Is China About To Attack? Massive Military Buildup Explained (Uncut) 02-11-2025

Is China About To Attack? Massive Military Buildup Explained | Shaun Rein & Michael Beckley

For Xi to say we need to be prepared by 2027 is actually admission that China hasn’t been building up like the Nazis, like Michael just said. They’ve been fairly slow in building up the military. If you look at it, Japan is doubling their military budget over the next five years, while China’s doubling it over the next 10 years.

You know, I hope that Sean is right. Certainly a military buildup doesn’t mean that war is inevitable. By the way, you know, Xi Jinping has said multiple times that, you know, if you if you play around with this issue, you’re going to get burned, basically.

How will China respond to escalating trade war tensions with the US? And how will the development between China and Taiwan progress under Trump 2.0? This is the theme of our conversation with our panelists today, experts on China and geopolitical risks. They are Michael Beckley, associate professor at Tufts University, and he’s a co-author of Danger Zone, The Coming Conflict with China, and Sean Rain, founder and managing director of the China Market Research Group, and also a best selling author of the latest book that he wrote, The Splits, Finding the Opportunities in China’s Economy in the New World Order. Welcome to you both, Sean and Michael.

Good to see you. Thanks, David. Thank you.

And I’ve had the opportunity to speak with both of them individually, so check out their interviews with me respectively in the links down below. So let’s start with the economy and the economic situation in China first before we move on to geopolitical developments here. Trump announced a 10% tariff on China earlier this week, as you know, and Beijing announced retaliatory measures on the 2nd of February, including filing a World Trade Organization complaint lawsuits and taking corresponding countermeasures to firmly safeguard its own rights and interests, according to officials from Beijing.

These included 15% tariff on US coal and LNG, as well as the 10% tariff on oil, agricultural machinery, and large displacement cars. They’ve also revived antitrust investigations into Google, Nvidia, and Intel. So let’s talk about how this will impact the economy, both for America and China.

My question to both of you is, who will be hurt more by the first salvo of this trade war? I’ll start with you, Sean. Well, good to be here again, David. Happy Chinese New Year to you and all the listeners.

Let’s be honest. I’m here in Shanghai. I’ve been traveling around China.

I was just in yesterday during the Chinese New Year. The economy here is weak. Confidence amongst consumers is very low.

It’s one of the lowest in my almost 30 years in China. That’s why you’ve seen retail sales only grew about 2%, 3% in 2024. But I think, David, the weakness that people are going to be surprised about is just how weak Chinese New Year spending was.

We interviewed a lot of hotels, and the price per room was down 10%, 20% in most five-star hotels, because consumers are scared about whether or not Trump is going to slap 60% tariffs. Chinese consumers are scared whether there will be military tension over Taiwan. So consumers are saving all of their hard-earned dollars for rainy day.

And that’s also what’s happening with fixed asset investment. On the private side in 2024, you saw anemic fixed asset investment from SMEs, around 0.2%, 0.3%. So I think for analysts, they’re going to be surprised at how bad consumer spending was during the Chinese New Year holiday. Now, I’m actually fairly medium-term bullish about the Chinese economy, because it seems like Trump doesn’t want to destroy China.

He only is slapping 10% if he goes through with it, tariffs, rather than the 60% that he’s been threatening like a Damocles over the Chinese economy since November. So it’s weak right now. China’s going to be hurt by tariffs.

But we see a little glimpse that there might be a deal that can be had with Trump. Chinese, surprisingly to many, prefer Trump over Harris and Walz. Okay.

And Michael, same answer to you, the Chinese economy or the American economy, which may be hurt more? I mean, it’s going to hurt both economies. I think China exports quite a bit to the United States. The US has this giant consumer market.

And as Sean pointed out, there are signs of weakness in the Chinese economy right now in terms of consumer confidence, really just the overall growth rate, which has been declining, and the rise in debt, and the implosion of the real estate sector. So for a whole host of reasons that we’re already operating independent, this obviously doesn’t help. I may be a little bit more bearish on the idea of some future deal I know that Trump and Xi decided not to meet.

And I just see these things escalating naturally. I remember last time we talked, I actually think the 10% is probably the opening gambit of the Trump administration and the natural way these trade wars are going to go now that you’re having Chinese retaliatory tariffs. I just don’t see Trump backing down for anything less.

And there’s tons of people in his administration that want to get up to that 60% level. So I think it’s going to hurt consumers on both sides on the economy. But I think because China still is much more export dependent than the United States, a trade war is just going to hurt its macro economy more than the American economy, even though both sides are going to lose out.

I’ll give Sean a chance to respond for the next question. Do you have anything to add to what Michael just said? Yeah, I agree with Michael. I agree with Michael, David.

Chinese consumers and American consumers, both are going to be hurt by the trade war. I think it’s funny that you saw Democrats like Senator Chuck Schumer and Republicans like Senator Rand Paul all criticize Trump for the potential tariffs on Mexico and on Canada because they said they would hurt the everyday American consumer, cause inflation, cost about $1,300 US. But they’ve all been silent about the tariffs on China.

Biden actually doubled down on the initial Trump tariffs of 2017, expanded the tariffs, expanded the export controls, built a very large garden high fence to try to contain China, has been really, in my mind, morally wrong, oppressing everyday Chinese, which is why the economy is so weak here. But we can’t forget that Trump’s tariffs on China are going to absolutely hurt the American consumer. We see that in the last year, for every $3.9 America borrows, they only generate $1 in GDP growth.

We have an incredibly inefficient American economy right now. The best way to help fix the economy is to get rid of the trade war against China and forge good relations. There is no need for America to be fighting with Canada.

That’s junk, that’s garbage. But similarly, there’s no need for America to be fighting against China. Both countries do better when the countries collaborate.

I don’t believe in this great power hatred in politics that a lot of people push. Well, what else could China do? Suppose tensions don’t die down and Trump were to escalate somehow, what else is in the Chinese playbook for retaliating against the US besides just implementing tariffs of their own? Michael, I’ll let you go first. Well, I think China has long said, you know, we think in terms of comprehensive national power.

And so a trade war is not just an economic dispute. It’s essentially an assault on China’s power and its influence and the trajectory of its nation. And so I think China could easily move into other areas.

There’s no reason why dialing up military tensions in the South China Sea, continuing to put pressure on Taiwan, continuing to support Putin’s war in Ukraine. I mean, all of these geopolitical factors, I think it all goes as part of the overall dispute between the two countries. And so for China, it’s like if you’re going to try to strangle our economy, well, then there’s no reason we have to contain this within the economic sphere.

There’s plenty of other areas where we can cause problems for either the United States or some of its allies or really just the order that the world is in. So I would expect China to take this as a sign of US hostility. I would expect the Trump administration to take China’s retaliatory tariffs as a sign of hostility.

We’ve seen historically that trade wars often will precede periods of intense conflict. And while I agree with Sean that no one wants great power competition, I fear that this cycle of retaliation is feeding on itself at this point. And so we’re much more, I would expect things to get worse, both economically and on the geopolitical front before they have a chance to get better.

Sean, just on that note, it was speculated that DeepSeek, for example, copied open AI’s codes. Do you think that this current administration in the US would put tougher restrictions on technology trading and perhaps ban more tech companies in China from operating in the US? Is that a viable path, the new Trump administration? Well, I mean, one of the reasons why Chinese actually prefer Trump to Harris and Waltz is that it seems like a deal can be done. They were worried that Harris would be an ideologue looking at great power conflict between liberal democracies and communist countries.

And Tim Waltz himself was viewed as a pro-democracy zealot. He actually lied and said he was in TNN Men in 1989, David, but he actually got married on June 4th, 1994, the fifth anniversary of the incident. So there was a fear that, you know, Harris would continue the Biden containment policies.

Now with Trump, he said things differently. He said, we don’t want China to be exporting their NAVs into the United States. We want them to build factories in the US, hire American workers, create jobs, create GDP in the US.

Now that’s fair, right? The Chinese just want to see a pathway for doing business. And Trump has offered that potentially with NAVs. He said that with TikTok, maybe if he gives a 50% allocation to American investors, that he’ll allow it to continue after the 70 day period is up.

So I think Chinese like Trump because they feel that there’s a way to do business. Now, if I was Europe, if I was the US, I would say, you know what, if Chinese NAVs want to come into America, force them to set up joint venture, because that’s what the Chinese did to Buick. That’s what the Chinese did to Ford.

That’s what the Chinese did to Volkswagen in the 1990s. If American and European companies and the auto sector wanted to have access to China’s swelling middle class, they had to set up joint ventures. And I think that’s reciprocity.

I think Trump was right in his first administration to continue to use the word reciprocity, reciprocity. And I think that if Chinese can do that, that would be great. I hope he doesn’t follow along the Biden regime’s path and just put export controls and ban everything.

But even with deep seat, David, as you said, is when it first came out, Trump said, hey, this is cheap. This is good for everyday people. We need to get Silicon Valley innovating more and out innovating the Chinese.

It was only tech bros like Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, tech bros like Alexander Wong, who said that they wanted to increase export controls on China. Trump hasn’t said that. And I think the Silicon Valley bros have done that because they’ve seen their valuations evaporate.

Because the reality is Chinese AI, as I wrote in my new book, The Split, is just as good, if not better than American AI. Interesting. All right.

Well, let’s move on to Taiwan-China relations, which is a geopolitical hotspot that a lot of people are following. Let’s just start with this general overview or high level question. How likely is reunification in the next four years during Trump’s second term? I’ll start with you, Michael.

Reunification? I think it’s incredibly unlikely. Well, peaceful unification, I think, is essentially out of the question. I mean, if you look at Taiwanese opinion polls with 80% of people opposing unification or more and more Taiwanese, I think roughly two thirds of the Taiwanese population views themselves as Taiwanese only and not as Chinese and Taiwanese.

And the fact that the DPP, albeit losing the legislative majority, has retained the presidency for three elections in a row, despite a struggling economy and a bunch of domestic issues that made the DPP unpopular for a bunch of reasons. They still hung on to the presidency because at the end of the day, the Taiwanese people want to maintain their de facto sovereignty. So I don’t see Taiwan coming back into the fold.

And so that then raises the question, is there going to be a war? I think great power war is always an unlikely event. But even if it’s like, say, a 10% chance, for me, that’s just way too high to fully stomach. And Xi Jinping, as many people have noted, has said he at least wants the military to be ready in theory to be able to conquer Taiwan by 2027.

You just have to wonder if he’s going to actually pull the trigger. So I think it’s highly unlikely. But there is, of course, the X factor of if he decides to roll the iron dice, then you’re going to have a major war.

Even under that scenario, I don’t see it being a cakewalk for China and being able to just absorb Taiwan. So, you know, where you’re sitting right now, David, I don’t expect to be fully part of the mainland anytime soon. OK, Sean, same question to you.

Yeah, I don’t see the likelihood of reunification in the next four years. I’d put that at maybe 1%. Now, I know a lot of people in the United States like to say that China is being increasingly aggressive to Taiwan or China might invade Taiwan in order to offset some of the weakness in the economy.

You know what? They would have done that in 2021 at the height of COVID when people were scared. They would have done that in 2022 when the economy here was extremely weak because at one point, 450 million Chinese were locked in their homes because of COVID restrictions. I’m actually sitting in my closet right now in Shanghai, where I spent three months locked down.

Very difficult to be able to buy food. If China was going to try to distract the Chinese people from the weakness of the economy, they would have done it during the COVID era. Not now.

Not after seeing a 5.4% growth rate in Q4 of last year. The economy is weak. Don’t get me wrong, but it’s not that weak.

Now, really importantly, David, we’ve seen that China’s government, the mainland one, has launched a charm offensive to Taiwan. In the last year, they’ve made it very easy for Taiwanese to be able to go to school in Fujian province, which is the province closest to Taiwan. They’ve given healthcare benefits, education benefits, and retirement benefits to any Taiwanese Chinese who wants to relocate and move into Fujian province.

In other words, China doesn’t want to invade Taiwan. They want to support the Taiwanese population, which is what they tried to do with the tycoons in Hong Kong in 1997. Importantly, they’re launching a major charm offensive to the Kuomintang or the KMT.

So President Ma, the KMT former president of Taiwan, has visited with Xi Jinping himself. You’ve seen senior legislators come and travel around China where they’re feted like kings and heroes. So it’s clear to me that China is playing the long game.

They’re hoping that the KMT will defeat the DPP in the next election in several years, and they will be able to buy back peacefully reunification by getting the wealthy businessmen in Taiwan and getting the KMT to want to have reunification. China’s going to dole out economic and political carrots to anybody who wants to support reunification peacefully. I don’t see anything happening in Taiwan unless America provokes it.

The much bigger concern I have, David, is in the South China Sea and the Philippines and Bongbong Marcos, where I don’t think the Chinese view them as cousins. They don’t mind having more military tension against the Philippines. There’s a lot more distrust and a lot more ethnic anger between the two countries.

At the end of the day, Taiwan is a province to China, according to mainland Chinese. They don’t want to kill their own kinsmen. I do want to get to the South China Sea and Southeast Asia in just a bit.

That is a very important region. Michael, how would you respond to Sean’s assertion that a charm offensive is one way that the Chinese could use for reunification? That’s certainly the preferred option. The problem is China has tried that before repeatedly in the past.

This is where I think the slowing economy does become an issue. I agree with Sean that it’s not a question of, oh, we need to distract the public from a struggling economy. Let’s just launch some random war.

The problem is if your economy is in the dumpster and it’s slowing down, then you just look a lot less attractive. Your overtures, your economic goods and carrots are going to be less than they otherwise would be. As a result, you start thinking about using military solutions or military pressure.

We’ve seen this happen throughout history where great powers, when they have an economic surge and then it slows down, they stop relying on those economic instruments, which are withering, and they turn to increasingly put on military pressure. This is why when I see these shows of force in the Taiwan Strait, I think we have to take China quite seriously about what it’s doing and its training operations and the fact that it’s churning out ammo and warships at a rate five to six times faster than the United States. This is the biggest military buildup we’ve seen for many countries since Nazi Germany.

Maybe it’s all a bluff. Maybe that’s just the stick to go behind the carrots that will be offered. I don’t see that winning over Taiwan.

I agree that they’re going to go after the KMT and try to win them back over. I thought it was very instructive that on the campaign trail, Hou Youwei, the candidate for the KMT said, we can’t go back to the policies of the Ma Ying-jeou administration. The situation across the strait is just so different.

China’s become much more aggressive and basically distanced himself from that policy. I know former President Ma has been going over to the mainland, but he’s not in power and leaders of his party have explicitly said that we are not going to adopt that same welcoming of engagement. I could see China making overtures economically, as Sean has suggested.

I just don’t see that really moving the needle, especially among the younger generation in Taiwan, which greatly values their distinct Taiwanese identity. Sean mentioned Hong Kong. I think they looked at Hong Kong and said, we got that same one country, two systems offer and look how it ended up in Hong Kong.

We don’t want to end up like that. I just don’t see these overtures really moving the needle enough for someone like Xi Jinping, who seems very ambitious and isn’t going to settle for anything less than Taiwan ultimately bending the knee in some form. Why was there so much rhetoric or some fear in the US around a certain deadline for China to invade Taiwan after which becomes less feasible or less likely? Take a look at this particular article.

I mean, several sources have pointed to this, but how DC became obsessed with a potential 2027 Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Xi Jinping at a summit in San Francisco said, Xi Jinping said, look, I hear all these reports in the US of how we’re planning for military action in 2027 or 2035. There are no such plans.

No one has talked to me about this, but according to US intelligence, Xi has told the Chinese military it needs to be ready to invade Taiwan by that year. I think that’s maybe where the miscommunication or confusion has stemmed. But certainly you’ve read about this.

What is your assessment of how this came about American media? Sean, I’ll let you go first. So I view this as sensationalism, fear mongering, and warmongering. For Xi to say we need to be prepared by 2027 is actually admission that China hasn’t been building up like the Nazis, like Michael just said.

They’ve been fairly slow in building up the military. If you look at it, Japan is doubling their military budget over the next five years while China is doubling it over the next 10 years. What I see is new media just wants to have a sensationalist story to present.

And then the US government always needs to have an enemy. So I’m American. I love America.

I’m a red patriot. I might run for Senate one day. But one of the problems, David, we have as a country is that we’re always creating enemies where there are none.

And I think policymakers, think tankers, academics, they’re all trying to say, you know what, we need to be prepared to fight against China because once the threat in Russia goes down, they need to be able to make their money and get famous somehow. It’s basically the military industry. I would argue and disagree with Michael where he says China is the most biggest arms buildup since Nazi Germany.

I would say it’s America. We’re constantly at war, creating wars where there aren’t any. And this is one of the reasons why I’m not so worried about Taiwan is that Xi Jinping has said, and a lot of senior policymakers here have said, that they believe US and NATO provoked Russia over Ukraine.

And they’re not stupid. They’re not going to be provoked by the Americans to do something militarily and stupid over Taiwan. I think China’s a lot saner.

They understand that military war is not something that they want to do. Again, they haven’t launched a bullet, shot a single bullet in 40 years. I wonder how long Americans say they’ve gone without shooting a bullet, an hour, two weeks.

All right. I’ll let Michael respond. Same question.

And to add to that, is there an actual credible threat from China’s buildup of the military? And we can debate the pace at which they’ve been building it up. Or is this just fear-mongering from the US, as Sean has highlighted? So on the 40-year point, Imperial Germany had not fought a war in 40 years before it launched World War I. So it’s not so much a question of serial aggression. The question is, is there a keen interest such that you think this country would be willing to risk war? I assume Sean would not disagree that something like Taiwan is an issue that China would certainly risk war over.

It’s that important to the Chinese Communist Party. It seems to be that important for Xi Jinping, who says the unification is an inevitable requirement for the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. He seems to be giving indications that’s something he very much wants to preside over as part of his historical legacy.

I hope that Sean is right. Certainly, a military buildup doesn’t mean that war is inevitable. But I think if you look at, say, you brought up Japan, if you look at the military budget figures, I mean, yes, Japan is increasing its military budget by 60% over the next five years.

But they’ve fallen so far behind the Chinese, who have just been growing like gangbusters with 7% to 10% increases in the military budget every year. And you can see the actual thousands of missiles that are being produced, the fact that the Navy has more ships than that in the US Navy, the fact that they are doing practice bombing runs on full scale mockups of Taiwanese bases and American aircraft carriers out in the desert. And by the way, Xi Jinping has said multiple times that if you play around with this issue, you’re going to get burned, basically.

So I think we need to take China very seriously. And I would also just add a lot of the rhetoric where people say, oh, there’s not going to be a war. I remember those exact same comments being made about Russia prior to the invasion of Ukraine.

And I think when a dictator says that this thing is not a country, it belongs to us, it’s historically always been part of us. And one day, one way or another, we’re going to take it back. We have to take that very, very seriously.

I think, you know, Sean says the United States just fights a bunch of wars. I actually think the common pattern in American foreign policy history is to assert a bunch of interests around the world, but then vastly underprepare with the military hard power to enforce those. So we saw that prior to both World Wars, where the United States, you know, opposed the expansion of Germany and Japan, but didn’t really build up the military or have the standing alliances to actually have real deterrence.

We saw this prior to the Korean War, where the United States withdrew its troops from Korea and said Korea is not part of the U.S. defense perimeter. And then North Korea took that as a green light to invade. We saw this prior to the Gulf War, where the U.S. basically made no attempt to deter Saddam Hussein and then intervened anyway.

So I just worry we’re going to repeat the same mistake where we sort of under repair, we don’t actually build up deterrence, and then the war may break out, and then the United States is going to intervene anyway at much greater cost. Much better to have a firm line and show that, you know, if there’s going to be a war over Taiwan, it’s not going to go very well for China, and hopefully that’ll keep cooler heads from coming. I do have a follow-up question for you, Michael, but I’ll let Sean respond first.

Well, the only thing is, I mean, America has 800 military bases in over 80 countries. China has one military base outside of mainland China. So when you say that America doesn’t invest in building up, I think we have wasteful spending in the military because I think there’s a lot of corruption involved.

We have too many political leaders going into defense back and forth. It’s a revolving door. Like Lloyd Austin, you know, he ran the Iraq theater in the army, then he went to Raytheon as a board member, and then he became secretary of defense.

You see Dick Cheney, you know, went from secretary of defense to Halliburton, the military construction company, back to vice president. So we spend a lot of money, but we just don’t spend it smartly, and we’re overextended because we keep going into too many wars. The next thing is you have to look at is what is Trump going to do right now? I mean, he has said basically Greenland should be his.

Canada, your home country, David, should be the 51st state. Panama should be part of the United States, and they’re going to take over the Panama Canal. So when we talk about who’s the greatest threat in the world to the world order, is it China or is it the United States under Trump? What I expect to see happening, and this is why I’m bullish for the economy, is the global South, Europe, all these countries are going to pivot back to China, and that’s going to be China’s move to offset the tariff war.

They’re going to build up relations with ASEAN. They’re going to build up relations with Europe, because right now nobody, not even Canada, America’s closest ally, best friend, wife, husband, whatever you want to call it, you don’t get a closer relationship than that. They’re now under attack from the United States, and Americans, half of them anyway, are supporting the attacks on Canada.

It’s shameful what D.C. is doing right now. Okay. By the way, Sean, do you take Trump’s rhetoric seriously, that he wants to buy Greenland or, you know, buy the Panama Canal? The 51st state would be Canada.

Like, is this just, like, what’s he doing here? I view this as a shock and awe strategy. So he considers himself a master negotiator. I’m not sure that he is, but he wants to say we’re best friends with Nelson Trudeau, but then belittle him by calling him a governor, and then launching a tariff war.

I think that at the end of the day, Trump doesn’t want to use the military. I actually think he’s one of the least warmongers as a president in the United States in my lifetime, which is why I support him over Biden. But he is going to do a shock and awe, and he will exert maximum economic pressure.

I don’t think he will use military, but he is fine with oppressing and hurting other countries economically, which is something that I disagree with. I just don’t, I like the fact that he doesn’t want to launch missiles and bombs as much as Biden. Biden seems to love doing that.

Michael, I’ll let you respond to that, but also to your earlier point about the Chinese building up their military faster than other US allies. If their end goal, at least, not end goal, but if their short-term to medium-term goal is not to invade Taiwan, like you said earlier in this interview, why the need to build up the military? What other ambitions do they have? Yeah, I mean, on the first one, I actually agree with a lot of what Sean said. I think there’s tremendous waste, and so it’s not so much the lack of investment overall in the military.

It’s just that it’s sprawled all over the place and not really particularly effective in any one place. And so, you know, as Sean said, the United States has all these military bases all over the place. It got bogged down in two forever wars in the Middle East that were disastrous for its strategic position.

But the problem is the local balance of power in the Taiwan Strait is looking worse and worse for the Taiwanese and therefore for the United States. I mean, still the United States only has two bases within 500 miles of Taiwan, and China now has lots of missiles trained on those bases. So the point is simply that the United States is ineffectively using its military power, and as a result, the military balance is shifting overall.

I think what else is China trying to do? I mean, I don’t think China’s aims end in Taiwan, maybe in terms of outright conquest, they do, but clearly China has ambitions to be one of, if not the dominant power in the world. And China has made pretty clear that the South China Sea is not some international waterway, or at least big parts of it are not international waters, that they are Chinese territory. You know that because if you’re in a ship out there, you’ll get approached by a Chinese vessel that’ll say you’re on Chinese territory, you have to leave.

So I think this is why Taiwan itself is so important because it is at the epicenter of these strategic waterways, which China then claims. Some people think that China may start putting pressure on the Ryukyu island chain that stretches from the Japanese main islands down to Taiwan. Sean mentioned the Philippines, which I also worry quite a bit about because it just looks like a very juicy target for the Chinese because it’s militarily weak, but strategically and symbolically very important because it is the country that brought that case against China in the Hague, in the world court, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which ruled that China’s historical claims in the South China Sea were null and void.

So making a lesson out of the Philippines would go a long way towards reversing that and consolidating China’s control there. It’s also an American ally, but it’s a country that basically has no offensive military capability, at least in terms of air and naval power. So it’s the combination of a weak, but also symbolically important target.

And so when I see China building up its military, I think a lot of it’s for Taiwan, but all of these assets could be easily redeployed to the South China Sea as well. Well, the Philippines is another major ally of the US. So let’s talk about the Southeast Asia region now, Michael and Sean.

What evidence do we have that it is the actual intent of the Chinese government to exert military power over these other countries in the Southeast Asia region? I mean, it’s possible that perhaps these military excursions that have led to confrontations with the local navies may have just been oversight by the Chinese Navy and accidents per se. I’m just playing devil’s advocate here. Is it possible that they don’t actually have any serious intent to expand or have any imperialistic conquest ambitions in the long term? I mean, certainly taking over the Philippines and other countries is not in their 14th five-year plan.

So I don’t see that China wants to expand its territorial ambitions. It views Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan as part of mainland China, and it wants to control those areas. I don’t see it increasing its borders and wanting to invade the Philippines.

I do see that it wants to deter the United States and protect its own interests. I mean, we’ve seen under Biden that it was very clear that the United States wanted to destabilize the CPC and potentially push for regime change. So I think most of the spending is not about trying to conquest other nations, but it’s about protecting its own livelihood.

Now, I spend a lot of time traveling around ASEAN. I just got back from Bangkok. And when you talk to elites there, they are very open to working with China.

They feel that the United States is actually putting too much pressure on them. I’ll give an example. My book, The Split, I just gave a book signing in Bangkok.

The very first person, David, to come up and ask for me to sign the book was Thailand’s former deputy prime minister and foreign minister. And he said to me, I’m here because I want to buy this book and understand how we can improve economic relations with China. Now, obviously, smaller countries like Vietnam, like Thailand are going to feel squeezed between the United States and China, and they’re going to have to make a choice.

It’s going to be very difficult for them to be neutral and have good relations with both countries. But I see, aside from the Philippines, most of ASEAN is getting closer to China’s orbit. That would be Malaysia.

That would be Indonesia. That would be Singapore. That would be Thailand.

Vietnam is sort of in the middle because there’s more historical tension with the Chinese. But at the end of the day, they all see that China’s economy is rising. It’s growing 5% a year.

That’s like adding an entire Thailand and Vietnam economy combined. So I think for ASEAN, the people closest to China, they want to benefit from China’s economic growth. They recognize China’s the next China.

They don’t want to have tension with China. It’s only the Philippines and Southeast Asia that I think is taking, wrongly, a very critical view of China. And I hope that Duartez or some other political power broker in the Philippines can gain more say.

Because right now, basically, Bongbong Marcos is a vassal of the United States. Okay. So Michael, in your book, Danger Zone, The Coming Conflict with China, you’ve highlighted that the 2020s could be a decade where the prospect of war with China between China and the U.S. could be heightened.

So what evidence do we have that China’s buildup of their military is offensive in nature and not more defensive, like Sean suggested? Well, I think first it’s just China’s claims. I mean, they claim Taiwan and they also claim, what, 80% to 90% of the South China Sea. I agree with Sean.

It’s not that they’re going to invade the Philippines, but they want to confine Vietnam and the Philippines to fairly narrow bands of coastline, which would be their territorial waters. Then everything else is Chinese territorial waters. And so they’d have to essentially beg Beijing to do anything there, to explore for resources, to fish, to really to operate.

And we’ve seen that that’s not just a talking point for China. I mean, they’ve been increasingly enforcing that with this so-called maritime militia, these thousands of fishing vessels and Coast Guard vessels that go and shove neighbors out of disputed areas. So again, I think we have to take them very seriously that when they say this is our territory, they really mean that.

Now, does it mean they’re going to completely shut down the South China Sea to all maritime traffic? Probably not. But I could see them increasingly calling the shots there and saying, if you want to be able to get access, open access to the sea lane, you have to give us concessions on X, Y, or Z, and you can only come in when we say that it’s okay. So that would be major change in the map of East Asia.

It would also be a huge shift in the balance of power because effectively China would become the regional hegemon of East Asia and could then start projecting power further afield, which I think it clearly wants to do. When you look at maps of Chinese investments around the world, it looks increasingly like a grand economic empire. So I think that just the straight up territorial claims combined with the military buildup show that China has the intention of flexing its muscles on the international scene.

Now, the 2020s I think are especially dangerous because there’s this window period where the United States, its allies have been very slow to try to spread out their forces, to rebuild their forces in East Asia. I would encourage listeners just to look at a graph of the military spending of China versus other countries in East Asia. And so China’s really shot ahead.

And then if dial down and look at actual platforms, then that becomes even more impressive what China’s doing because China frankly doesn’t report a lot of its military spending, but you can actually see with satellite photos, all of the warships and the combat aircraft and the missiles coming out. So you see this big military buildup. I think by the 2030s, there’s all these initiatives that the Pentagon has.

You see, as Sean mentioned, Japan increasing its defense spending, the Taiwanese trying to become a porcupine. I think that’s going to make things like an amphibious invasion of much harder or a blockade. And so again, it’s not that war is guaranteed in the 2020s, but I think if a war were to happen, this would be the most likely period because it’s at this intersection when China has a potential advantage in terms of military power, but is looking ahead, seeing development, seeing countries.

I actually disagree with Sean. I mean, I’m looking at these opinion polls showing that many countries around the region are fearful of China. The anti-China sentiment has spiked, especially since COVID to levels we haven’t seen since the Tiananmen Square massacre and the Philippines is opening up new military bases on its territory.

The Vietnamese, you know, they’re like 80% pro-American there. So, I mean, the idea that they’re all just bandwagoning with China, I think it’s a much more mixed picture. And so China is looking at these coalitions opening up and we’ve seen in the past that great powers, when they feel like they’re dwindling and going away, then they become much more willing to use military force.

Okay. So Sean, to your point, and let’s close off on the future of US-China relations. To your point about 800 US bases and one Chinese base abroad.

If China were to feel encircled and there comes a point where their military is powerful enough, how would they use their military if it feels threatened to the extent that they feel compelled to take action? What would that scenario look like to you, Sean? That scenario is unlikely unless they’re provoked, but I’m more worried about an accident in the South China Sea. So I think China’s government has been fairly good, but I do think that criticism of how China is demanding or declaring the entire South China Sea is theirs is reasonable criticism. So I think when the Philippines or some of these other countries say, we need to have more free flow, this is part of our sovereignty.

I think those criticisms are legitimate, frankly. But I think China is just trying to push off from the United States side. And again, deter, because as Michael said, the Philippines has just allowed America to come back and set up bases.

I actually used to live in the Philippines in the mid-90s and there was a lot of happiness when they closed Clark and Subic Air Base because they wanted the American GIs out of the Philippines. Now they’re welcoming them back in, and I think a lot of it is from pressure from the United States. I’m not sure that everyday Filipinos want America to build up their military capabilities again in the Philippines.

You also see there’s 30,000 to 50,000 American GIs in Japan, 30,000 to 50,000 American GIs in South Korea. They also now have GIs in Taiwan. So from the Chinese view, they’re being encircled.

I don’t see them launching military capabilities anytime soon. What I think it’s more likely, David, is they’re going to build up more infrastructure projects like they’ve done in Peru, more infrastructure projects like they’ve done in Afghanistan. They want to have win-win economic benefits.

Importantly, generals in China, when they retire, they’re not allowed to work for weapon manufacturers, right? Again, American, you see all of these guys in the US, Jim Stravarius, David Petraeus. They run the military in certain fields of operation, and then they work for Carlisle Group or KKR and other private equity firms. So they want to create a fear-mongering, war-mongering type atmosphere.

China’s not going to do that. They’re going to focus on economic benefits and trade more than military. So it’s not a great answer, David, because I just don’t envision China trying to use the military in the next five, 10 years to do anything.

All right. Well, let’s close off. Same question to the both of you, which is how China’s relationship may change with Trump 2.0. So Michael, you wrote your book, The Danger Zone, The Coming Conflict with China, before Trump took office.

Do you see any changes to what you’ve written in the book because of the Trump administration? I think it’s possible because Trump, he can be his own man, and he’s someone who has called out a lot of conventional wisdom, especially on foreign policy. He’s also done things like hint, do we really need to defend Taiwan? And so whereas Biden was increasing the American commitment to Taiwan, Trump has given comments at various points saying, why are we sticking our necks out and potentially getting in a big brawl with China? The problem is, I actually think a lot of US-China rivalry is much more structural in a way. I think, unfortunately, this is just what you see, again, in history with the two most powerful countries in the world in a strategically vital location like East Asia, and they tend to not give way very easily.

There’s also what political scientists call the credible commitment problem, which is namely that concessions that one side could make that might reassure the other side, if they’re big enough to reassure the other side, they also open up potential for exploitation. So, for example, on something like Taiwan, the Chinese want the Americans to stop selling arms to Taiwan. So the Americans are saying, if we do that, then the military balance is going to shift radically in your favor, and how do we know that you’re not going to exploit that situation? Or conversely, the Americans say, hey, why don’t you lay off Taiwan, stop these shows of force, stop building up your military? And the Chinese are saying, well, if we do that, how do we know that you’re not going to encourage Taiwan to eventually drift away from the mainland? So there’s lots of these kind of situations where it’s just very, very hard for either side to offer concessions that are big enough, but don’t open them up to exploitation.

And what you generally see is that both sides just dig further down into asserting their interests, and as a result, you get conflict. So I think Trump may try a few things, but because I view a lot of this as, unfortunately, quite structural, I don’t see a major change, especially just given what happened in the first Trump administration. I mean, ultimately, that’s our best guide, I think, in a lot of ways about how he’s ultimately going to come out on China.

Just a follow up question before I move on to Sean, do you think that Trump could be more hawkish on China, given that this is his second term, he’s not concerned about re-election? He could go either way, but that’s also another possibility, you know, that he’s swinging for the history books at this point. He doesn’t want to be the guy that presides over the American withdrawal from a strategic location and ceding it to a rising great power. So, you know, if that’s how he’s thinking about it, it’s entirely possible, but I have no idea.

Okay, Sean, how do you see Sino-U.S. relations progressing in the next three or four years? The great power struggle between China and the U.S., what does this ultimately look like under a Trump administration? Here’s the problem, David. There’s so much Sinophobia and fear mongering in D.C. right now. You see Chris Murphy, the Senator, I believe from Connecticut, said that Elon Musk and Doge is trying to close USAID because it helps China.

They blame everything on China. It’s ridiculous. I actually think that Trump might be the only politician today in the position to reset relations.

And I think that’s why Chinese are hopeful, because he’s only slapped 10 percent and he isn’t looking to destabilize the CPC. He has said good things about Xi Jinping. He says he’s friends.

He likes the Chinese people. His granddaughter learns Chinese. So there’s a feeling in China that a deal can be made.

Now, it’s going to be rough going for the next year or two. Trump, again, is going to use that shock and awe strategy, try to extract as much economic benefit out of China as he can and hurt China economically. But a deal will be made.

It might not happen in year one. It might not happen in year two, but it’ll happen before the end of his administration if he does leave in four years, because he’s got a pathological need to get a deal done. He wants to be able to tell the American people he beat the Chinese.

What does this deal look like, hypothetically, Sean? It could be simple, like in the first round where China agreed to buy more soybeans, more beef, more lobster. You know, he just wants to tout it out. It’s like the deal he’s made with Canada for the next month.

You know, we’re going to have 1.5 billion and more fentanyl czar from Canada. These basically were all things that Trudeau and Canada already agreed to when Biden was still president or in December. You know, the decision to get 10,000 troops on the border from Mexico, that was something Mexico had already had before.

So I think Trump has just loved an occultish-like behavior from MAGA, that he can spin anything as a win to his electorate, to his people. And he’s going to have to get a deal, I think, for the midterm elections. So the big power, any of his screaming and his cajoling and bullying is going to happen in the first year of his administration.

If things don’t work out well, then he’s going to have to step back down a little bit in year two for the midterm elections, because it’s so closely divided in Senate, so closely invited in the House of Representatives. Now, I think Trump might make a deal. Again, if he allows Chinese companies like TikTok or Neo to invest in the United States and have a pathway for business, that’s going to get the Chinese economy going.

And we also have to look out if Trump does willingly step down, who’s going to be the president after that? Gavin Newsom in California, he came to China in 2023 in the autumn, met with Xi Jinping, he was feted like the next president. And he said he wanted to get Chinese NEVs into California to help the environment there. And he didn’t view China’s rise as a zero-sum game.

But we’ve got the lunatics in Senate, like Chris Murphy, like Tom Cotton, like Josh Hawley, who are going to attack China. But I think people who are looking at the president position, they tend to be a little bit saner, a little bit more pragmatic in the post-Biden world. I’m hopeful that there’s going to be good relations over the next five, 10 years.

All right, good. Well, excellent talk. We’ll end it here.

Thank you to both gentlemen, Sean and Michael. Where can we learn more from you, read your work, follow you? Michael, I’ll let you go first. You can just go to my website, michaelbeckley.org. I try to post as many of my things for free there to get around paywalls as possible.

I also work at the American Enterprise Institute. They also post a lot of my stuff. Okay, excellent.

Thank you, Sean. Where can we learn from you? Thanks, David. Please read my book, The Split.

It just came out globally in December. It comes out this week on Kindle in Canada. So it’s very current, has a lot of great information.

You can find this on Amazon or Kobo or in bookstores around the world. Thanks so much for having me, David. Nice to meet you, Michael.

And thanks for the debate. I was expecting to be a little bit more anger on your side towards me. So I’m glad that it was very civil and that we agree more than we disagree on a lot of things.

Thanks so much. Thank you both. Yeah, we’ll put the links down below.

So make sure to follow Michael and Sean there. Appreciate you watching. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.