The Trivium China Podcast

From ports to lithium mines to diplomatic battles over Taiwan, China has spent two decades persistently building influence across Latin America and the Caribbean – one contract, one relationship, one chamber of commerce at a time.

• Leland Lazarus’s new book – Dragon in the Americas: China’s Power, Presence, and Regional Influence – argues this isn’t simply a trade story.
• It’s a long game, and China is getting more strategic and deliberate about how it plays it.

On the latest episode of the Trivium China Podcast, host Andrew Polk sits down with Leland – Founder and CEO of Lazarus Consulting and author of Dragon in the Americas – to unpack:

• Why ports are the “lungs” of a country, and why 37 of them across Latin America and the Caribbean are now funded, financed, or operated by Chinese firms
• Why the region’s own answer to the US-China rivalry mirrors an old Cold War approach from Barbados: “a friend to all, but a satellite of none”
• The story behind the Panama Canal controversy, and why it’s just the most visible example of a much bigger pattern
• How Chinese mining firms quietly bypassed national governments and went straight to local officials to lock up 60% of the world’s lithium reserves
• Why Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic allies in the region matter so much, and how far China is willing to go to flip them
• The darker edge of China’s presence in the region: Chinese criminal networks that have laundered an estimated $312 billion through the US financial system, with Latin America and the Caribbean becoming a central node

You won’t want to miss this wide-ranging discussion – and make sure to check out Leland’s book while you’re at it!

US President Donald Trump met Xi Jinping on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday – a rare honor last extended to the Pope by Barack Obama.

The atmospherics of the greeting and the rest of Xi’s Washington trip were great. The actual deliverables of the visit were more muted.

• The one concrete outcome from Xi’s Washington visit was a two-month extension of the Busan trade truce, far short of the six-month floor most observers expected going in.

On this quick-reaction episode of the Trivium China Podcast, host Andrew Polk sits down with Joe Mazur (Head of Geopolitical Research, based in Beijing) to unpack:

• Why “healthy competition” is a subtly new phrase in Beijing’s playbook, and what the shift in rhetoric signals
• US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s cryptic comment that China proposed “a bigger deal” over the weekend, and what that might mean
• Why AI got an explicit shout-out in Xi’s comments during the bilateral meetings, and how managing the technology is becoming the new arms-control issue of the US-China relationship
• The risk nobody’s pricing in: If this meeting doesn’t build real momentum, the two follow-up meetings penciled in for later this year may just quietly fall off the calendar

Give it a listen and let us know what you think.

Back in 2017, China’s former SASAC chairman told Joerg Wuttke, then president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China, precisely which industries China’s overcapacity machine would roll through next: EVs, batteries, solar, wind, basic chemicals.

Fast forward a decade, and it happened exactly as he predicted.

• Joerg’s very blunt take: “China, in essence, is kind enough to tell us when and how they’re going to roll over us.”

On this episode, Trivium China Podcast host Andrew Polk, along with co-host Cory Combs, sits down with Joerg – now a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group – to unpack:

• Why “China Shock 2.0” isn’t really a shock at all, but a systemic feature of how Beijing plans its economy – which was written out in black and white years in advance
• The shipping container math that captures the trade imbalance better than any dollar figure: one container now leaves Europe for China for every four that come back
• Why Wuttke thinks a stronger renminbi, not tariffs, may be China’s real concession on the table before October’s EU-China trade negotiation deadline
• The key Chinese tech sector Wuttke says Europe should consider closing its market to (and it’s not the one you’d guess)
• Why demographic collapse, not trade policy, might ultimately be China’s biggest vulnerability – and Europe’s unlikely opportunity

This episode is another banger, y’all. You won’t want to miss it!

China’s manufacturing output just grew at the fastest pace in six months, but retail sales barely moved last month – and the gap between the two growth rates just hit its widest point in over three years.

The upshot: Exports are still picking up the slack.

• But an increasing chunk of China’s export growth is simply down to price increases, not rising volumes.
• So even that stalwart economic prop is starting to wobble.

On this quick-reaction episode of the Trivium China Podcast, Andrew Polk sits down with Joe Peissel (Trivium’s Lead Macroeconomist) to unpack:

• Why the gap between factory output and consumer spending just hit a three-year high, and why Beijing’s own policy playbook keeps worsening the imbalance
• The hidden story in China’s “booming” exports: value is up 25%, but volumes for things like semiconductors and appliances are actually falling
• The one semi-bright spot in the monthly macro-econ data: infrastructure investment is declining at a slower pace (hurrah!)
• Why Beijing’s new interest-rate subsidy for consumers is aimed at the wrong problem entirely

Putting it all together: China’s economy will continue to decelerate into year-end.

Give it a listen and let us know what you think.

Everyone keeps calling the US-China AI competition a race.

• But Eric Olander, co-founder of the China Global South Project, says that framing is wrong – because a race implies a finish line, and this competition doesn't have one.
• Eric’s view is that Chinese AI companies aren't necessarily looking to out innovate US closed-weight models.
• Instead, the goal for China is to become Android to America's Apple – 10% of the profit, but 90% of the world's users.

On this week’s episode of the Trivium China Podcast, Eric discusses China’s approach to building AI offerings in the Global South with host Andrew Polk – but only after the two run through the flurry of travel and diplomacy Xi Jinping is undertaking throughout September.

The two discuss the implications of Xi’s travels, then turn to China’s AI strategy in the region, touching on:

• How Xi turned a single stop in Egypt into a four-birds-one-stone diplomatic play, touching on the Iran war, the Israel-Palestine conflict, Africa-China relations, and the dynamics around Xinjiang all at once
• Why the India-China thaw is real but fragile, and why Xi and Modi's sideline meeting at the upcoming BRICS summit matters more than anything on the summit's official agenda
• Why China’s AI push into the Global South won’t really be about the models themselves – but about enabling those models with Huawei servers, support contracts, and services sold on top of free, open-weight code
• Why the "China is less secure" pitch against Chinese AI companies doesn't land in a Global South that trusts Washington about as little as it trusts Beijing
• Why nobody in the Global South expects much from Xi's Washington visit, and why the mood in Beijing right now is just as hardened as it is in DC

Strap in – we cover a lot of ground in this one!

The US and China have been quietly testing each other’s limits all summer – and neither side actually knows where the breaking point is.

To discuss the nature – and limits – of the fragile US-China economic détente, we are joined this week by Evan Medeiros, the Penner Family Chair and Director of Asian Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

• Evan’s read: The US-China relationship is at an unstable equilibrium, and in for a snapback toward a much more contentious state of play.  

In this episode, host Andrew Polk and Trivium colleague Cory Combs sit down with Evan to unpack:

• Why Xi Jinping’s upcoming state visit to Washington, the first in over a decade, may be the one thing still holding the relationship together
• How the trade war became a supply chain war back in April 2025, and why tariffs aren’t the main event anymore
• Why China keeps reaching for chokepoints tied to US national security instead of hitting the broader economy, and what that reveals about Beijing’s actual theory of leverage
• The uncomfortable new front opening up: Beijing increasingly penalizing American companies for the crime of complying with US laws

It’s another great discussion, so enjoy!

Chinese tech companies keep getting fined and blocked overseas – sometimes unfairly, and sometimes because they’re behaving exactly like they do at home.

• Beijing just released a plan to fix both problems at once.

Our take: “China’s nefarious plan to get its companies to obey overseas laws” is a Foreign Affairs headline just waiting to be written.

On this episode, Trivium China podcast host Andrew Polk sits down with Kendra Schaefer (Head of Tech Policy Research) to unpack:

• Why lumping AI labs, e-commerce platforms, and cybersecurity firms into the single regulatory category of “cyberspace enterprises” is a bigger deal than it sounds
• The story behind AliExpress’s EUR 550 million EU fine, and why Chinese companies keep getting tripped up by rules they don’t fully understand
• One vague line in the CAC’s latest policy doc that might matter most: Beijing says it will “regulate the overseas competitive behavior” of its own tech firms, with zero detail on how
• Why cleaning up Chinese tech companies’ act abroad might get Beijing branded as the bad guy either way

China’s July macro data just landed, and the title of our monthly macro note says it all: “A Grim Picture.”

• Consumption, investment, and property all deteriorated further last month – and the two props that supported the economy in the first half of the year are now fading fast.

On this episode, Trivium China podcast host Andrew Polk sits down with Joe Peissel (Lead Macro Analyst) to unpack:

• How July’s slowdown was broad-based, across nearly every metric that matters – and why growth looks even worse than the headlines suggest
• How the K-shaped economy has spread from output into investment flows, entrenching the divide between booming and struggling sectors
• Why deflation, not inflation, remains the real danger for a heavily indebted economy like China’s – as officials are having to quietly pick their poison
• Why even China’s 24% y/y export growth print obscures a much less impressive reality, once you separate price from volume

Chinese companies can’t legally buy the most advanced US-made AI chips, so they’re renting them instead – from data centers in Thailand, Malaysia, and beyond – completely legally.

• US policymakers know about the issue – but several years into the implementation of export controls on advanced chips, they still haven’t closed it.
• And there’s a reason for that.

On this episode of the Trivium China Podcast, host Andrew Polk sits down with Tom Nunlist (Associate Director, Tech Practice, Shanghai) to unpack:

• How Kimi K3’s release forced Washington to confront a loophole in export controls it’s known about for ages
• Why renting chips sits completely outside the rules that govern buying them, even when the end result is identical
• Why closing this gap risks a “double win” for Beijing: 1) marketing material to court the Global South with China’s AI stack and 2) and potential leverage to retaliate with rare earths, ultimately causing the US to back down
• Why cutting off compute access could undermine trust in the US AI stack, like sanctions have eroded trust in the US dollar – and why that risk may be exactly what’s keeping policymakers’ finger off the trigger

When it comes to China’s key nodes of economic leverage, rare earths get all the attention – because they’re the cheapest, easiest lever China has to pull.

But the more durable – and future – points of leverage are already hiding in plain sight, in hundreds of intermediate goods most people never think about.

• Gerard DiPippo, Director of Global Macro at Eurasia Group, returns to the pod as our first ever two-time guest, joined by Dinny McMahon and Cory Combs, to unpack it.

On this episode, host Andrew Polk sits down with Gerard, Dinny, and Cory to dive into:

• Why rare earths are a uniquely cheap and low-cost weapon for Beijing, and why other chokepoints like batteries carry far higher stakes
• How China’s licensing regime doubles as a surveillance system, giving Beijing visibility into global supply chains it can use to ratchet pressure up or down at will
• The “shoe that hasn’t dropped yet”: China’s shelved extraterritorial rule that could restrict any product containing Chinese-origin content, anywhere in the world
• Why intermediate goods are the next frontier to watch, and why China’s reaction function gets a lot murkier once controls move further down the production chain – into products with real commercial value to Chinese firms themselves

It’s another great discussion – so enjoy!