#95 Former Australian Prime Minister and China Scholar Kevin Rudd: War Between the US and China

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Chinese Communist Party, Chris Clark, Kevin Rudd, Lynn Tomman
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Xi Jinping
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping
4. 20:00 – 25:00: Xi Jinping
5. 25:00 – 26:46: The Avoidable War, Xi Jinping

Notable quotes from "#95 Former Australian Prime Minister and China Scholar Kevin Rudd: War Between the US and China"

• Careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lyn toen welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be…

  about Lynn Tomman · at 0:16

• Between the US and China yeah one of the reasons for writing this book of mine the avoidable war is a deep reflection on how we all stumbled into the Great War of 1914 1918 an…

  about The Avoidable War · at 1:36

• Strength and power can you elaborate yeah China's run by Marxist leninist party the Chinese Communist Party who have a deeply realist analysis of power in their calculation of…

  about Chinese Communist Party · at 2:54

• Power still but as we said before with China from their own perspective closing on all three what evidence does Xi Jinping and other senior Chinese leaders see that supports…

  about Xi Jinping · at 7:12

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Xi Jinping — Person · 4 mentions · first at 7:17
• Lynn Tomman — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:21
• Kevin Rudd — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:30
  It's Lyn toen welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with former Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd and I'm excited to find out how he sees the risk of war…
• Chris Clark — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:51
  On how we all stumbled into the Great War of 1914 1918 an Australian compatriot of Mind by the name of Chris Clark a professor of history at Cambridge University wrote a book a…

Books & papers

• The Avoidable War — Book · 2 mentions · first at 1:41
• The Sleepwalkers — Book · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

• Chinese Communist Party — Company · 3 mentions · first at 3:00

Concepts & topics

• Quad — Concept · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 welcome to the three takeaways podcast which features short memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers Business Leaders writers politicians scientists and other newsmakers each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lyn toen welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with former Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd and I'm excited to find out how he sees the risk of war between the US and China Kevin's in a unique position to understand the China us relationship and risks of War he's a China scholar fluent Mandarin speaker and someone who knows the leaders of both China and the us he's been a student of China since he was 18 when he majored in Mandarin which he speaks fluently and Chinese history at University he's also worked with xiin

1:00 ping and other Chinese leaders over many years as a diplomat posted in Beijing and subsequently as Prime Minister of Australia Kevin has also lived in the US and been a friend and adviser to US presidents welcome Kevin and thanks so much for our conversation today thanks Lynn for having me on your podcast I really appreciate it it is a pleasure Kevin there was nothing inevitable about World War I as you have noted that it came about because because of the flawed decisions of political and military leaders in 1914 could the same thing happen now between the US and China yeah one of the reasons for writing this book of mine the avoidable war is a deep reflection on how we all stumbled into the Great War of 1914 1918 an Australian compatriot of Mind by the name of Chris Clark a professor of history at Cambridge University wrote a book a few years ago called the sleepwalker and how the world slept walked into

2:03 World War I and so that a relatively minor incident in late June of that year spiraled out of control during July against a Tinder Box of great power relations as they existed at the time and despite the fact that no one saw War as inevitable or even probable or desirable it happened and the Mass Slaughter we're all familiar with in history so for those sort of reasons I don't want China or the United States to sleepwalk into major armed conflict because the consequences of such a regional and Global configration would rewrite the Strategic map in ways which are utterly unpredictable quite apart from the enormous Devastation on the way through so that's the motivation for writing the book you have said that there are two things that fundamentally change the US China relationship the first has to do with China's relative strength and power can you elaborate yeah China's run by Marxist leninist party the Chinese Communist

3:02 Party who have a deeply realist analysis of power in their calculation of it they call it comprehensive National Power there's a Chinese phrase for it which is the students of the Soviet Union it's not dissimilar to the old Soviet concept of the correlation of forces so what does that mean in reality it means that they look at all the barometers and all the indicators and all the measures of National Power military economic technological and the rest and they aggregate them and according to this analysis the balance of power between China and the United States is moving rapidly in China's Direction in beijing's calculus and as a result of that they therefore have concluded that they no longer need to to paraphrase dang xaing hide their strength by their time never take the lead instead China has become under xiin Ping's leadership much more loud and proud in the assertion of Chinese power and influence

4:03 in the world of course that has therefore given rise to an American reaction starting with late Obama through Trump and now under Biden but as a consequence We Now find ourselves in a much more precarious strategic environment than we did a decade ago and she is extraordinarily powerful as a leader he's the most powerful leader in China since now what is his perspective on the US and what are his primary interests well the middle part of the book deals with what I describe as Xin Ping's 10 concentric circles of interest if you're a student of maslo and his hierarchy of needs this is an attempt for me to render from a Chinese Communist Party perspective their set of priorities starting with keeping the party in power but moving out to the economy and foreign policy and their security policy uh interest in the region and the world of course front and center and the latter is xiin Ping's view of the United States and xiin

5:07 Ping's view of America is that it constrains China's ability to retake Taiwan it contains China in terms of its ability to push out into the Pacific because of America's treaty alliances with a combination of the Republic of Korea and Japan and the Philippines and to some extent Australia and furthermore xiin ping has concluded in his own terms that as a result of the US China trade War initiated by the Trump Administration that the US is held bent on preventing China's further economic rise so for those sorts of reasons he now concludes that China is in an inexorable period of strategic competition and to use the Chinese Communist term struggle with the United States therefore we've Ed into a very sharp period indeed through the lens of his own worldview and he sees the us as the only country that can threaten China because the Chinese are deeply realist they make a clear study of anyone who

6:14 would be a challenge to China's long-term rise within the region and across the world and obviously that logic takes him first and foremost to Uncle Sam but also on the way through they've looked at some of the challenges which Russia has posed in the past but they are no longer real problems as Russia declines as an economic power remains a formidable military power but also has been as it were coales into a wider strategic condominium between Moscow and Beijing a raid against the United States Japan the Chinese regard as a formidable economic and military force on their doorstep and with a long and difficult history with China going back to earlier Japanese invasions of China Sovereign territory but certainly Numero Uno from beijing's point of view is the United States of America the world's largest economy still the L the world's largest military still the world's most formidable technological

7:12 power still but as we said before with China from their own perspective closing on all three what evidence does Xi Jinping and other senior Chinese leaders see that supports their view that the US is acting in a hostile way the Chinese lens on America is a long historical lens beginning with their own analysis of the Monroe Doctrine and America's strategy over many decades to secure for itself a dominant position in what Americans call the Western Hemisphere to the exclusion of other great powers from Europe and China in many respects in my judgment has taken some learnings from that in terms of how they perceive their own future in East Asia and the West Pacific and their own longer term interest in dominating what they perhaps refer to internally as the Eastern Hemisphere I think secondly they've looked at the pattern in history of American alliances in East Asia remember America was already fought against

8:13 Chinese troops in Korea came close to it over Taiwan China was backing militarily the North Vietnamese against US forces in the Vietnam War and so for these sorts of reasons China sees a lot of historical pattern and in the temporary framework what they identify is the formation of new geopolitical entities such as the quad the quadrilateral security dialogue between India Japan Australia and the United States is fundamentally seeking to balance against China's Rising power in Asia they would also point to bans on Huawei in terms of its ability to supply telecommunications infrastructure for American Allies and partners in the world world and they look at a range of unfolding bans on certain critical technology exports from the United States particularly in semiconductors and micr processors to China for those sorts of reasons the Chinese have concluded that they have an adversarial relationship and despite to

9:18 their own best efforts to ameliorate it have nonetheless reached a conclusion themselves that they must increasingly resort to National Economic self-sufficiency a more assertive security policy and forging ties with their own perceived natural economic and security Partners around the world including the Russian Federation how important is Taiwan to xiin Ping taiwan's a matter of high religion if you like to an atheist party it is a galvanizing unrealized National ambition it's seen as the incomplete component of the Chinese Revolution of 1949 when shankai Sheek and nationalist forces fled to the island of Taiwan after they lost the military battle against the Communist Party in Mao on the mainland so for xiin Ping who sees himself a little like Vladimir Putin as quote a man of history that is someone who seeks to readjust the historical map to deal with leftover questions from history it is a particularly urgent

10:23 political and foreign policy challenge doesn't mean that xiin ping will move tomorrow because as some of written America is strategically preoccupied with Russia and Ukraine but prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine my own analysis is that xiin ping was personally moving along railway tracks his own timetable towards looking at Ways and Means to coerce Taiwan back into Chinese sovereignty sometime in the late 20s early 2030s and back on the basis of the changing balance of power scenario that I referred to before with the United States and China how do you think the Russia Ukraine war has impacted that I don't think it's adjusted Shin Ping's timetable at all there'll be Lessons Learned and lessons drawn from Russia's military and financial and economic experience in Ukraine but in many respects China's innate strategic conservativism has caused them to Double Down much earlier on in their pursuit of military

11:27 preponderance over Taiwan in the United States in this particular theater because it's a conservative military culture in China One not predisposed to taking unnecessary risks so they will look at Putin's full heartedness in embarking upon this land-based Invasion although they would have believed I presume Putin's military briefings to the Chinese leadership that this will all be over in a week whereas the reality has proven to be anything but and remember in China's case this is not the relative ease of a land based Invasion it would be the largest amphibious operation since the D-Day Landings across 180 km of open Waters where Chinese vessels are massively vulnerable on the financial and economic side they'll look carefully at the operationalization of US dollar denominated sanctions Financial sanctions and particularly those removing the Russian Federation from Swift that is the US dollar denominated

12:25 International settlement system and China I think will see to build up its own resilience against those possibilities by the late 20s and the early 30s so yes there'll be Lessons Learned and drawn but the Chinese will have concluded themselves I think internally that these were lessons they were already working on anyway hence their extended timetable for working out the Taiwan question to their satisfaction do you think that Xian ping has used nationalism and anti-American media to strengthen his position and has it worked how do you think the average Chinese if there is such a thing sees the US I don't think there is such a thing anymore as quote an average Chinese unquote what I can look at is what the official propaganda apparatus has done under Xi Jinping on nationalism and make some judgment broadly about how effective it may have been with particular groups on the first question you don't have to be a road scholar to

13:23 line up the change and the tonality and content of Chinese official domestic propaga Anda against the United States and its Western allies in recent years a clear Insight in this is through a marvelous leaked document from the Chinese system called document number nine which was basically a Verbatim transcript of xiin ping unvarnished at a national ideology and propaganda work conference in 2013 very early on in his period it's a no HSB representation of the ideological e Vil of the West the ideological virtues of the Chinese Communist party and Marxism leninism and the need therefore to fully embrace the positive forces of what he described then as Chinese patriotism to advance China's interests at home and abroad so nationalism and moving China's nationalist center of gravity further to the right in order to underpin a more assertive Chinese foreign and security policy in the world has been at least

14:29 half of xiin Ping's overall ideological Enterprise secondly on the question of its Effectiveness it's hard to judge I'm not sure we have reliable opinion pole data from China itself in terms of popular and public attitudes and also the control of China's social media space while not complete is difficult to get a handle on in terms of what constitutes real public sentiment but I will say this and I've written recently on this this elsewhere when you have senior Chinese academics writing publicly about the new nationalist temperament on the part of Chinese Millennials that is those who have grown up purely in the shiin Ping period and come to adulthood in the last 10 years and when these academics reflect on their experience of these 20 and 22 year olds in the University classrooms today what these Chinese academics are saying is that this is a world apart from the kids they were teaching 10 and 20 years

15:28 ago let's switch and talk about the US perspective on China many Americans believe that China would become more tolerant more open more liberal and more of a democratic state but that attitude and perspective has changed dramatically how do you think that most us leaders government leaders see China now and what evidence supports their current perspective I've always had a view that the idea that open and more liberal economic policies would produce in China automatically varying degrees of political liberalization and or even the emergence of democratic forms of governance was a little misplaced it may have been an unconscious organizing principle on the part of various us political leaders over time but if we had eyes to see and is to hear what happened in chenan in 1989 30 years ago this is not really the case then and it hasn't really been the case since because we have a leninist party in

16:33 China which is determined to remain the ruling party in China for the very long-term future and not to yield political space if I was to summarize xiin Ping's worldview it would be along the lines of a guy who sees him having moved the ideology of his country to the left the center of gravity of Chinese politics to the left with the party's reassertion of its power over the rest of public policy the professional apparatus of the Chinese State economic professionals quite apart from business professionals and even in people's personal lives and the partial Crackdown on lgbtq communities in China as well this has been a fairly significant shift to the left and furthermore the reassertion of she's individual leadership as opposed to the collective leadership of the rest of the Communist Party put together similar we've seen a move to the left in the center of gravity of Chinese economic policy with a new emphasis on

17:37 state-owned Enterprises Chinese industrial policy Chinese State planning a more restrictive environment for the private sector either in the tech sector or in the property sector or more broadly and a new common Prosperity agenda which is a NEOS Socialist neoc Communist agenda to maximize wealth redistribution within the country and for those reasons as well therefore you have a new set of economic assumptions compared with the past so why do I make these points is that whereas under previous pre shiin ping administrations of dang xaing of jangam men of huin China was never trending towards becoming a liberal democracy there were greater freedoms both politically and economically as of 2012 than there are today and xiin ping has dialed all of these back and taken it in the reverse Direction so therefore for those who conclude that we now have a more shall we say assertive Marxist leninist State

18:35 at home and a more nationalist Chinese State abroad analytically that is correct and I think that is a view reflected across the United States Congress and across democracies around the world of course the $6,000 question is what's an effective strategy for responding as opposed to just pulling out a bullhorn and screaming at China and thinking that using a mega phone every Tuesday morning actually equals a strategy which it does not what do you think a good strategy toward China would be and what strategy would avoid a war how do you think a war could start there are multiple scenarios in terms of how crisis conflict and War could emerge between China and the United States over Taiwan in fact I trace five sets of scenarios there the South China Sea the East China Sea we've got so much metal flying around in terms of ships and aircraft Korean Peninsula also presents some challenging scenarios for the

19:36 future particularly Kim Jong yun's predisposition to go fully nuclear then of course there is this rolling role of the dice in terms of random attacks in cyber and space so there are plenty of trip wires out there secondly one of the reasons I argue in this book for what I call the doctrine of managed strategic competition is to try and reduce the risk of any of these trip wires producing accidental crisis conflict and War for which there are many many possibilities right now and by manag strategic competition I refer to the need for each side to identify its core strategic red lines in these five areas communicate them through private diplomatic channels to the other side rather than the current game of what I describe as strategic push and shove in the hope that somehow operationally we deduce where in fact red lines May lie but it's pretty dangerous way to go about doing it it's a form of Russian

20:32 Roulette and I'm not all that happy about that as being a form of enhancing strategic stability I think a further element of what I describe as a potential joint strategic narrative between China and the United States within this umbrella of managed strategic competition if you can deal with the red lines and the core strategically sensitive areas you can Embrace non-lethal full-blooded strategic competition and everything else the rest of national security policy the enhancement of deterrent capabilities on both sides of the equation the rest of foreign policy and the pursuit for foreign policy influence in the world Economic Policy trade investment Capital markets technology markets Talent markets Etc as well as ideology in the great contest for the world of ideas underpinning the next International System if there is to be a next International System and finally to construct at the same time sufficient

21:30 political and diplomatic space in the bilateral relationship as would still enable strategic collaboration in critical areas of mutual National interest like climate change like the next pandemic given how much we screwed up the last one all of us that is and furthermore maintain Global Financial stability given that these are the two largest economies and financial systems in the world so I think that's a credible way ahead and for the US to use that per period through what I call the decade of Living Dangerously the 2020s to continue to invest in effective military deterence together with their friends and partners in Taiwan across the Taiwan Straits to ultimately cause the Chinese military to think twice about whether XI jinping's political timetable is militarily capable of execution last time when we talked for three takeaways you talked about the importance of allies and that the US is

22:26 Ally rich with over 40 allies allies compared to China which only has North Korea how important are allies now and how can they be leveraged allies as China and the United States understand implicitly are Force multipliers and you don't have any good ones which the Chinese privately concede they don't the United States starts with this enormous advantage of 46 treaty allies around the world in Asia and in Europe and elsewhere so the question for the United States however is not to just regard these as passive military Partners but also to affect a much broader shall I say strategic and economic relationship with their allies and one of the challenges to the United States Congress which has become overwhelmingly protectionist is to regard their friends allies and partners As Natural participants in wider free trade zones with the United States for the long term both in Asia through what was once called The transpacific

23:25 partnership but also with Europe with what began as a concept of ttip and the United States with the naft economies of North America with its partners and allies in Asia and in Europe were to expand the tent the economic tent in trade investment flows and Technology flows this is such an important leverage point for America and its ultimate strategic competition with the People's Republic of China the fact that the United States Congress is heading in exactly the reverse direction is a case in my view of pulling out a very long double barrel shopgun and aiming it at both feet and blowing a hole in there and that's what very much the United States is up to now Kevin before I ask for the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today is there anything else you'd like to mention that you haven't already touched upon I'm very happy with what I've said so far then that's fine thank you for your

24:19 questions and the three takeaways three takeaways I think are as follows one that it's critical for the United States states to stabilize the US China strategic relationship in the 2020s this decade of Living Dangerously by embracing with Beijing a concept like managed strategic competition as I've outlined in our discussion today number two the United States if they do so should use this critical decade to rebuild its capacity both for military deterrence but also economic growth and development in order to continue to strengthen the position of the United States and its allies in the region and the world and the third takeaway is this and we haven't discussed this one but to look carefully at the long-term economic trajectory of XI jinping's move of Chin's economic policy to the left the impact which that has in turn on China's long-term economic growth rates as the private sector in China starts to go on a

25:24 business investment strike together with demographic Trends through an aging population a shrinking population and a shrinking Workforce and declining productivity growth to conclude that maybe by the time we get to the 2030s China's economy ultimately doesn't become bigger than the US economy or if it does maybe only a little bit bigger rather than the projections of the past more of a linear nature that it ends up being twice Thrice or four times the size of the United States and perhaps twice the size of the United States and Europe combined put those three things together I think they are reasonable takeouts for a long-term analysis of where this relationship can go thank you Kevin this has been great and I really enjoyed the avoidable war it is a wonderful book so thank you thanks so much Lynn and I appreciate you're having me on this podcast to discuss it and with all the folk who subscribed to it

26:21 if you enjoyed today's episode and would like to receive the show notes or get new Fresh weekly episodes be sure to sign up for our newsletter at 3 takeaway.com or follow us on Instagram Twitter and Facebook note that 3 takeaway.com is with the number three three is not spelled out see you soon at 3 takeaways tocom

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "#95 Former Australian Prime Minister and China Scholar Kevin Rudd: War Between the US and China"?

In order: 0:00 Chinese Communist Party, Chris Clark, Kevin Rudd, Lynn Tomman; 5:00 Xi Jinping; 10:00 Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping; 20:00 Xi Jinping; 25:00 The Avoidable War, Xi Jinping.

What is mentioned in this 3 Takeaways episode?

8 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Xi Jinping, Chinese Communist Party, The Avoidable War, Lynn Tomman, Kevin Rudd, Chris Clark. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "#95 Former Australian Prime Minister and China Scholar Kevin Rudd: War Between the US and China"?

The episode runs 27 min; the transcript is about 4,173 words in 27 timestamped sections.

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