Rana Mitter:
Miles, welcome to our new Thinking About China: A Belfer Center Conversation Series, it is great to be here with you.
We're at a moment where there's going to be the second U.S.-China summit between President Trump and President Xi, and there's going to be probably a couple more meetings in the near future as well. How would you characterize the evolution of President Trump's China policy between his first term when you served in government and the second? Is it a shift from deterrence to engagement, engagement deterrence, or something else?
Miles Yu:
Well, thank you very much for inviting me to Harvard. I think President Trump’s policy toward China has gone through revolutionary changes. We should put this into a historical context. In the first term, it was an utter revolution. It was a change from the previous guideline, or what I call the 1972 framework, that had been in practice for more than half a century until the first Trump administration when we completely reversed that. The upshot is that we changed from viewing as an engagement partner to viewing it mostly as the leading adversary of the United States for various reasons which I have written about quite a lot in recent years.
Obviously, that definition of China as America's top foreign adversary has gained bipartisan support. As a matter of fact, when President Biden came to Washington, his administration carried on the same course, continued our definition of China as America's leading adversary, virtually without any qualm. And now, we are in the second term of Trump administration. Many people see his second term’s China policy as a reversal of that definition of China codified in the first term. I don't agree with that at all. It's not a reversal, it's a continuity. There's a lot of connections. It's just with a different approach. In the first term, we spent most of the time convincing the country, convincing the American people that this definition of China as America's top adversary is justified. And we laid out all the reasons why to the country. So, throughout the four years of the first Trump administration, particularly during and after COVID, China behaved very badly, that helped us convince the nation and certainly convinced the Congress.
Also, I must say, we even convinced the world that China is a major threat to not just American security, but also to global security. In the second term, however, what is important is to carry out a specific implementation system of policies to comply with that definition of China as America's top adversary but without invoking, without getting U.S. into a kinetic fight with China at the moment. We must do something indirectly to curb China's aggression, to strengthen American domestically and hemispherically.
To do that, the second term’s priority under President Trump is basically, first of all, to enhance homeland and hemispheric security, kick China's influence out of the United States and out of places like the Panama Canal, Venezuela, and eventually Greenland.
And secondly, we're going to enhance our deterrence capabilities, particularly in the Pacific. So that's why our buildup--military buildup, and alliance building in that region under PACOM, has been historic and nonstop. In addition, we have enhanced our military sales to Taiwan at the unprecedented rate, despite all the erroneous assumptions, Taiwan has become America's number one buyer of U.S.-made weapons. We sold Taiwanese $11 billion worth of arms, the largest one in recent memory in December 2025.
The third thing is basically we're going to ask our allies, in Europe in particular, to take more of their own share of mutual defense spending so that we can focus more on China in Indo-Pacific. And lastly is to rebuild America, to strength our industrial and manufactural base.
Every single one of those priority agendas in the second term did not really have China’s name on paper, but it's really aimed at China. So, I will say the grand rivalry between U.S. and China is still alive and continuing. And of course, without getting U.S. into a direct kinetic confrontation with China.
Rana Mitter:
The question of a rivalry between the U.S. and China brings to mind the fact that as we speak, it's only three days until the next major U.S.-China summit, which will take place in and around Washington DC. What would you say should be the most important priority from the U.S. side for this meeting? And to push a bit further, can the two sides really agree about anything that actually matters?
Miles Yu:
President Trump's signature move in the second term is to use tariffs on the world to force reinvestment in the United States so that we could compete with China more strongly and with more confidence. Pretty much the rest of the world agree with the basic argument of the United States government, namely the trade between U.S. and other countries have been more or less unfair over the decades because we're the open market, we're the largest consumption market, without a reciprocal trade framework
Rana Mitter:
I’m not sure that all other countries would phrase it quite that way, Miles, but go on.
Miles Yu:
No, no, no. They are unhappy. They're reluctant of course, but they don't challenge the fundamental of the argument, namely the U.S. trade policy is based upon reciprocity. That reciprocity doesn't really exist with most of the countries. The only country that shows utter, 100% defiance to that argument is China. And for China it matters because China is the second largest economy in the world. For U.S. and China, there's a lot of economic and trade mutual dependency in that regard. So, what President Trump tried to do, and I think the Chinese government also tried to do is to find some kind of middle ground where it can cooperate. But you need to force China, which has been playing hard-to-get, to actually come to the negotiating table first. So, in order to do that, you’ve got to play up this pump and circumstance, this ceremonial splendor, because that's what Chinese government wants. So, this is where the summit stands now. China has this summit grandiosity obsession.
President Trump famously said in 2016 when he was running for president, he said, "Well, I don't understand why we give a state dinner to the Chinese leadership. We negotiated with them, took them to McDonald's and come back to talk." Well, that obviously doesn’t fit reality anymore.
Rana Mitter:
But haven't we seen that actually? President Trump was entertained twice now in Beijing in this very high style, he was taken to the Forbidden City, he was taken to the inner part of Zhongnanhai, the Chinese leadership compound the last time around so actually, he's pretty impressed. He came back even saying that China had a better ballroom than Washington DC, so I think he's no longer going to be taking Xi Jinping down to the Burger King. He's going to be doing something grander than that and enjoying it, isn’t he?
Miles Yu:
Well, he's not taking Xi Jinping to Burger King, just as President Eisenhower did not take Krishchev to Burger King, though to be fair, I am not sure there was Burger King in those days. What I'm trying to say here is President Trump wants Xi Jinping to come to the negotiating table to play ball.
And by the way, let me just go back a little bit. President Trump is carrying out the hundred-year- old dream of all American presidents, which is that he wants to open up China market to Americans. Do you know who is the first president who wants to open up China market? Is President McKinley. During his presidency, his Secretary of State John Hay, famously announced the Open-Door policy. Open Door policy basically -
Rana Mitter:
That's in 1899, right?
Miles Yu:
1899, that's right. So Open Door policy was announced just around 1900 during the Box Rebellion. This was done in light of the Western powers trying to carve up China in the aftermath of the Box Rebellion. So, President McKinley and his Secretary of State John Hay basically said, "Hey, listen, nobody's going to carve up China; secondly, because we want China to every country equal opportunity in commerce.” Everybody wants to do commerce with China. Which requires China to open up the China market. China market has remained closed ever since more or less, with a few exceptional years during the 30s and the 40s, but it has been closed in a basic way.
Now President Trump says he would open up China market. That is a continuing grand dream. So, I do not know whether it's going to work or not. But there is this tradition over there. Now, whether he will treat Chinese leaders with a banquet or the McDonald's, I don't think that really matters in this case. He wants China to play ball to a lot of American companies over there.
Now, is this capitulation? I don't think so. If you know anything about Donald Trump, you know he's a hard, brutal, and very effective negotiator. He wants to bring his adversary to the table to talk. If the deal he reaches with the other side is not to his satisfaction, he's perfectly willing to walk away. This is exactly what he did during four years of first presidency with Kim Jong Un. He negotiated with Kim Jong-un, calling him the best friend. In fact, he even said he was “in love” with Kim, bring him into a talk, two summit meetings, one in Singapore, another one in Vietnam. In the end, the deal he reached with Kim Jong Un did not meet his expectations. He walked away. But with the negotiations with Kim, he gained peace. There is no provocation by North Korean during his presidency. Same thing is with China. In his first term, there was no provocation by China in the Taiwan Strait, in the South China Sea, and now he's doing the same thing, to keep the enemy, the adversary close to a negotiating table and have this conversation about real reciprocity and opening up market to the United States.
Rana Mitter:
It was interesting what you said there, Miles, in that you talked about China as an enemy and then you changed the word to adversary. People might take a different implication from enemy, being someone who's simply out to destroy you, and adversary, as someone you might respect, but who has goals which are incompatible with yours and may prove a fatal obstacle to them. Which of those do you think is the right way to describe China and its relationship with the United States?
Miles Yu:
Rana, that really testifies to your ability as an astute observer on U.S.-China relationship because much of that relationship is built on semantics. Semantics matter but shouldn't matter as much. It's substance that should matter. Now in terms of adversary, in terms of mutual definition of each other, China defines United States as the mortal enemy. This is written into its founding documents, China looks at the United States influence on the Chinese people as the most important destabilizing factor to the region's survival. So, they want to diminish American's inspirational impact on people in China. So, they demonize the United States to no end. I mean, you've got a Chinese media environment every day saying U.S. is really in mortal decline, and everything is bad about the United States.
But the U.S. definition of China has been struggling. At first, we looked at China as an engagement partner, which failed. Now it's a strategic competitor, and that didn't really work out because logically it is flawed since competitor means that both sides are in the competition. In any competition, both sides must agree on same sets of rules of competition.
Also, competition must have a winner and loser. China always tries to bamboozle United States and says, "Hey, it's a win-win." There is no such thing called win-win. It is you lose or I win. Now when I say enemy, that's from the Chinese perspective. United States is the enemy of the CCP. When I say foreign adversary, that's American's diplomatic and the political definition. United States on paper legally defines America’s foreign adversaries, six of them, namely, China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela. So those are legally defined foreign adversaries of the United States. That's basically more legalistic definition. So, in that context, I sort of interchange the phrases which may have caused some confusion.
Rana Mitter:
So, let's stick with another aspect of semantics, but one that was brought up by the U.S. and by China in the last Beijing summit just in May of this year, was when both Xi and Trump signed off on the idea of "constructive relationship of strategic stability," actually that sounds a bit like the kind of phrasing that you sometimes get from the Chinese side, but it seems to have been adopted by both. Is that meaningful in terms of having a relationship that has strategic stability? Could that suggest there's a floor, there's a ceiling? Do you agree that that's the right way to think about it and how would it work?
Miles Yu:
Strategic stability is necessary when both sides possess the capability to severely damage the other, destroy the other even. So, this is in the same vein as our strategic relationship with the Soviet Union because there is a mutually assured destruction capability on both sides and you better try to avoid as much as possible, but there is no illusion about this. So, you mentioned about the May 2026 summit in Beijing, which was basically a ceasefire. Doesn't mean hostility really is gone. So, both sides are fully aware we need time to regroup. We need time to get ready.
Rana Mitter:
To get ready for what?
Miles Yu:
Well get ready for the chance to cooperate to ultimately yield to the mutual benefits of each other. If China doesn't play ball, then we have to really look at our deterrence promises there. That's why deterrence is a central strategy of the Trump administration. Deterrence. Deterrence is a matter of perception. We want the Chinese to perceive we have the capability to destroy it if they want to destroy us. So, you mentioned about signing off in May. But there's nothing that is signed there.
Rana Mitter:
That’s fair.
Miles Yu:
Before the May summit in Beijing, Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent and his counterpart, Vice Premier He Lifeng had held eight rounds of talks to figure out something that both sides could sign onto to claim some kind of détente. Nothing was agreed to during these painful talks. So, this time it’s the same thing. So, I don't expect anything substantial to be signed by both leaders in this summit in a few days.
Rana Mitter:
Miles, when you said earlier, both sides can prepare to get ready, I wondered if one way to interpret that might be about preparing for a change of policy on Taiwan, one of the most contentious issues for decades in U.S.-China relations. Do you anticipate that we will see changes in the Taiwan policy of the United States or of China during the remainder of this presidential term or going into the next one?
Miles Yu:
No. I mean, Taiwan issue, the argument for the defense of Taiwan has gone through many decades. In the Cold War, we obviously had a mutual defense treaty with them. In1980, President Carter terminated that treaty. But that was followed immediately by the Taiwan Relations Act and the various presidential decrees supporting Taiwan's defense. The major condition basically is this, that United States will engage with Taiwan, will reduce our defense pledge for Taiwan as long as China mitigates its threat against Taiwan. So, if China's threat level against Taiwan is increasing and we're going to sell Taiwan weapons, we're going to increase our defense pledge to Taiwan. Its all about a very dynamic relationship.
That was in the 1980s, 1990s. But now Taiwan is an entirely different issue to the United States. In other words, Taiwan is not just a country the U.S. wants to protect for the sake of peace. Taiwan is the guarantee of global commerce. Taiwan is the chokepoint of global technological advancement. Without Taiwan, if China takes Taiwan, the global economy will come to a halt, particularly the high- end semiconductor, aviation and aeronautics industries. In those areas, Taiwan plays a pivotal role. In other words, Taiwan needs the United States, but United States and the rest of the world needs Taiwan more than the other way around. In order to protect Taiwan, it is also to protect American interest. So, the argument is actually becoming much stronger to protect Taiwan. Therefore, it is absolutely essential for the security of United States and also for the security of much of the world to protect Taiwan so that Taiwan will not fall into the hands of the communists.
Rana Mitter:
For the upcoming U.S.-China summit, if you had to narrow it down to one issue, and for this I'm asking you to narrow it down to one issue, what do you think is the most dangerous point, either visible or potentially unexpected, between the United States and China right now?
Miles Yu:
I would point out a dangerous ideological blind spot on China's part because China is a Marxist-Leninist country. They have this really unshakable belief that America’s decline is inexorable and terminal. Therefore, they have this really bizarre self-confidence that somehow China now is in a position to destroy United States. They have the upper hands. And this is basically sort of a deadly romantic imagination of their own capability. It's very dangerous. You can see this, not just when China is strong as today, but when China was weak in 1950s and 1960s Rana, you're a historian, you must be aware of the fact. When the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik, Mao Zedong in 1957 went to Moscow to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. He was vigorously pushing the Soviet Union to have a nuclear showdown, a thermonuclear war, with the United States because he believed the time has come to the advantage of the communist camp. That kind of blind optimism is really dangerous. I think Xi Jinping is harboring that kind of ambition right now that the West is haplessly declining, China is triumphantly rising. So, this is a very dangerous thinking. So, if you believe that, we're very close to another global conflagration.
Rana Mitter:
So, the greatest risk of global disaster may be deadly romanticism. You've come to the Belfer Center to hear those sorts of insights, and we're delighted to have had this conversation with Dr. Miles Yu of the Hudson Institute. Miles, thank you for joining us today at Harvard and at the Belfer Center and for taking part in this podcast.
Miles Yu:
Thank you very much. Go Harvard and beat Yale!
