's greatness to the American public. I found that a little bit strange to be. To be honest. Well, and I think this is the big.
- [06:52]
Jordan Schneider
Sorry, Kevin.
- [06:53]
Kevin Hsu
Oh, I just want to add a few more to that. This is. Kevin, which is that I think there are two ways to think about this, right? One, from the White House perspective, they're all about their leader being President Trump getting the treatment that no other leader get to get when they go to these places, right? Like, I watched a whole raw footage of Trump getting the garden tour inside Zhongnanhai by Xi Jinping. And if you listen to the audio of that entire tour, there was this one moment where Trump just had to ask Xi, do you bring other prime ministers and presidents to this kind of access? Right? And then Xi was like, oh, very rarely. We don't really do this very rarely for other leaders. For example, Putin, right? So, you know, like, just drop that at the very end. And the entire Trump team actually needs that validation just as much as China wants to provide that validation to kind of stroke the visitor's ego, right? And so I quip a little bit on Twitter that the, you know, the John Emo moonlighting at the White House videographer's office, because those videos of the Trump visit was fantastic, right? But that being said, I actually think this was a more limited edition of Trump, what China wanted to provide to Other leaders. Right. If you think about it, just the previous leaders we've had from Europe, whether it's from Germany or from Spain, you usually get the multi city tour. That's what the Chinese that actually wants you to see. They want you to ride the high speed rail, they want you to visit either a dark factory or robotics company. They want to showcase this entirety of China's economic and technological rise that really you can only show so little if you have a limited edition of the visit in Beijing. But they did the best they could to still provide that. And obviously the Trump team ate it up. But I think in a way China wanted to do more, but this is all they kind of could have fit within. Maybe whatever the constraint the Trump team wanted to be able to fit, given that they're still fighting a war in Iran.
- [08:47]
John Zinn
Yeah. I think Kevin's point about how the Trump administration wanted to depict this is quite right. Right. To show that kind of validation that they're getting and the face that they're getting in turn from the Chinese side. But I would say for a lot of the optics, I really wonder if it may have misfired. I think the same is true for the business delegation that showed up. Right. My suspicion is, or my intuition is that what the Trump administration was trying to do by bringing Tim Cook and Elon Musk and Jensen Huang is to do it as a flex to demonstrate how many high end companies we have that really at the frontier of today's technology. But I think the way it ended up looking from Beijing's perspective is that you are here to do business rather than to compete with us. Because what's really striking to me, Sergey referenced earlier engagements like this. It did feel like a throwback. Right. Like it's kind of the Back to the Future summit where all the emphasis is on commercial and trade relations primarily. And you show up with a gaggle of executives signaling pretty loudly and clearly you want to do business. And you even saw that in Trump's true social on the way over, that they're looking to expand access to the Chinese market. I mean, if you close your eyes or squint a little bit, that could be a statement straight out of the George W. Bush or Clinton administration, not from the period of strategic competition.
- [10:03]
Jordan Schneider
Can we come back to this prestige dynamic? Because I think we all kind of agree that Trump and the team and the delegation sold prestige on the cheap. And there is a debate about whether or not kind of like giving you this face, giving you sort of face up front, leads to better or Worse outcomes. I mean, lots of folks have made the argument that, you know, the president since, I mean, starting with George W. Bush and through Obama and Trump won and Biden didn't give Putin enough face. And part of the reason that we're in here today is. Should we quote, should we quote your book, Sergei? Trump's Obama's occasional dismissive remarks about Putin, such as when the American president compared him to the bored kid at the back of the classroom, added to the sense of a personal affront. It was not just that the Americans felt they were exceptional. They also pretended to be teachers. So, you know, even if Trump isn't trading, like, trade concessions for the sort of propaganda points of, like, looking like he's overawed by Chinese imperial greatness, I mean, is there a sense where maybe this just, like, leads the planet on the safer trajectory because, you know, the Chinese people, Chinese leadership are less sort of like, ticked off and feel looked down to by an American delegation or like, are we past that, that sort of game in, in 2026?
- [11:41]
Sergei Radchenko
I mean, if I, if I may offer some historical observations on this, I think it is true that it, under all circumstances, speaking respectfully about the other side is just the do. And trading in insults has never led to any productive relationship ever. And the Chinese are especially sensitive to this. We had, you know, historically, for obvious reasons, we've had, for example, moments with where they, Mao Zedong had really nasty exchanges with Nikita Khrushchev back in the late 1950s. Speaking of what foreign leaders get to do or not get to do, Khrushchev got the real treatment. He got to meet with Mao Zedong in the swimming pool of Zhongnanhai because it was in the summer. And, you know, Mao Zedong had a swimming pool installed there and got Khrushchev. But actually, you know what, this was supposed to be an insult from Mao Zedong in relation to Khrushchev because he was kind of trying to show his superiority. But Khrushchev and Mao, they quarrel, and Khrushchev in particular called Mao names, et cetera. And it was just, in the end, it did not contribute. And you might say, well, in the end, this relationship we're talking about, relationship between Moscow and Beijing back in the late 50s, early 60s, it fell apart for reasons that perhaps were not all related to personal insults. But personal insults never helped. And so you talk, you know, you mentioned Jordan, this question of Putin and Obama. There were various reasons why Putin would want to reassert Russia the way he thought that he was reasserting Russia's standing and quarrel with the west for any number of reasons. It did not help that Obama was trying to sort of look down on him because there is a general kind of perception in Russia of some kind of American arrogance of some kind. So I can see how speaking respectfully about the other side is a generally good thing. I mean, President Trump has not distinguished himself in particular by being consistent and treating others with respect. In fact, he seems to go from one extreme to the other. He can trash a foreign leader and then suddenly say something good about him or her the next day. And I don't know. I mean, his treatment of Xi Jinping, however, has been fairly consistently respectful, wouldn't you say? He hasn't really trashed Xi Jinping in any kind of noticeable way. So it's good. I think it's good for the relationship.
- [14:13]
Kevin Hsu
Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with that. I mean, the only thing that Trump still wants to throw out there is still Covid from time to time. Right. But at the end of the day, his praise of Xi Jinping from afar or from up close has been incredibly consist compared to any other, I think, world leader, past or present, which is an interesting context to be received. Right. Going into China.
- [14:35]
John Zinn
Yeah.
- [14:35]
Sergei Radchenko
But I mean, Kevin, you know, some people will hear that and criticize us for saying that. Well, you know, that just shows that, you know, Trump. They'll say that Trump is just, you know, he's so. He admires Xi Jinping as a dictator, and therefore he feels like he constantly has to praise Xi Jinping, et cetera. And maybe there's something to that. I think there's probably something to that. It's probably fair to say that Trump admires Xi Jinping for his way of government, even praise that as well as Putin as well. And yet you could also say something like, well, look, you are dealing with a leader of an important state, China. We may not like what the Chinese are doing in any number of areas. However, we still have to kind of treat them respectfully because that facilitates our interactions. But this will not necessarily lead to a good relationship by itself, because the reality is, and China and the United States are strategic competitors. And you can, you know, you can kiss up to Xi Jinping all you want. This will not change this reality. Or you can swear at him all you want. This will still not change this reality, except for maybe it'll make it worse.
- [15:41]
John Zinn
Yeah, that's right.
- [15:43]
Sergei Radchenko
Yeah.
- [15:43]
John Zinn
I think just to embellish that point, I mean, I think that's one important element to keep in mind with these meetings is not how much they matter, but in some ways how much they don't in shaping the long term trajectory. And I was struck listening to the previous episode with Sergei, talking about these personal interactions with Brezhnev and Nixon and the personal rapport and how important that was. My sense is that especially under Xi Jinping, these don't necessarily move the needle and certainly not necessarily in a positive direction. I think as idiosyncratic as Trump is, and as different as he is from his predecessors and thinks of himself as different, there's something quintessentially American about him. He really thinks, like through his charisma and through glad handing and back slapping, that he's gonna somehow make a deal with the other side. Right. And that's like such an American way to approach things. And I think it's so mismatched with how she does these kind of meetings. Right. Like we just saw earlier this year with the episode you and I did previously, Jordan, about John Gyosia. Like, she is very unsentimental about personal relationships, right? I mean, even with people in his inner circle or people he's known for decades, right. He's willing to jettison them. And my sense is when he goes into these meetings, what he's basically doing is sizing up the side. And so I think that's really the more interesting kind of angle to this in some ways is what is he learning about Trump from this? I think it's probably only at the margins because she's had a decade now to interact with Trump and think about how to interact with him. But I think one of the things that's really shifted here in terms of this prestige dynamic that my old NSC colleague Henrietta Levin pointed out in a recent Foreign affairs piece is that it used to be the US Tactic to trade foreign for substance. And now, because Trump is so focused on the forms, it flips the dynamic where the Chinese side are able to say, okay, we'll roll out the red carpet as a way to try to achieve our objectives with the Americans, our substantive objectives. And you guys probably heard me say this before, but their objective was there was not really a clear, affirmative objective from the Chinese side. I think what they were mostly trying to do is think more long term about this and see this as a reprieve and just try to buy as much space as possible from US pressure and fortify themselves for the next round of the cont. Right? That is what they are purchasing by trying to give Trump so much face in. In this meeting. Right. Then that's, you know, in the big scheme of things, that's a relatively small price to pay.
- [18:02]
Jordan Schneider
Contrasting, like. Like the Soviet leaders being really needy. I don't think Stalin was particularly needy, but going. Going through kind of Khrushchev and. And Brezhnev, like they. As you. As you show in your book, Sergei, like, they had this. This kind of desire, like, deep, deep desire to sort of be seen as a peer with America on the global stage. Right. And, you know, almost now it's kind of flipped, right, where we have Trump, who is like the needy one, wanting to be seen as a peer, who
- [18:36]
Sergei Radchenko
wants to be recognized by China. Isn't that funny? Yeah, it is crazy if you think about it, because, you know, in the Soviet case, for example, it was clear why they wanted this American recognition and to be seen with Nixon, for example, or, yeah, I don't know, Eisenhower or for Khrushchev. And the reason for that was that they did not have really domestic sources of legitimacy. They thought that by being recognized externally by the United States, they would sort of. They would stand tall and proud as leaders of this great superpower and be legitimated in this by another superpower. And it's interesting to think that with Trump and the. The patientry that we saw in Beijing, it's almost like the reverse of that. He wants to be legitimated by the Chinese as a great leader. You know how he says, you know, other countries respect me, et cetera, which a lot of us in Europe, for example, are sort of rolling our eyes at the statement, oh, you know, other countries have respect America more since Joe Biden, etc. Because they're. There's frankly a sense of incomprehension in many European capitals. I don't know about the rest of the world, but Trump is sort of trying to use this opportunity to kind of highlight that China respects him. You see, China respects him. I wonder if it works the other way in the sense that. Is Xi Jinping also in need of selling the images around Trump's visit to the domestic audience to say, well, here we are, two great powers dagua sort of working together, and that shows the strength of the ccp, et cetera, et cetera. Is that part of the domestic legitimacy discourse for Xi Jinping? I think probably as well.
- [20:26]
John Zinn
I think so. But I think especially this far along into Xi's tenure, I think he's happy to take the win. Right. But I don't think it's crucial for him in the way it might have been for his predecessors like Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin. Right. I mean, he went almost 10 years without hosting an American president. And I think his power has only grown in that period. Right. Because of the purges and the expulsions and some other dynamics internally. So I think it matters, but I think it's really at the margins.
- [20:53]
Kevin Hsu
Right.
- [20:53]
John Zinn
I don't think Xi is really in a position where he needs at this point, especially where he really needs to assuage any kind of politically salient internal audience or demonstrate China's greatness in the, in the world stage. She's happy to do it, but it's not. It's not essential in the same way,
- [21:09]
Kevin Hsu
I would say on the margins of that. I mean, I don't think she's doing this because he thinks he has the trouble of winning a fourth term, let's just say. But as you think the domestic situation, when it comes to the economy, when it comes to youth employment, when it comes to general, I will say consumer sentiment has been very much on the bottom and bottoming ever since zero Covid for the last 2 1/2 years or so. I think last year's trade confrontation with Liberation Date did not help at all. Even though you can argue maybe China came out on front or China stood up to the US in ways that no other country could. All that is fair and trying to flex the real earth muscle. So it's learning how to do export control in a way that's also weaponized and offensive. And that's also fine as well as China learns these new crafts when it comes to dealing with the US from the more adversarial side of the relationship. But as far as being able to host Trump. Right. China just want this trip to happen. I think it could have been delayed again. It was delayed once. We didn't know when it could happen. I think it's very important for Xi to be able to host a United States president in a way that was on his term. That could very much balanced narrative at home, which is that we are fine from an international perspective. The G2 is back on the docket, if you will. Right. And now we can talk about the more substantive stuff as China has frankly a lot of domestic problems that it is wrestling with and we haven't talked about the future, you know, when it comes to the impact of AI and all that kind of stuff, which is now on the deliverable as well for these two countries, which is a kind of a new thing. Right. So I think all that is to say, say there is some domestic need for this to be both done and done very well. And you know, we can debate whether it is done or done not very well, but it has to be done.
- [22:53]
Jordan Schneider
So the awkwardness of the delay means that Putin is showing up in Beijing tomorrow. And, you know, this, this idea of like a G2, right, this was the dream of Brezhnev telling Newton, excuse me, telling Nixon together, you know, we will run the world. And the idea of like, whoever gets, gets to pair up with the US if it's China or, or the USSR is the one kind of in a, in a pole position. You know, when Julian Goertz pointed this out in a recent article, when she went to Moscow to see Putin In 2023, a camera caught him speaking with the Russian leader, gesturing emphatically. She's saying, right now there are changes unseen in a century and we are the ones driving these changes together. I agree. Reply, Putin. We had sort of similar, like, language around that with, with Trump and Putin talking about, you know, together we're gonna, we're gonna run the world. I think this is an idea which at some level, like, appeals to Trump in particular. But yeah, curious for kind of thoughts on how this, how, you know, whether, whether we're going to be looking at this relationship, whether we're gonna be looking at this trip very differently based on the visuals that are going to come out of, of Putin and Xi out tomorrow.
- [24:13]
Sergei Radchenko
So, so Jordan, on this question of writing the world together, did I, did I tell you this anecdote about the Soviet reaction when Nixon went to China in 1972 and made a toast? Whether the future of, of. Of the world is in America's, in China's hands, that. Remember that. So there's there. So that's 1972, Nixon goes to China, makes a tower. The future of China or the future of the world is in China's, in America's hands, that is then publicly reported. The Soviets read about it and get really upset and then complain to the Americans. So Brezhnev complains to Kissinger saying, what are you saying? What are you saying it's supposed to be? Aren't the Americans and the Soviet Union, aren't they supposed to be holding the future of the world in their hands? So in other words, there's a long historical, I guess, background to this idea of the world being run or co. Run by any number of these great powers. So it is interesting to see how this is evolving. And I would imagine that from Xi Jinping's perspective, to have Trump there first to talk about the future of the world. And now to have Putin as well, just a couple of days later, Putin showing up to talk about the future of the world, that puts him really in the best of all positions because he's the arbiter of the future of the world. He can sort of, you know, talk to both sides at a time when the, you know, the Russians and the Americans are not really talking to one another all that much. And, you know, clearly other players, like the Europeans are completely marginalized. So it is very much. It's not even the G2 world. It's almost like China is the center of the world and the others are like spokes, you know, connecting to China. Very much a Sino centric world. Isn't that like the return of the Sinocentric world in the weird.
- [26:10]
John Zinn
Yeah.
- [26:10]
Kevin Hsu
Or the G is where China is. And it's like whether you pair up with the US or you pair up with Russia. Right. But China is going to be the consistent one out of the two in the G2.
- [26:19]
Sergei Radchenko
Yeah, that's right. That's an interesting one. Yeah. So China is the. This the common unifying element here. And. Yeah, that is. Yeah, that's.
- [26:28]
John Zinn
But it's interesting because it's primarily in some ways, a question of optics. Right. Because I think one of the things that's interesting about how China responds to this G2 concept, I think they welcome the US side saying it, but they don't actually like it in the sense that they don't want to take on those burdens. Right. Like you see it with their caution in the Middle east right now. And I think there's kind of one of these paradoxes at play in which China, being the second superpower, benefits from that. They don't have to take on the cost. All they have to do is kind of continue to score singles and doubles at the US Expense and build up their power without taking on any of those additional responsibilities. And that segues to another point I wanted to make in terms of the way the calendar worked out in the run up to this meeting, just by happenstance. Right. The fact of the postponement meant that you not only have Putin coming on the heels of Trump, but you also had Iran's foreign minister visiting just the week before. Right. Which I think was probably intentional on the Chinese side. And it was designed to allow them to deflect US Pressure on this issue, since all they had to do was reiterate their long standing talking point throughout this conflict, that they support an opening of the Strait of Hormuz to try to assuage the US side. And then also the other notable aspect of it too, is that it meant that and the head of the kmt, Chung Liwen, ended up visiting Beijing and visiting Xi Jinping before the engagement with Trump. Right. And I think we don't know what happened in the internal meeting, but my suspicion was what this position Xi to do is to say to Trump when the Taiwan issue came up, to basically say, I'm a man of peace, you're a man of peace. I just met with the opposition and to put the onus on Lai Ching, to which, based on Trump's comments over the weekend, and it seems like that may have very well been the framing from Xi Jinping, which is unfortunate. So I think the Chinese side was frustrated just kind of at a logistical level that the meeting was postponed in the run up, but in some ways it actually ended up playing to their advantage just because of the way the choreography ended up working out.
- [28:29]
Kevin Hsu
Yeah, I mean, I wonder if there was a logistical scheduling alternate universe where the Trump visit could have happened after Putin, which I believe the Putin visit was long scheduled. Right. Where the US visit was much more in the flux this whole time. And speaking from the US perspective here, that might be a slight plus or bonus that she actually wants to meet with Trump first before he meets with Putin, as opposed to meet with Putin first, which looks more like, you know, the evil axis colluding first before receiving the US President in Beijing and then having Trump come a little bit later, at least from like the super outside, you know, tinfoil hat level perspective from the Twitter universe as far as analyzing the situation is concerned, because I feel like these days are so haphazard at this point. And that's something that I think the Chinese side, at least based on my kind of previous experience, having kind of advanced some of these White House visits to China from the US perspective, had to really compromise stylistically. Right. Like, these visits are so rigid and planned ahead of time. To have one American CEO jump onto the plane halfway on Ra route to go to the state visit, and then to have another member of the US Cabinet delegation be actually on the sanctions list, and you kind of contort yourself to let them in. These are all compromises that I think are actually very rare. I'd say from the Chinese side when it comes to preparing for these high level visits, that I think also shows a level of maybe practicality, maybe respect, maybe just a level of accommodation that is also quite rare to make all these visits look good and not have any silly awkward moments that could have Been a thing that overshadows the entire night narrative.
- [30:07]
John Zinn
Yeah.
- [30:07]
Jordan Schneider
Shout out to the Chinese advance team. I mean, we really put them through the ringer on this one. They deserve some kudos and probably late nights putting out that extra table setting.
- [30:16]
Sergei Radchenko
But, you know, it would. Sorry, I was just gonna say that.
- [30:20]
John Zinn
What?
- [30:20]
Sergei Radchenko
For me, although we've talked a lot about the symbolism of it and of course we don't know what happened on the inside except for what Trump has let us know in his conversation with the press, but it would be interesting to see in which way, for example, Ukraine was discussed. Right. This subject came up. And whether or not Trump has asked Xi Jinping to do something about Ukraine and what Xi Jinping would have, how he would have reacted to this. Of course, that connects then to Putin's visit, passing messages or something like that message from Trump to Putin. Vice. It's not even necessary because there are obviously the Witkovs and the Kushners that fly back and forth. But it would be still extremely interesting and historians will find out in 30 years from now what was being said and maybe we'll be massively surprised. But that's something that I find extremely interesting.
- [31:16]
John Zinn
I think it's interesting on that point, Sergey, that my recollection is that the Chinese side referenced Ukraine in their readout after the initial two hour encounter between Trump and Xi. And there was no mention of it in the US Readout, Right?
- [31:32]
Sergei Radchenko
Not in the readout, but Trump talked about it in, in his conversation in the airplane on the way back.
- [31:39]
John Zinn
Yeah, but you gotta keep in mind too, just in terms of the mechanics of the meeting, if that was the main time when they spoke about it, this is a two hour meeting in all likelihood and consecutive translation, which means you really only have an hour of each side talking at most, unless somebody really decides to hold forth. Right.
- [31:55]
Sergei Radchenko
I wanna, I think it was simultaneous because they.
- [31:58]
John Zinn
Oh, simultaneous, okay.
- [31:59]
Sergei Radchenko
Maybe small piece of it.
- [32:01]
John Zinn
Yeah. But it's. The point is. Right, regard. That's a totally fair point. But you know, it's gonna be, it's not gonna be a airtime. Right.
- [32:09]
Sergei Radchenko
So it was just this two hour meeting, right, between the two delegations. Did they have a private meeting? Sometimes you have this very small, very small meeting of just the leaders and their immediate advisors because the delegations were massive. They were like, you know, old men on two sides, about, you know, 50 people together or something like that.
- [32:27]
Kevin Hsu
Well, they too, they met for tea time, they did the tour. They had a lot more meeting time. That's slightly more informal. Right. And they also had a little bit more like a bilab media kind of avail where she was like, oh, Trump loved the garden. I'm gonna give him some flower seeds. Right. So I think before that or after that they had more chit chat, let's just say, right. That isn't as like formal in like a big conference room, which I think a lot of the things probably just got brought up sort of like that, you know.
- [32:55]
Sergei Radchenko
I hope they did not talk about organ transplants like Xi Jinping and Putin.
- [33:02]
Jordan Schneider
Well Kevin, this is your point, right? Two old men hanging out. What are they going to talk about? Bad backs and trees?
- [33:08]
Kevin Hsu
If you're, if you're in your, in the height of your, in your late 70s, you talk about organ transplant as the first thing. That's first thing on your mental agenda, let's be honest. And the second thing is how old the trees are around you to show a little bit of deference to mother Nature. Right. We got the second part, definitely on camera. The first part, you know, that Sergey mentioned, I don't know, it could have been just like, you know, give me that guy's number kind of a thing.
- [33:35]
Jordan Schneider
I'll take your seeds, I'll take your surgeon too. This idea, okay, Dayton, right? It's, I, I, this is, this is a weird analogy but like you write Sergey, the, the terrifying experience of the Cuban Missile crisis was key to Khrushchev's embrace of Dayton. We might having come close to the brink, both Khrushchev and Kennedy glimpsed the darkness on the other side and understood that the world had changed for forever. Nuclear armed great powers were simply indestructible from without. Now comparing the Cuban Missile crisis to the great rare earths, you know, sanctions list expansion, escalation of October 2025, I don't think is in the same bucket, but I do, I, yeah, I'm curious for the analogy here of like both sides deciding that the current temperature level is like the correct one for them.
- [34:35]
Sergei Radchenko
Right. So that's a very interesting analogy. And of course we did not have a crisis similar to the Cuban Missile Crisis. We could still have a crisis like that over Taiwan for example, and who knows how that ends up. But for now I think it's more interesting to compare what is happening now to the Soviet American detente in the early 1970s because there you did not really have a crisis per se. But basically at that point the Soviets were sort of in the sit. They peaked and they understood that they peaked and they wanted to have some kind of reasonable relationship with the United States to agree to rule the world together, to listen to each other's concerns, manage problems like the Middle east, for example. That's another interesting parallel. One of Brezhnev's big concerns in 1972, 73 was how to manage the Middle east together with Nixon. And of course it never worked out because here's the problem. You can have a wonderful personal relationship and actually Brezhnev and Nixon had a wonderful person personal relationship. I mean, Brezhne just loved Nixon for whatever reasons, you know. But you have two countries that were, that were at that time strategic rivals. And so no matter what relationship you have, there's always a tendency or desire to stab your partner in the back when opportunity, when the opportunity to do so arises. There's no alignment of values really. So you just basically you go for, you have an opportunity and then you go for it. So in the Soviet American detente In the early 1970s, things were, seemed to be very nice, but actually when it came to, let's say, forcing the Americans out of Southeast Asia, the Soviets were more than happy with this. In 1973, you had the coup against Salinde in Chile and this was a defeat for the Soviets, a victory for the Americans. Then you had any number of conflicts in Africa, from Angola to Mozambique to Ethiopia, Somalia, et cetera. And there too, despite the tone, this conflict turned into really a zero sum game for the two superpowers. Because in the situation of a strategic rivalry, both sides understand that basically it is a zero sum game. It is not, to use the Chinese propaganda phrase, win, win doesn't work like this. Right. So that's, I think both, I mean, the Chinese can still talk about win, win all they want, but the reality is this is a situation of strategic rivalry. And no matter what, what Putin, or rather Trump says to Xi Jinping or vice versa, we are, you know, it's going to be unstable and we are in a situation where more conflicts will arise. So the question is not how to prevent the conflict, but how to manage the conflict.
- [37:25]
John Zinn
Yeah, I think that meshes well with a point, you know, Julian Gors has made about this. This is not really stability right now or anything. Kind of like detente, it's stock, a stalemate. Basically where we landed last year after the whole issue over rare earths is both sides realize the other side had leverage and we're just kind of stuck right now. I think that means that the real question right now is maybe less about how long the stability lasts. I think that is one interesting question. But if we are locked in this longer term competition, the question is, then who's doing more to fortify themselves in the meantime?
- [38:00]
Sergei Radchenko
That's exactly it. And by the way, Deton fell apart. So we cannot see Deton as a stable condition in self def. Detente was stable for a couple of years. And even while it was stable, there was actually crisis in the Middle east that led to, you know, the United States raising nuclear readiness to DEFCON 3. So that's how, you know, that's how detente. Detente was. So detente, you know, we cannot say, oh, now we have American, Chinese detente, or there's no evidence for this. We had a summit, and the problems will continue.
- [38:30]
John Zinn
If anything, I kind of think this is like a great natural experiment this whole past year about the limits of the viability of an idea like detente in this setting. Because you have had the US in some ways hit the pause button on two of the issues that were the most contentious during the Biden administration, at least on technology and export controls, and then to some extent, kind of, with the giant exception of the big arms sale that was announced at the end of last year, pulling back, at least on rhetorical support for Taiwan. And I think the reality is it hasn't really yielded much in terms of some kind of deeper stability or an affirmative agenda, even recognizing, to Sergey's point, the limits of detente in the first go around, I think it underscores just how challenging it would be to get to something that does look more like that. The other point too is about the scary moment of the Cuban missile crisis and how that fed into subsequent discussions about detente and the need for arms control. And I think that's another really interesting point that's embedded in all this. You don't even have those conversations underway. And it's one of those really striking things. Even when I talk to my colleagues who are Russia specialists, you know, it's such an interesting compare and contrast exercise. And Jordan, I think you and I talked about this on an earlier episode, right, which is that in some ways we have a much deeper and more sprawling relationship with China than we ever did during the Soviet Union, of course, because of the people to people ties and the economic relationship, et cetera. But when you talk about those really sensitive issues, it's much more awkward and truncated. It's virtually impossible to have those kind of conversations about strategic stability in a nuclear sense with the Chinese or really engage deeply on these issues, even though there's been a push from the US side to have Some of these conversations about crisis management and this whole suite of issues since the EP3 incident, really. And my theory about this, and I don't really actually have evidence for this, is that the EP3 moment was kind of an oh, shit moment for a lot of people on the US side, not in a very rough analogous way to the Cuban Missile crisis, recognizing that you could have a crisis that could lead to a conflict they could crash into.
- [40:38]
Jordan Schneider
Sean, let's give the pressy. Give the paragraph for the unwash.
- [40:42]
John Zinn
Yeah, sure. This is when a Chinese fighter jet back in the Bush administration, in the first year of the Bush administration in 2001 crashed with an EP3, a large U.S. reconnaissance plane. They had to make a forced landing on Hainan Island. The guy in the Chinese fighter jet, Wang Wei, was killed in the crash. Basically, you had this crisis because the Bush administration had to negotiate for the relief release of these US airmen. Then the net result of it was that the Bush administration kind of sort of issued something akin to an apology at that point in order to brush things over. But what was startling to a lot of US policymakers is that they try to pick up a phone and call somebody and nobody would pick up and they couldn't get through. And part of that is because of the dynamics on the Chinese side that the military can't really operate on its own without sign off from the political authorities, from the Politburo Standing Committee, and they need to deliberate internally to figure out how to respond. But I've always had this theory that actually the Chinese side probably thought coming out of that, well, going dark is what we need to do anyway, because we need to deliberate internally, especially when it was more of a collective leadership model. And number two, it ended up working out pretty effectively as a negotiating tactic. We go dark, it scares the Americans and it gives us leverage, and we get to set the terms then about when we start to actually have a conversation again. So there's a real mismatch there. And I think this is one of these things a lot of people talk about getting to something like data detente, where the Trump administration has expressed interest in arms control and the Chinese are very uninterested in having that conversation. In fact, they basically see it as a trap. They think that the Soviets got involved in these kind of conversations and look how it ended for them.
- [42:27]
Sergei Radchenko
Yeah, well, I agree, but obviously on the Soviet side, you have this moment of a major scare in 1962, and then you, you gradually, you step by step decide to move towards arms control. I mean, one of the first things that was done was the decision to stop testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. This is the August 1963 treaty on the partial ban, Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. And then later you had move towards the establishment of the NPT regime, which is a really important breakthrough actually in a situation of superpower rivalry. You still basically have them agree on NPT nuclear non proliferation regime, which is a huge achievement going then on within the early 1970s with things like ABM anti ballistic missile defense and limitations on missiles. So the SALT 1 treaty and the SALT 2 treaty, which never of course was realized and was actually until the 1980s and specifically until 1987 that a first treaty actually cutting nuclear weapons, that is the INF Treaty was signed. So you had this, this process towards, you know, nuclear arms control was actually quite slow and quite painful on the Chinese side. And I mean what we now have is even more complicated because if you think about the complexity when you have just two superpowers, but at the moment in, you know, the Chinese don't have nearly as many nuclear warheads or, or means of delivery as say the Russians and the Americans. And they will say to us, look, you know, what do we have to do? Look at yourselves. You and the Russians have so many and we don't have so many. So effectively then the question becomes, at what point do they realize that it is in their interest not to do the overkill because it's expensive, because it's also destabilizing. And how do you then, once you get to this point, how do you then bring all the different parties into the equation? Because it can no longer be, it cannot be Sino American discussion. Right? It has to be Sino American Russian discussion as the kind of main players. Not to mention if, you know, we may, you know, and also we have other nuclear powers, right. That, that may have to be part of this discussion. So how you do that, That's a, what is that a three body problem? You know, that becomes even more complicated.
- [44:53]
Jordan Schneider
Just give, give Japan and South Korea and Taiwan a few more years and
- [44:57]
Sergei Radchenko
then it really gets out of control, right? Then we're in big mess. That's right. That's right. So, so that's very sad. So I raised this issue in, in Beijing at qcar and their answer was like, well, we can simply cannot engage in this kind of discussions. On the other hand, we can talk about AI AI regulation. And so that's interesting, just this whole approach.
- [45:23]
Jordan Schneider
Yeah, well, let's turn it to Kevin then. Because in contrast to nukes where everyone and their Mother is going to have one by 2030. It's not necessarily going to be the case in AI. And at least today there really are sort of of two superpowers. Though, you know, one can debate just how far behind China is relative to the us. Kevin, what's, what's your take on the idea that there's going to be some sort of AI safety dialogue between the two countries?
- [45:54]
Kevin Hsu
So we talked mostly about, when we come to talking about this trip, right, during this conversation, that Xi kind of has the upper hand or China is the common denominator of the future G2, which I think are all very accurate, rational analytical points. I will say AI is the one thing that might throw that dynamic a little bit off in the US's advantage. And I was actually in China for nine days during the latter end of April through early May, so front run the Trump visit by about a week and a half and visited all the Chinese AI labs, some of the universities as well. All of them still complain to our small delegation of AI researchers and writers about compute constraints, right? They cannot get enough compute. A big culprit of that is of course US export control. Second biggest culprit of that is lack of domestic capacity to be able to produce quality chips at a high enough yield. Even if Huawei can design the best chip, Smith cannot pump them out quick enough with the best quality to satisfy domestic demand. We're not even talking about Chinese models or cloud providers potentially going abroad overseas, which a lot of them would like to do if they are given the opportunity. Now, with that context in mind, we also had anthropic mytho model being, you know, launched, not launched in a way that really scared, I would say every single industry, I think, that cares even vaguely about cyber security at this point, right? We hear news about Dario briefing the largest banks now in Europe, like central banks, about the, the power of AI. And this was the trump card, if you, that the US delegation actually brought to China to initiate the AI, you know, G2AI safety dialogue, if you will, in a way that actually brings the US to a position of strength when it comes to these conversations. I think the current consensus view of what does this could produce in the long term is relatively modest. I also think it's just an entirely different kind of technological threat compared to nuclear weapon, for example, where, you know, in response to Jordan's mildly sarcastic point of view, everybody will have AI in their computer, right? We already have AI in our phone on our laptop at work, whether we like it or not. Not everybody has a mini little nuclear reactor to power their house. But the reverse is true when it comes to nuclear weapon. So I think the, the, there's just a larger sort of non military application to AI, but also there is a very leg military or national security dimension to AI that is making this, I would say a more de novo kind of dialogue between G2 when it comes to technological containment, if you will, or coordination. I think the context of the US delegation going to China talking about AI safety has a lot to do with non state actors actually accessing advanced AI models. Less so about, you know, China, you better not do this because we have the best, better model or the Chinese that be like, oh my God, you have the better model, we're going to try to catch up so you better not do anything, you know, crazy. It's a lot less of that. And I think that is sort of where we're heading into and probably I think the most consequential factor that could tweak the G2 dynamic in one size favor or the other, depending on where the model is at on any given day. That makes the dynamic a lot more fluid than, you know, who's the common denominator or who's not.
- [49:35]
Jordan Schneider
So if we, if we are stack ranking, like what breaks the stalemate for the rest of the Trump administration? We've got AI in there, we've got a Taiwan presidential election. I mean what else really like we've already played, we've, we've done the trade war thing. I don't think we're going to go back to that. So that's kind of off the table. Sorry, Kevin.
- [49:57]
Kevin Hsu
Yeah, well I kind of come back to what John was saying about, you know, probably not so much of a detent. I think Sergey agreed that Dayton was never a great framework to describe the current moment to begin with, but a buying time pause moment while each side tried to reassure or like strengthen themselves up for whatever the future might be. And we actually saw very good examples at least from the Chinese side of continuing to refuse Nvidia G200 chips from going into China, even though the US has granted, I believe, enough licenses to be sold. The Chinese side doesn't want it because having more foreign technology come into their ecosystem, especially a lesser advanced one, really messes up frankly their own reshorement playbook of channeling every single lab in China to give all your purchase order to Huawei, work with Huawei, co design with Huawei, make sure that supply chain is as robust as possible, even if they suffer a little bit of a Lag or falling behind, say in the six or the nine month or even the one year stretch. Even though every company, like I said, would have loved to have the H2 200s. But it does dilute, right, the revenue, the attention and the mind power to just supporting domestic, domestic GPU suppliers as much as possible. And the big wildcard is what are we doing in the US Side to actually do the same thing. Right. That could actually change the dynamics of a little bit if we have some real announcement that are not just like pumping the stock type announcement from, you know, Applied Materials. Yeah, I think it's called no MP materials. Right. These like domestic real earth suppliers, mines to be like, hey, we actually have enough going on now to really support GM and Ford and all of our automakers without needing to rely on any foreign source, a source of, you know, process real earth material to go into our supply chain. That will change the dynamic quite a bit. But we're typically very building our own stuff.
- [52:00]
John Zinn
Right.
- [52:00]
Jordan Schneider
Quick she quote and then you jump in. This is from 20. This is from March of 2021. Practice has repeatedly told us core technologies cannot be begged for, cannot be bought, cannot be bargained for. Only by holding core technologies firmly in our own hands can we fundamentally guarantee national economic security, defense security and other aspects of national security.
- [52:23]
Sergei Radchenko
I think we can all subscribe to that, right? Yeah, yeah, we're all trying to do this now.
- [52:28]
John Zinn
Yeah. No, that's great for our study session, Jordan, but I think this is really the key question, right. There's two real questions here. What breaks the stalemate? Either that it falls apart or somebody has a breakthrough. And number two, who uses the time better in the meantime? And this is one of the things that really causes me a lot of anxiety is that I'm not persuaded that that we're really using the time wisely or to the full extent. Right. And I think this is one of the interesting dynamics is that I think if you talk to Chinese colleagues, they feel confident that they're making good use of the time. You can see that reflected in the five year plan and how they're talking about it and the confidence they've been exuding since the fourth plenum last year. But I think if you talk to people in the Trump universe, they also feel pretty good about the US position. Some of that is congenital to the Trump brand to kind of have that bravora. But it's something that I've been really wondering about. Who's making better use of the time. Yes, we're having remarkable breakthroughs in the private sector on AI. But what I worry about is if you just talk about the particular issue, like Rare Earths, right? Like, I give the administration a lot of credit for the work that they're trying to do in the Pentagon in particular, and even the Pax Silica initiative. But we have two real factors working against us just on that particular issue. One is that we're getting our act together belatedly, frankly. We've known about this issue since 2010, since they did it to the Japanese. And even the Japanese, as many people have pointed out, after 15 years of assiduously working, working on this, only reduce their dependency from something like 90% to 70%. And what's been on my mind is that the Japanese have meti. They're designed to do industrial policy. And even in the best case scenario, or even in the Biden administration, we are not really designed for this. This is hard. How are we going to do price floors and offtakes for something like Rare Earths, never mind the other supply chains that run through China? And how much are we really devoting to figuring out some of these challenges? The other issue is there's other aspects to this competition too. Things that people have pointed out already. The depletion of munitions with the war in Iran, the reallocation of resources from indopacom to Central Command that have been concomitant with this. But even on the technology aspect of it, one of the things that I worry about, and that my colleague Kyle Chan points out too, is that I worry that we have AI myopia here in the United States, and we're so focused on this one technology. And if you look at the five year plan from China, China, they've got more of a portfolio approach. They are very much focused on AI, but there's a whole suite of other technologies that they're really putting a lot of emphasis on that I think are also quite important, like green energy, of course, has been very much in focus recently. But robotics, other aspects of this too. So it leaves me feeling unpersuaded as an American or anxious that if we do have this pause, that maybe we're not making as much of this time as we really can. Could or should be. One last thought and then I'll stop. Is that on what could break the stalemate or shake up the dynamic? The other element, Jordan, is just the mere fact of our midterm elections. I think as Beijing has thought about sequencing the diplomacy this year, this has been a crucial part of how they've tried to do the Choreography. I think they have been. It's not like they think in terms of dynastic cycles. They're just thinking in terms of outlook, calendar and recognize we've got an election coming up. And I think they recognize that whatever they're going to give the Trump administration in terms of concession or wins, they're going to get more bang for their buck if they give those to Trump during a state visit. That's very close to the midterm elections. Right.
- [55:53]
Jordan Schneider
But they didn't give him anything.
- [55:55]
John Zinn
Well, I think they're withholding it till later. Right. Because they can recognize if it's all about finding the minimum price point for mollifying Trump, you're going to get more mileage if you do it around the midterms. But then I think that's the really open question is then how does the policy and political dynamic on Trump China shift potentially after the midterms? Right. I just, I don't, I don't know
- [56:16]
Jordan Schneider
how this, I don't know if this is like a sell like we were talking about. The Trump administration, you know, wants to get some, like, brownie points because they feel insecure. Are there, like, voters out there who look at those videos or are going to see, you know, I mean, I don't know if there are voters out, if there are swing, swing voters out there, voters who might stay home in November who see those types of videos and the quote, unquote, respect we get from, from a Putin meeting in Alaska or a XI meeting in Washington in September. And I'll be like, oh, yeah, this is, this is the party I want to vote for. And then on the economic stuff, it's like, okay, like, it's one thing, the announcements, but like, to, to actually reduce inflation that has to flow through the economy, which isn't like, okay, we'll just have this be an October surprise type thing. Right?
- [57:09]
John Zinn
No, I think it's a really fair point. Right. It's not necessarily high political salience. It may have to do with how Trump wants to depict himself. And I think at the very least, what he's going to be loathe to do is see one of his big international deals unravel right around the time of the midterms. So I thought this after the two leaders met in Busan and agreed to the supply chain truce, they're looking at one year. It's a one year pause. And Trump's not going to want this all to unravel as he goes into the midterm. Oh, election. So I think they probably calculated that it gives them leverage, right. To at least stabilize things or lock in the US Side and prevent any competitive actions at least through the midterms.
- [57:49]
Kevin Hsu
And I think the Chinese side is much more willing to play game on that dynamic as well.
- [57:53]
John Zinn
Right.
- [57:54]
Kevin Hsu
I think front loading all the deals that they already said or think they're gonna give to the Trump side right now is actually pretty dumb. If you're that aware of the US political calendar. Everybody knows nobody pays attention until after Labor Day when it comes to a presidential election. Let al midterm election. That's just how it always works, right? So a late September big announcement where she actually comes to the US and give Trump, you know, a giant basket of gifts, whatever those purchases might be, is one what the Trump side wants. And second, what the Chinese side, I think is willing to give to give Trump, frankly, the best hand he could have for the second half of his second term. So that there is actually more deal to be made. Because the moment the House and or the Senate flips a lot of the stuff that China maybe want to work with the US on, that's a lot more longer term or has a longer timeline, especially when it comes to this, all this board of investment stuff where there could be joint ventures, actual boots on the ground, building certain facilities where Chinese company or Chinese technology is evolved, that could really flip on a dime, depending on who is part of the separation of power, getting to say. So I think we just have to wait until that. And I'm pretty sure the Iran war will end in some way, shape or form before September, let's hope, right? And Trump's whole gamut is that that will reduce gas price overnight and then inflation will come down. And I also don't think, quite frankly, inflation is something that the voters think about from an analytical or academic point, nearly as much as if the gas pump is lower, there's no inflation. And then we kind of move on to our daily lives, right? So I think all that actually lines up quite well to almost this weird little I call G2 chemistry where each side actually kind of knows what the other side needs to keep each other in play, to keep working together in ways that we probably don't give either side that much credit for, because we usually look at everything from a super competitive, confrontational, adversarial perspective in ways that I think kind of dilutes this interesting little understanding, let's just say, right, between Trump and Xi.
- [60:07]
John Zinn
Just to underscore that point, Kevin, I mean, when you think about it just over the arc of the past year. I mean, it's pretty remarkable that that's where we're at now, right. 14 months after having a de facto embargo on China, right. Where the administration comes in and thinks it's clobbering time. And now this is where we end up with this kind of implicit gentleman's agreement about scratching each other's political itches for the moment. I mean, it's kind of striking to me because I wonder, we'll see how things play out with ir. I kind of want. I've kind of had this thought that this is almost the Iran war is almost following a very similar narrative arc to what happened with China, right. Where the administration comes in, you know, literally in the case of Iran, guns blazing. Right. They underestimate the other side. Right. They realize how much resilience and appetite there is just for pain on the other side, and then they end up looking for some kind of diplomatic denouement or off ramp. Right. I mean, I think these are kind of. I think they're so something essential there in both years that kind of have defined the trajectory of each one of these contests.
- [61:11]
Jordan Schneider
Yeah, I got a book recommendation. Maybe we can end on that. So I just finished Julia Yaffe's Motherland, which I actually found to be like, a fascinating thing to pair with your book because it is telling the story of the Soviet Union through women. And there's both kind of.
- [61:32]
Sergei Radchenko
Oh, yeah, yeah, both.
- [61:33]
Jordan Schneider
Both like elite history of like, oh, Khrushchev's wife. They were actually like a team and, you know, they were bouncing each other back and forth and sort of the, the. Sort of the contrast between how the, the wives of various American presidents saw themselves and the wives of the, of the Soviet leaders who were, you know, PhDs and like, had their own professional lives and like, really thought that they wanted to mix it up on the world stage, but at the same time, time had these, like, status anxieties of like, they wanted to be perceived as, like, prestige and not these, like, dowdy, like, Russian babushkas was, Was fascinating. And so you get that layer of history as well as Juliofany's kind of personal arc and like, telling the story through four generations of her family and, and sort of the social dynamics of like, what has led to, you know, going forward from this, this dream of the early days of the Soviet Union that, like, you have, like, full and total equality where women are, you know, able to pursue exactly the same careers that men have to, you know, Russia in the 2000s where, like, you know, the ideal is to, like, just marry a rich man and have him divorce you 10 years later. So you're like, kind of fine, I guess, but. But sort of going that, that. That whole loop has, like, personal dimensions and policy dimensions.
- [62:53]
John Zinn
Mentions.
- [62:54]
Jordan Schneider
And, you know, it's a nice little reminder that even though you have photos with the US and China where you have 15 men on either side, there are actually lots of women who are being a part of these sort of discussions and informing them, even if they aren't literally the leaders of the two countries. So anyways, maybe, hopefully, maybe we'll get Julia.
- [63:18]
Sergei Radchenko
It's a very. It's a very masculine toxic environment, you know, counting by the number of men and in all of this. But, you know, that's something I suppose we should strive to. To do something about. Trump is not doing anything about it.
- [63:37]
Jordan Schneider
Yeah, well. Well, he's fired. I mean, two of the. I guess it's. I mean, Noam and Bondi have been two of the ones he's fired. Like, you're, You're. You're. Your survival rate as a Trump cabinet official is much better if you have a certain type of genitalia. All right, sorry. We'll end with that. Thanks so much for everyone joining this interesting edition of chinatalk.
- [64:05]
Poetry Reader
In a few years, with the development of biotechnology, human organs can be constantly transmitted, transplanted so that people can live younger and younger and even become immortal. The prediction is that in this century, humans may live to 150 years old. 150. A hundred and fifty. She. And nobody, nobody in my whole administration thought to mention it to me. So the banquet's winding down now, pal. The waiters cleared the plates, the cameras pack their tripods up and the presses at the gates. Before I climb back on the plane and kiss my phone good night there's just one little favor she about the back half of my life. Cause the knees ain't what they used to be and the heart's not what it was and I hear you got a guy who knows a guy who knows because. Cuz. Give me that guy's number the one who did your liver, the one who did your kidney and whatever's down the river. I don't need to know the details and I won't ask where it's from Just give me that guy's number. Before the morning comes. You are walk me through the garden she. You name me every tree a couple thousand years a piece of imperial pedigree Well, I got maybe 20 left on a generous bid and now I'm hearing 150 from a hot mic in Tiananmen, kid. Because Vladimir was looking sharp, and Vladimir is older. And Vladimir was a whispering pal. What the translator told ya. So give me that guy's number, the one who did your liver, the one who did your kidney and whatever's down the river. I don't need to know the details. I won't ask where it's from. Just give me that guy's number and 150 more. Give me that guy's number. Before the morning comes.
- [66:55]
Jordan Schneider
150.
- [66:58]
Poetry Reader
Before the morning comes.
- [67:01]
Jordan Schneider
150.
- [67:12]
Kevin Hsu
Sa.