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The View from Everywhere Else: Eric Olander on how the Global South is reading the Beijing summits
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C
Welcome to the Cynical Podcast, the weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents and cultural trends that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, foreign relations, economics and society. Join me each week for in depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I'm Kaiser Guel, coming to you this week for really one of the very last times for my soon to be on the market home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Sinica is supported this year by the center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a national resource center for the study of East Asia. Listeners, please support my work by becoming a paying subscriber@senecapodcast.com Please do subscribe so I can continue to bring you these conversations. The last few weeks have given us an extraordinary stretch of summitry in the Chinese capital. Donald Trump's visit to Beijing, his first as president since returning to the White House, was followed only four days later by the arrival of Vladimir Putin. Two visits back to back by the leaders of two of the world's other major powers, arguably the other two major world powers hosted by Xi Jinping in quick succession. Whatever one makes of the substance, the choreography alone has set off a great deal of interpretation in Washington, in European capitals and in Moscow. But the conversation I've been especially eager to have was about how all of this is landing somewhere else entirely, that is, in the capitals of the global South. And there are some big framing questions to put on the table. Are leaders in Lagos and Rusilia and Jakarta, Nairobi breathing a sigh of relief? Are they hopeful that a more stable US China modus vivendi means they won't be forced to to choose sides and that they can get on with the business of development in a less turbulent environment. Or is there foreboding, a sense that they're watching not stability forming, but a consolidation instead of a G2 world one in which the agency that middle powers and non aligned states have painstakingly carved out over the last decade somehow gets squeezed back down. Is China being seen as the indispensable convener, the one capital that can now host both Washington and Moscow within a single week? Or conversely, as a power being pulled in two directions itself and forced to perform balancing acts of its own? And underneath all of it, what does this moment do to the multi alignment strategies that so many Global south states have come to depend on? Well, to help me work through all of this, I am genuinely delighted to welcome back to the show someone I've collaborated with now for many years and whose work I admire enormously. Eric Olander, founder of the China Global south project and host of the China Global south podcast. Eric and his team have built what is truly the most indispensable English language resource for understanding China's engagement with Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. He draws on a network of contributors in places that most western China watching outlets simply don't cover. If you want to know how a Chinese financed port is actually being received in coastal Kenya, or what Brazilian commentators are saying about a Lula Xi exchange, or how Indonesian elites are reading Beijing's South China Sea posture, Eric's operation is where you go. It's a model of what serious on the ground, multivocal journalism about China can look like. And over the years our shows have leaned on one another often enough. I think that we're now. I mean, he is a real intellectual partner in this work. Eric, welcome back to Seneca. Great to see you, my man.
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B
Great to be back. And you're hired as the marketing chief for the China Global south project.
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C
Well, can you pay me? That's the thing. I'm hard up these days anyway. It's just wonderful. I. And a very good morning to you. A very good morning to you.
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B
Yeah.
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C
I always want to borrow phraseology from your show.
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B
It's hot and rainy here in Southeast Asia this time of year, but. Yeah, but we're excited. The rains are finally here.
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C
Yeah, yeah. Eric, let's start with the big picture. So in the days since these two visits, what have you and your team been hearing from your contributors and your contacts across the Global south this huge region that you cover, is there a dominant mood, and would it be relief or opportunity, anxiety, foreboding, as I was saying, or is it genuinely fragmented, depending on where you're listening. Give us the tour.
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B
Interesting, because we spend a lot of time looking at the discussions in Asia, Africa, Latin America. So we have a site in Spanish that's focused on Latin America, and then also a separate site in French that's focused on Africa. And so this conversation about the summits is very interesting by virtue of the fact that. And here in Vietnam, it was the same situation, too. Meh. I mean, like, it was the pro forma coverage that you saw, not a lot of discussion about it, nowhere near the kind of intensity of the conversations that people have been having in the US and Europe about it, about this kind of movement of great power politics. I think you have to understand the moment that we're in right now. So in Kenya, there have been, for the past week, massive riots over petrol prices and taxes going up. There's been violence on the streets here in many parts of Southeast Asia, the fuel shortages are pressing down on everything. So I think people have a lot more things on their mind other than this. And everybody's kind of a little bit exhausted of trying to figure out Donald Trump and what does it mean? I think the performance that Donald Trump gave did not really reassure a lot of people. The groveling that he did with Xi, his apparent lack of understanding of things like the Theocetes trap and other things like that, just kind of did not instill a lot of confidence. And so I think a lot of people in global south countries, from what we could see, were just kind of not really paying attention to the summit in the sense of what is every machination going on between what did Xi do, what did Trump, what were the body languages and all of that. What we're seeing, though, much more in the same time the summit was going on is rapid movements here in Asia in particular, to accommodate for the new realities. And so, at the same time as the summit's going on, President Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines is preparing for a trip to Japan to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Takeichi and said something very interesting that triggered an enormous amount of buzz out here that in the event of a Taiwan conflict, the Philippines would invariably be drawn in because of the proximity to Taiwan. And also the fact that there's 200,000 Filipinos in Taiwan. This captured the headlines a lot. China, of course, reacted furiously. And what was interesting was that, again, we did not see the United States come to the support of an ally partner on this, rhetorically speaking. And this is something that the Japanese have been complaining about for a long time, that when they made similar comments that they would be brought into a Taiwan conflict, the US Was nowhere to be found. So all of this together sets a context of uncertainty. And people weren't focusing as much on the summit as on the actions and what comes out of it. And I don't think there was a lot of tangibles that people could really base decisions on. So they're just moving on now. You know, they're, they're, and you're seeing the movement. We can talk about Japan and South Korea as well there. There's really a growing sense of alienation from the United States that they're going to follow through on their security indeed, in Asia.
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C
Let's, let's focus on Asia right now. And I need to timestamp this. We are speaking here on the east coast of the United States at a little past nine in the evening on May 21st. It's the morning of May 22nd where you are. And we've just seen the news that the United States has paused delivery fulfillment of a $14 billion arms package to Taiwan. This has just been announced by the secretary of war. And that in addition to that, the undersecretary of what used to be called Department of Defense, Eldridge Colby will not, be, as it originally been announced, visiting China in advance of Pete Hegseth's trip there. Now, this is all, you know, of course, we, a lot of people were afraid that this was going to happen. Trump had signaled his, his hesitation about approving the arms sales. He sort of talked about the arms sale as being in abeyance in interviews that he did. So now I think Taipei's worst fear is confirmed. But, you know, we're here to talk about the reaction in the global South. How is this news likely going to impact other countries of the region?
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B
So what Trump has been able to do in is remarkable in a historical context. When you see South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Japanese Prime Minister Sinai Takeaichi, you know, smiling together, being so close together, I mean, this is one of the most strained geopolitical and historically strained relationships in the modern era. And they are recognizing that they need each other. And since Takeichi's come into power, she's leaned heavily into rebuilding relations with South Korea. And this week, we saw a summit between those two, and it was all smiles. And this is a reflection of the new realities that Trump has brought them together. And that is something that we saw it a little bit under Biden, but this is so strained. And at the same time, we're seeing Japan was just, the Japanese prime minister was just in Vietnam, she was just in Australia. Marcos is on his way to Tokyo. And there is a sense among some analysts in this region now that Japan wants to put itself back at the center of an Asia Pacific security architecture. And again, this is where China has to be very concerned, because pushing the United States out of the western Pacific doesn't necessarily mean life gets easier for the Chinese in Asia. And I don't think there's an appreciation of that in a lot of the Chinese discourse. They're so focused on the US Right now. Well, but the movements that Japan is making is tremendous.
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C
Let me push back on you a little bit there, because I do hear it a lot when I talk to people who are, you know, sort of in the Chinese strategic class. They're not unaware that China has benefited from.
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B
They're not unaware. No, no, to be sure. Absolutely. But I think the focus is far more on the US But I do agree there is. I mean, there's certainly sensitivities in China, obviously, about Japan. I mean.
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C
Right. I mean, it's not just Japan. I mean, China understands that it had benefited from the, you know, the fact that the public good of security and balancing in the western Pacific had been something that the United States had provided and that when that was a pillar of stability, it was a useful thing for China. Of course, they had nurtured this area, but they're a little bit like the dog that caught the truck right now and getting what they wished for.
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B
That's right. And so the concern the Chinese need to have right now is that, you know, their defense spending has been stable for much of the past 10, 15 years, and that may not be the case going forward. If the security architecture breaks down in this part of the world, they're going to have to start spending a lot more on defense. And that's not something that the Chinese economy in its current state is well positioned to do. So I think, again, we're resetting the board out here in very profound ways. And that is. And maybe I don't know if it's fair to put that all at the doorstep of Donald Trump. Remember, the whole pivot to Asia never fell through with the United States. They never followed through on that. And so maybe this was bound to happen at some point anyway, and Trump is just accelerating that trend. But I can tell you it's happening right now and it's really happening in quite dramatic ways, which is fascinating to watch, but it's happening.
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C
It's interesting to hear you describe the result of the summit being sort of increased instability. When in Washington and in Beijing, I think many people are sort of celebrating and sort of letting out a sigh of relief at what now promises to be a couple of years at least, of relative stability. This new framework that not only that Beijing has proposed, evidently, and that the Trump administration in its fact statement following the summit has agreed to, of constructive strategic stability. Right. The Chinese readout leaned very heavily on that phrase. Trump characterized it as that he added, you know, of course, with reciprocity and, you know, there was an additional, you know, framing in the American readout. But the fact that he used the same construction about, you know, constructive strategic stability, how is that landing in. Let's start with and move out concentrically. Let's start in Southeast Asia where you are. Is it being taken seriously as a description of a new equilibrium or is it read more cynically as just mere choreography?
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B
I talked to a Philippine scholar this week to ask that question and I got a very bland answer. And this is why I think you're going to be disappointed by my answers here, which is that I just don't think that people in these countries are putting that much weight in the kind of stability you're talking about. Because I think the sentiment is there may be stability between the US And China, but if you're in Panama or if you're in Vietnam or if you're in Angola or any of these countries, the tensions are going to keep coming. I mean, the US Ambassadors that have been sent around the world aren't going to start pulling back their punches on China anytime soon simply because that there was a summit. And we see this playing out right now in Central and South America where US Ambassadors in Peru and Panama and others have just been just unstoppable in their criticisms of the Chinese. And so I think if you're sitting in these countries, you're much more pragmatic. I mean, remember the context of this, this narrative that, well, you know, the post Cold War era was one of the most peaceful and stable eras in history. And that's why the rules based international order is something that we should cherish. If you're sitting in Vietnam or Angola or Nicaragua, you're thinking to yourself, no, the Cold War was not a peaceful era. The war was fought in the global South. The tensions were waged in the global south, not between the Soviets and the Americans. And I Think there's a sense of this as well, that for some of the older generation, they'll think to themselves, listen, we've seen this movie before. Whatever happens in Washington, Brussels, Beijing and Tokyo doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be stable and quiet here. And so I think there's a lot of skepticism about that. Let's also be very clear that there are a lot of pressures now on these countries, particularly because of the energy squeeze.
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C
Right.
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B
And so I think a lot of people just aren't focusing as much on these great power dynamics as just getting through the day. Fair enough. And the local news.
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C
I do want to come back to the framing, but before we do, let me ask you this. I mean, so as you say, during the Cold War, the proxy battles were all fought in what we're now describing as the Global South.
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B
So there is a version back then it was the Third World.
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C
Right, Right. It was then called the Third World. There is a version in which leaders of the Global south might genuinely welcome strategic stability between the US And China because it means the kind of great power turbulence of the last few years finally calms down the pressure to pursue multi alignment. To have to hedge. That is a distraction. There's another version, though, where the stability just is simply a euphemism for this kind of G2 condominium that Trump is so fond of that reduces their room to maneuver. That echoes too much the Cold War. Which of those readings do you think has more purchase right now in the capitals of the Global South? Insofar as there is any.
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B
There's a universal consensus among developing countries that they don't want to get sucked into this drama, that they want stability, that they don't want to have to pick a side. There is not a. There's very few countries, even the countries like Argentina with Javier Milei, who is a Trumpista, if you will. He still, they talked about this week renewing the swap agreement with China for, for their currency swap. They, they still talk about lots of trade with China. So again, there's a rhetorical and political side of this and then there's an economic side. So even in the more polarized parts of this, of this ecosystem, people are looking for balance and looking for stability. So no one wants to choose a side in this.
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C
You know, the really skillful ones have been able to exact concessions from both sides. I mean, a country you're very familiar with, like Vietnam, they haven't, they sort of benefited from this, this great power competition in some way.
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B
They have. And look at Lula was just in. President Lula from Brazil was just in Washington talking about a big rare Earths deal with the Americans. I mean, that's right. And at the same time, we got a report out from the China Brazil Business Council that came out two weeks ago that showed that Brazil is now the number one destination worldwide for Chinese investment.
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C
Wow.
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B
So this is, I mean, Brazil is really playing its cards so well on both sides. And remember, Lula and Trump have had a very contentious relationship, but yet pragmatism still is driving this engagement and this need for balance. Same with Kenya. Kenya will welcome US Officials and Chinese officials with the same level of enthusiasm. So, you know, the, the desire of these countries to not get sucked into this and to continue economic growth with stability is always going to be welcome. So clearly, when they see some kind of detente that happens between the US And Chinese, I think there is a sigh of relief that's breathed. However, we have to remember this is Donald Trump. So next week, tomorrow, there could be a truth social post that comes out that says, you know, Xi Jinping used to be my friend, but now he's the worst person in the world. We're now going to cut everything off. And so I think people listen. They're not new to Donald Trump. He's been around for 10 years doing this stuff. So if you ask them quietly and privately, do you have faith? They'll probably go, I have faith for today, but I'll tell you tomorrow what the situation is. So the dependability of the United States now is something that's in question. Conversely, by the way, if you ask them, and this has been something that's coming out consistently, is do you have faith that the Chinese are going to be reliable partners? They'll say yes. And so Donald Trump's chaos has contributed to the perception that China is the more reliable partner. And that is not something that's fully understood necessarily in the US but it is something that is deeply, deeply entrenched now in many of these countries.
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C
That's the thing that China's been selling. You know, at the China Development Forum, which was just after the release of the 15th Five Year Plan. I don't know if you, you saw this, but Li Qiang, the premier, gave a speech. Ordinarily, in these speeches, he will sell Chinese dynamism and the growth, GDP growth and everything, and talk about China being open for business and ready for investment, because the audience is a bunch of mostly Western CEOs, and of course, a lot of Chinese entrepreneurial elites as well. But this Time, it was a completely different message. The message was reliability and stability. It was, you know, sort of China as adult in the room, China as the island of stability in this chaotic environment. Interesting. Curious. I mean, I have a feeling I know what you're going to say, but does the Putin visit in any way complicate any of this, or does it reinforce any of this? Because, I mean. Yeah, I didn't think so, no. Just. Just based on what you're saying?
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B
No, not in the least. Again, Putin, particularly in a country like Vietnam, is not seen as a. As a hostile entity. I mean, the Vietnamese Prime Minister, within days of the US Israeli attack on Iran, went off to Moscow to secure new oil and to sign a deal for a nuclear reactor. This has been a boom for Putin, who's now selling oil at double the price and providing energy relief to a lot of countries around the world by providing new oil access. So, no, Putin isn't seen as contentious in many parts of the developing world as he is certainly in the U.S. well, within there's large factions of the U.S. that don't see him as a problem. I mean, ask Tucker Carlson. Right.
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C
Setting that aside for a moment, I think the atmospherics of the Trump visit were very important, and I think a lot of people have been kind of distracted by this need to talk about the deliverables. But what came out of these visits that actually does move the needle for economies of the Global South? Are there new commodity arrangements, ag purchases, rare earths, tariff carve outs? Do people in the Global south look only in vain for any real substance to have come out of this?
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B
I don't think that people look to these summits as any more than they did. For example, when Gorbachev and Reagan got together. I mean, clearly there was an arms control kind of thing there. But in terms of how that impacted on the ground, daily life in Costa Rica or in Laos, I don't know if people drew a direct line between these big summits and their current scenarios and their current situation. So I think it's kind of similar today. It's a little bit abstract. They like, again, that these guys are talking. I think that's preferable to not talking. They like stability over instability, obviously, because that impacts their ability to grow. But at the same time, I just did not get a sense through our editors and our conversations that we've been having, that there was as much passion for this summit as there was in the US In Europe and elsewhere.
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C
Were you surprised by that?
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B
Yeah, I just, I mean, again, and I'm you know, this is a huge. Let's be clear here. This is a huge swath of territory we're talking about. And we. Yeah, yeah, you know, just have insights into very small pieces of it. But, you know, we. I certainly hear in Vietnam, I mean, it was covered in the. In the paper, but it wasn't the thing that everybody was talking about. People didn't, like, you know, cluster on the street looking at, you know, their phones and newspapers and hearing what the latest was from Beijing. When Trump was doing this or Putin was doing that, most people went about their daily lives. And even in the policy circles, I think there was a lot of, like, this is interesting, but it's one of 80 things that's going on right now that I have to be following here again in Southeast Asia. The movements of the Japanese, the movements of the Ferdinand Marcos, those are much more closely followed. And, you know, Trump's antics do not make front page news here that much anymore. And this is. I mean, I think Americans have a sense of main character syndrome a little bit. And I remember this when I was talking to people and they were about the ICE events that were happening in Minneapolis, and some Americans were like, the world is watching. Are people in Vietnam paying attention to this? And I said, no, no, they're not paying attention to this because they've got other things to worry about.
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C
And it's worse when you're talking about a guy whose whole sort of life revolves around watching the US China relationship.
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B
Yeah. And so, I mean, so I think that is quite important. And, you know, there was. And I'll just tell you, our podcast this week on the China Africa podcast was all about a huge decision by the Court of Appeals in Kenya that came down that forced the government to reveal the standard gauge railway contract with the China Ex IM Bank. Nobody in Kenya paid attention to that. It barely got any coverage. It got a little bit in the business press. No TV coverage, nothing. That was five years ago.
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C
Yeah, I was gonna say that's all anyone could talk about five years ago.
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B
Okay. I mean, and this was where the debt trap kind of origin, you know, one of the big debt trap kind of accusations came out of this where they said, you know, part of the contract was going to be the handover the port of Mombasa, which of course is not part of the contract. Revenues from the Port of Mombasa would be used to repay the loan in the event that there was a defaul. But anyway, so I just. Even a big story like this didn't get any traction in Kenya this week. And we were marveling at this on the show because they had the fuel riots and because there's so many political scandals. And I guess my point is there's so many other things going on, and so people are just not paying that much attention to things that are happening very far away that don't really have a direct impact on their lives.
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C
Eric, I don't even know what to ask you next because, I mean, my whole assumption going into this would have been that I'd be able to ask region by region for more granular stuff.
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B
But no, I mean, and again, that's why I said up front, I think I'm going to disappoint you now. Are you going to find, I can imagine in the comments, people are going to show some discussions on Twitter, in Bolivia and in India about this. I'm not saying it didn't get coverage. Don't get me wrong. I just don't think there was anywhere near the excitement or interest that we had in the US and that was to some extent in Europe, because we're on the front lines of this. But for a lot of these countries, I just did not see the scale of interest that I think a lot of people in the US Think there might be.
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C
So, Eric, BRICS has expanded significantly, but it's also become more internally heterogeneous. Right. Was there BRICS subtext at all to Putin's visit specifically? How should we think about BRICS as a vehicle right now versus a kind of vibe? You were the one who years ago talked about BRICS as this sort of anti American grievance club, and you tended to poo poo it. Does it have more of a raison d' etre now?
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B
You would think it would. When one of its members, Iran, comes under full attack by the US And Israel. You would think that this would be the moment for brics to circle around its membership, particularly as this grievance type narrative has really taken hold in parts of the BRICs. And you would think they would be screaming from the rafters. Well, not only has that not happened, but we're seeing to some extent some very serious cracks emerge in the BRICs. So there was an interesting thing that happened that coincided with the Trump visit, that Wang Yi obviously had to be in Beijing for the Trump visit, but at the same time, they scheduled a BRICS foreign ministers meeting hosted by SD Shankar in New Delhi. And so clearly Wang Yi, the foreign minister, can't go to participate in that. But rather than, you know, say, okay, Wang Yi can't come. But in many cases, Vice President Han Zheng has taken on a lot of high profile foreign policy type of roles. Again, he has a largely ceremonial role as Vice president, but he has done a lot of meet and greets with visitors who come through. And he's very prominent in the foreign policy kind of space.
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C
He met Trump at the airport.
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B
He met Trump at the airport. There was no reason that Han Zheng couldn't have gotten onto a plane and gone down to New Delhi to stand in Wang Yi's place. Instead, what the Chinese did is they didn't send anybody from Beijing and that was very notable. And so I got some pushback from people in Beijing and saying, well, listen, we can't do everything. And I said, yeah, but you're big enough to do two things at once. And being able to have a big event in Beijing and send a high level emissary who is near the foreign policy rank is something that you can do. They didn't do that. Instead they sent their ambassador.
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C
I mean, it's entirely possible that it was a deliberate downplaying of. Just to play up the importance of the bilateral relationship in a way that Trump wouldn't find flattering.
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B
Exactly. Here's my take on it. I think that they did not want to risk anything coming out of a BRICS meeting that would antagonize Trump because Trump has already been very vocal about the BRICs.
- [31:01]
C
That's right.
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B
And so I think this was a kind of a signal to Trump to say, listen, we're not going to cause any trouble during this visit by having a, a big statement come out of the summit. And then. But here's another interesting thing. So I think that was a concession to Trump, who again, has been sensitive about the BRICS currency and the use of the dollar. Remember, he wanted to put like 100% tariff on all BRICS members for a while. And you know, the BRICS has been a thing for Trump. So my guess is they, they stayed away. That doesn't bode well for the bricks though, that it's a group of convenience for the Chinese, Okay. When it's convenient, they'll send somebody. When it's not, will stay away. And sending an ambassador to a foreign ministers meeting is.
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C
That's bad for him.
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B
That's a slight. There's no other way. You know, in diplomacy, they're very, very, you know, sensitive about rank. For rank. Okay. And in the protocol, in diplomatic protocol, you know, you don't send people who are of different ranks. For the most part, this was notice that they had an ambassador there and again, they could have sent another high level emissary and they didn't. The other thing that was very interesting out of the foreign ministers gathering in New Delhi was they didn't come out with a joint communique, a joint statement at the end because India's relationship with Israel is very different than that of the other BRICS members.
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C
Right, right, right.
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B
And this was the same problem that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization had when they made a statement on the last June attack on Iran and intentionally kept India out of the loop. So we're starting to see some pretty big cracks in these coalitions that were ostensibly created to be alternatives to the western led international order and Western coalitions.
- [32:48]
C
It would surprise me, Eric, if New Delhi hadn't paid very close attention to, to the summitry. I mean, they have a vested interest in this. Like Vietnam, both New Delhi and Ho Chi Minh City have been used by the United States quite deliberately to counterbalance China. When that leverage goes away, when the United States seeks, as it evidently has, rapprochement with China, when there is a detente, they lose some leverage. Is there no anxiety about that? Especially after the sort of humiliations of last summer when Trump sort of rounded on India. So, so abruptly, what's deli thinking now?
- [33:31]
B
I mean, so we just had Secretary of State Marco Rubio in India for the Quad gathering. And again, this was something that our non resident fellow, Derek Grossman, who many of you know, he's at USC and he's very well written, you know, said that the Quad is on life support. Yeah, that's what I read is what he said. And yeah, and so the fact that Rubio went probably delays any kind of imminent death of the Quad. But again, I think it's all these groups are coming under strain because the coalitions that held them together have different priorities now. So the US Is not as passionate about the Quad and it doesn't seem like China is as passionate about the brics as it once was. I mean, again, just go on the actions, I am sure that Chinese listeners to this are going to be furious and saying, no, we still love the brics. We're very committed to it. We helped to find, you know, to create it. But again, not sending somebody at such a pivotal moment, you know, can only be seen as a slight to the bricks.
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C
I ask this specifically about New Delhi because India is the one actor in the Venn diagram that is an overlapping member of both the Quad and of brics.
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B
And the SEO.
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C
And the SEO. Yeah, yeah.
- [34:47]
B
And the SEO and India sees its relationship with China in much more pragmatic terms, I think today than we've seen in a long time. And so Modi has made it clear over the past two years that number one, deploying tens of thousands of forces to the line of actual control is not sustainable. And again, both India and China have seen that there is some sense in dialing down the tensions and getting to a more pragmatic level of engagement. Both sides have told us over the years on many occasions that while a lot of people see this as a detente, deep, deep suspicions on both sides exist and persist. So we're never going to get to a point in any, in any near term future where we're going to see some type of cozy, you know, upbeat, friendly coalition between the Indians and the Chinese. Can they get to a modus vivendi where they just are comfortable, you know, existing without necessarily having 50 to 70,000 troops and heavy artillery facing each other? That's probably going to happen. Although let's be very clear, despite all the flowery rhetoric of now, flights have resumed between the two countries. We've seen ambassadors back in each other's countries, students are going back and forth, they have pulled back some of their troops, they have not pulled back the bulk of their troops and the heavy artillery is still there. And the Chinese are deploying very, very sophisticated weaponry into Tibet, which is only there for rapid access into, into the border zone if needed. So again, it's interesting to see how the headlines and the reality sometimes don't align with one another at the same time. This past couple of weeks, the anti Chinese sentiment in India went up quite a bit over the past, say one to two weeks when word came out that Chinese technicians were on the ground working with the Pakistanis during the Operation Sindor, the ten day war between India and Pakistan. And that is something that really riled people in India, the fact that the Chinese were actively helping. It's one thing to say we're an arms vendor, we sold the, the J10s to the Pakistanis, we've sold the HQ9s, we've sold these weapons, the Pakistanis are using them, we're 10,000km away, that's one thing. But when you have personnel on the ground working with the Pakistanis, that's something that really got under a lot of people's skin in India. So these, these, these tensions are very close to the surface. Also interesting note by the way, JF17 fighter jets, Chinese made JF17 fighter jets and HQ9s which are basically the surface to air missiles are now in Saudi Arabia for the first time. And so Pakistan said the deployment of 8,000 forces to Saudi Arabia and Chinese weapons now are on the ground in Saudi Arabia. That's another interesting wrinkle in all of this.
- [37:44]
C
It is these days there's no shortage of MBA programs. What's harder to find is one that still feels connected to the real world, to people, to place and to the way business is actually changing. The MBA at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has that connection. The campus sits above the South China Sea and yes, the view really is as good as they say. But what makes it special is the mix of perspectives it brings together. Students come from everywhere and the faculty don't just teach business models. They push you to question the assumptions behind them. If you want to understand how China's economy works on the ground and how it fits into the larger global picture, HKUST is one of the few programs that can genuinely offer that you'll graduate with more than a credential. You'll have a clearer sense of how to lead in a world that keeps surprising us. Find out more at MBA hkust. Edu HK we'll get to the Gulf I do want to go region by region with the caveat that I understand that I'm likely to be sort of, well, disappointed by the kind of tepid lack of response, the nonchalance of response to the whole rubric of this conversation was how are they responding to the summitry. Apparently they're not. But let's go region by region. Let's start with Africa where you have such a great grounding. Where are things on focac? Follow through the forum on China Africa cooperation on the security footprint, the critical mineral corridor. Did this round of cemetery register at all meaningfully in African capitals? We've talked about Nairobi already, but yeah,
- [39:33]
B
I mean again the focus on China Africa relations in Africa today is much more on the new tariff free status that 53 African countries have with China. There's a lot of excitement about that and the potential that it brings to a lot of African countries to increase their exports and to China and at the same time noticeably that they can't do have the same access to the European and the American markets. Let's not forget that even though Congress did give agoa, which is the African Growth and Opportunity act, which before Trump was duty free access into the US market, they resuscitated agoa, but AGOA still has Liberation Day tariffs in it. So it's AGOA plus Liberation Day tariffs. So it's not duty free access into the US market. And so the Chinese in this move is great politics. However, there's a lot of skepticism among analysts that it will fundamentally change the China Africa trade relationship. 70% of exports from Africa today to China are extractives with unprocessed extractives.
- [40:43]
C
Right.
- [40:44]
B
The countries that will benefit most from this trade access for the most part are the ones that are already doing relatively well. So South Africa has a very robust export business. They will sell more fruit, they will sell more agriculture. Kenya may sell a little bit more. We got some numbers last week that came out of the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics that exports to China in 2025 collapsed. And that was their word collapsed really. So, and this is very much typical of a lot of the African trade profiles with China, except for the handful of countries that sell a lot of raw materials. Kenya in 2025 sold $130 million worth of goods to China and imported 5.3 billion. Wow, my God is a problem. And selling more avocados and more grapes and more cut flowers is not really going to close that gap. Most of the Chinese exports to Africa are intermediate goods, chemicals, precursors, machinery, telecommunications equipment, things like that. That is a great profile of exports because those intermediate goods, you know, help businesses to generate, you know, revenue and other products. Right. So that, that's actually not a bad thing. But this imbalance that exists is very hard to correct. And right now there's about a $100 billion trade surplus in China's favor. And so the Chinese, to their credit, are really working hard to address this. So Giraud, our Africa editor, was in Beijing last week and was told by one African embassy that the Chinese Commerce Department and Customs Department and the Ministry of Foreign affairs are together organizing training seminars for African customs officials to best take advantage and understand how to overcome some of the non tariff barriers, you know, these very high phytosanitary requirements that China has to bring in agriculture into China, for example. And this is the, this is exactly the kind of work that needs to be done right now to help repair this very distorted trade relationship between Africa and China. Now you talked about focac. This is a very, very interesting time because FOCAC next year will be held in Congo, Brazzaville. This will be Focac10. So there's obviously the symbolism of 10 Focacs. This is a very exciting thing. So we're just now starting to get word that the early organizations and planning sessions are starting. And so it usually takes about a year the dynamics of FOCAC over the 10 previous meetings or nine previous meetings has changed a lot. In the early days of FOCAC, back when Jiang Zemin started this in 2000, the Chinese would basically slip a piece of paper to the African delegation, say this is what we're going to talk about, this is what the agenda is. Thank you. Today that doesn't work anymore. And what we've seen increasingly over the years is African agency in this process has increased substantially. And there's great work by people like Hannah Ryder at Development Reimagined and other groups who are pulling together the African delegations 12, 14, 16 months in advance, working on the agenda priorities and really asserting themselves much more in the process. So this is a collaborative process rather than a Chinese driven agenda. That's something to look for. The thing that I've been advocating for in the run up to focac and we're going to start writing a whole bunch of policy briefs for policymakers in Africa on recommendations for what to prioritize in the FOCACC conversations.
- [44:31]
C
Give us a preview.
- [44:32]
B
My personal. And again, I don't know if my team agrees with this, but my personal thing is they should be focused on two things. Number one is having China help facilitate internal African trade through the African Continental Free Trade Area. So improved logistics, infrastructure, everything so that you can sell a product from South Africa to Nigeria much faster. The other thing is focus then on how to take advantage of this duty free access into the Chinese market.
- [45:02]
C
Right.
- [45:03]
B
I would get rid of all the other stuff out of Focaccia on security, on blue water, on culture, on everything else and focus on trade and logistics that can generate jobs and growth.
- [45:16]
C
They're obviously not going to do that. They may, I think, raise these up in priority. What's in it for China to facilitate internal trade?
- [45:24]
B
Well, here's the interesting thing when we talk about one of the key trends of the 21st century and this is going to be a little preview of my recommendation at the end of the show. Justin Ifu Lin, he's the famed Chinese economist, he did an interview with Guan Cha, the kind of nationalist Chinese online website, and he talked about kind of how China should best take advantage of the current moment. And one of the key things is moving manufacturing out of China and into global south markets. And we're seeing that now. So here in Southeast Asia, the Chinese automakers, for example, are setting up factories. Like every other week there's a new announcement of a new Chinese auto factory setting up in Brazil. In South Africa, the Same thing.
- [46:08]
C
Well, that's encouraging.
- [46:10]
B
So as manufacturing goes out, they're not bringing those factories to sell back to China or to set up a factory in Indonesia that will then sell to the United States. That BYD factory is meant to sell to Indonesia into Africa or no, in this case of Indonesia, but in South Africa it's meant to sell into the southern African market. And so when we see Hisense and you see BYD and you see these Chinese manufacturers now setting up in places like Africa, that is meant for regional distribution rather than international, you know, transatlantic or trans Indian Ocean distribution. So this is where the AFC FDA becomes very important. Because if BYD can set up a factory in South Africa and then sell a car in Nigeria, that would be very good for Nigerian consumers who get access to all these new products. Right now it's very difficult to ship a car from South Africa to Nigeria. You can do it by boat where you have to go around, but in terms of overland, it's very difficult. And that's the same with all products. There also needs to be tax harmonization, trade harmonization among the various countries. China can help with that as well. The one thing that African countries have to be concerned about though is that the Chinese are increasingly are exporting their very low cost production methods to Southeast Asia, to Africa and to others. And they have an ability to produce at profit margins that are just so low. And that makes it oftentimes very difficult for local competitors to meet not only the China price in China, but the China price in their backyard. And so there is a concern among some in Africa that if too much Chinese manufacturing ends up coming into the continent, displacing local manufacturers and then basically taking advantage of the free trade access through the AFC fda, that doesn't necessarily bode well for African producers, even if it's a benefit to African consumers.
- [48:12]
C
It just incentivizes them to get a hold of some of those Chinese capital goods, some of those Chinese manufacturing. This is a sort of twist on a few months ago you did a great show with James King. You remember that about the $6 toaster and. But I guess it's encouraging to hear that Liny Fu is saying that even to Guan Cha Huang, which is probably in deep denial about the problem of not shedding low end manufacturing as the Flying Geese model would have had it.
- [48:45]
B
If we can just spend a few moments on what Lyn talked about and I think this article, and I'll give you the link to put in the show notes because I think it's important for people to read, because he's given shape to something that's been happening and he calls it the three moves. And this is in response to the US trade actions against China. So he says, number one, that Chinese companies have to move up market. And he says, here's a quote. As long as our products are high quality and inexpensive and can meet the needs of other countries, barriers will make it difficult to completely block the market. So high quality, low cost, that is what the Chinese do, right? I mean, and that's what makes it very difficult for others to compete with them. But that's one of the moves. The second move is this localization thing we talked about and that we're very much seeing in the global south here in Vietnam, which is very interesting. If you go up to northern Vietnam, there's a province called BAC Ninh province. In many ways it's starting to look a lot more like the maquiladoras along the US Mexico border where, you know, an engine for Ford or GM would go across the border six, seven times before it was shipped out. Now what we're seeing is, we're seeing pre production materials come from China, come into Vietnam for final assembly and then go out. Some people call that okay, just transshipment. It's more than just transshipment to evade, to evade tariffs. What we're seeing now is again, just like in the US Mexico relationship, it was a complementary relationship. Lower cost labor here in Vietnam benefits Chinese producers. So you can make the hard expensive part in China and then the low cost assembly part can be done here. That's a cost advantage more than just transshipment. This is part of what Lyn is talking about in terms of the localization. That's the second move, the third move.
- [50:46]
C
Okay, so that's the second move.
- [50:47]
B
The third move is he says move south. So he says, and here's a quote, we are moving south by expanding our engagement with Belt and Road partner countries and global south markets across regions such as Latin America and Africa. Today, more than half of China's Exports go to BRI countries with over 60% destined for the global south. And there he's absolutely correct. And this has been one of the mitigation factors that the Chinese have against US pressure. ASEAN is China's largest regional trading partner. And this is something that again, the folks in the White House don't understand. I've heard Peter Navarro talk about how, what are they going to sell the Southeast Asians to make up for the Americans? You're like, yeah, yes, yes, they are and that's exactly what's happening. So there are the three moves that Lyn talks about, and none of this is new. He's just given shape to something that's been happening for 10 years. So move up market, move to localize, and move south. I think that's a very interesting framing that he's done.
- [51:51]
C
Indeed, Indeed. Well, let's move ourselves along to another part of the global south to Latin America, which you just mentioned. Lula Sheinbaum, Trump has been leaning hard on Panama and Mexico in particular. How are those leaders reading the new shape of the relationship between the US And China against the tariff pressure that they're under?
- [52:13]
B
So we've been spending a lot of time on this in part because we have our new Spanish language site, China Enlas Americas, which Maria Cervantes is our editor based in Lima, is doing a fantastic job in really getting a lot of traction. So if anybody speaks Spanish and read Spanish and wants a dedicated focus on Latin America, I highly recommend it. And it's allowed us to dedicate a lot more resources to covering this. This is a region in many ways on edge. The United States single, you know, singled out the Western hemisphere in its national security strategy with the intent of expelling China from this region. Now it's going to be near impossible for China to be expelled as a major trading partner. And the new president of Chile cast who came into power, he told the US this is a red line. We're not cutting our trade with China. Okay, so we're going to do other things to accommodate you, but we're not cutting trade. We rely on it too much. That being said, when you see how Argentina and Chile, for example, have opened investigations now into Chinese space stations in their countries that the Peruvian president, you know, Peru's had like six presidents or seven. I don't. I can't even keep count now. I mean, the turnover's just been remarkable. But whenever, you know, the ambassador, the US Ambassador, who's a Mar. A lago friend of Trump, you know, says something provocative, everybody drops everything and says, what did he say? And we're now in Panama. You know, there's the fafo. Right. We all know about that. F around and find out.
- [53:51]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [53:51]
B
We're in the find out phase right now in Panama.
- [53:54]
C
Yeah, I heard that show you did.
- [53:56]
B
And there has been this escalation that has been dramatic where they. And literally President Raul Molino when he in January when they expelled C.K. hutchinson from the both ends of the Panama Canal after the Supreme Court said it was unconstitutional. He literally publicly said, I don't think there's going to be a reaction from the Chinese. And that was very naive. Very, very naive.
- [54:22]
C
Curious why he would even bother to say something like that because the level
- [54:26]
B
of China literacy in this part of the world is exceedingly low. And we work with a lot of Latin America, China scholars and these wonderful groups that are there and they just, they pound the tables constantly trying to raise the level of China literacy and to educate stakeholders on how to better understand China. And President Molino is showing you the price of what happens when you are ignorant about this. So in March, I think something around 90 Panamanian flag vessels were detained in China. That continued into April. And the premise here is that China is the world's largest trading power. Panama makes millions of dollars through its
- [55:09]
C
vessel on flagging ships.
- [55:11]
B
And if those ships are not as valuable, it's not. To have a Panamanian flag on your ship means you're going to run into delays. Then countries and companies are going to avoid Panama and go to Liberia or go to other countries that do a lot of flagging. That's the message here. And then at the same time, the Chinese, you know, gave a what I, you know, almost like a mafia type warning. Like, you know, the mafia walks by your, your bakery and says, be a, be a shame if anything happens. And they basically said that to Maersk and to a Swiss shipping company that now took over the concessions on the Panama Canal. And they said, we think you should leave and not do this. They didn't say the what else or what happens if. But the implication is that if Maersk runs into problems in China, that's a huge part of their business. So this is what the find out looks like. And these countries in many parts of the global south or particularly Latin America, with the exception of Brazil, are not really strong enough to push back on this. So they're caught in a very difficult position where the US Is beating down on them. But at the same time, they have a lot of pressure, economic pressure that can come from China. China has a lot of leverage on many of these countries. And then we should talk very quickly about Honduras. Honduras has a new, new government in power and they are actively talking about putting their, their relations with China on review now to consider about switching back to Taiwan.
- [56:51]
C
Yeah, I mean, it would be going back to Taiwan because they have flip flopped already.
- [56:56]
B
That's right, because they didn't feel that when President Shiomara switched from China, from Taiwan to China, there was this expectation that money was going to rain down from the skies in the form of BRI spending and other things. And a little bit has come, certainly particularly in the hydroelectric sector, but nowhere near what they expected. So that's opened up the door for political pressure from the United States and domestically to switch, to potentially switch back. And so. So it's been interesting. And then the last point on this Taiwan issue, which, remember, the Caribbean is the largest cluster of countries now that still recognize Taiwan. So it's very important to Taiwan. But Santiago Pena, who's the president of Paraguay, was recently in Taipei right before Trump was there in. In Beijing and just had a love fest with lighting the. And so Paraguay stands as probably the most enthusiastic country that has diplomatic ties with Taiwan. And he was adamant in saying we're not going to switch. So there could be some momentum in, in the Americas for more support for Taiwan, especially if Honduras switches, though not from Washington itself. Well, Washington loves this idea. And again, this is something that they've been pressuring quite a bit is to have Latin American countries hold firm on supporting, or at least the Caribbean countries that still remain diplomatic partners with Taiwan to hold firm.
- [58:26]
C
Right. I was making a joke in reference to the abeyance on the arms sales. Yeah. Anyway, let's move finally to the Gulf. We've done Southeast Asia pretty well already. Let's talk a little bit about the Middle East. The Gulf states are courting Washington, Beijing, Moscow, all at once, often with the same officials. You would think that they are very much implicated in the recent Beijing summitry. What does it look like from Riyadh or from Abu Dhabi right now?
- [58:53]
B
There's a consensus emerging in the U.S. i was listening to Ross Doubtut's podcast in the New York Times, and he interviewed this military affairs scholar who said, well, who's the biggest winner in the war? And without losing a microsecond of a breath, said, china. And I just want to remind everybody that at the end of the Gulf War, China emerged as Iraq's largest purchaser of oil. And when everybody was saying how the setbacks for China in Iran and Venezuela show that Trump is playing 4D chess and the Chinese are now on their back foot, I didn't believe it, and I don't believe it. And I think China's gonna come out of this somehow. They're gonna come out of this winning on all sides. I think their relationship with the Saudi Kingdom is going to be fully intact. I think the relationship with Iran is going to remain intact. I think their relationship with the Emiratis is going to remain Strong. I'm looking for the major setback for the Chinese in the Gulf, and I'm not seeing it. I think the Chinese are going to reduce their energy purchases from that region. I don't think they want to be exposed to this level of vulnerability. Again, it's not going to go to zero, to be sure.
- [60:10]
C
Right.
- [60:11]
B
But something remarkable happened in just the past 10 days where Brazil displaced Saudi Arabia as China's second largest supplier of oil. Process that. Okay, Russia is number one, Brazil is number two. Saudi is number three. This is what we're going to have to get used to in the future, that the mix of the oil suppliers in the top 10 for China are going to be much more varied than they are today. So that region will be important strategically for China, but not because. Only because of energy. And so I think that's very important to take away from this. I mean, they look at the Emirates in particular as a key priority. I mean, 400,000 Chinese expatriates live in the Emirates. It is a major vector for trade and for logistics for the Chinese, for banking and financial services and for tech as well. I think these are going to be huge markets for Chinese new energy products and, and vehicles and e. Mobility and, and, and so, and again. And the fact that this ties into Taiwan, that, that the Acting Secretary of the Navy Hong Kong said to the Senate today that we can't move web, you know, weapons to Taiwan because we're running short. I mean, just is a dream for the Chinese. And if they're taking Thads out of South Korea to move them to the Gulf, again, this. They couldn't, they never could have imagined this would happen. So this war has been nothing in the, you know, but good for the Chinese. Obviously the energy impact and the economic impact is enormous on China. And they can't. If this thing goes on for another four or five months, it's going to cause real problems in China like it will everywhere else.
- [61:59]
C
Sure. Gas is already equivalent to $5 a gallon.
- [62:03]
B
Yeah. I mean, but the geopolitical upsides are real for the Chinese. There's no doubt.
- [62:07]
C
Absolutely.
- [62:08]
B
And I think it's undeniable even now in the US that this was a colossal mistake that is benefiting Russia and China more than. More than almost anyone else.
- [62:19]
C
But is Beijing under any pressure from any of the Gulf capitals, from Riyadh, from Abu Dhabi, from Doha, to play a bigger role in bringing the conflict to an end? I was a little surprised how Beijing wasn't a little more forthcoming about this because it does feel a Pinch it would benefit. It wouldn't be beyond Beijing's abilities to put a little more pressure on Tehran.
- [62:49]
B
So there's a lot of reluctance in Beijing to get involved in these things and to get sucked into them. And this is, we, we did a great interview with Jeremy Friedman, who is at the Harvard Business School.
- [62:58]
C
Yeah, it was very good.
- [63:00]
B
He wrote a piece in Foreign Policy on this issue as well, that China's reluctant to take on the burdens of global leadership because it just doesn't want to get in, get into these things. But China does have to be careful because Iran is continuing to throw weapons and to attack its neighbors. And if, if we can start tracing back the, the chemicals in those weapons or the actual drones or the actual materials directly to China, that's certainly going to cause problems for the Emiratis and for the, for the Saudis when Chinese material starts landing in their, in their apartment buildings and blowing up things. And my guess is that the Saudis are having conversations with the Chinese to say, listen, you know what, cool it, stop, don't send. And that's going to be a much more potent message than the Americans trying to send to say, cool it, it's not in your long term interests to keep supplying them precursors or chemicals or to support, we understand you're going to support them with oil buys. We understand where you're going to ship some EVs there. We understand you're going to have a trading relationship with Iran. Okay. But cool it on the stuff that ends up on our porch. And my guess is that's the conversation because we always have to remember that the paramount relationships for China and the Gulf are the Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Way more important than Iran. Iran is important politically, but it's nowhere near as important economically for the Chinese. And so in the hierarchy of their relationships, they want to make sure that relationships with Riyadh and the Emirates stays stable. So my guess is that is going to be where the pressure points are. And if the Americans are smart, and I don't give them that credit right now, they would work through the Saudis and the Emiratis to pressure the Chinese rather than they go directly. Because if the, if it's seen politically in China that they are kind of taking direction from the Americans to pressure Iran, that's never going to pass. It won't pass with the Iranians and it won't pass with the Chinese. Right. But if it's the Saudis and the Emiratis who are pressuring the Chinese, then I think that's more politically feasible in China because the US Hawks are real in China, just like we have our China hawks. They've got their US Hawks, and them taking direction from the Americans is on. On. On an issue like this is. I just. I don't see it happening. Remember when Chuck Schumer, you know, blindsided Xi on live TV when he asked for help on Iran? This is about two years ago. That didn't go down well. Jake Sullivan went to Wang Yi in Bangkok when they had a meeting and said, can you help us with Iran? Went nowhere. So we should know now, after two years of making these requests, that this is not going to work. So the Americans should find a different way. And the way is through the Emirates and through Saudi Arabia.
- [66:02]
C
Eric, you've got a fantastic network of colleagues and contributors now that spans the globe. You've got them in Seychelles and Lima and Jakarta and all over the world. What did they pick up in the last couple of weeks that just hasn't surfaced in the Anglophone coverage of. I'm sure the audience is getting tired of hearing me come back to these summits, but let's not talk about that. But just sort of this rupture period, this whole period since January, since Davos, what is it that we're missing in the North American discourse?
- [66:45]
B
How difficult life has become for a lot of people because of all of this. The tariffs have been punishing for people now. The oil and energy shortages have been punishing for people. The instability for most Americans is reflected at the gas pump. But for the most part, daily life still continues on. Generally, the same things are more expensive, to be sure, but they. They go on all the same. The instability in countries with weaker governance, who are dependent on commodities as exports, who are, you know, the vulnerabilities are just much, much higher. And I think this chaos that has come into the international system has not been good, obviously. I mean, I'm stating the obvious here. I mean, this shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. People are thinking themselves, of course, but I think when in the daily life, the level of uncertainty here. So here in Southeast Asia, there's very few shock absorbers in the system.
- [67:48]
C
Right. Not a lot of buffers.
- [67:50]
B
Yeah. So a country like Laos in Cambodia, in the Philippines, they. They went to shorten work weeks immediately within. We're talking within weeks of the energy being cut off.
- [68:00]
C
Right.
- [68:00]
B
And that shows you how. How vulnerable this all is. And so daily life is impacted in quite severe ways. You know, for the most part, in Vietnam, things have been stable, and this government has Been very, very rapid and it's adapting to the environment. I don't think other countries are in that situation. And so again, I point to Kenya this past week and the turbulence that's been there over the fuel tariffs that the government put in and then eventually took off. And I think also in places like Peru, where Maria, our editor in Lima, says that the exhaustion of every day following what the US Ambassador says, does he mean at this time, what does that mean? He said something, he said this. What do we do? And that just takes so much energy away from other governance. And I think that's part of what's so draining for a lot of people. So by the end. So the reason I come back to why the summit itself was not as much of a. A draw is because people have been following the day to day kind of, you know, just dramas that are coming out of US entities, particularly in the Americas, that by the time this thing happens 10,000 kilometers away, they're numb to it all. And we as Americans, by the way, have become numb to a lot of this. Right? I mean, who remembers what the Trump scandal was from four weeks ago, much less a year ago? And so I think there's a fatigue that's kind of settled in across much of the world on this. And they're waiting to kind of see how this plays out. But in the meantime, they're taking decisive actions, as we're seeing here in Asia and in Africa, to reorient themselves away from the United States and to de risk from the United States the reconfiguration of the international order and alliances and partnerships. The speed with which that is happening is something that you cannot imagine. It is remarkable to watch where leaders like the Angolan and Ethiopian presidents coming to Vietnam is not something that we would have seen two or three years ago with the intensity that we're seeing now. Every day these guys are on the road trying to figure out a new way. I mean, just again, we go back to Takeichi. This woman is getting frequent flyer points in Asia. She's been everywhere just in the past month. And that is something I don't think the North American discourse is picking up. The world is going to be different after all of this. Americans will not understand this.
- [70:35]
C
It's really, really reshaping the whole topography.
- [70:38]
B
Yeah, yeah, it is reshaping the whole geopolitical topography. And I think Americans want all the benefits of hegemony without any of the costs, and they're going to find out what it means to be in in the second place. And I don't think, you know, you're. In my lifetime. We've never been in the number two. You know, final observation. There was a great comment on Instagram. I forget who it's for, and I don't want to plagiarize it, but they said this was the first summit since the end of World War II where we didn't know who was the most powerful person in the room when a US President was in the room.
- [71:14]
C
Right.
- [71:15]
B
That's remarkable.
- [71:16]
C
Yeah. I mean, yeah, this was the first summit at which the United States and China were genuine peers. It was really a remarkable piece of theater.
- [71:26]
B
It really was a remarkable piece of theater. And she was right out of central casting. I mean, he just. He played his role perfectly. I mean, a lot of people were focusing on the body language differences between Xi and Putin, you know, between Trump and Putin, when Xi was, you know, very warm and effusive with Putin, but very kind of distant and cold with Trump. I don't know what you read into that. I think that's part of Xi's theatrics as well. Watch Xi, anytime he meets with the Japanese prime minister and he puts on this frowny face and this distant handshake, and so he does that. You know, I don't know how much you should read it in terms of substance, but it is interesting to watch the, you know, the performance of it all.
- [72:07]
C
It's deliberate, it's not particularly subtle, and it probably conveys exactly what. What it appears to convey. Eric, let's leave it there for now. Thank you so much. This has just been magnificent. Even if my premise didn't hold up under. Under scrutiny, that's how it goes.
- [72:26]
B
That's how it goes. That's the fun of these conversations, right?
- [72:28]
C
That's the fun of it. A lesson learned here. I need to be prepared for the possibility that what I assumed was not what my guest assumed. But you know better than I do. I absolutely take your word for it and consider me schooled here. Let's move on to Paying It Forward. The segment of the show where I ask you to name a younger colleague or somebody. I suspect there's somebody in your orbit who maybe needs a more fulsome introduction.
- [72:55]
B
I want to. I'm not going to name a single person. I'm going to name a group, and it's a group that I've been working with for quite some time. It's the Boston University Global Development Policy Center. It's a team led by Kevin Gallagher. These guys are doing just some fantastic work It's a group of young researchers who are doing the kind of nuts and bolts data collection analysis on Africa, Latin America. They focus a lot on new energy, they focus a lot on China. And we are partners with them. We showcase their work. We have a great report that's up on our site that came out on China, Africa, trade trends, which is really important to have these data sets that really benchmark where we are. And that, again, is the best antidote to the toxic narratives that are out there when there's actual data that's produced by a team of Africans, Chinese Americans, I mean, a really international team. So I just want to give a shout out to Boston University's Global Development Policy center and the entire team there.
- [73:59]
C
All right, Kevin Gallagher and company. Congrats. I mean, they are fantastic. I've known about them for, it has to be a decade now. They've been doing this stuff and they're
- [74:10]
B
consistently producing this work. And that's really important.
- [74:13]
C
Yeah, great one, great one. And what about for recommendations? Do you have a book you've read recently or anything that you want to shout out?
- [74:22]
B
I've come in, you know, I've. I've been negligent in my kind of China research over the years in studying Xi and understanding Xi more than the superficial what we do. And I read Kevin Rudd's book on Xi, and that was, I think that's like his PhD dissertation, and it really read like that, but it was important. And I've come to the point now where I don't believe you can understand modern China today, contemporary China, if you don't have a deep, thorough understanding of who Xi is as a person, who, his worldview and whatnot, the same. For example, you cannot understand the United States today without understanding Trump and maga. And I mean, you can try, but if you don't understand Trump's worldview, you don't understand where we are today. So I'm. I've gone down a rabbit hole of books dedicated to Xi. So again, it started with Kevin Rudd's book, which I do recommend, by the way. It's been controversial. Quite a few people, very knowledgeable scholars, have disagreed with a lot of his key points. But I think it's important that you read it so you have an understanding of that discourse. Now I'm reading Party of One, the Rise of Xi Jinping in China's Superpower Future by Chun Han Wong, who is the Wall Street, I think. I don't know if he's still with the Wall Street Journal, but he was a Longtime Beijing correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. The book is excellent and I'm halfway through it and I'm going to read another Xi book after this. But I'm really immersing myself in trying to understand Xi's worldview and his history and how he sees the world because he will be with us. I mean, if assuming his health stays at least for another five years. Right. I mean, so, yeah. And he's shaping China in such profound ways comparable to what Trump is doing to the U.S. i need you to
- [76:07]
C
jot down a few of your best insights as you read through this whole oeuvre, this whole literature about see what are the things that you learn from it and I'd love for you to come back on the show and share that with us.
- [76:19]
B
That'd be great. I mean, just learning about the upbringing and again, the turbulence going from a princeling to some of the difficulties he had and then trying to kind of see how that has shaped his is worldview today is really.
- [76:34]
C
Have you read, have you read Joseph Turian's book the Party's Interests Come First? No, the biography of Xi Junction, I'm
- [76:43]
B
going to put that on to. Oh yeah, that's the Xijong Shin book. Yeah. So I'm going to. That's all part of my rabbit hole that I'm going down. And, and of course this is all tied into, even to Richard McGregor's famous book in seminal the Party Party and seeing the relationship by how the control the party has and then Xi's relationship and dominance of the party, which again brings echoes to Trump's dominance of the Republican Party. Again, it's not, there's, they're not parallels there, but it's interesting to see how these two men have reshaped the political systems as much as they have. And I don't know as much about Xi as I feel like I should and that's why these books are really timely.
- [77:19]
C
Excellent. Well, I look forward to that conversation. I definitely have my own thoughts. I'm going to go completely opposite direction for my recommendation and talk about a duo, a rock duo from Quebec called Engines des Poitrins, which means something like cardiac angina. Right. They are, like I said, a duo. People describe them as microtonal math rock, which strikes me as about. Right, it is microtonal. That is, they play notes between the notes. It's not your typical 12 tone scale. There are these microtones like you'd find in Indian music, but it's also highly, highly technical. There's a lot of extremely Difficult polyrhythm and stuff like that. And it's all done by two people, one guy who plays a double neck with a bass on the bottom and a microtone guitar up top. And they use loops, they use, you know, sort of a sampler to be able to sort of capture in real time what they're playing. So something will continue to loop and they'll play something atop it. And it is utterly bizarre. A friend of mine sent around a message just saying, is this the Emperor's New clothes or the second coming? And we had to listen through a few times before deciding pretty unanimously, this is the second coming. These guys, they're anonymous, they wear kooky outfits that are all covered in polka dots and they're made of paper mache and they have outlandish, clownish looks. But if I had to throw out a few bands that you could put together to sort of approximate what they are, they're almost like Frank Zappa meets King Crimson with Sleepy Time, guerrilla museum and Mr. Bungle thrown in, if any of those names make any sense to you.
- [79:14]
B
But.
- [79:15]
C
But that's what it is. It's just so out of this world. I mean, we've been waiting really for something like this to come along and breathe new life into progressive rock. These guys might be it. It's truly something to see. Angin that's a N G I N E D Poitrin P O I T R I N E Check them out. You can find them all over YouTube now. And I'm very late to this, so this is quite a sensation. But I only started listening pretty intently about three weeks ago, but check it out. Eric, man, what a great pleasure always.
- [79:55]
B
Kaiser. It's great fun to be with you and also to be partners on your platform where we put a lot of our shows and our podcast is part of your network and it's one of the highlights of what we do.
- [80:08]
C
Well, likewise. I'm incredibly proud to have you and I think we're meant to be together, man. We're just really meant to be together forever. All right, you've been listening to the Cinica Podcast. The show is produced, recorded, engineered, edited and mastered by me, Kaiser Guo. Support the show through substack@cinecapodcast.com where you will find a growing offering of terrific original China related writing and audio and video featuring Eric. Email me@cinecopodmail.com if you've got ideas on how you can help out with the show. Don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts enormous gratitude to the University of Wisconsin Madison's center for East Asian Studies for supporting the show once again this year. Huge thanks to my guest Eric Olander, partner eternal. And thank you for listening. We will see you next week. Take care. Of foreign
- [81:29]
A
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B
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