Larry Diamond Talks to Armstrong & Getty

Democracy China. Right, we're going to talk about China. His research focuses on democratic trends and conditions around the world, and he's just been part of producing a big new report about the way China is trying to influence the West in ways both the savory and unsavory, including the United States. Looking forward to this, Larry Diamond joins us. Now, welcome. We appreciate you joining us for the podcast. So listen.

The the current zeitgeist is to hang on every mentioned, every whiff of anybody talking to any Russians and act as though that is self evidently a betrayal of the nation or a dangerous activity and that sort of thing. And I'm not downplaying Vladimir putting An plans, but it's funny that no such sentiment exists about our many, many

contacts with China. Well, I think that's beginning to change, and uh, we make very clear in this report we've just released with the Hoover Institution that we do not want to generate or feed a generalized hysteria about China or contacts with China, and certainly not about Chinese Americans or even Chinese visitors in the United States. But they do have an agenda here to penetrate and sway our democracy, and we need to wake up to it. And how

are they going about penetrating our democracy? Well, not as deeply and alarmingly as they have in Australian New Zealand, where there's ample evidence of them really having uh penetrated politics through campaign contributions and enlisting for the work of their companies and business people former prime ministers and former ministers. But you know, they are moving deeply into universities with very uh I think unhealthy conditions and lack of transparency

in terms of some of the relationships. When they have exchanges with think tanks and universities, often they will uh eliminate people from the exchange list from the ability to participate in a conference if they don't like their politics. Uh. They are very selective, increasingly so in the granting of visas to journalists and scholars and so on so they can send a message that if you criticize China, you'll

be denied access. Uh. They're getting business people to do their bid, American business people to do their bidding and appeal for their policy interests with the US government. Uh.

They are stealing our technology, uh and uh misappropriating intellectual property. Uh. They're sending scientists and engineers to work in university and other labs in the United States who are affiliated with or working for the People's Liberation Army and disguise their real identity so it looks like they're just honest scientists. And then you wake up and you find, just read the newspaper on a daily basis, whether it's quantum computing or electric cars or a gene editing or whatever, that

there's artificial intelligence. They're surging ahead of the United States in technologies that will not only determine who leads the world economy, but looking over the not very distant horizon, who will have military superiority. Well, I appreciate your disclaimer at the beginning of our chat about not, you know, causing some sort of generalized desteria about the Chinese people, but that sounds like serious concern about serious issues. This is not ticky tech, you know, trying to gain a

little bit of advantage. This is serious stuff. I think it's very serious stuff. UH, and so do UH. You know a significant number of people who have spent their lifetime studying China, who love China, uh, and who have joined in this working group report that we just released. We just need to be what we call in the report, constructively vigilant. We need much more information, uh, much more due diligence about who we're dealing with on the Chinese side.

And that's partly a responsibility of universities, think tanks, media, UH, state and local governments that are being approached for investments or uh for exchange relationships to investigate who they're dealing with. But the federal government also needs to give these organizations and actors more help and trying to understand and know who they're dealing with. We're so used to military and economic superiority over everybody, and it's been that way for

quite a while. UM. The economic stuff is out there for everybody to read, you know, the various gauges of sizes of economies and that sort of stuff. But how about the military stuff. I remember there's a statement out of the Pentagon not too long ago that we're approaching a time where we we would not be able to win a war against China. Is that sound accurate to you? Yes, it does. After talking to a number of defense and scientific analysts, because I do not present myself as one

of those. In a technical sense, I think it is not a hysterical concern that they're they're raising. I think it's well founded. And the reason why that we all need to keep in mind is that we're increasingly entering in the era of what they call asymmetric warfare. And by asymmetric um what is meant is that we may have more aircraft carriers, and we may have UH battleships

destroyers that have more firepower than the Chinese. But if the People's Liberation Army can disable our ability to communicate with them UH than UH for example, or find other ways through long range, highly precise missiles that they're developing of actually sinking in American aircraft carrier, than the fact that we have more than them and that they have more firepower isn't necessarily going to help us to win a war. Increasingly, I think the next war will be have.

If there is God forbid, a major war between major powers, it will be heavily driven by information technology. And if they have an edge in that, they may have a war fighting edge in general. Is it realistic to think that, at some point in the future near enough to matter, we'll convince China that stealing all of us, say a company's uh, technological um information is not an okay way to do business. I don't see them giving in on that point. Well, uh, that is a very pleasible scenario

that they won't UH. And if they don't, I think we need to respond in a number of robust ways. Look, I think anyone can google me and discover that I've been extremely critical of President Donald Trump, but on this issue of trade with China, and in particular UH, the abuse of the trading relationship that is most dramatically evidenced by their their theft and misappropriation of our intellectual property.

I think Trump is right on target. And I can tell you during the late summer I spent twenty days in Asia, and I was surprised by the number of people in India, in Thailand, in Hong Kong, in Taiwan who were telling me even people who were you know, environmental activists and obviously on the political left in their countries that they are very grateful to Donald Trump for

standing up to China. So I think in the current trade negotiations, we need to take a tough line on this and uh, if they're not willing to change their practices, I think it should have not only significant consequences for trade, but for the granting of visas to the people who are coming here and stealing this corporate and scientific technology. Does China see us as a threat? Or is it cultural that they want to be number one? What keeps them from just wanting to be, you know, one of

two superpowers that does very well in the world. Well, Uh, I think that all rising powers rising to super power of status in world history want to be number one, So it would be you know, really, I think in ethnocentric mistake to call that cultural. Um. I think that it's not so much fear as ambition. Uh. They are arising superpower. They are, after all, the largest country in the world in population. And you've got to keep in mind Chinese history that China once was the Middle Kingdom,

a great center of learning and commerce. Uh, the most successful or certainly at various points in world history, one of the most successful, advanced, admired civilizations in the world. And I think beyond any kind of communist party doctrine, because they're not trying to make the world communist, but they are trying to penetrate and in sway it to its point of view. Uh. They do certainly seek domination

within Asia. I think there's no question about that. They're trying to push the US out of Asia militarily and to marginalize it economically and geopolitically. But after Asia, what you look at what they're doing around the world, there's these similar influence efforts. Uh in Europe as well. Uh. They've got this Belt and Road initiative that's extending their economic reach and clout and domination. I would even say in Africa, Latin American, elsewhere Central Asia. Uh, And it

looks like a pretty global ambition. How different has the leadership of Ing been from his present predecessors. Well, that's a good question. I think that there is both a qualitative and an incremental difference. The incremental differences look as you go from John Zamin to Jujent Tao, they each have had ten year terms and now since two thousand and twelve to Shi jin Ping, you do see a progression in China's reach and ambition and boldness on the

world stage. That's an incremental evolution of Chinese power and ambition. The qualitative one, I think is that she is much more aggressive and um bold and unapologetic about his intentions. And you look at what China has done under his leadership, build these islands in the South China Sea out of nothing, dredging sand and creating new islands which they are militarizing with air bases and radar stations and so on. And you see in aggressiveness that we haven't seen before. Yeah.

I've read a number of stories about China showing up in countries where they just never seem to have any interest before or couldn't have any interest in Middle East or sending ships places that seems to be ongoing. Hmm. Yeah. I mean they've got a military base now or some kind of base in Djibouti in the Middle East, and you know, they want to be a world power. And I will repeat they are the largest country in the world. They've been the most economically dynamic country in the world. Um,

there are a permanent member of the Security Council. They increasingly show up to international meetings astonishingly well prepared, and you know, they increasingly are able to dominate the agenda because of that, which is to say, I mean give them credit for this. They are doing their homework on international issues. Uh So, you know, uh, they are a rise in global power and we'd better wake up to it.

You know, Russia has hacked our election and attacked our democracy in a way that no other country has ever done. But China's breadth of penetration of our society, our economy, our various democratic institutions is far broader than Russia's, and China's potential to eclipse the United States as a world power is dramatically greater than Russia's, which has a tenth of the population of China and is never going to catch up to the United States again militarily or economically.

Let's talk a little bit about the Confucius Institutes on American university campuses. I've been harshly critical of them. I I've read the summary of your report. You're a little more charitable to me. They are, you know, they're they're so obviously a way to get Chinese propaganda and or intelligence agents into the country. Any any benefits seems to me incidental. Is that too too cynical. It's probably a little too cynical. Uh, in the following sense. I mean,

we have a Confucius Institute here at Stanford. Frankly, I don't know what it does. There's a plaque on a wall. There's never been any sign that they have much impact. I think the way to to think about it is

as follows. Uh, At you know, well resourced colleges and university Stanford, Berkeley, so on, that have um a lot of resources to fund their own language instruction, a Confucius Institute is probably just a small layer on the top Uh that if the relationship is transparent, uh, you know, might add some some marginal value of teaching or or

cultural exchange or so on. But at the many, many colleges and universities, not only in the United States but in Europe and elsewhere where, they don't have the money to fund Chinese language instruction. And this money is very valued, uh,

and it's kind of the only thing going. The opportunity to kind of drive the agenda of what's discussed about China is much greater, And I think the bottom line we came to is that these contracts the universities sign between uh the university and the agency in China within the Education ministry called the han Bond that runs these things, they're all secret now, and it is just a violation of academic freedom and proper procedure in universities for any

such contract to be secret. UH. So, you know, if universities are going to sign these things, they've got to be transparent. They've got to be subjected to faculty review. Everybody's got to know exactly what's in them. The curriculum needs to be open to inspection. And there needs to be no commitment of any kind. Two issues that are off the table for discussion in the classroom or on

the university or college campus. And just for personally, I don't think the Chinese will agree to those combustions for folks who are not familiar with it. How many of these Confucius institutes are there in the US at this point, I think like a hundred and fifties something like that instead a hundred in the world. Wow, I just you know, I appreciate a mid level university really wanting to be hip enough to have Chinese language and cultural you know,

information available to their students. But these c I's Confucius Institute seemed to me that the guy who's come to defile my sister, but he gives me ice cream. I mean, I'm just not going to be that grateful for the ice cream. I know why he's there, but you know, I wouldn't quite put in the provocative terms you did. But here's how I would put it. We want our young people to be learning Chinese and to be able

to engage in a effective way. Uh. You know, the largest and one of the most powerful and dynamic countries in the world. So that's all good, but it shouldn't be funded by the People's Republic of China. Let's pass a new National Defense Education Act like we did in the Cold War with respect to the Soviet Union, and have the US government stepped up to the plate to fund college and university language instruction in critical languages like Chinese, Russian, Arabic,

and FARSI. I think that's the proper response. I know that you have written a lot books articles about democracy the promotion of democracy around the world than the last couple of years, democracy has been taken a hit and receding on the world stage a little bit. How much does it concern you that if China were to become the dominant economy or a peer of ours, a full peer of ours militarily, there'll be less of an argument

for democracy. I mean, for quite a while now you've been able to say, look to the world, the most powerful, richest country in the world is a democracy. Well, if if you can say, look, the world's most powerful country is a dictatorship, that's going to be more of an argument for that, isn't it. Uh. It's a very trenchant point you've just made, and it is one that the Chinese are pushing when they bring journalists and politicians from

developing emerging market countries for training and cultural exchange. Increasingly they are saying, we have a better model, we have a more dynamic model. And our challenge now is not only to wake up, to inform ourselves about, to be vigilant about and and to strengthen our institutions against these forms of inappropriate influence and penetration, but we've got to make our own democracy work better, uh, and in a

less dysfunctional and polarized way. If we are going to be able to make the claim that democracy is the best form of government, uh, and can actually deliver practical solutions to people's problems. You need to be able to stay solvent, for instance. Oh my goodness, yeah, we could start there. Well, there's there's absolutely no arguing those of us who have spent any time looking at it about

the efficacy of dictatorships for doing certain things. They're not bogged down by the whole voting ridiculous environmental concerns and and you know, way, I got to tell you, as a social scientist who studies this issue that, um, their argument, which you've just kind of advanced as a as a hypothesis, really doesn't hold water. If you look at the evidence, all the evidence, and not just cherry picked China or

you know, South Korea from the sixties through the eighties. Uh, you find that the democracies do, on balance at least as well and in some places in historical periods, including Africa today, better than authoritarian regimes in delivering development. So their argument isn't even true. Oh, I believe that wholeheartedly, you wholeheartedly. I was just talking about the short term. You know that the appearance of a benefit if I'm

an African warlord, the trains run on time. Sure. You know, you're probably familiar with Tom Friedman's articles over the years in the New York Times about how much more efficient China is because of their right the way their government works. Yeah. Correct, Yeah, if you need fifty thousand miles of road built, they're going to do it all more quickly in China. But there's an enormous cost to that, for instance, including trying to manipulate how many people you have in the country

and how many kids people can have them. And when you start, you know, drilling down that deep in society, it gets complicated. That's one of their challenges going forward, isn't it. Well, it's much worse than that. I mean, they're getting rid of the one child policy now because it's had the perverse effect of creating a rapidly aging society. In fact, they're freaking out about it. It's happening so fast.

But the more ominous thing, and this gets back to your point about what what the implications are for the future of freedom in the world. They are creating an Orwellian surveillance state in most cities. Now there's a surveillance camera on you know, every corner. They've got the most sophisticated surveillance cameras in the world. They lead the world in the technology of digital facial recognition, so they can figure out who it is on the streets who might

be holding a protest sign or whatever. They've got technology that they can go up to someone and say, give me your cell phone and then basically sucked the whole contents out of it so they can see what they're

reading and who they're talking to. Increasingly, in Shinjong Province, which is a completely totalitarian situation now in the northwest of China, they've got not only hundreds of thousands of people and concentration camps for quote re education, but there's swabbing everybody's d n A to build a complete and total portrait of every individual. I mean, this is almost

beyond George Orwell. And this is what we're looking at when artificial intelligence and high technology meets uh, you know, a Lemon Leninist communist party state and perhaps gene editing babies to you know, who knows where they're going with that. So yeah, right, you know, I worry that the history of mankind is that the tighter dictatorship squeeze, the more likely it is that that rebellions will emerge and resistance

will grow. But with the technological edge that China, for instance, has these days and the measures you are just describing, I don't know how you get a nascent rebellion going. Well. I think we've entered uncharted territory and we we actually don't know where this is leading. But you asked before what are they afraid of? And the answer and the real answers, I don't think they're afraid of the United States. They're afraid of their own people, and that's why they're

implementing all these measures. That's interesting, which is always the case with dictatorships. Clearly their biggest concern is, you know, arrival in their own country kills them in the middle of the night, not not another country. So if we were to kind of drape of an overall theme around the conversation about China and its efforts to infiltrate what was it? You had a great quote from malk In Turnbull, former Australian Prime Minister uh covert, coercive or corrupting efforts

to penetrate and sway. If you were to just describe what our attitude ought to be broadly toward China, toward Chinese scholars, Chinese companies, Chinese initiatives, how would you summarize it for the layman? I would say I'd used the term we use in the title of our report, constructive vigilance. We need to educate ourselves, our national government institutions need

to help local institutions educate ourselves. Not to several ties with China, that would be a huge mistake, but to go into into these ties, UH, mindful of the risks, mindful of their agenda, aware of who we're dealing with and what they're hidden ties maybe to the communist parties state, and demanding both autonomy for ourselves in deciding who's going to be involved in the exchanges of relationships and reciprocity that they shouldn't be able to have unfettered access to

our society. Our institutions are politicians, and our not being able to UH send journalists and scholars and other actors over there on more or less our own open terms. Larry Diamond, Senior fellow with the Hoover Institution, really really interesting conversation. Can't wait to read more. Of the report and will have a link so that our folks can find it very easily. We sure appreciate the time. Well done, Thank you so much, thank you. I do think that

that's uh he called it a trenchant point. I don't know what that word means, so I didn't know if he was saying that's a good point or or if you know, once you let's grown up speak No, No, that compliments no, But I do, I do. I do have the concern that if the most powerful country in the world is a dictatorship, it's a lot harder to sell democracy. Yeah, well, and we have to sell democracy.

I was actually gonna ask if we got a chance, if if Larry is familiar with the book I have referenced many times with the Dictator's Handbook UM subtitle why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics by Bruce and Bueno de Mesquite that and Alistair Smith, and they talk

about how effective dictatorships are at certain stuff. But then they get into the fact that if you're talking about clean water, adequate medical care, uh, the life expectancy, infant mortality rates, just every measure of you have a not miserable life. Democracies always win well, and number one I know is always innovation. You do not get Steve Jobs

coming out of dictatorships. You just don't get that this is impossible, which is a drum we ought to be beating like crazy all the time because listen, if I'm an African UH dictator, number one, I should be deposed immediately. You should. You can do better than that. Um. But if I'm an African dictator and I'm thinking of mmmmm, do I go with the American model? Because you know, my people are starving. I've got enough money to distribute

to the elites in the army, so we're okay. The treasury is good enough to keep me in power, but barely. Do I want to go the American model? Do I want to liberalize? Do I want to give people rights and and have them vote and risk losing my power and and probably being tried from my many crimes financial and otherwise. Or do I want to embrace the Chinese model? You know, we'll keep a dictator ship, will liberalize around the edges economically, but will you also surveil our people

and tell them what they're doing? Please? Please? Warlord Joe is not going to take three minutes thinking about that, And that's why you've got to just absolutely promote the value of democracy as hard as you can, and you're gonna you're gonna lose a lot of those you know, those those battles. But he made a good point. But but I'm sorry, but that shining example is still gonna be out in front of the people who are oppressed, and you hope someday they're gonna overthrow me and and

get to what's actually good for them. It's just human nature to want to be number one. That's just I mean, that's just the way I'll would sway everybody's built. So it's not something special to the Chinese that you're on the cusp of being number one. And you know, if you're the number two NBA team right behind the Warriors, who's gonna say that's good enough? Why can't we be a number two is great? The number two prost expert, number number two is great. That's just not the way

anybody is built. So do they have and I'm serious about this, do they have foam number one fingers in China? If they make them in China? Wonder if they have them for you know whatever. You know, Hunan provinces, you know, the other province in soccer, do they wave foam? Number one? In my lifetime, will trying to be the number one economy and the number one military power in the world. Maybe, ye, maybe, probably almost certainly the economy. If you get hit by

of us today, No, no, they will not. There's that. See a lot of eubles. That's a trenchant point. Thank you very much. I hope you've enjoyed the Armstrong in any podcast.