Trump in Beijing

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NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 13th of May. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. 

Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

President Trump is in Beijing with a delegation of major American CEOs—from finance, tech, manufacturing, and aviation. This comes against a backdrop of tensions over Taiwan, trade, and military competition in the Pacific. 

There’s an official welcome ceremony tonight, which is actually Thursday morning Beijing time.

EICHER: Meanwhile, Chinese analysts and state media increasingly describe the United States as a declining and internally divided power. The New York Times carried a major piece on that yesterday. Some reports suggest Beijing believes it may now hold more leverage in the relationship than at any point in years.

It’s Washington Wednesday, and joining us now is political scientist Hunter Baker. 

Hunter, good morning.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

EICHER: So Hunter, this trip comes at a moment when China is seeing the U.S. as weakened and distracted, but President Trump appears to be approaching Beijing with a very transactional mindset. His idea is trade and economic opportunity. 

So what do you think each side believes it has to gain going into the summit?

BAKER: Carl F. Henry, who some of the audience may remember, he wrote a short book called Has Democracy Had Its Day? And I think that if we were to ask the Chinese, “Has democracy had its day?” I think they would say, “Yes, it has.”

They would look at the United States, they would see how we have our elections every couple of years with power changing hands, and they would say, “How can you govern that way, especially when the population is not united?” And so they see that as a tremendous weakness that we have.

We, on the other hand, tend to see the ability of human beings to be true citizens, to vote, to organize, to speak, as more of a strength than a weakness.

But right now, as you’re seeing how events in Iran are affecting the United States, you can see something to the Chinese position. You can see, right, the U.S. president is trying to resolve this thing, and the Iranians know if they can just draw it out long enough, that it will be a problem.

Now, what Trump wants—yes, he wants trade, he wants economic wins, and I think he probably wants Beijing to pressure Iran to resolve this thing and to get world commerce going full tilt again.

The Chinese, of course, want to continue to do business with the United States. We have the greatest markets in the world, they benefit tremendously from doing business with us. They’re not that crazy about us protecting ourselves. They’re not that crazy about us trying to prevent them from doing things to American corporations that want to do business in China. And most of all, maybe, they want to affect our posture toward their policy with regard to Taiwan.

MAST: Hunter, I wanted to ask you about that. How central is Taiwan to this trip, really, even if both sides publicly emphasize economics?

BAKER: Taiwan is a big deal. It has been for a long time. And they are very aggressive in their push against anyone who acknowledges Taiwan’s independent existence. And the United States has been cagey about it for quite a while, and we sort of take this strategic ambiguity with regard to Taiwan.

Some folks may remember that Joe Biden, at one point, made a fairly strong statement about our defense of Taiwan and there was almost this rush to walk those words back, to return to strategic ambiguity.

But the Chinese care tremendously about it. They would view it as a huge victory if we would not sell arms to Taiwan, or if we would express that Taiwan is not our business.

MAST: You know, Hunter, we also talk a lot about military rivalry, but things like soybean purchases and aircraft deals still seem to matter enormously here. I want to know, why are basic commodities still such powerful geopolitical tools?

BAKER: Well, in the case of China, you’re just talking about an incredible amount of money.

It’s certainly true that we have come to rely tremendously on Chinese products in the United States. Walmart, for example, is absolutely full of things made in China, and American consumers have benefited from that, you know? We have paid lower prices. Before COVID, we had an incredibly long period of price stability that I think was achieved in part because of trade with China and cheap goods.

But it is also the case that we sell things to them. There was once a time when China was constantly deprived of foodstuffs and unable to feed their massive and burgeoning population. United States agriculture is a very big part of that, and so our farmers depend on having those markets open.

So Trump is always aware of how our trade relationship with China is going to affect the sale of agricultural stuff, and also of course, things like aircraft. And aircraft, we have largely a duopoly between the European Airbus and the American Boeing, and he wants to make sure that Boeing is able to be part of that growing Chinese market.

EICHER: You know, nothing says this meeting is about the economy more than having a plane full of multinational CEOs with you. What do you think it says that some of America’s biggest corporations still see China as indispensable, despite years of rhetoric around the idea of decoupling?

BAKER: It’s a really complex situation.

There’s a famous sort of international political concept called the "Thucydides Trap." It’s the idea of a nation like Sparta having once been dominant and facing the rising power of Athens. And the trap is that the dominant power and the rising power very often, you know, if you study history, will end up in conflict, maybe a real war.

I think that the big players are aware of that dynamic between the United States as the dominant power and China as the quickly rising power, and there is a desire to achieve something like a managed rivalry.

We don’t want a war; they don’t want a war.

If you talk to people who really understand China, they’ll emphasize this idea of winning without fighting. They want to find a way to defeat, to overcome the United States without ever actually having to get into a fight.

And for our part, you know, we have no appetite for the sort of gigantic military conflict that that would entail. And so we continue in this sort of rivalrous dance that we’ve been involved with for the past couple of decades.

EICHER: Speaking of rivalrous dances, we’ve got a story out of Arcadia, Calif., of all places. Federal investigators say that the mayor of that town agreed to plead guilty to acting as an unregistered agent for the Chinese government while serving in office.

Prosecutors say that the case is connected to a broader influence network involving Chinese-language media and efforts to shape opinion inside Chinese American communities in Southern California.

So Hunter, when Americans hear "Chinese espionage," perhaps they’re thinking cyberattacks or something huge, like spies in Washington. But this case apparently involves just a local mayor, community media, and smaller influence operations. 

What stands out to you about this story?

BAKER: Remember those words that I used just a couple of minutes ago? "Winning without fighting."

They are willing to use any number of different kinds of levers of influence, and this is the kind of thing that the United States of America is vulnerable to. We are a free society, and so that means that there are lots of ways that enemies of the United States or rivals of the United States will try to influence American citizens, to influence opinion.

It’s understood that opinion is maybe the most powerful source of law in the United States, and everybody on the outside understands that they can do something about that, that they can try to affect that. And so that’s what we’re seeing. 

With this one small instance of this mayor in Arcadia, you can assume that we could multiply this instance probably by many thousands and never get to the end of the different types of influence that are being used to affect American politics and culture and institutions.

MAST: Switching continents here, The Wall Street Journal this week highlighted what it called a capitalist makeover underway in Sweden. The country long held up by many American progressives as proof that expansive social democracy works has embraced school choice, private-sector reforms, and tougher conversations around immigration and welfare-state sustainability.

Hunter, Sweden occupies an almost mythic place in American progressive politics, so why is The Wall Street Journal suddenly talking about Sweden embracing market reforms and school choice? And really, why should Americans care?

BAKER: It’s a really important part of the American political conversation.

So, you know, for a long time you had this kind of debate about the United States versus the Soviet Union. And it was understood or at least it was thought by various American elites that the Soviet Union was at least on par with the United States, possibly better.

And then, of course, the Soviet Union fell apart, and it became quite clear that it could not compete with the American model, and that capitalism, or free-market economics, had been vindicated over against that Marxist model.

But when you would have that conversation, people on the left would say, “Well, there’s Sweden,” right? They would point to Sweden with their social democracy and their very high taxes and very extensive welfare state and healthcare provided and education provided, basically everything coming forth from the state, as the superior model. You know, that the Soviet Union had failed and hadn’t respected human rights, but that Sweden had done it the right way.

And what we have seen—and really this has been for probably the past couple of decades—is Sweden slowly unwinding, slowly engaging in more privatization. And it’s just amazing to me to read this story in The Wall Street Journal and talk about the success of school choice in Sweden! It’s unbelievable.

The other thing to say about this is, it’s amazing that we have these American socialists who are trying to do the things that other people have tried and are walking away from.

MAST: Well, Hunter Baker is a political scientist and provost of North Greenville University. 

Hunter, thank you so much.

BAKER: Thank you.

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