 Thank you everyone for joining us. I'm Sam Sachs. I'm a cyber security policy fellow at New America and a senior fellow at Yale Law School's Paltide China Center. I am honored and delighted today to have Michael Schumann, author of the new book, Super Power Interrupted, who's going to talk with us about his book about the role of technology and national power, as well as his decades of experience researching, reporting and writing from Asia. Michael was a foreign correspondent with the Wall Street Journal and with Time and is now a contributor to the Atlantic as well as the writer for Bloomberg opinion. Thanks so much, Michael, for joining us. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. So I want to just read a short passage from the introduction to the book. Michael writes, the history of the world comes in strands, each leaving its own story. These strands occasionally bump into each other. Religions are spread technology shared goods exchanged, but to a great extent for much of history, the strands continued along their own course. So Michael, just to begin, can you tell us what inspired you to look into the Chinese strands of history? And why is this something that you think has been undercovered and what are some of the takeaways that you have from delving into that strand? Well, you know, I was thinking about how we learn history, you know, and I grew up in New Jersey and I went to just kind of a regular, you know, city public high school, pretty good high school actually, but, you know, my choices of history were American history and American history. And, you know, the other parts of the world kind of float into that story when, you know, but generally you're taught a certain narrative of history and I think generally everybody learns history that way. I mean, in the US, you know, we call it Western Civ and you have this narrative that starts usually with ancient Greece and then Rome and then, you know, the development of Europe and the Reformation and the Enlightenment and the Age of Discovery and the American Revolution, and so on and so on. So, and I started thinking that basically I think other people in other societies learn history the same way but they learn an entirely different narrative of history. So people end up learning a history that leads to where they are and it's based on who they are. And that leaves us somewhat disconnected from other people's histories. So when you start thinking about China, you know, this is a society with a very, very long history and also a society that has its own stories. Yeah, its own heroes, its own villains, its own turning points and major battles and good things and bad things and good people and bad people. And this is the story that the Chinese know and this shapes the way that people in China see themselves, they see the world, how they interpret events, both historical events and current events, how they see the role in the world and where they're going in the world. And so I felt that if people in the US and elsewhere knew more about this kind of Chinese strand of world history or what I'm calling a Chinese history of the world, then what China is doing now where China is going, what Chinese ambitions are for themselves and for the country start to actually make a lot more sense. So bring us, make those links for us between your experience delving into the past and the Chinese strand of history and where we are now as we make sense of the Xi Jinping government and China's role in the world. Well, you know, I think one thing that is most remarkable about Chinese history is how often the political elite in China were able to rebuild Chinese power. You know, we, we, we learn Chinese history as a series of dynasties kind of like, you know, one took, one replaced another, you know, one after the like they were like tenants in the Forbidden City or something and one moved out and the others moved in. It wasn't really like that but what, you know, China went through long periods where they were civil wars and there wasn't politically united and there were periods of weakness and periods where China was invaded. But after all of the different calamities eventually the Chinese got together and built themselves into a great power again and for large sections of their history over the last 2000 plus years. The Chinese were a major, major regional power and major world power based on circumstances at the time. So, you know, we, when we talk about China today, we tend to talk about China all wrong, where we we talk about China as an emerging economy rising country as if this is of course something new. And, you know, in the current modern context the last, you know, 50 years, 100 years, yes it is. But when you put what's going on in China today, and what's happening with China's role in the world today in this longer historical narrative, it looks like another one of these periods where the Chinese after after, you know, a couple hundred years when things were, they weren't that strong they had lost kind of influence on on the world stage that they're again in the process of rebuilding their power. There's ways of kind of comparing the government today with you know the old imperial dynasties obviously this is the government today and not supposed to be a dynasty and there's no emperor at least at least officially, you know it's supposed to be a people's Republic. But when you look at the pattern of what's going on and also a lot about a lot of how this government actually behaves and acts on the world stage and its ambitions. It looks something like an old imperial restoration like the old Ming dynasty, the old Tang dynasty. So, and when you put it put it in that historical context, then you can really understand what China where China's going because you know we spent a lot of time, you know, in the West talking about well what is China want and the answer is somewhat, somewhat simple which is really trying to kind of wants what it always wants to reclaim its position in the world that it traditionally has had for long periods of time and I think based on the Chinese view actually the Chinese believe that they kind of have a right to have. As you write the period when China was demoted from its superpower status was a mere blip in the long line of in the long Chinese timeline a few pages and historical volumes that fill a library. And then you say they are striving to do that again in the 21st century will they succeed in a truly globalized world where one person can influence another on the far side of the globe with the tap of a smartphone screen. The answer will determine the course of everybody's strand of history. And I want to transition with that with the smartphone screen to talking about specifically the role of technology and national power. And one point that you've raised in the book is that we often think about China as a, or in the past we until recently we thought of China as a copycat nation the idea of China as an emerging economy. China was pulling from innovations, you know, elsewhere. And I think now we're, you know, that framework is dramatically shifted. But I think what what you're saying is it's not just recently that China moved away from this so called copycat nation. But in fact that China for large chunks of its history was very much at the forefront of technological innovation. And that China was a manufacturing powerhouse, a high tech exporter and innovation hub and an engine of the global economy, long before Marco Polo embarked on his famous journey. And I love the parts of the book where you talk about what were these sort of high tech exports from the past and going into silk and porcelain and paper. What are some of the things that you've taken away from looking at the role that technology played in China's history, and its role sort of on the global stage then. And any lessons that we can glean for the discussion of the role of technology today and global power. Well, it's interesting because we in the West tend to equate the formation of a kind of a truly global economy with when, you know, the Portuguese sound their way into the Indian Ocean. And you started getting these long distance connections between Europe and Asia, but there's more and more research being done that there was actually something of an international world economic system. It's been going on long, long before that going back 1000 years from now even even earlier than that. And China played a massive role in that international system, and was always a major player in global trade. And why is that a lot of it's because they made stuff that the world wanted and a lot of it. And for long periods of time the rest of the world didn't know how to make I mean porcelain as you mentioned is a great example and industry that the Chinese dominated that much of the rest of the world had basically had no idea how this product was made for centuries that you know, for for many centuries until other countries figured it out. So, this was a major driver of world trade people around the world wanted to get their hands on these Chinese products, and they would come from all over the world looking for looking for them and and trading for them. So, and China was also at this at this point that connected the overland routes through Central Asia the also what we call the old Silk Road, and also the maritime routes, stretching all the way from East Africa, and the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf across the Indian through to Southern China, and China was kind of a hinge point of these these two kind of trading systems. And it was really the role that China played as a technological leader that allowed them to do that that's why the world wanted to trade with China. And this of course is a big source of Chinese power, because if you have something that other people really want, then you have a little bit of leverage over them so you know people want to trade with you. And, you know, you, you have basically control the power balance. So, when you look at what at what's going on today. You know, with Xi Jinping, and I think he very well very much realizes this he realizes that yeah China's the second largest economy in the world, but to a to a great extent they're very heavily dependent on foreign technology. Things like, you know, chips, you know, Huawei sells a tremendous number of phones, but they but they run on on Android. They don't run on a Chinese operating system. Not that the Chinese can't develop these things. But, you know, the fact that that the United States is so still so dominant many aspects of technology to a certain extent leaves China in a little bit of a second class status on the international stage. So, a big part of Xi Jinping's economic policies is, is creating homegrown Chinese technologies and new cutting edge industries like, you know, AI electric vehicles that he hopes that China is going to be able to dominate in the future and and basically rebuild another one of these pillars of traditional Chinese power, which is a technological advantage. You know, it's interesting the terminology, you know, because your book is focused on restoring superpower status and that term has come up specifically around technology in authoritative Chinese writings on technology ambitions. The idea of building China into a quote unquote cyber superpower, one law Chianguo, and I've had debates with colleagues about how do you translate Chianguo is that a cyber strong nation is that a cyber superpower. You know, I, and I think we actually my colleagues and I at the Digi China project, New American Stanford had decided that superpower was probably the most accurate way to translate Chianguo and there's also a science and technology superpower and this is sort of part of the Xi Jinping thought on on cyberspace and what the objectives are. So one of the questions and I think this relates to technology but some of the broader themes and the book is when we think about what does the leadership of Xi Jinping want in this, you know, superpower status. Is this an idea is this something that you know the Trump administration refers to this is basically an existential threat to the United States. One of this is focused on technology in the ongoing conversation, you know, tick tock is an existential threat. You and I have had conversations about that Huawei that this sort of that's manifesting in these tech companies that have succeeded in making it outside of China's closed technology ecosystem. Do you see these ambitions as posing a it's an either or is this a you know the scholar, Jessica Chen why scholar Cornell has written that Xi Jinping's ambitions are not about overthrowing and revising the international order it's about creating an international order that is safe for autocracy where China can coexist along with democracies and other authoritarian governments, even if it is a sort of disgruntled power within that system. Or do you see this sort of in line with the Trump administration as an X you know these new ambitions, or these restored ambitions are an existential threat how do we make sense of what this means in the context of the US and the broader international order. Yeah, well you know it's hard to tell if the Trump administration sees companies like you mentioned like tick tock in Huawei. Are they national security threats, or are they technological threats to American dominance, and to a certain extent it in those those ideas are somewhat linked right because because when you think about it you know I think it's a real question is if China can, can China achieve the ambitions that Xi Jinping has set out without being a technological leader. I don't necessarily know the answer to that question, but you know when you look at at the US, which has been in quote relative decline I'm not a big decline this I don't necessarily believe in the inevitability of the end the end of the United States but like a lot of people do but it's, you know, even as the US has has declined and kind of relative size and the world economy. It has maintained it's a great degree of dominance because of the technological edge. And so can can China actually be the power that it wants to be without somehow claiming a certain amount of that edge for for China. And what happens if it can't does the economy stolen with the economy stalls. What happens to China's other ambitions. If China cannot be a technological power. Can it. How can it project its power globally and in the way they in the way that it wants to be if, if everybody in the world is still using iPhones and buying American chips and using American software. Does that mean China can still be a superpower. I don't I think the answer here that the Chinese would say would be no. And that's why they're in such a such a national drive to try to to not just catch up, but to catch up and at least in some industry surpass the US and Europe and get that technological edge back because I do think they see it critical for the expansion of their own power and the preservation of their of their system as well in on the world stage. And I think also that technology is in some ways, almost a backstop to the ways in which this is a zero sum game, one because of the integrated nature of global technology development but also if we think about some of the manifestations of this power, we see Chinese companies going abroad. If these companies are to be received and welcomes abroad, they cannot be perceived as being arms of the Chinese state and that's exactly what we're seeing. And I think that we can play out with TikTok and Huawei right that they have to be seen as separate and that's the very that's the problem, otherwise, the US government is going to take a swipe at them is what's happening. And in this way I think that sort of the Xi Jinping government is sort of at odds with itself and there are tensions between the economic and commercial ambitions and the national security ambitions. The security law the draft of it came out in early July the second chapter of the law specifically talks about the need to balance industrial development and security. And I think that that's a tension that's playing out and will continue to sort of play out as these as these issues unfold. So, yeah, go ahead. Oh yeah but but it's you know, it's interesting to do because to a certain extent Xi Jinping is working across purposes. You know, you mentioned earlier that this idea that he needs to develop China into a kind of a high tech power to kind of preserve his, you know, his system and carve out a space for it on on the world stage but to a certain extent what I think what we're finding is that this authoritarian system and the quest for technological influence are basically running counter to one another I mean that's the real lesson of what's going on with TikTok and Huawei right now is, you know, why are people so nervous about Huawei and TikTok. It's not because of the videos that kids that kids make and put on on the TikTok app and it's it's not really because of the immediately the equipment that Huawei makes. It's because the Chinese state is working in the background. It's not so much that we don't trust Huawei and we don't trust TikTok we don't trust China, and what China is going to how China is going to use this technology to promote their own authoritarian system and their own authoritarian interests. So Xi Jinping by intensifying state control in society as he has in China and using technology as a key way of intensifying state control over society. He is basically pulling the rug out from under companies like Huawei and TikTok who are trying to be global players. And I'm not sure he's at all aware that he's put that he's holding the rug and pulling it up from under them but that that basically so I, I think the big question for China is that can China promote its authoritarianism and promote the technologies at the same time. I don't know the answer to that question. Not everybody is going to ban Huawei. So the answer on a certain level, maybe yes but at the same time if you have the US and the UK and Australia and other major economies doing it. You're definitely curtailing China's mobile ambitions because of its authoritarianism. So another point that you write a theme throughout your, your Chinese world history tour is also the fact that China throughout different periods has oscillated between periods of openness and periods of closeness and xenophobia, which I think is something that this is a theme that's also playing out in US politics as well. Looking back at Chinese history, are what lessons sort of have you drawn from seeing where openness and close the effect that openness and closeness has played and in the book you assert that the Xi Jinping government appears to now be heading back into one of these periods of paranoia and xenophobia and closeness. At a time when I think the US government is also in that same period. What's what are the implications of that. You know, I think all societies go through this kind of, you know, periods of great openness and acceptance and periods of kind of paranoia and xenophobia and nativism I don't necessarily think that's China specific I think China has a somehow gained a reputation that has historically been an isolation society, which is, it's very much not true and I would, when you look back at how even that the Chinese themselves consider to be, you know, their most glittering periods of history, they tend to also be equated with the periods of the greatest openness. You know, when you look at, for example, the Tang Dynasty, which I think is considered the height of Chinese traditional civilization. It was also easily the period when China was most open. And you had a lot of a lot of non Chinese playing very, very important roles with within the, the Tong government, foreign fashions foreign products foreign food foreign dancers foreign whatever very very popular in, in the Tong period, especially the early time period. And, you know, when you look at then periods of closure I mean it's, I've been I've been making a very vague, you know, the connection in my mind with you know, when did, when did China start to lose its technological edge and, and start to lose, start to lose its, its, its power on the world stage. You could almost link it with when China became much more close, for example, you know, with, with the Ming dynasty, which was a period of greater isolation. This was really the period that saw the start, at least otherwise, you know, the rise of Europe. The Ming were aware that the Portuguese and others had better, had better military technology than they did, but they didn't really do a whole lot about it. Because they, they didn't, didn't take a whole, a whole lot of interest in what was happening with foreign people. So, you know, and obviously by the time you, you, you got to the Qing dynasty, the Industrial Revolution that happened in Europe, and China had fallen far behind it. It took centuries for the for that to all play itself out. But, you know, this is something that Deng Xiaoping realized, if you, if you go back and read his speeches and writings, he, he equated China's poverty and weakness with China's closed door to the world. And that's why he decided to open things up. So, you know, it, what I'm afraid of what you're seeing now is again, as you said that this government is kind of going back into one of these isolationist periods where it feels that it needs to do everything at home, including a technology, you know, Xi Jinping talks about technology self-sufficiency, which is kind of an almost an auto market kind of thinking that we have to do all this ourselves, which is very uneconomic. But so the, but you know, but this is still China is a big economy, but it's still a middle income economy. And the question is, can China get to where it wants to go? Can China really become, you know, one of the world's most advanced economies, if it's going to be a more isolated economy? You know, and getting back to what we were talking about in terms of technology, you know, if you can develop technologies, you can build your hallways and ticktocks, and you can make chips, but what if no one else in the world is buying it or using it? What kind of economic power then do you have if, you know, if you become basically an isolated technological island? You've already seen that here with the internet because of the Great Firewall, that basically there's an internet and then there's a Chinese internet. So, you know, China and the technology space has already somewhat been moving in that direction, and I don't see how that's positive for them over the long term. And I think we're seeing the strands of techno nationalism in the United States too. It's obviously very different forms. I mean, there's something, you know, it's not to say that, not to equate the two. There's something very different about a government that, you know, is able to read WeChat messages and round up dissidents. So not to equate cyber sovereignty in China with cyber sovereignty in the US. But something that I've argued is that if we go down the path of banning Chinese companies based on country of origin and this mistrust, that begins to, that's an assertion of state control over the way that people use the internet. At a moment when it's not just China and the US, but in Europe, in India, we're beginning to see rising state sovereignty and sovereign borders around cyber space and the digital economy. So this inward looking technology posture, I think, is certainly a trend that's rising around the world. I want to pivot and just talk a bit about, you know, you've been reporting and writing from Asia for over two decades and now is such an incredible period. You know, what has that experience been like and I know that you recently relocated from Beijing to Hong Kong. So from your vantage point, watching all of these stories play out, having been a real sort of seasoned Asia expat. What are some observations that you can share with us about what that experience has been like and what you're seeing now. Well, you know, it's interesting when we talk about history and views of history and how history plays itself out in the modern day. So what's going on here in Hong Kong is actually somewhat of an example of that because you're what you're looking at really is a clash of two historical narratives. And, you know, in Beijing, the story of Hong Kong is that, you know, Hong Kong was snatched away by the British after the Opium War, and you had a Chinese population that was subjugated under foreign imperial rule. And, you know, the return of Hong Kong is a, you know, it's a homecoming of the Chinese people. That's kind of one version of history. But then there's this is other version of history, which is that, you know, once the British got got control of Hong Kong, it developed entirely differently. And it turned into its own society, separate from China, with its own its own ideas and its own values and its own sense of community and identity. And to a certain extent, its own history that doesn't match the history that Chinese likes to tell about Hong Kong. That's probably what you see playing out unfortunately on the streets right now. And where you have this, this clash of views over what Hong Kong is and what Hong Kong should be. And unfortunately, no, I live here in Hong Kong for previously for nine years, I'm a permanent resident here. I've experienced here with the city and there's a tragedy about it because you're kind of seeing, you know, because of the political power nature of what's going on. The Chinese are a certain extent in Beijing are basically forcing their version of history to play out on Hong Kong to the detriment of its own society and its own people. And so it's tragic. I know the world has condemned this and has tried to do something about it, but it's I think, I think the ball was rolling down the hill and I don't quite know where any way of stopping it at this point. So it's, it's, I mean, it's just one of the changes I said I've been out here for more than more than 20 years. You know, China itself is remarkably as you know, remarkably different place than it was when I first, my first time in Beijing with 1996. I remember there being hardly any cars on the road and wandering through the the forbidden city almost entirely by myself. Good luck doing that these days. You know, and so, I mean the story of China, which now, now, you know, in the US, China scene is as such as strategic threat, which is, which is a shame. I think it is it's a way that the Chinese government has had its own shift in policy under Xi Jinping. And unfortunately what's been lost is this other absolutely amazing story about how quickly Chinese society has has changed how people's live lives have changed and sadly in all of this that's, it seems to have been lost on and actually on both sides. The Xi Jinping government could be taking a very different attitude towards the West when you talk about Hong Kong, you know, there's this there's this focus on what happened in the opium war, and you know the loss of Hong Kong and China's mistreatment at the hand of the West, which is still such a prominent theme in Chinese media and discourse. What you very rarely see in Chinese official media is the discussion of the amazing partnership that China has had with the United States over the last 40 years and how that has basically helped to make China what it is today. And that unfortunately isn't discussed so this is again when you get to use a history and how you view history. If the Chinese government chose to see history with this, the history that's relations with the West differently. The Chinese relations with the US might be very, very different right now. I just like for you in terms of researching Chinese history, you have some wonderful anecdotes and just jewels from over hundreds of years, how did you go about doing your research and did I, am I understanding right, are you a history major as an undergrad. My, I did study history as an undergrad but I studied Asian history, actually, or, or what, or what was called at my university, non Western history, which meant everything, everything but the US and Europe so I did all kind of things but I, well, you know, it's interesting when because I pitched this this book and I sold the idea and then I actually started writing it. And then I got into this thing was gay wait a second what is a Chinese view of history. Because there's two immense complications with it one. And what does Chinese mean, right, because the Chinese, the way people identify themselves as Chinese today and what the word Chinese means today has nothing to do with how the people who lived in lived in the what is now China 500 years ago, identified themselves and thought about themselves, let alone 1000 or 2000 years ago so the first challenge was well what is Chinese. History was solved relatively easily because Chinese historians have a certain narrative of their own history so then you can kind of follow into the Chinese view. It's okay then to use the Chinese view of the course of their own history, the much harder one was what is a view of history because of course you know history is what you what you make of it. It's mostly being rewritten and reinterpreted and then re rewritten some more. So, you know, the way that people see historical events today is not necessarily how they saw them 500 years ago or at the time. So then you get into okay well what is a view. What I didn't want to do is I didn't want to write a Communist Party view of history, you know the Communist Party does a tremendous amount of just rewriting of history that's introduced a lot of distortions. That might have been helpful from something of a policy standpoint but it would have been horribly misleading from a reader's historical standpoint. So, what I decided to do is go through history and look at what Chinese writers were saying about themselves and the outside world and the events that were going on and their relations with the world and how they saw China in the world. As these events were as the events were actually happening. So to use basically a real ties real time is as you can get to some cases the sources aren't particularly contemporary but you do you do the best you can. But there's actually tremendous amount of contemporary writing as well and you know and not just histories, but poetry and philosophy and all kinds of other writing where you also get these get an idea of how the Chinese were viewing themselves in the world. So, what I did in the book if you there, almost all of the direct citations are Chinese writers. There's only a few foreigners that are quoted and quoted in there, including a Marco Polo that were put there for very very very specific reasons. Most of the time it's almost all the time. It is Chinese telling you what they thought about themselves in the outside world at that time period. And so that that's how I said I, I built a narrative on that and then from that you can actually get a real, a real historical look at the patterns of how the Chinese have seen themselves, what China's role traditionally was in the world. How the Chinese perceive that role and and, and then connecting that all the way to the current day. So I want to turn now to some of the questions from the audience, and please feel free for those of you joining us to submit questions in the chat feature. I should also say that in the chat we have a link if you to purchase the book so please be sure to check that out as well. This first, I'm going to combine two questions here. So from Anne Moisan better understanding the China history, understanding Chinese history, what foreign policy recommendations would you provide to the US and the West in dealing with China. And then a second question from Eugene Chang. If you had two minutes with President Trump, how would you advise him on the short term and long term US policy with respect to the PRC so taking this multi disciplinary historical perspective. What concretely would you recommend to leadership in the United States right now. You know, I think one, one main thing that the Trump administration has has wrong. I mean, I will say that, you know, I think that the Trump administration actually somewhat done the US a bit of a favor by kind of waking everybody up to the potential threat that China does pose and as an authoritarian state to the US as well as the rest of the world. But I, when he actually gets into actually policy and trying to do things that's when things kind of kind of go awry. I think there's too much emphasis on this idea that somehow you can stop China that if you decouple, or if you don't let Chinese companies list on US stock markets or you block their technology that somehow you can stop their rise where they are. I think that's unrealistic. I don't necessarily, I wouldn't necessarily assume that China will become the superpower that it intends at least not right now. You know, it's I don't, well, I kind of agree with Benjamin Franklin, you know, when he said there's nothing a certain except taxes and death and taxes so becoming a superpower is definitely not something that's certain. But I think this idea that somehow you could stop what's happening is is is a mistake. I think what you really have to think about more of is how to, on the one hand, allow China that the space that China feels that it needs and the role that China feels that it needs in the in the world. China wants to be a great power and is intent on it. I think there has to be a way to a certain extent of accommodating that at the same time without allowing China to kind of destroy the US system. And that would mean something that Trump is certainly not doing, which is strengthening US alliances, strengthening the institutions of the US war water. And using that as kind of a board against the rising the rise of a Chinese authoritarian state. And to a certain extent, a little bit like what happened during the Cold War but the circumstances are extremely different because of the integral the way China is integrated into the world economy makes it far more complicated but I think so that the Washington that they're thinking about this kind of the wrong way. Not just destroying the US system in terms of alliances but also openness and this gets back to the issue of sort of rising techno nationalism and xenophobia here. And I actually just this morning was having a conversation with my friend in Beijing and young at the FT and we were talking about, you know, what are the technological solutions for coexisting in a world of low trust. If we if we understand that China is going to be a player and that's not going to go away. You know, are there technological are there policy solutions that we can use to create more security, given that low trust environment. And I think that that is really imperative that we look at how to do that rather than destroy the openness of the US system in the process and Laura Rosenberger at the German Marshall Fund recently came out with a great piece in foreign affairs that said, look, there are ways to get at this but if we tear away at the openness of the US democratic system, we will lose that competition with authoritarianism around the world. Well, you know it to to extent I think what's what's a shame when you see what's going on. I mean, you know, when, when you go back to to the 90s of the thinking about the the internet and what the internet was going to do, which is, you know, bring everybody together and into one big big world, which to a great degree you know has happened I mean what makes what makes Twitter so fascinating is that you know you can have conversations with people and all over the world, who you would you would never otherwise meet probably or even have a chance of meeting and you can get their views you may not agree with them but you can get their views. You can see what they're interested in and and I think that's mean that's meaningful I think that's helpful in terms of building understanding I think what's what's a shame that what China has done with the great firewall that they basically taken them themselves out of that system. You have, you know, 1.4 billion people or at least however many of them don't have VPNs, you know, or go to school in the US, you know, who don't have access to that internet and they they aren't interacting on Facebook. They aren't interacting on Twitter, they aren't exchanging ideas with the rest of the world. And I'm not saying that the reason for what's happening right now but it sure doesn't help improve you know the Chinese feel on an official level that they're misunderstood and why is that well because they're not communicating with anybody. For sure and I think one thing that's missing also from the policy discussion on both sides is to sort of a willingness to call out problems on all sides and be clear eyed about about this and right now not having real viable diplomatic channels because engagement has been seen as a failure and actually I would love to hear your thoughts on that if you agree with the idea that engagement is a failure. And answer what is the best way to go about in this current environment but I want to get to another another audience question. How well does the CCP understand American history lessons learned and American values and motivations. Yeah, it's unfortunately very hard to know because the very senior people, you know, don't really chat a whole lot with people like me. I think there's some people who in the government and in academic circles who think they understand the US very very well. I don't necessarily think that they do. I was joking the other day that I think the Chinese leadership all should go and see Hamilton. You know, I think that there's an impression that the democratic values that the US talks about are just that talking points that they're ways of harassing the Chinese on certain issues. And the Chinese nationalists like to point out about how well the US isn't the most fair and democratic society either that's true. But I think what the Chinese don't understand is that a lot of these these ideals about democracy and representative government and free speech and free press and at least striving towards the equality of people even if we don't actually achieve it. The idea of having that ideal is immensely important to Americans and not just on a government level but on on a street to street house to house level and American take this stuff very seriously. And I don't I don't think that's fully appreciated in China at all. I think they I think that they they way would be very very well served by going and reading somebody about some of the American founders and helps the founding principles of the United States a little bit more. And I think that would give them much better appreciation of how the US works. Another question from Steven Shapiro. I was surprised to hear you say that China's history of is one of mostly openness to the world. That's a revelation against that. Can you discuss the concept of the Middle Kingdom, kowtow and the payment of tribute. Right. Well, those are all different things. In Chinese political philosophy. You know, the emperor wasn't just kind of a regular run the mill leader like everybody else right. The emperor was was the son of heaven who had kind of a divine sanction to rule and even more than that was was kind of the connection between the divine and man. So this gets into this idea well. How can the son of heaven be on equal status with all these other kings and chieftains of all these other people. And then on top of that you had this idea that goes very very far back in China in Chinese writing back 2500 years plus where the Chinese kind of defined their civilization as civilization. And we're following kind of Chinese culture and Chinese ways that you were there by definition uncivilized, and that China had some kind of a civilizing mission. Similar actually to the idea of American exceptionalism that I've been calling the US China conflict, a clash of exceptionalisms, you know, the US has this idea of being you know the city upon a hill that we're going to bring liberty and freedom to the world. The Chinese felt that that that it was their mission to basically bring civilization to barbarism. So this then this kind of ideology in the imperial system got filtered through into a system of foreign affairs that a lot of Western historians called the tribute system but it's the Chinese that never actually use that term and that term is actually highly controversial in the historian circles it's the kind of thing that you put a bunch of Chinese historians in a row they probably get into a fist fight over it so I don't use the word tribute system in in my book but what it did create is a view of the world where things were a hierarchy, and China was on top of the hierarchy, and in order to have diplomatic relations and trade relations with China, other people were accepted to expected to acknowledge that superiority. This is often translated in English is submit to but that's, that's gone out of fashion as a way of understanding it, but so you, but for most of Chinese history, you, you had the Chinese sold the world as an unequal place. And now, of course, you know this current government would say that they don't see the world that way but when when when you see how, especially the Xi Jinping government deals with its neighbors, when you see for example how like the built road works. You see you can catch glimpses of this whole system where where, you know the Chinese kind of see themselves on the top of a pyramid. And then this will be our last question. And then we'll close with you some closing comments Michael if you have any. This is an anonymous question which is do you think that Trump has an accurate or inaccurate view of the CCP. And it's an interesting question, particularly in light of your comments that you think the Trump administration has woken the world up to the reality of something that had been probably, you know, not as aware of before so is it an accurate perception that the CCP is operating based on. It's interesting, you know, I think the other thing that goes on to knowledge here I mean, we do we focus a lot on what's happened, the US-China relationship on what Trump has done, but actually I think the really key player is what Xi Jinping has done. You know, we look back at engagement of being a horrible failure but you know, the reality of it is that Xi Jinping brought about a dramatic shift in Chinese policy both at home and abroad. And in that way, he's created a China that's much more threatening that at least people proceed before. Maybe that would have happened anyway and we're holding him unfairly, I'm holding him unfairly responsible, but it certainly happened on his watch so in that sense where you I think Trump does have an accurate perception of the CCP and what the goals and aims of the Chinese Communist Party is which is basically expanding its power and expanding authoritarianism. I wouldn't necessarily say he has an understanding of China. When he and his other people in the White House talk about China, I feel that they're talking about China of about 1987. I don't think there's a full appreciation at how much richer and more, more, more of what China is now. And I think they feel that they feel that the US still has enough power to unilaterally kind of hold China back and that's very unrealistic at this stage and I think that's because there's administration doesn't really understand what one or China's like. Any closing comments. I think my my closing comment is is going to be you know it's it's watching what's happening with with the US and China. I feel like it's too it's too. It's too good to two countries talking past each other. And, you know, you, you mentioned how in the US versus feeling that engagement was a total failure and we have to do something else but it's I don't think the US has necessarily figured out what that is. And, you know, in China, I feel that there's, they've accelerated this drive for greater global influence. We're not totally aware of the consequences of what's what's happening and what that could mean for China down the road. I think I think what's unfortunate is that I, you know, neither of these countries are are best served in conflict with one another or an isolation from one other. So, however, this this plays out if you wanted to be a positive outcome. We have to get to a point where there's a much better understanding between the two countries on both sides, and where they're headed and what their goals and interests are and unfortunately, that's it seems we're moving in the opposite direction towards less engagement, less interaction. And that's that means probably heading in an increasingly negative direction. Well, I wanted to remind everyone that you can purchase a copy of superpower interrupted from the link in our chat box Michael thank you so much for taking the time I should also say Michael it is it is almost 1am in Hong Kong now so he has been up and late with us for the conversation and I'm kind of coherent at that so thank you so much. Thanks Sam in the conversation. Thank you Sam I appreciate it.