In short
U.S.-China relations under shifting Trump policy, and what China wants—framed as “sovereignty, security, and development”—plus how China’s critical-minerals leverage (rare earths, permanent magnets) changes the risks of economic and military confrontation. Weiss argues the U.S. should pursue a “shared doctrine of restraint” and a stable modus vivendi, not escalation dominance or “beating China at China’s game.”
Guest
Jessica Chen Weiss, professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS and former U.S. State Department official; author of essays including “The China Trap” (2022) and a recent Foreign Affairs piece with Gloria Shong on China’s rare-earth leverage.
Key claims
The bipartisan “hard line” consensus was shallower than it looked; export controls and tariffs haven’t slowed China’s modernization and may have increased Chinese counter-leverage. China’s rare-earth dominance is not a grand hostage plot; it stems from industrial concentration, pollution-driven relocation, and gradual learning after earlier episodes (e.g., 2010 Japan dispute). A truce is possible but fragile; people-to-people ties and Taiwan-related assurances matter.
Notable examples
2025 critical-minerals export controls with extraterritorial licensing; Japan’s 2010 rare-earth export reduction episode; Taiwan Strait “center line” pullback idea; U.S. chip export controls; China-Russia deepening; AI safety talks as a partial bright spot.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOUnderstanding U.S.-China Coexistence
0:06 to 1:33
Discussion on the nature of U.S.-China coexistence and its implications.
“But what we need is a kind of shared understanding of how the United States and China are going to cohabit this planet.”
Shifts in American Foreign Policy
1:33 to 3:23
Analysis of recent shifts in U.S. foreign policy towards China and their impacts.
“foreign policy can do to meet those ambitions without resorting to dangerous confrontation.”
Jessica Chen Weiss's Perspective
3:23 to 6:22
Jessica Chen Weiss shares insights on U.S.-China relations and her writings on the topic.
“It was interesting for me in this context to go back and read the piece you published in Foreign Affairs in 2022.”
Evaluating Trump's China Policy
6:22 to 7:39
Discussion on the merits and flaws of Trump's approach to China.
“We actually need many of the technologies that China is pioneering in, or if we want to achieve our own objectives in terms of affordability and decarbonization.”
China's Perspective on U.S. Relations
7:39 to 11:40
Exploration of how Chinese analysts view U.S. foreign policy and Trump's actions.
“I think that he's getting right the fact that we do need a stable and constructive relationship with China.”
Critical Minerals as a Tool
11:40 to 14:00
Discussion on China's use of critical minerals in its foreign policy strategy.
“You spend a fair amount of time speaking to Chinese scholars and analysts and officials and reading Chinese sources.”
China's Strategic Use of Rare Earths
14:00 to 17:35
Learn how China's control over critical minerals impacts global dynamics.
“And how to evaluate those trade-offs and what policies to pursue is sort of an open question.”
Historical Context of China's Resource Strategy
17:36 to 23:32
Understand the historical decisions that shaped China's resource policies.
“I mean, it's the sort of top to bottom understanding of, despite the rhetoric of decoupling and de-risking, we remain highly interdependent.”
The Global Impact of China's Export Controls
23:33 to 26:29
Explore how China's export restrictions affect international relations.
“You know, there were some media in China that suggested, well, maybe we should use this kind of rare earth weapon.”
China's Influence and Strategic Missteps
26:30 to 28:03
Discuss the implications of China's heavy-handed tactics on its global standing.
“Have you seen similar debates about where it depends on China playing out elsewhere in the world than other capitals outside of Washington?”
Show all 16 chapters
China's Global Strategy and Relationships
28:03 to 32:55
Explore China's complex relationships with the U.S. and allies amidst global skepticism.
“So it's definitely a worldwide conversation.”
China's Global Strategy and Relationships
32:56 to 33:20
Explore China's complex relationships with the U.S. and allies amidst global skepticism.
“I'm Nicholas Wood, a former journalist with the New York Times and BBC.”
China's Global Strategy and Relationships
34:05 to 34:20
Explore China's complex relationships with the U.S. and allies amidst global skepticism.
“A weekly email from Dan featuring more of the helpful context and clear analysis that you get here on the podcast.”
Sino-Russian Relations and Taiwan's Future
34:20 to 42:02
Discuss the evolving Sino-Russian relationship and implications for Taiwan's politics.
“I think this, you know, over the last few years surprised lots of observers of that relationship over time, but it seems to be continuing to get deeper and stronger.”
Understanding China's Vision for the World
42:02 to 45:50
Explore China's evolving vision of sovereignty, security, and development in the global order.
“The first piece you ever wrote for Foreign Affairs, certainly the first one you and I ever worked on together was seven or eight years ago.”
The Quest for Coexistence Between Powers
45:50 to 50:02
Discuss the challenges and opportunities for U.S.-China coexistence and collaboration.
“And I guess we'll have to see whether ultimately, I think the biggest question is whether might will make right or whether we will continue to see norms against the use of force.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00I'm Dan Kurtz-Falen, and this is the Foreign Affairs Interview.
0:05Jessica Chen Weiss:China can succeed on its own metrics or not. That's sort of immaterial. But what we need is a kind of shared understanding of how the United States and China are going to cohabit this planet. I don't think that coexistence is even very loaded a term. I mean, we already coexist right now, right? The question is in what forms and how dangerous is that coexistence going to be? Are we going to kind of be on the verge of a new crisis, military or economic? Or are we going to be able to reduce that set of tensions to a level where we can harness the benefits of our continued interactions? There has been no shortage of dizzying shifts in American foreign policy since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year.
0:49But I'm not sure any of those shifts has been as surprising as the one on China. In his first term, Trump helped create a hardline consensus centered on fears of a growing threat. Now, he seems much more interested in striking deals, as he presumably will be when Xi Jinping comes to Washington later this month. Many analysts of U.S.-China policy have reacted to this reversal with dismay. But Jessica Chen Weiss sees it as an opportunity to forge a more sensible approach. Weiss, a professor at Johns Hopkins Seis and a former State Department official, has warned of the dangers of zero-sum thinking about China in a series of essays for foreign affairs in recent years.
1:25Her most recent essay in our September-October issue focuses on the myth and the reality of China's critical mineral dominance. I spoke to Weiss on August 31st about what China wants, to borrow the title of her forthcoming book, and what U.S. foreign policy can do to meet those ambitions without resorting to dangerous confrontation.
1:52Jessica, it's wonderful to have you back on the podcast. It's been a few years.
1:56Jessica Chen Weiss:Great to be here, as always. If we'd been having this conversation, I think even 18 months ago, I think it's safe to say that we both would have agreed that a hard line on China was one of the few matters of real bipartisan consensus in Washington. That formulation was so obvious at that point that it had become fairly hackneyed, I would say. in Donald Trump's second term that seeming consensus has come apart pretty quickly and dramatically. How has that made you think differently about the nature of what seemed to be a consensus for several years? Was it always less solid than it seemed through the latter part of Trump's first term in the Biden presidency?
2:30Or is there something else going on?
2:31Jessica Chen Weiss:Well, I think that the consensus has come apart in ways that I didn't anticipate, although I think I wrote for Foreign Affairs kind of on the eve of that election, that the consensus was shallower and more wobbly than it appeared. There was a shared concern about many of China's actions and American standing in the world, but there was far less agreement on exactly the shape of that challenge and what exactly the appropriate American response should be aiming at. And that said, of course, I certainly didn't predict all that has happened since. I think that President Trump has taken it in directions that would have been hard to imagine just, you know, a year and a half ago.
3:17Jessica Chen Weiss:But he has, I think, very much demonstrated that that consensus was not as constraining as his predecessor and the Biden administration seems to believe. It was interesting for me in this context to go back and read the piece you published in Foreign Affairs in 2022. It was called The China Trap, and it was quite notable at the time because of the way it pushed against that hard line. At its center was a warning about how the fixation on the challenge from China was warping U.S. policy. I'll just read one line that really captured it. You wrote, quote, the current course will not just bring indefinite deterioration of the U.S.-Chinese relationship and a growing danger of catastrophic conflict.
3:56It also threatens to undermine the sustainability of American leadership in the world and the vitality of American society and democracy at home. So quite a resounding warning. As you reflect on the arc of American policy and the American debate on China in the last four years, do you think those warnings, which, you know, again, seemed fairly lonely at the time, have become heated? Is that what sunk into the system?
4:19Jessica Chen Weiss:I think there are a couple of things that have happened. I think one, I think the number of Americans who agreed that the United States and China were far too close to the precipice of an actual war in the Asia Pacific or an economic meltdown as last year's trade war and export control war demonstrated. demonstrated. And that actually public opinion has shifted in the direction of wanting to resolve conflicts with China through one survey called cooperation and not through containing China's influence. I think the second thing is that China has not been meaningfully slowed by many of the measures that were endorsed on a bipartisan basis.
4:59Jessica Chen Weiss:That efforts to slow China down may have constricted China's access to compute, for example, but they've been very effective in indigenizing and finding other ways to accelerate China's modernization and development of essentially just as effective a tech stack as the one that we have on offer. And you mean they are the export controls on chips along with sanctions and tariffs and everything else that was meant to restrain China's growth? Exactly. I mean, I think the heart of the Biden administration strategy was premised on this idea that there would be a small yard and a high fence and that the way in which the United States would to maintain its security was by staying ever ahead of China.
5:39Jessica Chen Weiss:But what ahead really looked like, and then maybe you could say that they succeeded on the metrics that they specified, which was to say at the model layer of these artificial intelligence models. But in other ways, in the adoption of AI technology and open source, China has really flourished. Chinese companies have flourished. But that's a little bit too in the weeds. I think more broadly, I think there's been a recognition that the United States needs to do better on its own terms rather than simply beating China at China's game. In some ways, maybe it's too late to contain China, constrain China.
6:13Jessica Chen Weiss:And then, though, I think the debate has not yet settled on what the alternative should be. Should it be a kind of withdrawing into a fortress America, or should it be one that is allied scale, friend-shoring? Or is it one that actually does need to continue to some degree maintain a degree of integration with China, including selective openness, in the words of Meg Rithmeyer and Peter Cowie, who recently wrote a piece that I endorse, where it's not just enough to go it alone or even go it alone with allies and partners. We actually need many of the technologies that China is pioneering in, or if we want to achieve our own objectives in terms of affordability and decarbonization.
6:57Jessica Chen Weiss:So I think that's yet a different prescription. And again, we need more of this kind I don't think that the answer is obvious, and these are genuinely hard questions, which is one of the reasons why I came back to Washington after writing that 2022 piece and started the Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs, or ACF, at Johns Hopkins SICE, to bring together these different perspectives and tackle these really hard policy tradeoffs. I won't ask you to endorse, let alone describe all elements of Trump's China policy, because that's probably impossible to do. But as you've looked at the surprising directions he's gone in, to use your formulation, what do you think he's getting wrong and what do you think he's getting right?
7:37Jessica Chen Weiss:Let me start with what he's getting right. I think that he's getting right the fact that we do need a stable and constructive relationship with China. And the two presidents, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, agreed to that in his visit this spring to Beijing. That's about where it lands. I think that the actual implementation and the degree of strategic thinking and coherence underneath that, I would be pleased to be shown wrong. And that, you know, the upcoming summit at the end of September will demonstrate a great deal of strategic foresight. But I think the challenge has been one of distraction and under preparation.
8:16Jessica Chen Weiss:And, of course, that kind of in symmetry and in diplomatic engagement was preceded by some of the most extreme threats and tariffs against China, followed quickly by a desire for a truce, recognizing that neither side could really sustain the level of economic damage that the actions and retaliations were going to bring about. And I think that, unfortunately, there's been a missed opportunity. The president has been clearly willing to say unprecedented things about our allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific, including his comments about Taiwan. He postponed, after making the largest ever arms sale, then postponed an arms sale and said he would treat it as a bargaining chip.
9:03Jessica Chen Weiss:I think the previous presidents and probably most of Capitol Hill feel, I think, quite trapped by the fear of looking weak or insufficiently committed to the principle of Taiwan's defense. Trump feels no such compunction, but neither has he shown that he's willing to get something for what he's giving. And so this willingness to make unilateral concessions, what are apparently unilateral concessions, without a real strategic conversation about the concessions that China needs to make in return, I think is a real missed opportunity and is not setting us up for success on that dimension. If you were advising the president, it's a hard thing to imagine, but let's say you are, what kinds of concessions do you think you should be asking for in the upcoming summit?
9:48Jessica Chen Weiss:Well, I think that, I mean, of course, these need to be mutual because long gone are the days where the United States could demand things and China would be forced to give them up. But there are other things that the United States has put on the table, including this question of arms sales to Taiwan. I know that's not a popular viewpoint, but I do think that asking that China, in exchange for this continued pause, pull back its military operations across the center line of the Taiwan Strait, many of the things that we, along with Bonnie Glaser and Tom Christensen, argued for is that assurances from the Chinese side are necessary in order to prevent this sort of action-reaction spiral from escalating.
10:31Jessica Chen Weiss:And so we've seen a lot of sort of assurances on the United States side. I hesitate to call them fully assurances. It's hard to know exactly what was delivered privately and comments to Fox News are not the kinds of off-the-cuff remarks we would have advised. But nonetheless, there does need to be this balance struck. And I worry we've overcorrected in the other direction. I mean, the other thing is that President Trump, unlike much of the Republican Party and others in his administration, has signaled his openness to welcoming Chinese students. He said it's good for American universities. But the administration is doing anything but presenting a welcoming face to international students and scholars.
11:13Jessica Chen Weiss:And so this is not a concession per se, but this is an area, this growing estrangement between the two societies that makes it really difficult even to understand what's happening in the other country, let alone benefit from the human talent that really wants to leave China and go elsewhere. Unfortunately, we've made it increasingly difficult for those who want to stay in the United States to contribute. So I don't know where that's going, but that's an area, the restoration or stabilization of what we call people-to-people ties would be a really important area, I think, to make some progress towards stabilizing the relationship.
11:52You spend a fair amount of time speaking to Chinese scholars and analysts and officials and reading Chinese sources. What is the debate about Trump's China policy among Chinese voices at this point? And how are they understanding where things are and what that means for the relationship?
12:08Jessica Chen Weiss:I think a lot of them are wondering just how durable this is. Is this going to be, will there be after the midterms or leading into 2028, will there be a snapback where, whether it's because Trump himself authorizes a more confrontational turn as he did in his first administration. You'll recall that it wasn't until COVID hit in 2020 that the Trump administration unleashed a whole range of really harsh measures and also really escalated the rhetoric against the Chinese Communist Party. You remember a variety of speeches by senior Trump administration figures. So there's a real question as to whether or not this framework can endure.
12:48Jessica Chen Weiss:I think that the Chinese side is interested. I think they do prefer stability to growing confrontation. And I think that's part of the reason why they pulled back or were willing to pull back in a truce, you know, last spring and last fall rather than trying to crush the U.S. economy as they could have had they maintained the really harsh restrictions on the export of critical minerals, rare earths and permanent magnets. So I think that's, you know, that's one question. I think the other question is now that the United States is not playing such a leading role in the world stage, what role does China want to play?
13:24Jessica Chen Weiss:I was speaking to one China expert who often advises the government. He said that China's sort of been like a student trying to graduate and very, very focused. And I guess the analogy was to resisting what was felt as U.S. pressure, this constrainment, encirclement, etc. And now that that has been, to some extent, lifted, or China feels that it has fought back and been able to fight the United States to a standstill, now what? Now that China, in this metaphor or analogy, has graduated, there's a whole range of choices available. And there are real trade-offs. And how to evaluate those trade-offs and what policies to pursue is sort of an open question.
14:10I want to pick up that big question about what China wants and how it sees its role in the world. But I first want to focus on the rare earths and critical minerals back and forth that started in April or May of 2025. This is the subject of your most recent piece in Foreign Affairs with Gloria Shong called How China Found its Most Potent Weapon. What was most striking to me in watching that back and forth is just how surprised people in Washington seem to be by the effectiveness of that tool. Were you surprised by how the Chinese deployed and how the U.S. reacted?
14:39Jessica Chen Weiss:I think that it was something that there had been warning signs, but it wasn't unleashed fully until the Trump administration's sort of wild escalation. But it wasn't even the tariffs. It was actually the export controls and their expansion that led China to unveil its own extraterritorial set of export controls. Meaning that it was not just restricting the critical minerals and related products that it would send to others, But it was preventing anyone from using those products from sending it to the U.S. or other markets the agenda didn't like. Exactly, exactly. And so I think that there was, although there had been warnings, I think, especially from industry when under the Biden administration, after the imposition of export controls on advanced chips and manufacturing equipment, China retaliated with some restrictions on critical minerals, but hadn't gone to the extent that it did later.
15:36Jessica Chen Weiss:And I think that at the time, I think some U.S. analysts observed that China hadn't really gone for the big guns yet. And I think that that led many to believe that this was going to be okay, that China was responding with relative restraint. And I think in this narrative, oh, it was really the Trump administration's fault in 2025 that China sort of reached for its, quote unquote, break glass playbook. And it's true that what set in motion China's effort to build out and consider a more expansive use of kind of export controls on rare earths was the first Trump administration's actions against Huawei.
16:16Jessica Chen Weiss:But they had been planning and learning from U.S. export controls and sanctions, financial sanctions, sort of studying and trying to figure out, you know, because they understood that these could also be counterproductive, that they could accelerate a process of diversification away from China. And in fact, and also, of course, lead to retaliation that China might not be prepared to withstand. And so it was really over three successive U.S. administrations that China first really decided to embrace this, explored it, prepared for it, and then finally unleashed it. And so in some sense, it was a very dramatic turn of events.
17:00Jessica Chen Weiss:And I do think that one of the, and this is something that Henry Farrell has pointed out in a recent piece for ACF, that often you don't realize where the kind of pain points are and just how significant they are until you force the target to activate them. And so I don't think we really understood just how much, you know, the industries may have understood, but often these supply chains are quite opaque. And so we didn't quite understand how acute and painful, you know, the stoppage of Chinese rare earth exports and permanent magnets would be until it happened. So while some of this is about the rather slipshod policymaking process in the Trump administration, you think the problem goes much deeper than that in American strategic circles?
17:45Jessica Chen Weiss:It's not just the strategic circles. I mean, it's the sort of top to bottom understanding of, despite the rhetoric of decoupling and de-risking, we remain highly interdependent. And that in this context, or the belief in sort of escalation dominance, that we have it and they're just going to fold, like Secretary Besant said at the outset of the trade war. That China holds a pair of twos and so we can force them to back off. That just doesn't really capture reality. And so I think that rather than pursuing or now having realized the extent of our vulnerability to believe that we could either fully insulate ourselves or then find the kind of new ace card that the United States could play is really sort of foolhardy as a strategic objective.
18:33Jessica Chen Weiss:And that what we should instead be focused more on is developing what D 'Lip Singh calls a kind of a shared doctrine of restraint. The core argument of the recent essay is about the way that China found its way to dominance over the rare earth and critical mineral supply chain. You argue that, and I'll quote you here, that even though China sought to take advantage of its position, its dominance is not the result of a grand, farsighted scheme to hold the world hostage. I think it's probably worth saying a bit about just how dominant China is at this particular moment, what gave it such leverage when it launched these controls last year, but also how you see the right way of understanding the history of how we got here, and perhaps just importantly, why it matters to understand those intentions, not just, it's not just a matter of kind of academic debate.
19:20Jessica Chen Weiss:Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, China is, you know, dominates the, you know, the vast majority, it's like 80, 85%, especially of kind of permanent magnets made with these rare earth minerals. And that that dominance, there's little sign of abating it, especially in key rare earths such as yttrium, where it's not even clear on what date that might be reduced to dependence on China as a sole source. And that these, you know, it's not that rare earths are that rare, it's just that they rarely appear in kind of minable concentrations around the world. And it's incredibly polluting as well. And so, you know, by the 1990s, You know, China had really, you know, become a favorite location for their production because the developed countries, you know, it was both incredibly polluting and also less expensive to just send it over to China.
20:14Jessica Chen Weiss:And so this the market shifted. And, you know, this was, you know, some look at this as sort of a deliberate effort, you know, by China to starve the world, something that China has been plotting ever since Deng Xiaoping said in the early 1990s, you know, that the Middle East has oil, China has rare earths. But that actually reflected his quote in particular, I think, took place at around the time of the end of the first Gulf War when China and China's strategic experts realized the extent to which they were vulnerable and that key resources could be a source of conflict. And that Deng Xiaoping at the same time also remarked on that China hadn't spent enough time studying these treasures and that they needed to do more to protect them.
20:55Jessica Chen Weiss:And there has been throughout this period a concern that China is import dependent on key commodities, including oil and energy, even food, and that China didn't want the same to take place in the context of rare earth, which as China's own industries were developing, it was clear that these would be really critical for China's own industries to use. And that remains the case. There was a period in time where analysts in China worried very much about the kind of total dysregulation of this market and that this was a sure pathway to actually using up China's supply of rare earths. They were cheap and dirty was kind of the reigning slogan and that there was a concern that rare earths were being sold at the price of, quote, cabbage or dirt.
21:43Jessica Chen Weiss:And that actually the Western developed countries were kind of keeping their own while depleting China of its rare earths. Now, of course, over time, there were efforts to consolidate this industry. But even as late as 2010, production of rare earths exceeded quotas by more than 35%. You know, suggesting that the government really struggled to rein in many of these kind of illegal operations, actually, in southern China. And that, you know, leading some observers to say that the main competition to China were the kind of crime rings, you know, inside China's own borders. And so that's about the time at which, you know, this 2010 crisis with Japan erupted over disputed islands in the East China Sea.
22:31Jessica Chen Weiss:And that was really the first time that there was the temporary kind of reduction in the export of rare earths for political reasons as opposed to concerns about market and disorganization. And it was a wake-up call for Japan and for the world. But it turns out, as we looked further into this, that it wasn't clearly the result of, you know, a strategic decision by Beijing. That, in fact, research by the geographer Julie Klinger suggested that actually it was, you know, in the context of this geopolitical tiff between Japan and China, that there were actually subnational officials, port administrators, that thought that this would be a good way to show China's displeasure with Japan's arrest of this drunk fishing captain.
23:18Jessica Chen Weiss:And so whatever the reason, I think it was that that I think actually alerted authorities in Beijing that this could indeed be potentially a source of future leverage. But that wasn't the end of the debate. In fact, there were questions when the first Trump administration took its actions against Huawei. You know, there were some media in China that suggested, well, maybe we should use this kind of rare earth weapon. But others, more authoritative voices, more sober voices suggested that this was not really likely to be an effective strategy. that actually, you know, China continued to depend on kind of international markets and technologies and, in fact, joint exploration, and that using these, the so-called rare earth weapon prematurely could be counterproductive.
24:08Jessica Chen Weiss:And so it was clearly a process, right, of over time learning and desiring greater geopolitical leverage that the Chinese leadership, I think, seized on this, but only really quite late. I was in government in 2010 when that use of restrictions are rare to Japan first, I think, caught people's attention in Washington as highlighting the importance of this issue. I think ever since then, there has been lots of talk in American foreign policy circles and the U.S. government about properly diversifying and building up critical minerals, mining and refining capacity in the United States or among U.S.
24:47allies. It has not gone that far. I think that's what we saw in the reaction to Chinese restrictions last year. There's a new push now. I think the PAC Silica is the State Department's name for their initiative to build up alternate supply chains. Do you see any evidence that's working, that there's meaningful progress here? I guess to put it a different way, are the Chinese fears that this might be counterproductive and that it will lead to diversification being borne out now?
Read the full transcript
25:12Jessica Chen Weiss:I think diversification is taking place, but there are so many different potential choke points that it's hard to see this being resolved anytime soon, where the United States will and its allies and partners will emerge sort of immune to future potential Chinese retaliation or threat of retaliation. And in particular, you know, China, this is not just a matter of the raw stuff. It's the processing and the refining and the, frankly, the know-how that goes into this that is challenging and that China, you know, has so many more universities, you know, graduates focused on this set of issues that it may be difficult.
25:54Jessica Chen Weiss:But that said, we in the article say that a little diversification goes a long way. And so actually remaining dependent to some extent is not as much of a problem. It's a problem when it's over-dependent and it actually encourages Chinese hubris or the temptation to continue to weaponize this threat. And so that then really points to what's going to happen in September with the upcoming Xi visit. Will that truce be sustained? My sense is that both sides want it to, but there are obviously things that could spoil that. So if the United States wanted to make good on some of its threats to impose secondary sanctions on China over Iran and oil, I mean, there are other things that could upset this pause.
26:39Have you seen similar debates about where it depends on China playing out elsewhere in the world than other capitals outside of Washington? And to what extent is this a kind of uniquely American concern? And to what extent is it precipitating a broader shift?
26:52Jessica Chen Weiss:I think it's very much galvanizing debates around the world. China's export control restrictions are not only targeted at the United States, they apply to all countries around the world. And there's a lot of, maybe that's in fact kind of an own goal. China, in trying to push back against the United States, actually aroused a great deal of fear and concern across the world. You know, I think the other thing is that in Japan, right, this has been a conversation since 2010. And since 2010, you know, Japan has gone from a 90 % reliance to something like a 60 % reliance on the Chinese supply of rare earth and permanent magnets.
27:34Jessica Chen Weiss:And also, these are intertwined supply chains. So much of what affects Japan also affects the United States. So even though there's a truce, right, also the implementation, right, one of the things that we talk about is how understaffed China's, you know, bureaucracy was at the time that they announced these export restrictions as licensing regime. And so, you know, in anything that requires, I mean, they're in some ways are sort of building out this capacity both to allow but also restrict these exports and their licenses. So it's definitely a worldwide conversation. And that's part of why you've got so many countries interested in working with the United States.
28:10Jessica Chen Weiss:to address stable and secure supply chains. But it's important to know that they aren't choosing one or the other, right? They're working with the United States, but they're also continuing to work with China. That own goal dynamic, I think, could be applied to Chinese policy across a broader range of areas during Trump's second term. It's a time when Trump is doing a lot to alienate U.S. allies and partners and others in a whole variety of ways. It brought to mind a sentence that you wrote in that 2022 piece, the China trap, where you warned that, quote, China sees U.S. leadership as weakened by hypocrisy and neglect, providing an opening to force others to accept its influence and legitimacy.
28:48That seems even truer now than it did back then. But there are a lot of ways that China has perhaps been too heavy handed in trying to make sense of this opening and thus not picked off allies and partners the way it might. In fact, you see lots of evidence that allies in East Asia and even in Europe at this point are are still quite willing to work with Washington when it comes to some of the kind of hard, secure and economic issues. Do you think that's the right reading of Chinese policy and how it's using this moment?
29:16Jessica Chen Weiss:I think there are a couple of drivers of China's sort of lack of recalibration in ways that would more effectively take advantage of the growing skepticism of the United States. One is that, as I noted, I think Chinese strategists are unsure of how long this kind of pause with the United States will last. And as a result, they are unwilling to put greater distance between China and some of China's strategic partners that they have worked with in order to provide sort of a degree of insulation and balance against the United States. So I'm thinking about Russia here, right? And China's closeness with Russia is a leading source of European antagonism and skepticism of China.
30:01Jessica Chen Weiss:I think the other source is China's own domestic economic challenges. And in some ways that is bound up with their, particularly Xi Jinping's, unwillingness to do more to kind of rebalance internally away from exports as a driver of or sustainer of growth and more toward domestic consumption and households. You know, this is partly, I think, an ideological preference and belief, but it's also a part of why these sort of painful changes have not been as forthcoming. And as you see the growing global pushback to what they're calling the second China shock, there's a sort of intransigence there that I think is suggesting that China is focused on other things other than the defenestration of the United States, right?
30:54Jessica Chen Weiss:I mean, like the United States is taking itself out of the sort of number one position, but China is not clearly grabbing that brass ring. You know, China is moving much more, you know, looking for opportunities, but I think largely cautious about where this moment leads and not wanting to move too quickly to assume, either assume the global burdens or make the compromises, the concessions, I think, necessary to earn China more trust and goodwill, not just in the United States, but from around the world. We see in the polling that approval of China has picked up in the United States, but especially in other countries, Xi Jinping compares favorably with Donald Trump.
31:37Jessica Chen Weiss:But I would say that overall, we're still in a minorities looked to the Chinese leadership with approval. So China's gained, but I think that trust is still elusive in part for these reasons. So the argument implied in my question that China is missing a moment of opportunity, in fact, reflects a view that this is not really as deep a rupture as many of us think, to use the now much overused term used by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, that this is more of a kind of a pause in structural developments rather than a fundamental change? No, I actually think it is a rupture. I just think that China doesn't see this as sort of a contest for global supremacy.
32:18Jessica Chen Weiss:And so it's not eager to take up and make that dash while the opportunity presents itself. And what I meant by maybe a pause, it's that the U.S. sort of willingness to be kind of more conciliatory toward China, that they are unsure of, whether there will be this snapback that will then result in China needing to once again rely on its kind of strategic buffers, if you will. We'll return to my conversation with Jessica Chen-Weiss after a short break.
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34:19Are you surprised by both the durability and continuing growth in depth of the Sino-Russian relationship? I think this, you know, over the last few years surprised lots of observers of that relationship over time, but it seems to be continuing to get deeper and stronger. How do you read those developments?
34:38Jessica Chen Weiss:I mean, I think it comes back to the strategic underpinnings, which is that in a world of U.S. supremacy and willingness to put great pressure on both China and Russia, the two have looked to each other as sources of ballast and insurance. And although I would like to have seen a lessening of that, especially as the United States and China seem to be dialing down their tensions, I think that we would need to see a much more concerted and durable effort to achieve a new modus vivendi, to see any sign growing in China that there is some strategic upside to keeping Russia a bit at a distance. And we haven't, I think, begun to turn that.
35:25You mentioned the piece that you wrote in 2024, along with Bonnie Glaser and Tom Christensen, that was about Taiwan and the growing risks in the Taiwan Strait. That does seem to be another place where there's probably a little bit more calm than we worried about a year or two ago, even though a lot of Chinese activities around Taiwan have continued military activities and other. How do you understand this moment and the cross-strait dynamic? So a couple of things.
35:53Jessica Chen Weiss:First, while I argued that it was unwise for Trump to be making what appeared to be unilateral concessions to China on Taiwan, I think we also can see that China hasn't exploited what many saw as a lack of credibility and resolve to attack Taiwan. And I think that that reflects a deeper judgment that, as John Culver has said, Taiwan is a crisis to be avoided rather than an opportunity to be seized. And that, of course, China has gone through its own upheaval with the purge of China's most senior military officers. I think that this is not a China that is itching for war. I think that they have continued their campaign of pressure on Taiwan.
36:42Jessica Chen Weiss:They do not like the current president. But to some extent, I think the fact that both the United States and China are a bit less focused on, quote unquote, resolving this issue at the moment is a good thing. I hope that it continues. Of course, you know, we have elections around the corner in both Taiwan and in the United States. And so we'll have to see, you know, where politics takes us. But ultimately, this is a political question rather than a question of the military balance. And so even as I think the United States has unwisely spent many of its munitions fighting this war in Iran, I don't think that the consequences are as immediate as many, I think, fear those who privilege the military balance as really the only thing holding Xi Jinping back from attacking Taiman.
37:32Jessica Chen Weiss:I don't see it in that way. So the fact that there's not a U.S. aircraft carrier in the region anymore, that we've used up lots of our air defense and other kinds of munitions we would need in that kind of conflict, that's not going to lead to temptation on Xi Jinping's part to do something precipitous. That's a worry we can save for another day. I'm just saying that the risk may be higher, but it wasn't so great to begin with that now it has tipped the scales. Well, do you work? I mean, I think there is a sense in the debate that, you know, whereas we used to be very focused on 2027 as the moment of of great risk, it's now 2028 when there'll be a presidential election in the United States.
38:12also won in Taiwan and the chance that TPP, the current ruling party that's more, has a harder line on relations with mainland China, could be reelected. I think the worry that you hear from some analysts is that there's this moment now when policymakers in Beijing think that events in Taiwan are more or less moving in their direction, that they don't need to worry about massive changes in the other direction. That could kind of come apart very, very quickly in 2028. Do you worry about that as a moment when things could suddenly get very complicated again?
38:46Jessica Chen Weiss:I do worry about it, but I, you know, and of course it depends on the outcome of those elections. And, you know, just as we have now, you know, a president in Taiwan that Beijing really dislikes, that president is very constrained in the legislature where the opposition, you know, holds the majority. So I think that it is not a foregone conclusion that in the outcomes of the 2020 elections will somehow set aside irrevocably China's hopes for quote unquote peaceful reunification. And I think there's important research suggesting that Xi Jinping actually believes in peaceful reunification. We'll be putting out something soon along those lines.
39:23Jessica Chen Weiss:And that Xi Jinping is not the most hawkish voice urging the use of military force in China. There's actually a broad spectrum of views. Nobody's debating whether or not that should be the objective, but the tactics by which, you know, Taiwan is, you know, so-called brought back into the fold is debated. And, you know, so far, at least, I think it remains the case that at least he seems to believe and certainly is telling the country that time is on China's side. And so I think it's really important that the United States and, you know, as well as, you know, leaders and the public in Taiwan, you know, allow that to, that narrative, that illusion, perhaps, to remain the case and that nothing precipitous be done to force a different decision.
40:08The focus of that 2024 essay on Taiwan was about really the need for credible assurances to Beijing, especially you quote the great Tom Schelling line, one more step and I shoot can be a deterrent threat only if accompanied by the implicit assurance. And if you stop, I won't shoot. Do you think there's more that Washington should be doing in the way of credible assurances to Beijing or in restraining actions by Taiwan in these coming years?
40:32Jessica Chen Weiss:I mean, President Trump, for all of his wild rhetoric, has in some cases already made some of these assurances. He's said that he doesn't want someone to go independent. I think that this is, just as George W. Bush similarly, I think, warned Chen Shui-bian 20 years ago about that American support is effectively not a blank check and that American assurances should be aimed not only assuring Taiwan that, of course, the United States treats any threat to Taiwan as a matter of grave concern, but also assuring Beijing that the United States is not bent on separating Taiwan from China or supporting an independent Taiwan.
41:17Jessica Chen Weiss:In fact, that's one of the reasons why I find the language of strategic competition really problematic because the United States and China are not competing over Taiwan. And the more that we talk about this as a competition, then Taiwan is a prize to be won. And Beijing might come to believe that there is no future in which a peaceful resolution of these differences across the strait could be resolved. And the United States begins to think that we need to pull Taiwan ever further away from China, which just undoes the credibility of those circumstances necessary to avoid a conflict. I want to, before we close, get back to some of the big questions you alluded to earlier in our conversation about Chinese aims and China's vision of its role and what that means for the United States.
42:02The first piece you ever wrote for Foreign Affairs, certainly the first one you and I ever worked on together was seven or eight years ago. It was called The World's Safer Autocracy, and that attempted to distill China's view of the kind of world, the kind of order that it would be comfortable with, that it wanted to help facilitate. How do you distill China's vision now, and how has that changed, if at all, over the last seven or eight years.
42:24Jessica Chen Weiss:So what I argue that China wants in my forthcoming book from Oxford, which will come out in February, is that what China wants is sovereignty, security, and development. And that has implications for the kind of world that China wants to live in. It's one that is, you know, where states are pretty much free to run their own affairs internally as they like. They're sort of free from, quote-unquote, foreign interference and free of the fear of subversion. But it isn't one that tries to, by the same token, remake other countries in China's image. It's definitely one in which the norms of the international system are more conservative in the small C conservative in that sovereignty is paramount.
43:08Jessica Chen Weiss:And the state, of course, is the ultimate arbiter of how affairs should be decided. And it definitely privileges the state over individual political rights. And so that has implications, of course, right, for civil society and NGOs and the ability of, you know, the international community to shape what happens within states' borders. And so that's, I would say, less liberal, for sure, in international order, but it's still not one where China is sort of preferentially putting its thumb on the scale in favor of autocracy. You can see that in part because of China's interests in everything from securing access to materials and markets all the way to gaining support for China's preferred positions in the United Nations, especially when it pertains to Xinjiang, Hong Kong or Taiwan, that China does business with governments of whatever stripe.
44:05Jessica Chen Weiss:That China is a little bit less concerned with who gets elected, as long as what they say doesn't run afoul of China's own parochial interests. So in a separate essay for international security, my co-author Una Zhou and I argue that this is a more nationalist or particularist form of leadership rather than the kind of universalism that the United States or even the Soviet Union or Maoist China, I think, once subscribed to. So it's that kind of an order, but that kind of an order is, you might call it China first, or it's permissive of America first, of China first. It doesn't necessarily do enough to meet many of the global demands on shared challenges, right?
44:49Jessica Chen Weiss:One hopes that that may emerge, but sovereignty, security, and development, again, it is what can the world do for China, a little bit less than what China can do for the world. But that said, there is, I think, a growing recognition that the world is looking more to China to fill what Xi Jinping has called kind of global governance deficits. And so this is an emerging area of Chinese thinking and one that bears watching, right? Will China lead in a more multilateral fashion? They've already signaled, for example, that they'd be willing to reconsider some of the privileges granted them previously at the WTO.
45:27Jessica Chen Weiss:I don't know whether the WTO has a future, but nonetheless, there are signs around the edges that China, for example, in the World AI Conference, there is an effort to lead multilaterally. I think the question is whether or not the United States and other countries will embrace that or continue to invest in these smaller, plurilateral groupings that exclude each other. They may be overlapping, but they are more exclusive. So it may be a more fragmented world. And I guess we'll have to see whether ultimately, I think the biggest question is whether might will make right or whether we will continue to see norms against the use of force.
46:05Jessica Chen Weiss:And that's a very conservative, you know, Westphalian tradition. We'll see whether the UN charter, you know, I mean, that's an area where China's championing of the UN-based system, I think, is really important if it's going to survive, right? And that as the United States looks to resume its leadership, hopefully, in that system, I think that China will be an important partner in that effort. Of course, we will have conflicting interests and ideas, but hopefully they can be resolved within a common system as opposed to in fractured blocks. As you lay out that big question about whether these two great powers can together find some kind of common will and ability to address transnational problems, whether it's climate change or technology or anything else, pandemics worth mentioning there.
46:56It is striking that I think one of the only areas, maybe the most important area, where you've seen a willingness in talks between U.S. and Chinese officials, both in the Biden administration and Trump administration, has been on AI safety. And, you know, those are nascent efforts, but it does seem like there is some willingness to exert the influence of the two countries to find some kind of order there.
47:17Jessica Chen Weiss:I think that's right. I think that is a shared sense of risk that is urgent and where there aren't settled rules of the road. And so I think that's an important area for the two countries to continue to engage in substantive conversations about how they each see the respective risks and what steps they might be willing to take separately or together. It does strike me as well, as I heard you laying out China's view of the kind of world at once, that there's something quite in its way hopeful about this scenario as you see American policy shifting from some of its own universalist, you know, at least kind of idealistic applications on democracy or human rights.
47:56You know, that's bad for lots of other reasons, but it does allow some kind of common acceptance of a world order that might have been harder under more ambitious U.S. policies.
48:05Jessica Chen Weiss:Absolutely. I mean, I think that we'll have to see where the emerging character of American strategy in this space goes. Right now, more of the criticism seems to be directed at our fellow democracies and how they are governing themselves, which is not as, it still has a kind of ideological valence. It's just directed in different directions. But again, I think it remains to be seen. I mean, I think that the president's remarks about election interference, you know, is like the first sign that that language of criticizing the communist China might come back. So I don't know where that goes. It'll be interesting to see how that evolves.
48:44I'm struck by a line that I was reminded of when I went back and read your 2022 essay, The China Trap, where you wrote, in attempting to craft a national strategy suited to a more assertive and more powerful China, Washington has struggled to define success or even a steady state, short of total victory or total defeat, that both governments could eventually accept and at a cost that citizens, businesses, and other stakeholders would be willing to bear. How do you define success now? You've been thinking about this question fairly intensively for the past few years. Have you settled on a clear way of articulating that?
49:16Jessica Chen Weiss:For me, success would look like a new modus vivendi or equilibrium that serves American interests in affordability, in stable and secure supply chains, in cheap, clean energy, and a vibrant hub of innovation and scientific progress within our borders, but also one that is able to work internationally with others to solve some of the most challenging shared challenges. You'll notice that that definition of success doesn't involve beating China. China can succeed on its own metrics or not. That's sort of immaterial, but what we need is a kind of shared understanding of how the United States and China are going to cohabit this planet.
50:02Jessica Chen Weiss:I don't think that coexistence is even very loaded a term. I mean, we already coexist right now, right? The question is in what forms and how dangerous is that coexistence going to be? Are we going to kind of be on the verge of a new crisis, military or economic, or are we going to be able to reduce that set of tensions to a level where we can harness the benefits of our continued interactions. That will be a great question for you and others to pick up on our pages going forward. So we will, I think we'll leave it there for today. But Jessica, thanks so much for the great recent piece, as well as all the others you've done for foreign affairs over the years.
50:40And thanks so much for doing this today.
50:41Jessica Chen Weiss:Oh, my pleasure. Thank you.
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From the publisher
There has been no shortage of dizzying shifts in American foreign policy since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year. But perhaps none have been as surprising as the shift on China. In his first term, Trump helped create a hard-line consensus centered on fears of a growing threat. Now, he seems much more interested in striking deals—as he presumably will be when Xi Jinping comes to Washington later this month.
Many analysts of U.S. China policy have reacted to this reversal with dismay. But Jessica Chen Weiss sees it as an opportunity to forge a more sensible approach. Weiss, a professor and the faculty director of the Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a former State Department official, has warned of the dangers of zero-sum thinking about China in a series of essays for Foreign Affairs. Her most recent essay, in the September/October issue, focuses on the myth and the reality of China’s critical mineral dominance.
Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Weiss on August 31 about what China wants—which is also the title of her forthcoming book—and what U.S. foreign policy can do to meet those ambitions without resorting to dangerous confrontation.
You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.