Today, Elizabeth Economy provides context for recent US-China negotiations on trade and fentanyl mitigation; Matthew Pottinger asks if President Trump and his team are “getting played” on technology exports in their negotiations with Xi Jinping; and Stephen Kotkin speaks with Dan Wang about the latter’s new bestseller on China’s engineering-influenced governance model, as well as the possible futures for the US-China relationship.
Confronting and Competing with China
Writing yesterday at The Free Press ahead of President Trump’s meeting in South Korea with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Distinguished Visiting Fellow Matthew Pottinger noted that the stakes were very high, with the meeting potentially determining “whether America will remain a technological superpower or, if Xi gets his way, becomes an agrarian commune beholden to Beijing.” Pottinger, a first-term Trump administration deputy national security advisor, focuses on whether or not the Trump administration will maintain “restrictions against China obtaining the world’s most advanced semiconductors.” Pottinger argues that if “Trump gives away advanced Nvidia chips to Xi,” he “would be unilaterally deindustrializing America.” Under this scenario, Pottinger warns, soybeans “might be the only thing America has left to sell China before long—just like the late Premier Li forecast to Trump back in 2017.” Read more here. [Subscription required]
This Monday, the Hoover History Lab hosted a book talk on Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future. Research Fellow Dan Wang, author of this bestselling new release, spoke with Senior Fellow and Director of the Hoover History Lab Stephen Kotkin about his arguments in the book and how his experiences living in China and observing its society and industry informed his analysis. Kotkin notes this book has resonated with a very wide audience amid heightened focus on US-China relations and technology competition. The conversation covers Wang’s idea of China as an “engineering state,” the lasting ramifications of China’s one-child population control policy, and the possible terms for China and the United States “sharing the planet” this century. Wang and Kotkin also discuss the drivers of the United States’s difficulty today in constructing cutting-edge, large-scale infrastructure projects. Watch or listen here.
In a column reprinted by the Hudson Institute, Visiting Fellow Miles Maochun Yu argues that China’s slogan about “reunification” with Taiwan is “a hoax sustained by fear, ideology, and deception.” Yu outlines ten reasons why “Taiwan is not a rebellious province but a living refutation of communist determinism, a society that chose freedom over fear.” First, and critically, Yu notes that no part of “Taiwan’s territory has ever been governed by the Chinese Communist Party” (or CCP) since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949—so the CCP “cannot ‘reunify’ with what was never unified.” Yu sees fear of the Chinese people as Beijing’s real motive to absorb democratic Taiwan. As he writes, “A prosperous, democratic Taiwan proves that the Chinese people are fully capable of self-government.” Yu concludes that with all the falsehoods, propaganda, and subterfuge behind China’s Taiwan policies, “‘Reunification’ is thus not a national project but a totalitarian one.” Read more here.
Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies
Visiting Fellow Bjorn Lomborg argues in the Financial Post that poor countries need more cheap energy to fuel their economic development, and the World Bank should direct more of its resources toward helping such nations meet that need. Lomborg maintains that “climate change demands action, but not at the expense of poverty reduction,” and urges the World Bank to back “core development investments such as improving maternal health, advancing e-learning, or enhancing agricultural yields.” Lomborg cites research suggesting that dollar for dollar, these efforts “deliver much greater benefits than climate spending and do so faster” for the world’s least well-off populations. The piece concludes with a call for Canada and other developed nations to “get on board with the mission of returning the World Bank to focusing on poverty.” Read more here. [Subscription required]
Freedom Frequency
In this episode of China Considered Quick Takes, Senior Fellow Elizabeth Economy analyzes the recent US-China trade framework agreement. She breaks down what’s in the deal—soybeans, fentanyl precursors, and tariff adjustments—and explains why it’s a positive step forward. However, Economy emphasizes that this is not a fundamental reset: structural issues like industrial subsidies, market access barriers, and technology competition remain unaddressed. While the agreement may ease tensions and stabilize the bilateral trade relationship in the near term, the deeper strategic competition between the US and China continues. Watch or read more here.
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