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Okay, here's what we're gonna do worldwide an incrassination. It's not going to be Oh Trump, what do we do that? The Washington Post with a nice treatment this morning, thinking of Ian Bremer is maybe it was the first G two summit where there was some form of equalization in the United States and China. What we're going to do here, which a lot of people don't know, is how did we get here? And I doam mean Kissinger is sitting in the piece hotel in Shanghai, are on the way
to Beijing. And for all of US fossils the shock of seventy two and Nixon with US Robert Hormats. Some people talk, other people do ew and Winston Lord got this going back then there had to be literally like Columbus looking over the horizon. Tell us about what Winston Lord, with your assistance on economics, Ambassador, what was the shaning I communicate like to jump start this new Asia US and nexus.
It's a great question, and I wrote a piece about it in Foreign Affairs to document this. The goal at that point was to try to make the relationship more normal, to deal with a whole series of problems that had been built up over twenty five years of no communication,
no trade, no investment. And of course the key issue on the minds of both the Chinese and the Americans was Taiwan and Joe and Lai, who was the Premier of China, who was their negotiator, and Henry Kissinger, who was Nixon's negotiator, and both formidable people on their own, decided they would need some compromise language and the Shinghai Declaration that still is the centerpiece of China US relations on that issue was worked out between the two of them,
and that opened the way to a building up of confidence. And then after that we came up with a few economic issues that we can use to normalize relations, to increase trade incrementally, and it built from there. But it was trust and confidence and precise planning. And we're critical to this and trust.
Which of course the Trump administration is wonderful just because of time, and Paul wants to get in here with some real questions. I've got to ask you, this President g seems to venerate the pre chow in like China. He wants to go back to Mao, he wants to go back to a more rigid, tougher China. When you see the turmoil with their defense leaders, their generals, they're admirals.
When you see just the clock ticking, is there any chance President g can pull back and become more like the China Robert Hormance.
New Well, I think he's I know him quite well because I've worked with him since he was the party secretary and Jujuan Proms in the nineties. He's a very methodical person and he does sort of venerate Mao, but he also realizes Mao had a number of issues that made him controversial. But there are two parts of the
Mau background that are extremely important to understand. Mao made one point that we've been bullied by the foreigners over the last one hundred years, and we're not going to be bullied again, and she is very much of the view that that must be a critical part of China's strategy to be invulnerable to bullying or pressure or leveraged by the foreigners. The second is that Mao understood and she understands that the fall of the Soviet Union was in part because they did not have a lot of
trading partners. They were confined to very few products that they produced and of very few countries to sell them too. And she Jinpain was going to make sure that China had a broad range of trading partners and had a very diversified economy and therefore could not be leveraged by the United States or anyone else. Those were really two key points that he draws from the mal period and
the fall of the Soviet Union. And let me matter make one other point follows up your point, Tom, and that is, if we learned anything from this summit, it is that for the first time and nearly one hundred years, the US has a peer competitor, a peer competitor on military issues, political issues, technology issues, and economic issues and appear both in scale and in skill. We have If we didn't know that before, we know it now.
Involve David Weston had a brilliant insight I think it was yesterday or the day before on how we were back in the time of Robert Hormance and there's a whole new China out there is.
So, Bob, what is some of your takeaways or what are some of your takeaways from this President Trump, President g I guess we call it a summit here I'm not sure what was really accomplished, but what are your takeaways?
Well, my takeaway is that Trump came to understand that China is a pure competitor, unlike any we have seen for as I say, in early one hundred years. The second is that China does business negotiates in a very different way Trump Trump came in with a great deal of flattery of she Chinese do not necessarily take the flattery. And she came in with a very crisp agenda and
was particularly crisp on Taiwan. And I think it was because he had picked up and the Chinese authorities had picked up that there was a lot of pressure in Washington on Trump to in effect give away a little bit on Taiwan, to move closer to the Chinese position on Taiwan. But also so the people in Washington wanted a statement or something that was clear that said we
would we would toughen up our support for Taiwan. And she wanted to make sure that that issue did not arise and that the United States did not use this summit to make any statements that were pro Taiwan or gave Taiwan additional power in terms of at least verbal support from the United States. Trump she wanted to avoid that. That's why he made the statement very early on, don't mess around with Taiwan.
Yeah, the first two readouts of the first day were very different. President Trump brought a planeload of American CEOs over to Beijing. Here. Do you think Beijing as wants to do business with the US with the West? Here?
Yes, I think that they realized that they have a need. They see a lot of companies looking for new supply chains diversifying away from China.
Yep.
They want to make sure that they don't that that does not continue. And therefore, I think it was smart to bring those CEOs. And every one of them has the potential to make a deal that can actually enhance our capability and maybe their's the problem. Has a lot of them encounter a lot of complex difficulties on regulatory issues, intellectual property issues.
So they're killing me about hormone, says I'm going to interrupt here. So we brought over a bowtload of billionaires. See you there were what's the shoes of the white soles. They're all decked out in the Laura Piano shoes. Hormance would be called dead notes. We didn't take Nicholas.
Burns, we didn't take William Burns, we didn't take Robert Ormantz, we didn't take the detritus of James Baker out of Rice University. Can we rebuild your world at state?
Not in the way we're doing it now. If you look at the number of diplomats who Trump took over relative to the number of CEOs he took over, the latter vastly outnumbered the former. And I think that China is a matter of building trust, and China trusts a few people who've worked on China, not that they always agree with them, but there are a lot of There are several diplomats and Nick Burns is certainly one. I think I'm another, and there's several others who have a
long history with China. I think he would have done well to consult with those people and bring them over to show continuity with the China, the knowledgeable people about China from the past, not necessarily to agree with them, but that would be a way.
I got to run.
Can we do a once a month thing with you? Can your people talk to my people so we can figure out it once a month?
Yeah,