Transcription
So, you um, I also want to mention one other thing that you're involved in, uh, which is an amazing, brilliant podcast with uh Jane Perlez. Where's Jane? I know she's here. There she is, right there.
So, Jane, as most of you I'm sure know, is the legendary foreign correspondent. We knew each other, worked together. She caused me all sorts of trouble when I was uh trying to write about China and she was uh too good at it. So, uh New York Times, very long time. New York Times and her and Rana have a a brilliant um podcast on US-China Face-Off. Um it's uh so it's great.
Um I wanted to start by asking you about the role that history plays for Xi Jinping today in modern China. What what how important is history and the use of history uh for Xi Jinping and and how do you think he sort of views his place in history?
Absolutely, Jamil. Well, first of all, can I just very briefly say thank you so much for hosting today this session and thank you, Duncan, Lionel, Kevin, Jingchan, and everyone who's been involved in bringing together this wonderful grouping. It's a pleasure to be here. The only thing I'm slightly trepidatious about is your rather overly generous introduction, so I shall have to try and live up to uh to that.
Um I'm really glad you brought up the question of um how history, and particularly modern history, is shaping the thinking of Xi Jinping and the leadership of China because as we'd address a whole variety of topics today that are going to be on the more contemporary side, I think it's worth remembering that that historical background is never absent from the way in which top leaders are thinking in China. So, let me try and give just very quick abstract uh sorry, uh concrete, not abstract, concrete examples of ways in which I think it matters.
One comes to mind just last year, actually, when I was in Beijing just ahead of people remember the big military parade uh at the beginning of September of uh 2025. And I went over to actually one of my favorite spots, the um Museum of the War of Resistance against Japan, as it's rather untactfully known in China. In other words, the Second World War Museum, which is at the Marco Polo Bridge, just outside the uh the kind of main body of uh of Beijing. It's the place where World War II between China and Japan broke out back in 1937. It's now the site of a huge memorial museum with a lot of historical displays.
But, one of the things that I thought was most interesting was the new display pavilion, which um had been built just that year for the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. And that was very much, you know, Xi Jinping's personal doing, I uh I strongly suspect from what I I gathered there. Being China, an entire huge new pavilion, many times the size of this room, had been built in 6 months. So, you know, they did it at high speed. But, the content of the pavilion was the really interesting thing.
Because what they have said, and if you're going to Beijing, do take time to go and see it today, it's still very much there, I think, is to say that China suffered through 8 years of World War II, you know, 8 to 10 million deaths, you know, hundreds of millions of refugees, a horrific experience, and one that as a historian I have found valuable and moving to uh to write about, and have engaged with many Chinese colleagues, Japanese colleagues, too, over the years about it. But, the lesson that they were seeking to draw in this 80th anniversary pavilion was that this led to China's presence as one of the founding members of the United Nations, a P5 permanent five Security Council member, the top five top table of diplomacy. And that was a direct product of China's sacrifices during World War II.
In other words, the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping himself, I'm sure, is very much putting forward a message that's relevant not to the 1930s, but to the 2020s, which is that in a turbulent world, in which at least some major powers are perhaps seeking to overturn the world order, the message that they want to put forward is that China is a country that is going to be a solid player in international society just as in 1945 it was part of that founding group that made up the United Nations which still has relevance today.
One tiny note I should add at the end there Jamil which is as a historian I noted that one particular historical element of accuracy is missing from that pavilion or very downplay. The fact that of course it wasn't the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman Mao that signed off on that membership of the UN back in April 1945 in San Francisco. It was of course the predecessor Guomindang Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek. And that they get round by having museum captions saying that it was quotes China's representatives Jungo the daibiao who actually signed the the the form therefore keeping both a preservation of the Communist Party's leading role in terms of the wider history by omission if not necessarily deliberate commission at at the same time as paying tribute to that part of history. That's very much the the the value.
>> the one China principle cuz they were Chiang Kai-shek was in Taiwan by that point.
>> And he was very much in Taiwan and of course never never Oh no he wasn't in actually he was still in the mainland in 1945 I would say but he was about to take a what I think President Trump would call a long excursion to Taiwan which ended up being fairly long-term.
>> Um can I ask you about Xi himself? So uh when I was working as a journalist I in in Beijing I would often hear sort of political Communist Party elites they would refer to uh Jiang Zemin as the as the you know this emperor or that emperor. So which emperor do you think Xi Jinping sees himself as?
Very good question on this. Well I'm going to say that first of all I think that one of the things that marks off Xi Jinping very very differently from Mao and you know the early uh top Communist leaders is that unlike them unlike them they rejected much of China's traditional imperial past they said it was time for a radical break with the past. Xi Jinping has been notable in embracing much of the imperial past and China's long civilizational history. So, I think although he's never mentioned any particular emperor in connection with his own name, if you mention some of the big figures of the Qing Dynasty, Kangxi, Qianlong, other kind of makers of the empire, maybe he wouldn't be too hurt by by that.
But I would say that actually there's another phrasing and I'm able to actually bring up if I may um the Asia Society uh Policy Institute here is uh uh relevant as part of that. Um two of your brilliant researchers recently had an article in Foreign Affairs about a historical idea that's very much shaping the Communist Party under Xi Jinping today. The idea of zuo geming, self-revolution. I think that that historical element, perhaps even more than the emperors, is key to where Xi Jinping is going at moment at the moment in terms of the of the party. In other words, the idea of drawing on China's revolutionary past, the idea that it is still a Marxist-Leninist society and that he, as he calls himself, is a 21st century Marxist. He wants to reinvent that to us, perhaps in the West somewhat backward-looking uh philosophy, as a forward-looking idea. So, drawing on that revolutionary past today, I think is one of the things that shapes Xi much more even than casting himself as an emperor, although both of those are in the mix.
>> Can I um ask you, when we look back maybe in 50 years, historians in 50 years, how will they view Xi Jinping's place in in modern China? Will he be seen as the sort of you know, the most powerful We We as journalists often use this uh shorthand, most powerful since Mao. Uh do you think that in in the you know, wider context, how will we view him?
Absolutely. Well, I should just add one very quick cautionary note of caution in answering the question, which is that at most times the 20th century, if you took where we are now and said predict 50 years into the future, you'd almost certainly get it wrong. In 1949, when Mao took over power, you would not have said in 50 years from now, your communist successor Deng Xiaoping will be leading the biggest capitalist revolution in world history inside a socialist society. So, we have to be wary of any sorts of predictions.
Having said that, I think that we can also see trends in the 12 13 years that uh Xi Jinping has been in power that I think are transformative and are likely to shape China for decades to uh to come. I think he will be seen as a leader who essentially consolidated the rule of the party. In other words, someone who stepped away from where his two immediate predecessors, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, seemed to be going maybe 15 20 years ago. The idea that there would be a party and a state, a communist party and a Chinese state, and although they would be closely related and there would be no rival parties allowed, there would be a different sort of structure there. Xi Jinping has made it very clear that's not where he's going at all. The two things are, as he says, absolutely bound up with each other, east, west, north, south, as he uh as he says.
And I think as we see the acceleration of that trend, looking at a party state, which the party will argue right now, and Xi Jinping will push this line I think for, you know, many years uh to uh to come as he as he stays on top, that that's a system that gets things done. In other words, the time when the wider world, and again the phrase that he and Vladimir Putin have have used, that there are changes going on not seen in a hundred years, that China's party state system is able in the fields of technology, in the fields of energy transition, in the fields of global governance, to find new ways to actually talk about how your domestic governance can help to inform your international governance. I think one of the greatest challenges to the liberal world, which, you know, most of us live in at the moment, is to see if we have a plausible answer to that real change in the way in which I think she wants China to be a power in the world.
>> So, um, you and I were at a conference 2 weeks ago, I think, in Helsinki, and
>> We spent too much time having fun, Jemila. It's very bad.
>> time together, Anna. It's uh yeah. Um, the question you were asked at that conference, which I want to ask you again, is uh and it sort of draws on what you've just said, is China winning? I mean, just this idea that we've got as as um Dr. Rudd was saying, you know, you have this uh this battle between the US and China on many topics. Um, can we Can we And, you know, at times it looks like China is winning. So, what's your What's your take on it?
I think that in narrative terms right now, there are many areas in which China seems much more sure-footed and confident in the message that it's putting forward. And since that could obviously range very widely, and we have limited time and a lot of things to get through, let me focus in on one topic, because I think it's going to flag into what we do later in the day in this in this room. Right now, it seems to me that one of the biggest geo-economic stories, going to pick up on one of Dr. Rudd's some phrasings there, geo-economic story that's going to underpin the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years in terms of technology, and particularly in terms of artificial intelligence, is the provision of energy.
Until about a year and a half ago, the US and the Western world, perhaps more broadly, and China, were rivals in a narrative about who was going to be able to provide the kind of energy that's needed to underpin the massive revolution that AI is bringing, along with managing climate change. Because, of course, the provision of large amounts of energy by fossil fuels, even assuming it could be done, is going to exacerbate climate change. The United States, for its own reasons, has essentially moved away from that story, uh very much no longer the US of the Biden era green new deal. China, in contrast, is leaning into it big time.
Many of you will know the phrase "shēngtài wénmíng", uh ecological civilization, which is being used domestically in China as a shorthand for the idea that, of course, you go for green energy, of course, it helps to underpin this new AI-driven uh economy and the technology that goes with it, but also a narrative, a moral narrative about China putting forward the message that it is actually the power that will provide the green transition that will both let middle-class uh consumers in emerging economies in South America, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa grow their economies with Chinese infrastructural help. In contrast, of course, they will say with the United States. Now, of course, we now know that we still know that China is actually one of the four biggest fossil fuel polluters in the world as well. That doesn't make it as part of the ecological uh civilization story, but if you're asking me who's winning on narrative, then that energy story, I think, is a really important part of it.
>> The question that we often, I'm sure, get you and I definitely get asked all the time and was alluded to uh by by Dr. Rudd again, um the question of Taiwan.
>> Mhm.
>> Give me a straight answer. How likely
>> else does.
>> How likely is it uh that China will invade, a proper military invasion, in the next 3 to 5 2 to 5 years?
Oh, I can give you a straight answer to that, extremely unlikely. Um the reasons for that, I think, are um at the moment fairly clear, although I refer you to my earlier comment about all predictions being wrong. But, having said that, first of all, even though China now has the capacity or it's coming up to the capacity to be able, technically, to launch that kind of invasion. Certainly, the aim It is said that Xi Jinping uh wants to have the the by 2027. Having the capacity to do something and actually being able to pull it off is a very different sort of beast. And I think just to summarize in one sentence, many people would say that the kind of amphibious campaign that you would need to actually have a full-scale military naval invasion of the island of Taiwan would make D-Day, Iwo Jima, Inchon, these famous amphibious operations look, you know, like child's play. So, I think that's unlikely.
The flip side is that I think that China is very unlikely to want to push on that military option or even some of the things like gray zones, naval blockades that have been talked about. Because right now, it's got much more hopes that the 2028 Taiwan presidential election may well be an opportunity to turn the narrative in Taiwan's domestic politics on its head. Johnny Wang, the leader of the opposition KMT, technically I suppose the long-term successor of Chiang Kai-shek who we who we mentioned, um has visited Xi Jinping had photo opportunities with him, you know, goes to the mainland. That in and of itself is an interesting if slightly unusual thing for a major Taiwanese leader to do in terms of domestic politics. Meanwhile, Taiwan politics is becoming increasingly polarized between the DPP and KMT. I think China sees opportunities there through social media and other means to try and exacerbate that division. In other words, that combined with the possibility of economic coercion gives China in its own mind, I think, many tools to try and persuade Taiwan that it needs to do a deal.
I think the key factor is the attitude of the United States. If the United States stays steady in terms of helping Taiwan to defend itself, which has been its traditional position despite a certain amount of robust language from the current administration, remains broadly the case that I think nonetheless Taiwan still has I think a capacity to push back against those efforts. If that changes, then I think that we may see the democratic politics of Taiwan turn more in the direction of wondering what the next stage may be. But none of that involves a military operation.
>> So, one of the more compelling arguments I've heard is that the most dangerous thing that could happen in Taiwan would be the KMT winning uh because Beijing, Xi Jinping, the Communist Party have put a huge amount of expectation on that outcome. And the probability is that a KMT win does not actually mean integration or greater integration. So, once that sort of last hope, if you like, of the of the sort of political process, KMT gets in and then disappoints Beijing, that makes it actually more likely for uh for an invasion, a military invasion. But short answer, what do you think? Do you agree or disagree?
Um well, I think since we're in Paris, I will use a phrase that I think was originally Marshall Foch or something, but anyway, comme le rien ne dure comme le provisoire. Nothing lasts as long as the provisional. And I think that we would see that even if there were discussions between mainland and Taiwan, which the KMT or the DPP, I suppose, politically might be in a position to do in a way that the DPP might not be able to in the same way, they could last for an awful long time. I think the answer I'd give you in terms of why I don't think it's necessarily a crisis situation is that Taiwan is not the only thing that matters for mainland China and for its leadership. And by the way, I mean not just Xi Jinping, but if you think about the wider body of the party, of course there is that long-term goal to try and get back Taiwan. But of course, they've been quite canny about not putting a date on that particular aspiration. But they also want to revive the economy. They also want to make China the biggest techno power in the world in AI, biotech, um 5G, all these areas. All of those aspirations demand a calm Asia Indo-Pacific region that enables China's supply chains, its trade partners, its broader region to feel that business is going to be smooth and operate in a way that will enable people to be confident about investing. Right now, of course, that's one of the fears in the Middle East about what's happening with the US presence there. I think China is relatively unlikely to essentially torpedo that actually very, very difficult capacity for an authoritarian state to create a sense of confidence in the region by essentially stimulating a conflict. So, Taiwan doesn't stand on its own as a factor. There is a context.
>> Fair, fair. Um so, one story that is um and I'm looking at Eleanor Olcott, who is based in Beijing for the Financial Times, uh former colleague. Um uh one of the stories that's really the most difficult to cover is the Chinese military. I mean, basically impossible to cover. And um so, I'm I feel very sorry for you, Eleanor, who we're speaking later. Um the the story of this ferocious purge of the military, from what we can see, what do you think is behind this? Um why do you think I mean, I think it's something like Xi Jinping has gotten rid of five of the seven members of the Central Military Commission. The only one left is the guy who carried out the purge. And if I was in his position, I'd be feeling somewhat nervous um at this point. The guy who just got rid of everyone else might
>> Particularly since I think his brief is actually for procurement, which is one of the areas for special corruption.
>> position to be in. So, um Xi Jinping has gotten rid of everyone except one person on and himself on the committee, the Central Military Commission. Um and dozens, if not hundreds, of other senior officers all being purged. What is this about? What is this What What was the rationale? And And what does it mean for China's war-fighting capabilities?
Absolutely. Well, first of all, shout out to Eleanor Olcott, who does fantastic reporting from Beijing, which we all benefit from. Despite your strictures there, tremendous amount that I've learned from her reporting.
Um I think the clear answer, well, there there is no clear answer, but the answers that we have, Jamil, to an absolutely fascinating question, um sit in a couple of categories. One is, first of all, the question of whether or not corruption in other parts of the Chinese system, which have really been very, very hard squeezed in the last 10 year 10 12 years of Xi Jinping through institutions such as the CDIC, the Central Discipline Inspection Commission, have, until more until quite recently, left the PLA relatively, not untouched, but not as hard squeezed as the civilian parts of the uh of the system. The PLA has always been uh a silo unto itself in many ways, you know, founded nearly 100 years ago in 1927. And by the way, I think that thinking about we mentioned history, thinking about the anniversary, the founding of what was then the Red Army after the Autumn Harvest Uprisings down in Jiangxi in 1927 next year, is an important landmark to think about because I would bet that Xi Jinping and others are going to want to use that anniversary in 2027 next year to make an awful lot of announcements about how 100 years on the People's Liberation Army, as it now is, has reinvented itself um as uh uh as well.
So, part of that I think is genuinely about rage when it came to finding out that um you know, that the stories go there that nuclear missile sites uh in northeast uh northwest China turned out to be essentially empty of equipment, filled with dirty water. Corruption had meant that they hadn't been properly uh fulfilled. The second story that goes out there is that uh Zhang Youxia, the uh most prominent of the generals to be purged, the only one who'd had some combat experience in Vietnam, of course, in '79, old, you know, kind of childhood friend of Xi Jinping, may have been trying to tell truth to power about issues including Taiwan. Again, this is extrapolation. I often think that many aspects of Chinese politics are a bit like black holes used to be for astronomers. You can't see the hole itself, but you can see the distortions in the space-time around the hole itself. And here, the fact that we've seen these purges is a sign that clearly something is not well in that situation. But in the end, I think the final thing that's worth saying is that Xi Jinping clearly has one overall aim, which is to make it clear that he dominates the party and no one else does. And I think that's probably as good an explanation as any for why these very prominent and very kind of strong purges are happening.
>> Great. We uh want to open it up for Q&A. Um we have uh questions coming on the screen and uh also I think if you really want to ask a question, you're um you're allowed to uh put up your hand and we'll bring you a a microphone if you'd like to ask Professor Mitter a question. Um if you don't, then I am very happy I've got 20 more. I can keep going. I could probably go all day.
>> Oh, we've got one right here.
>> Ah, right here. Yeah, please.
>> No one ever asked the first question. It's good.
>> Hi, Adam Tooze from Columbia. Lovely to see you. And then
>> you.
>> Jamil. One of the things I find really fascinating about Xi Jinping and his approach to history is this uh line on historical nihilism.
>> Mhm.
>> And the role that plays in the most unappetizing element perhaps of Xi Jinping's ideology from Western point of view, which is his total refusal to disown the violent past of the Communist Party and the tradition he comes from. In fact, his emphatic embrace of it. And I I'd love to get your your views on that specifically cuz I agree with you that I think he sees himself much more as a man of the party than as a second second coming of an emperor.
>> Yes. Yeah, thank you Adam and great to have the great historian Adam too here to to give us pretty perspective on these questions.
Um I would say that that is I think probably the single most underestimated element of Xi Jinping's makeup in terms of the wide away in which he thinks about governance. And that is his relationship, which is very organic to the history of the Chinese Communist Party. Now, you mentioned this term historical nihilism, which is a kind of interesting term of art that basically means narratives about the history of the Chinese Communist Party.
Um which go against official versions of what is the correct understanding. You mentioned the military purges just now Juviel. It's worth noting that in the PLA daily, there have been references to past Communist leaders who basically it's said try to undermine Mao in the 1930s and 40s and you know, essentially although it hasn't been explicitly linked to Jang Youxia, the one who was purged, it's clear that mentioning those figures from 100 years ago it's not an accident on their on their part.
I think it's worth noting that there's one other element just um you know, to to pick on um Adam's excellent point that again tends to be underestimated that when Xi Jinping thinks about the correct version of Communist Party's history the Communist Party history, he also draws very heavily on the Soviet experience in particular and also the kind of Russian and Soviet literature that shaped his father, Xi Zhongxun. Many people here will know an outstanding book by Joseph Torigian of the Hoover Institution called The Party's Interest Come First, which is actually about Xi Jinping's dad, but has lots of great stories actually about the young Xi Jinping as well. And Xi Jinping has claimed that one of his favorite novels is the novel What Is to Be Done, which was a title used more famously by Lenin as a policy document, but was originally a novel by novelist called Nikolai Chernyshevsky. And Xi Jinping has said that he modeled himself on one of the characters in that book, a guy called Rakhmetov, who who used to sleep on a bed of nails to harden himself. And Xi Jinping has noted rather wryly to a group of Russian scholars, "I never actually slept on a bed of nails myself," he said, "but I used to sort of go out in rainstorms without a proper coat on to try and, you know, do the same sort of self-hardening of the body."
So, that element of kind of communist history from the Chinese side, the Soviet side, and also a kind of social Darwinism about the kind of individual body and the body politic needing to be hard and resistant and resilient. These are all parts of the story that he tells within China, within that actual party structure, which doesn't tend to figure in the international discourse, and I think needs to be better understood.
>> We're pretty much out of time. I want
>> another question from the audience actually for you. Is it in brief and came in Sorry, we're having French tech issues, so apologies about that. A question for you, Professor, is what kind of missiles does China fire recently, range, etc.? To whom was it intended? And should France be worried? For example, French territories in the South Pacific.
>> Talking about the missile on Monday. Fired by a submarine.
>> Indeed.
>> Towards my my homeland.
>> I'm sure deliberately aimed at the heart of Auckland, in fact. You know, Jamil, you know that you know that when you've knocked out New Zealand, then the world will follow.
>> New Zealand is the dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica, as Ken Henry Kissinger said.
>> Well, well, quite so. I mean, I think that on this, as so many other things, it's worth noting that I China is currently in a situation where it's not, I think, seeking to elevate the level of global conflict. It's very happy, I suspect, that much of the US and indeed part of the Western world is currently tied up in the Middle East and is likely to be there, judging by this morning's headlines, for quite some time. On the other hand, it also wants to make it clear that it reserves the right to use a whole variety of different uh capabilities that it has in its wider portfolio.
So, in a sense, I would regard the missile being fired as a sort of uh weapon-based uh corollary or uh an analog to the critical mineral um uh uh sales either bans or restrictions. In other words, just a series of sort of small but significant reminders that China isn't about to, you know, do anything uh confrontational tomorrow morning or even even next week. But, it has the capacity to cut off mineral supplies. It has the capacity to fire missiles. It has the capacity, if it wants to, to actually do significant uh damage to aspects of the global economy more broadly defined, all of the things that again Dr. Rudd was talking about uh earlier earlier on. And so, in that sense, I would say that France, specifically in the Southern Pacific, doesn't probably have anything very immediate to worry about. But, think of this as a kind of geopolitical throat-clearing by China to remind people that if it wants to, it could actually sneeze extremely hard. I I'll I'll I'll stop the uh lung-based metaphors at that point, I think, uh Jamil.
>> Okay, um we've got to wrap it up, but I have one last question. Very, very quick. What is the biggest misconception we have about China today? Quickly.
>> Okay. A very a very quick one in that case. I would say the idea, which existed actually in the Western political community and the business community for a very long time, that ideology doesn't matter in China. That it mattered in the days of Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution and Red Guards and all that. But, really since then, China's been in a word that you hear over and over again, it will turn out to be a pre-show, pragmatic. Yes, China, of course, is pragmatic. Well, I'd like to know which country is not pragmatic. Some people say France, but I'm sure that couldn't be couldn't be true. But, understanding that when China talks about reviving its pre-modern philosophical past through Confucianism, when it talks about Marxism-Leninism, when it talks about, you know, geopolitical changes, it is serious, and it has its own ideological framing to interpret that. And while it has many elements, liberalism is almost certainly not part of it. That is a very important framing for everything we do, whether it's investing in China to studying China to learning about how geopolitical negotiation needs to go on. And I think my two or three word version of that gentleman would be learn Chinese history.
>> Very good. Thank you so much, Rana. Wonderful to see.