Douglas Dillon Professor @Kennedy_School | Former Director @BelferCenter | Author of "Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides Trap?"
Cambridge, MA
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Having returned from a whirlwind tour of 9 intense days of meetings in Beijing, reflecting on my discussion with Xi Jinping:
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Will India surpass China to become the next superpower? As I recently argued in @ForeignPolicy, four inconvenient truths make this unlikely
foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/24…
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1/ Musk has it exactly right. How does Team USA compete and win in a world in which China has 4 times as many people as we do, 4 times as many STEM graduates every year, and invests more than 4 times as much as we do in R&D?
Maybe this is a helpful clarification: I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning.
This is like bringing in the Jokic’s or Wemby’s of the world to help your whole team (which is mostly Americans!) win the NBA.
Thinking of America as a pro sports team that has been winning for a long time and wants to keep winning is the right mental construct.
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China Hype. In the current political environment, politicians and commentators alike are competing to demonstrate who can make the most extreme charges against China.
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Lenin said famously: “there are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.”
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6/ Why are 90% of the advanced semiconductors produced in Taiwan rather than in the US? Because a short-sighted American company at which a Chinese-born, MIT-educated dreamer was working rejected his ambitious aspirations—and Morris Chang then moved to Taiwan where he founded and built TSMC.
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But is it? Declaring the US the winner in the global economic growth race by comparing it only with its established, aging G7 counterparts may be like awarding a medal to the American sprinter in the 100-meter Olympic race by excluding world record holder Usain Bolt.
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1/ The title of a Foreign Affairs article last week announces a favorite storyline among many DC China watchers: “Xi Can’t…” But ask yourself: how many times in the past year – or decade – have you read the headline claim, “Xi Can’t…” foreignaffairs.com/china/xi-…
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Who’s wasting money on high-speed rail?
A reader of the Wall Street Journal could be excused for thinking the answer is China. See their recent article subtitled: “China’s train system is one of the biggest public works in history, and it’s becoming a giant money pit.” It spotlights China’s $500 billion spend on new rail in the past 5 years. wsj.com/world/china/xi-high-…
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In China for heavy schedule of meetings with Xi’s foreign policy leadership team. Today’s included Wang Yi (China’s Foreign Minister and Director of the CCP Central Foreign Affairs Commission—essentially holding both the jobs of US SecState Blinken and NSA Jake Sullivan).
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He went on to use an interesting metaphor to describe the US-China relationship: “I am in you, and you are in me” (你中有我，我中有你)
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1/ Why is TSMC’s attempt to build a semiconductor factory in Arizona falling further and further behind? “TSMC’s debacle in the American desert” from Rest of the World offers clues:
restofworld.org/2024/tsmc-ar…
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1/ Having recently returned from 10 days in China, I agreed to be interviewed by Goldman Sachs’ Global Macro Research team. Here’s what they asked:
belfercenter.org/publication…
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As we see news reports on the current G7 meetings in Italy, for perspective, it is worth rereading Martin Wolf’s article on last year’s G7 meeting in Hiroshima titled "The G7 must accept that it cannot run the world." Consider three of his main points:
ft.com/content/c8cf024d-87b7…
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That requires leaders in both countries to identify what Kissinger called a new “strategic concept” that satisfies the contradictory imperatives to simultaneously compete and cooperate.
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China’s withdrawal of its pandas from the Washington National Zoo is a textbook case of “dumb” power. In an age where people talk about hard power, soft power, sharp power, we need at least one more bucket: dumb power.
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But if war means suicide for both nations, then the central truth Reagan captured about nations with robust nuclear arsenals remains as true today as it was during the height of the Cold War: “A nuclear war cannot be won and therefore must never be fought.”
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Will solar be the new oil? In an op-ed in the print edition of the FT today, I note that for the first time in history, global spending on solar energy production will outpace spending on oil production this year: $380 billion on solar compared with $370 billion on oil
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As @WSJ and other outlets sound the alarm that China’s 7.2% increase in military spending is “another hefty increase” in its decades-long military buildup, it is important to examine the facts.
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There, he said: “The Thucydides Trap is not inevitable, and Planet Earth is vast enough to accommodate the respective development and common prosperity of China and the US.”
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The price cap on Russian oil exports was announced by Secretary Yellen on December 2, 2022. She claimed it would “immediately cut into Putin’s most important source of revenue.” Inconvenient question: did the oil price cap work?
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Who is winning the global EV race?
The answer: China, China, and China.
In 2023, China sold over nine million EVs—six times the US. In Q4, China’s EV champion, BYD (which is backed by Warren Buffett among others), overtook Musk’s Tesla to become the #1 global EV automaker.
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Inconvenient question: who is the major supplier of drones to both Russia and Ukraine in the current war?
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While Xi’s primary objective in meeting with US business leaders (I was included as a ‘representative of the academic and strategic community’) was to emphasize that China is “open for business,” he was also interested in engaging about the broader geopolitical relationship.
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“The Most Consequential Undeclared Alliance in the World.”
foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/23…
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The US and China exist in 21st-century conditions in which each nation’s survival depends on cooperation from the other to address shared, existential challenges (nuclear MAD, climate change, global pandemics, etc.)
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Over the past four months, the total of all the territory Ukraine has recovered is 140 square miles. If it continues “gaining ground” at this rate, it will not fully liberate its territory in the 21st century.
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I asked him what he meant by that. For a clip of his answer to the question, see the recording below: piped.video/watch?v=3jY_Xrvp…
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1/ See my new interview in the South China Morning Post. They interviewed me a couple of weeks ago after I returned from Beijing. Overall, it reflects my current thinking about how the US is meeting the China challenge.
scmp.com/news/china/diplomac…
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Given California has already spent $10 billion in the 16 years since 2008 when voters approved building a railroad track that so far leads to nowhere, an American should ask: “who is wasting more money on high-speed rail?”
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Unipolarity is over, and with it the illusion that other nations would simply take their assigned place in a U.S.-led order. That will require accepting that there are spheres of influence—and not all of them are American. See my latest in @ForeignAffairs foreignaffairs.com/articles/…
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1/ China Facts: Who has the most competitive automobile market in the world? Who has the most competitive market for EVs in the world?
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- China’s real GDP (growth minus inflation) is now 20% larger than it was before the COVID pandemic. The US economy has grown by only 8%.
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Across nearly every dimension—tech, trade, industry, military, and global influence—the US and China are destined to be the fiercest competitors history has ever seen.
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The Peterson Institute’s Nick Lardy’s recent in Foreign Affairs, “China Is Still Rising,” offers a number of inconvenient facts that remind us to follow the numbers instead of the narratives.
foreignaffairs.com/united-st…
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What do China and the US have to show for their investments?
For $2 trillion total, China has constructed more high-speed rail than the rest of the world combined: 30,000 miles of track, enough to circle the globe, taking riders daily from Beijing to Shanghai at speeds upwards of 200 mph and freight from Chongqing to Zhengzhou at speeds of 125 mph.
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As I told CGTN last week: I do not believe for a moment that a hot war between the US and China is inevitable.
Thucydides' Trap, a concept about potential conflicts between emerging and established powers, is often linked to China-U.S. relations. In an interview with Liu Xin, Professor Graham Allison, who coined this term, emphasizes learning from historical mistakes to foster peace.
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Note: the IMF’s World Economic Outlook also reports that China grew 5.2% in 2023—more than 2x as fast as the US. Could a runner competing in the Olympics claim a gold medal if he had just been lapped by his closest rival?
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Biden has an opportunity to hurt Putin’s Russia and help Team USA: the administration should create Scientific Freedom visas to attract superstars from Russia to come to the US and show Putin what free individuals in an open society can create. My latest: thehill.com/opinion/national…
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I was invited to offer a 5-minute comment on the relationship between the US and China.
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While as I’ve written, I believe it is essential to recognize that China is and will be the fiercest rival a ruling power has ever faced, I am also convinced that the current demonization of China confuses more than it clarifies.
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Last week, I was interviewed by @NYMag about the dangers of demonizing China. As politically profitable as demonizing China now is, it leads individuals to overestimate China’s strengths and to underestimate its vulnerabilities. nymag.com/intelligencer/2024…
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In addition to commending him for what he and President Biden achieved in San Francisco in establishing a solid foundation for a stable, constructive relationship going forward, I raised a question about the metaphor he had used in his discussion with Chuck Schumer last October.
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In my search for avenues by which to escape Thucydides’s Trap, I am finding many insights and clues from both Chinese history and philosophy that has historically had a capacity for embracing contradictions and complexity.
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Good news:
Today, Harvard posted the job ad for a new Henry A. Kissinger Professorship of Statecraft and World Order.
academicpositions.harvard.ed…
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His response captures the essence of the conditions in which the greatest Thucydidean rivalry of all times is playing out.
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But as the piece admits, California’s high-speed rail project linking San Francisco to Los Angeles has “grappled with costs spiraling to more than $100 billion and a still-uncertain completion date.”
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For those who still imagine that Western sanctions are strangling Russias economy, the FT’s Big Read yesterday on “How Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ gets its ships” masterfully illuminates how Russia is out-playing the US at the cat and mouse game of economic sanctions.
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- Despite narratives about weak consumption, Chinese consumption (real per capita) rose 9% last year while incomes rose 6%.
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- Contrary to the belief that investors have lost all confidence, private investment increased about 10% in 2023 when excluding the real estate sector.
For more, Lardy’s article is a good read.
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3/ Driving this recurring error: disappointment that China has not followed the path of Japan and Germany, democratized, and taken the place America has assigned it in the international order; despair about what's happening in the US; and hope that China will fail before we do.
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My China team’s China Hype award for the week goes to the anonymous author of the @politico piece headlined “Xi Goes Full Stalin.” It argues that Xi has now become the new Stalin! Specifically: politico.eu/article/chinas-p…
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Inconvenient CHIPS Act Facts
Claim: The CHIPS Act will help restore US leadership in semiconductor manufacturing and reduce US reliance on Asia for advanced chips.
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Visited Zhongnanhai, headquarters of China’s central government, on my recent trip to Beijing. Productive meetings with officials at the highest levels. As in the US, debate over the diagnosis is over. The question now: how to secure vital interests without stumbling into war.
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In a Foreign Affairs article published today, Michael Morell and I try to sound an alarm about what we believe are echoes of what we heard in the months prior to al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. foreignaffairs.com/united-st…
The Terrorism Warning Lights Are Blinking Red Again
Echoes of the run-up to 9/11.
foreignaffairs.com 14
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When I asked Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, a decade ago about whether India could become the next China, he answered directly: “Do not talk about India and China in the same breath.”
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This Tuesday, join @Benjamin__Rhode and me for an @IISS_org discussion on the Russia–Ukraine war, the US–China rivalry, and Thucydides’s Trap.
iiss.org/events/2022/04/the-…
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Henry Kissinger was America’s greatest living statesman, Harvard’s most accomplished living graduate, and the model practitioner of statecraft as Applied History.
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In my recent interview with @NewStatesman, I argue American politics is driving towards something that could become a provocation that China could not avoid
newstatesman.com/the-weekend…
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Contrary to claims, China is not 10 feet tall; nor is it peaking and on the brink of collapse. To create and sustain a strategy for meeting the China challenge, Americans must understand our competitor as it is—rightly assessing both its strengths and its weaknesses.
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4/ In 2017, as Trump became president, Destined for War offered my best judgement that Xi was “the most ambitious, competent, and consequential leader on the global stage today.”
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In an inconvenient wakeup front-page story, the Wall Street Journal announced : “China’s DJI has become the go-to drone brand for Ukraine.” wsj.com/world/how-american-d…
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This year’s Munich Security Conference included a session on Applied History titled “The End of the End of History: Rethinking Western Policy Towards Russia," sponsored by the Ax:son Johnson Foundation (one of the major supporters of Applied History).
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In one line: what we the living owe the dead is to avoid unnecessary wars. Unfortunately, many Americans see Memorial Day as just a holiday to mark the beginning of summer.
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But for serious outlets like @politico who are seeking to help readers understand what’s actually happening in the world, where commentators make extreme claims without providing evidence or analysis that supports them, not good.
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5/ Assessing the performance of international leaders over the past 5 years, that judgement seems correct. Looking ahead to the next 5 years, who has another candidate they’d bet on to displace Xi from this perch?
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Before Trump takes action in Syria, he should ask: and then what? What will Russia do in response? And at the end of the sequence of actions and reactions, will Americans be safer than before? Bismarck warned against playing chess one move at a time.
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Inconvenient question: who is winning and who losing the war on the ground in Ukraine?
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3/ How did the US establish our position of leadership in science and technology to win World War II? By recruiting and welcoming the Einsteins, Fermis, and others who built the atomic bomb.
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In a forthcoming essay I wrote celebrating my professor Henry Kissinger, who reaches his 100-year mile marker tomorrow, I thanked him for enlarging our conception of a meaningful life
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Brzezinski warned in 1997 that the greatest long-term threat to U.S. interests would be a “grand coalition” of China and Russia, “united not by ideology but by complementary grievances.” Few heeded his admonition. on.wsj.com/2RZDvyU
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China’s 310,000 departures is .02% of its population of 1.4 billion. In contrast, German and British emigrants amounted to 1% of their populations. Thus on a per capita basis, for each individual who left China, 5 left the Germany and the UK.
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Among the interesting findings reported by the Journal: “Most small drones from the US startups have failed to perform in combat.” The Ukrainian military added: “Made-in-America drones tend to be expensive, glitchy, and hard to repair.”
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At a time when the US Navy also reports China having 200 times more shipbuilding capability than the US, the nagging question is: can the US make anything at scale or at a price point that can compete with China?
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In the social media world, the more extreme the claim, the more clicks it gets. And if clicks were the the metric of interest, this piece would get a passing grade.
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Second, India’s economy remains much smaller than China’s. At the beginning of the 21st century, China’s GDP was about three times larger than India’s. Today it is around five times larger.
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In fact, China’s 2024 military spending will increase by less (in nominal terms) than every pre-Covid year since Xi took power.
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The author claims Xi has “ramped up repression to totalitarian levels.” Compared to what? Xi’s corruption investigators have purged far bigger “tigers” than Qin Gang and Li Shangfu, who aren’t even on the Politburo.
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China’s 2024 military spending will increase by less than the overall government budget (8.6%), less than food and oil expenditures (8.1%), less than science and technology expenditures (10%), and less than debt and interest payments (11.9%).
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Enjoyed talking to @theallinpod at their annual summit in LA. A great conversation on China, the history of great powers, and US military spending.
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First, analysts have been wrong about India’s rise in the past. In the 1990s, analysts trumpeted a growing Indian population that would create an “economic miracle.” Yet that never happened. Will this time be different?
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2/ In one line: by recruiting the most talented individuals from all the 8 billion fellow inhabitants of planet Earth—and riding the waves they make as they realize their dreams.
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Third, India has been steadily falling behind in the science and technology race. China graduates nearly 2x as many STEM students and spends 2 percent of its GDP on R&D, while India spends 0.7 percent.
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The recent @nytimes headline declaring “Ukraine Has Gained Ground” confuses more than it clarifies.
nytimes.com/interactive/2023…
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The IMF issued today its World Economic Outlook reviewing what happened last year and previewing the year to come. It notes that the US grew at 2.5% in 2023–outpacing all other G7 economies.
imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/…
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Fourth, while China has essentially eliminated abject poverty, more than 10 percent of India’s population of 1.4 billion struggle to survive on incomes below this World Bank threshold of $2.15 a day.
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My article on "The Myth of the Liberal Order" is out in the new issue of @ForeignAffairs. I hope you'll give it a read. Look forward to what I'm sure will be a lively debate! foreignaffairs.com/articles/…
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China’s 7.2% increase is nominal. If China hits its real GDP target of 5% and CPI target of 3%, its military spending as a percent of GDP will shrink in 2024.
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