Angry Planet - After Xi

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.comAll things move towards their end, even seemingly omnipotent political leaders, and authoritarian systems are shaped by the question of succession long before the leader dies. Xi Jinping is 72 years old and the Chinese Communist Party has started to consider what comes next. Those conversations are shaping the political reality of the country.On this episode of Angry Planet, Brown University professor Tyler Jost comes on the show to explain China is navigating what life may look like after Xi.How succession shapes politics in an authoritarian systemHow does China’s government actually work?The path to the Chinese presidencyAs always, it’s all about who you knowPrincelingsXi’s path to powerCorruption as influenceWhen the eye of the leader lands upon you“Cyberpunk hellscape”Some parting notes on American MaoismAfter Xi—The Succession Question Obscuring China’s Future—and Unsettling Its PresentBureaucracies at WarSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Hey there, Angry Planet listeners, Matthew here. Did you know that Angry Planet is almost entirely listener-funded? It's true. If you go to Angry PlanetPod.com and sign up for $9 a month, you get commercial-free early access to all the mainline episodes.

The one that's out right now is an interview with Caroline Fraser, the author of Murderland, which is about lead in the time of serial killers. It's pretty fascinating. Now, let's talk about G. Hello, and welcome to Angry Planet. Another discussion about a world in turmoil. And Matthew says it better, but I like what I just said, so I'm going to stick with it. I don't know.

It is feeling like a world in turmoil a little bit more than everything else at the moment. I'm feeling that. I approve the change. Thank you. Today, we are talking about China and Xi Jinping. Joining us is Tyler, Tyler, is it Jost or Yost? Jost. Okay, great. So joining us is Tyler Jost, and he is a professor at Brown, and we are about to go off to the races. So, Tyler, can you tell us a little bit about who you are, and we'll go from there? Sure. I'm an assistant professor at Brown University in the Political Science Department. I do research on a number of different areas pertaining to international security, but the main focus is on China, its foreign relations, and in particular how its domestic politics, essentially what happens inside of the Chinese state and inside the Chinese Communist Party, shapes the way it behaves on the international stage.

And you recently wrote for Foreign Affairs a column called After Xi and the succession question obscuring China's future and its unsettling presence. So can you tell us just a little bit about what's in it and why we should be paying attention to after Xi when he's actually only 72 and seems fairly vigorous, I guess? Only 72. Only 72, right. Yeah, so the piece is really about a kind of paradigm shift that we see happening, or rather a paradigm shift that we anticipate is about to come. So if you think about the kind of progression of a Chinese leader, Xi Jinping came in in 2012,

and for the last over two decades of his time in office, the discussions about domestic politics in China have centered on what you would call a consolidation or a centralization of power. Xi Jinping has made himself more powerful relative to others, his peers within the Politburo and the party writ large, which huge ramifications both domestically and internationally. What we see coming, and we're not arguing in the piece that it's already happened, but there is going to be a paradigm shift whereby both people inside of the Chinese Communist Party and observers, will begin to think about what happens next.

Because succession, that is, who will replace Xi Jinping when he eventually decides to step down and eventually passes away, because that question is such a thorny one in an authoritarian system like China's, it actually begins shaping politics quite a bit ahead of when the succession actually, actually takes place. And we can talk about, you know, why that's the case, the potential timelines,

and so on and so forth. But the piece is really arguing about kind of change in the way that we think about domestic politics in China for the coming years, as opposed to saying that she is already ill, which, of course, there's no evidence of, not really, or already beginning to tap someone on the shoulder, which we still think is at least a couple more years away at the very minimum. Okay, so I think what would really help people, me in particular, is to get a sense of how the Chinese government actually works. It's an authoritarian system, and I guess everybody knows that. Not everybody knows exactly what that means necessarily. But how does it work? I mean, I assume there aren't a lot of elections, and, you know, but if you just give us the basics.

Sure. Yeah. So, I mean, definitionally, authoritarian, in kind of Western political science, we think about authoritarian rule as situations in which political leaders are selected for office through processes other than direct elections by the citizenry. It's also the case that we think about authoritarian regimes as lacking a set of civil rights and political liberties that we think are important. to ensuring that that process of directly electing leaders is, you know, what we would call democratic. It's worth noting, of course, that the Chinese government disputes, whether or not it is a democracy or authoritarian regime, it would categorize itself as a different type of democracy or democracy by its own definition. But at least within, like, the Western realm of political thought, it doesn't meet those criteria. because the leaders are chosen through a kind of internal process inside of the inside of the Chinese Communist Party. And then very consequentially, individuals who are selected to be at the apex of that political party

and given the mandate to govern have tremendous power to push forward an agenda with, as was the case under Xi Jinping, or as is the case under Xi Jinping, relatively few constraints on his decision-making. That's obviously, I mean, it's enormously complicated question how governance actually works in China. What I'm offering you is a kind of very high-level answer to a very high-level question. But that's the kind of broad strokes, I think, that you were going for. Okay, so if I am a young person growing up in, let's just say, you know, know, a medium-sized city, which in China could be 20 million people. No, I'm kidding. But, you know,

I mean, five million people or more. And I wanted to be president of China or the leader of China. What would I do? Well, the first thing is you've got to join the party. And the party recruitment starts at a young age. And then the track that you would want to take would be one of either a technocrat within the party bureaucracy or a kind of political cadre that's in charge of governance within very low levels. The interesting thing about the Chinese system is that in both the bureaucratic track or the political track, the individuals who rise up the ranks do tend to start at very local levels. So you could be working at a district level, municipal level, and then make your way up.

There are obviously plush postings as you get further up the ranks. It helps to be in. cities that folks within the United States are very familiar with, like Shanghai or Beijing. It's also helpful in particular to have postings that give you a wide social network within both the civilian branch of the party, and then as my co-author for this foreign affairs piece, Dan Mattingly and I have argued, actually the military is quite important to have social connections too as well. So if I, I've, you know, made a lot of friends, and I have a lot of ambition. It's, so it's like an old boys network, kind of? Yeah, I should have mentioned in the initial response

that we think that promotion within the Chinese Communist Party is some combination of social connections, knowing the right people, and performance. performance is difficult to measure, of course, because we don't have the dossiers internal to the party that go through every single aspect of how well an individual is performing. But we look at things like whether or not the geographic region for which they're politically responsible has high GDP, low GDP, relative to peers, so on and so forth. I think the consensus view in the folks who study China at present is that those social connections are irreplaceable. performance might matter in some in some circumstances, but you can't get up the party without knowing

the right people. And she actually started off with some real advantages in that case, right? I mean, his father was deeply involved in the party as the party's beginnings or near the beginnings. Yes, so he was a revolutionary

Xi Zhongshun. And what this, it's interesting to think about what that means for an individual in a subsequent generation, as Xi Jinping is. So on the one hand, it does seem to be the case that individuals who are these princelains, is what we often refer to them, as the familial connections provide opportunities for unique assignments relatively early on. This can be in terms of where you go to school or the individuals,

exposed to in childhood. It could also be a kind of unusually good assignment early on in your career. So in Xi Jinping's case, excuse me, he was a secretary for a then defense minister in the late 1970s, Gambeil, which presumably allowed him to kind of understand, particularly because it was at such a high level, understand the inner workings of how the military worked, the People's Liberation Army, which both Dan and I think are quite important to, to the way the Chinese politics really works. But he's never served. Not in the way we would think about it.

Not in the way we would think about it. But I just wanted to say to round out the discussion. It is probably important that the connections that one has to a revolutionary generation is in some ways a sign of social status within the party itself. The revolution is still, particularly for Xi Jinping, an important, it's an important idea that motivates and animates Chinese politics to this day. And so the closer you can kind of trace your heritage back to that, I do think there's a kind of informal way in which that shapes things,

although it's difficult to kind of pinpoint exactly how. Okay, so now let's say, all right, now I'm, I'm the leader of China, which is nice, and I'm Xi Jinping. How powerful am I compared to some of the other leaders since Mao? Just to give us an idea of, like, what does he really control and who does he answer to if he answers to anybody? Yeah, so the short answer to the very last question you're posed is no one. He alone is responsible within the system.

But I think, so your question, it's a really interesting one in terms of how do we rank the power of Secretary General's of the Chinese Communist Party over time. And I think that what I would perceive as the consensus amongst folks who study Chinese lead politics is that she is the most powerful ruler that has sat at the apex of the CCP since at least. Malthandong who ruled from 1949 as death in 1976. And then perhaps just as strong as Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping. This gets very, it's such a complicated question because power is so difficult to quantify in the Chinese system. So to try to rank well as Xi Jinping more or less powerful than Deng Xiaoping, I could give you a set of metrics that would say yes,

one could easily come up with alternative metrics that would say no. What's most significant probably in what a lot of the scholarly attention over the last couple of, well, the last two plus decade, pardon me, one plus decade has been focused on is the fact that it is clear that Xi Jinping is, is, has been much more successful at consolidating and power relative to the individuals who preceded him. Jung Zemin, and then in particular Hu Jintau, who was widely perceived as being a rather weak leader by CCP standards. Is it because he wants to be, or the other guys failed? It's probably a combination of both, but I probably put a little more emphasis on the latter. So, I mean, thinking through the kind of supply and demand about power consolidation in China.

Those who would sort of say it was because Xi Jinping wanted it more, well, you could take a look and say Xi Jinping does perhaps seem to be more politically conservative than Junk's, and then it's not actually necessarily the case that he is that relative to Hu Jintao. For Hu Jintao, those who had direct personal interactions with them, and here we actually the people who had the most direct access to him, like a large subset of those are people who interacted with him in diplomatic settings, right? So if you think about U.S. senior bureaucratic officials

who were in the room with, so, but how much you can glean from that type of meaning, I think, is somewhat, we have to be circumspect in that. But both based upon people who had met him within the Chinese system, who we have subsequently talked to scholars within the United States, as well as those kind of think about U.S. diplomats who are in the room when, say, Hujintan Tau was meeting with Barack Obama, there is a kind of dispositional story in which Hujentau might have been,

kind of by personality, a little bit more deferential, a little bit less willing to stand up. So you could think about it as partially this kind of demand side. It's probably more likely the case that Xi Jinping was very skillful in moves that he made during the first term in office. And this probably came from a combination of two things. The first is that Xi Jinping came into his position as General Secretary of the Chinese

Count of his party in 2012, in which by the best accounts that we have, there was a perception within elite ranks of the party that corruption was a real problem, like a genuine problem, not just a ploy by which a new ruler would consolidate power. But for the early years

in which Xi Jinping won, a pretty massive, widespread, mostly targeting senior, pardon me, kind of mid-level officials, but targeting some senior officials as well, crackdown on this corruption within the party. And so at first, if you sort of think about the way that that looked to Xi Jinping's other members of, say, the Polar Bureau Standing Committee or Central Committee,

that was perhaps within the mandate of what they thought that Xi Jinping was going to try to enact. And so there was this kind of early uncertainty about whether or not this would translate into something else. But absent the party kind of giving the green light to dealing with the problem of corruption, or rather, to put it a slightly differently, the party's green light to deal with the issue of corruption provided a kind of political opportunity for she to push forward this campaign, which he probably used to a disadvantage in the sense that targeting people for corruption, particularly early on, could be a double-edged sword. You could cut down on corruption, but you could also protect people who you know personally and kind of sway the anti-corruption process in ways that are politically beneficial for you.

And I think early on in those initial years, that was less obvious to folks and didn't become apparent until perhaps halfway through the first term. The other thing that makes Xi Jinping unique and probably allowed him to do things that his predecessors did not, and my co-author Dan Manningly is working on a really fantastic book that really traces this aspect of Xi's background in detail. But we sort of presented in the Foreign Affairs article as well. Xi Jinping just happened to have more connections to the Chinese military than his, and his immediate two predecessors, both Zhang Zemin and Hu Jintao. And what could make the case,

particularly given the peculiarities of the Chinese political system, that those connections to China's coercive organizations allowed him to push through, on the one hand, reforms within the military itself, which kind of bolstered that control that he had within the course of arm. but then allowed him to do things in the broader set of political institutions that others might not have been able to because they lacked that kind of standing and firm grip over the course of armor of the state.

So that means that the army actually really listens to him, right? Or does it? I mean, and is it then the threat of military force that helps keep every person? in line. Yeah, so I think it's worth unpacking a bit from kind of first principles and like why it would be the case that the Chinese military is important in a country in which we typically think of as having firm civilian control over the course of arm, right? It's not the case that China shares a political history analogous to Pakistan or even

Argentina in the late Cold War in which the military frequently intervened in politics. and there's just no doubt that this is a political entity that has directly seized control in the past. That's really not the case in China. So why would it be the case that it's still important? Well, essentially the proposition is, even though the military in the Chinese system doesn't necessarily have,

there's not this perceived threat that it's about or always about to try to seize power, there are political battles that happen within the civilians who control the party and the state. And so when those disputes get really intense, they can theoretically challenge one another and jockey to either undermine the policies that the other side wants

or, in the most extreme cases, move to remove that other faction within the civilian side of the party from power. So if you sort of think about those interactions between civilians and side of the party, of course no individuals within the CCP goes gently

into that good night so to speak and so when the confrontation happens what sometimes occurs when things get really bad is that civilians will turn to

implicitly or directly the coercive armor of the state in order to back them up right and so essentially if you think about civilian power challenges between different factions

they're mediated or resolved in part based upon whether or not the military sides with you as opposed to the other side. That's, of course, the worst case scenario in which essentially the civilians can't figure it out. But you can imagine a set of strategic interactions that happened before that, because if they know that if worse comes to worst, it's going to matter who in the military or who in the course of arm of the state, I'm going to be able to rally to support me as opposed to the opponents that want to undermine my policy or push me from power. You could imagine anticipatory strategic interactions

leading up to that point in which politicians within the party are thinking, well, how strong are my connections to the course of arm of the state relative to others within the system such that I like make, I don't do too much if I know that my position is weak, or if I know that my position is strong, I'm more inclined to do a lot more. So with that kind of framework in mind,

you can then start to think, okay, well, how does Xi Jinping rank relative to his predecessor along this dimension, his ability to kind of control things or at least lean upon people within the military? And it turns out that based upon the trajectory that he took up through the party, he did have an unusually high number of assignments

that allowed him to build personal connections to individuals within the ranks of the CCP, pardoning the PLA, the People's Liberation Army of the Chinese military. And so if you're sort of thinking about the interactions that Xi Jinping had, like how far do I push the anti-corruption campaign, if that basic first premise is right

that part of what matters is your gravitas or standing or connections to the course of arm of the state, the more you have, the more aggressive, or at least, let's say, the more you can try to push the boundaries on something like an anti-corruption campaign. As far as corruption goes in China, I guess I have two questions. One is, how bad did it get? And then after that, maybe we can talk a little bit about how successful Xi was in terms of curbing it.

So it's a really difficult question to answer, in part because what we would categorize as corrupt activity is different from the observable implications, well, the observable metrics that we often use as outside observers of Chinese politics to try to gauge how bad corruption is. So essentially, you know, if one were to measure this by the number of corruption cases that have been launched in China, well, then by that metric, what you've seen is like a huge spike at the beginning of Xi Jinping's type in office, followed by a sort of gradual decrease over time. But that's probably not a good indication of how much, like, how willing individuals are to take bribes, how pervasive that is within the system.

So to try to score Xi Jinping's success or failure in actually curbing corruption within the system is really difficult to say it in any kind of systematic way. It is the case that individuals do feel, at least anecdotally, tremendous political pressure. If one were responding strategically to add the anti-corruption campaign, which has been pushed forward in ways that his predecessors were not able to push that forward, one would presumably try to curb access. But it's not as if corruption cases, particularly for individuals at senior ranks of the National Center. security bureaucracy over the last couple of years had disappeared. Actually, on the contrary, we've seen an increasing number of very senior individuals currently within both the military

and foreign affairs system removed from office on grounds of corruption, or allegations of corruption. So it's an incredibly difficult question to answer with certainty. Okay, so it's actually, it sounds like it's the easiest way to get rid of somebody is to just charge them with corruption? Is it the easiest way? Well, I mean, you know. Yeah, I think it is one, it is one mechanism by which you would theoretically try to take down a person who you thought was politically disloyal, had done something wrong, or perhaps had given, was pushing policy or advice and directions that you were not content with.

And an important endendum here, though, is unlike when we study the way in which political movements inside of China shaped elite politics in the past, say, for example, the way that we can now study the cultural revolution, this big political movement that happened in China from 1966, officially ended in 1976, the picture that we get is just so much richer and more complex and nuanced than what we see. like what we're able to say about things at the time, or in the sort of contemporary setting. And so, again, like when you ask the question, is it the easiest way to get rid of somebody? You know, it's, it's, that's probably part of it, but we're only seeing a fraction of what is likely motivating what would push a leader like Xi Jinping,

to try to remove somebody the grounds in which they would try to do so and so on and so forth. So because to me that sort of, I mean, in my head it sort of leads into the point of your article. So because if someone, you know, if I'm an official close to the top and even if she's the person who put me there, am I living in fear? I mean, is this something where you know, you can rest easy at night or you worried most of the time that you could say just the wrong thing or get the wrong look or something like that? And like, you know, during the great purges and stuff in the Soviet Union. So almost certainly there's some level of apprehension all the way up to the very senior ranks of the Chinese Communist Party. at present and this dovetails with what we were just talking about,

it's somewhat difficult to know for sure the extent to which that fear exists, particularly amongst the set of individuals who are at the very top of the party system that would have access to she that would be allowed to advise she that are in charge, like are the first line of implementers for decisions that she makes. But it would make sense, of course, for them to look at what is, happened within the party and for to look at some of their peers and and be looking over their shoulder to make sure that they are not on Xi Jinping's bad side. So that actually, to me, connects directly to preparing for his succession. How in the world can you start even thinking

about it without looking like you're disloyal, which could mean that, you know, you're not sleeping that well anyway. Right, right. Yeah, and so I think, I think your point is right. And what that would sort of lead, and I think this bears out historically as well, where that leads us is that the question of succession is not going to be broached by China's number two or other lieutenants inside of the party system. It's going to be Xi Jinping himself along with, some of his closest political advisors that will begin to think about the question. And it really will be up to him, given the amount of power that he's consolidated, it will be up to him to set the pace and strategy that he plays going forward.

Because there's a number of different ways that he could try to set the succession up. But I think it will really be him as opposed to individuals below him jockeying to try to jocke in to be the chosen person. And to be totally candid, if you look throughout Chinese history, or I should say the history of the Chinese Communist Party since 49, it's often a really dangerous spot to be in, to be the chosen successor to an individual like Malzodong or even Dong Xiaoping. In some ways, it directs the political crosshairs to you and makes it, quite frankly, difficult to survive politically. So actually, sort of give an example.

I mean, who did Mao pick out and what happened to them? Yeah, so there are two individuals that are frequently touted as kind of successors in waiting that Mao discards before ultimately landing on the individual he chooses to succeed him, this individual named Huag Wofong. An incredibly interesting story that it might be. worth going into some detail on because it's Huang Wolfeng. When you ask most people in the United States, even very well-educated people who succeeded Mao, I don't know this for a fact, but my guess is a lot of people would think, oh, it's probably Deng Xiaoping, but it's Deng Xiaoping who

wrestles power away from the individual that Mao had chosen, Huo Bofeng. In any case, your question was about the individuals who were named number two that Mao dismissed along the way. There are two individuals, Liu Xiaqi, who, as well, well as Limbao, both of whom were purged as part of the tumult of that political movement, I mentioned a second ago, the Cultural Revolution, who presumed were sort of presumed successors to Mao at various points in time in the early 1960s and late 1960s, early 1970s. So, okay, well, so you say it's a good story. I want to hear it. Yeah, so Wang Wofone is this really interesting figure in party history, in part because

he has really been pushed aside from in the party's own telling of how things happened. So it's worth noting that this individual who is a pretty unknown figure within the party in the early 1970s is pulled by Mao in the early 1970s to run some of the course of arm of the state. state, and then finally tapped to be his successor in 1976. But the interesting thing about Hua, despite those early moves to try to burnish Hua's connections to the course of arm of the state, he doesn't have the kind of credentials that a lot of the other party cadres who had been purged during the Cultural Revolution do, and in particular lack the connections to the military that other individuals like

Deng Xiaoping, who eventually pushes him aside, possess. So what happens is the period between 1976 when Mao dies and roughly the end of 1978, although the chronology here gets a little complicated, but the end of 1978 is the first major move that really diminishes Kwa's control over the party, is that Hua is initially challenged in 1976 by Mao's wife, along with a couple of other radical political radicals within the party. In the first instance, if you've heard of the Gang of Four, this is the School of the Gang of Four.

The military sides with Hua against the Gang of War in 1976. But over the course of those two years, as Deng Xiaoping's political position is restored, and as I mentioned just a second ago, Deng has these tremendous, this tremendous rapport with the PLA generals. Deng is able to kind of politically jockey in order to set up a debate towards the end of 1978 that calls into question the, well, at least superficially, the policies that Pueheng has put forward

and the legitimacy of his right to rule going forward. There is a kind of political debate here that Deng manipulates, which is about, you know, how much should the party adhere to the line that Mao Zedong had set for the country, even at the end of his time in office. But there's also a more general sense of just, is this the right person to rule over a lot of these individuals who have been purged through the Cultural Revolution, but had made great contributions to the, from the perspective of the party,

the revolution itself and the early years of governance in the 1950s, these poor things began to go haywire as Mao was beginning to contemplate his own succession and beginning roughly 1962, midway, 1962. So what happened to, what? I mean, did he, was he executed? No, no. No, I mean, that's the, that's the interesting thing is the kind of anticlimactic nature of his, his downfall in the sense that some of his formal titles within the party, he retains all the way up into the early 1980s. But by 1981 and 1982, he has been removed from the most important positions,

and Deng's lieutenants have been installed in key positions within the party that allow Deng to have a firm control of the direction the party is going to go going forward. So Hwaha has a kind of somewhat anti-climatic, into a very dramatic political, political confrontation. So where does that, so is that a lesson at all for what's going to come next in China? I mean, is there anything we can take from it? We think so. We think so.

There's a couple of different lessons here. The first is that picking a successor is a really difficult thing in China. Of course, China today is not China. of 1976. But there is this kind of, you know, we could tell a similar story about individuals that Deng Xiaoping had put in as his lieutenants who had were removed along the way. And so what this tends to highlight is just that when you have an individual who has consolidated power as much as Xi Jinping has, it's difficult to select an individual,

in part because you're not sure about their true political colors, right? Individuals are reticent to reveal what they truly think in any situation in China, but particularly once the leader has consolidated this much power. But you really care about what the successor thinks because any ruler in China or really anywhere would prefer that whoever they hand power to politically is as closely aligned with what their vision politically, economically, culturally for the country is going forward. So you want the successor to be quite close to you, but it's really difficult to discern that when you've consolidated so much power.

But it's also tricky because in order to try to burn it essentially set up the successor for success to be able to survive some of these political battles that will eventually that they will eventually face once the ruler steps aside. means that you kind of have to furnish their credentials, give them experience, allow them to form social connections with people inside the military, so on and so forth. The tricky thing about that, of course, is that the more politically powerful you make the successor,

the more they could potentially challenge you on the one hand before, you know, as you're nearing your final years in office or on this earth. But also it could be the case that the more power that you, glean, you could just have more power to say no, right? So it might not be as dramatic as a political challenge to the city and ruler. But even so, the more powerful you are, the more social connections you have, the more you might be willing to essentially push the, again, pushing the limits of what you think the leader is, is willing to tolerate, which the leader would obviously prefer not to have. So it's a really delicate balancing act.

So we're talking about, if we're talking about she, we're talking about someone you want to, basically it sounds like stay in power forever. I mean, in other words, past his own death through the policies of whoever succeeds him. And I guess I'm just, I'm wondering about just the sheer level of hubris of someone. like, gee, if that's the case. I mean, how is he just that self-certain, do you think? You know, I mean, that he's right and that he's doing the right thing. It's a great question. And the unfortunate answer at a certain level is we don't really know for sure how

what she's intentions are and his preferences are. A lot of this is sort of assumed that based upon the self-interest of any political ruler, that without constraints on your power, you would prefer to continue to rule. And once you begin to hand over power, you would presumably want that individual to share your preferences such that you can continue to move the country in the direction that you were moving it, even once you've handed things over. Those are assumptions, though, which might not be perfectly true. That being said, when you look at the way that Xi Jinping describes the challenges that the country is facing, and when you talk to people who have had interactions with them, you come away with a sense that Xi Jinping does think that he's the right person for the job and that he has the quote-unquote right vision for the future of the country. how confident we should be that that will necessarily manifest in a rule that will last to the day he dies is, I think, something we should have a, we should, there's a great deal of a uncertainty about that.

But at the same time, I do think it could, like, these questions are political and they are strategic. And so as a result, it might not be the case that even if Xi Jinping would prefer to rule until death, he chooses a path that doesn't quite follow that because of some of the tradeoffs that we've just been talking about, right? Maybe he makes the choice to try to pull a successor up earlier rather than later because he sees that as a more direct path by which he can sustain his rule after he's handed over power. and that that individual that he gets to select will have the political strength that they need to survive. Like, that's one potential outcome that would actually result in a more expeditious transfer of power. But it could very well be the opposite. The kind of point of the piece isn't to try to say that necessarily it will be one way or the other. It's just a set of political questions that haven't dominated the conversation nearly as much as the power consolidation of Xi has dominated thus far.

And so questions we should begin to think about and start looking for evidence about. I really find the, do you mind talking for a second about the China that she wants to build is building? Sure, just like in a general sense? Yeah, well, I guess I'm thinking about what looks to someone in the United States as being, so restrictive of individual liberties and cyberpunk hellscape. It's okay to say it. Yeah, cyberpunk hellscape. Yes, I agree.

Yeah, with Matthew, that's what it sort of seems like from our point of view. Anyway. Yeah, I mean, I think that she's vision for what will make China prosperous, stable, and internationally competitive. is a model of governance that embraces the centrality of the party, the importance of the way of adhering to what the party deems as the appropriate understanding of history, and the kind of refusal or rejection of what she perceives to be political values that would undermine fractal. and potentially destroy the party's control over the country.

And so I don't think, I mean, from the way you've posed the question, there's this supposition that she's first question when he thinks about, you know, the first principle or first set of political beliefs that inform a wide-ranging set of policy choices that she would make is essentially like, do we allow civil liberties or do we not? I think from a certain perspective, she's first question is one of stability and control. And his understanding about the answer to how to solve that is firmly rooted in this traditional notion of the party's leadership. and if civil liberties come at the expense or are kind of pushed aside in order to ensure that the party can dominate, from his perspective, I don't think it would necessarily be a bad thing because what is important is not necessarily that dissent is allowed, but rather that the country is strong, stable, and that the party survives.

It's a very American point of view, I suppose, the way we posed the question, right? That wasn't meant to be a critique. It was just sort of a natural. No, no, I'm not pushing back against you, but it is, you know, it is true. Like, there's, I think that there are, I don't know, I have a lot of big feelings right now, as I'm sure a lot of Americans do at just this moment. Sorry, if we, you know, if we can transition this a little bit, uh, I'm kind of interested in your broad level thoughts and some other things. But like I'm thinking about that American point of view and that we take some of these things for granted that are maybe on the table in other parts of the world.

And it feels like the American leaders are now looking at other parts of the world, specifically China, and saying like, you know, I want some of that. And it feels like maybe here some of those things should be on the table, too. Does that make sense? Yeah, I certainly, the question makes sense. It's an interesting proposition to consider. It could be the case that some individuals within the United States... First of all, I should start by saying that I'm not a scholar of American politics. So to the extent that I can comment on this topic is as a citizen as opposed to as a scholar.

But I can think about the question, I think, like as I would as a social scientist. And it could be the case that individuals within the United States look abroad for examples of what political leadership could look like that would be different from the ways that we think. the central tenets of what makes the American democratic system work. But it's not obvious to me from an empirical point of view. And here, it's impressionistic and anecdotal. But it's not obvious to me that individuals in the contemporary American political landscape have taken the Chinese example as, the foundation for which they would support a new set of political values in the United States,

to the extent that those new values are even supported. An alternative sort of explanation might be that there are really important political changes happening within the United States. The factors leading to them are complex, they're social, the political, their economic, so on and so forth. and every once in a while individuals who these big structural forces, the beliefs of which these big structural forces are pushing on, every once in a while those individuals will make a reference what's happened in China. But to say that that's kind of that that's generating political change

in the United States, I think would be an empirical proposition that I'd want to see more rigorously tested. That's maybe a professorial. No, but I think that's a decent point, but I guess maybe not, it is fair to say that I think like, no, perhaps no one in power in America is looking at China and saying like, I want some of that. Maybe that was a bad way to put it. However, the end result at the moment

is that we've got op-ed writers writing op-eds that are calling like what's happening in America American Maoism. And I don't think they're wrong. Trump has got the U.S. to buy 10% of Intel. It seems like there are aspects of the way China runs its country that are now integrating into America. Maybe not, you know, I don't think perhaps Trump looked at it and said, like, I admire that I want to replicate it. But it seems as if we've got, we are ending up in a little bit of the same place.

I know that America is a different country and is very complicated, right? No, I mean, this is an incredibly interesting empirical regularity that you bring up. It's something I actually, so my first book just called Bureaucracies at War, highlights a little bit about what you're just saying, which is that leaders, political leaders, in very different countries with very different political systems can end up making strategic choices, particularly in the context of the book, it was about the way that leaders design institutions

for managing foreign policy, national security bureaucracies, right? But they can end up in very similar places because the logic by which you interact with the bureaucracy in China does have a kind of, there are echoes of the way in which you would deal with the bureaucracy in the United States. So to kind of take us out of the contemporary political moment and sort of think about this by way of historical comparison, so like thinking about the way that Mao attacked the state bureaucracy during the culture revolution. what was that, like what was the motivation there? Well, I mean, this again gets back to the question of succession.

Mao was concerned that the bureaucracy and the party had lost its revolutionary way, and he wanted to set conditions such that the individuals who held power inside of the party bureaucracy would be individuals that he thought were worthy of that political power. power. And so the result is mass, I mean, by, even in comparison to Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign, like nowhere near the amount of political tumult and violence associated with the cultural revolution. There is a really interesting analogy or extension of this logic by which you're concerned about the bureaucracy's loyalty. and so you begin to take steps to try to undermine its authority and to put people inside of the bureaucracy that you think are loyal. Or if you can't do that, then sort of shut it down. And at least, you know, what I argued in my first book is this happens in autocracies, yes, but it also happens in democracies.

So, for example, some of the measures that narrow, the India's first prime minister from 1947 and 1964, took with regard to the military and intelligence arm of the Indian state in the late 1980s, in 1950s. There's a kind of interesting parallel with essentially a similar logic by which the prime minister, was trying to curb the effects, deleterious effects that the bureaucracy would have upon policy and politics. And certainly it would not be far-fetched to say that bringing us back to the contemporary political moment in America, one could tell a story in which some of the moves that the Trump administration has made with regard to the bureaucracy are motivated. by a similar set of concerns about its willingness to support the political leadership and the kind of threat that it would pose to the political agenda that the current administration wants to push forward. So that would maybe be a way.

No, I think that that's accurate. And I would say that like as part of, I mean, I think that that's obviously the case. Because if you want to apply for a government position right now, I was actually looking at this yesterday, you have to now fill out a form and answer several essay. They want like 1,200 word answers that amount to like what do you think about the Constitution and how did the Constitution influence your thinking about why you want to join, why you want to take this job? And also, will you answer questions about how you feel about efficiency and how you feel about efficiency and how you you think government efficiency should affect the way you do this job? And will you please point out two or three recent executive orders that you believe influence the way that you'll be thinking about taking this job? This is like National Weather Service jobs, like just any of the federal

bureaucracy jobs that are up right now. I think that they are, like the Trump administration is very interested in making sure that incoming people are loyal to that system. So it is similar problem, slightly different expression because of America's unique political system, I guess, right? It's like, leader's going to lead either way. I don't think we've quite gotten to the cultural revolution from what I understand. No, no, no, that's, that's, that's fair. I think it's an important point to me.

Yes, absolutely. Nobody's getting, nobody's going to Dunst camp on their head in front of a bunch of people and getting yelled at, right? Nobody's like the violence is not extreme, but like I don't feel good. That doesn't make me, that doesn't make me less freaked out by the current moment that we're in. Well, that's the kind of down note that we like to end our shows on. Isn't it Jason? It really is. So, Tyler, is there anything that we missed that you think is really worth mentioning at this point?

No, I don't think so. It was a great conversation. So thanks so much again for having me. Yeah. Oh, and what do you have? Do you have another book coming up or anything that you'd like to mention? Sure. It's a ways down the road. But I am working on a second book, which is broadly speaking, it's about when major powers,

big countries like the United States and China cooperate with one another. it's from an empirical point of view, it sort of looks at the major power since the end of World War II in periods in which they were able to find their way to cooperation, things like why detente comes when it comes and why it collapses when it collapses. But it's really motivated in many ways by what happened to U.S.-China relations over the last two decades. So bulk of the chapters are focused on that. Well, when it comes out, we would love to have you on. I'd love to come back. All right. Tyler Jost, thank you so much.

Thanks again for having me. That's all for this week, Angry Planet listeners. As always, Angry Planet is me, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell. If you like the show, go to Angry Planetpod.com, sign up. $9 a month. You get early versions of the mainline episodes, and they're all commercial free. We will be back again soon with another conversation about conflict on an Angry Planet. It's about serial killers.

Stay safe until then.