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Clash of the Superpowers America vs China S01E02
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00:05Xi 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 rule book we can't continue to allow China to
00:28rape our country and that's what they're doing it's the greatest theft in the history of the world
00:35this is the story of how these two superpowers have become tangled in a struggle for economic
00:40and technological supremacy told by top US officials and Chinese academics who give the
00:47inside track from Beijing when the president's off the handle you don't know what's gonna happen
00:57in this episode a global pandemic rocks the US-China relationship
01:01I think the president started to realize I'm not sure I can deal with these people
01:06one of America's most formidable figures provokes a storm
01:11you have to understand whether it's going to Tiananmen Square or going to Taiwan
01:15you cannot let somebody else decide where you're going
01:22and in a new era of strongman politics America's president sets out to show the world who's boss
01:45before he even took office Donald Trump gave a foretaste of how he'd navigate the choppy diplomatic
01:51waters around China and how he'd do it his way still in his New York headquarters the president-elect
02:00was receiving congratulatory calls
02:04when the calls come in they all get put on a callback list and then are answered in turn but
02:10there's a list of who's not supposed to be on the list and not supposed to be on the list
02:15was Taiwan
02:16I said we've not usually had the president of the United States had direct contact with the president
02:21of Taiwan president Trump's response was interesting he said they buy a lot of our stuff we buy a lot
02:26of
02:26their stuff we buy their chips and so he did take the congratulatory phone call
02:33just off the coast of China the island democracy of Taiwan was regarded by Beijing as a breakaway province
02:40they 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
02:57her team gathered for the call with Trump Taiwan has been so much isolated on the diplomatic front so
03:08uh someone who is going to be important is willing to talk to you certainly we welcome the opportunity
03:18the call itself was the biggest diplomatic overture to Taiwan for generations then Trump went even further
03:27he offered to invite President Tsai to visit him in the White House she didn't even
03:34uh respond to to the very kind of offer because she knew it won't happen I think the president-elect
03:44obviously
03:44did not have much background knowledge of uh the cross-trade uh relationship
04:00well it's quite a shock I would say unprecedented because that would mean you know the president-elect is
04:10recognizing Taiwan's status
04:17it creates opportunities for the Taiwan separatists to misuse
04:22this phone call as if for example they can really achieve the so-called independence of Taiwan
04:31China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi 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
04:49group of folks from the Trump campaign and then a delegation from from China they all pulled out their
04:54binders and in very Chinese bureaucrat fashion they all turned to the same page and Yang Jiechi
05:01the director begins reading his uh prepared talking points no pause no break no room for a dialogue
05:08it's just this is my laundry list of talking points and i'm going to get through as many
05:14of them as i possibly can they go through what they refer to as their core interests what that meant
05:21was
05:21these are our non-negotiable demands and it usually started with Taiwan and ended with Taiwan they try
05:27to describe their core interests, or the red line, if it's really the case that U.S. president-elect
05:36supported Taiwan independence. It's too dangerous. It's too risky, because China will react in
05:43a very radical way.
05:48The 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
06:02and human rights. Trade was going to be his priority with China.
06:09He'd be in the Oval Office sitting behind the Resolute desk, which is a very big desk,
06:14and he'd take out one of his Sharpie pens and he'd point to the tip and he'd say,
06:18see 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.
06:37Three years into office, Trump was signing off a major trade deal with China's vice premier.
06:44Not a bad start to an election year. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. This is the biggest deal
06:51there is anywhere in the world by far. But within weeks, everything would change.
07:03In the early days of this strange new virus, President Trump picked up the phone and called
07:08Xi Jinping to offer assistance to see whether Beijing would agree to allow officials to come in
07:16and see how they could help. And Xi Jinping clearly pretty much just didn't directly answer. He was saying
07:25no by not saying yes. And what's more, Xi Jinping really tried to persuade President Trump that this
07:33new virus was no big deal. Well, it was only a month or so later that the U.S. economy
07:42contracted by about 33%.
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 100 trade deals with China,
08:14like the one that he'd completed earlier that year, it still wouldn't make up for the losses that COVID pandemic
08:22had inflicted on the United States.
08:24I think the president started to realize, I'm not sure I can deal with these people. I'm not sure there's
08:29anything that Xi Jinping is willing to do when he is so focused on hiding his complicity in this horrific
08:37outbreak.
08:38They call it Corona. It sounds like a beautiful seaside island in Italy. No, it's not Corona. It's called the
08:45China 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 relations become worse, worse and worse.
09:00The U.S. side accused, basically claimed that the virus was from China's lab in Wuhan. We were very angry
09:10about that.
09:11But then Chinese that began to say, maybe that's from the U.S. We began to throw mud to each
09:18other, very unfortunately.
09:22Amidst the mudslinging, for many in America, there was little doubt that this was a virus that came from China,
09:28which Beijing had sought to cover up.
09:31I think COVID in so many ways showed, you know, unfortunately, the hostile and uncooperative nature of the Chinese Communist
09:40Party and its system.
09:42So President Trump gave us guidance to move out on a wide range of actions to impose costs on Beijing.
09:58High on the agenda for Trump's team was Taiwan, where tension was growing as Xi Jinping instructed his military to
10:06ramp up drills around the island.
10:10The Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Communist Party was the same.
10:14The Chinese Communist Party was the same.
10:22Having played down the issue of Taiwan for three years, Trump now gave the green light for a multi-billion
10:29dollar arms sale to the Taiwanese government.
10:33The purpose to purchase weapons is to defend ourselves.
10:39President Xi Jinping, he is warning us, he is threatening us that he is there.
10:47This is very scary.
10:51And they are getting more and more aggressive.
10:56Arming Taiwan wasn't an entirely selfless act.
11:01The island now produced 90% of America's supply of advanced semiconductor chips.
11:07Vital components in everything from smartphones to electric cars to the latest military technology.
11:15Most 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 and open a
11:26war over Taiwan,
11:28the threat that it could bring about a global catastrophe and economic depression because of Taiwan's outsized role in the
11:36semiconductor 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.
12:01It was winning contracts around the world to install new 5G networks.
12:07But the Americans had decried Huawei as a security threat and wanted their allies to join them in restricting the
12:15company.
12:17Just 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.
12:30When I say, well, where's the brilliant American solution?
12:34It's all very well getting rid of Chinese technology from, you know, highways and byways.
12:41But where's the alternative?
12:44I remember thinking that it was a bit rich that we were being told that we had to dispense with
12:51Huawei when, as far as I could see, America had no alternative.
12:55There weren't alternatives that could operate at the same scale.
12:58It was absolutely clear that this would slow down the rollout of that important communications capability.
13:05It would be expensive to do so.
13:08Our technical experts were clear that they could manage the security risks.
13:12President Trump was irritated that Prime Minister Johnson wasn't shifting to see things his way.
13:19And President Trump cut the call short.
13:22But it actually led to a shift in our approach that ended up being quite effective.
13:30Trump's new approach was rolled out in May 2020.
13:35A worldwide ban on the use of American technology to make chips for Huawei.
13:41This would seriously jeopardize its ability to deliver systems to countries like the UK.
13:49This was kind of an atomic option that expanded US reach, but it was also quite effective.
13:56It was after that that the UK Parliament voted in favor of ditching Huawei.
14:04We saw other countries like, almost like dominoes, follow suit.
14:10Also in Trump's sights was Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok, which was rattling its American rivals like Instagram and
14:20Facebook.
14:21It's almost impossible to exaggerate what a shock the eruption of TikTok was to the powers that be in Silicon
14:30Valley, because it exploded in scale.
14:32Mark Zuckerberg would say to politicians in DC, look, they're taking our market share in our home market in the
14:39US,
14:40and we're not able to compete for their customers in their home market in China.
14:44This is just not a level playing field.
14:47For Trump's team, TikTok's popularity with American users also posed a growing threat to national security.
14:55We're looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok.
14:58We may be doing some other things or a couple of options.
15:03President Trump signed a measure that would have banned TikTok.
15:07In doing so, he spoke about TikTok's threat, especially as a platform for data exploitation
15:15and also potentially as a platform for hostile, subversive propaganda by Beijing.
15:23Trump's stance on China was getting tougher in the run-up to Election Day.
15:27His team called out Beijing over human rights and Hong Kong, while the president kept up his own lines of
15:34attack.
15:35China is desperate for Biden to win, because if Biden wins, China wins.
15:42And if China wins, China will own America.
15:46They will own, and they're not playing games.
15:52Trump's pitch to American voters didn't land.
15:56The Democrats retook the White House.
16:01China watched closely as the United States prepared for a peaceful transfer of power.
16:08What they saw was anything but.
16:11USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!
16:18For ordinary Chinese, there are a lot of coverage about the, you know, social unrest in the United States in
16:25recent years.
16:25You know, those mass shootings, those, you know, like occupying Wall Street.
16:32This is all the evidence of the, you know, sort of declining the U.S.
16:37January 6th is another evidence to that argument.
16:43China's laughing. They're loving this tonight.
16:47And Beijing, they're high-fiving because they point to this to say, this is proof.
16:51The future belongs to China. America's in decline.
16:56You're coming into power.
16:58Washington is essentially almost an armed camp.
17:04So here's my message to those beyond our borders.
17:08America has been tested.
17:10And we've come out stronger for it.
17:14I came on my first day in an armored Humvee.
17:18So a tremendous sense of domestic upheaval and uncertainty.
17:25It was a dark time.
17:27China looked at the United States and saw a country in terminal decline.
17:31And was determined to ultimately surpass the United States.
17:37And President Biden made that point to me emphatically in how we manage the relationship with China.
17:42This is going to be one of the defining foreign policy issues of my time as president.
17:51A decade earlier, Xi 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 lifted hopes for
18:06a reset in the relationship.
18:10We just had erratic presidents.
18:13He's lost his election.
18:15And we have a kind of stable type.
18:19Biden is a known figure.
18:21So, initially, the hope is high.
18:27Three weeks after Biden took office, he had his first phone call with Xi.
18:34President Biden felt it was really important that he explain to President Xi why he was focused on human rights
18:43issues like China's horrific treatment of the Uyghurs.
18:46And he basically said to President Xi, you need to understand what it means to be an American president and
18:53an American citizen.
18:54It is deep in our DNA to care about human dignity and human rights.
18:58And I wouldn't be representing my people or discharging my responsibility if I didn't speak out on these issues.
19:05He mentioned the struggle of civil rights still being unresolved in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests that
19:11were occurring at that time.
19:12And he said, look, even we're reckoning with this issue.
19:17The two leaders agreed that their teams would meet the following month.
19:22The 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 sort of autumnal winter-like views.
19:41Instead, we ended up meeting in the Captain Cook Hotel, which is in downtown Anchorage, sort of the finest 1970s
19:52architecture one can imagine.
19:55All of the murals of the hotel depicted white settlers coming in and basically taking over from Alaskan natives.
20:06So it was not particularly politically correct either.
20:10You need to think of the Chinese officials feeling, I need to travel far from China.
20:15I come to visit you, and you host me in the place very, very cold, created a very cool atmosphere.
20:25I don't think that's a good place for the two teams to talk to each other for the first time.
20:33The meeting was opened by Biden's Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.
20:38If the Chinese were expecting a friendly reception after their recent clashes with Trump, they were in for a surprise.
20:46We'll discuss our deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United
20:55States, economic coercion toward our allies.
20:59Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability.
21:07The attitude very beginning shocked me because they started talking about the first two minutes, we are talking to you.
21:16It's so condescending.
21:20We needed to show them, not tell them, but show them that they were just dead wrong, thinking America was
21:26on its way down after the Trump years and after COVID.
21:29From Chinese perspective, we already suffered from China very bad U.S. policy to China for four years.
21:36We wait for this reset for four years, but to the contrary, they criticized China in front of all the
21:44cameras.
21:45I think Chinese officials have to fight back.
21:48?
21:56Director Yang Jiechi spent 17 minutes unprompted just blasting the United States.
22:03This is a monologue.
22:14I thought that it was possible we would have a sharp exchange before the cameras.
22:18I did not expect that it would be a 20-minute exchange.
22:21And this is all being done in Mandarin without simultaneous translation.
22:27Only a few of us in the delegation spoke Chinese, and so I was one of them.
22:31I started transcribing what he was saying and passing notes around to our delegation.
22:37Many of us were passing notes down the table among ourselves as we're listening to Yang
22:41go off for quite some time.
22:44I passed in a note to Kurt that Yang was trying to really knock us off our game here.
22:50You're sitting there and you realize that, you know, all the cameras are on and pointed.
22:58This is exactly the kind of car crash they're coming to see.
23:03And just precisely what we're seeking to avoid, right?
23:09We left that meeting, we went back, and I remember folks saying,
23:13wow, is this the beginning of a new Cold War?
23:17Once you define the international relation that way, democracy versus autocracy,
23:24from a Chinese point of view, there is nothing you can talk to them.
23:28You know, at least it's impossible to talk meaningful things.
23:32Then I began to think maybe they are going to be worse than Trump people.
23:37Gentlemen, how is it going in there?
23:39Has it calmed down?
23:41We're seeing headlines about dust-up in Alaska, brawl in Alaska.
23:47And so we realize when we get back to Washington, we're going to have questions to answer.
23:53And so we had to make a detour and find an open liquor store,
23:58because we had to load up for the plane back.
24:02The 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 to supplant the United States
24:24and our leadership role in the rules-based international order,
24:28which they've long said that they want to do that by 2050.
24:31I'm worried about them moving that target closer.
24:35Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before then.
24:47Taiwan is now a part of the United States.
24:48Since the end of the Second World War,
24:50the United States had been the Pacific's dominant naval power.
24:55But China had spent the past decade building warships at breakneck speed,
25:00overtaking the US as the world's largest navy.
25:04Its fleet included increasingly advanced aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines.
25:13The 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,
25:29frankly, this is now the centre of the world.
25:31This is where the greatest risks to global stability reside.
25:35A conflict in the Indo-Pacific will leave the world unrecognisable 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 years, Australia had harboured a desire to have a nuclear submarine capability
26:00and had asked and been denied in the past.
26:04It is the most closely guarded military jewel in the world.
26:09The United States' nuclear propulsion technology for submarines.
26:21The Americans had only ever shared this technology once before,
26:25over half a century earlier with the British.
26:30Now Australia came up with a proposal, a security pact,
26:35that would see the US and the UK provide them with nuclear-powered submarines.
26:42The UK and Australia should be building a new submarine for a long time to come.
26:46The Australians will be buying American boats and so it's, you know, it's a good deal for America.
26:51It's a good deal for Australia too. It's good for the UK because we will, we will be making stuff.
26:57When Britain hosted that year's G7, it was a chance to pitch it to Biden directly.
27:05This was going to be the first opportunity in person for President Biden to see the two other leaders.
27:11This is a huge strategic initiative, almost like a strategic marriage.
27:15And you got to have the principals ultimately look one another in the eye and say, do we want to
27:24do this?
27:25But there was a problem. The Australians already had a contract in place with France to build less powerful diesel
27:33submarines.
27:34A 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
27:48Emmanuel noticing what was going on.
27:59We had some cunning manoeuvre. 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, we got away with it.
28:14The Australians and the British were on board, but the US president needed to be convinced.
28:22President Biden was concerned about the nonproliferation implications.
28:26Having a country, particularly like Australia, which had such a pristine nonproliferation record,
28:31now end up being a steward of highly enriched uranium, what would be the knock-on effects of that?
28:37I think it'd be fair to say that, um, both the Australian delegation and the British delegation were a little
28:43nervous when they raised it.
28:44They knew that we had only shared this technology once in 1957, 1958 with the Brits.
28:51So like coming up on 65 years and other countries that asked, we'd always said no.
28:58I was like, you know, a, a year 12 student swatting for my finals, um, all that day.
29:04And when I walked in the room, I was ready to go. And Boris said, good day to everyone. And
29:08then, and handed it over to me.
29:10Prime Minister Morrison gave a, an A plus lay down of what Australia was prepared to bring to the table.
29:18He said, this is the time for us to take the next step.
29:21The president was very gracious and he raised, I think, very reasonable, you know, points that he wanted to be
29:27satisfied about.
29:28There was the potential for this to be misrepresented from a nonproliferation point of view on nuclear.
29:34And 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.
29:49And what it was, yes, was nuclear powered submarines.
29:51What it was not was nuclear weapons for a signatory to the nonproliferation treaty like Australia.
29:58And so we got geared up to do that, knowing that China was going to be aggressive on the diplomatic
30:04front.
30:04I'm honored today to be joined by two of America's closest allies, Australian United Kingdom,
30:10to 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, Britain and Australia.
30:24I do respect sovereign choices.
30:26But you have to respect allies and partners and it was not the case with this deal.
30:30Do you think he lied to you?
30:31I don't think I know.
30:35Whatever 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.
31:09That is to fight against China.
31:12Once you arm yourself with nuclear submarine, you will be targeted and you need to figure out who will be
31:20targeting you.
31:21The Biden administration understand that if they take some action by themselves, the effect will be limited.
31:29But if you unite the whole developed world, the pressure will be much bigger on China.
31:38The Biden administration, I would say that the policy was the West versus China.
31:43So that's different. We don't like that.
31:56That summer, the Chinese Communist Party celebrated its 100th anniversary.
32:19The message to America was clear.
32:21China 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 Kyiv.
32:46Many analysts around the world at the time said that if Kyiv falls in just a few weeks,
32:53as Putin initially predicted, then Xi Jinping will do an unprovoked attack on Taiwan, also forcing our allies to fight
33:04a two-front war.
33:08Only weeks before the invasion, Putin had traveled to Beijing, where he and President Xi declared a partnership,
33:15which they said had no limits.
33:22When the White House heard reports that China might provide lethal military assistance to Russian forces in Ukraine,
33:29Biden picked up the phone to Beijing.
33:35Biden came directly at President Xi and said,
33:38this is not in American strategic interest. If you continue it, we're going to resist.
33:44Xi basically says, are you threatening me?
33:46President Biden said, I'm not, I'm not making threats to you.
33:49I think I owe it to you to be clear and direct because the implications and the consequences are severe.
33:55The Chinese do think it through, decide that direct support is not in their interests.
34:04The U.S. didn't send troops to Ukraine, but it was providing billions of dollars worth of military aid.
34:12Questions arose about what it would do if China attacked Taiwan.
34:17Very quickly, you didn't want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons.
34:23Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?
34:28Yes.
34:29You are?
34:31That's a commitment we made.
34:35On three or four occasions, the president, when asked, said, yeah, we're going to defend Taiwan,
34:40we'd have to say, look, boss, this is not exactly our policy. We're going to have to clarify that.
34:46I think he understood that there was sometimes a tension between plain spoken. Here's how Joe from
34:54Delaware is going to respond and what our national policy would be. I think what we used to say in
35:02government has let Biden be Biden.
35:06Biden's remarks broke with a longstanding U.S. policy called strategic ambiguity.
35:12This meant not saying how America would respond to a conflict over Taiwan.
35:18By 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.
35:35He destroyed the only reliable, say, instrument that helped maintain stability in Taiwan's trade.
35:45Biden completely shifted to the one side, basically saying, because of your democracy,
35:51you can do whatever you want to do, we will defend you. That means you shift strategic ambiguity into strategic
36:00clarity.
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. We were having a trip to Asia. We were going to Singapore,
36:27Malaysia, 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.
36:59Back in 1991, on a congressional visit to Beijing, she'd shaken off her minders to show solidarity
37:05with the protesters who were massacred in Tiananmen Square two years earlier.
37:11We've been told for two days now that there's freedom of speech in China. The description of China
37:17that we received for two days led us to think that it wouldn't be any problem for us to go
37:22have a
37:22private moment in front of the monument.
37:30Now, three decades later, when news reached Beijing that Pelosi might be visiting Taiwan,
37:36it was seen as another provocation. It's a tacit recognition of Taiwan independence.
37:44It's very much like selling weapons. In my view, this is a war talk, basically.
37:53Biden's top advisers sensed a crisis looming. They went to see Pelosi at her office in Congress.
38:01The 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
38:16bring Chinese ships and planes operating in closer proximity to the island on a long-term basis.
38:23You have to understand whether it's going to Tiananmen Square or going to Taiwan. You cannot let
38:30somebody else decide where you're going. You know, the speakers, by some people's evaluation,
38:37is the second most powerful position in the federal government. She's going to tell us where we can go?
38:44I don't think so. It's pretty tough. She's like, like, I'll make my own decisions.
38:49You guys are not going to back me off. I think it's important to go.
38:53She was extremely gracious about hearing us out and then extremely direct about telling us that
38:59she was going to do her thing. We weren't going there to talk about independence for Taiwan. We were
39:03talking about the status quo. And if the geniuses in the White House had any, they would have just said,
39:12this is just a status quo visit because that's what it was. It was a status quo visit.
39:19Pelosi'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 the airplane,
39:38or maybe have two fighter jets escort Nancy Pelosi to demonstrate our sovereignty.
39:46We're finding out that hundreds of thousands and then millions of people were tracking the plane.
39:52It's like, what are they doing that for? Well, I don't know.
39:55This is the closest moment, in my view, of a military encounter. Chinese could have done something
40:02radical. My understanding is that 20% of Chinese woke up and 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. And she's standing next to our president,
40:58the two beautiful ladies fighting with Xi Jinping. So that's the very inspiring moment for Taiwanese to look at it.
41:09America's determination to preserve democracy here in Taiwan and around the world remains ironclad.
41:19As Pelosi was being greeted by her Taiwanese hosts, in Beijing, the US ambassador was getting a taste of the
41:26Chinese response.
41:28Speaker Pelosi, we heard, was going to land at 10.46 p.m. in Taipei. And the Chinese knew this.
41:35And so my staff told me, 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.
41:49I don't want to arrive at the exact time they told me to arrive. And so we waited until about
41:5410.48.
41:55We walked in the front door and I think I had a three hour meeting with Vice Foreign Minister Shia
42:00Fung.
42:01He said, Ambassador, we are so outraged and offended by what you have done in allowing the Speaker of the
42:07House to visit Taiwan.
42:08We're now going to take action. There'll be no more talks about climate change.
42:13There'll be no talks about the conflicts in the Asia Pacific that separate us.
42:18And I thought, well, they're shutting down the relationship.
42:24Just hours after Pelosi's arrival, Taiwan suffered a massive cyber attack that included hijacking public screens around the country.
42:34In the convenience stores around Taiwan, the messages on the screen were injected to say the witch, Nancy Pelosi, should
42:46stay out from Taiwan.
42:51We looked at the source and found out that these cyborgs were manufactured in Beijing and running Beijing software.
43:08As soon as Pelosi left, the military response began.
43:28In a show of strength, China fired ballistic missiles directly over Taiwan and started moving its warships closer than ever
43:38to the island.
43:42They saw an opportunity to change the equation, to change the status quo across the Taiwan Strait, and they took
43:48it.
43:49It led to a basically permanent encroachment by the People's Liberation Army with all of its assets, its ships, its
43:59planes, its subs, you name it, closer to the island of Taiwan.
44:03Nancy Pelosi was actually to be given credit.
44:09Why? Because China now moved all the way to, much closer to Taiwan.
44:14So I think what Nancy Pelosi did was not really enabling the Taiwan separatists.
44:22It was pushing their unification one step closer.
44:29Biden's team knew they had to respond to China's actions.
44:32The question was, how?
44:36They turned to an issue that had been on their agenda since their first days in the White House.
44:42The race for technological supremacy.
44:47The most advanced semiconductors in the world, which power everything from large language models to military and intelligence capabilities.
44:56They're made by American companies and allied companies.
44:59China does not have the capacity to make the most advanced semiconductors in the world.
45:06Sullivan had been working on a radical plan to starve China of the most advanced microchips.
45:13America would impose worldwide restrictions on the sale to China of any of these chips made using US technology.
45:21In the months after Pelosi's visit, this unprecedented policy was rolled out.
45:28They're going for tech war.
45:30And it's led by Jake Sullivan.
45:33There is no historic precedent throughout human history.
45:38You can stop technological diffusion across the borders.
45:44It's not the first time of China facing blockade.
45:48So very quickly they began to push chip industry.
45:51Biden people's ban makes no sense.
45:53They don't see the future.
45:55They did not have a vision.
45:59Relations between Beijing and Washington had hit their lowest point in years.
46:05As critical military communication channels were cut.
46:11It took a year of grinding diplomacy before Xi 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 exercise.
46:35Every minute is scripted, every handshake, every talking point carefully gone through.
46:44We have to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict.
46:49High on the agenda was Taiwan.
46:52To work together when we see it in our interest to do so.
46:54For a long time people have been saying that maybe China has a timeline to invade Taiwan by 2027.
46:59What was interesting is President Xi took that point on directly in speaking with President Biden.
47:03He said, there's no timeline.
47:06If there were a timeline, I'm the one who would set it.
47:08That was a pretty powerful statement.
47:11Xi 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 for the Chinese tech
47:21industry.
47:24President Xi was, you know, adamant that, you know, it wasn't right for the U.S. to cut off the
47:29flow of these chips to China.
47:30He wanted the chips.
47:31And President Biden was very clear, very forthright, very candid.
47:35This wasn't in his talking points.
47:36He simply said, I know you want the chips.
47:39You're not going to get the chips.
47:40And then he said, you'll probably get them from someone else, but you're not going to get them from me.
47:47That evening, Xi found a more receptive audience when he was guest of honor at a dinner in downtown San
47:53Francisco, hosted by the great and the good of Silicon Valley.
47:59Security for President Xi is through the roof, right?
48:02U.S. Secret Service and the Chinese equivalent trying to keep him safe.
48:06As a result, all these executives have to walk the final block to the site.
48:10They can't drive up to it.
48:12These were some of the most powerful businessmen in the world, like Tesla's Elon Musk and Apple's Tim Cook.
48:19But they were happy to wait their turn for a handshake with Xi, knowing their company's fortunes depended on access
48:26to China.
48:30Companies like Apple, you know, steeped in China.
48:32They 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
48:40the race to sort of global preeminence in whatever tech sector you were operating in.
48:48Chinese assembled some top CEOs who had interests in China.
48:52They know CEOs have an influence on American government.
48:57Xi 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 history.
49:32And I've learned a lot along the way.
49:35He had a sense that he was not a year one president.
49:41He was more like in the ninth year of a presidency.
49:45And he felt he knew what he wanted to do in a whole bunch of areas and he wanted to
49:49move quickly.
49:51Returning to office, Trump set out an uncompromising agenda, doubling down on America first.
49:58China is operating the Panama Canal and we didn't give it to China, we gave it to Panama and we're
50:05taking it back.
50:08But after four years of Biden's team pushing democracy and human rights, Trump's return was cause for some optimism in
50:15Beijing.
50:18It's Trump's message that's most significant.
50:23He's dealing with China as a regular competitor.
50:26Competitor.
50:27Right?
50:29Normal competitor.
50:31Just another great power.
50:33Competition.
50:34Okay.
50:35He never used ideology.
50:47In his first term, Trump had shown he was ready to play hardball with China over trade.
50:53What few expected was that now he would also unleash huge tariffs against most of the world.
51:00Even America's longtime allies.
51:03You know, you think of the European Union, very friendly.
51:06They rip us off.
51:07It's so sad to see.
51:08It's so pathetic.
51:1139%.
51:11It's hard to think of a presidential decision in the last several decades that was more consequential than what Donald
51:19Trump did on Liberation Day.
51:21He basically said, I fundamentally reject the post-Cold War economic order that is predicated on the idea that the
51:29United States should just de-industrialize,
51:32take everybody else's cheap goods, and we should all be happy to go work as clerks in a service economy.
51:40While countries around the world scrambled to respond, China 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 countries in the world,
51:57leaving only China standing up against the U.S. maximum bullying.
52:03And I think when China says, you know, if you want to talk, we'll be very open-minded in talking
52:08with the tariff issues.
52:09But if you want to fight the tariff war, we will fight with you for this tariff war till the
52:16very end.
52:19Within weeks, Beijing's tariffs on the U.S. had climbed to 125%,
52:24whilst U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods were up to an unprecedented 145%,
52:31before seesawing over the following months.
52:35But Xi had an ace up his sleeve.
52:38China had spent years acquiring a near monopoly on the world's supply of rare earth minerals,
52:44vital ingredients for advanced technologies.
52:50Now Xi 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 earth minerals,
53:00it would really impede our ability to manufacture defense products.
53:07Rare earths weren't the only pressure point between these two intertwined economies.
53:12Chinese banks owned over $700 billion of U.S. government bonds,
53:16while America remained the largest market for Chinese exports.
53:21The 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 Street have fallen sharply in response to the emergence of a low-cost chatbot
53:45built by a Chinese artificial intelligence firm.
53:50DeepSeq proved that China could innovate even when the U.S. had blocked their access to the most advanced chips.
53:59The significance of DeepSeq is it is Chinese able to do it without using billions of dollars to do the
54:08same kind of technology.
54:11It's a wake-up call to Trump and his team.
54:14What China has shown is you're not going to be able to keep them down.
54:18It doesn't matter how many bands you put on high-end chips.
54:21You're not going to beat them.
54:23There is no such thing as winning definitively.
54:26There's coexisting.
54:27There's rivalry.
54:27There's competition.
54:28You can't beat China in the AI race.
54:32Thank you, Mr. President.
54:33Tomorrow we have a jobs report coming out.
54:34A 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.
54:48He 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 TikTok under the control of U.S. investors,
55:04rowing back from his previous calls for an outright ban.
55:12I'll say, Trump, maybe in the long run a good news for China.
55:17We have a chance to make a deal on other core issues, geopolitical issues, Taiwan in particular.
55:23So I see the hope.
55:30For 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.
55:47And I think it's going to be fantastic for China.
55:50I think it's going to be fantastic for us.
55:52And I think it's going to be great for unification and peace.
55:55His use of the words unification and peace have caused worry about potential U.S. concessions to China's territorial claims
56:03over Taiwan.
56:05When the two leaders held a call that summer to discuss trade, Xi warned against steps that could inflame tensions,
56:12including over Taiwan.
56:15Soon after, the Pentagon canceled a long-planned meeting with the Taiwanese defense minister.
56:23That worries us.
56:26Is Trump's administration pushing Taiwan away?
56:30Don't they want to be Taiwan's friend?
56:33And are they trying to be close friends 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.
57:01Traditional Western fantasy is all non-Western countries, as they economically develop, they automatically began to converge to Western system.
57:12values, you know, democracy, and so on and so forth.
57:17But now we see the reverse, and Trump began to converge with Xi Jinping in some way.
57:25Xi 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 atmosphere will never be questioned again.
57:52We 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.
58:01And we're not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.
58:08There is a ground shifting trend now underway.
58:15Trump is the one basically brought down liberal international order.
58:22This is a sea change that China very happy to welcome.
58:27This battle's not over.
58:29The 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.
58:38I think President Trump and his core teams realize China is not to be bullied.
58:44And if you bully China, China strikes back.
58:47And 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.
59:04Listen to Inheritance Samsung on BBC Sounds.
59:08Casting away the stress of the day with Bob and Paul on BBC Two Wales.
59:12It's an Irish gone fishing.
59:14Next.
59:21drought
59:21Now
59:23Inheritance
59:24Nor
59:24saturationssä
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