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00:04Xi Jinping and Donald Trump the leaders of the world's most powerful countries are locked in a
00:12high-stakes battle for global power and influence it's a fight that's threatened to explode since
00:20Trump first took office and tore up the diplomatic rulebook we can't continue to allow China to rape
00:28our country and that's what they're doing it's the greatest theft in the history of the world this
00:35is the story of how these two superpowers have become tangled in a struggle for economic and
00:41technological supremacy told by top US officials and Chinese academics who give the inside track
00:48from Beijing when the president's off the handle you don't know what's gonna happen in this episode
00:58a global pandemic rocks the US China relationship I think the president started to realize I'm not
01:04sure I can deal with these people one of America's most formidable figures provokes a storm you have
01:11to understand whether it's going to Tiananmen Square or going to Taiwan you cannot let somebody else decide
01:18where you're going and in a new era of strongman politics America's president sets out to show the
01:43world who's boss before he even took office Donald Trump gave a foretaste of how he'd navigate the choppy
01:51diplomatic waters around China and how he'd do it his way still in his New York headquarters the
01:59president-elect was receiving congratulatory calls when the calls come in they all get put on a callback
02:07list and then are answered in turn but there's a list of who's not supposed to be on the list
02:13and not
02:14supposed to be on the list was Taiwan I said we've not usually had the president of the United States
02:19had
02:19direct contact with the president of Taiwan president Trump's response was interesting he said they buy
02:25a lot of our stuff we buy a lot of their stuff we buy their chips and so he did
02:29take the congratulatory
02:30phone call just off the coast of China the island democracy of Taiwan was regarded by Beijing as a breakaway
02:40province they wanted back since establishing relations with communist China in 1979 Washington had refused
02:49to recognize Taiwan's independence to avoid antagonizing Beijing the Taiwanese president and her team gathered for
02:58the call with Trump Taiwan has been so much isolated on the diplomatic front so someone who is going to
03:12be
03:12important is willing to talk to you certainly we welcome the opportunity the call itself was the biggest
03:20diplomatic overture to Taiwan for generations then Trump went even further he offered to invite president
03:29Tsai to visit him in the White House she didn't even respond to to the very kind of offer because
03:39she knew it
03:41won't happen I think the president-elect obviously did not have much background knowledge of the cross-street
04:00relationship well it's quite a shock I would say unprecedented because that would mean you know the
04:07president-elect is recognizing Taiwan's status it creates opportunities for the
04:20Taiwan separatists to misuse this phone call as if for example they can really achieve the
04:27so-called independence of Taiwan China's top diplomat young Jeter was immediately dispatched to New York
04:39we were in Jared Kushner's family real estate building in New York on Fifth Avenue and it was a group
04:49of folks
04:50from the Trump campaign and then a delegation from from China they all pulled out their binders and in
04:55very Chinese bureaucrat fashion they all turned to the same page and young Jeter begins reading his
05:03prepared talking points no pause no break no room for dialogue it's just this is my laundry list of talking
05:12points and I'm going to get through as many of them as I possibly can they go through what they
05:17refer to as their core
05:19interests what that meant was these are our non-negotiable demands and it usually started with Taiwan and ended with
05:26Taiwan
05:26they tried to describe their core interests or the red line if it's really the case that U.S. president
05:35-elect
05:36supported Taiwan independence it's too dangerous it's too risky because China will react in very radical way
05:47the message seemed to land for the next three years Trump had no further contact with president
05:55Tsai and largely avoided the Taiwan issue as he did with sensitive topics like Hong Kong and human rights
06:04trade was going to be his priority with China he'd be in the Oval Office sitting behind the Resolute
06:12desk which is a very big desk and he'd take out one of his sharpie pens and he'd point to
06:18the tip
06:18and he'd say see that that's Taiwan then he'd say see this desk that's China that tells you everything
06:26about his view of the relative importance of Taiwan and China three years into office Trump was signing off
06:41a major trade deal with China's vice premier not a bad start to an election year nobody's ever seen
06:49anything like it this is the biggest deal there is anywhere in the world by far but within weeks
06:56everything would change in the early days of this strange new virus president Trump picked up the phone
07:08and called Xi Jinping to offer assistance to see whether Beijing would agree to allow officials to
07:15come in and see how they could help and uh Xi Jinping clearly pretty much just didn't directly answer he
07:24was
07:24he was saying no by by not saying yes and what's more Xi Jinping really tried to persuade President Trump
07:32that this new virus was no big deal well it was only a month or so later that the U
07:41.S. economy contracted by about 33 percent
07:59the ink wasn't dry on a great trade deal and all of a sudden the plague comes in from China
08:05we're not happy about it
08:07I remember in the summer of 2020 President Trump telling me that if he did a hundred trade deals
08:13with China like the one that he'd completed earlier that year it still wouldn't make up for the losses
08:20that COVID pandemic had inflicted on the United States I think the president started to realize
08:26I'm not sure I can deal with these people I'm not sure there's anything that Xi Jinping is willing
08:32to do when he is so focused on hiding his complicity in this horrific outbreak they call it Corona it
08:40sounds like a beautiful seaside island in Italy no it's not Corona it's called the China Plague
08:48when Trump is out of control blaming China using this ridiculous language Kung flu and so on so this is
08:57how the relationship even become worse worse and worse the U.S. side accused basically claimed that
09:04the virus was from China's you know lab in Wuhan we were very angry about that then Chinese that began
09:12to say maybe that's from the U.S. we began to throw mud to each other very unfortunately amidst the
09:23mudslinging for many in America there was little doubt that this was a virus that came from China which
09:29Beijing had sought to cover up I think COVID in so many ways showed you know unfortunately the hostile
09:38and uncooperative nature of the Chinese Communist Party and its system so President Trump gave us
09:44guidance to move out on a wide range of of actions to impose costs on Beijing high on the agenda
10:00for
10:00Trump's team was Taiwan where tension was growing as Xi Jinping instructed his military to ramp up drills
10:21around the island having played down the issue of Taiwan for three years Trump now gave the green light
10:27for a multi-billion dollar arms sale to the Taiwanese government the purpose to purchase weapons or is to defend
10:38ourselves President Xi Jinping he is warning us he is threatening us that he is there this is very scary
10:51and they are getting more and more aggressive arming Taiwan wasn't an entirely selfless act the island now
11:02produced 90 percent of America's supply of advanced semiconductor chips vital components in everything
11:09from smartphones to electric cars to the latest military technology most of these chips were designed in the U.S.
11:19If China were to follow through on the kinds of threats that Xi Jinping has been making
11:24and open a war over Taiwan the threat that it could bring about a global catastrophe and economic
11:32depression because of Taiwan's outsized role in the semiconductor economy is very acute and very serious
11:44Taiwan was just one battleground as America and China race to dominate technologies of the future
11:53another was the telecoms giant Huawei a key part of Xi Jinping's vision for China to become a high-tech
12:01powerhouse it was winning contracts around the world to install new 5g networks but the Americans had
12:09decried Huawei as a security threat and wanted their allies to join them in restricting the company
12:16just before COVID really started ripping the president decided to give Prime Minister Boris Johnson a call
12:23the president was very adamant that we should get rid of Huawei when I say well where's the brilliant
12:32American solution it's all very well getting rid of Chinese technology from you know highways and
12:40byways but where's where's the alternative I remember thinking that it was a bit rich that we were being
12:48told that we had to dispense with Huawei when as far as I could see America had no alternative there
12:56weren't
12:56alternatives that could operate at the same scale it was absolutely clear that this would slow down the rollout of
13:01that important communications capability it would be expensive to do so our technical experts were
13:10clear that they can manage the security risks President Trump was irritated that Prime Minister Johnson wasn't
13:17shifting to see things his way and President Trump cut the call short but it actually led to a shift
13:25in our
13:26approach that ended up being quite effective Trump's new approach was rolled out in May 2020 a worldwide ban on
13:36the use of American technology to make chips for Huawei this would seriously jeopardize its ability to deliver
13:44systems to countries like the UK this was kind of an atomic option that expanded US reach but it was
13:55also quite
13:56effective it was after that that the UK Parliament voted in favor of ditching Huawei
14:03Huawei we saw other countries like almost like dominoes follow suit also in Trump's sights
14:12was Chinese owned social media platform TikTok which was rattling its American rivals like Instagram and
14:20Facebook it's almost impossible to exaggerate what a shock the eruption of TikTok was to the powers that be in
14:29in Silicon Valley because it exploded in scale Mark Zuckerberg would say to politicians in DC look they're
14:37taking our market share in our home market in the US and we're not able to compete for their customers
14:43in their
14:43home market in China this is just not a level playing field for Trump's team TikTok's popularity with American users
14:51also posed a growing threat to national security we're looking at TikTok we may be banning TikTok we may
14:59be doing some other things or a couple of options President Trump signed a measure that would have banned
15:06TikTok in doing so he spoke about TikTok's threat especially as a platform for data exploitation and also
15:15potentially as a platform for hostile subversive propaganda by Beijing Trump's stance on China was
15:25getting tougher in the run-up to election day his team called out Beijing over human rights and Hong Kong
15:31while the president kept up his own lines of attack China is desperate for Biden to win
15:39because if Biden wins China wins and if China wins China will own America they will own you and they're
15:48not playing
15:48again
15:52Trump's pitch to American voters didn't land the Democrats retook the White House
16:01China watch closely as the United States prepared for a peaceful transfer of power
16:08what they saw was anything but
16:17For
16:18ordinary Chinese there are a lot of coverage about the you know social unrest in the United States in recent
16:25years
16:25you know those mass shooting those you know like occupying wall street this is all the evidence of
16:34the you know sort of declining the u.s um january 6th is another evidence to that argument
16:43china's laughing they're loving this tonight in beijing they're high-fiving because they
16:49point to this to say this is proof the future belongs to china america's in decline
16:55you're coming into power washington is uh essentially almost an armed camp
17:03so here's my message to those beyond our borders america has been tested and we've come out
17:11stronger for it i came on my first day in an armored humvee so a tremendous sense of domestic
17:22upheaval and uncertainty it was a dark time china looked at the united states and saw a country
17:30in terminal decline and was determined to ultimately surpass the united states and president biden made
17:38that point to me emphatically in how we manage the relationship with china this is going to be one of
17:43the defining foreign policy issues of my time as president
17:51a decade earlier she and biden had got to know one another when they both served as vice presidents
17:59in beijing the return to the white house of a familiar face from a less turbulent period
18:05lifted hopes for a reset in the relationship
18:10we just had erratic presidencies lost his election and we have a kind of stable type
18:18biden is a known figure so um initially the hope is high
18:27three weeks after biden took office he had his first phone call with xi
18:35president biden felt it was really important that he explained to president xi why he was focused on
18:42human rights issues like china's horrific treatment of the uyghurs and he basically said to president
18:48xi you need to understand what it means to be an american president and an american citizen it is deep
18:55in
18:55our dna to care about human dignity and human rights and i wouldn't be representing my people
19:00or discharging my responsibility if i didn't speak out on these issues he mentioned the struggle of
19:07civil rights still being unresolved in the context of the black lives matter protests that were occurring
19:11at that time and he said look even we're reckoning with this issue the two leaders agreed that their
19:19teams would meet the following month the americans chose the venue
19:28i think when we imagine this we would be in some kind of cool alaskan hunting lodge and it would
19:37have
19:37sort of autumnal uh winter like views instead we ended up meeting in the captain cook hotel which is in
19:46downtown anchorage it's sort of the finest 1970s architecture one can imagine
19:55all of the murals of the hotel depicted white settlers coming in and basically taking over
20:04from alaskan natives so it was not um particularly politically correct either you need to think of the
20:11the chinese officials feeling i need to travel far from china i come to visit you and you host me
20:18in
20:19the place very very cold created a very cool atmosphere i don't think that's a good place for
20:27the two teams to talk to each other for the first time
20:33the meeting was opened by biden's secretary of state antony blinken if the chinese were expecting
20:40a friendly reception after their recent clashes with trump they were in for a surprise we'll discuss
20:47our deep concerns with actions by china including in xinjiang hong kong taiwan cyber attacks on the united
20:55states economic coercion toward our allies each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that
21:04maintains global stability the attitude very beginning shocked me because they start talking about
21:12the first two minutes we are talking to you it's so condescending
21:20we needed to show them not tell them but show them that they were just dead wrong thinking america
21:26was on its way down after the trump years and after covet from chinese perspective we already suffered from
21:31china very bad u.s policy to china for four years we wait for this reset for four years but
21:40to the country
21:41they criticize china in front of all the cameras i think chinese official has to fight back
21:53it's very important for us to have a sharp exchange before the camera
21:57director yang jiachir spent 17 minutes unprompted just blasting the united states
22:03this is a monologue i thought that it was possible we would
22:16have a sharp exchange before the cameras i did not expect that it would be a 20-minute exchange and
22:22this is all being done in mandarin without simultaneous translation only a few of us in
22:28the delegation spoke chinese and so i was one of them i started transcribing what he was saying and
22:33passing notes around to our delegation many of us were passing notes down the table among ourselves as
22:40we're listening to young go off for for quite some time i passed in a note to kurt that young
22:47was
22:47trying to really knock us off our game here you're sitting there and you realize that you know all the
22:55cameras are on and pointed this is exactly the kind of car crash they're coming to see and just precisely
23:04what we're seeking to avoid right we left that meeting we went back and i remember folks are
23:12saying wow is this the beginning of a new cold war once you define the international relation that way
23:21democracy versus autocracy from a chinese point of view there is nothing you can talk to them you
23:28at least it's impossible to talk meaningful things then i began to think maybe they are going to be
23:35worse than trump people gentlemen how is it going in there as it calms down we're seeing headlines about
23:43dust up in alaska brawl in alaska and so we realized when we get back to washington we're gonna have
23:51questions to answer and so we had to make a detour and find an open liquor store because we had
23:59to load
23:59up for the plane back the mounting tensions weren't just about human rights and opposing ideologies
24:09in washington concern was growing about the military threat posed by china
24:16i worry that they're accelerating their ambitions um to be to supplant the united states um and our
24:25leadership role in the rules-based international order which they've long said that they want to do
24:30that by 2050 i'm worried about them moving that target closer taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions
24:46before then since the end of the second world war the united states had been the pacific's dominant
24:53naval power but china had spent the past decade building warships at breakneck speed overtaking the
25:01us as the world's largest navy its fleet included increasingly advanced aircraft carriers
25:07and nuclear submarines the threat of conflict was alarming america's allies in the region
25:21one of the great challenges in the indo-pacific has been to alert our allies and partners that
25:28frankly this is now the center of the world this is where the greatest risks to global stability reside
25:35a conflict in the indo-pacific will leave the world unrecognizable in every quarter of it
25:42for morrison the key to standing up to china lay in transforming australia's navy
25:52for many many many many years australia had harbored a desire to have a nuclear submarine capability and and had
26:01asked and been denied in the past it is the most closely guarded military jewel in the world the united
26:10states nuclear propulsion technology for submarines
26:21the americans had only ever shared this technology once before
26:26over half a century earlier with the british
26:30now australia came up with a proposal a security pact that would see the us and the uk provide them
26:38with
26:38nuclear powered submarines the uk and australia should be building a new submarine for a long
26:45time to come the australians will be buying american boats and so it's it's a good deal for america it's
26:51a good deal for australia too it's good for it's good for the uk because we will we will be
26:54making stuff
26:57when britain hosted that year's g7 it was a chance to pitch it to biden directly
27:04this was going to be the first opportunity in person for president biden to see the two other
27:10leaders this is a huge strategic initiative almost like a strategic marriage and you got to have
27:18the principles ultimately look one another in the eye and say do we want to do this but there was
27:26a
27:26problem the australians already had a contract in place with france to build less powerful diesel
27:33submarines a contract they were now proposing to break
27:39i had to get scott morrison and joe biden into a room together with me to do this deal without
27:50emmanuel noticing what was going on
27:59like we had some cunning maneuver i think we did it just after the red arrows had flown overhead
28:06and everybody was going to be down on the beach having a beer or something
28:11somehow we we we got away with it the australians and the british were on board
28:16the u.s president needed to be convinced president biden was concerned about the non-proliferation
28:25implications having a country particularly like australia which had such a pristine non-proliferation
28:30record now end up being a steward of highly enriched uranium what would be the knock-on effects of that
28:36i think it'd be fair to say that um both the australian delegation and the british delegation were a
28:44that we had only shared this technology once in 1957 1958 with the brits so like coming up on 65
28:53years
28:54and other countries that asked we'd always said no i was like you know a a year 12 student swatting
29:01for my finals um all that day and when i walked in the room i was ready to go and
29:07boris said good
29:08to everyone and then and handed it over to me prime minister morrison gave a an a-plus laydown
29:15of what australia was prepared to bring to the table he said this is the time for us to take
29:20the
29:21next step the president was very gracious and he raised i think very reasonable you know points that
29:27he wanted to be satisfied about there was the potential for this to be misrepresented from a
29:31non-proliferation point of view on nuclear and he just wanted to put that to bed
29:36the leaders agreed to move ahead fully expecting some diplomatic ructions
29:43we prepared to do a diplomatic blitz to say what this was and what this wasn't and what it was
29:49yes
29:50was nuclear-powered submarines what it was not was nuclear weapons for a signatory to the non-proliferation
29:56treaty like australia and so we got geared up to do that knowing that china was going to be aggressive
30:03on the diplomatic front i'm honored today to be joined by two america's closest allies australia
30:09united kingdom to launch a new phase of the trilateral security cooperation among our countries
30:16three months after the g7 meeting biden went public with the nuclear pact between the us
30:21britain and australia i do respect sovereign choices but you have to respect allies and partners and it was
30:29not the case with this do you think he lied to you i don't think i know
30:36whatever the french president said the reaction in beijing would have much more serious implications
31:00i think for australia to possess and operate a nuclear submarine has only one purpose that is to
31:11fight against china once you arm yourself with nuclear submarine you will be targeted
31:18and you need to figure out who will be targeting you the biden administration understand that
31:23if they take some action by themselves the effect will be limited but if you unite the whole developed
31:32the world the pressure will be much bigger uh uh on china the biden administration i will say that the
31:40policy was the west versus china so that's different we don't like that
31:56that summer the chinese communist party celebrated its hundredth anniversary
32:19the message to america was clear china had the strength to resist any attempt to constrain it
32:27but it wouldn't be xi jinping who provided the next big challenge to the west's resolve
32:39i remember the day that russia did an unprovoked attack on kiev
32:46many analysts around the world at the time said that if kiev falls in just a few weeks
32:53as putin initially predicted then xi jinping will do a unprovoked attack on taiwan also forcing
33:02our allies to fight a two-front war
33:08only weeks before the invasion putin had traveled to beijing where he and president xi declared a
33:14partnership which they said had no limits when the white house heard reports that china might provide
33:25lethal military assistance to russian forces in ukraine biden picked up the phone to beijing
33:35biden came directly at president xi and said this is not in american strategic interest if you
33:42continue it we're going to resist she basically says are you threatening me president biden said i'm
33:47not i'm not making threats to you i think i owe it to you to be clear and direct because
33:52the
33:52implications and the consequences are severe the chinese do think it through decide that direct
33:58support is not in their interests the u.s didn't send troops to ukraine but it was providing billions of
34:09dollars worth of military aid questions arose about what it would do if china attacked taiwan
34:15the rest of the community very quickly you didn't want to get involved in the ukraine conflict
34:20militarily for obvious reasons are you willing to get involved militarily to defend taiwan if it comes to
34:27that yes you are that's the commitment we made on three or four occasions the president when asked yeah we're
34:39going to defend taiwan we'd have to say look boss this is not exactly our policy we're going to have
34:44to
34:44clarify that i think he understood that there was sometimes a tension between plain spoken here's how
34:53joe from delaware is going to respond and what our national policy would be i think what we used
35:00to say in government is let biden be biden biden's remarks broke with a long-standing u.s policy called
35:10strategic ambiguity this meant not saying how america would respond to a conflict over taiwan
35:17by keeping both sides guessing the aim was to deter china from invading and taiwan from declaring independence
35:28the white house team braced themselves for the chinese reaction
35:34he destroyed the only reliable say instrument
35:41that helped maintain stability taiwan straight biden completely shifted to the one side
35:49basically saying because your democracy you can do whatever you want to do
35:54we will defend you right that means you shift strategic ambiguity into strategic clarity
36:03following biden's comments china increased its military presence around taiwan
36:13the danger escalated when word got out that the speaker of the house of representatives
36:18was planning a visit to the island
36:22we were having a trip to asia we were going uh singapore
36:28malaysia japan korea south korea and then we get this invitation from taiwan
36:36their very strong support for taiwan in the congress house and senate bipartisan
36:48nancy pelosi had long been a critic of the chinese government
36:55well
36:59back in 1991 on a congressional visit to beijing
37:02she'd shaken off her minders to show solidarity with the protesters who were massacred in tianaman
37:08square two years earlier we've been told for two days now that there's freedom of speech in china
37:15the description of china that we received for two days uh led us to think that it wouldn't be any
37:20problem for us to go have a private moment in front of the um of the monument
37:39it's a tacit recognition of taiwan independence okay it's very much like selling weapons in my view this
37:48is a war talk basically biden's top advisors sensed the crisis looming they went to see pelosi at her
37:58office in congress the argument to pelosi was that it was going to precipitate a severe reaction from china
38:08and that that severe reaction from china would degrade the security of taiwan because it would bring chinese
38:16ships and planes operating in closer proximity to the island on a long-term basis you have to
38:24understand whether it's going to tianaman square or going to taiwan you cannot let somebody else decide
38:32where you're going you know the speakers by some people's uh evaluation is the second most powerful
38:38position in the federal government she's going to tell us where we can go i don't think so
38:45it's pretty tough she's like like i'll make my own decisions you guys are not going to back me off
38:51if
38:51i think it's important to go she was extremely gracious about hearing us out and then extremely
38:58direct about telling us that she was going to do her thing we weren't going there to talk about
39:02independence for time when we were talking about the status quo and if the geniuses in the white house
39:09had any they would have just said this is just a status quo visit because that's what it was it
39:14was a
39:15status quo visit pelosi's flight to taipei was carefully routed to avoid chinese airspace amidst fears that
39:25whether intentionally or by accident it could be shot down
39:32that event is so provocative in chinese press talking about shooting down airplane or maybe have a two
39:39jet fighter jet escort nancy pelosi to demonstrate our sovereignty we're finding out that hundreds of
39:48thousands and then millions of people were tracking the plane was like what are they doing that for well
39:54i don't know this is the closest moment in my view of a military encounter chinese could have done
40:01something radical my understanding is that 20 percent the chinese who woke up did not sleep at that night
40:25when we landed we leave the airport thousands and thousands and thousands of people in the street
40:33it was the most remarkable signs lit up on buildings everything welcome to taiwan it was pretty exciting
40:49speaker pelosi she's a star
40:54and she's standing next to our president the two beautiful ladies
41:01fighting with xi jinping so that's the very inspiring moment for taiwanese to look at it
41:08america's determination to preserve democracy here in taiwan and around the world remains ironclad
41:18as pelosi was being greeted by her taiwanese hosts
41:22in beijing the u.s ambassador was getting a taste of the chinese response
41:27the speaker pelosi we heard was going to land at 10 46 p.m in taipei and the chinese knew
41:35this
41:35and so my staff told me uh ambassador the chinese vice foreign minister has asked you to arrive
41:42at the foreign ministry in beijing at 10 46 p.m i don't want to be at their beck and
41:48call i don't
41:49want to arrive at the exact time they told me to arrive and so we waited until about 10 48
41:55we walked
41:55in the front door and i think i had a three-hour meeting with vice foreign minister shia feng he
42:01said
42:01ambassador we are so outraged and offended by what you have done in allowing the speaker of the house to
42:07visit taiwan we're now going to take action there'd be no more talks about climate change there'd be no
42:13talks about the conflicts in the asia pacific that separate us and um i thought well they're shutting
42:21down the relationship just hours after pelosi's arrival taiwan suffered a massive cyber attack
42:29attack that included hijacking public screens around the country in the convenience stores around taiwan
42:38the message on the screen were injected to say the witch nancy pelosi should stay out from taiwan
42:51we look at the source and found out that these cyborgs were manufactured in beijing and running beijing
43:00software as soon as pelosi left the military response began
43:29in a show of strength china fired ballistic missiles directly over taiwan and started moving
43:36its warships closer than ever to the island
43:41they saw an opportunity to change the equation to change the status quo across the taiwan street
43:47and they took it it led to a basically permanent encroachment by the people's liberation army
43:57with all of its assets its ships its planes its subs you name it closer to the island taiwan
44:03nancy pelosi was actually to be given credit why because china now moved all the way to much closer to
44:13taiwan so i think uh what nancy pelosi did was not really enabling the taiwan separatists it was pushing
44:23their unification one step closer
44:29biden's team knew they had to respond to china's actions the question was how
44:36they turned to an issue that had been on their agenda since their first days in the white house
44:41the race for technological supremacy the most advanced semiconductors in the world which power
44:49everything from large language models to military and intelligence capabilities they're made by american
44:58companies and allied companies china does not have the capacity to make the most advanced semiconductors in
45:05the world sullivan had been working on a radical plan to starve china of the most advanced
45:11microchips america would impose worldwide restrictions on the sale to china of any of these chips made
45:19using u.s technology in the months after pelosi's visit this unprecedented policy was rolled out
45:28they're going for tech war and it's led by jake sullivan there is no historic president throughout
45:37human history you can stop technological diffusion across the borders it's not first time of china
45:46facing blockade so very quickly they began to push chip industry biden people's ban makes no sense they
45:53don't see the future they did not have a vision relations between beijing and washington had hit their lowest
46:03point in years as critical military communication channels were cut
46:11it took a year of grinding diplomacy before she was ready to visit biden
46:17this time the americans took no chances with the location rolling out the red carpet in california
46:26the amount of preparation and details it makes a wedding look like some sort of seat of your pants
46:34exercise every minute is scripted every handshake every um talking point carefully gone through we have to
46:45ensure that competition does not veer into conflict high on the agenda was taiwan to work together when we see
46:53in our interest to do so for a long time people have been saying that maybe china has a timeline
46:57to
46:57invade taiwan by 2027. what was interesting is president xi took that point on directly in
47:02speaking with president biden he said there's no timeline if there were a timeline i'm the one who
47:07would set it that was a pretty powerful statement she had his own talking points for the summit
47:14china's economy was struggling in the post-covid climate putting even more pressure on his ambitions
47:20for the chinese tech industry president xi was you know adamant that you know it wasn't right for
47:27the u.s to cut off the flow of these chips to china he wanted the chips and president biden
47:32was very
47:33clear very forthright very candid this wasn't in his talking points he simply said i know you want the
47:38chips you're not going to get the chips and then he said you'll probably get them from someone else
47:43but you're not going to get them from me that evening xi found a more receptive audience when
47:50he was guest of honor at a dinner in downtown san francisco hosted by the great and the good of
47:56silicon valley security for president xi is through the roof right u.s secret service and the chinese
48:03equivalent trying to keep him safe as a result all these executives have to walk the final block to the
48:10site they can't drive up to it these were some of the most powerful businessmen in the world
48:15like tesla's elon musk and apple's tim cook but they were happy to wait their turn for a handshake
48:22with xi knowing their company's fortunes depended on access to china companies like apple you know
48:31steeped in china was they placed the whole bet on china manufacturing china being in china and so on
48:36it was almost a given in silicon valley that if you weren't in china you were not going to win
48:41um the the race to sort of global preeminence in whatever tech sector you were operating in
48:48chinese assembled some top ceos who had interest in china they know ceos have an influence on american
48:55government she knew the tech titans were there to stay but american governments come and go
49:06ladies and gentlemen the president-elect of the united states the honorable donald john trump
49:25over the past eight years i have been tested and challenged more than any president in our 250-year
49:31history and i've learned a lot along the way he had a sense that he was not a year one
49:40president
49:40he was more like in the ninth year of a presidency and he felt he knew what he wanted to
49:47do in a whole
49:48bunch of areas he wanted to move quickly returning to office trump set out an uncompromising agenda
49:55doubling down on america first china is operating the panama canal and we didn't give it to china
50:03we gave it to panama and we're taking it back
50:08but after four years of biden's team pushing democracy and human rights trump's return was
50:14cause for some optimism in beijing it's trump's message that's most significant
50:23he's dealing with china as a regular competitor right normal competitor just another great power
50:32competition okay he never used ideology
50:47in his first term trump had shown he was ready to play hardball with china over trade
50:54what few expected was that now he would also unleash huge tariffs against most of the world
51:00even america's long-time allies you know you think of european union very friendly they rip us off it's
51:07so sad to say it's so pathetic 39 percent it's hard to think of a presidential decision in the last
51:16several decades that was more consequential than what donald trump did on liberation day he basically said
51:22i fundamentally reject the post-cold war economic order that is predicated on the idea that the united
51:29states should just de-industrialize take everybody else's cheap goods and we should all be happy to
51:35go work as clerks in a service economy while countries around the world scrambled to respond
51:43china saw itself as uniquely well prepared to take trump on
51:49the united states under president trump took great delight in striking fear in so many
51:55countries in the world leaving only china standing up against the u.s maximum bullying and i think when
52:04china says you know if you want to talk we'll be very open-minded in talking with the tariff issues
52:09but if you want to fight the tariff war we will fight with you for this tariff war till the
52:15very end
52:19within weeks beijing's tariffs on the u.s had climbed to 125 percent whilst u.s tariffs on chinese
52:26goods were up to an unprecedented 145 percent before seesawing over the following months
52:35but she had an ace up his sleeve china had spent years acquiring a near monopoly on the world's supply
52:42of
52:42rare earth minerals vital ingredients for advanced technologies
52:49now she threatened to cut america off
52:54the defense department was very worried that if it didn't get access to the chinese export of rare
52:59earth minerals it would really impede our ability to manufacture defense products
53:06rare earths weren't the only pressure point between these two intertwined economies
53:12chinese banks owned over 700 billion dollars of u.s government bonds while america remained the
53:18largest market for chinese exports the two countries agreed to a partial climb down
53:29beijing was proving itself increasingly immune to u.s pressure
53:33as it had shown on the very first day of trump's presidency with a stunning development
53:39technology shares on wall streets have fallen sharply in response to the emergence of a low-cost
53:45chatbot built by a chinese artificial intelligence firm deep seek proved that china could innovate
53:53even when the u.s had blocked their access to the most advanced chips
53:59the significance of deep seek is it is chinese able to do it without using billions
54:07dollar to do the same kind of uh technology it's a wake-up call to trump and his team
54:14what china has shown is you're not gonna be able to keep them down
54:18then it doesn't matter how many bands you put on high high-end chips you're not going to beat them
54:23there is no such thing as winning definitively there's coexisting there's rivalry there's
54:27competition you can't beat china in the ai race thank you mr president tomorrow we have a jobs
54:34report coming out a hallmark of trump's second term was his open door to the biggest players in tech
54:40some of whom had been hit directly by biden's export controls
54:46trump soon relaxed this policy he cut a deal allowing american firm nvidia to sell chips to china
54:53as long as the u.s government got a slice of the profits
54:59next he placed the american arm of tick tock under the control of u.s investors
55:04rowing back from his previous calls for an outright ban
55:13i'll say trump maybe in the long run a good news for china we have a chance to make a
55:18deal on other
55:19core issues geopolitical issues taiwan in particular so i see the hope
55:29for many in taipei trump's behavior was ringing frightening alarm bells
55:36trump's recent choice of words for describing u.s china trade ties are turning heads here in taiwan
55:43they've agreed to open china fully open china and i think it's going to be fantastic for china i think
55:50it's going to be fantastic for us and i think it's going to be great for unification and peace his
55:56use
55:56of the words unification and peace have caused worry about potential u.s concessions to china's
56:02territorial claims over taiwan when the two leaders held a call that summer to discuss trade she warned
56:10against steps that could inflame tensions including over taiwan soon after the pentagon cancelled a long
56:18planned meeting with the taiwanese defense minister that worries us is trump's administration pushing taiwan
56:30away don't they want to be taiwan's friend and uh are they trying to be close friend with china
56:38if they really want to you know make a good deal with china then what's going to happen to taiwan
56:48as the world tried to make sense of trump's foreign policy one characteristic shone through
56:54a harsh realism when it came to great powers dominating their smaller neighbors
57:00traditional western fantasy is all non-western countries as they economically develop they
57:08automatically began to converge to western system values you know democracy and so on and so forth but
57:17now we see the reverse and trump began to converge with xi jinping in some way
57:25she had asserted china's power across taiwan and the whole pacific region
57:32now trump was staking his own claims on what he saw as america's backyard
57:38especially those places rich in oil and minerals
57:44under our new national security strategy american dominance in the western hemisphere
57:50will never be questioned again we are going to do something on greenland whether they like it or not
57:56because if we don't do it russia or china will take over greenland and we're not going to have russia
58:02or china as a neighbor
58:08there is a ground shifting trend now underway
58:15trump is the one basically brought down liberal international order this is a sea change that china
58:25very happy to welcome this battle's not over president i have no doubt knows the battle's not over
58:32this is going to be a multi-presidency geopolitical chess match with the chinese communist party i think
58:38president trump and his core teams realize china is not to be bullied and if you bully china china
58:46strikes back and you may lose more than you ever expect
58:58behind a south korean tech giant an epic tale of a feuding family scandal and betrayal listen to
59:05inheritance samsung on bbc sounds casting away the stress of the day with bob and paul on bbc 2 wales
59:12it's an irish gone fishing next
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