Is China Leaving the United States Behind?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Foreign Affairs Interview

Episode: Is China Leaving the United States Behind?

Host: Dan Kurtz-Phelan
Guest: John Zinn (Brookings Institution, former CIA China analyst, NSC China Director)
Date: January 29, 2026

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Overview

This episode delves into the evolving U.S.–China rivalry, highlighting China’s assertive diplomacy, shifting U.S. policy under Trump’s second administration, and the strategic calculations inside the halls of power in Beijing. Host Dan Kurtz-Phelan interviews John Zinn, a seasoned China watcher, to unpack the motivations and tactics driving both countries—and especially how Chinese leader Xi Jinping is preparing for persistent, long-term competition with the United States.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Shifting U.S. Policy on China Under Trump 2.0

• The Trump administration began with tough rhetoric and intentions toward China but quickly shifted course after China’s rare earth export controls, described as "Liberation Day" by insiders.
• Initially, the U.S. saw Chinese economic weakness (especially real estate) as leverage, but Beijing’s resilience surprised Washington, resulting in a “climb down” and, in many respects, a more accommodating posture.
  Quote:

"We came in wanting to clobber them, and then we've gone totally in the opposite direction. I think after Liberation Day of really trying to mollify Beijing or even appease them..."
– John Zinn [07:04]

• The U.S. subsequently made substantive policy concessions, shifting from export controls to "export promotion" by persuading China to buy major U.S. tech products (e.g., Nvidia chips).

2. China’s Tactical Patience and Sense of Opportunity

• Zinn argues that China perceives "strategic flux" and opportunity in the current U.S. approach, using the period of “calm” to strengthen its own position for prolonged rivalry.
• Xi Jinping’s government believes "time is on China’s side" and is increasingly confident it can shape the international environment to its advantage.
  Quote:

"It says very explicitly in those documents that the international scene is favorable to us and we can take the initiative..."
– John Zinn [11:55]

• The U.S. distraction with other global hotspots (Latin America, Middle East, Greenland) gives China breathing room to press on its priorities, especially in the Indo-Pacific.

3. China’s Approach to Allies and Handling of Pathologies

• Rather than adopting a charm offensive toward U.S. allies, China has applied pressure (notably on Japan over Taiwan) to intensify allied dilemmas, pushing them to accept Beijing’s terms.
• China’s own economic pathologies (e.g., overcapacity) have paradoxically strengthened its international influence (huge export surpluses, competitive pricing), while U.S. dysfunctions impair American competitiveness. Quote:

"Our pathologies and our dysfunctions are making it harder for us to compete with China, whereas China's pathologies [are] actually... facilitating their presence on the global stage."
– John Zinn [21:32]

4. Leverage and Diplomacy: The Importance of Presidential Summits

• Beijing heavily values the symbolism and leverage of scheduled summits, seeing U.S. eagerness for meetings as a bargaining tool to restrain U.S. actions—since Washington is unlikely to escalate if a high-level meeting is at stake.

5. Xi Jinping’s Mindset, Evolution, and Systemic Risks

• Zinn details Xi’s evolution from relative obscurity to a transformative leader who deviated sharply from his predecessors’ consensus-driven style. Quote:

"This guy was going to be different. They were muted and they were subtle. But I think just the fact that he was a princeling, I think put him in a different position politically."
– John Zinn [26:53]

• Xi is deeply concerned with internal vulnerabilities—corruption, especially in the military, and a lack of oversight. His response has been an aggressive anti-corruption campaign described as shaking the Party’s deep structures.
• Xi is "obsessed" with learning from the Soviet Union’s collapse and the Arab Spring, investing heavily in security services to prevent similar outcomes.

6. Military Purges and PLA Reform

• Recent high-level purges in the Chinese military have marked a new phase: Xi is now targeting close allies and even powerful "princelings,” reflecting either supreme confidence or emerging paranoia. This centralizes his authority further but introduces risk. Quote:

"...Are we seeing Xi shift more toward a paranoid autocrat mode because he's going after people who are so close to him, and if he doesn't trust them, who is he going to trust inside the system?"
– John Zinn [49:56]

• Despite internal instability, PLA modernization and strategic tempo remain high.

7. Dueling Perceptions of Decline and Peak Power

• Both the U.S. and China view the other as “declining, decadent, but still dangerous”—mirroring each other’s anxieties about time running out, and each is wary of provoking a hasty crisis.

8. Technology Competition (AI, Semiconductors, Critical Minerals)

• While the U.S. is preoccupied with AI advances, China is more diversified, swiftly deploying tech into manufacturing and focusing on sectors including green tech and robotics.
• The Trump administration’s reversal on export controls (from restriction to promoting sales of less-advanced chips) is seen by Zinn as a significant strategic and negotiating error.

Quote:

"We've shifted from a policy of export control to one of export promotion... we've made these offers on Nvidia's H200 chips at the end of last year in exchange for nothing."
– John Zinn [55:59]

• U.S. government inertia on securing critical mineral supply chains stands as a microcosm of broader policy failure—diagnosing the problem for over a decade without decisive remedial action.

9. China as a Learning, Adaptive Organization

• Contrary to communist caricature, the CCP has become an “incredibly effective learning institution,” methodically studying and internalizing lessons from global politics and its own history.
• Xi triangulates information inside the opaque bureaucracy, seeking truth through competing perspectives (“yes, but men”), not just loyalists.
• Zinn notes the U.S. has reached a shared diagnosis of its competition with China but lacks mechanisms or political will to implement necessary (and expensive) structural reforms.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Xi’s Style:

  "He speaks in this kind of very slow, deliberate manner. He doesn't feel hurried. He knows everybody is hanging on his every word."
  – John Zinn [32:21]

• On U.S. Inertia:

  "How do we move from point A to point B? How do we pivot to Asia? We've been talking about this for a long time... but there seems to be a disconnect about how do we move from point A to point B."
  – John Zinn [61:13]

• Host’s Summation:

  "Misreading Xi Jinping is ultimately part of the failure to address the problems facing the United States itself, which I think is a really powerful closing point."
  – Dan Kurtz-Phelan [62:13]

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Key Timestamps

• [02:11] Assessing Chinese perceptions of U.S. policy flux
• [07:04] Shift in Trump’s China policy post–Liberation Day
• [11:41] Time as a strategic weapon—Chinese optimism about shaping the global order
• [18:34] China’s deliberate non–charm offensive toward U.S. allies
• [21:46] The symbolism and leverage of summit diplomacy
• [26:21; 32:10] Xi Jinping's rise, psychology, and personal leadership style
• [46:39] PLA purges and shifts in military centralization
• [53:49] Divergent U.S. and Chinese strategies in tech/AI
• [55:59] Export controls paradigm shift and its risks
• [58:49] U.S. policy inertia on critical minerals and military modernization
• [61:13] How/why the U.S. struggles to implement necessary reforms

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Takeaways

• China sees itself as increasingly empowered and biding its time while U.S. policy lacks clarity and urgency.
• Xi Jinping’s rule is marked by strategic confidence, obsession with internal discipline, and a willingness to break with collective leadership traditions.
• Despite challenges, China’s pathologies often accentuate its global leverage, while American dysfunctions diminish U.S. competitiveness.
• The U.S. must reckon with its policy inertia and the costs of true great power competition, learning (as Xi has) to close the gap between diagnosis and action.

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For more depth, including specific articles referenced, visit foreignaffairs.com.

Transcript

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

Dan I'm Dan Kurtz Phelan, and this is the Foreign affairs interview.

[John Zinn]

Our pathologies and our dysfunctions are making it harder for us to compete with China, whereas China's pathologies is actually in some ways facilitating their presence on the global stage.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

One of the big surprises of Donald Trump's second term has been the change in his approach to China. His first term marked the start of what seemed to be a hardline consensus in Washington. But in the past year, the drivers of Trump's policy have been much harder to decipher, including for Chinese policymakers. Beijing was prepared to respond forcefully to tough US Measures, as it has most prominently by wielding its control over rare earths. Yet it has also seen new opportunities to gain ground in its bid for global leadership. As Trump's focus careens from Latin America to the Middle east to Greenland, John Zinn has spent his career decoding the power struggles and ideological debates inside the halls of power in Beijing. Now at the Brookings Institution, Xin Long served as a top China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency before becoming director for China at the National Security Council. He sees Beijing's year of aggressive diplomacy as a success, with a lot of uncertainty about the months ahead. Xi Jinping faces a series of summits with Trump even as he grapples with economic challenges at home and the military that, if recent purges are any indication, is still not to his liking. I spoke with Zin about China's approach to Trump 2.0, what to make of the military purges and other developments in Beijing and the enduring nature of US China rivalry, whatever the surprises in the short term. John, thank you for joining me and for the slew of fantastic essays you've done for Foreign affairs over the past year.

[John Zinn]

Thanks so much, Dan. It's my pleasure to be here.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

You've spent probably as much time as anyone in the United States today trying to make sense of Chinese decision making and foreign policy, both in your time in the intelligence community and then on the National Security Council before you left government a couple of years ago. How, as you watch Xi Jinping and CCP leadership more broadly at this moment, how do you think they understand American policy towards China right now?

[John Zinn]

Yeah, I think right now I think they see a moment of real flux in our China policy and a moment of potential opportunity. Right. I think that especially as you saw in the National Security Strategy and in the national Defense strategy, there is much more muted rhetoric about China. This phraseology about being engaged in a strategic competition is not at the forefront of either of those strategies. Right. And I think from the Chinese side, I think they've recognized that there has been a paradigm shift in Beijing toward a more hawkish footing, Ironically, thanks very much in part to the first Trump administration, which really broke the seal on this pivot to a more competitive posture towards China. Their assessment is likely that this is not going last. This is going to prove to be ephemeral, and there will be a snapback at some point, either after the midterms or after Trump, toward a more hawkish perspective. And some of that is just ideologically baked into their system. Right. Like, I think it can be easy sometimes to go to Shanghai or some of these other cities in China and forget this is still a communist regime. Right. And they do view us, especially under Xi, through that very traditional Leninist prism where we are innately hostile to them. And I think that was true even before Xi. It was more subdued and muted. But I think that's at the forefront of their mind. And so I think now, especially in the next year or so, I think now they feel like they have an opportunity to do what they need to do to rectify some of the deficiencies that they still have and strengthen themselves for the next round of competition with the United States. I think the other thing that's going on, and I think this was very significant in the run up to the meeting between the two presidents in Busan when China rolled out this expansive rare earth export control regime.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

This was last fall. The meeting in this was last fall.

[John Zinn]

And just weeks before the two presidents were scheduled to meet in Busan for their first face to face engagement during Trump's second term. For that, to me, as somebody who's watched Xi for a long time, that very much felt like Xi shifting from being reactive over much of the past year and really for much of the past decade in many ways, to taking the initiative and switching from being on defense to being on offense with the United States. And again, this felt, to me, as somebody who's watched him for a long time, it felt a lot like Xi Jinping's first term. You know, where I and my colleagues, you know, we had many days ruined by Xi Jinping doing something we had not quite anticipated and him making big muscle movements on the international stage. And this, to me, feels much more like that. And I think the main way that it's manifested itself so far is not directly vis a vis the United States. I, frankly, have been a little surprised at how durable this rapprochement has been since the meeting between the two leaders. And I think that's intentional by China. I think they want to, like I said, strengthen themselves. But I think the way it's manifesting itself is how tough they've been on our allies and partners. Right. And especially the Japanese, where they've been very tough on the new Prime Minister Takaichi and reimposed export controls. Right. Because of her statements on Taiwan. So I think that presages a bumpy year potentially.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

I want to pick up on lots of those points. But just to linger on Trump for a moment, how do you understand what is going on with the Trump China policy? I think if we'd gone back a year, I won't project this onto you, but certainly I and a lot of other people watching US China policy closely assumed that a tough line on China would be a centerpiece of the Trump 2 foreign policy as it was with Trump 1. What's your read of what is happening?

[John Zinn]

Yeah, I mean, I think what's happened over the long arc of this year is I think they did come in very much with that intention. And if you rewind to about a year ago, it was quiet on that front. Right. Like I was referring to this time last winter as the phony war where there was skirmishing and some diplomacy. We had done a couple of initial cuts of terrorists, but the real engagement hadn't really gotten underway yet, and you didn't really have that until Liberation Day. And I think that the administration and you saw this in their public statements, they smelled weakness on the Chinese side, and I think inappropriately so. And I've had this theory that whomever briefed Trump about China and its economy early on in the administration must have led with the fact that China's real estate sector was the locus of all their economic problems, or many of them. Right. There would have just been a certain vividness to that. And so they came in, I think, wanting to be quite tough with the Chinese. And then I think what happened after Liberation Day, when China showed that it had the appetite to just ride this out and were willing to play hardball, I think it surprised many people in the administration. And I think they had to do a pretty significant climb down from that. I mean, there was a great line in the New Yorker profile of Marco Rubio where it said the president felt like he was checkmated because of the rare earths move. Secretary Bessen had talked about orchestrating some kind of coalition as we made trade deals with others, allies and partners, that China would then be the focal point of all that pressure. And that doesn't seem to have really materialized a full year later, like a little bit here and there, to be fair to the administration, like Mexico announcing tariffs. But other countries like Canada, of course, seem to be walking in the opposite direction right now. So I think the way I think about it is that there's kind of been a seesaw approach in our China policy. We came in wanting to clobber them, and then we've gone totally in the opposite direction. I think after Liberation Day of really trying to mollify Beijing or even appease them, we made concessions on export controls. It seems like we're shifting from a policy of export control to one of export promotion. Now with China, where we're trying to persuade them to buy Nvidia's chips, and with some, I think, some concessions on Taiwan, I think Taiwan is probably where we have the most picture in light of the $10 billion arms sale that was announced late last year.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

One of the other surprises of the second Trump foreign policy is the focus on the Western Hemisphere, Though I will note that Brian Winter wrote a great piece for Foreign affairs in December of 2024 predicting that Latin America would become a priority, though I think most of us have been surprised by just how true that has been. How have the Chinese interpreted and reacted to the focus on the Western Hemisphere, both in the national security strategy and national defense strategy, and also in our policy more broadly?

[John Zinn]

Yeah, I think it's really kind of a shoulder shrug from their perspective. And I think there's this theory that's floating around out there in some quarters that by focusing on the Western Hemisphere, this is actually the administration equipping itself to deal with China over the long term and to compete with China. And you see some people framing the move against Venezuela in particular through that prism. But I think from the Chinese perspective, they're very parochial and very disciplined about their own interests. This doesn't really affect their interests, and in a major way, it might be at most an inconvenience. But I think for them, the main thrust so far, and I think the main hope on their side is that this just gives them more space to focus on their own periphery on the Indo Pacific. Right. I mean, they've been able, like I said earlier, they've been able to push Takei pretty hard with a pretty muted response from the administration at this point. They conducted a pretty major military exercise around Taiwan at the end of last year, again with a pretty muted response from the US side. So I think they feel like this focus on other parts of the world plays to their benefit and that's traditionally how they see these things. If we are distracted with other issues, whether it's the Middle east or with Latin America, that's fine. I mean, what they don't want, of course, is it to be inimical to their interests and their commercial interests in the region. You see that playing out in the way they've tried to play hardball on things like the Panama Canal and the Chinese company that's involved in that. But again, it doesn't seem like there's a concerted effort underway from the administration to focus on economic development in Latin America or things that would really pose a challenge to a lot of the Chinese firms that are just doing business in China and that are really the centerpiece of their inroads into the region.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

On a previous episode of the podcast, Robert o', Brien, who was Trump's national security adviser in the first term, argued that what was driving the rapprochement was a recognition on the part of the Trump administration that there are too many other problems in the world, there's too much else going on. And it made sense to calm things on the US China front in order to give the US Some space to deal with these other things. Do you think there's anything to that? Is there anything to that logic, or is that an attempt by a former official to put lipstick on a pig, essentially?

[John Zinn]

A little bit. I mean, in fairness, there is a lot going on in the world, but a lot of that, especially over the last month or so, is of the administration's own making. Right? These are not exogenous shocks to the system. Greenland is not something that anybody had on their bingo cards last year. Venezuela has been a longstanding and festering concern, but not kind of a top tier geopolitical challenge for the United States. And so I think it's hard to make that argument. You know, like when I was detailed to the National Security Council during the Biden administration, there was also a lot going on, right? You had Russia's invasion of Ukraine, you had the attacks against Israel by Hamas, of course, but there was still a focus on China. I think there was a sense that this was the long term challenge and that we needed to be disciplined and methodical and not lose sight of that over the long term. Because if that is the case, I think that very much plays into Chinese statecraft and diplomacy. I get this question sometimes about when is the next crisis going to be with China, when are the guns going to start firing? And I think that gets the whole problem set wrong. Their approach is much more Insidious. They want to avoid a crisis, they want to engage in these salami slicing tactics. Pick your metaphor. So things don't come to a head and there is some kind of full blown crisis. If we give them that space, that gives them space to do their own thing and again, pursue their own interests pretty vigorously. I think so. I think it's a challenge. But if you give ourselves the space, you're also giving China the space. And I think that is just the reality of the trade off. And I don't think you can really walk away from that.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

A line that jumped out to me in one of your recent pieces for Foreign affairs was this notion that in Xi Jinping's mind, time is really on China's side, that some kind of calm on Beijing's terms in fact gives China the space to get stronger over time. And that contrary to some of the kind of peak China discourse that has characterized the US China conversation, that they really do see their prospects improving over time.

[John Zinn]

Yeah, I think that's right. And I don't think it's just a tactical point because of this pause right now between the two sides. You saw that reflected in the documents coming out of the Chinese Communist Party plenum just a week before the two presidents met. And it says very explicitly in those documents that the international scene is favorable to us and we can take the initiative, which is kind of remarkable for the Chinese side. They tend to be much more reactive and want the other side to make the first move. So that is Xi's guidance to the party state for the next five years, that we can take the initiative to shape the international environment. I think it shows just how confident they're feeling at the end of this first year of the Trump administration, where they're really not isolated. I want to dwell for a second too, if I may, on the point about peak China, because I feel like that was part of the zeitgeist that fed the Trump administration's mindset coming in and why they thought there was weakness. Yes, there was a weakness in the economy. And I think there had been a lot of bearishness on Wall street, which is where, of course, Secretary Bessen came from, about China's economy in the wake of the pandemic. And you also had this idea that China was peaking. I think the irony for me, as somebody who follows the Chinese side very closely, is they have an analogous theory about us, I would argue. Right. And again, it gets back to this ideological prism for viewing the United States. I mean, it could be Lenin from 100 years ago, they view us as a declining, decadent, but still very dangerous power. And so I think from their perspective, that theory that Hal Brands and Mike Beckley had, you could turn it on its head and represent that as the Chinese perspective, that time is not on the US Side anymore, that we recognize that. And because we recognize time is not on our side, we are going to lash out in more violent and unpredictable ways. And I think they would point to things that the Trump administration has done over the past year, but like the strikes against Iran, like the raid against Maduro, as exactly evidence of that.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

These are the kind of flailing, desperate attempts of a declining power to establish something.

[John Zinn]

Exactly, exactly. So. And again, it gets to this other argument out there that's floating around in some quarters that what we've done over the past year, these strikes demonstrate the vim and vigor of US Foreign policy and how we've been reinvigorated under the Trump administration. But I think from the Chinese perspective, I see very little evidence of that, that this has really caused them to recalculate or reassess their interpretation of Trump. And I think that's true for Xi in particular. I mean, it's worth recalling that when they did their summit nearly a decade ago at Mar a Lago, there was that famous scene, right, where Trump told Xi about the strikes on Syria over a beautiful piece of chocolate cake. So this predilection for unpredictable violence, I think that's already baked into Xi Jinping's calculations. It's not really going to send him scrambling.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

I do have to think, if I were sitting in, I don't know, the PLA office say, watching just the capabilities of the US Military, sometimes against Chinese or Russian defense systems, and then also watching the Russian experience in Ukraine, they do have to have some degree of reinforced respect for US Military capabilities in that scenario, I imagine.

[John Zinn]

I think that's right. And again, it gets to their assessment of us. They do see us as declining over the longer term, but still incredibly dangerous. And especially the US Military, I mean, the proficiency they've showed in that Maduro decapitation or what they did with Iran, I think that reinforces the assessment in Beijing. But I think the really interesting question from the US Policy side, then, is what does that lead them to do? They've already got the most dramatic military modernization since World War II underway. They've already gone back to the gym to bulk up. If they redouble their efforts, what is that going to mean for the United States over the longer term? If they keep assessing that the bar is quite high for them to achieve their modernization goals, and they keep building more and more options.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

Do you think that Xi Jinping's sense of assurance, sense of confidence about the coming years is warranted?

[John Zinn]

I think he recognizes that it's going to be challenging, that it's not going to be smooth sailing. I do think some of it is warranted, and I think part of it is because I think he has a realistic appraisal of what's going on inside China. And part of it, for Xi, is generational. This is a guy whose professional career really started after 1978, after reform and opening up. So all he's known his entire adult life is a China that's recovering from the male years and is on the rise and is on the move. And so I think that sense of confidence about China's place in the world and the trajectory they're on, I think it's quite sincere. And to the extent that there are real problems in the economy, whether it's with involution or overcapacity or the problems they were having in the real estate sector, I think they have demonstrated an ability to recognize those problems. And that's one of the things that's really disconcerting to me as an American is that they're able to say we have a problem, and then we're going to marshal resources and focus on remedying it. And I think Xi has done that reasonably effectively over the course of his tenure, even when it's been really painful and challenging for the political and economic system. And I think there's this tendency sometimes to frame assessments in the United States as being binary. Either China is going to surpass us, or it's a pipe dream and they're never going to, or they could potentially even fall apart. I think the reality is that even if they get kind of a gentleman's B on the homework that she has assigned the party state over the next few years, they're still going to be a formidable competitor. Right. I think it's time to stop talking about them as a rising superpower. They've arrived, and it's kind of like the United States. We can have a recession and still be a superpower. They haven't had a recession yet on the Chinese side, or not quite bracketing the pandemic. They haven't had that. They have had a slowdown. That's still 5% economic growth. I think they can have a few quarters, even a few years of slower economic growth, and they're still going to be formidable as a power and still pose a multifaceted challenge to the United States. So I think to just have that recency bias and just point to bad economic data over a few quarters or just point at the top line numbers for the challenges, it doesn't really capture what they're trying to do to fix that and what's going on under the hood and what this is going to mean over the long term. Even if it is as bad or as worse as some people think it is, this is still going to be a formidable challenge to us. And it behooves us not to underestimate them. Right. We run a greater risk of underestimating China, and I think we have many times over the past few decades than going in the other direction.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

If I wanted to argue the pessimistic case, the case against that assurance, one thing that has been really striking over the past year, even with speeches like Mark Carney's about, and Canada's, of course, economic rapprochement with China in recent, recent weeks, striking that China in some ways kind of never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity here. That even when the US Is alienating allies, China seems to not be able to restrain parts of its system from whether it's doing military exercises or, you know, dumping exports into markets that are suddenly more vulnerable because UBS tariffs that you know a moment when you can imagine them putting on a charm offensive and really bringing former US Allies and partners closer to China. Parts of the system and the domestic economic needs make that very, very hard to do for them.

[John Zinn]

Yeah, yeah. And you're right. I mean, I think after Liberation Day in particular, I think a lot of analysts expected there to be some kind of charm offensive with US Allies and partners since it was an omnidirectional trade war and that never really materialized. So my theory on this is that that is not by accident. This is not just the Chinese system tripping over itself. I think it's an intentional strategy over the past year, and it's not how we would do things in the United States where we would take an opening to then ingratiate ourselves. I think what they are trying to do with the Europeans in particular, but I think with our allies and partners along their periphery, is they are trying to intensify the conundrum of our allies and partners and show them they don't have good options. And if you want to have alternatives to the United States, you better come around to our perspective on a variety of issues. So I asked a Chinese academic who's very well connected in Beijing about this a few months ago. And his answer about this was really striking. He said, aren't you guys worried about pushback from the Europeans or some kind of fallout, given the way you've treated them over the past year? And his verbatim response was, so what? What are they going to do about it? They're going to complain to the Trump administration? Are they really going to help them? And I think what we're seeing now, actually, is that the Chinese play seems to be working. Carney has come around, he's trying to make deals with the Chinese, and you're even getting inklings from the Europeans that they want to come around. Macron was talking about welcoming more Chinese investment. Right. So it's not necessarily that the case that they think over the long term and over centuries and dynastic cycles. I think it's more about just being patient a year. If we do days and weeks, they tend to do more months and years in their thinking. And I think that does give them an advantage. And I think if you're in Beijing, what happened at Davos and the appetite among our allies for an alternative or to diversify away from the United States, I think it kind of demonstrates to them that their approach is working. There's one other point I want to make, Dan, just to tie into your earlier question, too, if I may. I think one of the things that's going on that plays to China's favor, too, is that there is really deeply rooted dysfunction in the system, as I argue in one of the pieces. I think one of the things that's really striking to me now in this moment is that the way China's dysfunction is playing out actually magnifies their international influence. This problem with involution and overcapacity, yes, it's a reflection of a real problem, but the net result of it is that they have a $1.2 trillion surplus that doesn't really seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. And Chinese economists will say as long as there's robust demand in the west, this dynamic is going to continue. You can create tariffs, but our companies are so competitive and pushed costs down so quickly that this dynamic is going to continue even if it decelerates. And on the flip side, what they offer for a remedy in light of that dynamic is they say if you want to really rectify the numbers or reduce the trade imbalances, you should welcome more Chinese investment, which also enhances their geopolitical heft, too. And it's a really jarring contrast with the west, where, yes, we have our own dysfunctions and pathologies, clearly right now they are inhibiting our ability to compete with China. To get back to the Robert and Brian point, our pathologies and our dysfunctions are making it harder for us to compete with China, whereas China's pathologies is actually in some ways facilitating their presence on the global stage.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

I was struck by another point in a piece you referenced in November about the leverage that Trump gave up by publicly committing to doing three meetings or saying he was going to do three meetings with Xi Jinping. And in 2026, why are those presidential meetings so symbolically important to the Chinese leadership? And when you look ahead to what we assume will be the first of those meetings when Trump goes to China in April, what does Xi Jinping want from that meeting?

[John Zinn]

Yeah, I mean, they're consequential because I think what China recognizes that for both systems, it's going to inhibit on the US Side our appetite for taking competitive actions or doing things that could jeopardize those meetings. And so they know it gives them leverage because they haven't confirmed it on their side. So if things start to get hot, they can always, well, maybe we won't do the meeting. And somebody is going to have to tell the president that his meeting that he seems very attached to could potentially go sideways because of something that happened at the Commerce Department or elsewhere. And their theory seems to be vindicated by events. Right. There was reporting saying that Stephen Miller was going to be the commissar enforcing discipline on the US Side, that there would be no major competitive actions towards China. And I think that is what she wants. And I think this gets to a deeper imbalance in the relationship that. That really spans administrations, which is that the US Side often wants a laundry list of things from China, whether it's help with Iran during the JCPOA process, help on the North Korea issue, help dealing with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And from the Chinese side, I think they want us to get out of their way, and I think that is a win for Xi. There are other affirmative things that he wants. I think he would welcome greater access to the US Market. I think they know they still need US Technology and know how to. And so you do see elements of that. But even with that, they're being very coy about it right now. You see how this is playing out with Nvidia, Right. And there is a debate, is this just a negotiating tactic or is this real? And it's probably a little bit. A little bit of both. In all honesty, they're not, they're not mutually exclusive. So I think, I think that really gives China a lot of leverage. They want time.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

The point there being they both seem to be signaling some desire for chips, but also then instructing companies to buy as few of them as possible. And that's the.

[John Zinn]

Exactly. I think the divergence here is that the companies really want the chips because it makes sense for them from a business perspective. But I think there is some real hesitation among different parts of the apparatus, of the state apparatus about should we welcome it. And either way, it's proved to be an effective negotiating strategy. Right. Because it seems then they're holding out for more and more advanced chips from the Chinese side. So it's just really interesting. So I think there's actually very little that they want from the administration at this point.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

We'll be back after a short break.

[John Zinn]

What if you could explore places in.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

The news like a reporter does?

[John Zinn]

I'm Nicholas Wood, a former journalist with.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

The New York Times and BBC. And 15 years ago I created the travel company Political Tours.

[John Zinn]

Our small group trips led by top correspondents around the globe.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

Taiwan, Turkey, NATO's front line with Russia. Just some of the issues we're exploring. Next year we'd like you to come and join us. To find out more, go to politicaltours.com that's politicaltours.com.

[John Zinn]

Join the world's top industry executives, policymakers and thought leaders at saraweek. The preeminent gathering on the future of energy, saraweek offers insights into the converging trends in competing forces that are shaping energy and geopolitics. With participants from 85 countries, Sarah Weekes dialogues navigate the state of markets, technology, finance, supply chains, climate policy, infrastructure and the energy workforce.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

And through shared learnings, chart the path ahead.

[John Zinn]

Saraweek 2026 from March 23 to 27 in Houston, Texas. For information and to register, please visit saraweek.com.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

And now back to my conversation with John Zinn. If you'll let me indulge in a flashback here, I'd love to go back a couple decades, as opposed in your career when you were a CIA China analyst. I think watching Xi Jinping when there were not that many people doing so, this was before he had come to power. And you again, we're one of the people watching most closely as our understanding of who he was and what he would mean for China and the U.S. china relationship changed. I'm just really interested to hear how your understanding developed and when you started to see that this wouldn't be kind of continuation of what we'd come to expect from Chinese leaders earlier and why it took so long for the rest of the American system to really process that.

[John Zinn]

Yeah, I mean, I think there was a real expectation. There were kind of two big expectations about Xi. I think kind of in the public domain during that period was when he was heir apparent. I think one baseline expectation was that he might just be hu jintao 2.0. This is going to be another wonky, technocratic guy who seems like a cipher from the outside, and we don't really know a lot about him. And he's just going to continue to pursue the Deng legacy. And then I think because so little was known about him, there was also this other mode that you saw in some places where he became a vessel for some people's hopes that he would reinvigorate a reform agenda in China that had in many ways stalled. Called under Fu Jintao, his predecessor. You had people on the Chinese side throwing around this term whose rule had been a lost decade. They were really living off of the fumes of the reform efforts from the previous era in the late 90s and early 2000s under Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji. I think watching Xi closely, though, I think there were clear indications early on that this guy was going to be different. They were muted and they were subtle. But I think just the fact that he was a princeling, I think put him in a different position politically. I think he knew had a better sense of the political system and how it was really wired in a way that neither Jiang Zemin had when he was thrust into the top job amid the Tiananmen crisis, or Hu Jintao really did. And I think if there was any doubt during the period when he was the heir apparent, I think we very quickly got a taste within Xi's first year of office of just how different he was going to be. I think the challenge for a lot of people was just trying to keep up with him because he was breaking so many of the old rules of the game of Chinese politics by going after former Politburo Standing Committee members and Central Military Commission members. I mean, I think people kind of forget or kind of assume that this is a police procedural where there's corruption, and then you pursue the corruption case to its natural conclusion. But that's not how it works in China. This is like going after made men and living to tell about it. Right. Especially in the security services and the military. These are the guys who control the guns. They're at the heart of the Party's control of the system. And I think when he started making those moves, I think that's when the ice started to break and people started to have this real realization that this guy is not the same as what we saw before. And I think you saw a similar appetite for risk on the international stage too, where he was making big muscle movements like the Belt and Road initiative, or. I think the one that really captured people's attention and imagination was what he did in the South China Sea. I think that was when a lot of people who are not part of the China watching community really had the realization, number one, that Xi is different. And number two, that when people say China is a long term strategic challenge, this is what they mean. They have the capacity to make these big muscle movements that are inimical to US interests. And I think that was really when it became indisputable in that kind of 2014, 2015 period that we were dealing with a different animal.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

I'm so interested in the epistemology of this and realizing that when you were at CIA, you had access to signals and human intelligence, that that made this job easier in many ways, although probably harder in some ways as well. How you went about developing this picture and how much harder it's gotten now, not just because you're out of government, but because the opacity of the system, the lack of kind of connectivity between the two societies. How do we develop these theories? And what are the kind of pitfalls in trying to paint that picture of someone where you don't get to spend a lot of time talking to them about their worldview?

[John Zinn]

Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think the most important ingredient is just time and just watching this guy for a long time. And I think the key thing is, in my mind, there's been kind of a cottage industry of people who are focused on Xi's utterances, which is appropriate and part of the Pekingology. But from my perspective, you've really got to watch what he does more than what he says and watch him over the years, because I think there is kind of a certain logic and coherence to what he's doing. It's not just about the text, it's about the context. It's about what is he doing and why and what kind of system is he operating in. And so that is really one of the important ways to try to make sense of him, you know, to go back to that moment right after Xi took power, just to make it a little bit more concrete. And when he started making these big moves in the anti corruption campaign going after what the Chinese call tigers in their system. My operating picture of Xi Jinping is that it's like when an electrician comes to my house, right? He understands the wiring that's behind the wall and he knows which wires he can clip safely and which one are going to zap him, which I could not do. Right. I would be zapped. And I think Xi as a princeling, this is part of his heritage that's intuitive. He understands those networks in the system in a way that Hu Jintao or Jiang Zemin wouldn't have. And this is why he's able to do it and do it safely and do it with impunity. But you kind of build out this picture over time as you watch him do these things and succeed in doing them, or watching him recalibrate when he does hit some kind of roadblock. So I think it's less about evaluating any piece of data in a vacuum and more about building a composite picture of this guy over time. Because I think it's kind of a mistake to say, oh, well, he's just a cipher, he's inscrutable. This guy's been on the world stage for a long time. We actually know quite a bit about his background, his family history, and I think there's a lot you can say about him based on that.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

Did you have the chance to be in the room with him when you went from the intel side to the policymaking side in the Biden years?

[John Zinn]

Yeah, I did. And unfortunately, when I started at the nsc, it was still the throes of COVID So a lot of those interactions were either telephonic or the zoom where it happens kind of moment. So the one time I was really able to see him in person was when President Biden and President Xi met on the margins of the G20 in Bali in 2022, which was quite a moment for me as somebody who had spent my whole adult life studying this guy, to actually see him in the flesh.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

What surprised you about seeing him? Did it change your understanding of what he was like in any way?

[John Zinn]

Not really, in all honesty, and I don't want to claim prescience, but he was very much what I thought he would be. And especially in that moment. Keep in mind, too, we did that meeting right after the party congress where she had really cleaned house in the leadership, evicted Henry Rump remnant of his former rivals faction inside the system, and it was really his own guys at the top. So he just exuded confidence.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

This is just after he had Hu Jintao marched out of the.

[John Zinn]

Yeah, exactly. Hu Jintao has marched out. She looks on totally impassively. Stone Cold. And I think in that moment, he was feeling very large and in charge, right. And very good about himself and about his position. And so that confidence, I think, came through. And I think even in the way he comports himself and carries himself, I mean, you know, I've seen a lot, you know, many hours of clips of him, how he comports himself in these Central Committee meetings or when he gives a speech. He speaks in this kind of very slow, deliberate manner. He doesn't feel hurried. He knows everybody is hanging on his every word. And that's very much how he is in person, too, right. That there's this certain confidence. I think what's striking about him, too, is that, again, I'm very mindful of the princeling heritage, right. The fact that his father was. Was a big deal in their system. And he had these references that I think are kind of esoteric for most Western audiences about the Communist Party's history. Very much front of mind, Right. And I think he demonstrated a proclivity to frame things that way and to make analogies and say, this is like this moment in our history and CCP's history. And so that was very unsurprising. So I think that sense of history and that sense of confidence, those were two important props in my understanding of Xi Jinping. And I think those were. Were in evidence in the. In the opportunity I had to see him actually in action.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

And so he would be talking about CCP history and leaving kind of Joe Biden just kind of scratching his head with confusion, I imagine.

[John Zinn]

Well, my job was to make sure the boss wasn't scratching his head, Right. So hopefully there was none of that. But. Yeah, but I think unless you were a specialist or somebody who really focused on these things, I think there were some moments where these are not offhand references for a Western audience.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

You have a fantastic opening line in your fantastic essay in our November December issue called China Against China, where you write, 13 years after Xi Jinping ascended to the top of China's leadership hierarchy, observers in Washington remain deeply confused about how to assess his rule. If we're getting him wrong. Now, if you're getting him wrong, how do you think you might be getting him wrong? If we're making a fundamental error right now, what would we be missing?

[John Zinn]

So I think there's a few different ways. I mean, if the problems in the economy are much worse than we appreciate, and there is some kind of really significant contraction in China's economy. That could be one way where it kind of knocks them out of the running. But even then, I think there's probably a floor on it. I don't think there's going to be some kind of total collapse of the economy. I think they probably still will have the resources to, number one, get through it and be a formidable rival to the United States over the longer term. They just have that. I think at this point, I mean, the one people always worry about, and I think, especially in my line of work, is about the underlying stability of the system, which is hard to gauge from the outside. So it seems very robust. Xi has invested a lot in the security services, which people like Sheena Greitmans have done a wonderful job documenting over time and Minshin pay. And so it seems very robust. And I think she has real confidence that he has a handle and a grip on the society. But that is always, you know, kind of the trillion dollar question about is there more fragility built in than. Than we're seeing from the outside? But again, I. I think that they have a pretty good handle on things. And I think this is one of the ways in which we've gotten China more wrong than right over time. Right. I feel like people have been predicting the collapse of the CCP since I started doing this. And even if there is real decay in the system, right. Rome didn't fall in a day. It takes time for these dynamics to play out. And I think she, again, one of the virtues that he has as a ruler is that he is not just focused on these problems in the system and their deficiencies. I think he is obsessed with them. They have studied closely what happened to Gorbachev and the Soviet Union. And I think he is preoccupied from the first day of his administration about not going that way. Same thing with the Arab Spring, which happened right after he took over the number two job in the military. I think that really spoke to him and I think that's why there's been such a focus on rooting out corruption in the pla, because I think a lot of these, not just analysts, but I think a lot of rulers in the Middle east thought that they had a strong grip on the security services and they had what they needed in place, and then that all just melted away in the face of mass protests. So I think that has fed Xi's preoccupation with the security services and with the military over time, making sure that that does not happen.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

You note this moment in the essay where Xi returns to Beijing to become Hu Jintao's number two, to become the heir apparent from. Remind me where he was was prior to 2007. He was.

[John Zinn]

He was in Shanghai.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

He was Shanghai at that point, briefly. So he comes back and kind of sees a system that has succeeded in many ways, but where there's this kind of rot, there are problems of success. Describe that moment and what as you understand it, he saw as these kind of vulnerabilities that had crept into the system over the preceding years.

[John Zinn]

Yeah, I mean, I think the two big obvious ones, especially in retrospect, are really the corruption and then the insularity of the military in particular and what had happened there. So the corruption is kind of the obvious one. And the way I think about it is that there was this notion floating around in the west for a long time that as China experienced this economic growth, surely there would be a rising bourgeoisie or middle class that would want a greater role in Chinese politics. The irony is that the Chinese also appreciated this, right? And the party appreciated this dynamic too, which is why under Jiang Zemin, they had this very clunky ideological phrase, the three representatives, where they basically co opted those business elites. So they solved one problem and they solved it extremely effectively by bringing those people into the party and neutralizing that threat. The problem is that now you had this marriage of wealth and power inside the CCP that didn't exist before. And yes, corruption had always been a problem in China endemic. And it had been a problem in earlier phases of the reform era. But I think this really accelerated it. And I think Xi knew that from being out in the provinces. And he probably got an extra view into it when he was in Beijing because he would have just had kind of a stovepipe view of it, that it was bad here in Shaman or it was bad in Fujian, but he would have had a bird's eye view once he got back to the top. And then I think with the military, there were obviously deeply rooted corruption issues within the military. But I think what may have been just as troubling, if not more so for Xi, is just how insular it is. Right. Especially for somebody who grew up as the son of Xi Zhongshun, who had cross cutting ties across both the party and military elite because he had been a leader in China's civil war that didn't really exist. And I think Hu jintao throughout his 10, he didn't have the network inside the PLA. He never really got his arms around. And I think it's hard to appreciate from the outside, you know, the pla, even within China's Communist Party, is kind of the sprawling high tech empire unto itself. That's really impenetrable from the outside. Right. There's no kind of oversight from Capitol Hill like we have in the United States. There's no army of think tankers who are military analysts and specialists the way that you have in Washington. There's not an office of the Secretary of Defense that's largely populated with civilians. There's nothing. There's really one node of civilian control and that runs through the chairman and if there's an heir apparent, the Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission. And I think that was probably very troubling to Xi in a lot of ways. And I think because again, because of that princeling heritage, I think he had insight into what was going on inside the PLA because of his network. Like there was a really famous speech at the time that was given by one of his fellow princelings where he said, and we've built a lot of impressive capability over the last couple of decades inside the pla, but we have a real issue with corruption. And we're at a point now where only our own corruption can defeat us.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

And the shift from this kind of consensual collective leadership to much more centralized control under one person was Xi's attempt to. Or a recognition that it would take that kind of stronger figure, that kind of assertion of dominance in order to break through these pathologies.

[John Zinn]

Yeah, I think that's right. And there's this school of thought that there was a consensus that China needed a stronger leader. Right. Somebody who had their hand more firmly on the till. But I don't think the people who ended on the opposing side of that were necessarily part of that consensus. I think Xi had an opening, and I think what he really did was take a crowbar to it and pry it wide open and give himself a lot of space. And I think for a system like this, this is endemic. And I think I make the point in this piece. This is an observation that goes back to Aristotle about the way oligarchies function, that they tend to be subject to both centripetal and centrifugal forces. So when things get too loose and you're too much in this collective leadership, things start to stall, the system starts to stagnate. And the natural reaction is not to move towards a more Western liberal system with checks and balances, it's to go into the opposite direction and to try to centralize power and clean house. So I think that impulse from Xi Jinping. I think it was there, and I think that there was a happy convergence in his mind of the party's interests and of his own interests. This is good for me, and it's also good for the party to concentrate this power in my own hand, because having this loosey goosey collective leadership approach is leading to rot. And I think some of that is actually built in. Right. If your theory is that we're going to have this collective leadership model, we're going to have a balance of power at the top, what does that mean? It means you're going to have a more stovepiped approach. And the way you're going to have something resembling checks and balances on the top leader is that you're going to have this kind of factional infighting festering beneath the surface. And I think that's kind of what we learned. That's exactly what was going on underneath the hood during Kujintao's administration. So even that kind of collective leadership model is going to be inherently rickety in this kind of system.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

One of the really surprising but persuasive points in that essay is that the ccp, especially under Xi Jinping, has, quoting you here, demonstrated itself to be an incredibly effective learning institution. How did that come about and how does that learning work? It obviously doesn't have kind of democratic feedback, but. But it has found other ways to do that, perhaps more effectively than we have.

[John Zinn]

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it. This is part and parcel of the reform era, where you have this effort to systematically study and break down problems. And I think this is where something like Joseph Tyrigian's biography of Xi's father is really helpful. You really get this sense of these major figures. In the 80s, they didn't have a game plan. What they were doing was unprecedented in many ways. I mean, they had a little bit of a model from some of the other economies in the region that had developed, but they were really groping through this. This. I think it's really probably after the collapse of the Soviet Union, right, where there's this preoccupation obsession by the party about studying this moment over and over again and revisiting it and debating it to make sure that that does not happen to the ccp, kind of the last man standing, if not in an absolute sense among communist powers in the world. How do we prevent that from happening? And so they do have this whole apparatus, I think a lot of it located at the central Party school, but also throughout these other government affiliated think tanks, to think through these problems and to be deliberate about them and to study other systems and how they function and make sure that they are applying those lessons internally and kind of, to use their clunky phraseology, they're sinusizing them. How do we take a little bit from here and there? And that's kind of been the story of their whole reform effort. How can we take what's worked on a Western factory floor and apply it here? How can we take a little bit of maybe what's worked in Singapore's political system and apply it here? And so they've been very methodical about doing that. And I think about institutionalizing a lot of that.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

After watching the failure of Putin's initial plan in Ukraine and coming to understand that he was surrounded by yes men who would kind of nod along when he declared his intentions and not tell him how much rot there was and how much harder it would be than he thought. A lot of people assume that the same was true of Xi Jinping, that there was no one around him to tell him that an invasion of Taiwan might not work that well or the economy was suffering as much as it was. Is it your sense that he gets good information and that people around him can tell him the truth about policies going badly? What's your sense of that dynamic? To the extent we know.

[John Zinn]

So my sense of him, again, I think this is as somebody who grew up in the system and took over the family business. I think he knows that he's going to get yes mend that when he looks around that room, everybody's going to tell him what he wants here. So again, my mental model from watching him over time, because we do see him recalibrate and adjust policies over time, is that he triangulated. It's not necessarily that he's getting good information, but I think he gets people in some kind of setting where they can maybe speak more freely or tell them what they think. And then he triangulates that if I ask one guy what he thinks about the situation, I ask somebody else that's going to give me some kind of picture of what's actually going on. And you see this among all kinds of shrewd politicians. This is how FDR ran the bureaucracy during the New Deal in World War II. This kind of constant gamesmanship and triangulating, it's different in an authoritarian system, of course, and it's more intense. But I think that is part of how he operates. Right? And I think that's what he tries to get. And what I'VE wondered about, especially as Xi's been in his third term, is because he cleaned house and brought in a bunch of people to the Politburo Standing Committee who he's known not just for years, but for decades, that this is more comfortable. If you're Xi Jinping and you walk into that conference room for a Standing Committee meeting, you're looking around and you're seeing guys who are all your former aides at this point, and that's much more comfortable. You're not looking at Lee Kuchiang, who was the potential alternative to you as the heir, apparently. And I think from their perspective too, my theory about these guys is not that there's going to be some cinematic moment where they speak truth to power to the President in a closed door setting, but they know how to talk to the boss and tell him things that might be uncomfortable. I always think of that BBC show from the late 70s, early 80s. Yes, Minister. So I've been calling these guys. They're the yes, but men. Yes, Prime Minister, this is a wonderful idea, but have you considered the following things that might delay us? Or maybe the timing would be better if we waited six months to do something like this? So that has been kind of my mental model of how he operates. Because he knows that that is a real risk, that everybody in the system is just going to tell you what you want to hear and that he wants to guard against that.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

And he's smart enough to want the right kind of people around him in some sense.

[John Zinn]

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think for a normal person, this kind of constant improvisation and playing people off each other sounds exhausting. But I think she is a political animal and I think he kind of relishes it. It would be my guess you noted.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

In the China Against China essay how important the strike against the kind of insulator the military and reforming the military was central to this project as Xi Jinping saw it. You also wrote a great piece with John Culver last year about the purges in the pla. We saw another set of these just in the last few days. How significant are the latest ones and what's your theory of what's driving this?

[John Zinn]

I think they are quite significant and they're potentially a seismic shift in Chinese politics under Xi's rule. And the reason for that is that that when this anti corruption campaign got underway, the focus was really on Xi's potential rivals. Right. People who had been the incumbents of the system and allowed all this graft and corruption to fester. Right. The People who had guarded the PLA for a long time from any kind of oversight from the party. And we've seen this shift. And again, this gets to the point about how do you do this kind of analysis? A lot of it is about contextualizing it and seeing it not just in a vacuum, but as part of a longer narrative arc. So that's how she starts his anti corruption campaign. And then he moves in his third term. I think somewhat surprisingly, given how much he cleaned house, to focusing on people who he appointed to this position. But I think a lot of times his connection to them was kind of tenuous. And I think from Xi's perspective, again, it's like a mob boss. I made them, I can break them. They were disposable. So if there's an issue or there's corruption, he can get rid of them and just move on to the next person safely. This is without it being a threat to his power. Reflection that there's something deeper going on. Now with the removal of Zhang Youxia, we're really entering a different space. And I think it's almost Shakespearean what's happened, because Zhang Youxia, I mean, they have a relationship that goes back to their fathers. They were comrades in arms in China's northwest during China's civil war. This is somebody that Xi has probably known for decades. And I think until recently, I mean, we didn't just have historical evidence, but more recent evidence that she really seemed to trust this guy. At the last party congress, he made an unusual move to keep Zhang around past the retirement age and bump him up and make him the top vice chairman on the Central Military Commission. I mean, I think that was kind of probably the greatest sign of trust.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

This makes him essentially the top uniform.

[John Zinn]

Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. He had been kind of the second ranked vice chairman and the last go around, and so then he gets bumped up. So it's not just that Xi has him stick around, he gives him a bump up and makes him the top uniform member of the brass. Right. So a real sign of Xi's confidence in him. And you know, my theory about how Xi Jinping was operating in his third term is that if you think of Chinese politics like a solar system, where Xi Jinping is at the center of it and everybody else is in his orbit. My theory was there was an inner circle that was inside the asteroid belt. And I would put almost all of the Politburo standing committee there. And then Zhang Youxia in the military, and then for these other people who he had gotten rid of like the Defense minister, the foreign minister. These guys were kind of outside of the asteroid belt, right? And he could safely get rid of them. But now she has gone after somebody inside that asteroid belt. Right. And so the question that's been on my mind, that I am thinking through, in all honesty, Dan, is that I think there's two ways to interpret this. Either I tend to think that she is just ruthless and rational in how he goes about things. Right. That there's a certain method to what he's doing. It's not capricious. It's not arbitrary. It's kind of like the electrician metaphor I used earlier. Right. He's very circumspect about how he goes about doing this. And this could. In some ways, I think this is my inclination. This could be the ultimate illustration of Xi Sang, fla. Right. That nobody is safe. I will go after you even if the relationship goes back to our parents. But I think given what's going on, gone on, too, I do wonder a little bit in the back of my mind, is this kind of a psychological shift? Are we seeing Xi shift more toward a paranoid autocrat mode because he's going after people who are so close to him, and if he doesn't trust them, who is he going to trust inside the system? I'm hesitant to say that, but again, I want to be transparent about how I digest something like this and how I think it through and try to assimilate it into the mental model that I have of Xi Jinping over time.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

That's fascinating, because in the piece earlier, and I think in your writing generally, and speaking publicly generally, you've been somewhat averse to the tendency among a lot of analysts here to interpret these purges as signs of kind of insecurity or. Or lack of trust in the military. But you see in some ways it turning into some slightly warped version of that in this latest phase, potentially.

[John Zinn]

Yeah, I think that's right. I don't think he's worried about his own personal grip necessarily. I mean, I think he's demonstrated that he's got a firm grasp of the military. I think the challenge for Xi is that I think he probably doesn't feel like he's getting what he wants from these guys, and that's why he's had to clean house so thoroughly. And I think that's one of the things that's really striking. It's not just that, you know, there's one uniformed officer left standing on the Central Military Commission. It's that if you look one level down at the people who might replace them, who are one great level down in their bureaucracy. A lot of those people are gone too. You know, this makes the Roman decimation system look quaint.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

Does it affect in any way the risks of some kind of precipitous action on Taiwan in coming years?

[John Zinn]

I don't think so. I actually have been turning this question on its head. I actually think that Xi feels pretty good about the cross strait dynamic right now, and I don't think it's driving him to clean house. But I think it makes him feel that he can do this with confidence without too much concern. Because if you look at that dynamic in particular, the Trump administration doesn't seem to be overly focused on Taiwan. It doesn't even get a mention in the recent National Defense Strategy. Right. And President Trump has made a number of comments about Taiwan that show a lack of firm commitment. Number two, President Lai Ching Te in Taiwan is in political trouble. Right. He had this recall campaign over the summer that failed. His party's in tough shape. And number three, there's going to be an election in 2028, which is going to be a year into Xi's fourth term. And opposition KMT is making very favorable comments about Beijing. So if I'm looking at this from Xi Jinping's perspective, this feels like a relatively safe time to do what I need to do, to renovate the high command and do something that's kind of complex and politically tricky to pull off internally. And I think it's because he has that sense of urgency. He wants them to get there. And I think even just as impressive as the PLA modernization has been over the last couple of decades, he still feels like they're not, but that this.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

Is a moment where he will not need to order a cross state invasion in the next year because of developments in Taiwan or shifts in US policy. So he can afford to do it now.

[John Zinn]

Yeah, and I think this is the real paradox of following the PLA in particular is that yes, there's this real corruption, there is this real operatic drama at the top of the system, but yet we don't see kind of a diminution of their modernization program from the outside and even in their operational tempo right after they announced the and finalized the purges of all these senior officers at the party plenum last fall. Then they conducted a major exercise around Taiwan just in the closing weeks of 2025. So they're still able to pull off a massive exercise like that, even with all this churn at the top of the system.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

I want to go back to some of the tech issues that we talked about a bit earlier. This, certainly the Biden administration, but I think also more broadly in the US China dynamic tech and AI especially has been and really the kind of center of how we think about competition. How does China understand what that competition means? And how do they, when they do a kind of net assessment of where the two sides are, how do they see things?

[John Zinn]

I think they see the US side as still ahead in some key areas and I think they recognize that. And again, I think they're probably frank about that internally and about figuring out reverse engineering. Literally what is it that we need to do? Right. That's why they're making such a big push on semiconductors and these other areas where we have the lead. But I think what's really striking when you look at the five year plan document that came out of the last plenum is that there's a real mismatch between the two sides and how we're handling the tech competition. I feel like here in the United States there's kind of this AI myopia, right? And if you look at even our own internal economic numbers from last year, I mean, there was this one stat Derek Thompson had that the build out of data centers contributed 50% of economic growth in the first half of 2025 alone. What's striking when you look at the party's approach to these issues is that they have more of a portfolio approach. It's diversified, right? So they are focused on AI, but again they're focused on deployment of it as quickly as possible, getting it out onto the manufacturing floors. And it's kind of become a cliche now in China watching circles, whereas we're looking for God in a box. And that's just on AI, right? Like they're focused on how do we apply this and how do we increase our productivity. And I think there's not just the same overriding focus on AI. There's also the focus on green technologies and green vehicles, which of course has gone away in this administration and robotics as well. You see a little bit of that in the United States. But I think there is this real intense focus on hard tech, right. And about manufacturing capacity. And that's very explicit from the top of the Chinese system. And so this is something that I worry about, bracketing the issue of the export controls that's gone on in this administration. But do we have the right kind of approach to dealing with this issue wholesale? And are we looking at the right suite of technologies or are we just buying and affect the things we want rather than the things we need?

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

The export control shift does seem quite significant, as you've written about, certainly that we used to talk about export controls as this kind of sacrosanct space that we would never trade away for anything. And the effective use of leverage over critical mineral supply by China and the concessions by the US in response to it does seem like a paradigm shift in some sense.

[John Zinn]

Yeah. I feel like what we've done is we've shifted from a policy of export control to one of export promotion ocean, where we're beseeching China now to buy not our frontier technologies or our frontier chips, but the penultimate ones. And it's really flipped. And what's striking to me just in terms of the tactics of negotiating with China, I mean, we've made these offers on Nvidia's H200 chips at the end of last year in exchange for nothing. We didn't get some kind of concession that's detectable from the outside. So there's the problem, first of, number one, negotiating over things that we had long considered part of our national security. But number two, if you are going to open the negotiations, you better get something really good for it. And I'm not persuaded that we really have in the process. So I think it's really disconcerting. And the export controls, I mean, they're challenging. There's a lot of debate about them. But from my perspective, ultimately it's not a question about whether or not they are the ideal tool or not. It's a question of what's the alternative. Right. And if you really accept the premise, which I think most people do at this point, that we are in some kind of long term strategic competition with China, then why would you sell them your most advanced technologies? Like, what is the real alternative to that? I mean, this theory that we're going to get them addicted somehow and that that's going to give us leverage that seems to carry greater risk than the risk of equipping them with our most advanced technologies.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

This would be the kind of Jensen Huang and I think David Sachs in the White House would probably say the same thing.

[John Zinn]

Yeah. And this is what I worry about too, is that we're landing in the worst of all possible worlds. We've gone about doing these export controls. It stimulated the Chinese system. They already had pretty considerable efforts underway on this. But to really double down and reinvigorate or further invigorate those efforts, and now they're not interested. And now We've explicitly said the quiet part out loud, too, that the goal is to try to get them addicted, so why would they go about doing this? And this is illustrative of my broader concern of where we're at now in terms of our China policy. I feel like we're stuck. We've gone far enough down the path of competition with China that we can't really go back to the earlier era, focus on commerce and comedy, but the things we need to do in order to compete with China effectively over the long term, I think there's a real hesitation to go there, both because of the leverage that China's accrued over time, but I think also the hard reality is that great power competition is going to be expensive. I mean, the global war on terror was expensive. This is an order of magnitude of a greater challenge and more multifaceted. And I think that's hard, and I think people haven't really come to grips with that.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

This is a question that I ask in, I think, almost every episode at this point, but I'm still kind of flummoxed by it. On the critical minerals front, on the rare earth's front, it is rather stunning to think that it's been 15 years or so since people in the US national security world were focused on the risk here and saw what China was doing to develop leverage and our own inability to develop our own supply, even though that's technically possible. How do you account for that failure and what's going to change it? Do you have any sense that we have finally gotten serious about this?

[John Zinn]

Yeah. So two thoughts on this one. One is that I think it's actually illustrative of the broader deficiencies in our China policy over the last 20 years or so where we've been slow to recognize the problem. And even when it's right there staring you in the face, we have not moved with alacrity to remedy the underlying problems. I think this is true on critical minerals, but it's also true, I would argue, on dealing with the PLA's military modernization. The last assessment from a bipartisan commission of the previous National Defense Strategy said for you know, we've been saying for years now that China is the pacing challenge for the US Military and it says they are out continuing to outpace us in a growing number of domains and negated many of our advantages in the western Pacific. So it's not that people haven't realized it, it's that it's been very challenging for us to do what she has done so effectively, say Here is a problem, here's a challenge to our interests, and then marshal the institutions to try to remedy this. Now, I think on critical minerals, I think part of the conundrum is it's challenging for our government to do this. We're not designed for industrial policy. Right. It's not clear who is going to be the focal point of this. Are we going to have state owned enterprises do this? We can do public private partnerships. Who manages that. It's a little bit easier in the defense space, which is, I think, why the administration went there. But we're kind of late to the game. And I'm worried that for this effort, I think the administration deserve credit for focusing actual resources on this issue now at this point. But I do worry it's going to be too little, too much late. Even if you look at the case of Japan, where they have METI and they are equipped to conduct industrial policy and they have been focused on this since 2010, I think they've gone from 90% reliance on China for rare earths down to 70% after 15 years. And I think it just underscores this idea that the administration has, and I think some people think this, that yes, we have to hit the pause button now, we've been checkmated so we can get our act together, remedy these deficiencies that we have, this dependency that we have, and then we can refocus on competition. I think it's going to be hard to do that. This is not a this year problem, or even this administration. This is going to be much more challenging. And this is just one area where China has this kind of chokehold on our supply chains.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

If you were going to suggest some lessons for the United States based on the Chinese experience and Xi Jinping's experience, turning his own party into a learning organization, as you say in the essay, what would those lessons be? What should we learn from Chinese success here?

[John Zinn]

I think what I'm really struck by is that I think in the broader foreign policy community, I think there's a pretty decent consensus on what we need to do. I think across administrations, there's been talk about refurbishing the defense industrial base. There are stacks of reports about the critical mineral problems and the rare earth problem. But what I'm really struck by, and frankly frustrated by, is that there's a real disconnect. We all finally have kind of a shared diagnosis of the problem or. Or most people have a shared diagnosis of the problem. And we even have some pretty good prescriptions on the table about what to do about this, but there seems to be a disconnect about how do we move from point A to point B? How do we pivot to Asia? We've been talking about this for a long time. Some people are ready to put a toe tag on the effort. How do we refurbish our defense industrial base? How do we build up some of the power that we lost? Can we even do that at this point? And again, these are thorny bureaucratic issues. But these are also, like I said before, expensive problems to deal with too. And I think that is part of the hesitation about how do we get there.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

It brings to mind the fantastic last line of that essay, China against China. You write. Misreading Xi Jinping is ultimately part of the failure to address the problems facing the United States itself, which I think is a really powerful closing point. So John, thank you so much for doing this for this slew of pieces. I think we've got more coming from you soon, so readers can look forward to that.

[John Zinn]

Thanks so much Dan. I really appreciate it. It.

[Dan Kurtz Phelan]

Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show@foreign affairs.com this episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Ben Metzner, Rachel Powell and Kanish Tharoor. Our audio engineer is Todd Yeager. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Arena Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.