April 10, 2025 • 50 mins
Dr. Elizabeth Economy sits down with Patrick Jenevein to discuss his career in the energy industry in China, the outlook for foreign individuals and companies seeking to do business in the country, and his new book - Dancing with the Dragon. Jenevein, who worked in the country for more than 20 years, recounts a collection of stories ranging from one of his company’s first deal in the country’s far west, negotiating with one of Deng Xiaoping’s top advisers to detailing the frustrations that eventually led him to leave the country.
Recorded on March 26, 2025.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Patrick Jenevein serves as the chief executive at Pointe Bello, an intelligence-driven strategy development firm that provides pioneering open-source intelligence to governmental and commercial bodies on the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) economic statecraft activity worldwide. Prior to launching Pointe Bello, he co-founded Tang Energy Group and, partnering with PRC state-owned enterprises, developed several businesses in the power-generating and electrical infrastructure sectors, including power plants, wind farms, and a manufacturer of wind turbine blades. Jenevein is a graduate of Davidson College, a Council on Foreign Relations Life Member, and past Chairman of the Dallas Committee on Foreign Relations.
Elizabeth Economy is the Hargrove Senior Fellow and co-director of the Program on the US, China, and the World at the Hoover Institution. From 2021-2023, she took leave from Hoover to serve as the senior advisor for China to the US secretary of commerce. Before joining Hoover, she was the C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and director, Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of four books on China, including most recently The World According to China (Polity, 2021), and the co-editor of two volumes. She serves on the boards of the National Endowment for Democracy and the National Committee on US-China Relations. She is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and Council on Foreign Relations and serves as a book reviewer for Foreign Affairs.
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ABOUT THE SERIES
China Considered with Elizabeth Economy is a Hoover Institution podcast series that features in-depth conversations with leading political figures, scholars, and activists from around the world. The series explores the ideas, events, and forces shaping China’s future and its global relationships, offering high-level expertise, clear-eyed analysis, and valuable insights to demystify China’s evolving dynamics and what they may mean for ordinary citizens and key decision makers across societies, governments, and the private sector.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Elizabeth Economy (00:08):
Welcome to China Considered,
a podcast that brings fresh insights andinformed discussion to one of the most
consequential issues of our time, howChina's changing and changing the world.
I'm Liz Economy, Hargrove Senior Fellowand co-director of the US, China and
the World Program at the HooverInstitution at Stanford University.
Today I have with me Patrick Jenevein,the author of a terrific new book,
(00:30):
Dancing with the Cautionary Tales ofthe New China from an Old China Hand.
Patrick's a Texan who, not surprisingly,
has spent most of his lifein the energy business.
More surprisingly, perhaps most of thattime was spent doing business with China.
The book is a firsthand account of what Ithink was a true roller coaster ride that
changed not only Patrick's business,but also his life.
(00:53):
Patrick, it's great to have you with us.
>> Patrick Jenevein (00:55):
Thank you, Liz, it's a treat to be with you, as always.
>> Elizabeth Economy (01:00):
So, Patrick, before we get started,
just flash the COVID of your book.
Because it's such a great cover.
I want people to be able to see it.
There you go.
And the dragon is the sortof typical emblem for China.
Is there a reason that you decidedto have that on your book?
>> Patrick Jenevein (01:19):
Yes, and it's a five toed dragon,
which makes it an imperial dragon,
which tells the imperial force in the PRCright now, we're paying attention to you.
>> Elizabeth Economy (01:30):
I love that.
>> Patrick Jenevein (01:31):
Very specifically, and I know you also had the book released
on October 1, 2024,which was the 75th anniversary
of the founding ofthe People's Republic of China.
And I saw in an interview that you saidit was a birthday present to the Chinese
government.
And I have to say,having read the book, I thought it's
(01:54):
probably a present that they wouldlike you to take back at this point.
But we'll get to that,I think, in our discussion.
So let me start now with your firsttrip to China, which was in 1995.
Why did you go?
Where did you go?
What was the result?
I mean, you already hada successful business in Texas.
What prompted you to,you know, travel to China?
(02:18):
As a young, ambitious man,we wanted to expand our business,
we wanted to grow, andwe looked at going to California.
And Gray Davis at the time talkedabout Texans as Texas power Pirates.
And a guy, Bob Falleen, that I had knownfrom the First National Bank in Dallas,
(02:38):
worked in both Shanghai and San Francisco.
And I met with him and
he said that the communists are muchharder to deal with in San Francisco.
That's all I needed.
And growing up in Texas, you're usedto being pushed to frontiers, or not
necessarily pushed, but drawn to frontiersand drawn to frontier challenges.
(02:59):
And natural gas, we were reallygood at natural gas processing.
And a guy named Imin Jan, PhD physicistfrom the University of Houston,
retired from ARCO when the priceof oil dropped to $8 a barrel,
but had grown up in Taiwan.
And his family didn't haverunning water when he grew up.
(03:20):
We wound up getting togetherto process natural gas for
the China National Petroleum Corporation.
That was the reason it was reallyinteresting going out there.
We had a couple of pilot projects.
We needed to show that we could getequipment and personnel in, and
that we could get personnel andmoney out, that worked.
(03:42):
We also started a conversationwith the CIA because trying
to find out who your partner was inChina at the time was very difficult.
Had a conversation with a guyon a desk in D.C. who said,
yes, your counterpartyis who you think it is.
We went over to China, Dallas,to San Francisco, to Tokyo,
(04:06):
to Beijing, to Ulamuchi,halfway around the Northern hemisphere and
thinking my CIA and the USCIA istelling me I'm gonna be all right.
Well, found out that they were wrong,that there was a 50 partner.
You can laugh about that now andI'll laugh about that now too,
because we know better.
But then in 1995, as a 30 somethingyear old, I didn't know better.
(04:31):
Now I do.
I came back and talked to that analyst andat the end he said, well,
what else do you know?
So that startedan interesting relationship.
>> Elizabeth Economy (04:41):
Right? And
maybe we'll hear a little bit moreabout that a little bit later.
But you know, a lot of your book isabout the challenges that you faced and
they were, you know, significant.
But you also had somesignificant successes.
What do you consider tobe your biggest success?
Because you had a number of differentventures over the course of your,
(05:02):
you know, two and a half decades or so.
>> Patrick Jenevein (05:04):
Well, the success that matters is that we built
relationships with Chinese andwe made money together.
And if you're making money together,
you're creating jobs,you're raising everybody's boat.
And there's an affair of the tides of menwhich taken to the flood leads to riches.
Well, we did that.
(05:25):
We saw that we were doing good things forChinese.
We were making money doing it.
Some of the emissions fromour natural gas fire power
plants was actually cleaner thanthe air many Chinese breathe.
Your book, the River Runs Black at thattime was a really important book for
me to be able to read because youqualified it, you researched it, and
(05:49):
you contextualized a lot of what you didthat helped people like me know we were
doing the right thing, knowing thatwe were moving the right direction,
putting our business in a position to dogood and to do well by doing good things.
>> Elizabeth Economy (06:06):
So, I mean,
that's a great sort of very positivetake on your engagement there.
And you've written a lot about what itwas like negotiating with the Chinese and
with the Communist Party representativesthat were both from the government and
also, you know, in the state ownedenterprises that you were working with.
You know, as you think back to thatsort of negotiating style and process,
(06:30):
you know, how much similarity was therebetween the way that Americans might
negotiate, the kinds of deals thatyou were doing and what you saw and
what you dealt with from the Chineseside in terms of, you know,
the style and the method andthe tactics and strategies.
Did you feel at home in terms of sort ofworking with your Chinese counterparts,
(06:51):
or was it just an entirely new world?
>> Patrick Jenevein (06:54):
It was entirely new.
One of our very first pilotprojects was in Kalamai,
so far Western China, in Xinjiang,
where the Communist Partyis abusing Uyghurs.
We were going to providea natural gas processing plant.
(07:18):
So when natural gas comes outof the ground, it's gaseous.
If you cool it or put a littlepressure on it, you can liquefy it.
And then if it's liquefied,then people can carry it around and
in small tanks that you canput on the back of a bicycle.
So here we were pushing that idea forwardand China National Petroleum Company
(07:41):
very shrewdly paired usagainst the Canadian firm and
gave us essentially identicalcontracts are identical task.
We got ours, we negotiated.
I left Kalamayi thinkingthat we were done, Imeen.
Dr Jan, my partner, stayed andwhen by the time I got home,
(08:05):
they had changed the deal completely.
So I sent him a fax and put confidential,you know, in big letters
on the top to make sure that the Communistparty people read it before imin.
So here, it was almost like playingbridge where you're bidding across
the table without saying everything.
(08:27):
You think so confidential, you mean?
You've pushed our company into a positionthat we cannot strategically hold.
We've already invested somuch, we can invest more.
The engineer from CNPChave out negotiated you.
So there was a lot that was inthere that complemented the CNPC
(08:52):
engineers gave them a face showedthat they had crushed an American
businessman in negotiating,which interestingly gave
them more flexibility in the future forus to work together.
So those ideas of face were fascinating
(09:14):
to learn, another quick example.
Our second pilot project was a gas fire,small gas fire,
electricity generating project fora Chinese company that made carbon black,
which generated for hard currency for
them foreign currency reserves at the timewhen China needed it to get paid.
(09:38):
Our young engineer, Gao Yang,who had been one of
the most successful engineersof the Onomuchi grid,
she was one smart hardworking lady.
And the other folks in the utility didn'tlike how hard she worked because it
(09:58):
made them look bad.
So when she had the chance to workwith a foreign company, ours,
she did well, she would go to Kula.
You should have to take a trainfrom Ulamuchi to Kula, and
then take a cab to the place andcome with a briefcase and an invoice,
and she'd get paid in cash, andthen she would reverse the trip.
(10:21):
Well, then the Kula or the carbon blackplant started slow paying her and
the general manager who could payher started to be gone on trips.
And one day, she just slammed thatbriefcase down on his desk in front of
a lot of other people.
I wasn't there, I heard this story andsaid, you're not treating us right.
(10:42):
Well, that gave him face.
He had shown in front of all thosepeople that he was doing a good job for
China and the Communist Party.
>> Elizabeth Economy (10:54):
So were these things that you picked up along the way,
this idea of giving your Chineseinterlocutor space, or was there a primer
that you read before you went to China,like how to negotiate with the Chinese?
>> Patrick Jenevein (11:08):
Well, you introduced me to Lucian PI's idea, so
reading your work, reading Lucian's workhelps contextualize what you're doing.
But then, getting back to the end partof the question, we started to answer.
Eventually, you understand thatthe Communist party is the one
(11:29):
that's negotiated with you,whether directly or not.
Because the Communist partyreserves the right to make or
the privilege to make every decisionin China, whether it's prospective,
current, or even retrospectively.
The Communist Party can change decisions,you know that, you've seen that, but
a lot of Americans don't appreciate that,whether they're in business or government.
(11:54):
And we're in business,we're negotiating and
running joint operations with Communistparty controlled outfits every day,
we're making decisions every day,and it's the same outfit.
So there's, there's much more overlapthan a lot of our, our diplomat,
our diplomats that are thereall the time understand that.
(12:17):
But the elected officials have a hardtime keeping up with that lesson.
And so your book and Lucian's book oryour books actually help.
There's no questioning that.
For me, because I'm a slow learner,maybe I have to go and
(12:37):
actually learn lessons myselfthe hard way, one quick story.
Start on that, we were in Dunhuang, and
we were going to build a natural gasfirepower plant that used a jet engine.
Put the jet engine on the ground anda generator behind it.
You feed it with a whole lot ofnatural gas, it spends really,
really fast, which turnsthe generator really, really fast,
(13:00):
which spits out a wholelot of electricity.
But as soon as you take a jet engine intoChina, whether you put it on the ground or
on an airplane or in a helicopter,you wind up working with
the Aviation Industry Corporation ofChina, whether you expected to or not.
It's divergent, you don't have a choice.
Well, a guy named Mr.Joe, who's older than I,
(13:23):
had been Deng Xiaoping'sadvisor of jet engines and
rockets, and he was the lead AVOC guy.
And here,we get through this initial meeting, and
then we agree to breakup into working groups.
And I think, I assume,
I'm going with the working group becausethat's where my mind is focused.
(13:46):
And he mean the PhD physicists of no,
you're going to go ride camels with Mr.Joe.
Ride camels?
Yes.
And you're going to go out intothe sand dunes and get on a camel and
you're going to go out to a,a Buddhist monastery.
Have fun.
Really?I don't, I need to work.
He says, no, I'll be fine without you.
(14:07):
We can catch up.
So I made a few mistakes.
You're growing up in Texas,I know how to ride a horse.
So a camel is just another long-legged,tall beast that you get on and ride.
And it starts from an awkward positionwhere the camel's on the ground and
then lurches up.
Well, I can ride that minutes,it's an animal.
(14:28):
My mistake was that I was on the biggercamel in the front of the line and
Mr. Joe was behind me.
The worst mistake I made,that was turning around and
looking at the camel that Mr.Joe was on as it was rising.
And poor Mr.Joe's white-knuckle in the pommel,
(14:49):
and that's bad enough, but
I saw fear in his eyes andhe did not like that.
And to compound my already grievous error,
there were witnesses,people took a picture of this event.
So now, Joe's embarrassed, and he know and
(15:11):
everybody else around himknows he was embarrassed.
So that night he invitesme to play Snickers.
It's a pool table game.
And with crowd of hisminions up against one wall,
he proceeded to beat me soundly,
which allowed him toregain face at my expense.
(15:34):
But I didn't care.
Yeah.
In Texas, you could call me what you want,what can you do is what matters, right?
So anyway, there were plentyof opportunities to learn.
>> Elizabeth Economy (15:48):
Yes.
>> Patrick Jenevein (15:49):
Even though I could have.
Even though I should have been ableto from reading your books, but
I still had to take those ones.
>> Elizabeth Economy (15:55):
No, no, for sure.
I think that nothing beatson the ground experience.
So no book is equal to that.
So I want to talk about whatI saw as one of your sort of
biggest successes in China.
And that was your partnership actuallywith AVIC on HT Blade, right?
(16:17):
So how did that partnership come about?
You mentioned Mr Zhou and this experienceyou just had with the jet engines.
But how did you decide to partner?
And what was this HT Blade?
What was this joint venture?
>> Patrick Jenevein (16:33):
Well, at the plant ding Wong, where Mr Joe and
I rode camels,we wound up making that power plant work.
That's a long story.
But we made it work.
And we met good people.
They were good in that they wantedto do what they said they would do.
They wanted to do well for themselves,for their company, for their country.
(16:54):
They were honest, they were smart,they were hardworking, and we'd like that.
And these were great people to work with.
We could talk about that a long time.
But back to your question.
Once we got that Dunhuang plant up andrunning, the jet engine on the ground,
working with Havoc, thenSing John Wind Energy company found us and
(17:15):
said, would you build a gas firedpower plant on our wind farm.
So that the wind farm can deliverelectricity even when the wind's
not blowing?
Great idea [COUGH] it's really hardto make that work contractually.
Insurance finance is a problem, but
we could figure out how to useproject finance to build wind farms.
(17:39):
That part wasn't that hard.
Getting that started in China was hardbecause China had not done it before.
Fast forward Wu Gang, who wasthe chairman of Jingfeng or Goldwyn.
We actually had dinner in Dallasat the Dallas Petroleum Club.
And I outlined, here's the businessplan that you need to have for
(18:02):
Goldwyn to be able to havesuccess in the United States.
And he did it.
He executed it and did a great job.
Anyway, we started to finance windfar or
build project finance in China forChinese companies.
And we were working with GE on that too,because GE wanted to sell turbines.
It made a lot of sense for everybody.
(18:24):
But then bombing the Chineseembassy in Belgrade and
having warplanes collideover Hainan Dao or
Hainan island are acts of war, andit leaves some project finance folks.
Those are acts of war andacts of war and project finance repel.
I mean,they're antithetical to one another.
(18:44):
So, after my strength is finance and
being able to put projects together,develop projects.
But we figured, we're our Patrick'sproject finance ideas are toast.
But here we were working with peoplewe liked at Avic and it was April 1,
2001, when we were supposed to havea meeting about project finance.
(19:10):
And one of those acts of war happened,and frankly,
we went to lunch early andstarted drinking.
[COUGH] but by the end of it.
Well, sorry, but that's true.
By the end of that was April 2001,and by the end of the year,
we were making blades for wind turbines.
(19:31):
And HT is H is the Chinesebetter than I do.
Hong for aviation and Tong for
our T for our company.
[COUGH] so Havoc knew how tomake airfoils, propellers for
(19:52):
engines, blades or helicopters,wings or airplanes.
Blade fora wind turbine is just a kind of airfoil.
So we said,avoc we know the wind business.
You know how to make airfoils.
We've got a great relationship going.
We know how to work with each other inways that are beneficial to both of us.
(20:15):
Let's start a company, make blades,
wind turbines from that April lunchto seven years later was the biggest.
The second biggest wind farm windblade maker in the world and
the biggest in China.
That's a short story onhow you got there sorry.
>> Elizabeth Economy (20:32):
Yeah, no, that's and that's, I think, for me, in any case,
that was the high point.
[LAUGH] as I was reading the book.
>> Patrick Jenevein (20:40):
Well, we were gonna.
We were gonna take that company public for$1.8 billion.
>> Elizabeth Economy (20:44):
Yeah, that would have been the high point.
We could get to why that didn't happen.
We can get to why that didn't happen.
But to begin with,then you decided, and AVIC decided,
right to expand the partnership, right.
And to move into thinking about whatyou could do in the United States.
And that's, I think,when things started to unravel, right?
>> Patrick Jenevein (21:08):
That wasn't the well,
the start was reallyXi Jinping's ascension.
We decided, so here in Texas, we decidedfor us to make sure this IPO for
$1.8 billion,initial public offer goes swimmingly,
we need to be able to show that we'reselling blades around the world.
(21:28):
So our company, Tong Energy, startedanother company called Soaring Wind Energy
to develop wind farms around the world.
And we built a Wind Farm, Nebraska.
And we went to GE and said, hey,
GE, we want to buy about $100million worth of your wind turbines.
Are you interested?
And even GE says $100 millionis a good transaction.
(21:50):
We said, but GE for our wind farm,using your wind turbines,
we want you to put our blades orHT blades on your wind turbines.
And that was working.
And then Xi Jinping startedsaying ascending and
telling Chinese that they neededto be much more patriotic.
(22:15):
And it was after a board meeting inbaoding, which is 150 kilometers or
so south of Beijing, that at dinner again,somebody was drinking.
And one of my fellow board members said,well,
the IPO is not gonna work because theforeigner is gonna make too much money.
So I was complimented.
And one way, because we were soused to working with each other,
(22:39):
we didn't consider each other foreigners.
But I said to my co boardman,who the foreigner is, don't you?
And he said, yeah, I'm sorry,that's you but why?
Because Xi Jinping had said, the foreignercan't make so much money here.
We had worked our fannies off.
(23:01):
We had done a great job.
We'd expanded the business.
And it took cooperation.
It took us working together.
We all knew that there.
But Xi Jinping had a different plan.
>> Elizabeth Economy (23:13):
But even with the IPO sort of put on the back burner,
you move forward with the partnership,right?
I mean,it wasn't the end of the partnership.
>> Patrick Jenevein (23:22):
No, we were still trying to make the company
grow to expand into the rest of the world.
But the Xi Jinping generated attitudewas don't work with foreigners.
(23:42):
It was that bad case in point.
I can't remember the year right now, but
about 2012 or so [COUGH] what.
We own our company owned Our Texas companyowned 25% of the Blade company and
(24:03):
AVIC and two of its subordinates,the other 75%.
One of those subordinates stole $8million from our joint venture.
And nobody told us.
We were just looking at.
We were comparing one setof accounting records and
financials to the previousperiods set of financials.
(24:23):
We said, you know, there's five.
There's $8 million missing.
It looks like $8 million is missing.
What do we do?
Do we forget to record inventory?
There could be a number of reasons.
We had $350 million ofrevenue at the time.
So $8 million is important.
But, it's easy,
you can understand how you might justhaven't had an accounting error.
(24:46):
Well, found out, no,it wasn't an accounting error.
Bao Dingway Yang had actuallystolen 8 million bucks.
And we said, okay,now that we know Avic in 2023,
Avic had more revenue than any otherdefense contractor in the world.
So they've got the cash.
We said, you've got the cash,Just put it back.
(25:08):
They said, yeah, we'll do that.
And they were somewhat embarrassed by it.
And then it didn't happen.
Didn't happen.Didn't happen.
And I went back and kinda maybe as a rudeTexan, said, where the hell's the money?
You've got it.
Why haven't you put it back?
So the first thing that happens,we got a letter of reprimand from Abbott.
So HT Blade, our joint venture company,got a letter of reprimand from
(25:32):
AVIC saying, HT Blade, if you'regoing to pay one member a dividend,
you should pay all members a dividend.
And we said, that's, that's not right.
That money was stolen.
There was no dividend pay,we didn't receive any money.
Wait for this.
So what happens next?
(25:52):
You might be able to anticipate.
We got a bill from the local taxauthority for the money that.
For the amount of money that was stolen.
So you think.
Yeah, you think that we can correcta theft by friendly negotiation?
And then, okay, maybe I was a little roughhewn as a kinda course Texan sometime.
(26:15):
[COUGH] But we got slapped with a taxbill from the local tax bureau.
So do you think that we could go tothe local judicial authority and
say, hey, these people are messing up,are messing us around?
We didn't think so.
You might have more researchthat would prove me wrong.
But we didn't think so.
(26:38):
So anyway, that flips us back to whatthey started doing to us in Texas.
They hired our general manager.
They being AVIC,they hired our general manager.
They stole a wind farm, andthey diverted financing.
You know, there were a few otherthings that were in there too, but
that's essentially it.
(26:58):
They started AVIC.
AVIC started a company to competedirectly with us in Texas to do
the business that wewere gonna do together.
So that's what it reallystarted unraveling.
>> Elizabeth Economy (27:13):
Right, which is something that I think, actually, a lot,
but certainly there have beena number of stories in China,
of Chinese companies doing that to theirmultinational joint venture partners,
where they start competitive companies.
But that's not.
(27:33):
Sorry, Patrick,are you speaking right now?
>> Patrick Jenevein (27:36):
No.
>> Elizabeth Economy (27:37):
Okay, your mouth was moving, [LAUGH] so it was very strange.
Sorry, Declan, hold that.
[LAUGH] Sorry, we'll just keep going.
Certainly there have been a number ofstories about Chinese companies doing that
to their foreign joint venturepartners inside China.
But I think yours may have been one of thefirst that I've heard of where the Chinese
(27:58):
company took on the American joint venturepartner inside the United States and tried
to do something sneaky in terms of settingup a competitive partner in that way.
So I guess you got pushed thenyour back was against the wall and
you decided what to takethem to arbitration.
Right.That was sort of the.
(28:19):
The first step in this process of seeingcould you negotiate a settlement.
>> Patrick Jenevein (28:25):
Yes, our soaring wind energy joint venture, which was the Texas
based joint venture, had a disputeresolution provision that was really long.
But a key part of it is Dallas,Texas, venue and in arbitration.
So, yes, we took AVIC to taskstarting in arbitration,
(28:49):
and we knew what a lot of Americancompanies don't necessarily appreciate.
They do by now, I hope,that the subordinate unit,
wherever it is,is controlled by headquarters.
There may be.
They can say what colortruck do you wanna buy?
(29:12):
When they can make that kind of decision,as long as it's the right decision.
If they bought the wrong color truck, theCommunist Party will still reprimand them.
Anyway, we tied orlinked the bad behavior of the Avicone
subordinate in Texasall the way to Beijing.
So headquarters inBeijing was responsible.
(29:34):
Building that Alter Ego chainwas what really mattered.
We knew it was there.
We thought we knew how to build it.
And the arbitration award came out inthe section on liability, like that said,
the evidence overwhelmingly shows thatAVIC is a single business enterprise.
(29:56):
In short, it's probably ten pages oreight pages of the award.
So I've just summarized it, butwe knew we would have to prove that,
to have a chance of collecting otherwise,like in China drywall.
I can't remember the guy's name that said,for China Drywall.
(30:18):
Let me back up just a little bit.
China Drywall was a suit that was broughtin the Gulf coast by people who were.
Who had rebuilt hurricane,destroyed homes with drywall from China.
>> Elizabeth Economy (30:33):
Yeah.
>> Patrick Jenevein (30:34):
One of the leaders at China drywall said,
we don't care if you sue us.
All our assets are in China,and you can't get to them.
Well, we showed how you could get to them,and that's the right thing to do.
We've got to be able to expect each other,and by that way,
(30:54):
I mean Americans andChinese to behave lawfully.
The Communist Party likes to controlall the laws and be above the laws.
But that's bad for Chinese.
It's worse forChinese than it is for anybody else.
Here I am.
We won, and then they returnedthe compliment of the lawsuit
(31:15):
by suing me personally for300 million bucks.
And, you know, they started offtrying to get me put in jail for
recording a conversation with a CommunistParty representative in California, but
they wanted detectives from Pomona countyand Fullerton county to put me in jail.
(31:36):
They wanted them to bringcriminal charges against me.
Anyway, it's a rough fight, butwhat we won was really important, and
eventually we collected dollars in Dallas.
Should it have been more?
Of course, I would say yes.
But the system producesthe results that it produces,
and at the end of eight years,everybody was worn out.
(31:59):
I was tired.
A friend in the Pentagon said,gentlemen, you've got combat fatigue.
So what are you talking about?
She said, I've been, I'm, I've beentrained to recognize combat fatigue.
And you.
You've got it.
You need to do something different.
And my dear bride knew absolutely.
I was.
I was exhausted, but Yeah,it wasn't just that,
(32:23):
it wasn't even just the court case.
>> Elizabeth Economy (32:27):
I mean, Abbott played hardball and,
and got a little scary too.
Right?Like trying to put you in jail and
death threats and, and other elements ofthis that you don't expect when you're,
you know, in arbitration and,and, you know, trying just to,
to write an injustice.
Right.They really.
Very personally.
>> Patrick Jenevein (32:46):
Yeah, or when you have a commercial dispute,
the commercial disputes about money, it'snot about attacking somebody's reputation,
somebody's asset, somebody's,well, commercial maybe, but
it's not about threatening families of,of litigants.
I mean, you know, we've risen above that.
(33:07):
Not that we're perfect inour our system at all.
Not that we don't have plenty of roomto improve, but we don't do that.
You know, we expect a fair fight, and
the Communist Party cannottolerate a fair fight,
because in a fair fight, they lo.
>> Elizabeth Economy (33:25):
So where is Soaring Wind, where is AVIC today in
terms of their wind businessin the United States?
Do they have a presence?
>> Patrick Jenevein (33:38):
Not that I'm aware of.
>> Elizabeth Economy (33:41):
Okay.
>> Patrick Jenevein (33:42):
Our joint venture agreement.
And I said that I would not workin the wind business anywhere else
except through Soaring Wind.
And I still, I kept that commitmentthrough the litigation and
now those opportunitysets have passed me but
(34:04):
AVIC would help other companies.
You know, they started.
Now, I can't remember the name ofthe company, but a company that actually
filed a opposition to a CFIUS findingthat was going to build a wind farm.
The Pacific Northwestoverlooking US Military bases.
(34:28):
Rawls, the company was Rawls Corp, soAVOC had actually gotten in behind Rawls,
that was an equipment provider andwas providing finance to Rawls.
And the, in fact, the generalmanager of ours that they hired,
he and I were talking one time andhe said, patrick, if you knew all.
(34:48):
All that went on with that,you'd have to go take a shower.
Was it that bad, she said, yes.
>> Elizabeth Economy (34:58):
So China now globally, though, does lead in deployment
of clean energy, both within China andI think globally.
The United States in the previousadministration sort of started a process
of trying to think about how to competewith the Inflation Reduction Act.
This administration is not as interestedin the clean energy space, it seems.
(35:22):
Do you think it's time forthe US just to cede the space?
Is it kind of game over whetherwe're talking about wind or solar?
What's your sense aboutwhere the US stands today in
a kind of competitionwith China in this space?
>> Patrick Jenevein (35:40):
Well, you're pricking a Texas point of pride,
I don't like seeing a darnthing to the Communist Party.
That said, we do need to realize and
understand the Communist Party'strue interest in renewable energy.
And it does a few things that are good forChina and bad for Americans.
(36:02):
One, the Inflation Reductionact has the effect of
taking money from Americans andfunding operations
in China that actuallyraise PLA capabilities.
If you're supporting BYD or some ofthe solar companies, you're supporting
(36:23):
the development of capabilities,technological capabilities and
technological expertise that hasdirect military application,
so that's something thatyou've got to work with.
Another thing that it does is it'sgiven China the opportunity or
it's made China's position relativeto rare earth minerals and
(36:46):
other critical minerals more valuable.
So if we would prioritizeprotecting people above
protecting just the environment and say,
what environments are we protecting forpeople,
if we could reduce the, andit would mean, and this is hard for
(37:09):
me to say because it soundslike seeding a lead,
and I don't like seeding leads.
Maybe I'm too competitive.
But I think we've got to realisticallyreduce that priority because
what the Communist Party can domilitarily and through cyber and
(37:29):
through theft of IP is sodamaging to the United States and
to Americans that we needto drop the priority of.
And I don't really mean drop the priority.
We, well, you can dropthe priority several ways, but
the way I'd like to see is say,give us more time.
Let the Inflation Reductionact play out over time, but
(37:52):
give it more time to play out,because even extending the time helps us,
us in the US keep the leadthat we ought to keep.
And if you're making stuff in China,they don't care about the people and
they don't care about the environment.
We care about both.
And we need to keeppushing those priorities.
(38:14):
A lot of people will saythat gets into human rights.
Well, yes, it does.
But what do we do better thananybody else in the world,
the real source of our soft power isthat we protect people from monarchs.
We've started protectingAmericans from monarchs and
now and now we ought to be protectingpeople from authoritarians
(38:35):
like Xi Jinping who just wannarun roughshod over people.
I might be going on, [INAUDIBLE]>> Elizabeth Economy: Patrick, just,
just to clarify a little bit, I mean,the Inflation Reduction act, you know,
gives incentives tobring manufacturing here
to the United States in the clean tech andclean energy space, Right.
So by supporting BYD and others, whatyou're referring to is just like targets
(38:58):
for the use of electric vehicles onwhich we'd now put 100% tariffs on those
coming in from China because I think inthat one area, the Inflation Reduction act
is actually very supportive of the kindsof objectives that you're talking about.
I think the other issue,
which I think is the second pointthat you made is on the environment.
(39:18):
Right, relative to protectionof the environment and
sort of the dirty processof rare earths and
other mining activities and processing.
Right.That we basically have outsourced,
you know, to China and to other countriesover the past few decades as, you know,
our environmental standards have risen.
(39:39):
And I think there has been a lot oftalk about, you know, the need for
different kinds of permitting to enable,you know,
more mining to take placeagain in the United States.
So I think the Inflation Reduction actactually, I think, does address some of
the issues that you've raised as concerns,but perhaps doesn't address.
Address others.
(40:00):
And just to be completely clear,
when you say give the Inflation Reductionact more time to be enacted,
I assume what you mean thereis continue to use and
invest in fossil fuels over a longerperiod of time before you put
on more stringent caps anddemands for the use of clean energy.
(40:23):
Is that a fair?
Yes, but there's a whole lot, there's a whole lot in what
you're touching on first,more time for implementation.
It's been enacted, so I don't mean tobe picking on your words too much, but
the implementation needs to take longer.
It also needs to be taken more,
(40:44):
with more awareness of what it reallytakes to implement some of its objectives.
And that's what I'm talking about.
Because if you, if you,if you drive the objectives too quickly,
you wind up driving money to China.
It takes a long time to.
There are rare earthminerals all over the world.
It's not that they're that rare.
(41:06):
But to your point,where are they processed?
They're processed where, or actuallythey're mined and processed in countries,
they don't care about the environment anddon't care about people.
We care about both.
So if you rush it, if you rushthe implementation of the idea,
you wind up penalizing Americans.
Then we wind up having to buy gear thatis loaded up with magnets that are made
(41:30):
with rare earth minerals.
The wind turbines or even the cars,you wind up pushing.
We just don't have enough time todevelop the capabilities in places
in the world that respect human dignityand respect environmental qualities.
>> Elizabeth Economy (41:50):
Okay, fair enough.
I think that's a pointof reasonable debate and
discussion, and so I'll cede that to you.
I agree that it's worth thinking thatthrough in a more careful manner.
(42:10):
So let me just finish up witha couple of questions about China and
the Trump administration, multinationals.
China right now is making a bigpush to entice foreign direct
investment back into China as Xi Jinpinghas made this a big priority.
And what advice do you have toUS Companies that might be tempted either
(42:34):
to enter China for the first time orto increase their investment?
Over the past several years,we've seen a complete fall off.
Basically, foreign direct investmentinto China has fallen off a cliff.
But now you're starting to see,I think, rumblings of renewed interest,
particularly as things become much moreuncertain here in the United States.
(42:57):
What would you say to companiesas they're looking at China anew?
>> Patrick Jenevein (43:02):
Do your due diligence.
Do what you do well.
Do your due diligence andstart with the framework.
Are There laws that make yourprojections reasonably reliable.
And right now, Xi Jinping has guttedthose laws or gone around them.
Until Xi Jinping changes his mind andactually flips his
(43:25):
idea that laws should notapply to the Communist Party.
It's a really dangerous place.
Now, there might be any episodic or
any unique example whereit's a good idea to go.
I can't think of one right now.
So, broadly,be awfully damn careful if you,
(43:46):
don't believe yourself.
If you hear yourself saying,well, I'm different.
Call this economy.
>> Elizabeth Economy (43:57):
Nice, I was going to say call Patrick Genevieve.
I don't think you called me.
I think just, just,I think a 15 minute conversation with you,
Patrick, should be enough to put the fearof, of God or into, into anybody.
And what about here,with the new Trump administration?
What would you like to see thisadministration do to better, you know,
advance orprotect US Business interests as,
(44:20):
as we're still doing business with China?
>> Patrick Jenevein (44:24):
First, they need to invest in peace.
And you don't do that by going around and
swinging a baseball bat at everybody that,everybody that comes near you.
So I'd like to see Trump go to Xi Jinping.
And just as Trump skippedZelensky to go to Putin, so
he ought to skip Putin andjust go to Xi Jinping.
(44:47):
Putin doesn't really have enough toreally matter materially for world peace.
I mean, he can disrupt it.
He's got nuclear bombs andthat can be very disruptive.
So I do not diminish that at all.
But Xi Jinping has not corneredhimself by starting war.
That gives Xi Jinping morenegotiating flexibility.
(45:10):
And Trump could go to Xi Jinping andsay, hey, I need your help.
I, Donald Trump, need your help.
That might be hard for him to say,but I need your help, Xi Jinping.
And you, Russia's about to implode andwe're worried about
mineral security,agricultural security, weaponry.
(45:31):
I need your help, Xi Jinping.
And Xi Jinping,I know you've got a real estate problem.
You, a third of your,almost a third of your economy.
And I know real estate.
And I can bring cash.
[INAUDIBLE] So I'll be your advisor andI'll be a source of cash.
But you've got to reign in yourbehavior around Taiwan and
(45:53):
you've got to quit sendingmicroelectronics to Putin.
You got to, you got to makehim come to the, the table.
But you, Xi Jinping, you andI can make this happen.
>> Elizabeth Economy (46:03):
Okay, well, we've heard that President Trump wants a grand
deal, a big deal with Xi Jinping, sowe'll send that message directly to him.
Although I think he's pastthat point with Putin.
I guess we'll wait to see.
But I think that is definitelya bold new idea, Patrick.
I'm not sure I'm entirely on board withit, but I like the creativity behind it.
(46:27):
All right, I always finish [LAUGH]->> Patrick Jenevein: Well,
you're right, Liz.
It does kick some cans down,down the road.
So we ought to talk about that.
I'll see further development,
the idea to use->> Elizabeth Economy: You see
the strategic recommendation to me, maybe.
(46:48):
Okay.
All right.
Last few questions that I ask everybody.
First, what is your sort of mustread book or article on China?
>> Patrick Jenevein (47:01):
Well, your books are up there-
>> Elizabeth Economy (47:03):
No, no, no.
Can't be my book.
Can't be my book.
Pick a different, pick a different book.
>> Patrick Jenevein (47:08):
Well, the part is one really understand, how the party works.
And then Matt Pottinger's article on.
Read what China says.
That's really important.
Pay attention to what they say.
Don't discount it.
So those are two.
What's next?
>> Elizabeth Economy (47:27):
Okay, and
you said the party is something thatwe don't know enough about, right?
The Chinese Communist Party.
We need to know more about that.
I think your book actually helpswith that, in a very concrete way
because it's full of really importantexamples of how the party works.
So I think that's a.
I'll nominate your book for that.
(47:47):
And then, you know, finally,it sounds like you may,
you may have a different answerthan a lot of people here.
On a scale of 1 to 10, what do you thinkis the likelihood of a kind of Nixon Mao
moment in the US Chinarelationship in the next decade?
>> Patrick Jenevein (48:01):
That's really hard.
But I think it's better than 50/50.
>> Elizabeth Economy (48:08):
Okay- >> Patrick Jenevein
it might be a six or six and a half, tops.
But that depends on whatleadership we bring.
That depends onthe United States of America.
All right, I mean,
Patrick, I have to say that usuallypeople say it's around a one [LAUGH].
(48:30):
And so you who've experienced morechallenges and more difficulty than I
think anybody I've had on this podcastthus far dealing with China, have the most
optimistic outlook for the US Chinarelationship over the next 10 years.
I think that that says a lotabout you as a person.
Basic, you got to be optimistic>> Patrick Jenevein: You got to be willing
(48:53):
to punch him in the nose, sorry.
But, you gotta, all right.
Well, I'm not sure that was part of the Nixon,
Mao negotiations-.
>> Patrick Jenevein (49:03):
No, no.
But But, they both knew that they couldpunch each other in the nose and.
>> Elizabeth Economy (49:12):
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
And on that note, let me thank you so muchfor taking the time to speak with me and
for your really, really a terrific andinstructive book that I
think anybody who is interested inChina or is working with China,
who plans to have some kind of dealingwith China, should take the time to read.
>> Patrick Jenevein (49:36):
Thank you, Liz.
Keep doing what you're doing.
We need you.
>> Elizabeth Economy (49:42):
Thanks, Patrick.
If you enjoyed this podcast andwant to hear more reasoned discourse and
debate on China, I encourage you tosubscribe to China Considered via
The Hoover Institution's YouTube channelor podcast platform of your choice.
Welcome to China Considered,
a podcast that brings fresh insights andinformed discussion to one of the most
consequential issues of our time, howChina's changing and changing the world.
I'm Liz Economy, Hargrove Senior Fellowand co-director of the US, China and
the World Program at the HooverInstitution at Stanford University.
Today I have with me Patrick Jenevein,the author of a terrific new book,
(00:30):
Dancing with the Cautionary Tales ofthe New China from an Old China Hand.
Patrick's a Texan who, not surprisingly,
has spent most of his lifein the energy business.
More surprisingly, perhaps most of thattime was spent doing business with China.
The book is a firsthand account of what Ithink was a true roller coaster ride that
changed not only Patrick's business,but also his life.
(00:53):
Patrick, it's great to have you with us.
>> Patrick Jenevein (00:55):
Thank you, Liz, it's a treat to be with you, as always.
>> Elizabeth Economy (01:00):
So, Patrick, before we get started,
just flash the COVID of your book.
Because it's such a great cover.
I want people to be able to see it.
There you go.
And the dragon is the sortof typical emblem for China.
Is there a reason that you decidedto have that on your book?
>> Patrick Jenevein (01:19):
Yes, and it's a five toed dragon,
which makes it an imperial dragon,
which tells the imperial force in the PRCright now, we're paying attention to you.
>> Elizabeth Economy (01:30):
I love that.
>> Patrick Jenevein (01:31):
Very specifically, and I know you also had the book released
on October 1, 2024,which was the 75th anniversary
of the founding ofthe People's Republic of China.
And I saw in an interview that you saidit was a birthday present to the Chinese
government.
And I have to say,having read the book, I thought it's
(01:54):
probably a present that they wouldlike you to take back at this point.
But we'll get to that,I think, in our discussion.
So let me start now with your firsttrip to China, which was in 1995.
Why did you go?
Where did you go?
What was the result?
I mean, you already hada successful business in Texas.
What prompted you to,you know, travel to China?
(02:18):
As a young, ambitious man,we wanted to expand our business,
we wanted to grow, andwe looked at going to California.
And Gray Davis at the time talkedabout Texans as Texas power Pirates.
And a guy, Bob Falleen, that I had knownfrom the First National Bank in Dallas,
(02:38):
worked in both Shanghai and San Francisco.
And I met with him and
he said that the communists are muchharder to deal with in San Francisco.
That's all I needed.
And growing up in Texas, you're usedto being pushed to frontiers, or not
necessarily pushed, but drawn to frontiersand drawn to frontier challenges.
(02:59):
And natural gas, we were reallygood at natural gas processing.
And a guy named Imin Jan, PhD physicistfrom the University of Houston,
retired from ARCO when the priceof oil dropped to $8 a barrel,
but had grown up in Taiwan.
And his family didn't haverunning water when he grew up.
(03:20):
We wound up getting togetherto process natural gas for
the China National Petroleum Corporation.
That was the reason it was reallyinteresting going out there.
We had a couple of pilot projects.
We needed to show that we could getequipment and personnel in, and
that we could get personnel andmoney out, that worked.
(03:42):
We also started a conversationwith the CIA because trying
to find out who your partner was inChina at the time was very difficult.
Had a conversation with a guyon a desk in D.C. who said,
yes, your counterpartyis who you think it is.
We went over to China, Dallas,to San Francisco, to Tokyo,
(04:06):
to Beijing, to Ulamuchi,halfway around the Northern hemisphere and
thinking my CIA and the USCIA istelling me I'm gonna be all right.
Well, found out that they were wrong,that there was a 50 partner.
You can laugh about that now andI'll laugh about that now too,
because we know better.
But then in 1995, as a 30 somethingyear old, I didn't know better.
(04:31):
Now I do.
I came back and talked to that analyst andat the end he said, well,
what else do you know?
So that startedan interesting relationship.
>> Elizabeth Economy (04:41):
Right? And
maybe we'll hear a little bit moreabout that a little bit later.
But you know, a lot of your book isabout the challenges that you faced and
they were, you know, significant.
But you also had somesignificant successes.
What do you consider tobe your biggest success?
Because you had a number of differentventures over the course of your,
(05:02):
you know, two and a half decades or so.
>> Patrick Jenevein (05:04):
Well, the success that matters is that we built
relationships with Chinese andwe made money together.
And if you're making money together,
you're creating jobs,you're raising everybody's boat.
And there's an affair of the tides of menwhich taken to the flood leads to riches.
Well, we did that.
(05:25):
We saw that we were doing good things forChinese.
We were making money doing it.
Some of the emissions fromour natural gas fire power
plants was actually cleaner thanthe air many Chinese breathe.
Your book, the River Runs Black at thattime was a really important book for
me to be able to read because youqualified it, you researched it, and
(05:49):
you contextualized a lot of what you didthat helped people like me know we were
doing the right thing, knowing thatwe were moving the right direction,
putting our business in a position to dogood and to do well by doing good things.
>> Elizabeth Economy (06:06):
So, I mean,
that's a great sort of very positivetake on your engagement there.
And you've written a lot about what itwas like negotiating with the Chinese and
with the Communist Party representativesthat were both from the government and
also, you know, in the state ownedenterprises that you were working with.
You know, as you think back to thatsort of negotiating style and process,
(06:30):
you know, how much similarity was therebetween the way that Americans might
negotiate, the kinds of deals thatyou were doing and what you saw and
what you dealt with from the Chineseside in terms of, you know,
the style and the method andthe tactics and strategies.
Did you feel at home in terms of sort ofworking with your Chinese counterparts,
(06:51):
or was it just an entirely new world?
>> Patrick Jenevein (06:54):
It was entirely new.
One of our very first pilotprojects was in Kalamai,
so far Western China, in Xinjiang,
where the Communist Partyis abusing Uyghurs.
We were going to providea natural gas processing plant.
(07:18):
So when natural gas comes outof the ground, it's gaseous.
If you cool it or put a littlepressure on it, you can liquefy it.
And then if it's liquefied,then people can carry it around and
in small tanks that you canput on the back of a bicycle.
So here we were pushing that idea forwardand China National Petroleum Company
(07:41):
very shrewdly paired usagainst the Canadian firm and
gave us essentially identicalcontracts are identical task.
We got ours, we negotiated.
I left Kalamayi thinkingthat we were done, Imeen.
Dr Jan, my partner, stayed andwhen by the time I got home,
(08:05):
they had changed the deal completely.
So I sent him a fax and put confidential,you know, in big letters
on the top to make sure that the Communistparty people read it before imin.
So here, it was almost like playingbridge where you're bidding across
the table without saying everything.
(08:27):
You think so confidential, you mean?
You've pushed our company into a positionthat we cannot strategically hold.
We've already invested somuch, we can invest more.
The engineer from CNPChave out negotiated you.
So there was a lot that was inthere that complemented the CNPC
(08:52):
engineers gave them a face showedthat they had crushed an American
businessman in negotiating,which interestingly gave
them more flexibility in the future forus to work together.
So those ideas of face were fascinating
(09:14):
to learn, another quick example.
Our second pilot project was a gas fire,small gas fire,
electricity generating project fora Chinese company that made carbon black,
which generated for hard currency for
them foreign currency reserves at the timewhen China needed it to get paid.
(09:38):
Our young engineer, Gao Yang,who had been one of
the most successful engineersof the Onomuchi grid,
she was one smart hardworking lady.
And the other folks in the utility didn'tlike how hard she worked because it
(09:58):
made them look bad.
So when she had the chance to workwith a foreign company, ours,
she did well, she would go to Kula.
You should have to take a trainfrom Ulamuchi to Kula, and
then take a cab to the place andcome with a briefcase and an invoice,
and she'd get paid in cash, andthen she would reverse the trip.
(10:21):
Well, then the Kula or the carbon blackplant started slow paying her and
the general manager who could payher started to be gone on trips.
And one day, she just slammed thatbriefcase down on his desk in front of
a lot of other people.
I wasn't there, I heard this story andsaid, you're not treating us right.
(10:42):
Well, that gave him face.
He had shown in front of all thosepeople that he was doing a good job for
China and the Communist Party.
>> Elizabeth Economy (10:54):
So were these things that you picked up along the way,
this idea of giving your Chineseinterlocutor space, or was there a primer
that you read before you went to China,like how to negotiate with the Chinese?
>> Patrick Jenevein (11:08):
Well, you introduced me to Lucian PI's idea, so
reading your work, reading Lucian's workhelps contextualize what you're doing.
But then, getting back to the end partof the question, we started to answer.
Eventually, you understand thatthe Communist party is the one
(11:29):
that's negotiated with you,whether directly or not.
Because the Communist partyreserves the right to make or
the privilege to make every decisionin China, whether it's prospective,
current, or even retrospectively.
The Communist Party can change decisions,you know that, you've seen that, but
a lot of Americans don't appreciate that,whether they're in business or government.
(11:54):
And we're in business,we're negotiating and
running joint operations with Communistparty controlled outfits every day,
we're making decisions every day,and it's the same outfit.
So there's, there's much more overlapthan a lot of our, our diplomat,
our diplomats that are thereall the time understand that.
(12:17):
But the elected officials have a hardtime keeping up with that lesson.
And so your book and Lucian's book oryour books actually help.
There's no questioning that.
For me, because I'm a slow learner,maybe I have to go and
(12:37):
actually learn lessons myselfthe hard way, one quick story.
Start on that, we were in Dunhuang, and
we were going to build a natural gasfirepower plant that used a jet engine.
Put the jet engine on the ground anda generator behind it.
You feed it with a whole lot ofnatural gas, it spends really,
really fast, which turnsthe generator really, really fast,
(13:00):
which spits out a wholelot of electricity.
But as soon as you take a jet engine intoChina, whether you put it on the ground or
on an airplane or in a helicopter,you wind up working with
the Aviation Industry Corporation ofChina, whether you expected to or not.
It's divergent, you don't have a choice.
Well, a guy named Mr.Joe, who's older than I,
(13:23):
had been Deng Xiaoping'sadvisor of jet engines and
rockets, and he was the lead AVOC guy.
And here,we get through this initial meeting, and
then we agree to breakup into working groups.
And I think, I assume,
I'm going with the working group becausethat's where my mind is focused.
(13:46):
And he mean the PhD physicists of no,
you're going to go ride camels with Mr.Joe.
Ride camels?
Yes.
And you're going to go out intothe sand dunes and get on a camel and
you're going to go out to a,a Buddhist monastery.
Have fun.
Really?I don't, I need to work.
He says, no, I'll be fine without you.
(14:07):
We can catch up.
So I made a few mistakes.
You're growing up in Texas,I know how to ride a horse.
So a camel is just another long-legged,tall beast that you get on and ride.
And it starts from an awkward positionwhere the camel's on the ground and
then lurches up.
Well, I can ride that minutes,it's an animal.
(14:28):
My mistake was that I was on the biggercamel in the front of the line and
Mr. Joe was behind me.
The worst mistake I made,that was turning around and
looking at the camel that Mr.Joe was on as it was rising.
And poor Mr.Joe's white-knuckle in the pommel,
(14:49):
and that's bad enough, but
I saw fear in his eyes andhe did not like that.
And to compound my already grievous error,
there were witnesses,people took a picture of this event.
So now, Joe's embarrassed, and he know and
(15:11):
everybody else around himknows he was embarrassed.
So that night he invitesme to play Snickers.
It's a pool table game.
And with crowd of hisminions up against one wall,
he proceeded to beat me soundly,
which allowed him toregain face at my expense.
(15:34):
But I didn't care.
Yeah.
In Texas, you could call me what you want,what can you do is what matters, right?
So anyway, there were plentyof opportunities to learn.
>> Elizabeth Economy (15:48):
Yes.
>> Patrick Jenevein (15:49):
Even though I could have.
Even though I should have been ableto from reading your books, but
I still had to take those ones.
>> Elizabeth Economy (15:55):
No, no, for sure.
I think that nothing beatson the ground experience.
So no book is equal to that.
So I want to talk about whatI saw as one of your sort of
biggest successes in China.
And that was your partnership actuallywith AVIC on HT Blade, right?
(16:17):
So how did that partnership come about?
You mentioned Mr Zhou and this experienceyou just had with the jet engines.
But how did you decide to partner?
And what was this HT Blade?
What was this joint venture?
>> Patrick Jenevein (16:33):
Well, at the plant ding Wong, where Mr Joe and
I rode camels,we wound up making that power plant work.
That's a long story.
But we made it work.
And we met good people.
They were good in that they wantedto do what they said they would do.
They wanted to do well for themselves,for their company, for their country.
(16:54):
They were honest, they were smart,they were hardworking, and we'd like that.
And these were great people to work with.
We could talk about that a long time.
But back to your question.
Once we got that Dunhuang plant up andrunning, the jet engine on the ground,
working with Havoc, thenSing John Wind Energy company found us and
(17:15):
said, would you build a gas firedpower plant on our wind farm.
So that the wind farm can deliverelectricity even when the wind's
not blowing?
Great idea [COUGH] it's really hardto make that work contractually.
Insurance finance is a problem, but
we could figure out how to useproject finance to build wind farms.
(17:39):
That part wasn't that hard.
Getting that started in China was hardbecause China had not done it before.
Fast forward Wu Gang, who wasthe chairman of Jingfeng or Goldwyn.
We actually had dinner in Dallasat the Dallas Petroleum Club.
And I outlined, here's the businessplan that you need to have for
(18:02):
Goldwyn to be able to havesuccess in the United States.
And he did it.
He executed it and did a great job.
Anyway, we started to finance windfar or
build project finance in China forChinese companies.
And we were working with GE on that too,because GE wanted to sell turbines.
It made a lot of sense for everybody.
(18:24):
But then bombing the Chineseembassy in Belgrade and
having warplanes collideover Hainan Dao or
Hainan island are acts of war, andit leaves some project finance folks.
Those are acts of war andacts of war and project finance repel.
I mean,they're antithetical to one another.
(18:44):
So, after my strength is finance and
being able to put projects together,develop projects.
But we figured, we're our Patrick'sproject finance ideas are toast.
But here we were working with peoplewe liked at Avic and it was April 1,
2001, when we were supposed to havea meeting about project finance.
(19:10):
And one of those acts of war happened,and frankly,
we went to lunch early andstarted drinking.
[COUGH] but by the end of it.
Well, sorry, but that's true.
By the end of that was April 2001,and by the end of the year,
we were making blades for wind turbines.
(19:31):
And HT is H is the Chinesebetter than I do.
Hong for aviation and Tong for
our T for our company.
[COUGH] so Havoc knew how tomake airfoils, propellers for
(19:52):
engines, blades or helicopters,wings or airplanes.
Blade fora wind turbine is just a kind of airfoil.
So we said,avoc we know the wind business.
You know how to make airfoils.
We've got a great relationship going.
We know how to work with each other inways that are beneficial to both of us.
(20:15):
Let's start a company, make blades,
wind turbines from that April lunchto seven years later was the biggest.
The second biggest wind farm windblade maker in the world and
the biggest in China.
That's a short story onhow you got there sorry.
>> Elizabeth Economy (20:32):
Yeah, no, that's and that's, I think, for me, in any case,
that was the high point.
[LAUGH] as I was reading the book.
>> Patrick Jenevein (20:40):
Well, we were gonna.
We were gonna take that company public for$1.8 billion.
>> Elizabeth Economy (20:44):
Yeah, that would have been the high point.
We could get to why that didn't happen.
We can get to why that didn't happen.
But to begin with,then you decided, and AVIC decided,
right to expand the partnership, right.
And to move into thinking about whatyou could do in the United States.
And that's, I think,when things started to unravel, right?
>> Patrick Jenevein (21:08):
That wasn't the well,
the start was reallyXi Jinping's ascension.
We decided, so here in Texas, we decidedfor us to make sure this IPO for
$1.8 billion,initial public offer goes swimmingly,
we need to be able to show that we'reselling blades around the world.
(21:28):
So our company, Tong Energy, startedanother company called Soaring Wind Energy
to develop wind farms around the world.
And we built a Wind Farm, Nebraska.
And we went to GE and said, hey,
GE, we want to buy about $100million worth of your wind turbines.
Are you interested?
And even GE says $100 millionis a good transaction.
(21:50):
We said, but GE for our wind farm,using your wind turbines,
we want you to put our blades orHT blades on your wind turbines.
And that was working.
And then Xi Jinping startedsaying ascending and
telling Chinese that they neededto be much more patriotic.
(22:15):
And it was after a board meeting inbaoding, which is 150 kilometers or
so south of Beijing, that at dinner again,somebody was drinking.
And one of my fellow board members said,well,
the IPO is not gonna work because theforeigner is gonna make too much money.
So I was complimented.
And one way, because we were soused to working with each other,
(22:39):
we didn't consider each other foreigners.
But I said to my co boardman,who the foreigner is, don't you?
And he said, yeah, I'm sorry,that's you but why?
Because Xi Jinping had said, the foreignercan't make so much money here.
We had worked our fannies off.
(23:01):
We had done a great job.
We'd expanded the business.
And it took cooperation.
It took us working together.
We all knew that there.
But Xi Jinping had a different plan.
>> Elizabeth Economy (23:13):
But even with the IPO sort of put on the back burner,
you move forward with the partnership,right?
I mean,it wasn't the end of the partnership.
>> Patrick Jenevein (23:22):
No, we were still trying to make the company
grow to expand into the rest of the world.
But the Xi Jinping generated attitudewas don't work with foreigners.
(23:42):
It was that bad case in point.
I can't remember the year right now, but
about 2012 or so [COUGH] what.
We own our company owned Our Texas companyowned 25% of the Blade company and
(24:03):
AVIC and two of its subordinates,the other 75%.
One of those subordinates stole $8million from our joint venture.
And nobody told us.
We were just looking at.
We were comparing one setof accounting records and
financials to the previousperiods set of financials.
(24:23):
We said, you know, there's five.
There's $8 million missing.
It looks like $8 million is missing.
What do we do?
Do we forget to record inventory?
There could be a number of reasons.
We had $350 million ofrevenue at the time.
So $8 million is important.
But, it's easy,
you can understand how you might justhaven't had an accounting error.
(24:46):
Well, found out, no,it wasn't an accounting error.
Bao Dingway Yang had actuallystolen 8 million bucks.
And we said, okay,now that we know Avic in 2023,
Avic had more revenue than any otherdefense contractor in the world.
So they've got the cash.
We said, you've got the cash,Just put it back.
(25:08):
They said, yeah, we'll do that.
And they were somewhat embarrassed by it.
And then it didn't happen.
Didn't happen.Didn't happen.
And I went back and kinda maybe as a rudeTexan, said, where the hell's the money?
You've got it.
Why haven't you put it back?
So the first thing that happens,we got a letter of reprimand from Abbott.
So HT Blade, our joint venture company,got a letter of reprimand from
(25:32):
AVIC saying, HT Blade, if you'regoing to pay one member a dividend,
you should pay all members a dividend.
And we said, that's, that's not right.
That money was stolen.
There was no dividend pay,we didn't receive any money.
Wait for this.
So what happens next?
(25:52):
You might be able to anticipate.
We got a bill from the local taxauthority for the money that.
For the amount of money that was stolen.
So you think.
Yeah, you think that we can correcta theft by friendly negotiation?
And then, okay, maybe I was a little roughhewn as a kinda course Texan sometime.
(26:15):
[COUGH] But we got slapped with a taxbill from the local tax bureau.
So do you think that we could go tothe local judicial authority and
say, hey, these people are messing up,are messing us around?
We didn't think so.
You might have more researchthat would prove me wrong.
But we didn't think so.
(26:38):
So anyway, that flips us back to whatthey started doing to us in Texas.
They hired our general manager.
They being AVIC,they hired our general manager.
They stole a wind farm, andthey diverted financing.
You know, there were a few otherthings that were in there too, but
that's essentially it.
(26:58):
They started AVIC.
AVIC started a company to competedirectly with us in Texas to do
the business that wewere gonna do together.
So that's what it reallystarted unraveling.
>> Elizabeth Economy (27:13):
Right, which is something that I think, actually, a lot,
but certainly there have beena number of stories in China,
of Chinese companies doing that to theirmultinational joint venture partners,
where they start competitive companies.
But that's not.
(27:33):
Sorry, Patrick,are you speaking right now?
>> Patrick Jenevein (27:36):
No.
>> Elizabeth Economy (27:37):
Okay, your mouth was moving, [LAUGH] so it was very strange.
Sorry, Declan, hold that.
[LAUGH] Sorry, we'll just keep going.
Certainly there have been a number ofstories about Chinese companies doing that
to their foreign joint venturepartners inside China.
But I think yours may have been one of thefirst that I've heard of where the Chinese
(27:58):
company took on the American joint venturepartner inside the United States and tried
to do something sneaky in terms of settingup a competitive partner in that way.
So I guess you got pushed thenyour back was against the wall and
you decided what to takethem to arbitration.
Right.That was sort of the.
(28:19):
The first step in this process of seeingcould you negotiate a settlement.
>> Patrick Jenevein (28:25):
Yes, our soaring wind energy joint venture, which was the Texas
based joint venture, had a disputeresolution provision that was really long.
But a key part of it is Dallas,Texas, venue and in arbitration.
So, yes, we took AVIC to taskstarting in arbitration,
(28:49):
and we knew what a lot of Americancompanies don't necessarily appreciate.
They do by now, I hope,that the subordinate unit,
wherever it is,is controlled by headquarters.
There may be.
They can say what colortruck do you wanna buy?
(29:12):
When they can make that kind of decision,as long as it's the right decision.
If they bought the wrong color truck, theCommunist Party will still reprimand them.
Anyway, we tied orlinked the bad behavior of the Avicone
subordinate in Texasall the way to Beijing.
So headquarters inBeijing was responsible.
(29:34):
Building that Alter Ego chainwas what really mattered.
We knew it was there.
We thought we knew how to build it.
And the arbitration award came out inthe section on liability, like that said,
the evidence overwhelmingly shows thatAVIC is a single business enterprise.
(29:56):
In short, it's probably ten pages oreight pages of the award.
So I've just summarized it, butwe knew we would have to prove that,
to have a chance of collecting otherwise,like in China drywall.
I can't remember the guy's name that said,for China Drywall.
(30:18):
Let me back up just a little bit.
China Drywall was a suit that was broughtin the Gulf coast by people who were.
Who had rebuilt hurricane,destroyed homes with drywall from China.
>> Elizabeth Economy (30:33):
Yeah.
>> Patrick Jenevein (30:34):
One of the leaders at China drywall said,
we don't care if you sue us.
All our assets are in China,and you can't get to them.
Well, we showed how you could get to them,and that's the right thing to do.
We've got to be able to expect each other,and by that way,
(30:54):
I mean Americans andChinese to behave lawfully.
The Communist Party likes to controlall the laws and be above the laws.
But that's bad for Chinese.
It's worse forChinese than it is for anybody else.
Here I am.
We won, and then they returnedthe compliment of the lawsuit
(31:15):
by suing me personally for300 million bucks.
And, you know, they started offtrying to get me put in jail for
recording a conversation with a CommunistParty representative in California, but
they wanted detectives from Pomona countyand Fullerton county to put me in jail.
(31:36):
They wanted them to bringcriminal charges against me.
Anyway, it's a rough fight, butwhat we won was really important, and
eventually we collected dollars in Dallas.
Should it have been more?
Of course, I would say yes.
But the system producesthe results that it produces,
and at the end of eight years,everybody was worn out.
(31:59):
I was tired.
A friend in the Pentagon said,gentlemen, you've got combat fatigue.
So what are you talking about?
She said, I've been, I'm, I've beentrained to recognize combat fatigue.
And you.
You've got it.
You need to do something different.
And my dear bride knew absolutely.
I was.
I was exhausted, but Yeah,it wasn't just that,
(32:23):
it wasn't even just the court case.
>> Elizabeth Economy (32:27):
I mean, Abbott played hardball and,
and got a little scary too.
Right?Like trying to put you in jail and
death threats and, and other elements ofthis that you don't expect when you're,
you know, in arbitration and,and, you know, trying just to,
to write an injustice.
Right.They really.
Very personally.
>> Patrick Jenevein (32:46):
Yeah, or when you have a commercial dispute,
the commercial disputes about money, it'snot about attacking somebody's reputation,
somebody's asset, somebody's,well, commercial maybe, but
it's not about threatening families of,of litigants.
I mean, you know, we've risen above that.
(33:07):
Not that we're perfect inour our system at all.
Not that we don't have plenty of roomto improve, but we don't do that.
You know, we expect a fair fight, and
the Communist Party cannottolerate a fair fight,
because in a fair fight, they lo.
>> Elizabeth Economy (33:25):
So where is Soaring Wind, where is AVIC today in
terms of their wind businessin the United States?
Do they have a presence?
>> Patrick Jenevein (33:38):
Not that I'm aware of.
>> Elizabeth Economy (33:41):
Okay.
>> Patrick Jenevein (33:42):
Our joint venture agreement.
And I said that I would not workin the wind business anywhere else
except through Soaring Wind.
And I still, I kept that commitmentthrough the litigation and
now those opportunitysets have passed me but
(34:04):
AVIC would help other companies.
You know, they started.
Now, I can't remember the name ofthe company, but a company that actually
filed a opposition to a CFIUS findingthat was going to build a wind farm.
The Pacific Northwestoverlooking US Military bases.
(34:28):
Rawls, the company was Rawls Corp, soAVOC had actually gotten in behind Rawls,
that was an equipment provider andwas providing finance to Rawls.
And the, in fact, the generalmanager of ours that they hired,
he and I were talking one time andhe said, patrick, if you knew all.
(34:48):
All that went on with that,you'd have to go take a shower.
Was it that bad, she said, yes.
>> Elizabeth Economy (34:58):
So China now globally, though, does lead in deployment
of clean energy, both within China andI think globally.
The United States in the previousadministration sort of started a process
of trying to think about how to competewith the Inflation Reduction Act.
This administration is not as interestedin the clean energy space, it seems.
(35:22):
Do you think it's time forthe US just to cede the space?
Is it kind of game over whetherwe're talking about wind or solar?
What's your sense aboutwhere the US stands today in
a kind of competitionwith China in this space?
>> Patrick Jenevein (35:40):
Well, you're pricking a Texas point of pride,
I don't like seeing a darnthing to the Communist Party.
That said, we do need to realize and
understand the Communist Party'strue interest in renewable energy.
And it does a few things that are good forChina and bad for Americans.
(36:02):
One, the Inflation Reductionact has the effect of
taking money from Americans andfunding operations
in China that actuallyraise PLA capabilities.
If you're supporting BYD or some ofthe solar companies, you're supporting
(36:23):
the development of capabilities,technological capabilities and
technological expertise that hasdirect military application,
so that's something thatyou've got to work with.
Another thing that it does is it'sgiven China the opportunity or
it's made China's position relativeto rare earth minerals and
(36:46):
other critical minerals more valuable.
So if we would prioritizeprotecting people above
protecting just the environment and say,
what environments are we protecting forpeople,
if we could reduce the, andit would mean, and this is hard for
(37:09):
me to say because it soundslike seeding a lead,
and I don't like seeding leads.
Maybe I'm too competitive.
But I think we've got to realisticallyreduce that priority because
what the Communist Party can domilitarily and through cyber and
(37:29):
through theft of IP is sodamaging to the United States and
to Americans that we needto drop the priority of.
And I don't really mean drop the priority.
We, well, you can dropthe priority several ways, but
the way I'd like to see is say,give us more time.
Let the Inflation Reductionact play out over time, but
(37:52):
give it more time to play out,because even extending the time helps us,
us in the US keep the leadthat we ought to keep.
And if you're making stuff in China,they don't care about the people and
they don't care about the environment.
We care about both.
And we need to keeppushing those priorities.
(38:14):
A lot of people will saythat gets into human rights.
Well, yes, it does.
But what do we do better thananybody else in the world,
the real source of our soft power isthat we protect people from monarchs.
We've started protectingAmericans from monarchs and
now and now we ought to be protectingpeople from authoritarians
(38:35):
like Xi Jinping who just wannarun roughshod over people.
I might be going on, [INAUDIBLE]>> Elizabeth Economy: Patrick, just,
just to clarify a little bit, I mean,the Inflation Reduction act, you know,
gives incentives tobring manufacturing here
to the United States in the clean tech andclean energy space, Right.
So by supporting BYD and others, whatyou're referring to is just like targets
(38:58):
for the use of electric vehicles onwhich we'd now put 100% tariffs on those
coming in from China because I think inthat one area, the Inflation Reduction act
is actually very supportive of the kindsof objectives that you're talking about.
I think the other issue,
which I think is the second pointthat you made is on the environment.
(39:18):
Right, relative to protectionof the environment and
sort of the dirty processof rare earths and
other mining activities and processing.
Right.That we basically have outsourced,
you know, to China and to other countriesover the past few decades as, you know,
our environmental standards have risen.
(39:39):
And I think there has been a lot oftalk about, you know, the need for
different kinds of permitting to enable,you know,
more mining to take placeagain in the United States.
So I think the Inflation Reduction actactually, I think, does address some of
the issues that you've raised as concerns,but perhaps doesn't address.
Address others.
(40:00):
And just to be completely clear,
when you say give the Inflation Reductionact more time to be enacted,
I assume what you mean thereis continue to use and
invest in fossil fuels over a longerperiod of time before you put
on more stringent caps anddemands for the use of clean energy.
(40:23):
Is that a fair?
Yes, but there's a whole lot, there's a whole lot in what
you're touching on first,more time for implementation.
It's been enacted, so I don't mean tobe picking on your words too much, but
the implementation needs to take longer.
It also needs to be taken more,
(40:44):
with more awareness of what it reallytakes to implement some of its objectives.
And that's what I'm talking about.
Because if you, if you,if you drive the objectives too quickly,
you wind up driving money to China.
It takes a long time to.
There are rare earthminerals all over the world.
It's not that they're that rare.
(41:06):
But to your point,where are they processed?
They're processed where, or actuallythey're mined and processed in countries,
they don't care about the environment anddon't care about people.
We care about both.
So if you rush it, if you rushthe implementation of the idea,
you wind up penalizing Americans.
Then we wind up having to buy gear thatis loaded up with magnets that are made
(41:30):
with rare earth minerals.
The wind turbines or even the cars,you wind up pushing.
We just don't have enough time todevelop the capabilities in places
in the world that respect human dignityand respect environmental qualities.
>> Elizabeth Economy (41:50):
Okay, fair enough.
I think that's a pointof reasonable debate and
discussion, and so I'll cede that to you.
I agree that it's worth thinking thatthrough in a more careful manner.
(42:10):
So let me just finish up witha couple of questions about China and
the Trump administration, multinationals.
China right now is making a bigpush to entice foreign direct
investment back into China as Xi Jinpinghas made this a big priority.
And what advice do you have toUS Companies that might be tempted either
(42:34):
to enter China for the first time orto increase their investment?
Over the past several years,we've seen a complete fall off.
Basically, foreign direct investmentinto China has fallen off a cliff.
But now you're starting to see,I think, rumblings of renewed interest,
particularly as things become much moreuncertain here in the United States.
(42:57):
What would you say to companiesas they're looking at China anew?
>> Patrick Jenevein (43:02):
Do your due diligence.
Do what you do well.
Do your due diligence andstart with the framework.
Are There laws that make yourprojections reasonably reliable.
And right now, Xi Jinping has guttedthose laws or gone around them.
Until Xi Jinping changes his mind andactually flips his
(43:25):
idea that laws should notapply to the Communist Party.
It's a really dangerous place.
Now, there might be any episodic or
any unique example whereit's a good idea to go.
I can't think of one right now.
So, broadly,be awfully damn careful if you,
(43:46):
don't believe yourself.
If you hear yourself saying,well, I'm different.
Call this economy.
>> Elizabeth Economy (43:57):
Nice, I was going to say call Patrick Genevieve.
I don't think you called me.
I think just, just,I think a 15 minute conversation with you,
Patrick, should be enough to put the fearof, of God or into, into anybody.
And what about here,with the new Trump administration?
What would you like to see thisadministration do to better, you know,
advance orprotect US Business interests as,
(44:20):
as we're still doing business with China?
>> Patrick Jenevein (44:24):
First, they need to invest in peace.
And you don't do that by going around and
swinging a baseball bat at everybody that,everybody that comes near you.
So I'd like to see Trump go to Xi Jinping.
And just as Trump skippedZelensky to go to Putin, so
he ought to skip Putin andjust go to Xi Jinping.
(44:47):
Putin doesn't really have enough toreally matter materially for world peace.
I mean, he can disrupt it.
He's got nuclear bombs andthat can be very disruptive.
So I do not diminish that at all.
But Xi Jinping has not corneredhimself by starting war.
That gives Xi Jinping morenegotiating flexibility.
(45:10):
And Trump could go to Xi Jinping andsay, hey, I need your help.
I, Donald Trump, need your help.
That might be hard for him to say,but I need your help, Xi Jinping.
And you, Russia's about to implode andwe're worried about
mineral security,agricultural security, weaponry.
(45:31):
I need your help, Xi Jinping.
And Xi Jinping,I know you've got a real estate problem.
You, a third of your,almost a third of your economy.
And I know real estate.
And I can bring cash.
[INAUDIBLE] So I'll be your advisor andI'll be a source of cash.
But you've got to reign in yourbehavior around Taiwan and
(45:53):
you've got to quit sendingmicroelectronics to Putin.
You got to, you got to makehim come to the, the table.
But you, Xi Jinping, you andI can make this happen.
>> Elizabeth Economy (46:03):
Okay, well, we've heard that President Trump wants a grand
deal, a big deal with Xi Jinping, sowe'll send that message directly to him.
Although I think he's pastthat point with Putin.
I guess we'll wait to see.
But I think that is definitelya bold new idea, Patrick.
I'm not sure I'm entirely on board withit, but I like the creativity behind it.
(46:27):
All right, I always finish [LAUGH]->> Patrick Jenevein: Well,
you're right, Liz.
It does kick some cans down,down the road.
So we ought to talk about that.
I'll see further development,
the idea to use->> Elizabeth Economy: You see
the strategic recommendation to me, maybe.
(46:48):
Okay.
All right.
Last few questions that I ask everybody.
First, what is your sort of mustread book or article on China?
>> Patrick Jenevein (47:01):
Well, your books are up there-
>> Elizabeth Economy (47:03):
No, no, no.
Can't be my book.
Can't be my book.
Pick a different, pick a different book.
>> Patrick Jenevein (47:08):
Well, the part is one really understand, how the party works.
And then Matt Pottinger's article on.
Read what China says.
That's really important.
Pay attention to what they say.
Don't discount it.
So those are two.
What's next?
>> Elizabeth Economy (47:27):
Okay, and
you said the party is something thatwe don't know enough about, right?
The Chinese Communist Party.
We need to know more about that.
I think your book actually helpswith that, in a very concrete way
because it's full of really importantexamples of how the party works.
So I think that's a.
I'll nominate your book for that.
(47:47):
And then, you know, finally,it sounds like you may,
you may have a different answerthan a lot of people here.
On a scale of 1 to 10, what do you thinkis the likelihood of a kind of Nixon Mao
moment in the US Chinarelationship in the next decade?
>> Patrick Jenevein (48:01):
That's really hard.
But I think it's better than 50/50.
>> Elizabeth Economy (48:08):
Okay- >> Patrick Jenevein
it might be a six or six and a half, tops.
But that depends on whatleadership we bring.
That depends onthe United States of America.
All right, I mean,
Patrick, I have to say that usuallypeople say it's around a one [LAUGH].
(48:30):
And so you who've experienced morechallenges and more difficulty than I
think anybody I've had on this podcastthus far dealing with China, have the most
optimistic outlook for the US Chinarelationship over the next 10 years.
I think that that says a lotabout you as a person.
Basic, you got to be optimistic>> Patrick Jenevein: You got to be willing
(48:53):
to punch him in the nose, sorry.
But, you gotta, all right.
Well, I'm not sure that was part of the Nixon,
Mao negotiations-.
>> Patrick Jenevein (49:03):
No, no.
But But, they both knew that they couldpunch each other in the nose and.
>> Elizabeth Economy (49:12):
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
And on that note, let me thank you so muchfor taking the time to speak with me and
for your really, really a terrific andinstructive book that I
think anybody who is interested inChina or is working with China,
who plans to have some kind of dealingwith China, should take the time to read.
>> Patrick Jenevein (49:36):
Thank you, Liz.
Keep doing what you're doing.
We need you.
>> Elizabeth Economy (49:42):
Thanks, Patrick.
If you enjoyed this podcast andwant to hear more reasoned discourse and
debate on China, I encourage you tosubscribe to China Considered via
The Hoover Institution's YouTube channelor podcast platform of your choice.
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