China on the brink of war with the US An expert explains

your professor of the history and politics of modern China at the University of Oxford and today we're going to talk about China its relationship with Russia its relationship with America what are you going to tell me hope we can talk Kieran about the way in which China and Russia have had actually for quite long period quite an ambivalent relationship in which their friends their Partners but also don't quite trust each other and how that's playing out want to talk about China's economy as well think that that's one of the big Global stories at the present moment post covid China is desperately trying to get its growth rate back to be able to actually provide that middle class lifestyle for its people and I'd also like to talk little bit about that covid crisis that was of course the biggest story in the world out of China now it seems to have almost disappeared now that those regulations have been ended just few months ago but how are things going off the back of that and is it really the case that those regulations are never going to come back want to want to buy discussing how China marks the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine with their sort of 12 point plan of Peace it sort of spoke lot of generals about avoiding nuclear war of all the parties staying rational and exercising constraints you know but it also did discuss and warned about expanding military blocks which some people saw as sort of Nod to accusations of NATO expansion guess why do you think they had this 12-point pan for peace is it actual genuine attempt at trying to be some sort of broker when it comes to this War think Karen that one of the reasons that China felt that it had to put forward some kind of Peace plan is that expectations have been growing on China ever since it decided it was going to take more active role in the world and really in the last five years or so since Xi Jinping took what was his second term he's now in his third but during the second term he made very clear statement that China had message for the world not just for its own country and that involved issues such as looking for green growth looking for greater economic expansion but of course if you could oppose as global citizen you can't do that without actually having to have an opinion on some of the biggest crises in the world and the reason think that they wanted to put out this plan was to get on the front foot because the Ukraine crisis the Russian invasion has put China in very difficult position because it's trying to juggle two things at once one is the fact that the violation of Ukraine's sovereignty is actually big No-No for China One of the very few things in the world they have an absolute General red line on is an internationally recognized board has been crossed because it happened in the early 20th century to their border so much but at the same time they really have become very close to Russia in terms of policy and strategy particularly against the United States so those two imperatives run up against each other and that's think why they put out this plan as way of trying to answer criticism that they were trying to ride two horses at once as the Chinese would say in one of their Proverbs what can we therefore learn from that 12-point plan about what what world under sort of beijing's ideology would look like think first of all Kieran it's important to understand that when Beijing talks about having more influence in the world and it does it's not thinking about it in the way that either the United States or the Soviet Union did in the old Cold War in other words the idea that countries are going to change their systems and reinvent themselves so they can become either free liberal democracies in the case of the us as they would like to see themselves or people Democratic dictatorships in the way in which the Soviet Union like to talk about this China makes big deal of saying we don't interfere with people's political systems and indeed most of their influence tends to be economic in the main part but also certain amount particularly in Maritime issues tends to be more military but economics is really the big the big strategy in that sense so what would the world look like if they were going more in the direction that the peace plan suggests well think that that one thing that is clear is that overall one of the things that they are willing to do is to essentially put out for their ideological partners by which mean countries that also prefer an illiberal system of government like Russia now Russia's system is not the same as China's China still has very well embedded Communist party as its ruling entity whereas in some senses Russia is really more of kind of one-person organization with Putin but the idea that essentially people should concentrate on economic well-being and not be so concerned about civil liberties that's certainly direction of travel that you can see in China's intention but there is one other point that think is genuinely interesting in the peace plan that's been put forward and that's the statement that nuclear Wars should not be attempted or forward now think we can't be absolutely sure but think that this really is one signal that's being sent to their friend Vladimir Putin Putin has spoken more than once about nuclear weapons tactical nuclear weapons maybe not being off the agenda in the Ukraine conflict and think that this is signal not entirely subtle one but certainly not spelled out explicitly that if there's one thing that China really isn't going to tolerate that would be the use of nuclear weapons given the fact that the US is warning that potentially China could start providing weapons two Russia for their warn Ukraine how does that fit well think one of the things that submerged just in the last few hours and certainly days is that the United States is being little more specific about where they think China is thinking at the moment and they have actually been pulling back slightly and saying that they're not convinced at the moment that China is sending weapons it's just they want to make it very very clear that they really don't want China to do that think also when force was being talked about it was equipment such as drones which of course China has particular interest in rather than necessarily rifles or Canada those sorts of classic classic types of of Weaponry but think that beyond that there is also this sense that China wants to remake the world in ways that essentially fit that overall economic and political goal that they put forward so to some extent they are not concerned with whether or not Ukraine is under Russian control or whether it has its own government as well as that government essentially follows economic ends that China is Keen to pursue before the War started so just every year ago the country the single country which had the largest trading relationship with Ukraine was China the EU as whole actually had larger relationship in terms of single countries Beijing was certainly very very trusted and think practical partner in that in that sense think that what they don't want to happen is any kind of humiliation of Russia and that's why the peace plan they put forward in sense has an awful lot of rather Bland statements but one thing that is argued is that it should include cease-fire the ceasefire from the Chinese point of view is shrewd piece of positioning because it puts forward the idea at least ostensibly that China's interested in peace in people laying down their weapons above all but think most analysts including in China would admit that if they were ceasefire right now it probably would give an advantage to Russia rather than Ukraine and the Chinese probably wouldn't regret that is Beijing frustrated with Russia and what's been going on this past year think that there are certainly hints and we just don't have the inside information but we have hints that year ago just over year ago during the Beijing Winter Olympics that there was some indication to beijing's leadership from the Russians that something would happen in Ukraine and think most people think that was probably hint that the eastern part of Ukraine Daniels these parts would be perhaps attacked or taken quite soon and China may not have expressed view about that they certainly have never even to this day publicly approved The Invasion even at the UN they abstained rather than voting in favor of Russia but one could imagine that there might have been message going out that was along the lines of well you're going to go and do this go and do this but make it quick and this is one of the things that think will have really frustrated Beijing the idea that this war with their partner Russia involved has taken year over year and shows no signs of ending that's problematic from beijing's point of view it's problematic because it keeps bringing the attention back to what China is going to do which they don't want to have to talk about it also disrupts global trade it also provides whole variety of ways in which essentially Russia isn't useful partner to China while it's isolated for much of the rest of the the global the global International order but said there were opportunities and think there are for start fossil fuels are now flowing quite think advantageous prices to China which of course means that their own economic recovery after covid is given fairly assured sense of of being fueled in the short term trying to let the rest of the world is looking to move towards green growth but that's not going to happen instantly so the fossil fuels are useful in addition there's very strong sense and think that Chinese policy makers say this very quietly if at all but sense that Russia is more vulnerable to China's geopolitical aims so to give one you know example that think is already quite quite apparent in areas like Central Asia where actually China and Russia have had bit of rivalry think the economic and strategic interests of China are going to become more powerful than there's Russia simply because China is now in better position to tell Russia what it wants to happen let's have little history here about Russia and China's relationship following Mao zedong's takeover of the country in 1949 China became friend of the Soviet Union the great communist power during the Cold War thus they were both allies against the West in that battle but differences emerge following the death of Joseph Stalin with Nikita Khrushchev pursuing move of destalinization in Moscow Chairman Mao saw that as revisionism changing of marxist Orthodoxy with the sino-soviet split Beijing and Washington reached out to one another with Richard Nixon making his famous visit to China in 1972. however under Xi Jinping since 2012 Russia has once again become key Ally foreign Russia they've always had bit of distrust going back to the Cold War but guess back then you know it was the Soviet Union who was the big player is it very much now that China sees itself as the big player think in the present day there's certainly real fear in Russia and you can see plenty of Russian thinkers political analysts who actually write pretty openly that they're worried about being swallowed up by China the relationship between the two certainly over the last century or more in some ways actually is very very ambiguous and ambivalent because at one level the Russians actually taught the Chinese Communists everything they needed to know was the Russian Revolution of 1917 that inspired the first communist people like Mao Zedong who've gone to become of course Chairman Mao and during the 1950s and 60s people in the generation not of Xi Jinping but of his dad would have actually read Russian literature learned from Soviet thinkers in other words Russia really was the mentor that really switched during the cultural revolution in the 60s when China and Russia were isolated from each other the two countries nearly actually went to war in 1969 over border Islands on the asuri river and by the time the relationship got somewhat men and patched up in the 1980s and 90s well we know the story China began to take off like rocket when it came to economics and Russia fell in or the Soviet Union collapsed as state and post-soviet Russia came into that state that we now know in which it never seemed to find its feet economically or politically and eventually fell under the rule of Putin who has had to Resort essentially to war of invasion to try and boost his own nationalistic story something which think the Chinese at some level find really an argument of desperation since they still see themselves of course as on the up in geopolitics whereas us privately think they would regard Russia as state that is perhaps slowly but surely on the down escalator in some ways when well especially in the Western World the academic world the journalistic God reached China especially since the party Congress last year we put too much emphasis on Xi Jinping centrality to where China is today or not think it's important to think of him as someone who has made the weather but he is not the totality of the climate system if you want to put it that way so someone like Xi Jinping undoubtedly has brought more personal rule to most of China's major institutions than either hujintao or Zhang zamin his two immediate predecessors so that means for instance the Army is supposed to be very firmly under XI jinping's control also of course we looked at the party Congress of last Autumn last October where apart from she himself getting an unprecedented third term at the top in the politburo outstanding committee he brought in basically six others who are very much people attached to Israel so the personal rule is real but it's important to remember that an awful lot of people broadly in China do share that broader Vision that China has been hiding its light under bushel and it's time to make its way in the world the one exception that think we've recently seen that gave she some pause for thought was of course the covered regulations and those did change very Suddenly Last Autumn as we know talking about that you know zero covered policy which was so Central to to his his thinking and his Premiership for the last few years and it was very much you know China can handle this virus in way that especially under Trump the Americans couldn't when we saw that U-turn how has he played that if we ask the question today sitting here February 2023 is Xi Jinping perhaps more assured in his position than he would have been three or four months ago think that's plausible answer that is yes the reason being that it was very clear that one of the things that was really stoking out anger in China's middle class was the idea that these lockdowns are going to be endless that they will be locked in their apartments or unable to move around unable to go overseas for months and months years and years and vagina's middle class which as we know has been growing you know exponentially really over the last few decades who are used to foreign holidays used to sending their kids to International universities for Education covid lockdowns cut back against that so by deciding to first of all in October to put in top leadership that basically is very much his men in command and say then because the last woman on the wider public Bureau was removed from from office during that retired from office should say rather than forced to be removed but no women have come in at the top level to to replace her so his men are there in charge and now of course at least in the short term of course many people who've lost elderly members of the family from kovid are in mourning but many more middle class people in China are now going back to life as it was before the pandemic and think in terms of satisfaction from The Wider public that probably makes his position stronger is the idea therefore that not only are they willing to listen when there are protests which are very rare but also that there might be more of debate which actually goes on within Xi Jinping and his inner circle well first of all protests are not rare in China they actually happen very very frequently but most of them are localized and have to do with some particular grievance which is usually sorted out by local government what was rare about last Autumn was that people use social media to link their message in this case the anti-covered lockdown anti-zero covered message from City to City and think that's one of the things that probably gave pause for thought but in the question of flexibility and pragmatism of the party think we have to balance two things both of which are true on the one hand the party is perfectly capable of changing its core ideology in terms of how it acts at really quite short notice and with tremendous willingness to move Beyond accepted boundaries so you know if you look over the last three quarters of century Chinese Communist Party comes into power as soviet-style command economy it has 10 years of cultural revolution which is essentially form of Anarchy in sense you might say then dung Xiaoping in the 80s turns it into socialist-led capitalist economy which is essentially what it is today today it's basically you know in 2002 Johnson Min said capitalists are now welcome inside the party so all of those ideological shifts have been within the same one-party system but the one thing that remains absolutely constant is the Chinese Communist Party considers itself to have the destiny of ruling China that cannot be challenged and cannot be altered is there more worrying long-term Trend which has come from those lockdowns has been the fact that China's economy has stalled in terms of growth and there is an idea now that it may not overtake America as soon as one expected think the question of statistics and comparisons are only as important for China as the leadership want them to be for two reasons number one is that of course they control all the organs of propaganda so if they just want to never talk about beating America's economy again they don't have to just as the word zero covet have essentially been removed from the Chinese media sphere within the space of just few weeks you just won't find them and that essentially the damage that's been done to China's economy from variety of factors may make it difficult to actually overcome the United States reminded of those factors in the short term of course the effect of the covid pandemic where small and medium Enterprises things like travel agencies small restaurants businesses part of the motor that essentially had kept China's capitalist Miracle going those were all incredibly badly hit by the by the the pandemic and they're only slowly recovering now but also there are longer term factors China's demographics are really very very worrying for the leadership because and indeed for China's people because the one child policy which operated for three and half decades which essentially you know wasn't Universal but it was very widely spread that has essentially meant that China as well to give statistic that think gives the illustration if things carry on straight line from where they are now right now something like 100 working age Chinese support 25 retired age Chinese so it's still quite high proportion if you've gone straight line to potentially the end of this Century which you know in statistical terms isn't that far away it'll be exactly reversed with something like 100 retirees having to be supported off the back of 25 working age Chinese clearly not sustainable but it's not clear of them raising pension ages maybe thinking about you know new forms of industrial technology how that's going to be dealt with so all of those things could be holding China back particularly since of course the United States has its own economic problems but there's no reason that growth there should stop so the U.S will keep growing as well so think it's still an open competition at the moment as to who is the world's number one GDP let's say by the middle of the century now before we talk about U.S China relations one big issue that's come to the fall between the two Powers recently is actually covered once more in particular the origins of it the FBI director said that the organization believed that lab leak in China was quote the most likely source of the virus that followed reports that another U.S federal body the department of energy had concluded with low confidence that the virus was accidentally leaked now the White House said there was no consensus across the US government on the source of covert but clearly this is another area where some parts of the U.S system are pointing the finger at China the foreign Ministry in Beijing responded to the accusation by stating that U.S intelligence had history of Fraud and deception and this of course all comes just weeks after that recent spy balloon drama and spoke about that with ran emitter Xi Jinping and Beijing wants to have new rules but based Global Order where it is rival power to Washington and lot of what we talk about now is about that conflict between Beijing and Washington and we saw it recently come to quite bizarre head with with balloons with the Americans accusing the Chinese having spy balloon over their northern states in terms of Montana and it was eventually shot down in the Atlantic what does that tell you about the state of relations between Washington and Beijing obviously Anthony blinken canceled his trip to Beijing think there are some things that are worrying and some things that are reassuring Kieran about what's happened the last few weeks over those issues mean it's worth noting for instance that although Anthony blinken's visit to Beijing was called off nonetheless American and Chinese Senior officials did meet on the French's the Munich security conference just few days later and so it's not as if there's no conversation between the the two there's still think also an open jury as to what on Earth was going on with that balloon appearing over Montana at that point think there's almost zero chance that the Chinese leadership would have decided to you know mess up their own long-arranged visits so that we have to pass say that perhaps it was really just you know genuine error rather than actually conspiracy but the bigger question actually is is of course the important thing what is happening with U.S China relations well there are dialogues and there are more conversations happening on both sides than was the case during perhaps the last couple of years think of the Trump Administration and the Biden Administration has been Keen both to make it clear that it's not going to back down in the face of what it regards as Chinese confrontation but he doesn't want to stop dialogue either think Taiwan though which she mentioned is probably what you might call the the fork in the road issue if essentially the Taiwan question or is is managed they're essentially meaning managed in the sense that there's no conflict that breaks out or no kind of zero-sum Confrontation over it then most of the other things that trouble the two sides include things like technology transfer accusations of unfair trade on both sides you know all of those things can be can be reduced but if there is confrontation over Taiwan doesn't necessarily have to be war it could be say naval blockade in the Taiwan Straits by China which leads to sanctions by major Western economies in Japan that will produce you know potentially global recession that makes the Ukraine war look like you know really very trivial undertaking the likelihood think largely for economic reasons is still low but the point is that it's not zero is either side not playing this well in terms of avoiding that War mean you know in the past few months you know you saw Nancy Pelosi the former house Speaker go other you know Congressional delegations have gone to Taiwan well think the Americans and Chinese both have to take some responsibility but in both cases there are things they can do to try and calm the temperature in the case of the United States think it probably is not always helpful that very high level officials are going in very high profile way but going to make point about geopolitical tensions may actually ironically exacerbate those tensions and bit of restraint can think sometimes be helpful but we need to point out that China also needs to lower the temperature the sending of fighter jets across the skies near Taiwan the operation of Naval vessels essentially all of these things are you know bit over the top when it comes to the fact that Taiwan itself is of course no threat to China whatsoever there's no suggestion that Taiwan is in any position to do any harm to the mainland now when it comes to China's military capabilities this week it was announced at the national people's Congress that defense spending Will Rise by more than seven percent this year in Beijing and during his speech the outgoing premier of China Lika Chang said the nation must comprehensively strengthen training in preparation of war and spokesperson for the Communist Party of China said increased spending was appropriate given the international circumstances of course China's military spending is far below that of the United States but it has grown considerably over the past decades foreign in terms of lot of the discussion around Taiwan and possible Invasion Etc how much do you think that is actually overblown think what it illustrates Kieran is that neither side still has terribly clear idea of either what the other side thinks or what they themselves think it is an influx at the moment and would say that if you think about the effects mean think an invasion of Taiwan and the classic sort of D-Day sense landing on the beaches most military analysts still think that that actually would be very very hard for anyone to do because of taiwan's topography its Tides other things we don't need to create huge detail of but it's not an easy call that's why the idea of naval blockade in The Straits is one that actually has been talked about bit more but that will be seen as an act of Confrontation in its own right if China were to do that so we shouldn't underestimate the importance of that if we think for moment though of what it would mean there'll be whole variety of areas essentially of China's economy that would suffer very badly because of sanctions that would be imposed Global Supply chains which may be somewhat decoupling as they say from China but still are very closely linked to China would be heavily disrupt the semiconductor chip factories in Taiwan which has now become quite well known are really the only Global Source at least for few years of the really highest quality semiconductor chips that would almost certainly be destroyed or disrupted you know throwing the global economy into situation which would take years to recover both China and the United States and the rest of the world are aware of all of those results that might come from confrontation over Taiwan and still think that overall that does Point towards reason why all sides are still more likely to try and find ways to have dialogue and manage the situation is it very much that we are very far away from new Cold War new era of Chinese and American spheres of influence don't think Cold War even now is quite the right phrase to use because essentially the classic Cold War involved confrontation over whole variety of political military issues but very little economic interaction two academics and states have come up with phrase which has become think widely used and has some value to it which is weaponized interdependence in other words with China the United States and the Western World can't live without each other can't live with each other there's problems that we have to live with each other and think that the understanding of the economic interdependence between the two sides is not recipe that the two sides will now ever have conflict because of course we know from World Wars one and two that countries can be very entwined and still have major ideologically based conflicts but it is sign that actually in the world that we live in now the effects of that in relationship essentially coming under Fire would be much more devastating than anything we'd seen even I'd say half century or century ago Ryan mitter thank you very much talk to me thank you thanks very much Kieran