China: An Ugly Picture. Josh Rogin Talks to A&G

Josh Rogin (Global Opinions columnist for the Washington Post and a political analyst with CNN) joins A&G to track the progress of China's communist government's plan to overtake the US as the #1 global power.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Come on, man, they can't even figure out how to
deal with they the fact that they have this great
division between the China Sea and the mountains in the east,
I mean, in the west. They can't figure out how
they're gonna deal with the corruption that exists within the system.
I mean, you know, they're not bad folks. Folks, but

(00:21):
guess what they're not. They're they're not not not competition
for us. I could get hung up on that astounding
mishmash of half formed thoughts from a couple of years ago,
but I won't. It's a nice little introduction to the
topic of China, the US, our relationship, et cetera, and
to discuss that who could be better than Josh Rogan,

(00:42):
Global Opinions columnists with The Washington Post, author of Chaos
under Heaven, Trump she in the Battle for the twenty Century. Josh,
how are you great? Joe, great to be back with you.
Thank you very much. Yeah, it's always terrific when we
get a chance to talk to you. Hey, before we
get into some of the Biden administration versus China stuff
that you've been writing about lately, what are your impressions

(01:05):
of how the Olympics have unfolded thus far going into them,
Jack and I were discussing is this going to glorify China?
And and you know in the way the nine Olympics
really bought Hitler time. Um, is she going to get
what he wants out of these Olympics or will it
more focus on the horrors and evil of China. What's

(01:28):
your impression so far? Well, I don't know about you,
but what I've seen is a lot of actually good coverage,
not by NBC, particularly of the fact that China is
becoming a genocidal police state that operates like a mafia
organization and is trying to silence everyone, both in China

(01:49):
and around the world. Right to the ges thing thought
this was gonna be his best, you know, world stage,
that he thought this was going to be the chance
for him to burnish China's image. And from what I
can tell, all he's done is piste off countries all
over the world. There was the thing with the Indian UH.
Remember the Indian UM diplomatic team Withdrew the day before,

(02:12):
because they actually put an Indian UH Chinese military officer
who killed Indians into the Torch ceremony, and you know,
they piste off the Indian just for no reason the
day before the Olympics. Then they had a weaker like
the torch at the opening ceremony and everybody was like, Wow,
that's really passed up. That's a that's just a sociopathic

(02:33):
thing to do, you know. And then there was the
punk Shue mysterious interview where she pops out in the
middle of the first week of the Olympics and everyone's like,
oh wait, she's in a lot of trouble. This is
really creepy, and one by one by one, China's effort
to sort of show their best put their best foot
forward backfire. In my opinion, I don't know if if

(02:54):
that is that time everyone else happen. To me, it
seems like a total disaster for the Chinese Communist Party, um,
because this is their best behavior. This is when they're
trying to show us that they're not a horrible, you know,
human rights abuser, and every single step of the way
they just seemed to be reinforcing that for you. Well,
and there's snow sucks according to everybody participating in the Olympics.

(03:14):
So there's that and their treatment of the Olympic athletes,
and they're they're making them download an app that monitors
all of their speech, and then you know, forget about
like the fact that they put the the some of
the events in the middle of what looks like a
dystopian nuclear waste land, and you know, and then in
the lockdowns and the repression and the silencing of all

(03:35):
the journalists and the threatening of all the dissidents. I mean,
it's a pretty ugly picture. I think that, at least
that's what I see. I don't know about it. Yeah,
we've been rooting for it to be as ugly as possible,
just because to whatever extent Americans and people around the
world can recognize the evil and the power of the
Chinese regime, all the better for humanity. I just I
was scared to hear your take, because you know, we've

(03:55):
been rooting so fervently for that. I didn't want to,
you know, assume that my wishes were being the father
of my thoughts. H you know, not to completely, you know,
spoil your enjoyment. But it does seem that the actual
corporations don't actually give a crap one where or the other,
and none of the sponsors have done anything to stand
up for human rights. The International Olympic Committee helped the

(04:16):
Chinese Communist Party make a hostage video with punc Hua
and then they, you know, refused to even meet with
the human rights groups. You know, I've been dealing with
a lot of these debanton groups. We grow groups. Hong
Konger's Taiwan needs a lot of Chinese discident groups, and
they say that the corporations won't even give them the
time and day. So I think there's an awakening in
the public space right and regular ordinary people realize we've

(04:36):
got a problem here. But for right now, the lure
of the Chinese market is still forcing all these corporations,
especially American corporations, to shut up in self center. And
that's like sort of the other side of that coin.
Josh Rogan of The Washington Post is on the line, Josh,
I wish I could remember who wrote the piece. I
read it over the weekend. It was going through some
of the challenges that the Chinese Communists are gonna face

(04:59):
going forward, and she's pain specifically as he tries to
recommunize China. Turns out the guys an actual communist and
that combined because that's gonna choke off the engine of
the Chinese rise to the extent that he gets it
to go forward. You combine that with demographic problems with
UH you know, some dissident problems a A, a ceasing

(05:22):
of the rapid rise of standards of living in China UM,
and that he really faces some serious headwinds in the
next five ten years. I realize it's tough to see
inside the Chinese Communist Party, But do you agree with
that or do you think he's pretty solid at this point? Yeah? No,
I I think that's right. I think two is gonna

(05:42):
be a very tough year, fugiating thing if you think
about it, because he's gonna get his coronation UH to be,
to get his third term, to make himself the emperor,
to make himself bizarre. At the end of the year,
it comes to November at the party conference, so he
really can't afford to mess up from now until November.
So he isn't a tough ut for this immediate near term. Now,

(06:03):
the biggest problem he has is that he's got the
zero COVID policy, which seemed like a good idea with Delta,
it is actually a terrible idea when it comes to
Omicron because they can't open up their economy. So how
are they supposed to recover if everyone's lockdown forever because
they don't want even one case of COVID, which is insane.
And then if he opens up, he's gonna have a
billion people who are gonna get O Macron in two weeks.

(06:23):
That's also gonna be a problem. So there, he's got
a lot of troubles. But what that says to me
is that he's actually even more dangerous because he's actually
got more incentive to do do so, you know, to consolidate power,
to crack down on his rivals, to murder anyone who
stands in his way, and of course that's what he's doing.
So let's talk a little bit about the Biden administration

(06:44):
their China policy. I don't want to label you as anything.
You're a journalist and a writer. We can fairly be
labeled pretty hardcore China hawks around here, and we tend
to agree with you a lot. Um. I've been reasonably
impressed with the Biden administrations dance towards China. What do
you think about that? Yeah? No, I mean I've been
called hawf. I like to think I'm a realist, but

(07:06):
I guess everyone thinks they're a realist, right. I mean,
the bottom line is I believe that the Chinese Communist
Party is increasingly aggressive and repressive and expansionist and interfering
in our free and open societies, and we need to
do more. That's my view. That's what I wrote my
book about. Right, we need to do more to confront
this problem that we all have. And you know, the
Biden team came in. The people who are actually working

(07:27):
on this agree with that. That's the That's what I
wrote yesterday in the Washington Post that there's a team
of people inside the Biden administration who agree with that
that we need to do more. They don't they don't
like to be called Trump Light or whatever you name
you want to put on it, but the fact is
that they agree that the China problem is getting worse. Okay,
The problem is they don't run everything, and they don't
run like the West Wing, and they don't run the

(07:48):
Treasury Department that are run the Commerce Department, and it's
too slow. So I feel like it's like a you know,
Trump actually did something really good that he doesn't get
credit for, which is he changed our approach to China
in a fundamental way, and that by an administration agrees
with that. They looked at the same set of facts
that came to the same set of conclusions. So they're
keeping that direction. They're just going too slow. So final question,

(08:11):
and you can go on as long as you like
on this topic. Because as I was boring friends to
death at the dinner the other night, I said, the
story of the next fifty years is the United States
of America. Heroin addict. If you will giving up the
China habit. Commercially, our corporations are economy, are cheap underwear

(08:31):
at Walmart, etcetera. Because unless there's a serious change in
Chinese leadership and culture, which I think is highly unlikely,
we are going to slowly realize that we are in
We are enslaved to a brutal, cruel drug dealer. Now,
if you accept that metaphor at all, are we at
the like I gotta stop doing drug state? Are we

(08:52):
starting our rehab? Are we are we barely even aware
we have a problem? Where are we? You know? That's
the interest brain there, Joe. You know, I like to
think the Chinese. I like to think of the Chinese
Communist Party as a mafia organization okay, because it operates
like one. It's basically a big extortion ring. If they
go around the world and they say the countries, hey,

(09:12):
nice country got the would be a shame or something
happened to it. Okay, pay up, and that's what they do,
and they do that inside China. To now, what we
are is we are the mafia organizations, lawyers and financers
and accountants and business partners, and we are pumping money
and technology and know how into this system which they
are of course using to advance their criminal enterprise, which

(09:35):
in the end is in dat us, which in the
in the end means us harm. Okay. And in nineteen
seventy two, when the idea was that China could be
part of our system and if we just gave them
all the money and took all their money and integrated
them as much as possible, that they would company like us,
that they would turn into us. That was the idea
in nineteen seventy two. Two, that doesn't make any sense.

(09:55):
We just have to see them for what they are.
It doesn't mean we have to go to war, doesn't
mean we have to decouple all the way. But we
have to realize that we're dealing with a criminal organization.
It's like if the Gambinos, you know, ran a country
and it was the richest country in the world. That's
what it is. So what that says to me is
that we have to treat it like a law enforcement problem,
which means we have to punish the people who are

(10:16):
helping the drug deals. Okay, the drug dealers, lawyers, the
drug dealers, accountants, and they are dealing drugs because they
are actually sending tons offense at all into our country.
And that's just one of the problems right. More broadly,
we just have to stop helping our adversary build the
machine that's pointed at us, because it's crazy, okay. And
the reason that Americans are doing that is because they're

(10:38):
getting paid on both sides of the Pacific. So until
we change those incentives, we're not going to change our
corporations and our Wall Street firms, and our schools and
our Hollywood theaters who are all seeing it as better
for them to work with our enemy instead of protecting
us from our enemy. And that's the big change that
has to happen, right. And you have a better metaphor
than I do, uh that I love the mob betaphor,

(10:59):
because they don't just want to sell drugs, they want
to own everything. They want to own all the businesses,
and own all the towns and own all the people. Uh,
you know, final thought and reading your stuff in Michael
Pillsbury's hundred Dear Marathon and stuff like I've been, I've
become aware of and this is an illustration of how
dopey and naive Americans can be. From ninety two to recently,

(11:21):
um that deception is is celebrated in China. Fooling your
adversary into thinking you're not an adversary, feigning weakness, feigning friendship.
Those are not seen as despicable, they're they're enshrined in
some of the greatest values in Chinese society, the thirty

(11:42):
six Strategies, which is an ancient text, and the rest
of it. Who knew, you know, Joe. I don't think
any one culture or anyone's society as the cornerstone on deception,
you know what I mean. I think it's part of diplomacy.
It's part and I wouldn't want to single out China
in society is being responsed because again, you wouldn't blame
the Chinese people. The Italian people for the mafia, right,

(12:04):
So you wouldn't blame the Chinese people for the CCP. Right.
The CCP is a unique thing. And it's not really
about Chinese culture. It's not really about the Chinese nation.
It's about this party, which is a criminal organization in
and of itself, and that's the problem. And you know,
we have to focus on that, okay. And you know
what I say to that is like, yeah, of course
they don't want us to focus on that. That's what

(12:25):
That's how they're different from Putin. Putin wants everyone to
focus on putin Jing thing, wants everyone to focus on
anything but jing Ping because in order for them to
build a machine that's pointed at us, we need to
be looking the other way. So that's that is of
course a forum of deception. But I don't blame China.
I blame the c yeah, and fair enough. And and
it's funny because I don't see it in moral terms.

(12:46):
I see it in strategic terms. Um. And And if
it came off as like a moral judgment, I didn't
mean it that way because I'm just aware of negotiating
styles across different cultures are very different. Um. If you're
negotiating with somebody from Iran, say a Persian person is
sometimes they refer to themselves. They have a different view
of honesty and call it cleverness than some other cultures do.

(13:07):
But I'm afraid we're crazy up against a break, Josh
Rogan to The Washington Post. Josh, it's always stimulating. Thanks
so much for the time. We appreciate it. Never on
any time, and I hope we can talk against soon. Josh,
the author of Chaos under Heaven Trump she in the
Battle for the twenty one Century Great Book