The Daily Signal - BONUS | 'Future is Going to be One of US-China Tension,' Asian Studies Expert Warns

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

Michael Cunningham, a research fellow in the Asian Studies Center at The Heritage Foundation, joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" for a bonus episode to discuss some key takeaways from China's National People's Congress, the future of U.S.-China relations, China's new defense minister who is sanctioned by the U.S., and if there is anything about the National People's Congress that he felt the media missed in its coverage. Relevant Links: 6 Takeaways From China’s National People’s Congress: https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/03/14/6-takeaways-from-chinas-national-peoples-congress/ Listen to other podcasts from The Daily Signal: https://www.dailysignal.com/podcasts/ Get daily conservative news you can trust from our Morning Bell newsletter: DailySignal.com/morningbellsubscription Listen to more Heritage podcasts: https://www.heritage.org/podcasts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The future is going to be one of U.S.-China tension, and that was clear before she got his third five-year term as president. Hi, everyone. Samantha Asharis here, and that was Michael Cunningham. We are bringing you a special bonus episode of The Daily Signal podcast. Michael Cunningham, a research fellow in the Asian Study Center here at the Heritage Foundation, is joining us for today's episode. Michael, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me again. So as our audience might recall from your appearance on the show last week, the People's Republic of China recently held its National People's Congress.

There were some major takeaways from the event that I want to discuss, but first and foremost, can you remind our listeners what the National People's Congress is? Well, the National People's Congress is China's legislature, on paper at least. Decisions are really made by the ruling party, the Chinese Communist Party. but they have this legislature, and the full legislature meets once a year in the spring. And so that's what just happened. Now, it happens alongside another meeting of a political advisory body called the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which so sometimes when you read the news, you might see it called the two meetings or the two sessions,

but the really important one was this National People's Congress meeting. Something I wanted to discuss further with you was the report on the work of government, and this report was delivered by the outgoing Chinese premier during the first session of the Congress back on March 5th. Can you walk us through some aspects of the report and some of the key takeaways? Yeah, so this report is really, it generally every year is the most authoritative statement on policy for the year ahead. So the Communist Party gives directives, and we saw a lot of that at the party Congress last fall. But the government then turns it into concrete policy. This year's work report was a little different, and the reason is, as you said, it was the outgoing premier.

There's a new premier that was appointed as planned. And so rather than going in-depth and spelling out everything that the government's planning to do for the year ahead, what it did was essentially gave recommendations. And the recommendations are very much in line with the vision that she has pronounced very much in line with what the incoming premier Li Chang has been stating. But essentially, the main takeaway I saw there is, well, there are a couple. One is that the economic recovery is going to be key this year. It is the main thing on the party's mind or on the government's mind. At the same time, though, they're not talking about economic growth so much as they're talking about economic stability. And there's a difference here.

They mentioned specifically, you know, stable growth. We're not talking high speed growth. We're talking stable growth, enough growth to get by. While they're also looking for stable employment, stable prices, China has not experienced the inflation that the rest of the world has so far, but they're worried about it. And so that's going to be one of their priorities this year is to prevent high levels of inflation.

And they're also dealing with record. youth unemployment that they're really worried about. So these are the issues that can really affect the social stability in China, which is, you know, one of the party's main goals is to keep it stable so that the people do not oppose its rule. And so that it's much more important to them than high-speed growth. One other thing I'd say, though, is that in addition to these economic factors they're talking about, they're talking a lot about in addition to having stable growth and maintaining that stability at the same time making progress. And what they mean when they say progress is they are looking to change, to really transform the Chinese economy in many ways,

in ways that are more in line with China's global and domestic, the CCP's ambitions at home and both abroad. And so what I took away from the work report and the other statements we've seen is that there is going to be a return to some of this regulatory enforcement, some of these more difficult structural, what the party calls structural reforms, some of which some of which are legitimate reforms and some of which are as far from the liberal reforms the rest of the world is hoping for as could possibly be. One other thing I could mention about the work report is that it was shorter than I was expecting, especially.

It wasn't too terribly short by historical standards when the previous premier Wen Xiaabao before Li Kha Chang, who just stepped down. But when his predecessor gave his last work report, it was a similar. page length, but there was more dedicated to sort of the recommendations for the future than we saw this time. This time, really, it talked a lot about the past 10 years, and there was considerably less than usual focused on the coming years. Now, some people in China think we're going to see something more authoritative coming out from Li Chang, the now current premiere in the coming weeks or months. But I think in general, we are going to really be looking at in the coming

weeks, you know, who does Li Chang meet with, which ministries does he visit? What does he say? What priorities does he vocalize? Because these will all help us see the direction he plans to take things. But he's been very clear that the direction is going to be in line with Xi Jinping's vision. doesn't seem that it's going to deviate much from what Lee Kha Chang said in his work report. And just speaking of Xi Jinping, we also saw some comments from him talking about the U.S. and Western countries and how, you know, blaming them basically for containment and encirclement and suppression of China. We talked about this previously, but now that the Congress is over, I wanted to, you know,

see in terms of the U.S.-China relationship moving forward, you know, now that China has directly named the U.S., now that he has been elected another, you know, third five-year term as president, what do you predict the future will look like, if you could, or at least in the near term? Well, the future is going to be one of U.S.-China tension, and that was clear before she got his third five-year term as president. That's much less important than the third five-year term he got as leader of the party last fall. But what is, and I have to say that, you know, everything he said about the U.S. is standard talking points, but it is extremely significant that he actually mentioned the U.S. He did not say certain countries or certain Western countries, but he

specifically mentioned the U.S. So we are sort of seeing she really as expected as I think most of us who look at China, we're expecting that his third term was going to be one where he's even more bold and blatant in his opposition to U.S. global leadership. And so we're seeing that also. I mean, we're seeing he also has, you know, been very active already. diplomatically trying to put China out there and himself out there as being like a great global statesman and China as being more responsible than the U.S. globally. And that's the message that they're sending. And so, you know, we saw what happened where he facilitated the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the Middle East. The U.S. was not present.

was China with them doing that. We also see how there is going to be, he's going to visit Russia, and then he's going to have a talk with Zelensky, and he put out, China put out this proposal for how to deal with the Russia-Ukraine war, which clearly, I mean, to us, those of us in the West, in the U.S. and Western Europe, it's almost laughable that she would try to present himself and that China, he would try to present China as like responsible in this area. But we have to remember, we are not his audience. His audience is countries that are more susceptible to this type of messaging. We're talking rogue states that detest U.S. leadership as much as China does.

We're talking also authoritarian countries that may be aligned with the U.S. now, but are uncomfortable with the liberal norms, human rights and whatnot, that make their regimes look really bad, that she hopes to peel away from the U.S. orbit. And we're talking especially the global south, the developing countries that China feels it can use economic enticements, coercion, to get them to align more with China. And to these countries, it's not.

not as black and white and as obvious as it is to those of us in the developed world, how irresponsible really China has been in the Russia-Ukraine issue and many other issues. Now, I also wanted to get your thoughts on General Lee Shang-Fu, who was appointed as the defense chairman. And just for some context, the Trump administration actually sanctioned him as well as China's equipment development department, which he was leading at the time back in 2018 for buying Russian weapons.

What are your thoughts on Lee being appointed to this position? Are you surprised by it? I think it's unfortunate. You know, it's really important that the U.S. and China have defense dialogue. And whereas, obviously, you know, the U.S. is going to have to interact with him one way or another, but it would have been much more constructive if China would have appointed someone

who already didn't have this big black mark on them, given the stakes here, given the importance that the U.S. and China have some way of their militaries talking to each other and diffusing tensions that's desperately needed. China stopped that engagement with the U.S. last year. in the aftermath of Nancy Pelosi's visit to Tai Bay, there were signs when she and Biden met in November that that was going to restart. And it really hasn't at this point. And so it's unfortunate. Hopefully the two sides will be able to restart that kind of frequent military-to-military-to-military

dialogue because the stakes really are high. Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. Before we go, I wanted to ask if there is anything about the National People's Congress that you felt the media missed in its coverage. I'm not sure the media really missed this. I mean, there's been all sorts of reporting on every side. The reporting this year has actually been, you know, I've been impressed with how much reporting there has been. I would say, you know, sometimes some of the nuance gets missed. She got, his third term as president, but he didn't really need that as much as he needed what he got last fall, the party leadership. We did see, though, that she got many of his people installed

in key state positions. Now, why is that important, given that he already runs the party, why is it even important that he has people in the state? And this is one of the nuances that I think a lot of people miss when it comes to Chinese politics. I think people think that she is able to micromanage everything that happens in the country. And that's just not the case. People are very important. And so by having a premier and vice premiers who are key protegees of him and by restructuring some of the government organizations in ways that give the party more power and putting his key, protegees and allies in key positions within the state, that essentially helps ensure that his vision will go forward sort of in a way that he likes. Now, I think another nuance that's

important is these are not Dufuses that he has gotten into these positions. These are, you know, they may not have been as well qualified as some of the other possible people that were pretty much taken out of the picture at the party Congress last fall. But these are people that are highly capable. And that's one of the reasons she likes them so much. And so they are going to be better able than, say, you know, people who weren't necessarily as aligned with she's priorities. They're going to be very capable at pushing his priorities forward. Well, Michael, thank you so much. That's going to do it for today's episode.

Thank you for listening to The Daily Signal's interview with Michael Cunningham. If you haven't gotten a chance, make sure you subscribe to The Daily Signal wherever you get your podcast and help us reach even more listeners by leaving a five-star rating and review. We read and appreciate all of your feedback. Michael, thanks again for joining us. Thanks for having me on the show. Of course. I hope everyone has a great day and we'll be back with you all soon.

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