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- [00:01]
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- [01:35]
Steve Hayes
Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. Ahead of President Trump's planned summit with China's President Xi Jinping. Later this week, we'll discuss the United States current and past relationship with China, President Xi and the state of the Communist Party's political leadership, and America's policy on the Taiwan question and the future of Taiwanese independence, then not worth your time. Sean Duffy's Great American Road Trip reality TV show. I'm joined today by my Dispatch colleagues Jonah Goldberg and Mike Warren, and Dispatch contributing writer Michael Sok of the Hudson Institute. Let's dive in. Michael Sobolic how should the United States think of China heading into these conversations? Give us this sort of big picture. Is China an enemy? Is China an adversary? Is it an economic rival? Is it the other pole of a bipolar world? How should the United States think of China?
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Michael Sobolik
Big picture today so that question, maybe in a counterintuitive way, makes me think back to 1980 when Reagan was on the stump speech and he was talking about Jimmy Carter and he has this famous line from the 1980 campaign where he says, a recession is where your neighbor loses their job, a depression is when you lose yours, and recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his. So these terms can be kind of subjective. They're subject to people's political agendas, but they also have meaningful distinction. So cooperative, partner, competitor, adversary, enemy. I am comfortable with using the term enemy because of the Chinese Communist Party, the nature of the system, what their geopolitical ambitions are. This is a Marxist Leninist regime and its founding, that ideology pervades today, although admittedly does look a bit different than it did during the Mao era. But this is a regime that is revisionist in its geopolitical ambitions. It is not terribly happy that it lives in this post World War II, post Cold War order that the United States, States and our allies have built together. And they are not in outright military warfare with the United States, to be sure, although they are the benefactor. I guess the Iranians and the Russians are the benefactors, or they benefit from the patronage of China. But what China is doing is waging political warfare against America. And I think that is a term of art that was, you know, at least in Washington, widely accepted during the Cold War. And I think we've lost some of our memory of what it means to be on the receiving end of political warfare. And if you look at the different avenues of state power, whether it's lawfare, whether it's mercantile economics, whether it's using chemicals and to pump fentanyl precursors into our hemisphere, which maybe we'll talk about later in the podcast, China is doing things that are not just discrete actions of state owned enterprises or freelancers inside of the People's Republic of China, trying to make a buck, and it happens to hurt the United States. The Chinese Communist Party is pursuing a strategy that is meant to displace the United States as the most powerful, most influential country in the world. Xi Jinping has done the most to that. But he's not the only Chinese leader that suddenly woke up and decided, hey, I'm going to take on America today. This has been a long standing necessity for the ccp, because the world they want to build cannot really survive with American leadership continuing. So I'm very comfortable with using the term enemy, but if you want to use adversary, I will subscribe to that nomenclature as well.
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Steve Hayes
Jonah, do you buy that framing? You know, is it the case that, I mean, you look at the things that Michael mentioned, fentanyl distribution, sort of tacit or some believe, explicit approval of Fentanyl as a weapon produced in China, distributed in the United States. You look at reporting that we've seen just recently about China reportedly providing signals and satellite intelligence to Iran to help Iran in the targeting in the current conflict with the United States. You look at China effectively living in our cyber world, living in the, you know, highly secur financial websites and back end infrastructure of banks stealing our secrets, both financial and military. Is enemy an overstatement?
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Jonah Goldberg
All right, so here's how I feel. I have no problem, fellow think tank guy. I'm very chagrined here at my annex office at AEI that the view in my office is so much less impressive than the view in Michael's office at Hudson. We will crush you in softball to punish you for this. But I think for think tank guy people, right, for analysts saying enemy is fine. I wouldn't want necessarily politicians quite yet to say enemy not because it's not necessarily true, but because for good reasons and very bad ones, we are so bound up, our interests are so economic interests and others are so bound up. In China, rhetoric like enemy requires certain follow through by politicians, by policymakers. And if all of a sudden Donald Trump says China is our enemy, then why are we still buying rare earths from them? Why are we. There are all sorts of things that become trading with the enemy problems. But adversary works for me. Opponent, potential enemy, all those things are fine. They're certainly their interests and our interests do not align on national security questions, on geostrategic questions, and also on moral questions. Right. I mean, I think this is one of the things that frustrates me a great deal about the debate about China is I'm not necessarily a moralist in all aspects of foreign policy. Like, I don't think you just go to war necessarily for strictly moral reasons. There needs to be something more specific about the national interest. But Reagan was really good at making this distinction is that rhetorically he beat the crap out of evil countries. Even if he was like that doesn't mean we're going to war with him. Right. China is a Jim Crow country. If you are not a Han Chinese, certainly if you were some of the specific ethnicities, you were a second class citizen at best. Sometimes you're in a camp, right? But even if you're not a Uyghur, some of the non Han Chinese they require, you know, they can't get internal passports to find jobs, they can't get to big cities, they can't get into the best schools. And for a country that spends a lot of Time beating itself up for its racial past that we just say, oh well, that's the way they do things, I think is foolish and ill advised and we should be in a situation where we put them on the moral back foot. They're great at lecturing us about our racist past. Okay, we own it, we teach it in school, we apologize for it. We amended the Constitution a couple times for it. What's China doing today about their, you know, their problems? And so anyway, the reason why I'm for a little more nuance, I'm definitely a China hawk, is that China, unlike Russia, does not want to blow up the international order yet. Right. It has been a free rider for a long time. It benefits from a lot of these things in ways that I don't think. I think Russia truly wants to throw monkey wrenches everywhere it can. China is more like planning on throwing monkey wrenches and we should be open eyed about that. But we don't have to inflict grievous wounds on ourselves economically or buy confrontations earlier than we need to have them with China, by the political class using the word enemy, but having people in the room saying, hey Mr. President, hey, Mr. Secretary of State, you do know they're our enemy and we should be careful about how we do this. That's fine by me because I think it's probably accurate.
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Steve Hayes
But isn't there something to be said for the moral clarity that Ronald Reagan brought when he talked about the Soviet Union as an evil empire? Are you making primarily a prudential argument that because the Soviet Union was sort of self isolated in a way that China is most certainly not, that kind of moral clarity is less desirable or might be counterproductive?
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Jonah Goldberg
Well, let's just say I think it would take a more nuanced rhetorician than Donald Trump to play the Reaganite role. And this is where the question is a good one. Written about this a few times. This is why I think the Cold War analogy doesn't really work. I mean, if you mean a lowercase c and a lowercase W. I talked about this with Hal Brands before then, okay, we're in a cold war, right. If you define just simply cold war as non shooting, but you know, pre positioning strategy, great game proxies, all that kind of stuff. Okay, we're in a cold war with China for sure. If you're saying in some sort of literary way this is the second Cold War and it's like the first one, I just think that's wrong because the Soviets were true. And this is where I Disagree a little bit with Michael. I mean, I agree it's Marxist, Leninist and its founding, and it definitely is Leninist in its view of the party ruling, the party dictatorship. I agree with all that. But this is what makes China much more challenging. It's much more like Pre World War I Germany to me. Right. It's a huge player in tech and science. It's a huge economic power. And the Soviets did us a huge favor by not understanding or participating in global capitalism. So it was really easy to do sanctions and lock them out in certain ways from the economic stuff and surpass them technologically by leaps and bounds once we put our minds to it. That's much harder with China because they are basically the rural valley of manufacturing for the world right now. And it just, it requires a different playbook than the one we used in the first Cold War.
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Michael Sobolik
Yeah.
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Steve Hayes
Mike Warren, there's been so much written, so much speculation about what exactly Xi Jinping wants today. Do you have a sense that part of what he wants is this near peer relationship with the United States? Would he like to go further? Is part of his goal to have a sort of unipolar moment with China at the top? Is he happy sort of dividing the world into hemispheres or spheres of influence? Do you have a sense?
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Mike Warren
I don't. In fact, it's a sort of a driving question I have when I am reading and listening and talking with others about China is trying to understand exactly what, not just how Xi sort of wants to position China, whether it's, you know, like you said, a sort of unipolar, like the new America. Right. You know, if the American century was the 20th century, that to make the 21st century the Chinese century, if it's that if there's a sort of this rivalry, we're two poles here, the United States and China, and we're sort of in this big. Almost as if it's a new Cold war and maybe even a better Cold war from China's perspective than the US Soviet one. And it's a question I have for Michael in all of this is what is the benefit of sort of accepting the viewpoint that I gather is XI's and the CCPS, that this is a rivalry that we are sort of. That they are trying to sort of challenge our power in the world? Is that a useful. Is that a correct way for us to be sort of analyzing that relationship and this major power in that way, sort of on China's terms? Should our policymakers, should our leaders sort of accept the way that China views itself and its relationship to the United States and sort of move forward along those lines? Or do we have a responsibility to sort of define China and define China US Relations in our own way? I'm curious what the status is of that and how we should think about the way China thinks of us.
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Michael Sobolik
Sure. I mean, different presidents, both Republicans and Democrats, have tried to define China going back to the 70s when Nixon went over there. And I think this has been a dream for many presidents. Congress has taken somewhat different approach, but many presidents have won, wanted to be the president to fit the square into a round circle with China. They want all of the economic benefits of engaging China commercially without any of the national security downside, which is basically a position of we want no trade offs when it comes to the strategic relationship. And I do think that there has been a dose of reality that's hitting Washington. You can argue when it hit, but the moment I would pinpoint would be around 2015 or so when DoD was really starting to freak out about the South China Sea and China literally redrawing the map and these artificial islands starting to pop up. And by the time the Pentagon sounded the alarm, it was too late to roll it back, it was already there. And I think since then there's been an awareness that we are not in a position to unilaterally define this relationship, that China of course is going to have a say for what it's going to look like, but we've accepted that. But what we haven't done is actually let go of that belief that we can still have our cake and eat it too. Presidents, I think in their own way, still try to cooperate and compete at the same time. And to an extent, I agree with a lot of what Jonah is saying, that these are two intertwined economies. We have no choice but to have some kind of a moderated engagement with China for no other reason than we have. We're on this path dependent route that we're really trying hard to break out of and it's taking a while. And if we were to blow up that relationship tomorrow, there would be, I think we would feel quite acutely the pain of not taking that intertwined nature seriously. So as far as that goes, yes, we need to be responsible and prudential about how we go about decoupling. But decoupling is only the beginning of this challenge that's basically editing undo, like Control Z over and over again on your laptop. Three to four decades of engagement. And the reason that is urgent is because at this point in our critical infrastructure, we have kill switch devices that the CCP can activate remotely that could hit our power grid, that could hit our ports. And this is not just, hey, we shouldn't rely on China for pharmaceuticals or critical minerals. It's actually quite more urgent than that. If China were to move on Taiwan, they could throw portions of the US Homeland into the Stone Age overnight. It is a very high degree of threat, which is why decoupling is one thing. What we really need to be focusing on, I think, is figuring out what Xi Jinping and the party is trying to accomplish globally, figuring out where they're weak, and then attacking their own strategy. But you cannot do that until you have resolved that you're not really in a positive sum relationship. And no president thus far has really been willing to make that decision. And until that happens, we're going to continue playing both sides of the ledger with cooperating and competing.
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Steve Hayes
Jonah, what's your sense of how strong China actually is today? I mean, I think there's sort of consensus among policy experts that China's in a much stronger position today than it was, say, a decade ago, sort of at the beginning of the transition to Xi and today. And yet there are certainly, if you look at sort of the broad scope of China's power, areas in which China is very strong. Michael pointed to some of them and other places where it's, I would say, relatively weak, or at least not as strong as one might have assumed. And you sent me before we started today, Wall Street Journal article, very interesting Wall Street Journal article published today. Headline is, Xi's China Dazzling Technology, Military Muscle, and an Economic Mess. And I'll read the first two sentences here. More than a decade into Xi Jinping's rule, China's military has grown more formidable and its factories dominate global manufacturing. And its technology pioneers are closing the gap with Silicon Valley. Yet big parts of its economy are a mess. A colossal property bust has destroyed trillions of dollars in wealth. Consumer confidence has been gutted, and the job market has grown bleak, not to mention the challenges with the middle class in China. Is China as strong as we talk about it? If you look at the rhetoric from Capitol Hill, if you look at the rhetoric sometimes from the White House, it depicts China as a superpower. Is that accurate?
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Jonah Goldberg
Oh, I think it's a superpower. I mean, I don't know what the official scorecard kind of like hierarchy of things, but it's the second most powerful country in the world, I would argue. Right. And so I think we're in better shape than China. But like I Think we tend not to focus on the fact that China has a lot of real problems. And again, in the spirit of Inter Think Tech company, I highly recommend Nick Eberstad from AEI who's like one of the smartest bipedal creatures in this quadrant. Was on the great Aaron MacLean School of War podcast talking about a report that Nick led. And Nick's very, very concerned about America's low birth rate. But China's low birth rate is a frigging disaster for China. The number of babies born in China last year according to the official numbers, which means that this is. Since there's so much pressure to boost the birth rate, it's entirely possible these were goose numbers, but who knows? Let's take them at their face value. Means that the baby making crisis in China hasn't. The last time they made this few babies it was like 8 million babies was probably in the 17 early 1700s. They are in a depopulation implosion in China. And if you read from Nick's report, he talks about this in great detail. But this is a particular problem for China because they still don't have, I mean, for all the glitz that we see from Shanghai or Beijing, they don't have a fully developed social safety net the way western democracies do. The rural urban split on healthcare and these kinds of things is a huge problem for China. And the way China has gotten by for the Last carry the 12000 years is by the extended civil society social networks of large families, cousins, grandparents, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces helping each other, large groups of kids helping their parents, lots of parental worship and grandparental worship and all that kind of stuff going on. And in a nation that now is basically in its third generation of singletons, like they're kids who don't even know what it's like to have an uncle or a cousin, right? And because of the gender selection for boys, the social dynamics of being working class and trying to find a mate in China are really ugly. I remember James Q. Wilson talking about this years ago that wherever the ratio of men to women hit a certain tipping point, men get violent. And he pointed to the Wild west in the United States where once you got men went out there and left their women folk behind. Once you got a ratio of 120 men to 80 women or something like that, things got out of hand pretty quickly. And then one of the other points that Nick makes is that aversion to military casualties takes on a new meaning when the entire army is basically manned by Only children. And that's just one facet of it. I just think it's really interesting and I was reading the report this weekend, but China has lots of problems that we don't have and has lots of advantages that we don't have. And no one's really played out. I mean, I'm sure Michael does some computer program or something like that, but no one really knows what a real confrontation with China would look like for our societies, for our planners. And given that they're both nuclear powers, you'd like to come up short of that. Anyway, the last thing I'll just say, because I know I'm rambling, is this intramural debate on the right about whether opening up to China was a mistake. The only caveat I ever provide about that, because I think the argument that it was a mistake has some real heft to it in terms of geosecurity and all sorts of other things. But when people say this bet that China would become a liberal democracy once it got rich or move towards a liberal democracy once it got rich, that was proven false. And my response to that is sort of maybe or not yet. Right? I mean, like, because China is very strong, but it's like marble. It's also very brittle. And the CCP had a bunch of China scholars telling me this over the years. Is almost as afraid of the people as the people are afraid of it. And because it's a totalitarian, essentially totalitarian country, our visibility into its brittleness is not very good. And there's a reason why Xi has been sentencing to death a bunch of senior generals lately. It's because he's seeing something he doesn't like to see. Right? And we can extrapolate from all that. We can do our Beijingology instead of criminology. But I just think that the oh, they're eating our lunch, they're beating us at everything thing is wildly overdone. But they're a serious adversary. And if we decided to make them an enemy, they could punch back in a way that no other country has been able to punch back at us since World War II.
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Steve Hayes
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Mike Warren
Yes, but on the other hand, I think the, to Jonah's point, the economic liberalization will lead to political liberalization argument is maybe, I feel like the opponents of liberalization really love to lean on that argument, say, see, it was wrong and sort of maybe over index how important that argument was to trade liberalization. And of course, if you look sort of globally, I mean, you know, if you expand this sort of globally, I mean, I think the truth is that trade liberalization has been on net a positive certainly for the United States.
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Steve Hayes
Sure.
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Mike Warren
And it is in many ways sort of the best and first line of diplomacy in a lot of these countries. And I would say that's even can be the case and maybe still will be the case and in some ways has been the case in China as well. We can see that in the way that unfortunately the tariff operations of the over the last 15 months or so, you know, they have put a squeeze on China as well. And that is, I imagine, what this summit that just the reason we're talking about China today, this summit between Trump and Xi is going to focus a lot on is on the economics of can we negotiate some kind of economic detente right now after, after these 15 months of sort of upheaval. But I think that sort of demonstrates that actually the economic liberalization has helped and provided us with tools as well as being, you know, a drawback or not going as far as people like you, Steve, as you say you wanted. But I have a question before we get into sort of the summit and sort of some more specifics about Xi in particular, because, you know, from my vantage point, it seems like Xi is maybe a personification of what Jonah was talking about about strong but brittle. He seems to be stronger internally than just about any other leader in China for the past hundred Years, maybe even stronger than Mao, you know, just by the fact that China is not as dirt poor as it was when Mao was in charge. I'm just curious what we should make of the Xi of it all in terms of, I think of some of the things you were talking about, Michael, you know, sort of the way things changed in the way we perceive China happened about 10 years ago, 11 years ago. This is right after Xi was sort of taking hold. How do we understand, you know, Xi's internal power and how that has, you know, affected China's power globally through the person of Xi Jinping.
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Michael Sobolik
He is the most commanding, impressive individual leader in Chinese politics since Deng Xiaoping, without a shadow of a doubt. And he wants to be remembered in that upper echelon with Mao, Deng, and himself. Let's step back first and talk about how Xi wants to be remembered, and then maybe we can talk about his current situation right now. Around the time that Xi Jinping took power in China, or began to take the main offices of power in China, starting around 2012, he gave this speech and he situated himself with how he hopes history remembers him. And Jonah got to a little bit of this a few minutes ago when he talked about China's like, 2,000 in your history, 3,000, 4,000, depending on what timelines we're using. We spend a lot of time in the Beltway talking about Xi Jinping right now and China post 1949. And I think that has something to do with this pathology that I will admittedly concede that I fall into at times, which is thinking that history began after we won the Second World War. And I'm also a millennial, so it's easy for me to think that way sometimes. But if you look at how Xi Jinping talks about China, he talks about not only China being strong after becoming wealthy, which is how he fits in with the upper echelon of CCP leaders. He talks about China regaining its stature globally and redeeming the quote, unquote, century of humiliation, which was around the end of China's dynastic era in the 19th century, when the final dynasty, the Qing dynasty, bumped up against a global, expanding European, different European powers, imperial powers fueled by changing technology and the industrial revolution, powering that push of European power to all the corners of the world. And the Chinese were not ready for it, and they suffered tremendously in their own hemisphere, inside of their own country, and they were dictated to. Xi Jinping wants to recover that lost honor that China used to have globally. But it goes back even further than that in that opening speech he talked about recovering and preserving the like 2000 to 3000. Actually, no, he used 5000. He talked about China's 5000 year civilizational greatness. And I think that self image is important for us to keep in mind. America is celebrating our 250th anniversary this year. That's cute. For someone in the Chinese Communist Party that's deserving of a head pat, maybe. So Xi Jinping has these, I wouldn't even call them, delusions of grandeur because China does have this grandiose cultural and civilizational history. But then you get into the party, which is the rub here, because they are the current caretaker. And you can even characterize them as I have, as some sort of a quasi dynasty that now has this political culture that is dynastic in nature and quite imperial in nature, but they are the current caretaker of. So what does that all this mean for Xi Jinping? They are in a difficult economic situation, as Jonah just laid out demographically. Gosh, when I worked on the Hill, I would go to Nick Eberstadt for any question I had on North Korea and demographics. And I will co sign. He is one of the smartest human beings I've ever encountered. And the demographic situation in China is abysmal by the party's own making with the one child policy. So for Xi Jinping, right now, he needs China to be cresting power and continuing to have this upward glide of economic and military might. They are developing militarily, but the economic foundation for them to continue to ride that wave and the demographic momentum are not where they need to be. So you have this possibility for Xi Jinping where, right when he needs China to be strong for his own legacy and for his own political security inside of China, he may not have the foundations that he needs to get there. And all of these purges that we're seeing, I can say that at least in the China wonky space, the big debate is Xi Jinping large and in charge inside of the CCP or is he not? This is a debate that I. Spoiler alert. We're not going to settle this today because it's a opaque system. But I can at least share a few thoughts. And I wrote for the Dispatch on this earlier this year back in January. I think Xi Jinping has a really big challenge inside of China because we talk about American presidents often in terms of poll numbers. Are they up, are they down? I know Jonah hates the word mandate, but what was their election margin? But in China, it's very different.
- [35:35]
Jonah Goldberg
Because we assume Mandate of Heaven is different. But anyway, yeah.
- [35:41]
Michael Sobolik
Oh, my gosh, my heart is so happy that we're talking about the Mandate of Heaven on the podcast.
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Jonah Goldberg
I'm here to bring you joy.
- [35:47]
Michael Sobolik
For Xi Jinping, he has a higher challenge because we assume legitimacy into. It's baked into the conversation of American politics, and let's hope it stays that way. But in China, it's not inside of the Chinese Communist Party. Just because you have the title General Secretary, just because you're the chairman of the Central Military Commission, that doesn't mean that you pull all the strings. It's a much more complicated system than that. You have the propaganda department, you have internal security, you have the general department, which is essentially like the chief of staff, operational side of the party. This is not in any way analogous to the American system that we have over here. And one of the reasons that possibly, I emphasize possibly that we're seeing these purges is because there are a lot of people inside of the CCP that not only are afraid of Xi Jinping, but greatly dislike Xi Jinping because he purged their proteges and new lines of. Of generational leadership inside of China that weren't necessarily his guys or his people. So I am in the camp that we risk overestimating how strong Xi Jinping is. Granted, it's a hard system, but I think we should at least open that. When I was in Taiwan a couple weeks ago, interestingly, some of the conversations I had over there reinforced that perspective.
- [37:07]
Mike Warren
Yeah, that's the corner dog sort of theory of it, right? That he's dangerous because maybe he's not as powerful. That's an interesting perspective.
- [37:16]
Steve Hayes
Michael, before we turn to this upcoming summit and these potentially important, very important meetings, I want to talk to you a little bit about your trip to Taiwan. We talked to you about this maybe four or six weeks ago. You were on the front end of that trip. You sort of laid out what you expected to see on the trip and talk to us a little bit about the likelihood. I mean, there's obviously increased speculation that with the United States otherwise engaged in another war in the Middle east, quarreling with our allies in Europe, that this is sort of opening things up for China to potentially make a move on Taiwan. Both of those questions. What did you learn during your trip, and how do you think about that possibility?
- [38:00]
Michael Sobolik
Sure. So what I learned from a Taiwan perspective, they are in a really difficult place domestically right now. They passed a defense budget, which is good, but it was not the budget they needed to pass. I think the president, President Lai, was asking for somewhere about $40 billion. They passed around a 25, 28 billion defense budget, and it basically funds future purchases of American weapons, which is fine as far as it goes, but this is a geographical reality. Taiwan is an island. And if they ever find themselves in a shooting situation, they cannot rely on external supplies of weapons. This is not like Ukraine, where you can resupply over land by various routes into the country. How are you going to get American weapons into that island if the Chinese are blockading them by land? And if they have, if they're trying to establish air superiority, you know, so that was the part of the budget, the indigenous production of weapons that was not funded, was not funded as it should have been. And the domestic breakdown inside of Taiwan is tricky. At the moment, the party chair of the party that controls the legislature but does not control the presidency, this is the kmt, the Kuomintang Party. The party chair was recently in Beijing meeting with Xi Jinping. And this party has always had. Well, not always, but at least in recent Taiwan politics, they've had more of an affinity for cooperation with China as opposed to engagement with the United States as a primary strategy. And Xi came out recently saying that Donald Trump should oppose Taiwanese independence when he goes to meet with Xi Jinping. That's a great asset for Xi because when he sits down from Trump at Beijing, he's going to say, listen, I want this. The Taiwanese are asking you to come out in opposition of their own independence. Like, you can't. You're not going to tell them. You're not even willing to talk about this or work with me on this. So the fact that they didn't get the budget passed and that there are some individuals inside of the KMT party that are agitating in Beijing's favor is bad. What is good is that Marco Rubio was asked about this when he was at the Vatican recently, and he went out of his way to say, there's no change in America's posture to Taiwan. We expect Taiwan is going to come up in Beijing during this meeting. But we remain opposed to unilateral changes in the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, which, as far as Taiwan policy goes, it's the bare minimum, but it's fine. And it's better than changing the status quo in a bad way. I have long been of the position that the status quo is actually trending against the United States right now because China is upping the tempo of their exercises and have been doing so for a number of years now. And if we don't find a way to rejigger the status quo into a more stabilizing situation, we allow China to control the pace and the tempo of how the status quo is defined. So the rhetoric is okay, at least for now, but we actually need policies that would make it painful for China to continue what they're doing militarily and diplomatically to isolate Taiwan. And that's going to require more political will and political cost.
- [41:28]
Jonah Goldberg
So, Michael, can I ask a question about this? Because one of the things that's just every time I have somebody on my podcast talk about China, I ask about this, and I usually get the same range of answers. But the cliche is we can't care more about Taiwan's defense than Taiwan does. Right? I mean, that's the sort of standard mantra. I would have thought that what's happened in Hong Kong would be ill advised for Xi precisely because it would send the signal to Taiwan that unification is not like one country, two systems is not something China is actually willing to follow through on. If Taiwan becomes part of China, it's going to lose its distinctiveness, it's going to lose its freedoms, all this kind of stuff. And so I would have kept Hong Kong a little healthier as a show product to sort of lend support to the guys in Taiwan who want to make the case that we can work with the Chinese and it's not going to be that bad and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And instead they've been terrible in Hong Kong and it doesn't seem to have had any effect on the internal debates in Taiwan. And I don't quite understand why. It's like, you would think that even the sort of reconciliation people would be like, well, I don't want to. I don't want to go, but, like, become like Hong Kong does and, like, and they didn't take over Hong Kong at point of a bayonet. Like, who knows what Xi does if they send in the People's Liberation army or whatever it is and take huge casualties and then feel like they need reprisal, you know, like, it could be really ugly, a Chinese takeover of Taiwan. And yet it doesn't seem to have focused the mind of the Taiwanese. Why?
- [43:08]
Michael Sobolik
I think there's some genuine elements and then there's some very specific things to Taiwan's history. So generally, I look at how Taiwan has responded and I look at how we responded with COVID and I see some pretty eerie similarities. The virus came from China, and it's no mystery to anyone how the pandemic started, and yet there's been no American president. Either Biden or Trump have been terribly interested in holding China accountable for starting Covid. I think there's something about the human nature that is quite resilient in the face of a crisis, and the ability to survive by walling off trauma is something that humans are really, really good at doing. Unfortunately, that can happen geopolitically as well and at the national level in ways that in the short term are good, but in the long term mean that you're actually leaving yourself exposed to that very thing happening again. So generally, that dynamic, I think, is at play, but specifically for Taiwan, the military has a storied history in Taiwan in a bad way. We think of Taiwan as a democracy today, and rightly so, because they are. But the transition into democracy was quite abrupt. And Taiwan was a military dictatorship for a number of years from 1949, for decades on after that. And that history defines and clouds the military's reputation inside of Taiwan today, in Israel, military service and serving the reserves is not only mandatory, it is an honorable thing to do. It's part of coming of age, and you make a lot of friends that way. And it's this understood chapter of everybody's life. A lot of the nations on Russia's border, Poland is another great example of this. But in Taiwan, that culture is not there. And in our meetings, we brought up this point consistently, which is, you need to find a way not only to have a credible reservist program inside of your country, but you gotta find a way to make it an honorable thing to do to serve in the military, which is easier said than done, especially when you have that history. So I think that definitely colors some of it as well.
- [45:22]
Mike Warren
Can I ask Steve, since we're on Taiwan? There was this letter, Michael, that a number of senators, US Senators, signed to President Trump last week, and it's a bipartisan group, mostly Democrats, but a couple Republicans sign on as well, in which the senators said, quote, we urge you and your team to make clear that America's support for Taiwan is inviolable. They essentially list out a bunch of reasons why that should be the case, and urging President Trump essentially, to enter this summit with Xi with the mindset that, you know that we will not concede anything on Taiwan. Is this a perfunctory letter? Is there a sense that Taiwan is sort of on the negotiating table in these negotiations in a real way? What should we know about how realistic that is that would prompt these senators to write this letter?
- [46:13]
Steve Hayes
Sure.
- [46:13]
Michael Sobolik
So I Think what's behind that letter is, at least in part, this rumor that she is pulling together a huge investment package offer that he'll pitch to Trump when they sit down.
- [46:27]
Mike Warren
Right?
- [46:28]
Michael Sobolik
Probably in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars. And it kind of makes sense why he would do this, because Trump, when he does these tariff negotiations, is asking this of every single world leader. What's your commitment to invest inside of the United States? And if China were to have a package, I mean, however credible or incredible it would be, of a trillion dollars into the US Economy, I suspect that would get Trump's attention. Interestingly, this was a point we made in Taiwan in a number of our meetings. If you do back of the napkin math and look at per capita population relative to these investment offers, Taiwan's investment in the United States would actually be bigger on a per capita basis than China's, even if it was a $1 trillion, which is meaningful. And I hope that's something that the President remembers, not only because that is interesting, but also because when you talk about a commitment from China, you got to discount how likely it is that they're going to follow through on it, for all the obvious reasons. But I think that is. That's what's behind it. Another thing that's behind it is that Xi Jinping asked Biden for this exact same concession to come out in opposition of Taiwanese independence. And this is a microcosm of, I think, a lot of the stupidity around our Taiwan policy and the word games that we have played with Taiwan for a long time. Do we recognize them? Do we not recognize them? Do we have strategic ambiguity? What does strategic ambiguity actually mean? What does it not mean? People will parse the words of all these different communiques. Do we acknowledge China's claim on Taiwan? Do we recognize it? How meaningful are any of these diplomatic word games? The word game in this particular case stems from Clinton's administration, where one of the concessions he made would be that America would not support Taiwanese independence. But in true diplomatic speak, that doesn't mean that we oppose it. It just means we don't support it, which is this whole ongoing d of protecting the status quo. Strategic ambiguity makes sense when you have a power mismatch as great as we had in the late 70s and the 80s and the 90s and even the 2000s. I am in the camp right now that it at least makes sense to have a conversation of opening up the hood of the car and asking, is strategic ambiguity working today in 2026 as well as it has been historically because of the strength of the plaque, the investments they're making, the drills they're running with increasing regularity. And Xi is asking for this because he wants the narrative that Taiwan is alone, that America is never going to come to Taiwan's rescue. And I imagine that these members are tracking all these developments and they're registering their concern beforehand.
- [49:20]
Steve Hayes
I mean, hard to imagine the president who came up with depends on what the meaning of is is would come up with ambiguous language in and his foreign policy as well. Before we take an ad break, please consider becoming a member of the Dispatch. You'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes and all our exclusive newsletters and articles. You can sign up@thedispatch.com join and if you use the promo code roundtable, you'll get a month for free. And speaking of ads, if they aren't your thing, you can upgrade to a premium membership. No ads, early access to all episodes, two free gift memberships to give away, exclusive town halls with the founders, and much, much more. Okay, we'll be right back.
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- [51:03]
Steve Hayes
welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. I want to move to final discussion here on the specifics of this meeting. And I want to go back, Michael, to a a point that you made about what Marco Rubio has been saying, which sort of I think gives Perhaps the baseline U.S. position but notable that Donald Trump has not been saying it. And I would argue that while Donald Trump sort of made his bones brand in 2016 and to a certain extent, again, in 2020 and 2024, as a China hawk, and he's built a reputation as a China hawk. If you look at his rhetoric, it's not terribly hawkish. The president has repeatedly been friendly to Xi Jinping, to China in general. I think back to the point that you made on Covid, and what was so striking to me in those early days, when we knew nothing about the provenance of the virus, the pandemic, was President Trump again and again talking about how great Xi had been and how we could trust him. And he had said that they didn't do this. And it's sort of what. If you string together the. The praise that Donald Trump gave Xi Jinping at the beginning of COVID it is quite striking. And I look back at some comments that the president made just a couple days ago as he was previewing these meetings. I think we have that clip.
- [52:22]
Donald Trump
You have a very good relationship with President Xi. We've had a great economic time. China has been great for us economically, but not for other presidents. But we've done very well with China.
- [52:33]
Jonah Goldberg
China.
- [52:33]
Donald Trump
We're going to have a meeting with President Xi. It's going to be, I think, quite amazing. He's been a. Been a friend of mine. I got. I've gotten along with him very well over the years. We have had no problem, and we've had no problem with China and Iran. You know, everybody said, oh, China, China.
- [52:50]
Steve Hayes
Maybe we could dispute a number of those individual claims, but I would say, given the president's friendly rhetoric toward Xi and the fact that we know that President Trump, on a very personal level, likes to impress the people he's in front of, how much does that factor into these concerns about what the president might say? We know what the ask is going to be, right from Xi Jinping. The people you talk to in the administration, are they worried about that? I mean, Marco Rubio saying it is one thing, the President of the United States saying it and challenging the Chinese on this is quite another.
- [53:24]
Michael Sobolik
It will all come down to what Donald Trump decides in that moment. But I'll at least share. I had some conversations with folks in the Pentagon maybe a month or so, month and a half ago on this exact issue. And the definitively firm response was, we know they're gonna ask us about it, and, no, we're not gonna make this concession. That said, there is only one decision maker, and it will come down to what President Trump decides, and it's gonna come down to that conversation right now. I'll tell you, I'm less worried about Taiwan for the moment because they at least got a budget passed, which it's not what they needed to pass, but they at least got something done before the trip, which is good. I am watching very closely that potential investment agreement, whether it materializes, whether Chinese automobile manufacturers for electric vehicles are in that package, because if they are, it would probably signal the death of this, maybe slow, whatever timeline, but it would be a catastrophic event for American automobile manufacturers and Japanese. And Japanese as well. That's right. I'm also watching whether the president raises political prisoners, whether he advocates on behalf of folks inside of China like Pastor Ezra Jin, a Christian pastor in China, Jimmy Lai, Internet tycoon in Hong Kong, Gulshan Abbas, a Uyghur in Xinjiang, Pastor Gao and many others as well. This is something that, that I'm optimistic that he'll at least raise because he said he will raise a few of these cases. What he needs to do, I think, is leverage this because this is a pressure point for the party because they live in constant fear of the Chinese people by the nature of the system. So I hope that he leans in and gets some of these prisoners home, too.
- [55:15]
Steve Hayes
I think it's, I mean, look, the president has made a priority to bring prisoners home and he's sometimes aggressive in speaking about individual cases, cases. I wouldn't expect him, however, to make a broader case about China's human rights record, genocide, Uyghurs, any of those things. He typically doesn't do that at all. Well, There are about 750 other questions and topics that I wanted us to get to. We will have to return to this topic. Maybe after these meetings we'll reassess and talk about what in fact happened. But two things before we go, I want to get to Dispatch recommends and I need to bring you all in on a road trip by a government official here in the United States and get your thoughts that may or may not be worth our time. So first Dispatch recommends Mike Warren, what have you read in the Dispatch over the last few days that you'd like to draw listeners attention to?
- [56:08]
Mike Warren
Oh, all kinds of great stuff. But I really liked our colleague Nick Catoggio's American Dreamer newsletter from I think this was last Thursday about Marco Rubio as who we're speaking about and his 2028 campaign ad. Okay, not an official campaign ad, but a video that he or someone on his team developed after Rubio spoke and I think did perform quite well in front of the reporters in the White House press briefing room last week. And just that's an interesting exploration of where Rubio is politically ahead of the 2028 presidential election.
- [56:40]
Steve Hayes
Yeah, pretty perceptive to pick out that video and link it to future political ambitions. I didn't pick up on it before Nick wrote that, and then after Nick wrote that, it reframed the entire thing for me.
- [56:50]
Jonah Goldberg
Jonah an issue I am exceedingly concerned about given the context of all of this and that we've been talking about for the last hour, particularly vis a vis Taiwan. We have in Operation Epic Fury. Whatever you think about it, we've run through a lot of ordinance and magazine depth is a huge, huge issue. And we have a great piece by my friend and AEI colleague Mackenzie Eagle and running through just how bare our cupboard is in terms of munitions and how we need to do something about it. It's up today. It's a great piece, Michael.
- [57:28]
Michael Sobolik
I will plus one the exact same article from McKenzie. I think the window that we have in Iran right now makes a lot of sense given how weak the regime is inside of Tehran. We can talk about how poorly or how well the administration made the case beforehand, and I know that you guys have been doing that a lot on this show. Even if you support what's going on right now with targeting Iran when they're weak, there are trade offs, and the trade offs to our magazines and to our industrial weapons supply is significant when you look at the fact that we just do not have the ability to build these things as quickly as we used to. And we're lucky that the PLA is ridden with Persia's right now because they're operationally not quite able to exploit a window of opportunity in the Indo Pacific. But we shouldn't assume that posture is going to remain forever. So I would recommend McKinsey's piece as well.
- [58:28]
Steve Hayes
Yeah, I recommend it too. Mine is the latest Dispatch Markets where Kyla Scanlon looks at Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh and his longtime interest in making the Fed smaller. It's a fascinating read and it's accessible even for those of us who are not completely fluent in Fed speak. I highly recommend that I'm talking about you, Jonah. Specifically you. Before we get to not worth your time, I wanted to One quick follow up on the dispatch cruise discussion from last Thursday. Thank you for all of the feedback. We've gotten a lot of emails, we've gotten a number of comments. We're flattered that so many of you are interested in the possibility of a dispatch cruise. And while we're not ready to commit to anything just yet, I will let you know that the response compelled me to do some soft outreach exploring the possibility. So it's on our radar. We got a lot of fun emails about it, and one of my favorites came from Mike Kraft, picking up on Jonah's promise that if he were to do a cruise, he would be on his best behavior. And Mike writes, I presumed that Jonah knew his audience better. For me, the attraction of having dinner at a table with Jonah would be enhanced if he is not on his best behavior. If I didn't get cantankerous grumpy stream of consciousness Jonah, I would ask for a refund. Mike, I think if you come, you can count on grumpy stream of consciousness
- [59:59]
Jonah Goldberg
Jonah, if this podcast lasts much longer, you can count on them right here.
- [60:05]
Steve Hayes
I'll just bring you into some long meetings with me and you can do that. Finally, Michael made the point earlier that China looks at the 250th anniversary of the United States as cute. And I would just like to point out that China might look at it as even cuter if they are paying attention to the news out of the Department of Transportation last week, where Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, who was a reality television star decades ago, announced that he is filming or has filmed a five part reality television show with his family traveling across the United States. And their argument is that everyone should take a road trip to celebrate America's 250th birthday. Jonah, you're fond of taking road trips. Do you buy the argument that you have to see America to love America, which is the explicit case that they're making here, number one. And number two, would you have wanted to be invited on the Duffy family road trip?
- [61:20]
Jonah Goldberg
Okay, so you basically openly declared that you wanted cranky, cantankerous Jonah, so just shut the hell up for a second. First of all, my understanding is that this thing is kind of a grifter boondoggle where sponsors, quote unquote, sponsors get like free sort of product placement advertising while the friggin Secretary of Transportation is going around on an all expense paid trip on the taxpayer dime or at least away from his work. Right, okay, so there's that. Second of all, like, I'm reminded of the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine says, you know, I love stuffed crust pizza because it's going to be years before they figure out where to put more cheese on a pizza. The idea that we needed more sort of kayfabe infotainment, blurring of the lines between reality shows and governance. Like, I didn't think you could get more into It. But apparently you can, and Sean Duffy's our guy. Okay? So there's that. Put all that aside. I. Oh, the third political point. I'm sorry. Really frigging weird to recommend that everybody go on long road trips when gas prices are at, like, a generational high. Hey, let's remind everybody how craptacularly high gas prices are right now with a. With an infomercial on it. Okay? That aside, if you can afford it, and if you've already subscribed to the Dispatch with your disposable income.
- [62:44]
Mike Warren
Yes.
- [62:44]
Jonah Goldberg
I am a huge believer that to appreciate this country, you really need to drive around it. I mean, you can walk around places. It doesn't have to be a car, you know, but, like, it's so big, it's so vast, it's so diverse geographically, culturally, that I have driven across country one way or both. I don't know, 15 times in the last 20 years and lots of sub drives. I learned something new about this country. I relearned something new about this country every time. It is a vast, sprawling, cool, beautiful country. And I think, particularly people in our line of work who hang out inside the Beltway and do this kind of stuff, you lose sight of a lot. And just literally, physically driving around across this country, you realize why, like, people in Washington get all snippy when we see these polls where normal Americans can't name the members of the Supreme Court or can't tell you what this government body, whatever. And then you drive around and it's like, why the hell would I be thinking about Washington and politics if I lived here, right? It's a giant frigging country, and I don't think people appreciate it. And bonus, if you ever get a chance to drive around Alaska in the summer, highly recommend.
- [63:59]
Steve Hayes
Michael, being a millennial as you are, I'm guessing you did not watch the Real world Boston in 1997 where Sean Duffy sort of burst on the scene, or the later show where he met his wife, Road Rules All Stars. So two questions to you. One, are you a reality television guy? Even if you didn't see those, do you watch the Bachelor as sort of a thing for you? You, number one. And number two, is your family a road trip family? Do you do a lot of driving road trips, and will you, given the gas prices that Jonah mentioned?
- [64:36]
Michael Sobolik
So in the late 90s, I was just biding my time for the Phantom Menace to hit theaters. In 1999, I was a Star wars geek, and I was so happy when I saw Darth Maul with A double bladed lightsaber. But no, I was not aware of Sean Duffy when I was was at that age. I think I must have been at 11 years old in 1999. So I was not tracking Sean Duffy. And I have a personal. I've made a personal decision not to watch reality tv mainly because there's nothing real about it and I think it's quite stupid. It's all manufactured. And the viral moments that usually get a lot of traction from the Voice or from a lot of these shows, it's all pre decided what's going to happen in that scene before they shoot. So I guess the one exception would be Trading Spaces on tlc, which I watched for a season when I was in like middle school or high school. But aside from that, no, no. Reality tv.
- [65:32]
Mike Warren
Yeah, I want to hear if Michael is going on any road trips.
- [65:35]
Michael Sobolik
Yeah, we drive back and forth to North Carolina really frequently because my wife's family is down there. But we haven't ventured out for road trips longer than that with our five year old yet.
- [65:45]
Steve Hayes
All right, Mike Warren, is your favorite reality TV show, Love island, scripted the way that Michael suggests? All of these shows are scripted. And do you take your family on road trips?
- [66:00]
Mike Warren
It's real to me, damn it. That's my response to anybody who says that reality should. No, I mean I was, I think Michael and I are the same age. My reality TV was professional wrestling. So watching the WCW and the NWO and the Wolf Pack and all of that stuff, that's really where all this is. And I should say, like, in a way, Sean Duffy is sort of the most honest sort of manifestation of kind of Trump's idea of what government ought to be doing. It's basically like spokesmanship for the country. And like, why not return to his roots? Like that's kind of why he's there in the first place. Sean Duffy is. Go back to this reality tv. It's what he knows. And maybe it's the most honest use of that position. Even though I hate the idea of Sean Duffy and his. He has a very large family, by the way. Lots of kids in that family are going on a road trip on the taxpayer dime. We like road trips. Or I should say, I like road trips. My wife does not care for road trips. We have three kids. And our joke, which is not a joke, is that the worst of our kids on road trips is my wife. She's the one who like after about like four or five hours, she gets really antsy. She gets really angry about little things, you know, Little traffic stops and I could go forever.
- [67:14]
Steve Hayes
Do you have some more details that you can give us about just how unpleasant your wife is on road trips?
- [67:21]
Mike Warren
I've said too much. I've said too much. So my dream, of course, is to drive across the country. And I think our compromise, because marriage is all about compromise, is at some point in the next few years we will fly out west and do a bunch of the national parks and do a road trip, but with the base of being somewhere out west. So we're not driving from the east coast all the way out west. That's our compromise.
- [67:46]
Steve Hayes
Well, I've always wanted to do the big, you know, two, three month full family RV trip around the country. We have not done it yet. It remains a bucket list item for me. I'm determined to do it. I think my kids probably will be too old and not want to join me when I finally can, you know, have the time and the freedom.
- [68:04]
Mike Warren
That's right.
- [68:04]
Steve Hayes
And the money to do that, particularly if gas prices remain high. But I will say I'm less opposed to the Sean Duffy reality show certainly than Jonah. I take Mike's point that this is sort of going back to his. And of course Donald Trump sees the administration as a large television show. So this is sort of one, maybe a spin off of the Trump show.
- [68:25]
Jonah Goldberg
Again, explanations are not excuses.
- [68:28]
Steve Hayes
I hear you.
- [68:28]
Jonah Goldberg
Right. I agree with you. They think it's a reality show. That doesn't mean it's a good thing.
- [68:34]
Steve Hayes
But you know, Jonah, we talked about this before. I think you were on. If Sean Duffy's off doing reality TV shows with his family, he is not creating and spending the billion dollar slush fund to put gyms in airports, which he did at a press conference with RFK Jr. Where they, I think they were doing, doing pull ups and showing off their manliness. The more road trips he's doing, the less of that kind of stuff he's doing. And I think that's a net win for the country, for taxpayers.
- [69:11]
Mike Warren
Consider the opportunity costs.
- [69:12]
Jonah Goldberg
Possible. Possible, yeah. So one road trip story, when we first, my wife and I first started doing it, we first started doing it largely because my oldest sister in law has this fantastic place in the San Juan Islands and Washington state and we would go there, spend like August, stay in a guest house. It was fantastic. And the weather there in August is about as perfect as weather gets anywhere anyway. There are only a few routes inside a single state that will break you as a driver. The belt of Texas is obviously the biggest one, right? I mean the westernmost city in Texas is closer to LA than it is to the easternmost city in Texas and vice versa. But the top of Montana, which is longer than the bottom of Mont is another one. And then like north, south, California can kill you. But when we first started doing these drives, we had one of those old Garmin GPS things before phones did it all for you and all that. And every single time for 10 years when we would get to northern Montana, there would come a moment where the Garmin would say something like in 587 miles, stay straight. And I would always say to Jess, for hours I would make the same joke and she would never find it funny. It's like, remember, in three and a half more hours, don't turn. It's just, it's such a big country.
- [70:39]
Steve Hayes
So Michael, I think you and I win because neither one of us trashed our wives on the end of this podcast.
- [70:46]
Michael Sobolik
So it's a low bar.
- [70:48]
Jonah Goldberg
Yeah, I thought it was more self deprecating because I only thought it was funny.
- [70:52]
Steve Hayes
But anyway, okay, yeah, no, and I agree with Jess actually she shouldn't have left left.
- [70:58]
Jonah Goldberg
Certainly not the 20th time.
- [71:01]
Steve Hayes
All right, thank you all for joining. That was a very interesting discussion on China. We will revisit on the other end and see what we learn. Finally, if you like what we're doing here, you can rate, review and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help new listeners find us. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns or corrections, you can email us the end at at roundtable@the dispatch.com we read everything. Even the ones for people who don't want to go on a dispatch cruise. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in and thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible. Noah Hickey at Peter Bonaventure, thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.
- [71:48]
Jonah Goldberg
Sam.