00:00President Trump was due to visit President Xi in China, but he postponed that visit because of the war in
00:05Iran,
00:06something that further complicates a relationship that was already complicated.
00:10Nicholas Burns served as U.S. ambassador to China.
00:13That capped a distinguished diplomatic career in which he was undersecretary of state, as well as ambassador to Greece and
00:19to NATO.
00:19He is now professor at Harvard's Kennedy School.
00:23Ambassador Burns, there was supposed to be a summit coming up in China between President Xi and President Trump.
00:29It got postponed because of the Iran war.
00:31Give us your perspective on what role the Iran war plays in U.S.-China relations.
00:37It's had a decisive impact on the U.S.-China relationship this winter and spring because, of course,
00:43China's fundamentally engaged economically in Iran, importing 1.3 million barrels a day on a discount that favors the Chinese.
00:50And the Chinese have major investments, in fact, greater investments in the Arab Gulf states than they do in Iran.
00:57So their interests have been fundamentally affected.
00:59And, of course, President Trump, I think, rightfully, sensibly took the view in the middle of a war,
01:05he couldn't go off to Beijing to stand beside Xi Jinping and have three days of summitry.
01:10He had to be at his desk running the war.
01:12So I understood the decision by President Trump and supported it.
01:16President Trump has called upon various nations to help, particularly with the Strait of Hormuz, including China.
01:22Is China picking sides in this?
01:25China is very much attached to Iran as a political ally.
01:28But I think we've seen the Chinese reaction over the last three or four weeks of this war
01:33that the Chinese care a lot more about the predictable supply of oil and gas coming out of the Strait
01:39of Hormuz
01:39because they're dependent to a very large extent on that flow of energy.
01:45And their investments in the United Arab Emirates, in Saudi Arabia, in Qatar, in Bahrain, in Kuwait,
01:51are far more substantial than what they had coming from Iran.
01:55So I think they're of two minds about this.
01:57They didn't want to see their political ally bludgeoned the way it has.
02:01But it's interesting, David, they haven't really lifted a finger to help politically and diplomatically Iran.
02:08They're much more focused on ending the Iranian missile attacks at the Gulf Arab oil and gas refineries.
02:15I think they want a quick end to the war itself.
02:18And one of the intriguing questions here is there's going to be an endgame.
02:24There's going to be an attempt to resolve this by diplomacy.
02:27Can China play a role in that?
02:29And I would say behind the scenes pushing the Iranians to an agreement.
02:33That would be, I think, the American hope that they might do that.
02:36So that is promising, potentially, if China were to play some role in that.
02:41Given history, has China done that in the past?
02:43Has it typically played that sort of behind-the-scenes role?
02:46It has not.
02:47It has in its own region.
02:49For instance, Myanmar, which is a neighboring border state.
02:52China is fundamentally involved in trying to steer the course of the civil war there.
02:56But the Chinese have not taken the step, as the United States has been doing now for seven or eight
03:02decades, of being a peacemaker and a leading diplomatic actor.
03:07I will say this.
03:08When I was in Beijing two years ago, Wong Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, presided over a ceremonial handshake.
03:15You may remember this, between the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers.
03:18And the Chinese then began to message me and kind of, in my face, say, we're a big power in
03:24the Middle East now.
03:25Well, they haven't been present in the negotiations to date.
03:29Over the last three or four weeks, it's been the United States and Israel and the Gulf Arabs being the
03:35major actors in this drama with Iran.
03:38So I think China, in a way, has taken a hit on its political credibility.
03:42If you combine their lack of action to support, effectively, Iran diplomatically, I never thought they would intervene militarily.
03:50And combine that with their silence, really, when the United States went into Venezuela in the early part of January,
03:56I think they look like a fickle friend to both the Iranians and also the Venezuelans.
04:03But there's another side of this coin. Xi Jinping has been positioning himself throughout this first year and a quarter
04:11of Donald Trump's second term in office.
04:13He says, and this is quite hypocritical, by the way, and you can see through it, but it has some
04:18resonance in the global south.
04:19We're the predictable country. We're the upholder of stability in the world, both economic and politically.
04:26We defend the United Nations charter, point, counterpoint in this duel that he and President Trump are having, a friendly
04:33duel in some respects, as to which leader is the most respected global leader now.
04:38The world is necessarily focused right now on Iran and what's going on with the war there, and will be
04:44until that's resolved some way.
04:45But there were a lot of expectations for this planned summit between President Xi and President Trump before that.
04:53Go back before the Iran war. What were the major issues between these two countries?
04:57Well, you know, it's interesting. Scott Besant, Secretary Besant, had taken the lead in preparing this summit for President Trump,
05:03which is a little bit unusual.
05:04Normally, in the last few decades, it would have been the Secretary of State or the National Security Advisor.
05:09And that tells you a lot. I think President Trump is seeking some degree of economic and financial stability with
05:16the Iranians after the wild roller coaster ride from Liberation Day last spring on.
05:22And what the two sides were working out, and I very much think this is a good idea, a truce
05:27in the tariff war.
05:28The tariffs won't change much, but there'll be a certainty that until the end of this calendar year in 2026,
05:35both countries will stay at their current levels.
05:37And that helps. It helps markets with predictability. It helps the global economy and the two individual economies.
05:44Second, a truce in the supply chain wars. So China would agree through the end of 2026, it's not going
05:51to withhold rare earth or rare earth magnets from the global market.
05:54The United States would agree it would not play the cards that it played in the supply chain wars with
06:00computer parts, airplane parts, that kind of thing.
06:02That's also, I think, positive. Third, the United States agricultural industry depends on exports to China.
06:11In fact, China is the largest export market in most years. One fifth of all of our agricultural exports go
06:17to that one market, China.
06:18And the Chinese, over the last couple of years, including when I was ambassador, in the last two years of
06:24my time there, 2023 and 2024, reduced significantly their purchases of American soybeans and sorghum and wheat and pork products.
06:34And that has a big negative impact on American agriculture.
06:38So President Trump, and again, I think this is a good idea, has been promoting the fact that we need
06:43to return to much higher purchases by the Chinese government.
06:47And then fentanyl, David, has been thrown into this as well. As you know, it's the leading cause of death
06:52in our society, Americans 18 to 49.
06:56And the majority of the precursor chemicals come from the Chinese black market, not from the government of China, but
07:01the black market.
07:02We made, I thought, significant inroads into this in the last year and a half of the Biden administration.
07:08I worked very closely with the Chinese government to try to reduce the sale, black market sale of this.
07:15And President Trump, I think, has done a good job keeping this alive as an issue.
07:19So those are four issues where I think when this summit is rescheduled, could turn out to be net positive
07:29for the economic relationship.
07:31And as recently as two years ago, we had a $750 billion two-way trade relationship in goods and services.
07:37This is a very substantial market for American companies.
07:40You know, we've talked a lot, David, about the war in Iran, which has been catastrophic in the short term
07:47for the global economy and energy flows.
07:49We talked about what's happening in Europe with Putin trying to cross the brightest red line, take over someone else's
07:56state.
07:57In the long term, there's a greater interest, China.
08:01China is out to outcompete the United States.
08:04China wants to overtake us militarily in the Indo-Pacific.
08:07They think that by putting a major state investments into AI, quantum computing, biotechnology, cyber technology, space technology, they will
08:18become the technological champion of the world in the 2030s and 40s and 50s.
08:24We simply can't let that happen.
08:26So we can't take our eye off the big challenge, which is we do need to pivot to the Indo
08:34-Pacific so that we can work with our allies, Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Australia, our partner India, to outcompete the
08:41Chinese.
08:42And I'm afraid that another Middle East war was not in our interest.
08:47And so that, to me, for future presidents, Republican and Democrat, for our kids, David, in my case, our grandchildren,
08:55we've got to keep our eye on the China competition.
08:58Thank you very much.
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