 Yeah, we're back, we're live. Here we are at three o'clock with Marco Mangelsdorf doing global connections and talking about China. And the title of our show is very provocative, but true is, you know, Hong Kong now and Taiwan next. There's a sequence going on. Do you agree, Marco? Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. It's, I feel a little bit disoriented because it's a different day and a different time and a different subject. But you know, this allows me to put on my PhD political science hat and the fact that my principal field in Pali Sai was international relations. So this is a real pleasure to kind of put the solar hat down, the energy hat down and talk about things thousands of miles away, you know, in a global context for the part of the world that I've taken a very keen interest in, I would say over the past 20 years or so and spent a fair amount of time in the People's Republic in Taiwan, Southeast Asian so forth. So thank you so much for having me. Sure, sure. And it's very interesting you should mention that because what I was gonna say in the days of Deng Xiaoping and the days of say around the year 2000, China was so promising. There was so many Americans, including young Americans who had the greatest hopes that were organizations built to ultimately, you know, connect up with China and do stuff together with China. And we were gonna have a new day. It was gonna be a fabulous time going forward. I remember the energy of it and I remember how excited I was about it. But if you go fast forward from the early 2000s till now, wow, things have really changed. You know, I read a book called Pacific by Simon Winchester out of the East West Center and it had various stories about various parts and countries in the Pacific. And one of the stories was China and the South China Sea. And he talked, this is at least 10 years ago, there was a revelation for me. He talked about the fact that China was gonna take over that area that it had determined to take over that area and the ocean and everything inside. And it had imperialistic plans. And the question of course was then and is now, what can we do about it? Can we do anything about it? Or is this sort of baked into the future? Is this a future that we have to sit back and enjoy because we're not gonna be as influential as we were in the Western Pacific. And I remember how shocked I was with that. Shocked with the notion of the great, exceptionally United States, the winner of World War II, the greatest generation, how we had to sit back and take it and that was Simon Winchester was saying, relax. We don't have the ability to remain as influential as we used to be. At first I resisted that notion but then after a while I saw that he was right. And that's the last 10 years of my thinking about China, watching our relationship with them devolve and watching their care and concern about accommodating us also devolve. You've seen the same thing. I have and there's so many entry points that we have here. Jay, we could have a multi-hour seminar easily without running out of interesting things to talk about. And for me, I consider myself something of a scholar of post-revolution, in other words since October 1949 to the present Chinese political history. And it's a fascinating tale on so many different levels. And you go back to 1976 and the death of Mao Zedong and then the rise of the sent off to the hinterlands by Mao, Deng Xiaoping who became kind of first to money equals in 79. And one of the lessons from Mao I believe that was learned within China was the danger of having a particular individual on his cohort having so much power and they decided consciously to go in a more collective leadership direction. And that was the situation for a number of decades. You know, had the 1989 phenomenon which wasn't just Tiananmen Square in June which we're coming up on what we just passed about 32 years ago. But I mean, that was months and months in the making of demonstrations by educated youth and not just Beijing, but multiple Chinese cities across the mainland who were unhappy with the current trajectory, unhappy with corruption, unhappy with the Communist Party leadership. And then you had with the fall of the Democrats so to speak, you had Zhang Zemin who became the leader of the party for over 10 years and then Hu Jintao for 10 years. And that was kind of the informal understanding wasn't in the constitution whether it wasn't under statute to my understanding but you had a leader that served two terms and then left. And with Xi Jinping coming into the leadership position in 2012, interestingly, there were a lot of hopes been on this fellow who had a nice warm smile who had spent time in the United States. Maybe he was gonna be the great liberalizer or a small D Democrat that we were hoping and aspiring that he would become. He would continue to open up the People's Republic of China, maybe liberalized as time went by. And I think by all accounts, any reasonable observer say he's gone in the opposite direction. And now there's a big question or maybe it's not even a question that he is the core leader. That's the way he's referred to in China. And the notion that he's gonna step down anytime soon is not in the cards from what we all can tell. So he appears to be leader for life. Another Mao who ruled from 1949 to 1976 when he died. And one of the biggest concerns I have, Jay, and I've been taking a pretty deep dive over the past just a few months in terms of reading books that I've talked about, I've talked about the Cultural Revolution and the upheavals that took place from 1966 to 76, the under Mao is that when you look back at periods like that and even under Xi Jinping, you had the not infrequent occurrence of top party leaders who were touted to be very close to Mao, who were touted to be the person to come after Mao, people like Liu Xiaoqi and Lin Biao under Mao who from one day to the next either were banned as counter-revolutionaries, revisionists or in the case of Lin Biao, he apparently was trying to escape to the Soviet Union and his plane crashed. So you have this history, whether it's under Mao and now under Xi early on in the Xi years of big party heavyweights such as Zhou Zhongkong or Bo Xilai who both met rather unplus than fates. Now they weren't powered off and executed or dismembered but they were both big show trials and imprisoned. So Xi has made it a point of putting people away who he sees as a threat. And to go to my punchline here, Jay and one of my biggest concerns is as US Chinese relations are at today and Nadir we're at a real low point now and not only between ourselves and the peoples republic of China but whether it's the European Union whether it's Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan that there are multiple and parts of Southeast Asia as well there are multiple parts of this world which have become increasingly uncomfortable to what we see China doing both internally and externally. So here my punchline is I'm concerned about to what extent somebody like Xi Jinping who's leader of the party who is head of the military commission they're a very powerful position in and of itself is having any type of council around him which is challenging the existing orthodoxy which is giving him counter arguments and a spirit to discussion about what's going on kind of a red team so to speak upon intended. And I think back to John of Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis October 62 and the XCOM Executive Committee where there were multiple voices advocating different paths whether it's the general chiefs of staff whether it was Bobby Kennedy or the attorney general you had an open discussion about options and costs for those options. And to what extent in the top echelon of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and the Politburo there is open discussion about the risks that China, Beijing and its current trajectory are encountering or will encourage. That is one of my biggest concerns that he's operating in perhaps something of a bubble that doesn't allow the free flow and discussion of information that would challenge the particular worldview right now that's being held at the top level of the Communist Party. Well, just as he's been very hard on his own people a lot of people have left or tried to leave China a lot of them have gone to retraining camps that buzz of optimism has been modified and look at the really harsh steps he's taken to Hong Kong and look at the rhetoric he's been using on Taiwan lately it's scary and it seems to me that in the last 10 years as you say she has taken more power every time you look he treats himself as Mao he treats his writings and his comments his thinking as thoughts of Mao and I agree with you he'll stay in power a long time. So the question really is and you talk about all these countries that are intimidated for good reason, for good reason it's not just economic it's this military behind that I mean they got the biggest Navy in the world now they have the nuclear weapons they are and the army is huge and obedient and so I think what we have is a real threat to Southeast Asia and to any country that gets in the way including all the countries that want to use those ocean pathways that he has effectively taken over in violation of the International Court in Hague. So the real question is where is this going? It's not likely that he's gonna have the red team anytime soon Marco, he's gonna stay there in power he's gonna be increasingly paranoid absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely that's what we have, one belt, one road or shall I say belt and road we'll give him power and influence and God knows what kind of leverage all the way to Europe, all the way to Europe in every which way and he's building Chinese freeways through countries that don't have drinking water it's quite remarkable what he's been doing and this is gonna give him control in so many ways of the economics and ultimately the political sovereignty of those countries. So what I would like to ask you if you have all those considerations what's gonna happen here? He's not gonna be less powerful next year he's gonna be more powerful and we don't have to get to the question of the US just yet but we gotta talk about that. So let's talk about Asia let's talk about going west all the way to Europe where is she taking us? Well and unless you were to make a major misstep which is not predictable at this point when, if, where but I mean if he were to make a major misstep that would most likely put his leadership in serious jeopardy although so much of what goes on as a very top echelon of the Chinese Communist Party is so very opaque. So the likelihood of that happening I'm not gonna bet one where the other but to address your question Jay to me my focus is particularly on the Republic of China aka Taiwan which is off of the Chinese East Coast the mainland East Coast and I've been paying particular close attention these past months in the past year too especially in light of what appears to me not being a lawyer but appears to me to be a clear abrogation of Beijing's agreement with the UK 1997 to hand over Hong Kong, right? 50 years of autonomy. I think any reasonable observer any reasonable scholar, any reasonable lawyer would see what's happened there and see it as an abrogation of the agreement that the Beijing and London came to in 1997. So a very cautionary tale in terms of clearly Xi Jinping in the leadership saw Hong Kong the continuing shall we say unrest in Hong Kong as being unsustainable from their perspective and absolutely not with it not acceptable. So they've taken the action that they have people like Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee and others who have been, you know for decades on the side of Hong Kong Democrats are either imprisoned or have been reprimanded severely that they're not likely to get involved in politics anymore. So what does this mean for that region, for that neighborhood? And if you look at kind of the last remaining sore spot for Beijing this goes back of course even prior to the October 49 revolution but it goes back to the decades long civil war between the Communist Party and the Guomandong, right? Led under Chiang Kai-check decades to go. So Taiwan is the last remaining unfinished business of the People's Republic of China. And it has been a... Are you saying that Hong Kong is already handled and Hong Kong is over the Rubicon now and it's not coming back? No, no. I don't see any circumstances whatsoever where there would be... I mean, in the world as we have right now where Hong Kong would revert back or would go back to a more democratic set of islands there. I see no possibility of that happening. So the last remaining big part of their portfolio in terms of things they absolutely feel they need to do I'm talking about the leadership in Beijing is to deal with the Taiwan issue. And like I said, it's been bothering them for decades and decades and decades. And I am very concerned, Jay and a lot of people who pay close attention to that part of the world are very, very concerned that there is a... The tension between the Taiwanese government under Tsai Ing-wen and her democratic progressive party and Beijing and the tension between the United States between China and the United States but not just between China and the United States regarding Taiwan but the Europeans are getting involved as well. And the Chinese are particularly apoplectic about what they call salami cutting or salami slicing tactics. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is that over the decades roughly since the thing with Jimmy Carter who after Deng Xiaoping visited the US for the first time first and only time in 1979 decided to officially change our recognition of China from Taiwan to the People's Republic of China. There has been this so-called strategic ambiguity in Washington from Democrat to Republican to Democrat Republican president where it was kind of an open question. Well, what if what happens in Taiwan in terms of the Chinese mainland folks seeking to reunite the motherland with Taiwan by force? What would we do? What would the United States do? Hence the... Well, we wanna leave it ambiguous, right? So it's been ambiguous for decades but it's kind of less ambiguous now. So from Beijing's perspective, Jay and I read the Chinese press every single day which they're emo typically alternates between defense and offense and offense defense constant, constant, constant in terms of going after their critics going after the United States, going after Scott Morrison who's the PM in Australia and list goes on and on and on. The salami slicing to use the Chinese vernacular is essentially we just keep on pushing closer, pushing closer, pushing closer to this red line, this core interest where Beijing is absolutely set and makes it very clear that this is not negotiable. This is not negotiable. We will reunify Taiwan with the mainland. It's just a question to win and we're running out of patience. We're running out of patience with the current government in Taiwan. We're running out of patience with the Americans and there have been record numbers of Chinese aircraft that have tested the air defense zone and ID zone around Taiwan and a big, big concern about what comes next and all the war playing scenarios that I'm aware of that have been conducted by the Pentagon or by other groups in the United States show few if any scenarios where our side wins or the Taiwanese win. So it's a very, very, very serious concern. And I mean, this is an island of close to 24 million of which about less than a million are expats. So figure on 23 or so million native Chinese to the islands and ethnic minority groups. And it is the one place in the world now the one place in the world where you have people of ethnic Chinese origin who are ruling in a democratic and liberal democratic fashion. And here you've got 1.4 billion people on the mainland who seek to change that status quo. So it's a great source of concern for me. I have some friends in Taiwan as well. And I really wonder how we in Beijing and Washington and Beijing are going to get out of this and just one more thing, kind of an anecdote before I turn over the talking stick to you Jay. In the past week or so, there was the visit of three US senators to Taiwan for all of three hours, three hours, okay? Senators Tammy Duckworth, Chris Coons and Dan Sullivan from Alaska. And they were on the ground there at the airport, Songshan airport in Taipei for about three hours. They were met by Signing Wen who went to the airport as well as other dignitaries. And then they were transported in on a US Air Force C-17 transport. And just got a lot of press in China in terms of the insult that the Chinese people supposedly had that there was a military aircraft that landed in Taipei with three US senators. So they just thought as another slice of the salami that the Americans were changing the status quo of the strategic ambiguity and pushing closer and closer and closer and closer to that red line. Well, my reaction is, at first meaning what to decades ago after the war, we swore that we would protect Taiwan, gave them weapons, gave them money, made treaties, reserved alliances with them. And over time, various administrations that the problem in our democracy, administrations come and go, foreign policy comes and goes, alliances come and go these days. And so our relationship with them isn't nearly as hardy as it used to be. And our promises to protect them are not as nearly as credible. You can say it's ambiguous, but even ambiguity, you can see through the ambiguity when you connect the dots. And I think if you connect the dots now and you ask whether the United States would defend Taiwan against that attack, the answer is a robust no. It would not, it would stand back and maybe we would make some noise, but we don't have the political will. And of course, there's the other question is, is China going to tolerate our involvement or is it going to be fisticuffs with us too if we try to enter that theater? And I think the answer is China feels very strong and arrogant about this. That's why they can cut the salami this way. That's why they can go into the South China Sea. They don't care, they're gonna have their way and every day they're stronger about it because they're always testing us. And I think we fail the test. I think their Navy is stronger than our Navy. I think they have all kinds of weapons and they have a huge army. And it's very, what do you want to say? It's very responsive to the political commanders. I don't think we can beat them there. It would be a disastrous war, but I don't think we can beat them. At the end of the day, we know that. As you said, all the scenarios point the wrong way. All the think tanks are telling us not to do that. So we are going to wind up being observers, maybe stamping our feet, I don't know, sanctions, all those things that have no effect on the public stage, on the global stage. And I agree with you too that this is coming. One of the points in the article in Foreign Affairs a week or two ago was that she had said that within three to five years, he was going to resolve this problem. That means he's going to take over Taiwan in three to five years. That he's strengthened by what he did and is doing in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is going to look like, what's the name of that city in the West where the Muslims are? Xinjiang. Xinjiang, yeah. He's going to have his cameras. He's going to be watching every man, woman and child in the place. He's going to be throwing him in jail or retraining, if you will, on pretense. He is going to terrify them. And this has the effect of terrifying others elsewhere, like in Taiwan. He may threaten Taiwan to the point where they just give up. That's a possibility. Take economic steps and stamp his feet and use threatening military operations, maneuvers, exercises to show... Cyber attack. Cyber attack, quarantine, blockade. Yeah, there are a number of options. And I wanted to read this quote from, it was in the New York Times piece by Keith Bradshaw, who's there, a China bureau chief there. And I found it kind of striking. This is from Xi Jinping last week when he was speaking before a level, a top level group of the Chinese Communist Party. Quote, we must focus on setting the tone right, be open and confident, but also modest and humble, and to strive to create a credible, lovable and respectable image of China. I like that last phrase in particular. Credible, lovable and respectable image of China. And that kind of an obvious question to me is, I mean, does he believe and do his top lieutenants believe that they are currently creating that credible and lovable image of China? I mean... It's propaganda, they're creating a fantastic level of untrue propaganda. That's what's happening here. I mean, it actually reminds me of some of the things that Trump has done. But bottom line is, you can't believe what they say now. There was a time when you might have believed the greater share of it, but right now, no. They're abusive and they're arrogant. So, they can talk about being lovable, but nobody is gonna believe that, I hope. Bottom line though, is that we're gonna be facing this increasingly accelerating, escalating problem over the next few years. And they're gonna be taking advantage of any false steps that happen with our government and our country. They're probably rubbing their hands when they see insurrection, and they see Joe Biden's inability to get his initiatives through, because they can get their initiatives through, no problem. So what happens here is that they are encouraged by our frustrations and failures, and that makes it happen faster. And when the crux moment comes, and I agree with you, it wouldn't necessarily be a physical war, it could be any number or a combination of things, as in the Foreign Affairs article. We are not really in a position to stop them. We are not really in a position to get involved. We are not really in a position to change their conduct. And yet, Jay, and yet despite the bluster, which can be considerable at times, one of the things that really struck me in my years in reading a lot of literature on China, both written by Chinese sources and Western sources, is the degree of kind of ingrained in security, fear, and paranoia that exists amongst Han Chinese. And there are reasons and explanations for that, that would be another hour or two, or a worth of discussion. But it is a firm conclusion and observation I have that there is kind of deep within, and I'm making a broad generalization here, and I'll stand by it, as there was a, as I said, deep kind of river of insecurity, fear, and paranoia. Some of it justified based on how they were treated by colonial powers, including the United States in their history. And some of it that I think springs just from the nature of being, again, I'm generalizing here, the being Chinese. And they cover it up at times with a lot of bravado, try very hard to cover it up with a lot of bravado. But to me, there is this deep insecurity within the psyche. And, you know, to circle back to close this, the stance that we're doing with them in Taiwan is very, very dicey right now. And just want to kind of sidebar note, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company there in Taiwan is the kind of ultra best and most sophisticated manufacturer of, of, you know, the top ships in the world, the top computer chips in the world. It's the Taiwan Semiconductor Corporation. Manufacturing Company, TSMC. Yeah, huge, worth trade-ins. Opening a subsidiary plant in the US, by the way. In Arizona. Yeah, Arizona. Yeah, but that's going to take. And they're spending trillions there too. And imagine, I mean, and I got this information from a good piece in 60 minutes, a number of weeks ago by Leslie Spal. And I mean, imagine, I got to believe if I was a planner in Beijing, that I would certainly be taking that into account in terms of the benefits and the risks of the Bain land, making a more immediate or near term move into Taiwan is getting access and control over the premier manufacturer of chips, which, you know, have to do with military, have to do with IT, have to do with AI and all other sources. Everything, everything. The he who controls the semiconductors now in this world controls everything. But, you know, just one comment about your concern over their paranoia. I think, you know, one of the things that I've seen in my readings is that there's a tremendous amount of internal propaganda going on. I mean, you spoke of, you know, these newspaper articles in state controlled press where they, you know, knock on Taiwan every day. And why do they do that? Well, I think they want to get public support. They want, they want the Chinese people to be behind them. They already have that. They already have that in spades. There is very, very small number of people in China, even if they were honest, the mainland, who would say, well, we support where the Taiwanese are doing. We support the freedom that they have. It's just the opposite. The very large majority of people on the mainland have bought in to the narrative, which the Taiwanese are renegade province, they're spoiled, they're elitist, and, you know, they deserve what's coming to them. I'm, again, generalizing, but I'm 100% behind what I just said. But, you know, one other question before we close, and I do have a closing question for you, but why? Why 24 million people, it's peanuts. Sure, they have a semiconductor plant, but why does China, why is China pushing on this even since the war? What is it symbolic maybe? Because it doesn't mean that much really to China. China has been successful in Tibet, I think Mongolia and other peripheral countries. China, you know, has been successful, is being successful in Hong Kong, its initiatives. China is all the way out to Spain with its Belt and Road. So what do they need this little peanut island? It is both strategic and symbolic, Jay. Strategic is pretty easy to understand. Symbolically, the Communist Party, won, they were victorious over the Guomandong in October, 1949. And as that was happening, you had the Guomandong under Chiang Kai-shek who fled to the island of Formosa, AKA Taiwan. So symbolically, this represents the last part of the revolution which they were unsuccessful ultimately because they didn't destroy and vanish forever, the Guomandong. The Guomandong escaped to the island. They're still there. You know, that party is still interestingly, you know, Go Figure, the Guomandong or KMT as is known in Taiwan is the opposition party to the Democratic Progressive Party. And they, Go Figure, they are more pro-good strong relations with the mainland. So interesting. Yeah, very funny how that works. So don't just count the symbolism, my friend, of how raw the Guomandong escaping to Taiwan and this Renegade province being a thorn in their sides for decades, don't underestimate how- It was 770 years later. No, it was 770 years later. I want to flip the question on you though. Why, if at all, is Taiwan important to us? And what should we be doing now in our foreign policy to deal with this state of affairs? Well, let me answer that this way. So as much I was not a fan of former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, I do largely agree with his then hard line at it, and he's still hard line, but then hard line attitude towards the People's Republic of China. And in the last weeks and months of the Trump administration, he instituted a number of changes to the status quo as far as American policy towards Taiwan. And there was a lot of bated breath in Beijing in terms of what's Biden gonna do? Is he gonna back off? Is he gonna be more of our friend and a negotiating partner than Donald Trump was? And I think they have to conclude at least six or so months into it that Biden and Tony Blinken, the current secretary of state, are not going to be soft on China that is politically untenable, even if they wanted to. So the American position will continue to I think be relatively tough towards the China, towards Beijing, much to the dismay of Beijing. And what should we do differently? I think it's a very careful, very dangerous, carefully calibrated drama that we're in with Beijing right now. And I'm not in a position where I would recommend do this or do that, but I'm reading both sides. And like I said, to reiterate for the umpteenth time, I'm very, very concerned about Beijing deciding at some point not too far from now that they've had enough and it's time to deal with this once and for all and the consequences be damned. Yeah, really the reality is there and all that you read and see suggests exactly that. Well, Marco, even though we can't solve this problem together, I would like to do that. We can certainly observe it and I know that there'll be stuff happening in Hong Kong, in Taiwan and in Beijing that will teach us more about the trajectory of these historical developments. And I hope you'll join me again when that happens as and when that happens so we can catch up and evaluate it still one more time. I'd be very pleased to do that, my friend. We know where to find each other. Marco Manglestor, a guy who has traveled everywhere who has studied everything and who has spent a lot of time in China and Southeast Asia. Really appreciate you coming around. Ah, Shuxie, you're too kind. Thanks so much for having me. Shuxie, say jian. Shuxie, say jian.