← The Good Fight
The Good Fight
The Good Fight Club: Why Japan’s “Weirdo” Victory Matters, the Rise of Chinese Soft Power, and the End of Asian Stability
01:13:49
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- [00:00]
A
You know, it's not something that a single president is going to be able to reverse, say in 2028. You know, once, once the, the rose colored glasses are shattered, it's hard to kind of rebuild that. So I think that, you know, we gotta say goodbye to that era. And I really felt that this year. And now the Good Fight with Yasha Monk.
- [00:28]
B
Welcome to the 15th edition of the Good Fight Club and Good Fight Club of the year. We had a really great episode about Europe at the end of last year and I thought it would be really interesting, despite the continent being much larger and in some ways much more complex than Europe, to try and do something similar about Asia. And so I invited the three people I most enjoy talking about various parts of the Asian continent with onto the podcast. We have Pratap Panumita, who teaches politics at Princeton and is also based at the center for Policy Research in New Delhi. Welcome back to our podcast, Pratap. We have Bethany Allen, who is the head of China Investigations at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and somebody who knows China very well. Welcome, Bethany. And we have Chang Che, who is based in Tokyo, fluent in Japanese and in Chinese, and who who writes extensively about China for the New Yorker and the Guardian and other publications. Welcome to the podcast, Chang. The big news of the last week or so about Asia is the re election of the new Japanese Prime Minister who's been in office for a few months. Dubbed the Japanese Iron lady due to her fondness for Margaret Thatcher, she won in a way, the least surprising story in the world is that a politician from the Liberal Democratic Democratic Party of Japan has won an election to be prime minister because the party has ruled Japan virtually without interruption since the establishment of its democracy after World War II. But the size of her victory and the enthusiasm, the wave of enthusiasm that she seems to ride is quite a big story, isn't it? Chang, you're based in Tokyo. What explains that she won such a big majority with so many young people voted for her that there seems to be, at least from what I read, a genuine sense of sort of excitement about her among young Japanese people. What is going on?
- [02:30]
A
So it's interesting that you mentioned that it's the least surprising thing for the LDP for a politician in the LDP to win election, which is very true. It has always, it has been very often the case in Japan. You know, the LDP has been a dominating a dominant party for decades. But to start to try to just step back a little bit about why I think this, why this election was so Historic. You know, the LDP was before Takaichi, you know, in crisis. It was in 2012 when Abe first kind of won this super majority in Japan. The LDP had been actually losing, losing seats every single election since then. And so there was this, there was this belief last year when I first moved here. So I moved here into Tokyo last year in the summer from Shanghai. And when I first moved, the discussions in Tokyo were all about is the LDB kind of collapse and is there going to be a new party to come in. Ishiga, the previous Prime Minister, had extremely low approval ratings and he had to step down because of inflation. And there was a lot of issues with corruption with the party. And it's just remarkable how, you know, how much things have changed in just a few months. So this election that just happened last week was one of the most decisive elections. I think it was like the greatest victory for the LDP since World War II. So the LDP won 316 seats, which gives Takechi a 2/3 majority in the lower house, which means that they can override the upper house. They don't have a majority in the upper house, but it means that Takichi can basically run through any legislation that she wants. And so this is a, this is a trouncing. And you know, I think that the way that I would think about it is that I think Japan, like anywhere else in the world is kind of coming to a reckoning about the end of the kind of old US led liberal order. You know, the kind of reckoning that we saw in Davos is happening in Japan. And it's. And that kind of sense that, you know, we're in this kind of new turbulent world now we have to kind of fend for ourselves. Has made a figure like Takeichi, you know, the, the quote, unquote Iron lady, someone who is a kind of predecessor of Abe, who had always been, you know, a sort of. Who has always been an advocate of a sort of Japanese military and to kind of, you know, a revision of the Constitution, Article 9, Constitution. People like that have become a lot more attractive, especially this year, given what's been happening in the United States. So I think that it is a reflection of just broad geopolitical climate that has led the Takahashi to this like, astounding victory. I do think that there's also a bunch of other smaller reasons that we can talk about. Like, I think that the younger voters who are really supportive of Takahichi might not necessarily have these like grand big visions about what the world is like. And they may have just sort of fallen into this kind of, like digital, you know, the kind of things that, like, happened with the Trump election in 2024, where there were, you know, podcasters and younger people who were just kind of pulled to politics by just by way of their consumption of social media. I mean, I think that that's been happening in Japan as well. But I'll stop there and sort of get your thoughts, other people's thoughts.
- [06:13]
B
The one thing that seems to matter more than anything else in politics at the moment, whether it's in Japan, whether it's in India, whether it's in North America, whether it's in Western Europe, is some kind of authenticity. And in a way, it means you can be a kind of weirdo. I mean, Donald Trump is a weirdo of one form, you know, very strange man in all kinds of ways. You know, the new Japanese Prime Minister seems to be kind of a proud weirdo in other ways, right. Part of her reputation is that she would not go to those long political dinners full of networking that seemed to define the Japanese political scene. Kiko Taro wrote about this wonderfully in Persuasion a few days ago. But to go home and work on her policy brief, which you wouldn't think to be a kind of calling card for a politician, that's cool of young people. There was something about the kind of unabashed nature of who she is and how she carries herself that seems to have played into this wave of enthusiasm. What are we to make of, again, this age old political party, very established, having this leader that in some ways follows the mold, in other ways completely breaks it, achieving this surprising success? What does that tell us about this moment in democracies?
- [07:27]
C
So it's a wonderful question. I would put it more structurally, Yasha. I mean, you know, authenticity is always a very tricky thing to define in some ways, and particularly in these days of kind of social media constructions of images and identity. But clearly the one thing that is, I think, significant here, right, is that most leaders who are contesting currently are contesting not just in a context of great international instability, the idea that the old liberal international order is dead. But even domestically, in most democracies, there is a kind of hunger for politicians who in a sense, revolt against the old elites. Now, the LDP's case is more paradoxical because in some senses it was the dominant party. But I think, you know, positioning yourself as a kind of outsider insider is an extraordinarily actually, you know, clever political tactic where somebody can say, look, I am here. And what I represent is partly a revolt against old elites. Partly weirdness is a way of signaling that this is not going to be business as usual. Don't take anything for granted. And so I think it's that kind of revolt. I think structurally that is, I think, very attractive in all democracies, that there is just this inchoate sense that whatever it is, that old order thing is not what we want. And let's see who can, you know, sort of, in a sense, offer something new. The second thing, I think, and this goes to the size of the majority, right. Which is that in this context of kind of geopolitical instability, I mean, I think the sense that you need strong leaders who express the agency of the people, in some ways that part of the diagnosis of the whole system was that it had become too sclerotic, it had become too paralytic. It was just not taking decisions. Right. And I think that's also created a kind of background condition where I think people are willing to put up with leaders more than they actually care for, perhaps processes or worry about concentration of power.
- [09:36]
B
Definitely. You know, one of the ways in which Sanae Takechi had differed from previous Japanese prime ministers is in being much more blunt about the threat that China potentially poses to Japan. And in her remarks, particularly about Taiwan, saying that, you know, any military attack on Taiwan would be considered a direct threat to Japan itself. You're sitting in Taipei. Tell us about, you know, how you're reading that aspect of a political Persona and more broadly, what it has meant for the relationship between Japan and China and what it might mean for the future of Taiwan.
- [10:15]
D
Yeah, absolutely. We saw her make very strong comments about how Taiwan is an important part of Japan's national security. And Beijing immediately took umbrage at those remarks, and for the past month, since she made them, has levied, lobbed at Japan what we now know as a kind of classic Chinese coercion campaign involving diplomacy, involving military, paramilitary coercion, involving economic coercion. For example, Chinese tourists basically were way down. Chinese tourists love to go to Japan during a lunar New Year. Chinese tourism to Japan was way down. It's a kind of a spigot that Beijing can turn on and off to put pressure on countries. They've done that on multiple occasions in the past.
- [11:03]
B
And by the way, Bethany, sorry to interrupt you. What's the mechanism? Right. When you're saying it's a spigot that they can turn on and off, like, how does that actually work for tourism?
- [11:12]
D
Yeah, in some instances, I think the. The main way that that happens is through tourism groups. So like, you know, many Chinese tourists like to, like to travel with tourism with, with tourist groups. And so the Chinese government will convey to tourist groups that, sorry, currently we are canceling. You must cancel trips to whatever country. It doesn't, it doesn't eliminate tourism to those countries because you can still go as an individual or they could, you know, they could reduce the number of flights, etc. That kind of thing. That's, that, that's one mechanism. That's. Yeah, the tourist groups are an important mechanism. Anyway, so, so in, in the face of this kind of wall of China's coercion, Takaichi has held. Held strong and in fact reiterated her position. And so that, that has implications for, certainly for Japan. And so it's actually a very, very. It shows, at the very least, it shows that the Japanese populace either doesn't care what China says or does or is not at all intimidated by what China says or does, or even has had a reaction against what China says or does against Japan to, to vote in the way that they voted. So that was a big, big showing. However you want to look not fare well with this election. It did not look good for Beijing's ability to coerce Japan or coerce Taiwan indirectly via. Via Japan. I was curious, you know, she's the Iron Lady. She's cast sometimes in headlines as very conservative. What does that mean in a Japanese context or even in an LDP context, which is always conservative? It's just various shades of conservative. How would you compare her to like, Shinzo Abe or. In what way is she more conservative than. Than previous recent leaders?
- [13:06]
A
I. I don't think that she's more. Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I don't think that she's more conservative. I think that she's more Shinzo Abe. I think she's part of a tradition that comes out of not just the, the kind of Abe. You know, the Abe line comes out of this long. What, what conservatism means in Japan is this kind of. There's this kind of legacy to kind of break out of the shackles of the World War II order. You know, primarily the military, you know, the constitutional restraints on the military. And so there's always been this kind of like, statist. Like there's a kind of like statist urge and energy within this tradition that starts with Abe all the way down to Takaichi that basically wants to like. Yeah, basically try to run Japan, like, with like, intense industrial policy, like almost like a Meiji restoration part, like 2.0, like that, that is kind of the, the vision that Takaichi has. And I think that she's, you know, perhaps more than other LDP members. I think she's just more articulate and, and more focused and more kind of ideologically driven towards it. And now she has the numbers to back it up. Like she's also kind of, you know, like look, what's really striking about, about this moment is like, you know, she's kind of ABE 2.0 with the majority, with the super majority during an era when she probably has, like if she, if she puts the Article 9 revision up for a referendum in Japan, like I think that she might get it passed. Like this is like I think that we should think of.
- [14:51]
B
Explain to us what Article 9 revision means. Chunk.
- [14:53]
A
Oh, sorry. Yes. So Article 9 is the, is, is the article within the Constitution in Japan that prevents Japan from having a standing military. It's the, the major, one of the major sort of political principles of the LDP since Abe has been to try and revise Article 9 so that there could be a, there could be room for what Japan calls a self Defense Force. And this is kind of an effort to, in the Japanese case it's called being a normal power, like just being a country with, with just being a normal country rather than some, a country that is neutered of its military, which was the kind of the historical circumstance once Japan lost World War II. So that, that's the kind of the, the one of the central debates in Japan and that has been going on for decades and now I think that we should think of this year as potentially the, the we are potentially the closest we've ever been to successfully revising Article 9. There's so, so the numbers are just, just say a little bit more like. The numbers I think are like very, very like she, she, Takah almost has the numbers to pull this through. She doesn't have a majority in the upper house yet and she's. I think if you count all the pro revisionist politicians in the upper house, she's missing only three votes. So she basically needs to convince three independent politicians in the upper house which is not, you know, there's hundreds of people. So it's, I think it's possible this year.
- [16:25]
B
I think this is kind of under played story of the demise of a post war order which we're obviously seeing across a whole number of dimensions. But one of those dimensions is the status of Germany and Japan and Ian Baruma, of whom you have a podcast, Chang has interesting work comparing Japan and Germany, including the ways in which Germany has faced up to its past and Japan hasn't. But both countries were kind of embedded in a particular post war order that was based in part on them foregoing the former ambitions. That was the point of Article 9 in Japan. It was the reason why, you know, Conrad Adenauer chose for Germany in the 1950s, 1960s to be embedded so strongly in a Western alliance rather than to seek reunification in the immediate aftermath of World War II, which likely would not have been possible in any case. And you know, in Germany it was actually Gerhard Freude in the late 90s and early 2000s and then in some ways Angela Merkel who started to try to normalize. I think there's an interesting argument that when Germany participated in the bombing of Kosovo in 1999, for Joska Fischer, the leader of the Green Party, the purpose was that his lesson from World War II was not never again war, but never again Auschwitz. That he saw sort of a moral responsibility to act against an impending genocide. Whereas for Gerhard Schroeder, the chancellor from the Social Democrats, it was a way of actually moving on from the past, of saying we're a normal country, we can participate in an international mission. The fact that German troops had been in that part of the world 50 years earlier shouldn't hold us back. Right. And now in Germany with Donald Trump, sort of really making Europeans question the nature of their relationship with the United States, there's active debate about whether Germany should get a nuclear weapon, which would have been very hard to imagine a couple of decades ago. I actually wrote a paper arguing with 10 years ago. But that I think is a sign of sort of the hold of a post war order starting to go away. And I think if you get to Article 9 revision in Japan, even the fact that you're so close to it, have such a serious debate about it. It's just one more interesting kind of emanation of a way in which those fundamentals of post war order are breaking apart partially in ways that are very worrying, partially in ways that perhaps just a testament to a new reality and to how remote World War II now is. I want to turn a little bit to China. I was talked about two things recently that I'm sure you followed closely, Bethany. The first was just the immense progress that China is evidently making technologically. The big story in the west was when Deepseek was able to briefly rival the performance of top models of artificial intelligence like Chatgpt and Claude a little over a year ago to Me the most striking development actually is the progress on robotics. We're recording this just at the tail end of the Chinese New Year. There's always a huge gala on Chinese state television to ring in the New Year with famous singers singing corny songs and kids showing off all kinds of skills and, you know, drone shows and, you know, you know, all of these sort of impressive things you can throw at a seven hour. I don't think it's quite seven hours, but it feels that long. Television gala. But the show stealer this year was a dance kung fu number by a bunch of rather talented kids and a bunch of even more talented robots. And there was interesting juxtapositions on social media of the same robot show a year earlier and today. And the progress in robotics is very impressive, awe inspiring, and in some ways scary because of what it says about Chinese capabilities, in some ways scary about what it says about how humans are building machines that are soon going to be much more dexterous and perhaps powerful than us as a species.
- [20:41]
D
It is almost, it's almost impossible to overstate the amount of progress that China has made in the past 20 years in technology and especially the last 10 years. That is a result of massive investment, Chinese state investment, and policies to encourage technological innovation from the ground up. Just to say it again, it's almost impossible to overstate the amount of investment that's gone into this and the huge amount of planning and effort. And at aspe, we track Chinese progress in technology research. And I also manage a project where we do research, very intense research, on China's top 100 or so universities. And so we know what our Critical Tech Tracker has found, that if you look at high impact research published to prestigious journals, that you'll see that China is leading in high impact research in 57 of 64 critical technologies. Now that's not leading in the production and the manufacture or commercialization of these technologies, but on paper, leading in high impact and prestigious research in these fields. And what our studies have shown is that it takes about 10 to 15 years, usually for leading in research in a particular field to lead in the actual real world in that field. And so we traced, at ASPE, we traced 20 years of this data worldwide, global data on high impact technology research in critical technologies, and found that China has risen from leading in seven back in 2004 to leading in 57 in 2024. And you see that with that dramatic increase over 20 years, you also saw an in kind increase in the number of fields where China's leading in the Real world. And so I could predict that in 10 to 15 years China would be leading in real world technologies in dozens of critical technologies. So if you want to look then at, that's sort of looking at the numbers, right? Research. But if you want to look at the university research ecosystems themselves, which is, I have done a lot of work personally, you find that on the ground in just to throw one number out there. Between 2019 and 2025, we looked at China's top 60 universities, approximately that do advanced research. And we found that in those six years alone there were more than 200. And that's a low end figure. That's a low ball figure. There were more than 200 new research centers founded focusing on dual and emerging technologies in those 60 universities alone. I mean, that's more than most countries have at all. Not the U.S. the U.S. has more than that. But that's a massive amount of investment. And that's just one particular kind of, you know, just, that's just looking at new research centers, that's not looking at new investment into existing structures. So yes. Is China, is China going to become a like the global technology superpower? I think it's really hard to say that they won't. Especially, especially if you look at what's happening in the U.S. with the DE investment in advanced research in the U.S.
- [24:19]
B
yeah. I mean, as a European, I'm even more struck by the contrast. I mean, the United States is a complicated picture because obviously the Trump administration is attacking higher ad in a number of ways, but levels of investment still remain very high and there's just a lot of capital for mentioned capital going around. And so if you want to invest in AI and do research in it, it's quite easy to get very significant funds for that. Europe is just terribly behind. I mean, there was a. Emmanuel Macron to his credit is really trying to turn France into a center for AI and he's been more successful at it than most other European countries. But there was a rightly much mock tweak the other day where he said, look at this amazing investment we're making into turning France into a center of AI. We've invested 5 million euros over the course of the next so and so many years into AI research. And it's just, I mean, you know, the least successful member of a second rate startup accelerator is going to raise $5 million for some AI project in Silicon Valley in a couple of weeks. So the dimensions are really striking. In contrast, Pratap and we'll probably get to India later, but there Is an AI summit happening in India at the moment? What does the technological race between the United States and China look like from an Indian perspective? And to what extent can India play a role in that race?
- [25:48]
C
So, I mean, you know, it's a wonderful question. And look, the honest truth is India is like nowhere in the big league of China and the United States. And the gap is growing, I mean, exponentially on kind of lots of critical technologies, right? So the way the government kind of presents it is that India's kind of alternative would be some kind of low cost, frugal innovation, some kind of building of global alliances, particularly with the Europeans. But honestly, you cannot get away from the fact that India is just nowhere in the big league. I mean, just. It really isn't. And it is, in a sense, now kind of scrambling to find a niche. I mean, how do you strategically position yourself in the context of two technologically powerful superpowers, both of whom might be actually hostile to you? I mean, not just one or the other, right? So in some senses, this technological race has completely kind of, I think, appended India's foreign policy framework. And I think a lot of this kind of AI summit is really, in a sense, just trying to figure out a niche somewhere. You know, in some senses, not a. Not a coincidence, as President Macron is, you know, Prime Minister Modi's kind of best friend on the international. It's two powers that have fallen behind in the race, in a sense, trying to present some kind of architecture that can cope with this reality. The second thing which I think has to be said, building on Bethany's point, is that higher education is not Prime Minister Modi's strong suit. I mean, yes, the aggregate levels of investment have been marginally rising, but the general state of Indian universities and the extraordinarily low investment in R and D, I mean, just makes it very, very unlikely that India can position itself in a big way for a time to come. I mean, and, you know, one indication of the fact is that India has extraordinary talent abroad, right? Indians in Silicon Valley, United States, across the world.
- [27:53]
B
Well, half of half of Silicon Valley companies are, you know, led by people who are either Indian origin or in
- [28:00]
C
fact, Indian citizens, except for very small sections of the Indian economy, maybe global capability centers, middle range talent. India has not been able to attract any of that talent back. I mean, compared to the kind of talent talent China is attracting back. And if you look at the diaspora talent coming back to Indian universities, R and D, basic research, no competition. So if you just look at where the Scientists are voting for in terms of, you know, voting by their feet. I think India has a long way to go and I think, you know, Mr. Modi has many strengths, but education and higher education is not one of them. I don't think this government gets what it takes to compete in this high intensity environment.
- [28:43]
B
Chang One of the things that we've talked about in the past as we took long strolls through the streets of Shanghai is that for previous generations of Chinese, certainly up until the 90s and probably the 2000s, a mark of success was moving abroad, moving to the United States. And if you had a chance to do so, you very likely exercised that option. Even some of the top Chinese leaders send their children to live in the west, and many of them continue to live in the West. But that is changing that. The sort of dream of young Chinese to move abroad is not nearly as strong as it was. But for many people in China now, it's a mark of pride that perhaps in my parents generation, my grandparents generation, if you want to make it, if you wanted to have a good life, you know, any ticket to go live abroad, you would scramble for and you would take. But our country, our nation has now come so far that we don't have to do that anymore. And so interest in studying abroad has, has significantly decreased. Tell us about that transformation.
- [29:49]
A
Oh, I mean, the transformation is, is very palpable. So I was in China, you know, last week, you know, just reconnecting with some friends. And I had, I remember one of my friends was, she had a, had the option to basically move to the US because, like, her boyfriend is in the US and they were just deciding whether it was right for her to move. And she was just telling me, you know, and she's not a very ideological person, so she was just weighing the pros and cons and just every, everything seemed better in China, you know, just like the infrastructure, the convenience, the, you know. Yeah, the price of everything. And so it's just something has really flipped. And I was really hesitant about believing this. Like, I think it took me a while to kind of fully come around to this. But when you go to China now, I think that there's the sense of. And now, by the way, I don't think that China is, I don't think that this comes from a sense of pride. Like, I don't think that there's, it comes from a sense of, oh, you know, we have risen. Like, I, in fact, I think that life is pretty hard in China. You know, if you look at the, if you look at college, you know, you know, employment rates, people, you know, students who come out of college, and you look at the job market, it's extremely, extremely. Unemployment is extremely high for young, for young people. If you look at, you know, the price of housing, it's extremely unaffordable. Right. So there's, there's similarities in terms of, you know, we're in this kind of slower era of growth and there aren't a lot of paths for young Chinese in China. So I, I don't think that it's China, you know, this kind of classic phrase that Xi Jinping says, which is like the east is rising and the west is declining. No, it's not that. It's just that the US has changed so much in the past few years and it's become so painfully obvious for a lot of Chinese how different and kind of disillusioned they are with the United States, that, that it's made them want to stay in China rather than want to go to the US So I think that that shift is, is, is going to be here, it's going to endure. And I think that, you know, it's not something that a single president is going to be able to reverse, say in 2028. I don't think that, because I think that this kind of, you know, once, once the, the rose colored glasses are shattered, it's hard to kind of rebuild that. So I think that, you know, we got to say goodbye to that era. And I really felt that this year,
- [32:31]
B
what about the kind of soft power of China? I think one of the striking stories of the last decades is that China was rising in military terms, it was rising in economic terms, it's clearly rising in technological terms. Ten, 15 years ago, barely any of the top universities in the world were in China. Now some of the rankings, which don't always have the best and most sophisticated methodology, but it's nevertheless a very interesting testament since the methodology hasn't changed much in those years, are full of Chinese universities in the top ranks. There's many more Chinese universities and European universities in the world university rankings by many organizations now. But one thing that really seemed to be lagging behind is cultural cache. You know, you can go to countries in the west or in other parts of Asia or in the Middle east, and perhaps you find a good Chinese restaurant. But you know, still today, I think people in most parts that aren't direct neighboring to China would struggle to name four or five living Chinese people who are not, you know, top level politicians or, you know, one or two, you know, distant artists who are living abroad or something like that? You know, the number of Chinese people who people can name is just astonishingly low. There still isn't much expert of Chinese movies. It's hard. You know, many cultural products are produced in China, physically produced in China, but there's few Chinese brands that have significant cachet outside of the country. But in the last month, that has seemed to have changed a little bit. There was the viral phenomenon, the Labubu, and more broadly, there seems to be this kind of phenomenon of China maxing, which is now starting among some social media influences going to China and fawning over some of the generally impressive progress in the country. Does that have similar roots, Bethany, do you think that's also sort of rooted in a lesson in admiration for China than in a foil to an America that seems less attractive? Is that just that soft power tends to come downstream from material progress and there's just a kind of temporal lag and we're now finally kind of starting to see that play out. Other cultural barriers there that are going to remain stubborn. Should we expect that many Global celebrities in 10, 20, 30 years are going to be Chinese? Or is that never really going to happen? Or what's your take on this?
- [35:03]
D
Well, I think a couple of things. First of all, I think part of what we're seeing is the globalization of social media. So with the rise of short video format, driven in Large part by TikTok and some others, you know, it's a way for young people around the world to communicate to each other, with each other, even if they don't speak the same language. And they can communicate by engaging in shared, you know, shared social media challenges or, you know, kind of imitating each other so they can, they can speak to and with each other without even directly communicating. And that means that young Chinese people can show the rest of the world, you know, what, what their lives are like and what, you know, what the social media, the Instagram version of their lives are like. And so you have an opportunity really for the first time for, you know, people to, to see, you know, in their own, in, in their own language, their own video language. Right, Their short video language of this sort of trend in China. That's, that's one part of it. And because there are so many Chinese people, because TikTok is a, I would say, relatively China friendly platform, I think it's given, it's given Chinese people a little bit of a, you know, it's like there, it's not Nepal maxing You know, it's because there's, there's so many, there's so much social media content being made in China. Second, I would say it, I think we're kind of looking at, in the U.S. i think this is kind of like in the 80s and 90s when Japanese culture became Japanese sort of, you know, pop culture became popular in the US And Japan was viewed as this very scientific, you know, technologically advanced place. This kind of like amazing, like you know, cyberpunk, other. I think that's kind of what China, the role that China is playing right now in the young American imagination. And I would say it's maybe a sort of a similar vibe or a similar filling a sort of similar role, but sort of, you know, what's underlying all of that that's different certainly than our obsession with Japan in the 80s and 90s is that whatever's coming out of China is being filtered. Right. That's the, you know, that's the difference between social media coming out of the US and coming out of China is that Chinese social media influencers can't really show certain things or say certain things. And so are people outside of China getting a, a brighter picture, you know, seeing things through rose colored glasses? Definitely. I mean, absolutely. But at the same time, I mean I actually really appreciate this because right now in the west at least, headlines about China, our information environment about China is overwhelmingly negative. It's just, oh my God, every headline is just China scary, China bad. And like, yes, it's obviously not wrong, but I think especially as we've lost a lot of the foreign correspondence in China who could no longer be on the ground and tell those very human centered, very person centric stories. I think that having social media, even if it's overly rose colored, is doing everyone a service, showing the world that China isn't only a scary, authoritarian place, it's also a place where there is a lot of, there are really cool technological advancements and in some ways their lives there are better than ours in some ways and their EVs are better and you know, they do have cool things and they're just living their normal lives. And I really appreciate that about this trend. I'm not, I'm, I'm. People ask me often if I think that this is like some kind of influence operation. And I'd say, well, it's, it's swimming in that general environment that I personally don't. I think it's more of a good thing. But I would love to hear other opinions.
- [38:54]
A
Yeah, I wanted to add like to that just to back off, piggyback a little bit off what Bethany said. I think that part of the, like what I'm noticing from a lot of the American influencers, I recently, yesterday I had a conversation with Hasan Piker, the leftist kind of political like commentator in the US And I was asking him about his trip to, to China. And I feel like the motivation for a lot of these influencers is that they're, they're also kind of trying to communicate a message to like the establishment and the kind of older Americans who think of China that way. Like, I think there's a kind of pent up frustration among sort of Hasan is like in his 30s, but like he, his audience is a lot younger. And so what he's getting from them is this frustration that you know, the, the media and the discourse about China for the past decade, really since Trump's first term has always been through a kind of national security lens. But if you're a Gen Z, if you grew up in the past, if you came of age in the past 10 years and the only thing you hear is China is a national security threat, but your, the rest of your time is on TikTok and, and Instagram, you're seeing a very, very different but also real kind side of China that is not being reflected in the American media ecosystem.
- [40:17]
B
Forgive me if I'm a little bit more skeptical about the motivations of Hasan Paikachiang. I mean, I agree very much with Bethany and with you that there is a problem of a one sided portrayal of China, which is simultaneously an authoritarian country that advances values in the international stage, with which I deeply disagree, and a beautiful wonderful culture that I very much enjoy studying, getting to know and whose richness is often lost in the portrayal in Western media that I completely agree with. I mean, I think for somebody like Hassan Piker, there's a much more straightforward explanation, which is that, you know, he's somebody who's so consumed by hatred of the United States that he's never met an enemy of the United States. He doesn't like whether that's Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela or Vladimir Putin in Russia or you know, the Chinese Communist Party.
- [41:10]
A
That's true. No, I, I completely agree with that. I'm just saying that he's on one of so like, like he told me that his, one of his motivations for going was because Ishowspeed went earlier and he got kind of FOMO from Go and then after him there's been like a bunch of other influencers. I'm saying, just broadly, there's this kind of trend among younger sort of influencer people who are like more chronically online to. To see China differently. And I think that he's channeling a little bit of that.
- [41:36]
D
One really quick point, if I can. I think that we're talking about two different kinds of influencers, right? We're talking about Chinese influencers who are doing whatever, and then we're talking about, I would say, tankies or people who are being paid or allowed in by the Chinese government. And that is more directly propaganda. And I would have a big problem with that.
- [41:55]
C
No, no. Building on that. I mean, Yasha, I think embedded in this discussion, I think, is a kind of more general and potentially interesting point to kind of think about, which is what the relation between soft power and national power is going to be in the 21st century, right? So there's like 21st, 20th century model where it kind of comes as a package in some senses. And maybe you're in a position where actually the, you know, the circuits of cultural circulation will have their sort of own autonomous logic, governed by all kinds of sort of technologies, trends, fashions, processes. And then there's this, in a sense, circuit of kind of politics, economics and technological power. And in some senses, the two will not be easy to align to. So it is possible to actually think both things simultaneously. So, for example, you know, in the science fiction world, right, I mean, you know, you think of kind of names. I mean, China kind of dominates in some senses, you know, late 20th century, early 21st century science fiction imaginations. And so I think Bethany was right that there is this kind of, in a sense, forms of cultural interface that will probably not be as easy to align to state purposes as we were used to thinking. And the other core form of soft power, which is the core meaning of soft power, which is how much do other countries trust your institutions, right? I mean, the United. That was the core of the United States is soft power, right? Which it could then translate into privilege for the dollar, which could then translate into, you know, all kinds of investments. I think the interesting question is kind of what's happening to soft power on that front in all the major powers.
- [43:33]
B
That's really interesting. I want to start to transition to talking a little bit about India. But actually, how do you think about India's soft power in the world these days? It feels to me like it's stronger than China's. It felt like it was really rising until perhaps a decade or so ago. Now I'm not sure that it still Feel that sort of India is ascendant on the cultural scene in quite the way that perhaps it was a little while ago, but perhaps you feel differently about that.
- [44:00]
A
No.
- [44:00]
C
So, you know, I must confess I've always been ambivalent and perhaps confused about the concept of soft power. So one of the features of India, right, In some ways that even when it was very weak, let's say 1920s, 1930s, right. What is India's biggest intellectual export to the world? It's probably yoga, right? In some senses, right. As something that has kind of just become a kind of ubiquitous practice across the world. And Indian soft power, if you want to call it that works well precisely when there's no state imprimatur behind works through a kind of spontaneous receptivity to ideas, maybe alternative forms of living, you know, whatever. I mean, it can take kitschy forms in terms of, you know, certain translations of spirituality, whatever, but in a sense, it always had us. Has that a kind of organic feel about it. I think what's happened in the last 10 years is that the state decided to kind of take on promoting soft power as a kind of project. And I think it's ended up actually undermining it. It's ended up undermining it because ultimately enduring soft power and values and forms of cultural production that people take to actually will be a function of, in a sense, you know, the more authentic those products are. And I'll give you one very good example. Bollywood, right? Which outside of North America, I mean, in Southeast Asia, in Africa actually, you know, was extraordinary presence, really extraordinary presence. And one of the things that, you know, the Modi government has actually done is actually undermined Bollywood. And so I think the big takeaway from India is that whenever the state gets into projecting soft power, people will start seeing through it at some point. There is a kind of regimented performative quality about it as opposed to something that actually taps into a whole range of kind of diverse individuals sort of leanings. And I think India has always been best when it has just let it, you know, let that kind of free flow of culture exists without making it a state project.
- [46:09]
B
Is that part of the reason why China has punched below its weight on soft power? I mean, you know, one explanation is sort of Orientalist in a sense, right? Is to say that, you know, Mandarin is just a language that is incredibly hard for anybody in the west to learn or to follow. You know, that helps to explain why there's so few Western students. And China, for example, you know, perhaps some of the cultural musical Traditions, which is very different from the west and less influenced by the west, and therefore they sort of penetrate less. But, you know, when you look at Korea and Japan, some of those same things should apply to those countries. And yet Korea and Japan actually do have a very significant and growing influence on popular culture. So perhaps the real explanation for why China has been less influential culture is parallel to the point that Pratap was just making, that it's just a lot of its culture is either state produced or at least has to, you know, be sanctioned by the state. And I certainly find in my, you know, fledgling efforts to learn Chinese, it's just really hard to find good cultural products that I want to watch. Right. Like, I'd. I'd love for there to be more shows that like, you know, I'm excited to watch at 11pm as I'm winding down. And I want, you know, half an hour, an hour of entertainment that also can kind of double as language practice. And it's just hard to find something that motivates me to keep watching. And perhaps that does have something to do with the extent to which the state influences, let's say, cultural production in China.
- [47:40]
A
I mean, that has been the wisdom for a long time in China. And you can get this sense when you talk to the artists in China, right. I mean, a lot of them will say that there just can't be creative and authentic without having to think about censorship. I mean, censorship is a huge deal in all artistic industries in China. I mean, there's a kind of tradition since Mao that really treats artwork and culture as a very, as very important in the kind of politics and the kind of ideology of the state. And so that tradition continues to this day. It is a significant constraint for directors and artists, which is why, you know, something like, like Parasite, you know, that popular Korean movie, that's not something that. I don't think that that's something that Chinese, that can come out of the Chinese environment. And, and the reason is because there's a kind of concept in China which is very propagandistic, called positive energy in Chinese. And that's a kind.
- [48:42]
B
You can imagine how terrible fiction would be if every editor said, you know, every page of his novel has to have positive energy.
- [48:49]
A
Exactly, exactly. But it is a cultural, It's a kind of political, cultural aesthetic that sort of runs through the censorship apparatus. And basically when you talk to artists who are, or, and writers in China, you know, they'll be like, oh, you know, opinion. Like, they're very sarcastic. They're like, oh, yeah, that page was a little bit too negative energy. Sorry, like, and because that will get censored. Right. But it's oftentimes the, the non positive energy cultural works that, that get a lot of traction globally. If you look at like the things coming out of South Korea, you're not seeing a lot of positive energy. Like, Squid Game is not a positive energy product, you know, so.
- [49:34]
D
But crash landing on you is.
- [49:36]
A
Yes, that's true. There is positive energy stuff. Right. But I think that as a, as a general rule, if you, if you only allow for positive energy cultural products, you're significantly kneecapping the kinds of content that can come out of China and you're completely neutering artistic creativity. So that's, that's been my wisdom for the past last few years that I've been in China. But I do think that there's a question now which I think is genuine. I really think that this, this is something that like, I want to think about this year, which is like, has China squared the circle? Like, has China been found a way to be as culturally repressive as it is, which is intensely and still managed to provide some ability, some powerful soft power products? For example, robots. Robots are a state. You know, there's a lot of state direction, as Bethany has said. There's a lot of, there's billions of dollars being poured into the Chinese robot robotics industry. But Chinese robots have also kind of become a tool of soft power. If you look, my, my X feed is literally all Chinese robots. Like, I can't avoid Chinese robots on X anymore. It's been, it's been that case for like a year, like, and, and it's constantly being shared by American, you know, techno enthusiasts and Elon Musk and, you know, people are always talking about it on X. So there's something there about how maybe China has managed to use technology as a soft power and because they're so good at technology, they've kind of managed to avoid this, this kind of perennial problem that I thought was kind of intractable.
- [51:16]
B
Yeah, I think there's two interesting points here. The first is this point that I never quite thought of that actually negative, not negative portrayals of a country, but sort of gritty portrayals of reality in a country or sometimes persiflages of reality in a country as parasite, I think is actually end up endearing people to the country. Right. That it is, you know, squid games and parasite that made a lot of people globally fall in love with, with Korea in a way that, you know, a kitschy show about how wonderful Seoul is, could never have accomplished. I think that's quite interesting. The second point I know why my references are so German today is that, you know, when you have a bad global reputation, technological leadership is a pretty good way out of it, right? I mean, Germany on some global polls a few years ago, it may still be the case, you know, end up as being the most popular country in the world. Perhaps that's because some of the things that Germany did in World War II are popular in certain parts of the world. But mostly it's because what people think of about Germany or at least thought of Germany until a few years ago when Germany started to really fall behind on those things, is like cool cars and you know, reliable technology and made in Germany as a sort of sign of quality. So it's interesting that, you know, China is struggling on cultural export when it comes to, you know, movies and TV shows and other things that perhaps are mental to spread a positive vibe about China. But it is succeeding on the technological front.
- [52:43]
C
Yeah, sure. I mean, I would be, I think a little cautious on that. I mean one in the sense that so, I mean, if you look at kind of Chinese literature, even that's, you know, produced in China, it's actually quite gritty. I don't know if you ever watched this Chinese show, Only the River Flows, which is set in China in the 1970s. It was an Amazon EC extraordinarily gritty and extraordinarily well done actually. I mean, you know, in, in even. And, and so I, I just wonder whether kind of a. Just under the surface there is actually a lot of that we, you know, look for it in the kind of. I mean, one of the things I find interesting about Chinese science fiction is how much of it is actually a critique of social trends. If you actually read, right. I mean, read. So maybe there is a lot more of it. And but I think the question that Chang raises, the I think interesting one which is the most fascinating thing about China is whether it is weirdly managing to square the circle between extraordinary political repression and authoritarian repression and yet this kind of, you know, flowering of certain, you know, cultural creativity and even forms of individual self expression, I mean they may not be political self expression in the sense that we understand or social self expression, whether this is actually managing to square that circle. And that's going to be the, you know, one of the interesting questions about kind of, you know, the China Chinese model in the 21st century.
- [54:11]
B
In the rest of this conversation we really go deep on India Pratap who is really one of the top thinkers from and about the country, tells us how India has changed over 10 years of Narendra Modi's rule, whether he thinks that India is going to be catch up to China in the future. And finally, we ask all of the distinguished members of this panel what a misperception of the region they must study is that they wish people in the United States, in Western Europe would finally shed Normally this part of a conversation would be behind a paywall to entice people to support what we're doing here to make our work possible. But today I'm feeling generous, so I'm giving everybody access to that part of a conversation. But if you are feeling a little bit grateful in return, if you want to make sure that we can actually do this podcast on a sustainable basis, please go to writing Jasamunk and become a paying subscriber. This will allow you to set up a premium feed on your podcast app which gets around these annoying little interludes, make sure you don't have to listen to any of the ads that we're probably playing during this episode and gives you all full content of the podcast. To set that up, go to writing.yashamunk.com Listen Pratap, I do want to make sure that we cover India a little bit. We touched on Indian soft power and yoga and strange forms of, you know, Westernized versions of Indian spirituality. We touched upon the AI summit. But I'd love for you to give us a brief broader overview. It's been about 10 years that Narendra Modi has been in office. Now he came in promising to turn a majority Hindu nation into a nation that is in some ways defined by being Hindu. And he also came into power promising that he would be able to replicate at national scale the economic progress that he had accomplished as chief minister of his home state of Gujarat. What does India look like 10 years into Modi being in power?
- [56:36]
C
I mean, I think the one line version is that its democracy and its institutions are certainly degraded and I think the authoritarian control that the BJP Mr. Modi's party has over Indian democracy has deepened. He has certainly managed to consolidate India's Hindu identity politically in ways that do marginalize minorities. And that is I think my biggest, I think worry. I think on the economic front his performance has been mid link. It's not as bad as sometimes the opposition hopes. I mean it's 7% growth rate with all the kind of caveats about unemployment, low productivity. Employment is not something to sneer at. I mean it has Been much more of a time of consolidation. He has been good on some things like infrastructure and so forth, but it's been a middling economic performance and international relations, right, where he has spent surprisingly, you know, large amounts of his kind of energy in the last three or four years. He's actually, in a sense, now found India vulnerable in ways in which he hadn't anticipated when he took office. I mean, if you look at just last year in India's international relations, I mean, you know, in a sense, relations with the two major powers probably at their lowest. India felt very isolated after its military action against Pakistan. It's realizing that it has fallen behind in the technology race, and so it's actually going having to go back to the drawing board. The one silver lining I think, for him is that one thing Mr. Trump's actions have done, and particularly when the sanctions were imposed in India, is that it has concentrated his mind on economic reform once again. So the last six to seven months, there was a whole series of economic reforms that had long been announced, but not really implemented. Delayed, you know, reformation of the goods and services tax, for example. He is now much more open to trade deals. India has just trying to signed a FTA with the eu. So I think he is concentrating a bit more on what he thinks are important economic reforms. But his Achilles heel, which I think is still education, I think still remains, I think, very palpably visible.
- [59:06]
B
What is the broader outlook when we try to compare India and China? A number of decades ago, India and China were at comparable levels of economic development. Today, of course, China is very far ahead. It's tempting to project that out into the future. China has all of the strengths that we've talked about throughout this podcast, including the technological leadership that will continue to propel it forward. China also has some unique problems, or not unique problems, but problems that are particularly strong in China, like the demographic crisis that faces the country. China now has well over a billion people, but at current rates of population decline, may sink to having about 500 million people. I think by the end of this century. India shares some of those challenges. I believe that India has now fallen below the replacement rate, or as close to the replacement rate in terms of population growth as well. But it obviously didn't have a one child policy in the way that China did. It has a much more healthy age structure. And in technological and economic terms, it still has a lot further to grow. Do you think that, you know, we will look at the divergence between China and India over the last 30 or 40 years? As a kind of, you know, late 20th, early 21st century diversion. And, you know, in 30, 40, 50 years, the two countries are going to be evenly matched in economic and other terms. Or do you think that India kind of missed a crucial turning and will play the second fiddle to China on the Asian continent for the foreseeable future?
- [60:43]
C
Gosh, projecting. So, I mean, I think one of the challenges about it, so you can run both stories actually, which is I think there are some underlying trends that are hopeful. And for example, I mean, maintaining 7 to 8% growth rate for a decade from now on is actually not impossible for India given its demographics, given the dividends it will reap from the kinds of changes that have occurred over the last 20 years. I mean, you know, in a sense there's a kind of glacial pace to when those changes acquire momentum. So one way of thinking about it simply is that if India can maintain 7 to 8% growth rate for almost a decade, China will still be ahead by orders of magnitude. But in a sense, you know, India will be, in a sense sufficiently, I think, well endowed that Asia will not, in a sense be at least a kind of two power race in the United States and China. India will become, in a sense, a bigger player. So I think if the question is, in a sense, can India grow enough to actually be at least a significant weight in international politics much more than it is now? I think on raw parameters, India is still only 4% of global trade, despite everything else. Yes, I think that potential is there, but the next four to five years are absolutely critical. If India misses this turn, then India still remains extreme, extremely poor before it grows very old. And that's the kind of nightmare scenario.
- [62:24]
B
It's perhaps a testament to the relative advantage that China has managed to accrue over the last decades that we've talked a lot about the perception of China more than the other way around. What role does India play in China? Is this to be a little bit rude? You know, the way in which Boston thinks of New York as a competitor, but New York thinks of, you know, Tokyo and Beijing as a competitor and doesn't really think about Boston very much, or does India play a significant role in the Chinese imagination?
- [62:59]
C
I mean, I. I mean, I think it's complicated. So one, I think China, of course, looms large, much larger than India's imagination than India does in China. I think, I think there's kind of very good evidence for that. Right. There was a sense in India that I think, I think if you look at the kind of broader global perspective, if the Indian model succeed, right, or succeeded, which is to say a liberal democracy in an extremely diverse society, and it can also demonstrate that it can actually produce 8% growth rate, that translating into some kind of a transformation of Indian human capital, then I think India's actually imprint on the world is actually much greater than the formal numbers would suggest, because it's almost a kind of vindication of the proposition that you can be a developing country and you can achieve many of these high goals and targets. You actually don't need a period of authoritarian consolidation. So in that sense, I think the ideological significance of India's presence is actually not inconsiderable. I mean, I think that's actually far more significant than the actual geopolitical weight it carries. And I think in those respects, I suspect, I don't think India looms as large in China's imagination as it does, I think, in terms of its ideological significance. In some ways, perhaps just let's do
- [64:27]
B
a final lightning round to close off this conversation. We touched on this a little bit during this Good Fight Club. What do you think is a thing that you wish that audiences in the United States, perhaps in Western Europe, understood about the current situation in Asia, whether in Japan and China and India, that they're really missing what is just a fundamental misunderstanding that you often encounter that you wish people didn't fall into? Perhaps let's start with you, Bethany.
- [64:59]
D
Well, I would say the question I get most often about Taiwan relates to how soon is China going to invade Taiwan or whatever. And people ask me, oh, is it scary? Is it scary in Taiwan? Because it feels like surely this is a country under siege, but in reality, Taiwan feels very safe. And when China engages and it's, you know, military exercises around Taiwan, most Chinese people just ignore it completely and may not even know that it's happening. So. So widespread misunderstanding would be that people in Taiwan feel like they're under siege or like they're scared of China, when in reality, life here is just. Just feels absolutely, completely normal.
- [65:49]
B
And I can attest to that from my experience of when I was in Taipei. And just as I had fun wandering the streets of Shanghai with Chang, discussing various aspects of the region, I had fun, Bethany, having coffee with you in Taipei and you explaining to my ignorant self some of the realities of Taiwanese politics and history.
- [66:09]
A
So I think that there was this. So there's a kind of cliche about Chinese attitudes towards outsiders that is. That is long standing. And I got this from an academic that I really sort of admire, who is an expert on China. And he said that, you know, Chinese kind of, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but his point is basically that, you know, Chinese are always kind of looking at the west as either like, barbarians or idols. Like, there's no in between. You know, they're either like the, you know, someone that we have to become and idolize, or they're, you know, you know, they're evil, and we have to basically, you know, close off. And I feel like what I'm seeing increasingly is Americans treating China the same way. So I'm seeing, like, Americans see China as like, either, like, oh, my God, they are the future and we have to quickly catch up or, oh, my God, like, why is everyone thinking that China is the future? China is an evil communist regime. And I just want people to. You know, I think there's like a Fitzgerald quote that's like, you know, the. The measure of intelligence is keeping two things true at the same time or something like. Of that sort. Like, I just want people to be able to hold, you know, two seemingly contradictory things and. And weigh them with equal seriousness. You know, one of them being that, you know, China is a ruthlessly repressive regime that I don't think that we want the world to. To approach. And as well as an extremely innovative society with Labubus and intense games like Black Myth, Wukong and awesome movies like Neja, like, those are all things that can come out of China, and it can be one. One country because. Because China is a big country. And so there's just a lot of realities to hold.
- [68:05]
B
There's got to be better things to point to than Labubus Pratap.
- [68:10]
C
I think, just building on that point, right, which is that, you know, I mean, one of the kind of remarkable things about this conversation, right, is the kind of common theme, which is summarized by the word complexity, which is these are extremely complex societies. I mean, in all kinds of ways. Historical depth, sociological complexity, their location in geopolitics. And I think the right frame to adopt is to say, okay, it is not easy to navigate this complexity for any of the citizens who live in these societies. You know, they're all trying to modernize in their own way. And I think finding frames of talking that can actually, in a sense, I think, do justice to this complexity. I think Chang put it in terms of being able to hold two contradictory thoughts, you know, thoughts together, something like that disposition, I think, that imaginative empathy. What does it actually mean to navigate this kind of complexity?
- [69:05]
B
Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. To Bethany to Chang and to Pratap.
- [69:12]
C
Thank you. Thank you,
- [69:20]
A
Sa.