 to Think Tech, I'm Jay Fidel. It's a Monday morning, and we're starting again our broadcast week with the Middle Way with Chang Wang, who joins us from Minneapolis, is it, Chang? And Russell Liu joins us from Honolulu. Nice to see your smiling face as you guys. So we're talking today in a special bonus show about how will President Biden deal with China? Very important question, a very complicated question, and it's rife with policy, foreign policy, and also American politics. So Russell, why don't you scope out the discussion? What are we going to cover here? What points do you want to raise with Chang? I think really, Jay, how will Biden deal with China? I think the first question is that we hear every day is, will Biden be soft on China? Coming from the Trump administration, which took a very hard position toward China? And the second really hard question is which way is up for Biden? You know, there is so much discussion because he's five days into his presidency. But we're going to look at today really, what is the really problem here? What is the question that begs to be solved? We're going to look at the problems that we have. Maybe we misunderstand China, we don't know enough about it. And I think that's a starting point. What is the problem here? And how does Biden approach it? It's not going to be an easy fix, but I think the first, we need to look and examine just what is the problem, because that determines how Biden has to map out the next four years dealing with China. It is a very urgent matter, and so this is what we're going to talk about. Foreign policy is much more urgent today than it was for previous presidents. Why? Why is it urgent? Why do we care? Well, why do we care? It's because so many things are going around that are happening, and we seem to are unable to really have solutions. We have many things that are changing around this. For example, the EU has entered an agreement with China, so that it's a great big investment deal for Europe, and that's one of the things that is concerned, because Biden's main approach has been coming to presidencies. We need to talk to our allies how to deal with China. We have to be on the same page with our allies, but it's changed. The dynamics are changed, and that really influences how the U.S. will have to work and deal and manage this relationship. Second of all, the major trade agreement in Japan, Korea, and China, which is something that the U.S. is not involved in. So there's a shifting world around us, and what and how we do with China means, very importantly, do we understand the issues? Do we understand the problems? I think Chek was going to talk a little bit about some of that perspective of what is the problem. Chek, let me ask you a question that can terminate side of what Russell was saying is, you know, how well did Trump do? Did Trump make the right moves or the wrong moves? I have my own opinion about that. I wonder what yours is. Well, there was a book, Everything Trump Touches Dies, and it touches China, and he didn't let it put that way. The first reaction, my reaction when Trump got elected, my first reaction was the Communist Party would be very happy about that. And there are many reasons for that. First of all, Hillary was not China's friends, and Trump was not China's enemy. There was a misconception that Trump would make a good deal with China. But Trump didn't, if you read John Bolton's Maimar, and Trump didn't do well with China. Trump didn't know how to negotiate, how to deal with a very sophisticated bureaucratic system like China. He knew how to, he had a lot of street smart, but he really is not capable who negotiate with these foreign leaders, which have, you know, a lot of background and experience in dealing with American leaders. Let me give you just one quick example, and I want to hear your comments. In 1988, in 1988, there was a Chinese scholar, a Chinese professor visited the United States and spent six months in the United States. And after he, at that time, the common feeling from Chinese toward America is total admiration. They just say that it's time to change China to look more like the United States. Separation of powers, checking balances, independent judiciary, and representative of the democracy, all of that, you know, total embrace of what America had. And America in 1980s acted like a big brother teaching China about everything China needed to know to be a modernized country, because China just woke up from the nightmare of the Cultural Revolution. But in 1988, this Chinese professor inside inside the system, what we call insiders, he was part of the bureaucratic system. He published a book, as soon as he finished completing his American trip, he wrote a book, the title is, and I really want to have your attention now, the title was America Against America. And in only six months, he found so much he traveled more than 15 states, and he talked to the professors, students, farmers, workers, a grocery worker, everybody he could find. And he read like crazy about United States history and sociology. And he concluded there are some fundamental structural problem with the American system. And what he see he summarized in his summarized his funding in the title is America Against America. And here's the best part. Who is this professor? This professor is now the top tank for the Communist Party, and he's the number five leader in the People's Republic of China, his top five leader in People's Republic of China. So using this example, what I want to illustrate is Chinese know much more about America than Americans know about China. They are more English speakers in China than the entire US population. If you walk into any bookstore in China, any bookstore, independent bookstore, chain bookstore, there are shelves, shelves, English books, and they are backseller shelves almost always have the most recent American backseller translated no later than one or two months into Chinese language. That is not uniquely Chinese. You go to European bookstores, you go to Brazil bookstores, you go to Australian bookstores, Korean bookstores, the American backseller quickly being translated into other languages. So you may be proud. We should be proud that of course that means America's self-power, right? But also that means the foreigners know more about America than American themselves to know about the foreign countries. And one last example I will stop. Turn on your local news, local news. You turn on the evening news, CBS, ABC, NBC, or if you may, Fox. How many international news you hear? Unless you turn on a TV, turn on PBS, you'll hear BBC, World Service. Otherwise, the average American have no idea what's going on in the world. But you turn on the foreign news TV, particularly when you're in China, that every day they are, they'll be bombarded to hear all this what's happening in the United States. They analyze the federal system, the court cases, the Trump and the Biden, they know they know so much about Americans and we don't. Here's the, so that's the fundament. One problem I see is the Americans are overly confident. They say that, okay, this guy traveled to China with China twice. You know, he can, he can, you know, be part of the China strategy or China policy. The good luck with that. But the people in China making the U.S. American strategy to deal with the United States, probably they know much more about the United States. Well, the situation you described where there was some good reason for China to embrace the American system in the past 20 years, that's gone away. Because I think that book was probably well accepted in China. And people realized in China, as we in the United States should have realized. Also, if we didn't realize it before, we certainly realized that on January 6 of this year, that America is fighting with itself. And therefore the system here is not not so good. And at the same time, the China system seems to be working well. They have dealt with COVID. They have resurrected their economy. They're doing well. And more importantly, they're doing well on multilateral agreements in Asia and now in Europe too. So you've got to give them credit for that. The one thing we haven't talked about is the trade war that Trump started. Why did he start that? Who supported him then? And who supports the continuation of the tariffs against China? Russell, you know, was there a good reason for it at any point along the way? Has it done any good for anybody? And yet why are people supporting it now? Well, Jay, that's a very good question. Again, what Chang has talked about, it mystifies me because that policy was largely promoted by Peter Navarro, who was the main advisor to the president on that to get the trade star. And somebody who's never been to China, lived in China, worked in China, done China deals, or there's a complete fundamental misunderstanding. I think everybody that's in that are Americans or China understood that this was really wrong. The American people are going to be paying for the price. And the companies in America pay the price. And one of the things that really is mind-boggling is that most of the exports from China are not truly made by Chinese companies that are selling in America. They're made by American companies in China or assembled things in China. A large part of the percentage of the things that come from China are actually made by American companies for American consumers. But again, we fast forward to today. We still have the tariffs. We are in phase one agreement. And because of COVID, China has not been able to fully perform yet. I think either 40% of the purchase is made. So that is something that Biden is toying with. And from the preliminary remarks, Biden has said, we're going to still keep the tariffs. And it seems to be more of a political issue because I'm aware, I'm sure that he's aware that it doesn't work. And we're going to have to change that. Because it's not going to work. It hasn't worked for the last four years. It's not going to work. These are things that are complicating Biden into how does he deal and engage with China. But the good thing is Biden knows that he has to engage with China. And his background of 40 years of political experience knows that he can walk across the aisles. It's complicated. As Chang was suggesting, China's view of the U.S. probably has changed. We know it has changed in the past 20 years. And it certainly has changed during Trump. I mean, there's a certain racist element in the way Trump handled China. He blamed China. He called the flu, the coronavirus, the Chinese flu. To me, that was racist. China was doing a pretty good job at flattening the curve and all that. All of a sudden, this guy is beaten up on China on a regular basis every day. I call that racism myself. We have a strain of that in the United States. And it was reflected in China in the Trump administration. But that has a momentum all of its own. Trump exacerbated that. So now, Biden has the Republicans who don't want to take the tariff off. He has this racism to deal with. He has the fact that China has gone out and made other deals, multilateral deals, trade deals in Asia and now in Europe as well with the EU. Biden has his hands full on this. He's got challenges from all sides of it. Chang, what can he do? How can he roll back these mistakes that Trump made? I shouldn't say mistakes. It's worse than this. It was an intentional mistake. Many intentional mistakes. What can Biden do to normalize our relationship with China and get back to some sort of friendly arrangement which we did have before? What I can say is only from my personal opinion and it's not advising Biden administration whatsoever. We expressed hope that Biden made it pretty clear that what Trump did was wrong. And the trade war was wrong. The racist remarks was wrong. As I said, Trump for years was like a gift to China. President Biden, as a Vice President, visited China not first time but when he was a Vice President, he visited China in 2011 and later he made another trip. Ten years later in 2021, China has changed dramatically. Partly thanks to Donald Trump because Donald Trump basically collapsed US reputation around the world and in China. Now, Chinese government can show Chinese people just to look at the United States. The democracy doesn't work. That stick with us. That is a very convincing argument now. And for the coronavirus pandemic, in some very strange way, coronavirus exposed some vulnerabilities in the US system. And one is a federalist system. But the China centralized bureaucratic system worked extremely efficiently in responding to this pandemic. But those are even without Trump, China has changed dramatically. China has now is much more prosperous. The government have like unlimited financial resources. They want to build a highway. They can build a highway. They want to build a new city. They can build a new city. They want to build a hospital to quarantine all these COVID, you know, light symptom patients. They can do that within like seven days. Those are just the coronavirus. It's just one more layer to boost China's credibility and their bureaucratic capability. But come back to your question. What we expect Biden administration to do? And we hope everything Biden administration do, of course, will be in the should be in the best interest of the United States first. But one thing we hope he will make it clear is to total refutation with resist remarks and the resist policy. Some of the Trump policies was made and designed and implemented was not in the best interest of the United States in mind, but with basically it's out of this resist, you know, motivation. For example, the travel ban. President Biden already reversed the Muslim travel ban. But the China travel ban is still in place. It was it make sense to have a travel ban during pandemic, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to have a travel ban on China who has like 20, 50 cases per day and and not have a travel ban other US allies. So you see that there's a discrepancy here. Also the immigrant ban is not reversed. But we are hoping that President Biden will look at into it when he has little bit more time to look at immigration issues in early February, the immigration ban with banning all the immigrant immigrant workers for coming into the United States. So all those are the issues. But he has put in together put together a very good professional team, some very good veterans have Chinese parents who have international diplomacy experience, Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan. All these are very competent people. And how about some Chinese members of that team? Well, there's a US Trade Representative Dai Chi. She's a second generation of Chinese American, but her parents were from Taiwan. So that's the thing. I don't think the United States government feels so comfortable to have the first generation immigrant work for them yet. And so they are all comfortable with a second generation immigrant's work for them. But when you get to the China policy, it appears that if you have, I said, if your parents or grandparents from Taiwan, you are much more trustworthy than if your parents or grandparents from mainland China. So that's an irony here. The administration, the federal government always put in place other people from, well, I think they already made progress. In the 20 years ago, they have people from Singapore or Japan or Korea to be in charge of China. Now, at least they progress to have people from Taiwan to be in charge of China. Well, your progress is good. But you know, what's interesting is that Trump went backward into the 12th century for four years. He reversed so many things that were positive and then went negative on really everything. We could spend weeks identifying all the things that Biden will have to correct. And the tragedy is Biden will have to work for his four years or more, maybe, correcting what Trump did instead of moving forward. You know, he has to correct and try to get back to where we were. It's nice to hear there's some progress about that. But you know, time marches on, Russell. And in the process, China has not lost any time in eclipsing the United States in trade deals. So it has made, what is it called, a receptive trade deal in Asia. It has made that deal a multilateral deal. And it has made a deal with the EU, a multilateral deal. And this, correct me, but this sounds to me like it makes it very hard for the US to generate its own multilateral deals. It has lost ground. It has been squeezed out of the multilateral trade business. And so Biden really has a challenge to try to get back to leadership the United States had in multilateral trade deals. Am I right about that? Yes, Jay. I think how we look at it is what kind of leadership does America play in the role today given we have what the things that Trump has done and what is Chang has mentioned. I think it's going to be very tough for Biden to try to work out with the allies as he's quoted the paper saying, trying to work out a multilateral approach. Very difficult because, again, China has in the last four years. And we've seen this COVID virus has been really leading the global world economy. 2028 is the magic date they say China will overtake the US to be the number one economy. I think it's sooner. I think it's going to be 2025. All of these things are working against Biden. He doesn't have the time. And I think, Jay, just in perspective, I was watching a show about black Americans who left the US in 1930s to start a new life in Soviet Union, then Soviet Union, now Russia. And so they're interviewing them today, the descendants. And one of them had struck a note that really hit down deep when I heard her say the difference between being in Russia and the discrimination, the racism, the US, and this woman was like in her 80 years old. She's like the third generation following her ancestor that left America to escape the leachings in the South. And she said, America is built on state racism. Now, in Russia, it's not state racism. It's casual racism. Casual racism means on the street somebody doesn't like you because you're black, and they'll tell you that. And she says, that's okay. But when you're in a state racism system, where, for example, we see what Trump has been doing as institutionalized this racism, you know, talking about the coronavirus as being Chinese, you know, all of this stuff is state racism. Then how do you deal with that, when you have to deal with a larger problem, you know, getting on backtrack in the world? And China is going to overtake and be the number one economy, whether we like it or not. And again, the second problem that I see is the leaders that have all signed up to vote for certification of President Joe Biden. These are the ones that are the real hawks on China. You know, so again, it's going to be a very difficult thing for Biden politically, domestically. And again, going back to what Chang said, it's important because we don't know China. Just because you went there, you have some meetings, doesn't make you a China expert. And I think that's where we have a problem. You can't figure a problem unless you know what the problem is. And you can't figure out the problem unless you really know the other side. You have to have something like that. That's true. And as we've all seen, it's 20 years ago, but maybe more recent than that, American companies go over there. They don't adequately study it. They don't understand the way the business community works. And they get in trouble. Even local companies here in Hawaii went over there and they got turned on their heads and they had to leave. So I guess what I'm saying is you have to be sophisticated if you want to deal with China. You have to know China. And it's a deep subject. It's sophisticated. It's complex. And if you don't do that, then you can't win. Not then, not now. And the problem is, as you both have said, that the average American doesn't know anything about China. This is a big problem. Worse than that, the average American, at least in the hinterland, and bang, you probably see this in Minneapolis, there are people in the hinterland that are still on the Trump track here. They have very peculiar views of China. And it's very hard to get them to come around because we need national policy to develop a good relationship. It has to be friendly. It has to be fair. It has to have a lot of communication. And it has to be tough where it needs to be tough, like intellectual property and the whole thing about investments in China. We couldn't do that, but we have to have the support of Trump's base in order to do that. Otherwise, you have Republicans opposing everything that anyone, including Biden, tries to do to reestablish an appropriate relationship with China. How is he going to deal with that? How is he going to educate the country on coming around to a fair-minded and pragmatic policy with China? Oh, the question for me? Yeah. Go ahead, Shane. I need a really hard one for you, Shane. It's okay. It is hard one. Actually, you already answered it. And what Biden can do in the coming years, what is this nutrition? We put a lot of confidence and hope in it. We just hope that they can repair the damages that have been done for the past four years. That's the most important thing. And even without any additional progress, we already be thankful. But first thing first, all the damages need to be repaired. And in the United States, we are in a much weaker position to argue with China on an international stage right now. The Americans need to be aware of that. You care about the democracy in China. Do you? And when you do not care about the human rights and the Black Lives Matter in the United States, when you even challenge your own democratic process, when you have a government sectioned the riot against the one branch, one branch sectioned the inciting interaction against another branch of the government, when the temple of democracy, US capital was occupied by these interactions to proud boys and amateurs, and how can you argue? How can you say with a straight face, you really deeply care about the human rights and the labor condition in China? You lost the credibility of that. So I believe that some people deeply care about these. They are true believers. Many of them work in the current administration, but they will have a very, very tough time to first convince our allies in Europe and that all the policy we are going to implement are making sense is in the best interest of the United States and European allies. Second, you will have a very hard time to argue with Chinese. You know, under Clinton administration, United States government almost always use that the civil rights and human rights issues as a leverage in the treaty negotiation. You can't do that anymore because China is much more prosperous right now that technology is much more advanced. And also for the past four years, there's American laws, a lot of credibility in the soft power. So long story short, I really hope that the current government can do some meaningful way to repair the damage and restore the credibility. Yeah, we need it. We need it on so many levels. And your points are well taken. But I want to step into Russell's shoes on this. Russell, it's up to you to summarize this discussion and to point us forward and to give us the larger conclusion, if you will, it can be done. Thank you, Jay. I think that what we're seeing in this last election, all of these things, all of these domestic things are happening, has changed, would agree. This is sort of like America's cultural revolution. And coming from somebody like me who I am not Caucasian, I look with a different filter and it's sort of like, I'm saying, who is an American? Because we're not on the same page, obviously. And because we're not on the same page, you know, when you deal with China, they're looking at America, who do we deal with? Who can we trust to negotiate? We tried with Trump, okay, and it didn't work. And we got bashed overhead. And to the point where at least I don't know if it's true, but where Xi Jinping has a communication with Howard Schultz of Starbucks, maybe he's an American that knows China more than Donald Trump or Joe Biden. But again, I think that what not only it's figuring China out, but it's figuring America out, because as Chang said, how can we deal with China when they're looking at us? We don't have a position of strength. We have this lot of the civil rights problem, you know, discrimination that's going on in America and the political machine doesn't work. As you saw from the January 6th ride on Washington D.C. So all of these things, again, go back to this thing. Joe Biden has to not only look to China, but domestically. He has to- Yeah, you know, I get that you guys have made a very strong statement that we really have to pay attention. And I would like to close with one thought that I take out of this. And it's to go back to Chang's word about trust, the sort of long-term guanxi. You know, you can spend years building guanxi and blow it in no time at all, which is what we've done. And now you see the question of trust is out there. And what is very troubling is the transfer of power at the end of a four-year or eight-year administration. Just what can happen is, and we have seen this, we are seeing it now, is the whole thing flips. Whatever you did before, you change it, you turn it around, you make- So if I'm China and I'm looking for long-term guanxi, I'm looking for trust, you know, the American system does not really yield that because we turn it over every four years or eight years and we'd be trusted. And I think that's the long-term model, the long-term issue. You know, even if Biden does a wonderful job, how do the Chinese feel about the end of the Biden administration and the possibility that a Republican who stands in the shoes of Trump would take the same positions as Trump will not replace him? This is very troubling for me and I'm sure for you and for them, of course. Thank you very much, Russell Liu and Chang Wang for joining us. We'll see you next Monday again for more of the Middle Way. Such an interesting show. Aloha, you guys.