← Sharp China with Bill Bishop
Sharp China with Bill Bishop
(Preview) The War in Iran and the Visit to Beijing; New DNI Assessments on Taiwan; Military Scientists Disappearing From Public View
00:13:19
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A
Foreign.
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Welcome to Sharp China. I'm Andrew Sharp and you are listening to a free preview of today's episode.
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Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sharp China. I'm Andrew Sharp and on the other line, Bill Bishop. Bill, how you doing?
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C
I'm all right, Andrew. Hope everyone's well. Good to be back on the show.
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A
Another day of parsing dire updates on the Internet. I gotta say, I've done a lot of self criticism since my last appearance on this podcast, my premature celebration of Spring. Last week I'm doing my rectification after jinxing it for the entire east coast, overreacting to a couple days of 75 degree weather.
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C
Yes. Hopeful now that it may actually be gone, but we shall see.
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A
I. I mean, hopefully we turn the corner. I'm not going to make the same mistake two days in a row, but. Or two weeks in a row. Excuse me, but that was honestly probably the funniest thing that's happened to me on a podcast all year is to talk about spring and talk about not spiking the football explicitly and then wake up the next morning and have to walk my son to school in like beating freezing rain after it dropped 55 degrees in D.C. yes. And then you texted me like three hours later saying look outside the window and it was in fact snowing in
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C
Washington D.C. and for the record, I blamed Andrew.
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And look, I accept the blame. It was entirely my fault. So anybody who's living in Washington, you can blame me for what we had to deal with. But here we are one week later, coming a little later this week because of scheduling issues. As for the news, first of all, if anyone wants supplemental Sharp China, I wrote a long piece on Sharp text last week about the war in Iran in the context of 12 months of Trump China strategy. I'll link that in the show notes for anyone who would like to check it out. And I really enjoyed the podcast that you recorded with Dimitri from the Financial Times on all things US China, Dimitri Sevastopolo, as well as a little bit of US Japan at the end. Very enjoyable conversation from start to finish.
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C
Thanks to each. Dimitri is great, so. And it was nice of him to take time out of St. Patrick's Day to talk about, I know China, US policy towards Trump and Japan and all sorts of fun things.
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I'm not actually Irish, but I've spent some time in Ireland. I'm genetically Irish, so I'm rooting for any Irishman I see out there in the world and particularly on St Patrick's Day, making time to talk us I know what a sacrifice from Demetri. Uh, but in any event, the news of the week, I'll begin with a little timeline here. Financial Times Sunday night. Trump said this is their, their writing. Trump said he was also expecting China to help unblock the strait before he travels to Beijing. I think China should help too, because China gets 90% of its oil from the straits. Trump said that's not accurate. Waiting until the summit would be too late. He said. We'd like to know before that. It's a long time. He added that his trip to China might also be put back. We may delay, Trump said. And then Scott Bessant doing a little cleanup on CNBC Monday morning. If the meeting for some reason is rescheduled, it would be rescheduled because of logistics. And then Trump on Tuesday said, we're resetting the meeting and it looks like it'll take place in about five weeks. We're working with China Week. They were fine with it. And then it became official Wednesday when White House Press secretary Caroline Levitt said, we're working with them. They have agreed to postpone the trip. I think they understand the president's rationale for doing so. But again, we're working on those dates. The prc, for its part, has said head of state diplomacy plays an irreplaceable strategic leading role in China US Relations and the two sides of the will continue to maintain communication regarding President Trump's visit to China. So what do you make of what we've seen over the last several days and a visit to Beijing that is now delayed indefinitely, let's say?
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C
Well, I think it's, I think it's important to say it actually is probably a definite at this point. It was interesting, right, that the, the news was broken by a Financial Times correspondent is one of the colleagues of Dimitri, who has gotten like, I guess a lot of reporters in D.C. has President Trump's cell phone and he sometimes just picks up and so he called him. Yeah. And that was certainly news that then again, as you said, was, was confirmed. And I think there was, you know, cleanup on aisle six by the secretary Treasury. But it makes sense, I think that optically it won't look good if the president is in Beijing getting fed in and having, you know, his, you know, wants to be a very sort of, I think pageant filled and friendly meeting with Xi Jinping if they're still combat operations underway in Iran. Yeah, I think now the challenge, and I think the Chinese understand that. I think it's also potentially a bit awkward for the Chinese and there was multiple reports that, you know, I've also heard the same thing, you know, that the, the planning was not where the Chinese side wanted to be. The US Side is fine with it because that's sort of how the US Side rolls when it goes into these summits, at least under the Trump administration. Sure.
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I mean, as recently.
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So for the Chinese, a delay. A delay doesn't necessarily. Again, it doesn't. I don't think they look at it as a problem relationship. I don't think they take it personally. They had the meetings Bessant had and Greer had their meetings with Holy Fong and Li Chungong over the weekend in Paris. That went, I think, about as well as people expected, as far as we can tell. So I don't think the Chinese, again, I think it's not the end of the world.
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A
Such a great slight. Yeah. I mean, as recently as the last couple weeks, it was clear that nobody had any idea what was going to be accomplished when Trump visited Beijing. I do think the Chinese feel comfortable talking to Trump directly and prefer talking to Trump directly. But in terms of deliverables from this particular trip, that was all completely up in the air, like two weeks out. So delay on the PRC side isn't the worst thing in the world.
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C
No. And there have been meetings. There have been, there have been other US Officials in Beijing a couple weeks ago sort of working on it. I mean, it's not like stuff wasn't being worked on. But again, I don't think the Chinese, you know, given what's going, going on in the Gulf, I don't think the Chinese will look at this and say, okay, this is a snub. And, you know, the challenge zone. This is something Dimitri pointed out in our, in our conversation on, on Tuesday. And I think he's right, is really. Well, if you're on the, on the Chinese side, I mean, again, this war, now we're day 20.
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Yeah.
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There, you know, and the U.S. government, apparently the Trump administration is asking for a $200 billion supplemental. Right. So that is an indication that they may be not thinking it's going to be over soon. And so then it becomes, is it really going to be five or six weeks? Or if the rationale for delaying the trip was, well, there's a war going on. I need to be here in five or six weeks. If the war is still going on. Well, then they delay it again. And then does that start, you know, we're now.
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Or do you even schedule it? I mean, that's the thing. It's like, at this one, I think the Chinese probably schedule anything.
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Right. And I think the Chinese side may, you know, I, I would guess that they would be hesitant to, you know, set a specific date at this point. I mean, Xi Jinping is a busy guy. They can tell the U.S. you know, where the openings are on his calendar, and the two teams can maybe work towards deliverables and certainly can have the conversations like they had in Paris over the weekend on the, on the, the sort of economic trade issues. And then again, the Chinese are, you know, that today they announced that they arrested, I think, seven people cracking down on like, fentanyl precursors and other drug precurs, you know, and they said that the official Times media is saying, you know, it's based on tips from the U.S. right. And so there, that is something that they would have done as a, as sort of a, a measure of goodwill ahead of the visit that would have, you know, would have been less than two weeks from now. Right. And so they're still doing that. They could have not announced it if they said the trip's delayed, we're going to hold back. But no, they're still doing that, I think, and trying to show good faith in that. They're living up to some of their commitments around Fentanyl.
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A
Yeah, right. Well, and I mean, from the US Standpoint, as the war continues and deepens here, it's increasingly become clear that it just would have been insane to try to go to China in the middle of all this. Like the US Side planning to take Marco Rubio, apparently, which is interesting since he was sanctioned as a senator. But I mean, the Secretary of State and President being in Beijing while the US Is prosecuting an active war, war just doesn't seem very tenable. And I also think there's an angle to it where Trump would prefer to be walking into Beijing with a strong hand across the table from Xi Jinping, and right now the Americans don't have it. And so punting for a few months is entirely reasonable and probably advantageous in Trump's eyes.
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C
I mean, and again, we just don't know if it's a few weeks, a few months, but it hasn't derailed the other bits of the relationship. Right. And that's why, like, this Paris meeting again, we're waiting for the actual, you know, the, the Secretary treasury or, or USTR head, Greer, I think, said there would be sort of like a readout and, or an official statement from the US Side in a couple days. We haven't seen that yet. So we don't actually know if there was anything new that was agreed to or fixed. You know, rare earths. This continues to be a problem. The US Side and US Corporates are not getting what they thought.
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Yeah.
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C
And you know, so the question. But the problem is the US doesn't really have much leverage to push them on that. Um, and I think. Or they do, but they haven't been willing to use it and I think they weren't willing to use it going into what they thought would be a leader, leader meeting in, you know, at the end of this month. So we have to see what, what comes out of that meeting. It's actually substantive. Certainly the Chinese are not indicating that they want to, you know, they want stability relationship. They want it. They don't want to do anything that derails what they think they achieved over the last year.
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Yeah.
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And on the replacement for the tariffs that the Supreme Court struck down, you know, the various investigations USR US has announced like a 301, a couple 301s I think. And you know, those, the Chinese have said, you know, they basically, they reserve the right to, you know, consider that these are violations of the deal. But they haven't done anything at this point.
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Yeah.
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And I don't think they want to.
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Were announced like 10 days ago.
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Yeah. Because they don't want to again. They, they. I think they're pretty. Feeling pretty good about where the relationship is given, you know, where it started at the beginning of this, this administration a year plus ago.
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Right. Well. And I mean, one narrative that I saw in the Wall Street Journal Thursday was that the rebuke here stings because it throws cold water on Beijing's narrative that it's a true global peer of the US acclaim strengthened over the past year.
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C
I thought that article was complete bullshit. No, I'm sorry, I read that article. I just, I just like really.
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I agree completely. They quoted Ian Bremmer who says the delay again shows that on global security the American the biggest game in town and Trump is leaning into it. I just, I don't know.
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C
I mean, the US Is the biggest game in town, but how does that, how does that have thing to do is him not going to Beijing?
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I mean, I don't think the delay shows that at all. I think the delay. No, if anything it underscores that we're in the middle of a moment that is tremendously uncertain for the United States and China. And if anything, it's a testament to the uncertainty that I think both sides of the US China relationship are probably relieved to not be meeting in two weeks here to try to hash any of this out while so much remains unresolved in the energy markets in the Middle east. Like there's just too many balls in
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C
the air and all, all sorts of chem. I mean, all sorts of, not just oil, gas, but all sorts of related chemicals, fertilizers. I mean, it's, you know, and China right now is still in a relatively good position because of their stockpiles. But that those stockpiles have, you know, once they start tapping them, they will, you know, they're not infinite.
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Right. They don't want to use those.
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And, you know, I will say we have no evidence, but we've seen it in other areas with that stockpiles. You know, they had massive corruption investigations in the grain stockpiling sector because it turned out that a lot of the grain stockpiles were false.
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Oh, wow.
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Interesting. You know, you never, you just never know what they really have.
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All right.
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And that is the end of the free preview. If you'd like to hear the rest of today's conversation and get access to full episodes of Sharp China each week, you can go to your Show Notes and subscribe to either Bill's newsletter, Cynicism, or the Stratecheri Bundle, which includes several other podcasts from me and daily writing from my friend Ben Thompson. I'm an incredibly biased news consumer, so I think both are indispensable resources. But either way, Bill and I are going to be here every week talking all things China, and we would love to have you on board. So check out your Show Notes, subscribe, and we will talk. Talk to you soon.