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U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S., March 18, 2024.
US and China hold high-level talks in Beijing
Jake Sullivan is holding talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday during his first visit to China as US national security adviser. The two are expected to discuss a variety of issues, including Taiwan, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and US import tariffs on China, as well as Gaza, North Korea, and Myanmar. The meeting follows five previous bilaterals, including secret meetings in Malta, Austria, and Thailand, that aimed to restore high-level communications between Washington and Beijing.
The agenda is packed, but neither side expects significant changes in the relationship, says Eurasia Group’s Rick Waters, formerly the State Department’s top China policy official.
“These talks are more like caring for a garden: If you don't do it constantly, something bad will happen,” he says. “What you can achieve is making sure that when you do certain things, the other side understands why. When the channels break … they tend to make up narratives about what the other is up to.”
By way of example, the US added 42 Chinese firms to a trade restriction list last Friday over their material support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, but don’t expect an overreaction. The US can use these high-level talks to make clear that such actions are reversible if Beijing backs off on supporting Moscow. Without that, says Waters, “There would be some in China who would say these export controls are not really about Russia – that they are about a comprehensive US containment effort to go after Chinese companies.”
Will Biden and Xi meet again? The White House seemed to leave the door open, telling reporters it would “look for opportunities to continue” high-level bilateral discussions “through the end of the year.” US and Chinese Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping are scheduled to be in Brazil for the G20 on Nov. 18 and 19 — conveniently after the US election. We’ll see if they grab a room on the sidelines.
What’s Beijing thinking about Harris? Vice President KamalaHarris’ whirlwind ascent to the top of the Democratic ticket in July surprised Chinese leaders as much as it did the rest of us, and her scant track record on China leaves plenty of unknowns. That said, the question may be more one of tactics than strategy, as Harris has given no indication she intends to depart from Biden’s path.Intuit logo displayed on a phone screen and a laptop keyboard are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on October 30, 2021.
Hard Numbers: Intuit’s mass layoff, Very expensive flip phone, AMD’s Finnish acquisition, Taiwan’s millionaire class
1,800: Intuit, the company behind popular financial software Quickbooks and Turbotax, announced a mass layoff of 1,800 employees — about 10% of the company — with plans to rehire the same number with a renewed focus on AI. The firm has an AI-powered financial advice tool, called Intuit Assist, in which it plans to invest heavily. That new investment might be necessary: A recent Washington Post review of Intuit’s AI assistant called it “awful” — not only “unhelpful” but also “wrong” much of the time.
1,899: Samsung has a new line of AI-powered foldable phones — and they’re extremely expensive. The Galaxy Z Fold starts at $1,899.99, a $100 increase from last year’s model. This nouveau flip phone boasts AI tools such as voice recording transcription, translation, and summarizing and text suggestions across email and social media apps. AI isn’t exactly a new thing on mobile phones, of course — so hopefully for this price, these new features make Siri look like a bot of the past.
665 million: The chip designer AMD is buying a Finnish startup called Silo AI for $665 million. Silo bills itself as “Europe’s largest private AI lab.” This deal will get AMD into the AI development business — an expansion from its hardware focus — as it tries to compete with industry leader Nvidia.
1.16 million: There are plenty of new millionaires in Taiwan, thanks to AI. Taiwan is a global hub for the semiconductor industry, which has boomed in recent years due to demand for AI. TSMC, its leading firm, is a key global fabricator for computer chips of all kinds. Taiwan’s total number of US dollar millionaires was 790,000 last year and could grow to 1.16 million by 2028, according to a new estimate by UBS.Chinese pilots deplane from a JH-7 fighter-bomber in preparation for the 9th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, known as Airshow China 2012, in Zhuhai city, south Chinas Guangdong province, 10 November 2012.
Hard Numbers: China rattles the saber, Egypt’s inflation falls, Japan props up yen, Spain wins Euros
30: Taiwan’s defense ministry recorded 30 Chinese combat jets and seven warships in the skies and waters around the islandon Saturday and said it was monitoring “waves” of missile tests in Inner Mongolia province. These are the third large-scale maneuvers around Taiwan this week.
27.5: Inflation rates in Egypt have dropped for the fourth straight month to 27.5%, down from an agonizing 38% peak in September. However, economists warn that fuel, medicine, fertilizer, and naturalgas markets remain volatile, and Egypt’s most needy families are smarting from a 300% increase in the price of subsidized bread.
22 billion: A Bloomberg analysis of the Bank of Japan’s accounts found it had likely spent approximately $22 billion propping up the anemic yen, which has lost 11% of its value this year, on Thursday. This would mark the third time the central bank has directly intervened in the currency market — an expensive practice, but Tokyo has few other options while the difference between US and Japanese interest rates remains so vast.
2-1: Spain beat England 2-1 in a thrilling final of the Euro 2024 championship on Sunday, marking their fourth time bringing home the cup. England, the country that invented modern football, has never won. In Miami, Argentina won the Copa America 1-0 against Colombia, but the event was marred by botched security that saw scenes of panic as unticketed fans rushed and overwhelmed barriers.Lai Ching-te attends an inaugural ceremony as president of Taiwan in Taipei, Taiwan on May 20, 2024.
William Lai takes the reins in Taiwan
The Democratic Progressive Party’s William Lai was inaugurated as Taiwan’s 8th president on Monday. His pro-independence inclinations cause consternation across the Strait, but Beijing’s domestic position and relations with the United States make discretion the better part of valor for the moment.
Lai is expected to follow his predecessor Tsai Ying-wen’s policies closely, given he served as her VP. That means pursuing closer ties with the United States where he can, and building up deterrent capacity against a Chinese invasion without provoking Beijing — much easier said than done.
In the short term, however, China isn’t likely to cross any rubicons. The foreign ministry's response to Lai’s inauguration message was pretty tame, just an insistence that "Taiwan independence is destined to fail," because Beijing has its eye on the US relationship. Both Washington and Beijing have committedly pursued stabilization of relations over the past year and change, with some good progress to show for it. No point in risking all that to show Lai how much they dislike him (he’s well aware!), particularly with a lackluster economy to worry about as well.
Why the US-China relationship is more stable than you might think
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week. US Secretary of State Tony Blinken in the Middle East right now. But he just came from China, Beijing and Shanghai, and the US-China relationship is what I'm thinking about. Want to give you a state of play.
It continues to be better managed and more stable than we've seen in a long time. Now, not clear that would necessarily be the case, given the number of issues and places where we have friction between these two countries. Just over the course of the last couple weeks, you've got President Biden, putting new tariffs on Chinese steel, opening a new investigation into Chinese shipbuilding. You've got this anti TikTok policy that's coming down from US Congress. You've got $2 billion in additional military aid for Taiwan from the United States. You've also got lots of criticism from the Americans on ongoing Chinese support, dual use technologies for the Russians, allowing them to better fight the war in Ukraine.
Given all of that, is the relationship starting to become much more confrontational? And the answer is not really. It's true that the Chinese foreign minister said that the Americans need to choose between having a relationship of containment and a relationship of partnership, and it's certainly true that the Americans would rather have it both ways. They want to have partnership in areas where it suits the Americans, and containment in areas where it suits the Americans. The Americans getting away with more than that than other countries can because the US is the most powerful country in the world and ultimately the Chinese need Americans more than Americans need China. Still, there's a lot of interdependence, and there is an ability to push back. How much is China actually doing that? And the answer is there's been very little direct Chinese tit for tat, despite all of the policies I just mentioned. It is true that overnight, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that there would be resolute and forceful measures if the supplemental support for Taiwan, which is a red line for the Chinese, is signed and Taiwanese assistance from the US moves ahead, and I suspect that means we're going to see some more sanctions from China against US defense contractors.
That is largely symbolic. It is a tit for tat. But on all the other policies I've mentioned that the Americans have just brought against China, we've seen Chinese focus on making their country and their economy more resilient against American efforts to contain, but not hitting the Americans back, not calibrated, moves of sanctions or reciprocal investigations. In fact, the Chinese have been pretty stable.
Also. We saw that Xi Jinping still met with Secretary of State Blinken directly, a meeting that would be very easy for the Chinese government to take down, and historically certainly wouldn't have been present if there had been a lot of tension in the relationship. They chose not to do that. And in fact, Blinken went to a record store, you know, he plays guitar and sings, and he's into music. And the coverage from the Chinese state media of that trip was very humanizing, was very friendly, frankly, better coverage of a US secretary of state than I've seen at any point since Xi Jinping has been in power. That's something it's very easy for the Chinese government to put their thumb on the scale if they want to show that they're unhappy with where the US relationship is. I think about Obama and the town hall, that he wanted to put together and the Chinese unwilling to give him the kind of coverage that the Americans at the time had wanted. You know, this is a lesser official from the US and is still getting, frankly, tremendous treatment from the Chinese government. I think that matters a lot.
Having said all of that, this is a relationship that is becoming more challenging to manage. And that's true because in the United States, whether you're Democrat or Republican, one of the very few things you can agree on in foreign policy is that there is a benefit in going after China. So the policy from the US is not just about Biden making decisions himself, but it's also about members of Congress. It's about governors. It's about the media. All of whom are taking their own shots. And they're not coordinated. Where from China, if Xi Jinping wants it, everyone basically rose in the same direction. Now, there are lots of American corporations and banks that are sending their CEOs, making trips with China right now. And there's much more people to people engagement between the two countries, something that Chinese officials are strongly focused on.
There's a lot more communication and cooperation on things like climate, as well as in response to America's fentanyl crisis, where the Chinese are shutting down the labs, the companies that have been exporting the precursor chemicals. Those things matter. They are engaged. There's also a lot of willingness of the United States, at the highest level, to provide more information to China, just on what the Americans are seeing happening around a confrontation in the Middle East that China would like to see a cease-fire for, so would the Americans at this point. And also, the Chinese don't have a lot of high level diplomats and a lot of ability to collect information that the Americans do. And when high level Americans are talking to their Chinese counterparts about the Middle East, the Chinese are very much in taking notes mode and appreciating that they're getting that information from the US.
So overall, I continue to see a lot of high level engagement that is very constructive. But coming against a relationship that has virtually no trust and where the baseline of conflict is going to pop up in a lot of different ways and a lot of different places around the world. Over time it's going to be harder to maintain that stable floor on US-China relations. But for now, I think we're likely to continue to see it, at least until elections in November.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
Taiwan honour guards march in front of a statue of Chinese Nationalist Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek at a changing of the guards ceremony on October 27, 2003. Chiang's widow, Soong May-ling, died aged 106 in New York last week. Family members are considering whether to bury the former first lady in the United States, Taiwan or China.
Why Taiwan struggles to move past Chiang Kai-shek’s legacy
Taiwan’s government has pledged accelerate efforts to remove over 700 statues of Chiang Kai-shek, the former leader responsible for Taiwan’s independence and decades of authoritarian rule.
Odd as it may sound to play down the country’s founding figure, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party sees removing the statues as a way to move symbolically beyond its painful past. The opposition Kuomintang or KMT – Chiang’s old party – is fighting to keep his image in places of prominence, particularly military institutions, and it’s not an idle debate: Chiang’s memory ties Taiwan’s political discourse to the mainland, and how the government treats his memorials resonates in Beijing.
The young warlord. Chiang rose to prominence in the chaos that followed the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. The KMT formed a provisional government but was quickly forced to hand power to Gen. Yuan Shikai, who soon died.
Powerful men carved out fiefdoms for themselves, while what remained of the KMT reorganized itself in the far southern city of Guangdong under its leader Sun Yat-sen. Chiang, who had served in the Imperial Japanese Army, took command of the KMT’s military academy in Whampoa in 1924. He and Sun saw military strength as the only avenue to reunite China and build a modern nation.
Backed by Soviet military advisors and bolstered in number by an alliance with the Chinese Communist Party, KMT forces trained for two years to strike northward. On the eve of war, however, Sun died. Chiang seized control and launched a bloody invasion of central and eastern China in July of 1926. By April of 1927, Chiang's forces had taken Shanghai, with approximately 700,000 people dead.
Rivalry with the Communists. With Shanghai secured, Chiang turned on his erstwhile allies and killed thousands of communists and suspected sympathizers.
Though the KMT would go on to take Beijing and nominally unify China in 1928, this so-called “Shanghai massacre” had effectively launched the country into another civil war. A young Mao Zedongretreated into the mountains of Jiangxi province to launch guerrilla attacks against the KMT, and the Northern Expedition did little to end warlordism.
Japanese ambitions. Across the Yellow Sea, Tokyo eyed Chiang’s unification efforts with unease. Japan had preyed upon China’s weakness to wrest away control of Taiwan in 1895 and Korea in 1905, and it controlled significant economic interests in the northern region of Manchuria. Just as the KMT began to find serious success in 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria.
Chiang offered little resistance and focused instead on purging the communists. By 1934, he had eliminated some 90% of their fighting strength, but Mao fled to the northwest on his Long March, where he re-established a base of operations in October 1935.
By then, Chiang’s subordinates had had enough. They launched a conspiracy to kidnap him in the city of Xi’an in late 1936 and forced him to agree to an anti-Japanese alliance with Mao. Months later, Japanese forces launched a full invasion of China.
Saved by Uncle Sam. Tokyo rapidly secured key coastal cities and pushed Chiang west into the mountains. President Franklin Roosevelt was alarmed but constrained by a US public that wanted no part in an overseas war, so he could only offer economic and political support to Chiang.
Part of that support included an oil embargo against Japan, which contributed to Tokyo’s ill-fated decision to launch surprise attacks against Pearl Harbor, Manila, and Hong Kong on Dec. 7, 1941. The US began sending Chiang billions of dollars of aid, and troops to fight in Burma in a costly effort to keep supply lines open. Chiang allegedly stole staggering quantities of this aid, leading US Gen. Joseph Stilwell to give him the nickname “Cash My Check.”
Downfall and flight. While KMT and allied troops were fighting a bloody but largely ineffective campaign against Japan, Mao and his communists were gathering strength for the wars to come. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the US dispatched Gen. George Marshall to build a unity government between Mao and Chiang, but the two sides were in open warfare by 1947.
President Harry Truman was not ready to support the unpopular and corrupt Chiang, and the KMT’s forces quickly melted. On Dec. 7, 1949, Chiang evacuated his government to Taiwan, where he intended to regroup and launch a reconquest of the mainland.
A new identity? In Taiwan, Chiang imposed martial law and began a strategy of economic development to build a capable military-industrial base. He was joined by around two million nationalist troops, and around a million civilians fled the mainland between 1949 and 1955.
These new arrivals known as waishengren coalesced into a distinct — and privileged — Mandarin-speaking social class. They formed the core of Chiang’s government and economic reform strategy, in contrast to the majority Minnan- and Hakka-speaking indigenous population of Taiwan, who had few ties across the strait and suffered more under military rule.
But Chiang never came close to reconquering China, and as the country moved toward democratization following his death in 1975, intense debate has centered on Taiwan’s relationship to the mainland. Those with ties to Chiang’s government in the KMT see Taiwan as indelibly linked to China, even if they’ll never take back the mainland. Beijing sees the KMT as more sympathetic and pliable toward peaceful reunification because of that affinity.
Members of the ruling DPP party, including president-elect William Lai, on the other hand, sometimes question whether Taiwan would be better off essentially declaring itself not China, and downplaying links with Chinese nationalist figures like Chiang. Beijing doesn’t see a way to negotiate a peaceful integration with leaders who don’t share Chiang’s view of a China that includes Taiwan as an integral part, which is why the symbolism of removing statues of Chiang will have real-world consequences.
Are we on the brink of a new cold war?
“We are back in a period of superpower competition that will probably go on for decades. And that, if we're lucky, remains a cold war.” David Sanger, a Pulitzer prize-winning national security correspondent for The New York Times, joins Ian Bremmer on a new episode of GZERO World to offer a clear-eyed take on America’s adversaries. He’s out with a new book called "New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West." The takeaway: we’re entering a new and increasingly unstable era of geopolitics where the US, China, and Russia will be vying for power and influence like never before. China's rise as a world leader and economic powerhouse, along with Russia's nuclear saber-rattling and increasing military cooperation, poses an unprecedented challenge to US dominance.
But unlike the Cold War that dominated the 20th century, where the US and the Soviet Union could operate essentially independently from each other, the world today is far more connected. "It's a cold war that bears almost no resemblance to the one that you and I are old enough to remember, because in that Cold War, we had a single competitor, and we weren't dependent on them, nor they on us for very much."
Sanger also talks about America’s missed opportunities and misjudgments in dealing with Russia and China. There were early hopes of engagement with Russia under Yeltsin's presidency, which quickly eroded when Putin came to power. Similarly, there was a belief that integrating China into the global economy would lead to political reform. However, this bet did not play out as expected, with the Communist Party using digital forces for explicit repression techniques. "It became pretty evident, pretty clearly that the Communist party had learned how to take these same digital forces and use them for the most explicitly designed repression techniques we have ever seen.”
But one area where both Russia and China have a shared interest? Pitting Americans against each other. “They have every incentive, both Russia and China, to be subtle actors in the background of this coming presidential election,” Sanger tells Bremmer. “And that's one area where if they are not cooperating, it would pay them off considerably to coordinate.”
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
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Why the US is sending aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. And a Quick Take to kick off your week. A big $90 billion package that has been approved by the US House of Representatives, going through the Senate shortly after months of debate and, all of the package, all three major pieces of it, have some significant, complicated features.
First of all, the biggest piece for Ukraine, $60 billion, massive military support.
They had been in danger of losing significant more territory. This certainly shores them up. It helps the Ukrainians. It makes the Europeans panic less, but, you know, can they longer term hold on? What is the end game? The Ukrainians are, of course, running short not just of material to fight, but also air defense capabilities and, critically, people, soldiers. It's much harder for them to get people for the front lines than it is for the authoritarian, and much larger populated Russia. And so, the intention is that the Ukrainians don't fall apart, but of course, longer term, the idea that the US will continue to be able to provide 60 billion in support year after year. Certainly not true if Trump becomes president, probably not true if Biden wins a second term. What you really want to do is try to find a way to get them in a better position so that negotiations, inevitably, that need to occur with Russia, can be more productive and more constructive from the Ukrainian side, from the European side, from the NATO side. The US kick the can on this last year when the Americans, were in much better position supporting Ukraine. Now it's harder. Always is the case is that you think that things are going to get better. You don't feel like taking the political risk and as a consequence you extend and pretend. And now they're in a worse position. So I'm glad that the money came through. I'm glad the Ukrainians, are still fighting courageously and want to fight courageously. But of course, longer term, this war leads to some degree of partition where the Ukrainians are losing their land.
Israel, closest ally of the United States in the Middle East. Some 17 billion in military support for Israel, also some 9 billion in humanitarian aid in Gaza in this plan.
But, of course, increasingly, the United States does not support Israel continuing to fight against Hamas in Gaza. They want to see a lot more protection for Palestinian civilians, which the Israelis have been reluctant to put in place. They don't want to see a ground offensive into Rafah. Over a million Palestinians shelter in there. The Israelis are fully intent on continuing with that, proceeding with it. They did want to see a cease-fire that was linked directly to a hostage release. Now, increasingly, the US is talking about those two things as critical but delinked. And at the same time as the US is providing all this money, you have sanctions being placed by the United States on battalions of the Israeli Defense Forces engaged in human rights violations. This shows just how impossible this position is for President Biden to maneuver domestically, not to mention internationally. The US is overwhelmingly, the one country that is most supportive of Israel. Biden is overwhelmingly the political leader that is most supportive of Israel. But most of his constituents are not. And this is absolutely going to hurt him, even though it's a foreign policy issue and they don't usually play that heavily in recent decades in the election coming up in November. And you’ll see it, of course, across campuses all over the country, including my own at Columbia.
And then finally Taiwan. And this is in a sense the least controversial, because everyone on the Democratic and Republican side pretty much supports more support for Taiwan, is opposed to China. It's very easy to get lots of legislation that makes life more difficult for China. At the same time, though, the long term strategy of the United States is to make Taiwan less important, less important for the Americans in making sure that semiconductor production, moves from Taiwan to the United States, to other allies, not just a few miles off of the mainland Chinese coast, but also export controls that prevent the Chinese from getting advanced semiconductors from Taiwan as well. In other words, the big US strategy is not just arming the Taiwanese and helping them defend themselves, but also making Taiwan fundamentally less important to mainland China. and one of the main reasons that the Chinese would not be interested in attacking Taiwan long term or squeezing them hard economically long term, is because they're so indispensable to the Chinese economy. This is not going to be the case long term.
In all three of these areas, you've got the United States with friends, but they are less aligned with strategically than they are tactically. And that means that this money that we see going forward is all about kicking the can on short term gains that make sense politically for the US right now. But long term do not resolve the challenges that exist for the US with these countries.
That's it for me and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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