Pacific Polarity

Jersey Lee

Welcome to this episode of Pacific Polarity. Today we’re speaking with Dr. Gabriela Bernal. She is a Korean affairs analyst based in Seoul, South Korea, and a non-resident fellow at the European Center for North Korean Studies. She is also an associated research fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy. She has a PhD from the University of North Korean Studies and has published work in various media and online outlets. Dr. Bernal, great to have you on.

Gabriela Bernal

Thanks for having me.

Jersey Lee

The major recent news—part of the reason why we’re even speaking at this moment—was Trump’s Truth Social announcement last month, stating that due to his great relationship with Kim Jong-un, as well as South Korea’s lack of help against Iran, America scaled down the joint Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise with South Koreans. Was this intended as an olive branch towards North Korea leverage against South Korea, or something else, or some mix of that, what’s the mix in your mind?

Gabriela Bernal

I think definitely Trump is trying to get back on Kim Jong-un’s good side. I think it was relevant for a few reasons. Because Trump has said since he came back to office, he said on multiple occasions that he’s interested in meeting Kim Jong-un and that he’s open to talking with him, and he’s spoken a lot about their good relationship. But this is the first time that Trump really backed up those words with some kind of action, with something tangible beyond just words. So I think in that sense, it is notable. It sends a message to North Korea, yes, that Trump is interested in keeping the tensions lower.

And specifically, I thought it was interesting that he mentioned how the drills are seen are a hostile signal to Pyongyang; because he didn’t have to say that, he could have just ended it with, “South Korea didn’t help us with Iran and they’re not helping us, and therefore why should we help, why should we invest so much money with you guys in terms of these joint military exercises”, he could have just ended it in terms of criticizing South Korea and left that way. But the fact that he brought in North Korea specifically, and pretty much echoed what Kim Jong-un and North Korean leaders have been saying for so many years about the drills being exercises for war and very hostile—he used that same kind of vocabulary that North Korea uses. And I thought that’s very notable because that shows definitely it’s not just about perhaps punishing Seoul for not cooperating so much on Ukraine or Iran; that’s partly it, but it is more a message to North Korea, so yeah, an olive branch, I think it is.

Now, whether North Korea will accept that olive branch, that remains to be seen. But, yeah, I do think Trump, especially seeing how things are not going his way in the Middle East, in Europe, with Ukraine, maybe North Korea could be his last kind of hope for a major foreign policy achievement before he leaves office. So he might really switch his focus more on North Korea in the near future.

Jersey Lee

Like the Nobel Peace Prize, you mean?

Gabriela Bernal

I’m sure he would love that. He tried during his first term. In practice, I don’t think that’s going to happen. But we’ll see. Because really, it’s not that much up to Trump now, unlike last time. Last time was very different. The tables have turned significantly since his first term. I think Trump or the US, they don’t hold all the cards anymore. Now, North Korea is not nearly as vulnerable or weak or isolated as it was back in 2017, 2018. So even if Trump shouts and screams that he wants to have diplomacy with North Korea and resume talks with Kim or even hold a summit, it doesn’t mean that North Korea is going to accept it.

Jersey Lee

As someone who only casually observes peninsula affairs—I’m referring to myself—it seems that no matter what South Korea or the US does or says, North Korea has over the past few decades remained implacably hostile, at least in its public statements. Could anything, including President Trump or South Korean President Lee Jae-myung’s efforts change this dynamic and get North Korea to show some more diplomatic flexibility than they have previously?

Gabriela Bernal

I think from the outside, that is how it usually looks, because North Korea always has these very dramatic rhetoric and statements that they make, with the vocabulary that they use, it’s always very extreme. But in practice, in the past, North Korea has been diplomatically flexible on multiple occasions. We’ve seen it during the 90s. We’ve seen it during the six party talks and we’ve seen it during inter-Korean talks under multiple administrations, and most recently under Trump’s first term. The very fact that they would engage in in such diplomacy, and really they did bring concessions to the table to the US. So it’s hard to say that they have not been completely—that they have not been flexible at all.

But of course, they hold their cards closely, because again, the Korean Peninsula is technically still at war. So the war is still ongoing. The United States is on paper still North Korea’s main enemy, and it represents a real existential threat to North Korea. So they can’t afford to be too flexible or open, unlike maybe other countries, because—this thinking has been reconfirmed again and again over the decades by the U.S.’s foreign policy, and especially its wars in the Middle East and deposing of dictators and all of that. And most recently in Iran, it’s been confirmed to North Korea repeatedly that they can’t fully trust the U.S. and they cannot afford to just negotiate away their nuclear weapons without getting a significant concrete security guarantee in exchange.

To your point about what could make them more flexible, or make them resume diplomacy in a serious way, I think it’s the same thing that they’ve been looking for since the beginning. North Korea has always been looking for the same things. That has not changed. Their goals have remained much the same for over the decades. Namely, they need a security guarantee to guarantee the survival of the regime. And I think for them, they concluded early on that the only way this would be possible is if they had nuclear weapons. History has proven them quite correct, if we look at so many examples of other countries.

So I think for now, in the current context, the main thing for the beginning—what would make Kim Jong-un want to go back to talks—it would have to be a significant change in the U.S. position, because the U.S. position on North Korea has remained much the same across administrations, despite there having been attempts at diplomacy here and there, attempts under Trump last time, under Obama, under Bush, during the six-party talks. But overall, the position on CVID, Complete, Verifiable, Irreversible Denuclearization, that issue—and it has softened a bit in recent years because of how things have changed so rapidly. I think the U.S. knows that in practice it is not possible to start negotiations on that basis, from that footing of CVID, it is not going to work anymore. I mean, it wasn’t going to work in the past; it’s definitely not going to work now.

So I think the first thing would be to put that to the side. It doesn’t mean to abandon denuclearization, because ultimately the goal should remain a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, the whole peninsula, for the safety and security, not just of the Koreas, but of the region and the wider world, and to prevent further nuclear proliferation, which is already a threat in the region and beyond. I think for those reasons, that’s very important. And whether the US, mainly, is willing to change its position publicly on deferring denuclearization in favor of an arms control centered approach, and also somehow, somewhat, in some way recognizing North Korea as a nuclear state. Now, does that mean officially making a giant speech and saying that, OK, we, as the United States, we recognize North Korea as a nuclear state? No, no, no.

But we can see that it’s kind of already going in that direction. If we look at Russia and China, China has been, of course, very silent, but that silence speaks volumes. Unlike Russia, which has said North Korea is not going to give up its weapons, it shouldn’t be a bargaining chip and pretty much de facto recognizing its nuclear status, China has not gone that far, but they have also not brought up the issue in recent meetings or in recent documents, which is also very noteworthy, because historically China has been very supportive of denuclearization and consistently mentioned it always in public statements.

Trump has said multiple times already in during the second term, referring to North Korea as a nuclear state in passing. So not in an official statement kind of way. But I think by now, since 2006, since the first nuclear test and now we’re 20 years after that first nuclear test, is it not time now for us to finally reckon with the reality that, yeah, North Korea is a nuclear weapons state? That’s not ideal and we don’t want that; ideally, they would give up their nuclear weapons. But for many, many reasons, they won’t.

So the only way I think negotiations can take place in a way that has actual hope of being sustainable and for long term cooperation and progress to be made—and not just very easily reversible progress like in the past, for something to actually stick and to be able to be carried on across administrations and worked on—I think the basis of that needs to be a de facto recognition that, yeah, North Korea is a nuclear state, and now how are we going to deal with it, instead of how are we going to get them to give up their nuclear weapons. Because that premise is—I think it’s too late for that.

Jersey Lee

Going back to the statement we started off with, South Korean President Lee’s response was pretty interesting in that he welcomed it, framing it as aligning with his own peace initiative. I think many people saw this as a smart move to diminish the leverage that Trump thought he could hold over South Korea, but some have criticized President Lee for further harming the alliance and drifting away from America, perhaps towards China. What do you think?

Gabriela Bernal

First of all, it’s important to understand South Korea has one of the most complex, difficult geographic positions in the world, which makes its geopolitical environment extremely challenging, because it is in between all these major powers, China, Japan, the United States. And throughout history, it’s been the same thing.

South Korea cannot choose one or the other. It just can’t, even if it would want to, it can’t. So it can’t take on a policy as, for example, Japan, which has been much more willing to take an openly pro-US stance. For Japan, that’s been the case, but for South Korea, it’s just not that feasible because, as we know, for security, they rely immensely on the United States, and for their economy, immense inter-connectedness with China. That’s one thing. And so South Korea always tries to—or usually tries to pursue a balanced foreign policy between the two superpowers. Now, of course, this changed during the Yoon Suk-yeol administration, where it went way more pro-US, but now under Lee, the progressive government is trying to recalibrate that foreign policy again in a more balanced way.

Regarding the Trump statements and Lee Jae-myung’s reaction, it’s a pretty calibrated, balanced and strategic reaction, because of course, in practice, South Korea knows that it is being sidelined—as it has often been in the past in many of these situation—It is being somewhat sidelined; diplomacy between Kim Jong-un and Trump is likely—if it does resume—it is likely to resume more in a bilateral format than with South Korea as a mediator. Unlike during 2018, 2019 under the Moon Jae-in administration, South Korea has lost a lot of that leverage. With the whole two hostile state policy of North Korea, they will not be interested in South Korea playing any role in diplomacy between the U.S. and North Korea. So South Korea is aware that it has lost a lot of leverage. And yet, it is aware of its international security priorities and its goals, one of those goals being improved inter-Korean relations and improved U.S.-North Korea relations, as that adds to overall Korean Peninsula security in the long term. I think, at least for now, the only way to get to those goals is to promote or at least allow U.S.-North Korea diplomacy to play out, however that might look like. So if South Korea would come in between now and demand a more active role, or demand to be involved in every single step of diplomacy, it would be quite counterproductive, because North Korea would see that as a very unwanted move, and for the US, it would also trouble things. So I think South Korea is just taking a step back, not because they don’t care about the situation—Of course, they care immensely about the situation—but because they know that this is a very unique situation where these two leaders have this personal relationship that was cultivated during Trump’s first term, and it’s the highest chance in years for diplomacy between the U.S. and North Korea to resume. So they don’t really want to sabotage that.

I think that it’s a pragmatic approach. Lee Jae-myung has branded his foreign policy as pragmatic foreign policy, right? Well, I think this is one example of him being very pragmatic. It’s not the ideal position for Seoul to be in, but it is the reality. And I think it’s the right move.

Jersey Lee

I remember that U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Elbridge Colby, called South Korea a model ally earlier this year. Why have things changed so dramatically? And I also understand that President Lee Jae-myung, like all previous Korean presidents, face a very hostile opposition under the very partisan political atmosphere that South Korea always has. How are his opponents, domestic political opponents, thinking about the alliance with America? Do they just blame President Lee for everything wrong with it? Or do they also recognize how chaotic American foreign policy has become, such that you can have it be a model ally, and then suddenly very bad and whatever.

Gabriela Bernal

South Korean domestic politics is an entirely... very complicated thing. But yes, in general—of course, there are outliers—But in general, the conservative camp has been historically much more pro U.S., pro U.S. alliance and very advocating for things like military drills and closer cooperation with the U.S., and then more most recently closer cooperation, trilateral cooperation involving Japan, the U.S. and South Korea. And yeah, there is a tendency to blame issues, especially related to the alliance, to the incumbent administration, especially if it’s a progressive leaning administration, as is currently the case; it’s an easy scapegoat, right? It’s an easy way to push all of the blame and the problems on one president.

But of course, like you said, it’s much more complicated than that. Of course, this has predated Lee Jae-myung. If anything, complicating a lot of things on the peninsula, it was the former administration and the entire martial law episode. So that was a big deal too.

I think, yeah, it’s one of the main big problems in South Korea, because each president only has one five-year term, which is extremely limited and difficult to make lasting change, because there has been this trend, if we look at across administrations in South Korea, that whatever policies one government made, especially related to North Korea or a lot of foreign policy issues, are often reversed by the time the next president comes along. On North Korean issues, it’s very, very counterproductive because it doesn’t allow for a stable, consistent foundation for engagement, or just even any kind of central South Korean policy toward North Korea. I think that’s a big problem because conservatives view it one way and then the progressives view it another way. The only thing they must agree on is the unification goal because it’s written in the Constitution. But everything else, like how to get to unification, that is completely, very, very different for both these camps. So the bipartisan divide in South Korea is extremely strong, it’s very palpable and does not bode well for any kind of long-term progress on these very difficult issues.

The current administration will be doing the best it can in terms of promoting its very different goals. It’s very difficult because now we’re at this point where on the one hand, they want a more independent military posture because they are aware of uncertainties regarding the US alliance and the commitment to South Korea security. But then on the other hand, they also really want to resume diplomacy with North Korea. And those two goals are very hard to reconcile. It would be a difficult position for any president to be in. It’s very simplified to just say, because it’s a liberal or progressive president, that’s why these things are happening. No. The geopolitical forces at play now are so much vaster than any one person or any one party. I think that’s something that the next administration, even if it is conservative, they will have to deal with it as well.

Jersey Lee

Just sticking with Korean domestic politics for a moment, how do conservatives think about the foreign policy legacy—particularly in relation to the alliance with the U.S.—How do they think about Park Chung-hee, who did not trust the Americans and tried to get a nuclear weapon? And for that matter, how do progressives think about this legacy, that part of his legacy in terms of its relationship to what Korea is thinking through right now?

Gabriela Bernal

This is a very sensitive topic in South Korea. And again, I’m generalizing, but in general, especially in over the past decade, there has been a movement among conservative groups, especially far right conservative groups, that have revived this idolization of these figures like Park Chung-hee and like Syngman Rhee. That has been met with very, very strong responses by the more left-wing camp. Because on the one hand, you have these...

I’ll give you a personal example. My in-laws are conservative leaning. In their mind, because they grew up—like my father-in-law, he was born in 1956, so three years after the Korean War, the ceasefire—so for them, for that generation, Park Chung-hee was like a savior, and I can to an extent understand where they’re coming from, if I put myself in their position. There was no food to eat—I’ve heard a lot of these stories from my father-in-law—There was no food to eat, it was a very poor country at the time; overpopulation, lack of infrastructure, just completely—South Korea was so poor, very, very poor. It’s almost unimaginable now for us to think of South Korea as one of the poorest nations at the time, in the 50s and 60s.

And so for them, Park Chung-hee was the strong leader that the country needed. And he made the difficult decisions that got the country to develop rapidly—the miracle on the Han River—to develop rapidly, to really become a strong country that can stand up to North Korea and to anyone, and really to—not erase, but really overcome a lot of what it had lost during the Korean War, and also before that, during the colonial period, South Korea had been through a lot.

Now, one of the reasons why a lot of more progressives don’t see people like Park Chung-hee in a very positive light is because one, of course, all the human rights abuses and human rights incidents that happened during his rule, but also because of his links to Japan, to the Japanese colonial period and his background. But I think that is somewhat—I don’t know if forgiven is the right word—but somewhat neglected by the conservative camp, and more to what he did for the economy, to make South Korea a strong economic country, and modernization of South Korea in such a short period of time. His normalization of relations with Japan, that was a big move towards getting a lot of investment, and towards getting a lot of that capital needed to modernize the country.

So if you hear it from people like that, like my in-laws, they will tell you that without Park Chung-hee, South Korea would be a third world country today. That’s literally what they say. I don’t know, maybe, perhaps; we can only speculate. Of course, his policies did help South Korea economically, but at what cost, right? A tremendous human cost.

I think nowadays, that schism, that divide, it continues, not just about history, but until today—simple example, Japan-South Korea relations. There are many conservatives—if not most, I think a lot—many conservatives, at least, believe South Korea and Japan should have closer relations, they should improve their relations, they’re neighbors, they need to work together. From a pragmatic point of view, that is true, they should lean more on each other in terms of security, especially with the U.S. becoming less and less reliable. But then the progressives will come and make note of issues such as, well, we cannot forget what Japan did during the colonial period, and what they have yet to seriously apologize for—because they have made apologies in the past, but then Japanese leaders continue to visit Yasukuni Shrine and things like that. So I don’t know what will be enough for—That’s the question, what does Japan have to do to really earn this portion of South Korean population’s trust back? And how important do they see that? Do they even think that’s necessary?

So these are issues that seem very domestic, but they have repercussions for security of the peninsula and regional security, and therefore U.S. policy and Chinese policy in the region. So, yeah, I forgot what the question was, but it’s very complicated.

Jersey Lee

I guess I wanted to ask specifically—I’m aware that Korean progressives and conservatives, one of their big differences is over history—But the reason why I specified Park Chung-hee is because, as a conservative, his policy towards America is actually kind of reversed. He’s probably much more skeptical of America, or as skeptical of America as many progressives today. And he also tried to get a nuclear weapon for South Korea. So I’m wondering how—maybe this is an even more sensitive topic in that neither side wants to—like the progressives don’t want to say, oh, let’s copy Park Chung-hee, and the conservatives don’t want to bring this up either.

Gabriela Bernal

That’s definitely a good point. As we’ve seen in recent years, especially under the previous administration, there has definitely been a major increase in not just the public, but also the conservative camp calls for building an independent nuclear deterrent. I think the framing of it, though, is important, because some will openly say that, we need to have this because the U.S... I think the framing is usually toward North Korea, that North Korea poses this significant threat to us. And if they have nuclear weapons, we should have nuclear weapons, too, especially after what happened with Ukraine and how rapidly North Korea’s military’s capabilities have grown in just a few years. I think South Korea, regardless of the U.S. alliance, I think South Korea is just realizing that, is this enough? What we have now, is it enough?

Now, the difference, I don’t think all the conservatives would frame it in the sense of, oh, we should pursue nuclear weapons because we can’t trust the U.S. I don’t think they would frame it that way necessarily. What I’ve heard is, for example, nuclear weapons would just make the alliance stronger, it would make South Korea a stronger partner in the alliance with the United States. And it would be an addition to the alliance. It would make it for a better partnership, a more fair partnership. So I think it’s a lot of question of framing.

Definitely, we can see parallels, because the reason Park Chung-hee went after nuclear, or tried to go after nuclear weapons at the time, was because he saw the U.S. commitment as not totally ironclad, as they say. And I think even if they don’t state it explicitly, we are in a similar situation today. So it just depends, I guess, who would be in government. I think now in 2026, it’s much harder actually go after nuclear weapons in a covert way without anyone noticing, without the U.S. noticing, as compared to in the 70s, during Park Chung-hee’s time. That’s the challenge. I don’t think they could do it secretly. They definitely have the technological capabilities, just like Japan does. They could make one relatively quickly, they have almost everything they need, I think. But to make it covertly, that would be almost impossible. But yeah, we are in similar times, for sure. Again, the main crux of the issue is the uncertainty over the U.S. commitment to defending South Korea.

Jersey Lee

Something I’ve been interested in is in the idea of Sadaejuui, where Korea historically deferred to its great power friend in matters of diplomacy, ideology, political system, etc. This role was historically played by China; looking to today, it seems that North Korea has maneuvered itself away from relying on a single great power, while, especially when the conservatives are in power, it seems like they want the U.S. to be the modern version of their great and powerful friend, although as you say, President Lee may be trying to shift things back from that. So how do the two Koreas perceive the legacy and modern relevance of Sadaejuui?

Gabriela Bernal

I think it’s something that remains relevant till today in South Korea. The values and principles related to democracy and the values that the United States historically has stood for are still very strongly embedded in South Korea and South Korea’s constitution in the way South Korean democracy is run. A perfect example of this was during the martial law declaration under Yoon Suk-yeol, how immediately and the amount of people that stormed the National Assembly building, that show of South Korean democratic strength. Same thing during the Gwangju uprising, the student protests. So I think South Korea has an extremely strong heart of democracy, very strong history of fighting for those values. That is till today a very, very critical part of South Korea. And I think that doesn’t change just because of one president like Trump. Trump may talk a certain way about allies and about America first, etc. But it’s still not enough. One person is not enough to erase—Of course, he does a lot of damage and he’s done a lot of damage—But one person is not enough to erase everything, all those values and principles that the U.S. has built and stood for for decades. So that’s for South Korea.

For North Korea, that’s a bit more complicated. Yes, because North Korea has from the start, practically, tried to play off its biggest neighbors, Russia and China, play them off against each other and extract as many concessions from both of them. And really, we see it in Juche, in North Korean ideology, it’s a mix of everything. So it is not completely the socialist style of either China or socialism as it is classically understood. It has a lot of components of socialism and communism from Russia and China, but it has its own unique characteristics, not least the whole focus on the idolization of the leader. That’s one thing that is very, very important in North Korea.

I think ideology has been, maybe in the beginning, I think it was much more important during Kim Il-sung’s time, ideology played a big role in galvanizing the people. And they had a common enemy, the United States, and they had strong, strong partners, China and the Soviet Union, with a common ideology. And I think that ideological basis was very powerful during Kim Il-sung. I think that was during that time. But if we look now, during Kim Jong-un, there’s been a lot less emphasis on ideology, on this historical ideology. I think in a way, it has become a bit more pragmatic as well. We just see the same trend and tendency of North Korea to pick and choose whatever fits with their own goals and then call it whatever they want to call it, Juche or self-reliance.

don’t think North Korea—and it’s always been the case—North Korea does not want to be seen as like a vassal state of China or of the Soviet Union or of Russia. It does not want to be seen as a dependent state, it wants to be seen as its own strong power, independent, sovereign; they always talk about sovereignty, and we see it played out now under Kim Jong-un, in how he’s very effectively been playing Beijing and Moscow, trying to extract a lot of concessions from each. So even though North Korea does remain extremely dependent economically on China—Despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine, despite all the arms sales to Russia, still North Korea is very dependent on China, and China is by far its main economic lifeline—It will never want to portray itself as such.

So it’s not like South Korea that proudly speaks of all of these values and celebrates a lot of the U.S. alliance, the U.S.-South Korea alliance and South Korea; through imagery as well, all these summits between U.S. and South Korean leaders. And that’s a big thing here. But in North Korea, it’s always been about the North Korean leader individually, that person, the Kim family; not the Kim family’s ties to this country or that country or this leader.

In that sense, the ideology was much more relevant before. Even now, if we look at the documents from the Party Congress earlier this year and other documents that we’ve been seeing from North Korea, coming out over the past three to four years under Kim Jong-un, there has been much less mention of ideology, especially of his predecessors. I think really for North Korea, the focus has and will remain on the leader specifically.

Jersey Lee

North Korea’s growing relationship with Russia has not just helped it increase its diplomatic room and military capabilities, but also apparently being an economic boom, at least based on media reports. How significant and widespread has the economic windfall been for like North Koreans generally? On the other hand, I remember reading in 2024 speculation that growing number of North Koreans in Russia, whether it’s on the front line with Ukraine or whether it’s in Russian factories or wherever, may introduce an element of political uncertainty for the Kim regime, because these people, they would be more exposed to the outside world—Even though it’s Russia, it’s much bigger than North Korea. So how has Kim managed the risk and benefit?

Gabriela Bernal

How he has managed it, I think the details of that are known only to North Korea inside North Korea. We don’t know the details of that, but I definitely think it’s true what you say, it’s a double-edged sword for North Korea, this whole Russian economic boom. It’s a double-edged sword because on the one hand, yes, he does get that diplomatic clout that’s a much stronger international position, much more leverage over the US, over South Korea and all the money, the billions and billions that have reportedly come in through arms sales. So that those are all pros.

But then there are cons, like you said, because it’s impossible to completely seal off an entire country from the outside world, no matter how hard you try. And in North Korea, this is a very perfect example, because they have tried from the very beginning to really keep the country as close as possible, the people as indoctrinated with propaganda as possible. And that remains central to the government survival to this day. It’s very important because, of course, if North Koreans would know, if they had access to the Internet, if they had access to outside information about what’s going on in the outside world or how people live in other countries, how long could the Kim family survive?

But I think they survive through a lot of different strategies, because North Koreans are not oblivious to the outside world, especially since the 90s, the famine of the 90s. Ever since then, the amount of smuggling that began taking place since then, and the markets, a lot of outside information was able to come in. So I think North Koreans, if you look at the testimonies by North Korean escapees that are compiled every year by South Korean government and research institutions, we see all these testimonies that so many North Koreans have watched dramas and all that. Yet still, then the important question is, but if so many people know about the outside world through these movies or music or videos, why don’t they revolt against the government? And yeah, it’s difficult to answer that, but the government just has a very strong control in terms of security control over the people that makes it very difficult.

The North Koreans that are going to work in Russia in factories and restaurants, that has definitely increased in recent years. A lot of people from North Korea have been sent to Russia. A lot of them have been sent under student visas. But when they’re sent there, their entire families pretty much in North Korea are kept as like hostages. They know that if someone defects, that they’re going to either kill your family or send them to a labor camp or some terrible fate. So that is a huge deterrent for the majority of North Koreans to not defect. Still, some do defect, but the majority will not because they know that they have family there, and if they leave, their entire family and sometimes even generations below, like people that are not even directly like immediate family, like mother, father, child, even cousins, sometimes they’re all sent to these labor camps or prison camps. And I think that is a major deterrent for North Koreans not to defect, even though they have access to the outside world.

It might in the long term. We won’t know now. It’s too soon to say now. But all of these people that are in Russia now in these years, 2024, 2025, and maybe in the next few years, when they go, they’ll go back to North Korea. And when they go back to North Korea, they won’t be the same people as when they first left. And what does that mean? What will they do with that information that they have with that experience that they gained? I think that’s a very interesting question. I guess it depends on how many, because the more people have such experiences and the more people are to act on this newfound desire for freedom and change, the higher the chance that something could happen in North Korea. But I think for now it’s too soon to say, but for Kim Jong-un, it’ll be interesting to see if he does keep sending more and more people, because every person he sends is a danger. Yes, they bring money in for the government now, but in the long term, you don’t know which one of those people might come back and actually plot something. It’s very possible. So that’s interesting.

Jersey Lee

Going back to the benefit, because that was mostly about the risk, apparently there’s a big economic boom in North Korea, not just from Russian cash, but also from various IT cyber scams and whatever. Looking at the economic side, Is the money just going into the North Korean government? Do ordinary peoples feel any difference? How is it manifesting itself, all this supposed money?

Gabriela Bernal

From what we’ve seen and the limited information that we have, the majority of the money does seem to go to the military, to weapons and modernizing the military capabilities. But Kim Jong-un has also invested and is continuing to invest significantly in domestic projects separate from the military, such as construction and medical facilities, agriculture, education. There have been a lot of projects in recent years, which would arguably then benefit the local people eventually. I do think that’s noteworthy. So it’s not all about the military, because Kim Jong-un, I think he realizes that the people, the quality of life matters now more than it did perhaps under his predecessors. People are not as blindly going to just follow if the government cannot provide for them. So the more the government can provide them with their basic needs and also with maybe a bit extra than basic, the greater the loyalty that it will inspire in people. At least that’s what the logic would be.

If you look at especially the cities like Pyongyang, definitely the pictures that we’ve gotten from tourists, especially Russian tourists, the photos that they have and videos that they’ve taken, are really surprising of how modern it looks, like they have their versions of Uber, and all these QR code ordering, and all these restaurants and all these skyscrapers. And of course, the difference between the rest of the country and the capital is still large. But from the beginning, Kim Jong-un has always emphasized the importance of closing that gap or at least narrowing that gap by investing in the provinces, which he has done and continues to, there are plans to continue to do that. So I think the money that is coming in from Russia, some of it is reaching the local populations. But still, of course, the disproportionate amount will go back to the regime and the military.

Jersey Lee

Thinking about all this foreign currency that is coming to North Korea, how do they even use it? Because they’re supposed to be under a lot of sanctions, right? Even though Russia presumably has stopped enforcing many sanctions, most other countries, if you want to trade with North Korea, if you don’t try to smuggle goods from the China-North Korea border, then you have to ship them by sea. And we’ve seen recently satellite photos of ship-to-ship transfer of sanctions evasion goods and whatnot. So number one, is that just how that works, they would use foreign currency to buy stuff that’s smuggled into North Korea? Why can’t South Korea and Japan or the U.S. just stop this? We can see it on satellite. Why can’t we just stop it?

Gabriela Bernal

First of all, a lot of these transfers happen in... So there’s many different ways where they do this. And one of them, like you said, is maritime, under international waters. And the flags that they use on the ships are from other countries. So it’s not necessarily immediately clear that, oh, this ship is linked to North Korea. They also change the name of the ships very frequently. So a ship may have one name today and in three months, it’ll have a totally different name under a different flag. So that makes it difficult to accurately, it usually takes months later when analysts go over these satellite images, and then put them together with measurements, and then they can see that, oh, it was the same ship. But to catch it in real time is very difficult.

I think the sanctions evasions have definitely gone up since 2022, because ever since, I think it was a big deal in 2022 when both China and Russia didn’t vote in favor of more sanctions against North Korea. And since then, it’s just all gone downhill from there, the enforcement of sanctions, especially by Russia, obviously. And China also has been very vocal about not supporting sanctions anymore, that sanctions aren’t going to work and that sanctions are not the way.

I think if other smaller countries, especially in Africa, other countries that may otherwise have been willing to trade with North Korea, at least in a limited way, if they see two of the biggest powers in the world openly defy U.S. and U.N. sanctions, I think that makes them more willing to follow suit. If we look at the list of countries that have the top 10 trading partners of North Korea for last year, according to the South Korean Central Bank’s research, you have countries in there like Laos, like Tanzania—Tanzania was like number three. It’s very interesting because we never hear about that. We don’t know anything about this kind of trade, because, of course, these countries, if you look at the U.N. reports about sanctions enforcement, they don’t provide—Obviously, they’re not going to provide a list of things that they traded with North Korea, or notify the UN about these things. So it’s very interesting to see that, yeah, North Korea does have other trading partners besides Russia and China, and a lot of the trade is in minerals and things like that. But its options could grow, because its diplomatic partnerships are also expanding and growing. For example, with Belarus, they made many deals with Belarus this year and last year. Relations with Vietnam are also very strong. And because a lot of these countries are already not democracies, it’s more difficult for us to know what happens after they sign these deals. So we don’t know. A lot of trade could be going on and probably is going on behind the scenes with many of these diplomatic partners of North Korea. We just don’t know. We’re just not that aware of it.

Jersey Lee

It seems that Kim Jong-un has made it increasingly obvious his daughter is going to succeed him as Supreme Leader. Given that he also has a younger son [Correction: should be older son], why is he choosing a female successor, which seems like it might ruffle some feathers in a society like North Korea’s? How do they think of the prospect of a future female supreme leader? And more broadly—you mentioned this a few times—can this de facto monarchy continue for the foreseeable future? Or other than what we’ve already discussed, is there potential for regime instability?

Gabriela Bernal

Both are possible. But first of all, about the son, we do not know for sure that he has a son because there have been a lot of high-level sources in South Korea and North Korean defectors as well that have said, no, Kim Jong-un does not have a son, that his oldest child is Ju-ae, this is this girl, the daughter. So we do not know for sure, but there have been a lot of authoritative people who have said that there is no son. So that’s one thing we don’t know. If he does have a son, it could all be a ruse just to take the focus away and to confuse and all that. But for now, we don’t know if a son even exists. That’s the first thing. And two, why a woman? Well, again, I think Kim Jong-un has, unlike his predecessors, he has been actually much more open to women in high level positions. If we look at the foreign minister, Choe Son-hui, if we look at his—even the role for his wife has been, compared to other first ladies, the role of his wife and of course his sister, who has been like the face of North Korean media for years now, he has shown himself much more open and I guess—I don’t know if open-minded is the right word, but at least willing to use women.

His daughter, well, first of all, if he doesn’t have a son, then he doesn’t have a choice, right? If he doesn’t have a son, he has no choice but to choose his daughter then, the oldest one. And second, even if he does have a son, I think the important thing is, which he learned through his father—because Kim Jong-un was not supposed to be the first choice for successor. His elder brother was supposed to be the choice, but Kim Jong-il did not choose the other one because the other one would have been—he had zero leadership qualities whatsoever, he would go to Disneyland and Tokyo and concerts, and he had no—for lack of better description, that “dictatorial aura” was not there, you know? So I don’t think he’s going to choose.

Kim Jong-un knows that, because that’s why he was chosen, because his father saw him, even though he was younger, he saw him as a much better potential leader than his elder brother. And you know that ultimately what matters is the survival of the regime. And so if choosing the younger son or if choosing a daughter who is strong-willed and a potentially very strong leader, if that is what’s going to enhance the chances of regime survival, I think that is the decision that the leader will make. Regardless of whether it’s a daughter or a son or the eldest or the youngest. So I think that’s one thing that Kim Jong-un must have taken from his own experience with the succession.

Also, like you said, won’t it ruffle some feathers? Of course it will, because North Korea is a very patriarchal society. It’s still very male dominated, definitely. And there are high level North Korean escapees who say that, no, North Korean people would never accept a female leader. Yeah, possibly not yet. But I think that Kim Jong-un knows this. And possibly, if she is his top choice for successor, then it makes sense why he would bring her out from such a young age, because there’s really no [other] reason for him to, because he can show her off at a major event, at a family kind of thing, that he’s there with his wife and his children, to portray this image of normalcy, which is another reason why people say he brought his daughter out, is to show himself in a more normal light. But I don’t necessarily agree with that, because then it would be enough to just show her occasionally in a more familial setting. Even with photos maybe taken at home or taken at a beach or whatever, something more family like. But the fact that he takes her out to like missile tests and he took her to China last year, the way that he brings her to these very specific, important military security related political events, that doesn’t add to that argument that, oh, he wants to seem like a normal person, a normal leader. No. Why would he do that? And it’s the image that he’s creating for her, because again, North Korea is very, very centered around propaganda, around idolization of the leaders and all this. It would make perfect sense for him to use this strategy of showing his daughter in public to the country and to the world from such a young age.

So then by the time, let’s say she takes over power in 10 years or whatever it is, or eight years, or at least whether she’s named successor when she reaches of age, that it would be maybe more palatable for the North Korean public, because that’s what really matters, because the world will have to deal with whoever is chosen, so that’s not so much of the problem. The problem is the North Korean people, will they accept her leadership or not? And there’s a much higher chance of them accepting her leadership if she’s been in the public eye, if she’s been among military generals and in that circle for by then maybe 10 years or more than 10 years. So in that sense, I think the strategy would make a lot of sense, but whether that is his intention, we won’t know for a while. But for now, she does seem like the most plausible successor.

Jersey Lee

By “people”, you’re referring to North Korean elite, presumably not ordinary North Koreans, or do they get a say?

Gabriela Bernal

Both. I think because the society—especially the elite, for sure, the elite would be even more difficult. Because they actually have the power. There are military generals that could potentially plot a coup or something. And especially if Kim Jong-un would die, that would be especially possible. So I think that is definitely something that is a threat, and that he knows. Because as long as Kim Jong-un is alive, all the elite have to, even if they don’t agree with it, and even if they can’t possibly imagine this little girl being the leader in the future, they have to go with it because that’s what the leader is deciding now. But if he was not to be there anymore, I think that would be very difficult to get the elites on board in the in the short term, which is why a lot of analysts also, including myself, argue that if Kim Jong Un would die prematurely or like within the next 10 years, It would make much more sense for his sister to take over, at least for a few years, until the daughter gains more experience and until her position is more secure. So, yeah, it’s a risky thing.

Jersey Lee

Well, Kim Yo-jong, I feel like if I was Kim Yo-jong and it’s like, okay, we’re already setting a precedent that it’s okay to have a female supreme leader, why can’t it be me?

Gabriela Bernal

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, definitely. I think that is another open question, would she not plot something? That’s a very good question. We don’t know. Again, I think as long as her brother is alive, as long as he is alive, it’s very difficult for anyone to really openly defy him and reject his decision. So if Kim Jong-un is still alive and he officially names his daughter as his successor, it would be much more difficult for anyone to really openly challenge that, including his sister. But like you said, if he doesn’t name her officially his successor and he suddenly dies, it would make more sense for her to be leader. And then would she step away after a few years to then make way for the daughter of her brother, her niece to take over power, or would she stick to power? Would she just, I don’t know, exile the niece potentially or something. It’s all possible. It’s like a Game of Thrones kind of thing. It could, yeah, it’s possible.

Jersey Lee

Finally, you’re originally from the Caribbean island of Curacao. What got you interested in North Korea, which is almost diametrically on the other end of the world? Also, I imagine it’s quite difficult for you to even step foot in North Korea. So how do you even study it?

Gabriela Bernal

Very long story, but I’ll keep it very short. I became interested in the history of Korea after visiting here, after visiting the Korean War Memorial in 2017, that’s when I really learned more in detail about the Korean War and especially the division of the country, I thought was very unique and interesting from the perspective of someone who was studying political science at the time. I thought it was a unique case compared to the other countries that I was studying, because the fact that the war had not ended yet, the fact that North and South Korea are now like separate countries, but still want unification, and North Korea being this enigma, such a mysterious place with such little information, everything was very unique about this situation, about the Korean Peninsula.

Initially I was just intrigued by it. And I started reading more about Korean history and North Korea. And I wasn’t planning on going so deep into it. But then the pandemic in 2020 happened and I had other plans, but of course, that didn’t work out. And a professor of mine referred me to this Ph.D. program that the Ministry of Unification was hosting for the first time ever, for North Korean studies, because they wanted more foreigners to become experts on North Korea. And I thought there was nothing else I could do at the time, because all the borders were closed in many countries and all the programs were canceled. But this was open. This was July 2020, right at the start of the pandemic. And so I decided to come here to South Korea then to do the PhD because I thought, one, it’s a very unique opportunity to learn under such a—because the University of North Korean Studies is only, like the name suggests, is only about North Korea and all the professors are experts in a specific field related to North Korea. The whole thing was in Korean. That’s also really helpful, of course. And I genuinely didn’t have anything else to do. So I thought I would do it. And it was only three years compared to other PhDs, which take many, many years. This program was specifically three years. So, yeah, I thought, why not?

And that’s how I kind of by accident became more specialized in North Korea. That was not my intention initially, but it’s a very unique—I don’t only focus on North Korea, I focus on the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asian diplomacy and security in general. North Korea is an extremely unique place to study for sure. Very difficult, very challenging. But yeah, I think at the time also when I as a student, I was thinking, there’s a lot of China experts, there’s so many China experts. There’s quite a lot of Japan experts as well. But Korea, there were not a lot of people back then, and even now today, but especially back then, there were not so many people focused on the Korean Peninsula specifically. So I thought it would be a good niche as well to differentiate myself from like other political analysts. And I truly do love it here.

Jersey Lee

That’s such a unique experience. It was so great to have you on.

Gabriela Bernal

Thank you for having me.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pacificpolarity.substack.com

Tom Wright joins Pacific Polarity to discuss the emergence of "two Americas", the consequences of America's political volatility for its allies, and what a future US strategy towards China might look like. Wright argues that allies cannot simply wait for the next administration to restore the old order, but need alliances that are structurally resilient to changes in Washington. He also argues that Trump is less interested in strategic competition with China than his predecessors, while defending the Biden administration's approach as responsible competition rather than a new Cold War. Using rare earths as a case study, he discusses America's difficulty in responding to China's economic leverage, the need for greater strategic industrial policy, and working with allies at an "allied scale". He also shares his thoughts on Trump's transactional approach to alliances, his meetings with Xi Jinping, and the emerging debate over the future of Democratic foreign policy.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pacificpolarity.substack.com

On the latest episode of Pacific Polarity, Jersey Lee spoke with Australian Senator Dave Sharma about Australia's role in the Indo-Pacific, its relationships with the United States and China, and the Coalition's approach to international development and climate policy. Sharma argues that Australia should support continued American engagement in global conflicts rather than begrudge Washington's attention beyond the Indo-Pacific, while using its own development assistance more strategically in the region. He discusses the challenge of speaking clearly about China while avoiding unfair treatment of Australians of Chinese heritage, and advocates a nuanced approach that combines partnership and trade with firm resistance to actions that threaten Australia's security. Sharma also argues that China's military buildup is the primary driver of regional tensions, while noting that both major Australian parties broadly share a pragmatic approach to the Indo-Pacific. He also shared his views on the Coalition's climate policy, especially as it relates to Pacific Island nations

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pacificpolarity.substack.com

Professor Adam Lockyer joins Pacific Polarity to discuss his new book "Conventional Maritime Deterrence", arguing that deterrence at sea operates fundamentally differently from deterrence on land. He explains how concepts such as sea control, sea denial and "maritime sparring" shape competition in the Indo-Pacific, why Australia needs both offensive and defensive options—including AUKUS—and why emerging technologies such as drones may be reshaping maritime warfare. Drawing on Cold War history, Lockyer suggests Australia's evolving strategy may increasingly resemble Soviet rather than traditional American maritime doctrine, while arguing that Australia's greatest strategic weakness lies not in its plans but in its failure to convincingly demonstrate the capabilities and resilience it claims to possess. The discussion also explores the lessons of the Iran and Ukraine wars, industrial preparedness, societal resilience, and how policymakers can avoid learning the wrong lessons from history.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pacificpolarity.substack.com

The Wall Street Journal’s Jonathan Cheng discusses his forthcoming book Korean Messiah and the deeper ideological foundations of North Korea. Moving beyond conventional analyses, the conversation explores how Kim Il-sung’s Christian upbringing helped shape the regime’s quasi-religious political culture, and how this—alongside hereditary rule—sets it apart from orthodox Marxism. Cheng situates North Korea within a longer arc of Korean history, highlighting its strategic autonomy, ideological evolution under Kim Jong-un, and surprising continuity with the past. The discussion also examines why the regime may feel vindicated in its choices, and what its trajectory reveals about leadership, legitimacy, and survival in an increasingly volatile geopolitical environment.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pacificpolarity.substack.com

Note: This episode was recorded on March 15 Australia time (March 14 US time). On March 16 Australia time (March 15 US time), Trump threatened to delay his upcoming visit to China, if China doesn’t help unblock the Strait of Hormuz. In response to this news, James Zimmerman provided the following additional comment: China is unlikely to respond to the threat, and it’s not in their best interest to jump into the fray of the hostilities, which is not their battle. They’ll likely say that if Trump cancels, that is on his own volition and unfortunate as Beijing is able and willing to proceed with the planned Summit. But, overall, my guess is that Trump will proceed with the visit knowing that the US-China relationship is too important to postpone.

Jersey Lee

Welcome to this episode of Pacific Polarity. Today we’re speaking with James Zimmerman. He is a seasoned lawyer with more than three decades of diverse legal experience based in China since 1998 and is currently a partner at the law firm Loeb & Loeb where he advises foreign companies on corporate, transactional regulatory litigation and white collar criminal defense matters. He is also the chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China and had previously served in this position four times over the past two decades. He is also the author of the acclaimed nonfiction book, The Peking Express: The Bandits Who Stole a Train, Stunned the West and Broke the Republic of China. James Zimmerman, great to have you on.

James Zimmerman

Thank you so much. It’s great to be here. I appreciate the opportunity.

Jersey Lee

As I understand, you’ve been involved in the preparations surrounding Trump’s upcoming visit to China. To the extent that you can share, how have these preparations progressed and what can we expect from the visit?

James Zimmerman

This might actually be overstating our role, but we, the chamber and its members, are very much engaged with different departments in the U.S. administration, just providing our suggestions and input on the upcoming presidential visits. And we’re doing so because we want to make sure that the business communities, American business community’s agenda is part of that discussion. We are making sure that we’re having conversations with the administrations to let them know that we’re supportive. We’re here. And we’ve got ideas on what we want to see in terms of deliverables, outcome. And so, I mean, that’s why we’ve been making ourselves available.

I was in Washington, D.C. two weeks ago meeting with a number of the teams that are participating in the presidential summit and to make ourselves available and to be supportive in any way we can.

Jersey Lee

What might be some of the expectations from the business community that you represent?

James Zimmerman

Well, I think the best way I’d characterize it is the expectations are generally low. We’re not expecting a grand bargain. We’re not expecting significant deliverables, although I do know that there is some discussions at this point to try to come up with some purchases that may result from the discussions. But overall, I think the goal of the summit is to continue to maintain a stable relationship between the United States and China. And the goal of this summit is not to reach a whole new bargain, a whole new agreement, the key issue is maintaining the stability in the relationships, which I feel is very, very important from the business community’s perspective. So long as the parties continue to talk and the relationship is stable, I think that’s something that’s very important for not just the business community, but the global economy as well, because if the bilateral relationship is stable, that supports stability across the globe and is good for the global economy.

Jersey Lee

There’s been quite a number of reports that have noted issues with the preparation process, or at least, as you say, playing down expectations for the visit. There’s reports that there might not be a corporate delegation from America, and some other reports suggest that the preparation process has been a bit rushed, which is why there’s low expectations for outcomes. What do you think of such reporting?

James Zimmerman

Well, I think that there is some truth to the fact that, yeah, this has all been late discussions and we’re trying to put something together without a whole lot of planning time. But keep in mind, too, the delegation that Trump led to Saudi Arabia that was all put together at the last minute where CEOs got on board. And I think that there is some discussions that he will be bringing forward to China maybe 20, maybe 30 CEOs that have an interest in ongoing trade and investment in China.

I think the expectations and the reporting in general is accurate. I think they’re trying to put something together where we’re going to have some business that will be participating in some way, but the actual outcomes and the actual purchases is something that’s left for observation.

Jersey Lee

So it sounds like this is something that’s common in Trump’s visits, instead of specific to this upcoming visit to China. Is that what you’re saying?

James Zimmerman

Yeah, I mean, I think it would be—There are things specific to the U.S.-China relationship that we’re trying to put together, but the last-minute planning is nothing new with this administration, they seem to be doing things quite often at the last minute. Even when I was in Washington, when I met with the Chinese embassy the DCM (Deputy Chief of Mission) there had said to me that, wow, we haven’t heard what the plan is, and it’s so hard to have outcomes, so we have to play down expectations because we just don’t have a whole lot of time. That’s the situation here, but we may be surprised, there are some last minute preparations that will, may pull things together, so Trump brings along a real solid group with him, but we’ll have to see what happens.

The fact that Secretary of Treasury percent is meeting with Vice Premier He Lifeng in Paris as we speak, a lot of those discussions in Paris are planning the logistics and planning some of the outcomes that will come out of this meeting. So in the next few days, we may be hearing more information.

Jersey Lee

Beyond the usual conversation over trade and investment, which lots of people have talked about, some reporting suggests that the US might push China to reduce purchases of oil from Russia and Iran, or to push China to exert pressure on Iran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. Meanwhile, there are suggestions that China may in turn push the U.S. to weaken its support for Taiwan or to significantly weaken export controls. Do you think any of these proposals might find a receptive counterpart here, or are they just thought bubbles, trial balloons?

James Zimmerman

No, I don’t think there’s going to be any progress in either direction on the more sensitive topics. Those things take a lot of time to work through, and I think the parties, both the U.S. and China, are more interested in keeping the general stability of the relationship and not throwing a monkey wrench in either direction that’s going to cause any kind of complications. If the U.S. was to pressure China to reduce its purchases of oil or if China was to put pressure on the U.S. to weaken its support for Taiwan, I think you’re opening up a whole week of discussions, a month of discussions, and it just complicates things. And I don’t think either party really wants to go down that path. I think it’s more of, let’s just continue to stabilize the relationship, let’s talk in general terms, and let’s keep things at a very simple pace right now. And I think that’s the direction we’re going in.

There’s been a lot of issues that have come up in the past few months that could very easily have derailed the pending truce that’s between the U.S. and China since the presidents met in South Korea back in October, a lot of things have happened, not just Iran, but Venezuela and so forth. But there’s been quite a bit of discipline on both sides to not overreact, to destabilize the relationship. So it’s the same theme. It’s like, let’s not complicate things with very difficult requests at this time. Let’s just keep the relationship stable. So I don’t think you’re going to find that a lot of proposals that are going to be made.

Now, there might be, I mean, both sides may take the opportunity to lecture one another on things that they find to be troubling. And I’m sure that Xi Jinping is going to raise questions about both Venezuela and Iran and so forth. And then Trump himself might raise questions about the things that are troubling him as well. But I don’t think those are going to be conversations that are going to result in any grand bargain, so to speak. They’re just too complicated and just not enough time.

Jersey Lee

On the topic of the ongoing war in Iran, do you think that’s affecting either side’s thinking towards the meeting? Maybe not to the extent of derailing it, but just thinking about how much importance, how much salience they want to put into this meeting. Because various analysts have made the case that this meeting might be bad optics for both Trump and Xi, but for different reasons, given the current geopolitical context.

James Zimmerman

Yeah, I mean, that’s a concern on both sides. I know that, in communications with people within the Chinese government, they were very concerned, and they continue to be concerned about the optics of providing Trump with a platform, with the opportunity to meet Xi while this war with Iran is going on. So there are concerns on the Chinese side. And quite frankly, right after the war began, there was questions on whether Beijing was going to cancel the summit, there was a real concern about that, but that did not happen. In fact, Foreign Minister Wang Yi himself, I think it was earlier this week, had said he welcomed Trump to come to Beijing for discussions, so neither side has raised questions about this to derail the process. But there is certainly a bit of discomfort in both Beijing and Washington about certain things that either side is doing. And I know that on the Chinese side, they do have concerns, not just with Iran, but Venezuela, weapon sales to Taiwan, there’s a whole laundry list. And I’m sure that Trump is going to get an earful while he is in Beijing.

But whether that derails the relationship, I don’t think China wants to push it to the point where it’s going to cause a disruption in the relationship and then go back to situation like we had last year, with effectively a trade war going on, both sides lobbying tariffs back and forth, and sanctions back and forth. And I don’t think they want to move in that direction again, so both sides have shown quite a bit of restraint. And even though these geopolitical tensions are real and serious and significant, but there has not been a movement towards basically canceling the meeting.

But we have to see what happens because we still have two weeks to go. China and Xi Jinping may feel that, well, what’s going on in Iran is not going to be ending soon. And so we don’t want to appear to validate what the Trump administration is doing. So there is always a potential that the meeting will be canceled by the Chinese side. But we’ll have to see what happens. And I think that, at least on the Chinese side, they’re hoping that the situation will move in a direction of trying to resolve itself, or at least for the parties to open up a dialogue, so that the war either ends or it’s resolved in some way with a ceasefire. But we’ll have to see what happens. Xi Jinping may at the last minute cancel the trip, but I think that would be contrary to China’s interest. They really want to maintain a stable relationship with the U.S., whether they agree with what Trump is doing or not, so that’s something we’ll have to see what happens in the next couple of weeks.

Jersey Lee

Quickly following up on that, do you think that, assuming that the visit goes through, do you think that that would be indicative of both Washington and Beijing placing trade policy, trade concerns, trade relations above basically all other concerns and prioritizing that?

And I suppose on the topic of whether Beijing might potentially cancel at the last minute, do you think that China might use this as kind of a leverage or even a threat to affect how Washington conducts the war in Iran?

James Zimmerman

I do think that, as I said, I think that Xi Jinping is going to really put the pressure on Trump when he shows up. And so he’s going to use it as an opportunity to express his concerns, express his dislike for some of the actions by the Trump administration. That’s a given. He is really—I would anticipate that he raises concerns and his dislike for certain things. But that will also be part of the media, where Xi publicly is going to be—there’ll be public reports where he talks about how he is not happy about some of the things that the U.S. has done. But overall, I think it’s not so much placing the trade and commercial relationship over other issues. It’s really placing stability in the general relationship over a lot of other things like the geopolitical tensions.

So I don’t think Xi Jinping would be sacrificing his interest in the Middle East or in Latin America over this, I think he’s going to express his concerns when he meets. But he also realizes the big picture at 40,000 feet is maintaining a stable relationship, because last year, that trade war back and forth, it caused a lot of tension in the relationship. But again, I do expect that Beijing is going to express its concerns to Trump when he gets to town and use it as a platform to basically say, we’re not happy about this; but at the same time, we also don’t want to disrupt our relationship in general. Anyways, we’ll have to see how the messaging works out, but I don’t see this as placing commercial and trade interests over everything else.

Jersey Lee

I suppose what my question was getting at was, whether Beijing might use the meeting itself as leverage; it’s like, if you don’t draw down the war in Iran, or start negotiations with Iran, or at least indicate serious interest in having negotiations—because right now there doesn’t appear to be serious interest on the part of the U.S. to have negotiations at all—would Beijing say, okay, if you don’t even attempt to engage in negotiations, then the meeting is off. Do you think that’s possible?

James Zimmerman

Well, I do think that optics matters. Part of it is that I don’t think Beijing wants to have this meeting appear to be like a vote of confidence for what Trump is doing. And that’s a concern. And that was why a lot of folks were saying that the meeting may be canceled, because a meeting in itself may appear to give Trump some credibility as to what he’s been doing. So I do know that they are very seriously concerned about the optics of having him just come to town.

But I do feel that they’ve kind of turned it around. And I think that’s why they’re going to use it as an opportunity, to try to get some leverage, some concessions, at least some subtle pressure that you need to resolve this; if you don’t resolve it, this may impact our relationship. So there’s that kind of messaging that can come. But we’ll just have to see how it comes out. I mean, it’s very uncertain how the Chinese government are going to play this. I think the last thing Beijing wants is to show some support for what Trump is doing. I think that overall Beijing is going to play this to whatever advantage that they’re hoping to get out of it, so they look at this as an opportunity and not just something that is necessary. Hopefully Trump is going to be prepared when he comes to town. But I think both sides overall, from a long-term perspective, want to make sure that the relationship remains stable, that’s the key, and they want to put some guardrails in so that we don’t have any policy shocks on either side, because that doesn’t help anyone on either side.

Jersey Lee

You have long been a critic of the current administration’s trade policy, particularly tariffs. However, given the number of concessions that the US has managed to wrest from weaker counterparts using the sort of tariffs, like investment commitments, agreements, to drug pricing, etc., do you think that tariffs, however misguided they may be as an economic or trade policy, has given the US significant leverage? Obviously, it wasn’t effective against China, but it may have been effective against the European Union, against India, etc. And now that the Supreme Court has struck down the IEEPA tariffs, does the Chinese government think that this has handed them greater leverage during the upcoming Trump-Xi meeting, and how might they use it?

James Zimmerman

Well, I mean, first of all, I’m a critic, not just of the current administration, I’m a critic of Democratic administrations, on both sides of the aisle. So I don’t believe that the use of tariffs works. It may work in the short term, but in the long term, it doesn’t because of, one, any costs driven by tariffs ultimately come from the consumer or paid by the consumer. Secondly, any time you tariff, impose tariffs on a country, they will find a way to reciprocate, which means is that it becomes a wash between the two countries and it really doesn’t have, it’s not effective, and tariffs also have a tendency to really be disruptive in trade negotiations, so there’s better ways of negotiating concerns. I mean, if market access is the concerns, talk about market access. The strategy of hitting a country with tariffs and then hoping to negotiate really doesn’t work in the long run. And you kid yourself if you think it does.

And the same thing with sanctions, with export controls and sanctions. They have to be rational. They have to be based on a legal reason; if you’re going to impose export controls based on, say, national security concerns, they really need to be rational. If you overreact, then it becomes overbroad application. And what happens is somebody else is going to fill the gap. Your competitors in Europe or other parts of the world are going to fill the gap. And also sanctions just drives self-sufficiency. So a country like China says, fine, we’re not going to buy X from you. We’re going to just make it ourselves and we’re going to put a lot of money into investing ways to replace the technology or whatever that is subject to export control. So the controls have to be rational. They have to have a legal basis to be workable, and you have to have the support of allies. I mean, if you’re the only one applying, say, overbroad export controls, then your competitors in Germany, France, the UK are going to fill the gap. That leads to a situation where the export controls really have no teeth, no power. So I’m not a big fan of using export controls or tariffs because in the long term, they don’t work.

Now, what does work is dialogue. It’s slow. It takes time. It takes a lot of oversight. And that’s why you have global organizations like the World Trade Organization. You have international tools to try to make sure that behavior is followed in a way that is not restrictive of trade or to counter any subsidies that might be distorting market access or distorting trade relations.

So I am a critic of U.S. trade policy, but I’m a critic of all parties, not just the current administration. But yeah, the whole thing with the tariffs is it doesn’t work. The Supreme Court comes in and says you can’t use those. And now the U.S. government has a huge payback to the consumers, where did we get with that? He used a provision that really is limited to emergency issues, and it was overreaching, overreacting. So anyways, we’ll have to see what happens on this.

I think that in the meeting between Trump and Xi, I think both sides need to realize that they need to take a step back, and be careful about how they use the tools in their toolbox. And that goes for the Chinese side as well. They are starting to use the export controls on rare earth metals now. Sure, that may give China some leverage, but it is a temporary. Because what you do is, if you control or if you monopolize the supply, all you do is drive those on the receiving end. And that could be Australia, that could be the US or Europe. But all you do is drive them in a direction of self-sufficiency or finding alternatives. For those that remember the oil embargoes back in the 70s, the organization called OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, they imposed production controls, supply controls on the supply of oil, and that created a lot of shocks. But the learning experience on that from those that were on the receiving end is to find alternatives, to not be subject to those kind of monopolistic controls again. So anyway, if the Chinese understand history and they know that if they are overreaching, if they are overbroad in the way they apply the export controls to rare metals, then it’s going to be a very short-term strategy for one. And two, they’re just going to drive the US and Europe and Japan and other countries around the world to find their own sources and to become self-sufficient. And then China loses that leverage.

So it is not something that—I don’t believe the Chinese have the confidence that the U.S. may think they have. When I was in Washington, there were people in the administration that were saying, oh, China has weaponized this export control. My first reaction was, well, they learned from the U.S. the use of export controls. But I also came back and said, I really don’t think the Chinese feel that they have a weapon because they realize that it is a very short term, very temporary bit of leverage. That will not work in the long run. They have leverage right now for the rare earth metals. But in time, those on the receiving end, including U.S., Europe, Australia and so forth, are just going to move in a direction where they’re going to find alternatives and they’re going to move towards self-sufficiency.

Jersey Lee

Obviously you have broadly been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration’s policies, particularly on China. We have seen the ways that the Trump administration retaliates against some of its critics, which is quite different from how past administrations have gone about. Do you feel that your criticism may be hurting or limiting AmCham China or the broader American business community in China that you represent? Do you feel that that might limit their engagement with the Trump administration, particularly in this lead up to the upcoming Trump-Xi meeting?

James Zimmerman

No, I mean, again, keep in mind, I am a critic of U.S. trade policy when it comes to overreaching on the tools in the toolbox, and I was a critic of both Trump, Biden, Obama, the Bush administration and so forth, and our criticism is fact based. It’s based on facts. I mean, if any administration, if any government official doesn’t want to listen to the facts, then at the end of the day, they are missing out on the importance of the real impact of what they’re doing.

I don’t think that it closes or forecloses the chamber or myself to have the dialogue. I was in D.C. two weeks ago and met with members of the administration, people that are what we could call politicos, meaning they were political appointees of the Trump administration, met with several Republican members of Congress, and they understand that the American business community needs a voice, has a voice, and yes, we will raise criticisms, but we try to be fact based, so that we can lobby and educate our lawmakers on why whatever policies they’re initiating, either they won’t work or that they’re going to not be effective in the long term. So, yeah, when you say I’m outspoken critic, it’s really something that is nonpartisan, if not bipartisan. We’re trying to be fact-based and that’s the important thing. And again, we have access, we continue to have access. We’re in communication with the ambassador. We’re in communication with multiple layers within the administration. And they listen, and they’re appreciative of our viewpoint. So I don’t see that this in any way impacts our ability to be a voice within those discussions.

Jersey Lee

There’s talk of a “China cycle”, where foreign firms enters China, establishes the industry ecosystem around them, and eventually a Chinese competitor emerges that is able to be competitive and perhaps even out-compete them, not just in China, but globally as well, perhaps with help by the government. How have American businesses thought about this, particularly those among the losing end of this process? Because I suppose the hawkishness of the U.S. government towards China over the past decade may be explained by the fact that some U.S. companies came out of this process disappointed and perhaps even bitter towards China, so didn’t really bother to lobby for more trade and engagement with China. What do you think of this possibility?

James Zimmerman

Well, let me address your first question on this, and I would not call this simply a China cycle. I mean, this is a cycle that happens any place in the world, and it happens not just to, say, American businesses, but any company: European, Australian, Japanese, and so forth. If you move production to a country, you have to protect your core technology. I mean, this is putting my lawyer hat on. One of the things that we tell any company is, you really need to take steps to protect your processes, protect your technology, and even if you have partners—because the thing is, you don’t want to build your competitors. You don’t want—because quite frankly, it’s very easy for companies that you work with to become competitors. And it’s a natural thing. If you don’t protect your technology, nobody else is going to do it for you.

Part of the reason you have lawyers is, where you see company after company after company, either going to China or going to Vietnam or going to wherever, where they drop their guard. I can tell you, after three decades of working in China, we still get U.S. companies that say, oh, don’t put this in the agreement, we trust these guys, they’re good to work with, they’re going to respect us. And I’m like, you know, you got to be careful. It’s your core technology, your future, your relevance in 10, 15, 20 years. You’re actually releasing it to the world, so you need protection. Never say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we trust these guys. It doesn’t matter if it’s China, Saudi Arabia, wherever. You have to take steps to protect your technology. So it is something that, again, it’s not a China cycle. It’s a global cycle. It even is an issue within the U.S. If somebody across town from where you do business has access to your core technology, they’re going to use it. So you have to be very careful. That’s why you have intellectual property laws, to ensure that your core technology is protected. And it’s most important when you go globally, because then you go into different legal systems and different ways of looking at technology.

Now, some people say, oh, when we go to China, they force us to give up our technology. And I’m like, well, I don’t think that’s true. They basically say, yeah, maybe you should license it or whatever, but you need to push back. You need to say this is our core technology. Once the cat is out of the bag in whatever country it is, then you potentially might lose it. So that is something companies should be aware of. Some companies should be concerned about that. If they don’t protect themselves and then later are complaining about somebody stealing their technology, they have nobody to blame but themselves. You can’t call up the U.S. Embassy and say, hey, they took our technology. Well, how did they take it? How did they get it? Did you protect yourself? Did you make available the tools? Why did you even bring that technology to this market if it was so easily replicated? American business is aware of that. And those that are succeeding in China realize that they need to protect their technology. And unfortunately, those that let their guard down may be learning a very harsh lesson. So that’s an issue.

The second question you have is on the hawkishness of the US government towards China. I don’t know if the companies did not lobby on this, what was happening—we saw this in various congressional hearings—people walk in and they say, yeah my technology was stolen, and it’s all “bad China bad China”. But I mean, the question should be, what did you do to protect your technology? What did you do to protect your brands? What did you do to ensure that you were not going to lose your technology? I don’t think a lot of the American companies have thought about that side of things after the fact, but if somebody is going to steal from you, they will. And if you go into any market, it’s not just China, but any market in the world unprepared, you may lose your key technology, your markets, and then they end up competing against you. It’s a story that has been going on for a long time. That’s why it’s important to listen to the lawyers. And some lawyers may say, hey, look, we can protect your technology as much as we can, but we can’t do it all. So maybe a decision is whether to even go into the market or not, because you feel that you will be unprotected. And that’s a strategic decision to make.

But anyway, I do feel that a lot of American companies that are today very bitter about being on the receiving end, on the losing end with respect to their technology, I think if you really dig deep into this and you really analyze what the companies did, you realize is that they’ve made a lot of mistakes, but that’s why listening to lawyers is important. And not to be saying things like, oh, I trust these guys, or they’re the ones that are going to help us grow the market in China. You have to realize that your technology, if that is what makes you relevant in the next 20 years, then you need to guard it. You need to guard it, protect it, otherwise you’re going to lose it.

Jersey Lee

Obviously, this is a global issue and a global phenomenon, but I think it would be fair to say that the Chinese have been much more effective and much quicker at adapting technology. So I suppose what explains why China is better at doing this than almost any other country?

James Zimmerman

China, I mean, the Chinese people are very, very resourceful, very brilliant people, very creative, and the investments in education, the investments in Chinese people traveling around the world and being educated at different universities. And they have really done a phenomenal job over the last three decades on ramping up their skills, and we gave, I would say foreign companies gave them the opportunities to fill a gap on manufacturing and they did, but now we can’t expect them, we can’t expect China to totally stand down, they’re going to continue on a path.

Where we can counter China in a way is, if there are unfair subsidies or if there’s a process where the government, in government procurement, is favoring Chinese producers over foreign producers, there are tools that we can use to make sure that foreign companies are allowed to compete. But you’re not going to be able to stifle innovation. You’re not going to be able to force the Chinese people back into a time where it was more labor-intensive production. That’s not going to happen. So we need to be forward-looking. We need to realize the Chinese are—when you say they’re, from a technological educational perspective, they want to be an innovation-based economy, and yes, they’re moving in that direction to be an innovation-based economy, we, the foreign business community, the rest of the world must embrace that. But we need to emphasize and reemphasize the fairness part of it. And that is, subsidies cannot be used in a way that is unfair and drives out the foreign business.

And two, the playing field must be equal for both foreign companies and Chinese companies. They need to compete. And that’s something that I think the leadership in China has not really fully understood because they’re focused on driving the champions around the world, but they have to be careful with how they do that, because if it’s done in a way that’s unfair, that is only driving the foreign governments to basically push back. And I think the overcapacity issue is kind of an example where you have all these EVs being produced, where the government has provided significant subsidies to drive that industry sector, and then all of a sudden you have just overproduction. So what do they do? They have to sell these globally because you can buy an EV in China at probably half the cost you can get it anywhere else in the world. And that is at a loss for the companies, because they’re not making any money on it. But the point is, the subsidies that went into the EVs and other industries, like steel, is having a negative reaction in other parts of the world. But that is an issue of government subsidies. It’s not so much an issue of, hey, we need to restrain innovation. We’re not going to do that. The U.S. has to welcome China as an innovation-based economy. But the Chinese on their side needs to be careful about playing the subsidy card, about being careful about using government procurement policies to support Chinese companies over foreign companies.

Jersey Lee

So this month, we saw China release trade figures for January and February, and they featured a stunning jump in exports by over 20% from the prior year. This shows that the China Shock 2.0 isn’t ending anytime soon, and talk of Chinese overcapacity, as you say, won’t either. It would also indicate that if Trump’s strategy on Liberation Day was to fight China, as some have suggested, that has not been successful so far. You talked a bit about the topic of overcapacity. How do you see this conversation developing and how much further can Chinese exports surge?

James Zimmerman

I do think that there needs to be attention to the overcapacity issue and not just with EVs, but other sectors like steel, and China needs to reflect on that and realizes that it’s driving champions with government subsidies and it does cause shock around the world.

You brought up a point about how the tariffs have not had much of an impact, and that’s true. Because the cost of all those tariffs, even though China’s exports continue to go up, the cost of all those tariffs are really coming out of U.S. consumers, not out of the Chinese. And I think part of the reason we’re in the middle of this truce right now is, there is a very silent recognition that Liberation Day is just not working for China. It may have worked for other countries around the world that got slapped with tariffs and then they said, oh, we give up, we’ll work out a deal. But the reality is China’s like, no, we’re not going to cave into that.

But overcapacity is a big, big issue. And that’s something that if China is not going to correct it, then the countries where they’re exporting to will, and that can be in the form of various trade remedies, like dumping laws or countervailing duty investigations and so forth. Because when you’re dumping low-cost production around the world, it does really impact the domestic producers. But there’s tools to counter that. And that’s something that China needs to take a look at. And I don’t think that they have taken a serious look at how the government subsidies has really made or exacerbated the trade imbalance. And so, it’s not a good thing that we’ve seen a surge in exports. It really is a reflection of overcapacity of subsidies and so forth. And unfortunately, the subsidies from five years ago are now coming to a realization. So we’ve lost time, China has lost time in correcting it. But this is definitely going to be an issue that is going to impact the relations.

Part of it, too, is who’s going to pay for... I mean, if you impose tariffs on low-cost EVs that are made but with overcapacity, or in an environment where overcapacity is allowed, are the Chinese companies paying, putting a bill on that? No, it’s the consumers in those countries, but there really needs to have a serious discussion on this because it is an issue.

And I think you’re going to see more exports surging, but I think eventually it’s going to slow down because, on the China side, they’re realizing that they need to get a handle on it. When you see the surge of exports in the last two months, it’s really a reflection of policies that may be more than 12 to 24 months old. So this is something that, as a result of policies years ago, is now why we’re seeing the surge. That’s why the Liberation Day tariffs aren’t going to have much of an impact, because it’s really getting to the subsidy issues that the Chinese need to correct. Because correcting the subsidies issues now is going to affect trade two years from now.

Jersey Lee

I read a Wall Street Journal article you had written back in 2015, and it was striking that you had noted even then that China was shifting its economy towards services and domestic consumption. Over a decade later, it seems the shift is still very much a work in progress, and it’s rather doubtful how much headway has been made. In fact, data from this January and February shows the slowest consumption growth outside of COVID. Why has this been the case? And what do American businesses think of the lack of progress in boosting consumption?

James Zimmerman

Part of the problem is—yeah, that was 10 years ago, that was an issue—but the Chinese government has not been listening to a lot of its own economists or international economists that have made it very clear that Beijing must move in a direction to support domestic consumption, because that’s a big issue. They have, in some ways: when you see people traveling during the holidays, all the high speed trains are packed, the airlines are packed, flights are packed, there has been some increase in consumption, but overall there needs to be more. And it also needs to be directed at the purchase of goods. And so, yeah, it’s been since I had that article—and quite frankly, I applaud your effort in digging up an article I wrote 10, 11 years ago—But I think back then we were very much hoping that the government move in a direction of encouraging more consumption, because the more consumption also helps drive a need for purchasing American goods and services. And also there was indeed a shift towards services, but China has been slower in that regard.

But U.S. firms are ramping up and doing much better with services in China. We’re seeing, in fact, with the American Chamber of Commerce’s business climate survey for 2025, one of the bright spots in profitability was an uptick in profitability for services. And so that still remains important. China, I think, wants to do the same. They want to drive their services sector as well. But yeah, there’s a big issue with consumption.

The chamber was watching two sessions, Lianghui, hoping to see more policies that may come out of the two sessions that might be driving consumption, but there was very little that came out of the two sessions that really gave us any indication that we would see any kind of stimulus or any plan to move forward with consumption.

I think part of the reason they’re very slow to drive consumption is also concerns about—I mean, you’ve got the real estate market, which is a real burden in itself, and that was one of the areas that was driving some consumption. They’re trying to get their arms around the real estate sector. But unfortunately, as we’ve got a problem with unemployment, we’ve got a lot of issues that have to be addressed. But at some point, the government’s going to have to do something to really drive domestic consumption, and we’ll have to see how that plays out this year. The American business is concerned about the economy. In our 2025 business climate survey, one of the key challenges, the top challenge, was the diminishing Chinese economy, and that goes to issues concerning consumption and so forth. But we’re placing some reliance on the Chinese government to do a better job at driving consumption. Well, we’ll just have to see how this year plays out.

And that might be a topic within the discussion between Xi and Trump, but the world needs to have a conversation with China that it needs to do more to drive that and also to drive inbound sales of goods from around the world. That still remains an issue.

Jersey Lee

In that article, you had also noted discriminatory practices against foreign firms, something that you’ve brought up several times during this conversation. Would you say that compared to a decade ago, the situation has improved?

James Zimmerman

No, I think it’s about stayed the same. I mean, there’s different things that have improved. Others have not. But in the American Chamber of Commerce’s business climate survey, the discriminatory or regulatory practices is still an issue. It’s a big issue with government procurement, where there is a tendency to favor domestic champions over foreign companies. I would say that overall in the past 10 years, the situation has remained the same. And so attention must be given to addressing whatever discriminatory practices, specifically those with procurement. We have, however, in areas of, say, intellectual property protection, we see that American companies are, for the most part, treated just like Chinese companies. There’s ways we’ve seen improvements, but there’s also ways where there could be more improvement, and it’s a work in progress. And again, government procurement is one of those, and hopefully they’ll move in a direction to take corrective action.

Jersey Lee

You had worked on several high-profile and politically sensitive cases of foreign individuals detained and prosecuted under China’s broad and ambiguous national security and state secrecy laws and regulations, including the 2014 detaining of Canadian citizen Kevin Garratt and his wife under espionage charges. Since then, we’ve seen more high-profile cases of what’s been referred to as hostage diplomacy. For example, the detaining of the “two Michaels” in the wake of Huawei Princess Meng Wanzhou’s detention by China [Canada] and the detaining of Australian citizen Cheng Lei on espionage charges. To the extent that you can share, what were your reflections from the Garratt case, and how has China’s approach towards hostage diplomacy evolved?

James Zimmerman

I cannot comment on specific client cases, but what I can say is, the American business community, the foreign business community in general, has made it very clear to the Chinese government that there are certain red lines, and the detention of people in business is a red line. When the Chinese government moves in a direction of detaining people or ordering exit bans, it does not give the business community the confidence that it wants. Part of it is because there’s a lack of transparency around any of these detentions. Part of it is certain aspects of the criminal justice system are highly politicized, and it’s not considered to be a very fair process. So it raises a lot of concerns. But we have emphasized to the Chinese side, it is a red line and it is still there, it’s still an issue, it’s still a concern. And it does raise a lot of concerns within the business community. And I think the Chinese government understands that. I think today they are more apt to be a lot more careful about exercising that authority, even if they make a claim or legitimately can claim that they have a legal basis to detain someone, when they do that without any degree of transparency, or due process, it really disrupts business confidence. That is still a concern. But in our conversations with the Chinese government, we emphasize this is a red line; if you exercise this, if you use this as a tool in your toolbox, it’s not going to be positive or looked upon as positive by the foreign business community. And I think they get that. I think they’re very cautious about it, but it’s still an issue that we are very concerned about.

Jersey Lee

Moving back to the broader relationship between U.S. and China, at the recently concluded two sessions, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke of putting U.S.-China relations on a sustainable trajectory this year. I have to say this sounds quite, perhaps highly optimistic, given all that has happened over not just the past year but the past decade. Do you see any realistic prospect for a sustainable trajectory? And what might a sustainable U.S.-China relationship look like? And how will we get there?

James Zimmerman

Business thrives when there is predictability. Business thrives when there’s clarity on what the rules are. Business thrives when there’s guardrails, where they keep the relationship from going off track. And so the only way to have the clarity, predictability, and the guardrails is through a dialogue. And that’s what’s important. And I think that’s something that Wang Yi feels, is that we’ve got that ability to be talking with one another. I also think the additional evidence that we’re on the right track is, we’ve got APEC, and the U.S. State Department and other agencies are very, very engaged in the APEC dialogues. And so we have a year between now and November where there’s going to be a lot of discussions in the context of APEC, which in my view, in the chamber’s view is, the more we talk, the more we continue to talk, then the relationship will be sustainable, and it’ll be positive, it’ll be constructive. I think that this is a good year.

When you take a look at the last 10 years, part of that was because of covid, part of it was because of all the tariffs and geopolitical tensions and so forth, the parties stopped talking with one another. Back in the first Trump administration, we gave up on the JCCT, which is the Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade. We suspended a lot of dialogue, but now we’re restarting dialogue, and that’s important.

Jersey Lee

Around the turn of the millennium, you had been involved in providing advice to China on drafting changes to its contract law and had engaged with their policymakers in other areas as well. As China has grown more confident, now specifically talking of the “four confidences”, has China become less open to such outside help? What does it mean for foreigners in China as well as for other countries in their engagement with China? And I suppose to even take this even broader, what are your overall reflections on the changes in China over the past three decades? In what ways has engagement with China worked out well for the U.S., and in what ways has it failed to perhaps meet expectations?

James Zimmerman

One thing to keep in mind is three decades ago, China did not have a lot of the processes in place for drafting laws, and this is not just a contract law, but the anti-monopoly law and even the marriage law. And there was laws after laws after laws where they were looking for guidance and they look to not just the American business community, but to the business community, the legal community in Europe. And so they were seeking input from all over the world to assist with the drafting process. With the anti-monopoly law, it was a 10-year process. It was long. And they were trying to figure out what would work best for China, they were looking at draft laws from Germany, from the U.S., and so forth. Another example, as I remember, with the Social Security law, they were looking for feedback and came to AmCham and said, put us in touch with experts on Social Security, how do we go about drafting that law? So they were looking for expertise from all over the world, and I think that took place on the Social Security law around 2015, 2016.

But anyway, the Chinese have been very good about seeking input and they still do that. But today they have more processes where the law drafting process, the rulemaking process has built in public notice, where they open things up for public comment. Back when we did the contract law, there was no public comment process. They simply called up AmCham and said, hey, have someone review this and let us know what you think. But today they have the institutional capacity to issue public notices. Anyone can participate in that, where there is public notice on the rules. And they realize how important it is to have public buy-in and public input. Because if you have input and buy-in, it makes for a better law. You’ve got the public saying, yeah, this is what we want to see. So they understand the importance of public buy-in now. And the law drafting process cannot solely be behind closed doors. But anyway, they still rely on the foreign business community. It’s not less. It’s probably more. But they also rely on their own people, which is important.

So we’ve accomplished in three decades a lot in that law and rule drafting process. And there is indeed more public participation, more transparency, more of a process that was not there three decades ago. But again, it doesn’t mean that, with all these processes, it doesn’t mean that the foreign business community is left out. It means is that there is more of a process involved. AmCham gets all the public notices and decides if they’re going to provide input or not. Because there’s so—I mean, every day they may be issuing a public notice on some rule or some regulation or some law that’s being revised—And so AmCham can only be involved so much in whatever law or regulations are on the table. But we do, we are involved.

I don’t think it’s that they’re less open to outside help. They’re very receptive. And we also find that they’re receptive when we prepare our white paper every year and we have dozens of meetings with government agencies going over our white paper, which is full of suggestions. And we still feel that the government agencies are very receptive to receiving the white paper, to receiving our suggestions. So that interest is still there for the white papers. They’re very interested in the business climate survey. So, yeah, I don’t see that they’re less interested. But what I do see is that we have institutions that did not have the capacity three decades ago. But today they do, and so we’re supporting their law in rule drafting processes under the current procedures that they have set up.

I do think this is exactly what we want. We wanted the Chinese to develop the institutions where there is public participation and public buy-in. We wanted that. We wanted laws and procedures for the courts to review the administrative litigation or administrative issues and so forth.

I don’t think we feel left out. They’ve developed the institutions. They’ve developed the laws. And then now our role is, we’re involved as much as we feel we want to be involved in any processes. So the changes have all been very, very positive.

In short, there is much room for improvement, and so AmCham and other organizations are very, very much interested in remaining engaged, and so, yeah, we’re still involved. I would characterize the whole process as having evolved, but it is evolved in a way that is very positive for China. And we’re actually pleased that they have built in more of the public participation, more of the public buy-in than they had three decades ago. So we’re not really, we don’t feel left out, we feel that they have accomplished and have matured in a way that will benefit China as a whole in the long run.

Jersey Lee

What are your reflections on U.S. engagement with China and how that has played out?

James Zimmerman

I think the engagement has been what I would call evolving. I believe there was stronger engagement under the Bush administration, leading up to 2008, there was a strong level of engagement through JCCT and S&ED (U.S.–China Strategic and Economic Dialogue). And then with the Obama administration, there was significant engagement where they talked about and hashed out the bilateral investment treaty. So, yeah, there was a lot of different time periods where engagement was very strong.

But then we had the last 10 years where we experimented with decoupling. And now I think the engagement is moving away from that. When I was in Washington two weeks ago, everyone we spoke to, they said decoupling didn’t work. And so we’re now in almost what I would call a new era of engagement between the U.S. and China. It may not be the same as what we saw in 2008. It may not be the same as what we saw in 2015 and 2016. But we are engaged. And we’re hoping to move away from all the tariffs and back and forth of last year, was just a reminder that that stuff doesn’t work. And so I think we’re now in an environment where the U.S. government realizes that getting into a tense situation with the Chinese government is nobody’s best interest.

And so my view is we’re now in a time where engagement is at a very positive level, even though it is simply to maintain the truce. But the key thing is we’re talking, we’re having dialogues, we’re going to work together to try to resolve issues. And so that is where we stand right now. So I am positive about this year, but we have to see what happens in December, because by December, we will have gotten through the engagement on APEC. There’ll be the G20 meetings and so forth. And so we have to see what happens in the relationship between now and December. There is a lot of opportunity for further engagement. And so this meeting, two weeks from now, the presidential summit, even though the outcomes are not going to be any grand bargain, it is a step in the right direction to continue to move in a path of constructive and positive engagement between the two parties, of the two largest economies in the world.

Jersey Lee

Great to talk to you, Mr Zimmerman, and we look forward to a year of successful engagement and we hope that you can continue to play a positive role in that.

James Zimmerman

OK, very good. Thank you so much.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pacificpolarity.substack.com

Rushali Saha explores the uncertain state of U.S.–India relations following the rollback of Trump-era tariffs and the announcement of what she characterizes as more framework than finalized agreement. While strategic alignment between Washington and New Delhi remains strong in principle, implementation has long been uneven. India, she argues, is careful not to flatter Trump, mindful of its self-image as an aspiring great power—particularly evident in its insistence that tensions with Pakistan were resolved bilaterally, despite U.S. claims of mediation. On Russia, India resists U.S. pressure to curb oil imports, viewing energy security and strategic autonomy as paramount, while also seeing value in preventing a tighter Russia–China alignment. Regionally and globally, India’s ambitions are constrained by domestic politics, limited state capacity, and reluctance to take hard positions, even as it seeks recognition as a major power. Rushali suggests that India’s consensus-based diplomacy and long-term strategic signalling—especially in the Middle East—may yet bear fruit, but that true great power status will require translating economic scale into sustained global responsibility.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pacificpolarity.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pacificpolarity.substack.com

William Reinsch dissects Trump’s tariff strategy—framed as revenge, revenue, and reshoring—and its implications for the global trading system. He argues that while the U.S. is the greatest short-term threat to rules-based trade, Trump is unlikely to permanently remake the international order, even as resilience increasingly displaces efficiency as a core trade objective. Reinsch is sceptical of breakthrough U.S.–China trade deals, seeing recurring cycles of confrontation that ultimately favour China, while U.S. debates over export controls reflect uncertainty about how to compete with a technologically capable rival. Looking ahead, he suggests middle powers may play a crucial role in holding the system together, even as China’s overcapacity remains the most serious long-term risk to global trade.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pacificpolarity.substack.com

Richard Gray

On today’s episode of Pacific Polarity, we’re talking with Dr. Zoe Liu, who’s the is the Maurice R. Greenberg Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, she held post-doctoral fellowships at the Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program and the Fletcher School at Tufts University. Dr. Liu is the author of “Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions” and “Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System?”. Dr. Liu, welcome to Pacific Polarity.

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

Thank you for having me.

Richard Gray

So to begin this conversation, I want to turn first to the Chinese bond and stock markets. In November, China’s issuance of $4 billion in sovereign bonds, denominated in US dollars, was oversubscribed by about 30x. And since September 2024, when China instituted a support package incurring buybacks and overall stock market liquidity, Chinese stocks have outperformed American stocks in that period. And so this carries over to the national champions revenue growth for the BATX, which is Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi has outperformed the Magnificent Seven in the United States during the same period. And so what do you glean from this demand for Chinese assets? And what does that tell us about where the two economies are heading?

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

First of all, thank you, Richard and Jersey for having me. Now, I would say China’s stock market was designed in a different way. Back in the early 90s, when the Chinese government started to launch China’s stock market, especially in Shanghai, the idea was not necessarily to support the growth of private companies. It was not about successful startups getting an IPO. Instead, the whole idea was to help state-owned enterprises to restructure themselves and to raise money.

Now, fast forward to today, China’s stock market, especially Shanghai and Shenzhen, the composition has changed. You have more companies, not necessarily just state-owned enterprises. But if you look at companies, especially the large capex companies, or in the more successful companies, as well as take a look at what kind of companies are allowed to or being green-lighted to be listed. I’d say many of those are in strategic sectors prioritized by the Chinese government. So from that perspective, I’d say China’s stock market or Chinese equities are less uncertain in terms of returns, as long as investors are putting money along the side of the national team. One of the largest shareholders of BYD is Central Huijin, which is one of the national team.

So from that perspective, I’d say, regardless of timing, demand for a Chinese asset, or for that matter, demand for emerging market assets fit into the theme of investors’ diversification strategy, portfolio diversification. And this works especially well in times of returns are low elsewhere.

But if we specifically talking about today, like why now, right? I think this speaks to two different things: one is the bet on China’s innovation and high-tech sector, especially sectors that are prioritized by the Chinese government, and then on the other side, it also speaks to investors diversifying amid rising geopolitical tensions, as well as the fragmentation of technology standard between the United States and China.

Yes, Chinese equity market so far outperformed, in some measures, outperformed the US, but this does not necessarily mean the equity market is more dynamic and more private market friendly.

Richard Gray

And so as a follow up, do you see it likely that the Chinese government will continue to encourage a bull market or do you think it will eventually be reined in? It seems that there are some general concerns about within the United States over financialization and potentially unsustainable price earning ratios of the American national champions, if you will. And then as a sideline of this, between Baijiu, BATX stocks, bonds and golds, what are your favorite Chinese assets of choice?

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

Yeah, this is a good—you know, as we are talking, as we are chatting now, I think gold price is at a record high now, right? And again, here is not necessarily an endorsement of any other currency or any other asset. It’s more about investors’ shaky confidence in the US dollar as well as dollar denominated asset. Part of the reason is because of concerns about U.S. physical conditions as well as central bank independency and policy uncertainty overall, right? But if you look at U.S. tech sector, I’d say, S&P 500 is doing pretty well, if you just compare S&P 500 with itself.

And since we’re talking about concerns about over-financialization or the bubble, I’d say China is not the only concern. I think here in the U.S. as well. So if you let me zoom in on China, I’d say the Chinese government has a good track record to deploy national champions to stabilize equity prices. During covid and in the run up to the trade war, every now and then you see news headlines saying that China’s national teams is being deployed to prop up equity crisis. But I would say these recent years, COVID and now, these are not the first time that national teams have been doing it: 2015, 2016 stock market crash, that was also when the national teams were being developed. And on top of that, China has dedicated domestic-oriented sovereign funds with the goal to finance equity market. So from that perspective, I’d say it really depends upon how you define a bubble. And if we define bubble purely from the perspective of retail investors’ speculation or listed companies’ share buyback or cross-holding, or the unconventional financing model, such as OpenAI and its suppliers or its users, then I just say, this kind of a concern about a bubble less applicable to the Chinese market.

Part of the reason, and perhaps very important reason, Richard, is what you were talking about, is the national champion. And more importantly, the Chinese government has been encouraging long-term patient capital to be deployed in China’s equity market. One such example is the encouragement of insurance companies and pension fund to invest in equity market.

Jersey Lee

So over the next few months, we’ll likely see a number of meetings between Xi and Trump as they attempt to hash out a broader trade settlement to the kind of now more low-level trade war going on. But that period will also see the start of implementation for the 15th five-year plan. So there’s a lot of talk about the ways that America’s domestic and international policies are increasingly interconnected and intertwined. What is the case for China, particularly in the economic realm?

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

Yes, Jersey, you’re right. At least President Trump is scheduled or is supposed to go to China for a state visit in April. But from now to April, there is quite a few months. So things can happen. But hopefully there is no drama, no unexpected accident so that the two leaders can meet. And I think that would inject momentum at least in the near term to investors as well as policy working level bureaucrats, to work on stabilizing the relationship.

But on the other hand, if we recall 2017 during President Trump’s first term, he visited China and the trip was largely considered as successful. But when he came back to the United States shortly after that, what happened was not just trade war 1.0, but also a global campaign against the Chinese tech companies from ZTE to Huawei. So I would say regardless of how successful or how great the trip is, there are structural forces in the bilateral relationship. That means we cannot be overly optimistic about how the trip can improve the relationship. It’s just not realistic.

Now, what this means for the Chinese economy, especially considering that this is also the time for the new five-year plan or the 15th five-year plan? I think so far the message has been very clear, right? The message is continued focus and commitment to self-sufficiency, to technology advancement. And on top of that, China has also been identifying the strategic sectors that it wants to develop, from quantum computing, AI and semiconductors, which basically means the China’s economic model remains largely unchanged, which is investment oriented, combined with a government set using industrial policies to achieve self-sufficiency and advancement in dedicated strategic sectors.

This means that, despite there has been a growing attention to boost household consumption, it is very hard for government to actually implement policies to achieve the desired goal of boosting household consumption. And let me be more clear here. The goal is not to necessarily boost the consumption. The need to boost household consumption comes from two things. One is the recognition of rising trade attention, and then the second one comes from the realization of overcapacity and the international consequences of overcapacity. So that is to say, attention to boost household consumption is not the goal in itself. The goal is really to continue to achieve self-sufficiency. And why China is so committed to achieve self-sufficiency? A very important reason comes from the realization of the bottleneck, especially with regard to technology that the United States have had over China and the strategic insecurity that the party as well as Chinese companies have experienced since the first Trump administration.

Richard Gray

You were talking about industrial policy just a moment ago. I guess in your mind, what are the things that make the ways in which China mobilizes capital unique? We all know some of the general downsides of industrial policy. Sometimes there’s misallocation of capital. Certain sectors are supported at different variants of time. So one sector might get support for one year, another for 10 years. So that means investors have a level of policy uncertainty about the stability of those investments for a long term. But it seems like a lot of the Chinese industrial policy bets have generally worked, across any number of areas in AI, biotech, EVs, lithium ions batteries, and things of this sort. And so how do you think about the ways in which China mobilizes capital, its ability to take on some of these tradeoffs and costs and ways in which, say, India hasn’t been able to achieve the same levels of success?

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

Yes, that is a great question. I’d say industrial policies are never efficient, so it would be inaccurate to say the use of industrial policies is to improve capital allocation efficiency. So that has never been the goal. But the use of industrial policies could achieve at least two things. The first is to create incentives for private sector as well as for international investors. And the second thing that industrial policies can do is to remove uncertainties. No capital, whether it’s green, whether it’s red, whether it’s blue, no capital likes uncertainty.

Now, the interesting thing about industrial policies from the perspective of private sector is that it removes the uncertainty. So from that perspective, I’d say, once the government give this give a clear goal saying that we are going to prioritize these areas—China, the banking sector in particular, it remains the dominant financial mechanism and the banks are state owned, especially the four largest banks. And they lend to not just state-owned enterprises. They also give preferential treatment to companies that make investment or companies that are dedicated to achieve certain advancement in sectors that are prioritized by the five-year plans or by government policies. So from that perspective, I’d say what China’s industrial policies can achieve is to create the incentive, remove uncertainties so that international investors as well as domestic private entrepreneurs are aligned with the government goals so that once your incentives are aligned, everybody just to march towards the same goal.

The downside of this, however, is that China is a big country and China is not a unitary actor. There is a central government, there are also local governments. So once the central government says prioritize the area, prioritize the sectors, you end up having all these local governments across different administrative levels follow through. And one of the performance metrics is how much, not just the GDP growth, but also how much you have achieved in delivering advancement in these dedicated strategic sectors. So you ended up having local government also compete with each other to attract investment, attract talent, attract resources to develop these exact same sectors so as a result you ended up having a very highly competitive domestic market in exactly the same sectors prioritized by the government.

The good thing about high competition is that the technology advancement would move forward very fast because only the best and the most efficient firms get to survive. But then the downside of that is, of course, waste of overinvestment, overcapacity, profit killing competition, or the so-called involutionary competition. So I’d say the net effect of China’s industrial policies is that multiple things can be simultaneously true. On the one hand, it’s extremely capitalistic. Competition is extremely high. But then on the other hand, firms’ profitability level is also very low. You have highly innovative companies, especially if you measure them by the number of patents they file. Chinese companies file like patents filed by Chinese scientists. Companies, universities are more now than the United States, but not all of them are making money. In fact, you have extremely innovative companies, but they don’t really make much profit.

Jersey Lee

So over the recent years, we’ve seen the U.S. government increasingly adapt various tools of Chinese economic statecraft, such as subsidies, industrial policies. And this trend has accelerated over the past year as the U.S. government is now taking direct stakes in companies in strategic sectors. And this is framed by some as learning from the Chinese. However, that may only be part of the Chinese model. As you say, the Chinese model is also underpinned by ruthless capitalistic competition between Chinese firms, which may play just as important a role in helping China become the manufacturing and export powerhouse it is today. So can Washington’s attempt to copy China work? And why is the U.S. seemingly not even trying to emulate the more capitalistic aspects of China’s success story?

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

Yeah, that’s the interesting part, which is oftentimes people are saying—at least if we take a step back by thinking about the time when China first joined the WTO, right? At least, many American policymakers’ idea at that time was as China becomes richer, China will become more like us, meaning converge economically and politically towards the West. But it looks like they are wrong. Not just China is not converging politically, but it looks like even on the economic arena, we are converging and we are more like China: using industrial policies and trying to have government ownership in private companies now.

I wouldn’t say the US or the West is less capitalistic than China. After all, the Chinese policymakers remain committed to call China as a socialist economy, building socialist with Chinese characteristics rather than pure capitalist. And the goal of the Chinese or the Communist Party of China and the Chinese policymakers is to use Western means, learn from the West without becoming it. They learn the management style, management quality, institutional design, and the technology in particular. But the goal is never to become politically or even economically like the West. And you see this in the policymakers extreme skepticism and suspicion about Western ideology. And you see this especially reflected by the party’s emphasis called for confidence. and the idea of building China as a cultural power. They import the emphasis of China’s traditional value rather than a wholesale copy of Western ideology.

And then on the other hand, I’d say the American government’s copying, whether it is Republican or Democrat in recent years, it seems that we are borrowing a page from China’s playbook, especially the use of industrial policies to achieve some goals such as green development, or in the name of Making America Great Again, and trying to do all sorts of things. I’d say a lot of this is not necessarily copying China per se, or considering China as the model that we wanted to follow. Quite the contrary, I’d say, it’s purely because America’s sense of defeatism among some of the politicians, as well as their constituencies, because in the past four decades, you see a dramatic change when you compare China and the U.S., there is a sharp convergence in terms of the number of billionaires in China and in the United States. That’s a sharp convergence. Over the past 40 years, China has, yes, you hear China become the second largest economy, but if you only look at the number of billionaires, over the past four decades, China produced more billionaires than the United States now. So that’s a very sharp, dramatic convergence.

But on the other hand, you also see the dramatic rise of inequality and the job loss, deindustrialization in the United States. And with China’s rise, with China taking a larger market share, it makes China the target or the boogeyman to be blamed. As a result, from America’s domestic politics perspective, there has become this bipartisan consensus of blame China. And it’s very easy to say, okay, so this is what China does. And because China has a government and the government is very powerful to make decisions, to do things, so let’s just do it.

I think that’s a narrative, that’s an oversimplified narrative without realizing that actually, in China there are also interest groups, there are also bureaucratic politics, there are also state-owned enterprises fighting against each other. And I’d say the idea of America is copying China’s industrial policy also overlooking the fact that our political cycles is very predictable, at least up until now, right? It’s every four years we go through an election cycle, whereas in China, it’s different. You see consistencies across different leadership. So from that perspective, and it’s already very clear now, not all Biden era policies are carried through in the current administration. So in short, I’d say the major difference between America’s so-called industrial policy versus China’s is that we are very much fragmented and short-term oriented. It’s very much about interest group and domestic politics oriented rather than a clear goal going forward: This is five years, 10 years down the road, this is the market share that we are going to achieve in our industrial policies. This is not how we design it. This is not how things are implemented. We don’t have the capacity to implement or to carry out industrial policies in terms of decades.

Jersey Lee

So the other side of the ledger, you talk about China’s need to boost domestic demand. In the lead up to last year’s fourth plenum, I saw some pretty serious suggestions that China might consider changing the incentive structure for local government officials so that they are promoted for boosting consumption instead of the old model of promoting them because they attract new investment. But this change doesn’t seem to have occurred at all. So what’s the state of play on that?

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

So I have to say, I have been skeptical about all the optimism about the government measures to boost consumption. Don’t get me wrong. Should China rebalance its economic growth model by less relying upon export-oriented and investment-driven, yes, sure. In terms of rebalance the growth model, such that it’s more sustainable, it ought to boost household consumption by increasing household income, allowing household to invest in different types of asset, and also boost social security, sure.

As you correctly observed, especially since last year, I’d say even since around COVID time, the Chinese government has put out several plans, several documents prioritizing household consumption ahead of investment. And hence, a lot of commentators suggested that the Chinese government will boost household consumption. This is going to be their priority.

I have been very skeptical about such optimism, and there are three reasons. The first reason comes from numbers. The fact that economists and analysts debate whether China has an under-consumption problem, reveals that the number, the statistics are very messy. There is a lack of good numbers to accurately measure the contribution of household consumption to GDP growth. Now, based upon Western standard, which is also adopted by a measure that a lot of Chinese economists use, as well as National Bureau of Statistics has its kind of number. By this kind of measurement, household consumption is merely 36 to 38 percent of Chinese GDP. But the critics would say, this is under-measurement because you did not take into consideration of the in-kind consumption and the in-kind support. Fair enough. But even if you get everything all together, is the Chinese household consumption world average 60%? Many people’s measures suggested that no, actually not. So either way, I would say we have a numbers problem which basically means the government understand, we ought to solve this measurement problem first, so that’s the first place. That’s the first reason why I think boosting household consumption is very challenging, if you do not really have a good understanding of how much actually household consumption is contributing to your GDP, then you don’t really have a good idea of how much exactly you want it to boost, to which level, so that’s that.

And then the second part has something to do with numbers, but it also comes down to the cost of living or purchasing power across China. Purchasing power is not equal across Chinese cities or provinces. And this speaks to a lot of the cause of optimism about government stimulus, especially direct deposit or direct stimulus check. I have long doubted that they are going to do this. And it’s not because they don’t have the mechanism—[everyone] has a bank card with one of the four major banks and your social security card is with one of the major banks. So they have the mechanism, but why they have the mechanism and yet they haven’t done it? I think this is politically very sensitive, make sure that you are you are doing it right, you are not making people angry. And the reason I say this has a lot to do with the purchasing power inequality across China. For example, for people living in Shanghai versus the people living in Sichuan or the Chinese rust belt in Dongbei or Dongbei provinces like Jilin or other places. If you give everybody, say, a hundred, a thousand RMB a month as a stimulus for consumption, then people living in Shanghai would say, well, this is unfair because our cost of living here is much more expensive. So they would make the unfairness argument. But if you say, okay, so given that cost of living in Shanghai is more expensive, we give Shanghai people more money, say give them like 2,000 or 3,000, whereas other cheaper places, we give them less money. Now, of course, this is by definition unequal distribution. And of course, other people will be not happy, would make the argument saying that people in Shanghai already have a higher salary, their average income is much higher, why are you making richer people richer, right? So I think that’s so that is politically very difficult to make sure you can do this without making people not happy.

Then the last bit has to do perhaps with other concerns of physical capacity and embezzlement. Because local government fiscal situation is already very constrained. And we are going through cycles of cleaning up the off-balance sheet debt problem, largely due to the collapse of property market. And then the other part of that is, okay, so realizing that the local government has fiscal constraints, then if we rely upon central government delivering this payment, then it’s hard to avoid embezzlement or misallocation, misappropriation problem. So I’d say the calling for optimism for the Chinese government to boost the household consumption is perhaps a little bit too over the top. And so far we haven’t really seen any concrete measures the government has taken to boost the household consumption. But I’d say they have been doing something in the right direction. Meaning, for example, the government has been asking the statistics department to do a better job understanding the numbers. So once they have a better understanding of the numbers, that would help them to develop a mechanism as well as a benchmark and a standard so that we have a better understanding of how to distribute, whether it’s direct stimulus, or which area and what are the mechanisms more suitable for each province.

So I think going forward, I’d say with a better number and a better mechanism, they might develop a province-by-province model plan to boost the consumption; rather than central government have a centralized plan, it might be a more likely scenario would be central government to provide a guiding principle and then all the different localities, they have their own way to boost the household consumption. Now, would the government make this a leading KPI to promote local officials? It’s hard to tell because again, promoting household consumption is not a strategic priority, strategic priority is to achieve technology self-sufficiency. So even if they are going to change the composition of local officials’ KPI measurement, perhaps the measurement or the indicator that will carry more weight would be how much progress you have made in terms of achieving technology progress. It’s unlikely going to be how much you have boosted household consumption.

Jersey Lee

So my personal theory for the lack of concrete measures boosting local consumption is that it might entail rather radical reform, particularly the change KPIs of local officials. And this goes against Chinese political culture, which has especially recently trended towards ever greater conservatism and caution. Specifically, even though an export-led growth model is not sustainable in the long term, it has taken China this far already, and there’s probably a bit more juice to be squeezed globally. Meanwhile, China is at a critical stage of its competition with the US, and now would be the time to move steadily forwards based on what’s worked in the past, instead of rocking the boat and introducing uncertainty to a trajectory that has broadly favored China. Some others have also argued that demand-side consumption boost will largely end up helping foreign firms make more profit, given that Chinese firms lack profit margins, given what we said before, so perhaps if China were to do something serious, it might be as a concession to the U.S. in the ongoing trade negotiations. What do you think of this?

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

I think that is valid, those arguments are certainly valid from a broader geopolitical point of view, right? The idea that, oh, you know, like China cannot be viewed as yielding to external pressure to boost consumption, like because boosting consumption is something that in the U.S.-China bilateral dialogue, overcapacity has been a concern. But up until recently, I guess last year, Chinese officials had been consistently saying that China didn’t have an overcapacity problem. The global market is big enough. There is a lack of capacity, no overcapacity problem.

But since last year, the Chinese officials have been talking about, have been acknowledging China’s overcapacity challenge. And I think this is a realization, of not just external pressure, but also they realized the inefficiency and the cost to Chinese economic growth. And think about it. Given that technological upgrading in China is so fast, we are literally talking about, especially in EVs and batteries and solar panels, we are talking about, we are measuring the timing of progress in terms of weeks, not years, which basically means massive fixed asset investment is immediately going to become outdated. So that is a risk, right? So from that perspective, I’d say, China realized probably they do have very capable and very informed policy makers as well as policy analysts and economists. So they do realize the risk of out-of-date fixed asset investment. So from that perspective, I’d say they need the domestic market to consume some of these redundant industrial capacities.

But to what extent this relates to boosting Western firms’ profitability at the cost of Chinese firms’ profitability? I’m kind of skeptical in the sense that, you know, Chinese companies and Western companies, they have different business models, right? And companies have different ways to make profit. And in a way, the most innovative companies are not necessarily the most profitable because companies can get revenues from different sources. Chinese companies have long been operating on I build, I invest, they are very good at process streamlining so that they can lower the cost and sell it at the international market. And you sell big. The whole idea is you can sell at a cheaper price, but production capacity is massive, you can sell at a lower cost, then ultimately, pure quantity means you can get more profit.

But Western companies’ business model seems to be different, especially American companies, through technology innovation, they focus on higher quality than next generation. They focus on making, say, not mediocre product, but perhaps the best of the best. As a result, through innovation, the price would be high, but we are not selling massive quantities. And on top of that, American companies also dominate for a long period of time IP. So American companies, especially the high profit margin companies, they are light in asset, but they are high in IP in value. And then for those companies that have already achieved near monopoly status like Boeing. Even if you are not necessarily as innovative as you were before, because of a monopoly, because of a high entrance barrier, it also means that you can at least make money up until you destroy yourself.

So from that perspective, I’d say I’m skeptical about the argument of if Chinese people are consuming, then Western companies are benefiting. In fact, I’d say if we really do unleash Chinese middle class consumption power, there will be global consequences because China has a lot of people, and Chinese companies also absorb a lot of industrial input. So if Chinese consumer’s consumption power get unleashed, you ended up having a big country with 1.4 billion people consume a lot. A natural consequence of that would be rising commodity prices here and there, right? And remember the times when Chinese people just discovered avocado, and global avocado prices went up. And when Chinese people discovered, started to like adding cream, heavy cream and milk into their tea, then of course global dairy price went up. So I’d say, we ought to be careful of what we want China to achieve.

Richard Gray

So I guess a lot of what we’ve talked about is how the United States and China mobilize capital to build different industries and sectors. And one of the complications of this, of course, is it gives leverage and tools in which can be utilized against other actors. And so as you think about the economic statecraft dimensions, one of the big problems now is there’s a high level of incompatibility between, say, American sanctions and Chinese anti-sanction mechanisms between American export controls and Chinese export controls. American trade agreements, which have transshipment stipulations, that like Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia have signed on to, which now China wants to look into; and so for third actors and multinational companies, the ways of interacting with both the Chinese and American global economic footprint is getting quite complicated. So how do you think about the future of both the US and China tit for tats, but also the way that other actors try to build resilient companies and economies in such an environment?

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

That is a very tough question to answer, Richard, I have to say, because as a result of these two countries’ tit-for-tat retaliation against each other, the world now becomes this regulatory labyrinth. It becomes more and more difficult, if not entirely impossible, for multinationals to be able to be in compliance with regulations in China and the United States, especially in sensitive sectors that are very likely to be subject to either export controls or some other types of regulatory issues, regulatory change.

So for multinationals, I’d say the bottom line is that both the United States and China are a very important market that no multinationals would want to lose, and if you are a consumer goods product producer, or you operate in not so sensitive sectors, that’s fine. Consumer goods or necessities, fine. The chance of being subject to export controls are less. But that also means these kind of companies, especially if they are massive, they are likely to become the target of boycotting, for example Walmart or some major airlines, and another example would be Japanese or Korean companies; whenever there is a national interest conflict going on, you end up seeing China weaponize its consumer power, boycotting foreign companies, whether it’s Toyota or Lotte.

But then on the other hand, the weaponization of either China’s dominance in industrial supply chains or critical minerals or inputs or the weaponization of market access, or the US weaponization of its dominance in payment system or financial infrastructure, all of these overuse of power have led other countries to build their alternatives. From companies’ perspective, this also means that they simply would have to hire more experts in compliance; this is not necessarily good news, because it raises operational costs but then on the other hand companies may eventually develop a strategy of you just separate your China and the US operation. Rather than have a global operation, you ended up having a US operation and a China operation and the rest of the world. So what that means is we ended up having, especially for companies operating in sensitive sectors, their operation cost and their legal compliance cost would likely to go up.

Jersey Lee

So in 2022, you authored a report on the role of BRICS as a coalition to build out de-dollarization initiatives. What’s interesting is that with Trump’s threats against allies, even Western countries are now whispering about de-dollarization, with Denmark at one point threatening to dump off its treasury bonds. So where do we stand today on de-dollarization and how have these risks escalated over the past year? And is it even in the U.S. interest to maintain dollar dominance, which some argue might run counter to the goal of re-industrialization?

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

Yeah, I’d say the dollarization is a trend that has been going on for a long time, especially among countries that are subject to U.S. sanctions, financial sanctions in particular. But right now, when we are talking about U.S. allies, their motivation is not necessarily because they wanted to avoid sanctions, but rather it’s an expression of their frustration and lack of confidence in the current U.S. government, as well as more broadly in the predictability of American politics. Again, no capital likes uncertainty. So especially for allies in the name of improving their own economic security, it’s natural for them to diversify away from a type of asset that they thought or used to be risk-free, and once they perceive the risk increases, it’s natural for them to at least threaten to diversify.

But so far, I’d say there is no alternative to the US dollar. The so-called TINA phenomenon is still there. But by no means, this means the dollar’s dominant currency status would last forever. And the lack of an alternative, whether it’s euro or renminbi or yen, doesn’t mean other countries would be content to be subject to U.S. dollar’s exorbitant privilege.

De-dollarization has different goals for our allies. Their goal might be risk mitigation, not necessarily financial sanction risk, but really the opportunity cost. But for countries like China, like Iran, like Russia, it is not that they are willing to de-dollarize their system, because major commodities are still being priced in US dollar, and it’s also way easier to just use dollar in international transactions. But for countries that are subject to sanctions, diversify away from dollar is like buying insurance; you buy insurance hoping that you don’t have to use it, but in case you need it, you have this alternative payment and settlement system, so that you can keep your trade going. I think this is a fundamental motivation for countries like China and Russia to develop an alternative system. China does not want to dethrone the US dollar, but it does want to make sure that it can continue trade and international settlement, because after all, China remains the world’s largest trading economy.

Richard Gray

One of the, I guess, more macro concerns as the Chinese state thinks about its economy and economic reform is the risk of capital outflow. And there were some uptick of this during COVID, where consumer spending dropped, when Chinese firms were internationalizing as their position solidifies within their domestic market. And so how do you think the Chinese government might deal with trade-offs between making inbound investment more accessible without encouraging capital flight?

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

I’m not exactly sure the Chinese government, or for that matter Chinese companies are as eager to take free money as before. China, in the name of self-sufficiency, a lot of companies in strategic sectors get a lot of government support. And China also has a very booming domestic venture capital space and PE and all that. So they are no longer eager to take foreign money from many years ago. The idea is that if you take foreign money, especially American money, there is a chance that either the money will pull away or you get sandwiched in between. That has become a phenomenon.

But in terms of the capital flight, that is always a concern for the Chinese government. And over the years, we have been consistently tightening capital control. And a perceived game changer is the stablecoin, because that becomes a very convenient vehicle for Chinese exporters to store their asset in a system that outside of the Chinese government purview, so easy to move asset overseas. And that’s why I think very carefully studying what is going on in the stablecoin market—And Hong Kong is tentatively trying its own stablecoin experiment, but so far they haven’t really moved forward yet.

[The problem] here is that, yes, they are concerned about capital control, but they need to figure out how to maintain capital control while have a competing vehicle to the dollar backed stablecoin. I see latest development is they allow the E-RMB to take interest; that’s a very interesting uh move for move by the Chinese financial regulators; the idea is that you allow to pay interest, so that at least incentive for banks to promote it can be higher. But will this be successful? It is questionable, because the incumbent digital payment format is WeChat pay or Alipay, and it’s just hard to for people to switch platforms.

Richard Gray

All right. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Liu, for your time.

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

Thank you guys for inviting me and good luck with everything.

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