The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: China's great power performance and Mark Carney's bad budget messaging

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

This week's SCO summit in China projected a series of powerful images about the rise of China and the cleaving of the world into two power blocs. Putin, Xi, and Kim Jong Un watching the military parade at Tiananmen Square was a performance of a great power, as was Narendra Modi's public display of friendship with Xi and Putin. Donald Trump's treatment of US allies is turning away in-between countries and offering China a historic opportunity to step up to the plate. The world of the US is becoming a minority compared to the countries circling China's orbit. In the second half of the show Rudyard and Janice turn to Canada's upcoming federal budget and Mark Carney's bad messaging, as the PM warned of austerity followed by investment. In an economy that is slowing, will Carney wrack up more debt? Will these be investments, or expenditures? And does our Prime Minister have a real plan to get Canada back to a fiscal balance?Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Welcome to Friday Focus for the 5th of September 2025. I'm Roger Griffiths, Chair of the Monk Debates. joined by Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Mug School of Affairs. Janice, have you survived the deluge that is the first week of September after Labor Day? You know, it was a very busy week. We had orientation, but there is something wonderful, Roger, about the energy that all these young people bring optimism. They're convinced they're going to change the world, that I wish that.

You know, I want to make sure they've got the skills, but I'm awed by the energy. Don't worry about negativity. If you hang around this age, they're really wonderful. Yeah, that's awesome. Not only did we have a busy week this week, all of us coming back after the summer, but there was a consequential summit in China that projected to the world, Janice, a series of images which I want to hear your thoughts on this,

but which seem to me to suggest that the cleaving of the world into two power blocks has accelerated under the first seven months of Trump. Let's deal with those images one by one. So let's have your

comments first on this parade up a red carpet to a viewing square, tinaman square, to watch a large-scale demonstration of Chinese military prowess. And who was at the head of that parade? Obviously, Xi Jinping, the leader of China. Not entirely surprisingly.

Vladimir Putin, his, his, I don't know, friend without limits or whatever characterization they now give to their relationship. But Janice, we also saw as rounding out that Troika, Kim John Un, the leader of the hermit kingdom known as North Korea. What message did that image send and what is this portent? It was an astonishing spectacle. Let's just talk optics for one minute and then talk about the implications. The 40,000 soldiers that were in that square marching with this incredible self-discipline. It was almost a moment like the opening of the first Beijing Olympics, when you saw again this incredible discipline that China brings to anything it does. These,

you know, the fighter aircraft that were flying over, the tanks, the armored weapons, the autonomous weapons that were on display. This is the performance of a great power. There's no question about it. Talking about arising China is passe. China has risen. It is a great power. And the world comes to Beijing, which is what we've seen over the last week. I'm not sure that the world is dividing into two power blocks. In fact, as a result of Donald Trump, what we're seeing is the crumbling of one block that is under the tremendous stress. We saw just a few days before in Shanghai, the Prime Minister of India embraced Vladimir Putin

and Xi Jinping, in part because he's so outraged what Donald Trump is doing. The tensions that exists between Europe and the United States over tariffs, things are not good between Canada and the United

States. So wherever you look, Donald Trump is roiling his allies is sending a message to those in-between countries. Oh, my goodness, you don't want to deal with us. Because if you deal with your allies the way, this way, what will it be like for us? And this is a historic opportunity for China to step up its game on the world stage and say the address is Beijing. It is no Washington. That's what I saw last week. Yeah. Just remain a moment longer on Kim Jong-un. Yes. You know, China obviously was calling the shots on this summit.

This is a North Korean leader who has acquired nuclear weapons, possibly a dozen or more. It's working on ballistic, intercontinental ballistic missile technology, possibly now aided by Russia, who dispatched troops to Russia in the thousands to fight alongside Putin's army in the Kursk region that Ukraine had made an incursion into Russia proper. Undoubtedly, Janice, a huge victory for Kim Jong-un to be included in that trika. But why? I mean, compared to China, even compared to Russia, North Korea is. is a country periodically wrapped by mass starvation that is run by not simply a rogue state,

but a pariah leader. It seemed, jet as to me, like a, I don't know, a kind of bold and somewhat brash. I'm not going to use the word that I could hear, but I'll use the acronyms, FU. to the rest of the world, and particularly to the West. I agree with you, Roger. That was, in many ways, the most surprising picture of the summit.

And the reason it's surprising is Kim Jong-un has been a problem for Beijing, four years. It is the country that Beijing has struggled to constrain. There have been periods of great tension between the two governments. The Chinese are really, always worried that the domestic problems inside the Korean financial are going to spill over

its borders. And it's always walked up fine line. It's helped the United States at times on Korean issues. At other times, it has not. But this is not a friend. This is not a peer. And there are mostly downsides for Beijing. So why do this? Same for Russia, by the way. What's changed for Russia is its need for soldiers, for manpower, and that's been a great help that Kim Jong-un has helped. And there's also been technology, North Korean, technology that's moved to Russia. But, you know, Kim Jong-un is not a favorite of Vladimir Putin's either.

So why give this guy the profile, the equality? And, you know, beginning, the beginning of that military parade, I look at the pictures always, Roger. The three men standing there talking to each other, Vladimir Putin, Jiji Ping, and Kim Jong-un, almost elevating him to a level that we have not seen before was really surprising. And it was a kind of, I'm going to poke my finger in your eye to Washington.

You thought you were going to do a deal with him? Well, think again, Donald Trump. Kim Jong-un is not going to do a deal with you, if anything, he's going to do a deal with us. That's what that really was. Just about Trump for a moment. Do you think he looking at these three men, men that he's met, that he seems at a variety of times ways to admire,

that he wished that he was with the three of them walking up that red, carpet to watch the kind of military parade he wished that he could have in the United States in Washington on the mall. You're not alone in having my thought, Rogers. I must admit, it crossed my mind because they were doing everything that he wants to do. He had a lot of difficulty getting military parade in Washington. And frankly, if we were ranking parades, you and I, we would say that Beijing's parade outdid his. Even Vladimir Putin's celebration of the end of World War II out did his. And he sent, I don't know, you must have noticed the tweet he sent, which in many,

yeah, it's, we're talking about just for a minute because it, it captures all the the contra, social captures all the contradictions. I'm not sure I'm getting the wording correct, Roger, you correct me, but it was something like, I wish you, my friends, congratulations on the celebration of this special day as you gather to conspire against the United States. Now, what kind of, it's probably unique in congratulatory messages that one head of state sends to others, and it captures all the contradictions of Donald Trump. he's aware of these are adversaries, right? He's not. He talks about them as great friends, but that tweet tells us he's aware of them as adversaries,

but he's utterly conflicted, and his policy isn't coherent. Yeah. Let's talk about the other big message, an image that came out of the parade. You mentioned it in passing already, and that was Modi walking on to stage with Putin, clasping hands, holding hands,

hands. And then the two of them, again, highly choreographed, the imagery and the symbolism is remarkable. The two of them walking up to Xi and forming a troika where all three kind of link hands and link hands to elbows and kind of laugh and smile. How significant was it for us to see Modi in that mode, in that image, behaving the way he did with these two leaders. You know, of all the pictures that came out of this last week when Beijing was the center of international photography for the week, I think that was the most important picture, Roger. You know, India really matters in this world. It is a very large country. It has sophisticated what we might call civilian technology. It's a player as the rest of the democratic world gets older and grayer and has fewer kids.

That's happening in India as well, but the process is much slower. And they are a huge regional power and they matter globally. They are in August. They are in the quad. They are really an important country. And to blow them off this way, just think about what Donald Trump did for a minute. 50% tariffs on India because they are buying Russian oil

while he did not increase the tariffs on Russia, even after it was transparently obvious, that Vladimir Putin had once again played him not kept him. not kept his word. For India and for the Indian elite that makes policy and does strategy, this is simply incomprehensible. You can't explain it. So we, you know, there's expressions who lost China.

There was a big debate in the United States in the 1950s was very bitter and acrimonious and terrible for everybody, as if China was America to lose. But in this case, I will tell you, who lost India? Donald Trump, 10 years of investment by Republican president, Democratic president, to build deeper and build a strategic relationship with India. Trump just blew it off. Yeah.

Let me just try one steelman argument on you that, you know, that this administration, probably in the most articulate fashion has been expressed by J.D. Vance, the vice president. And that's that well before this summit, in fact, probably under the Biden administration or previously, the world was fracturing into power blocks. One of those blocks led by the United States, the other led by China. And one, to lay this at the feet of the president is too convenient by half. these forces and trends, you know, predate his second term. And maybe more importantly, J.D. Vance would argue that the types of steps that the administration is taking on tariffs, on technology controls, these are all in a way prescient, disruptive, yes, but prescient in terms of

what we saw earlier this week in China, that they are designed to try to head on off the rise of this, I don't know what we call it. Do we go back to the First World War and use a term like the Triple Alliance? Maybe it's bigger than that. There were 20 other leaders marching behind Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, and Xi. So we might not like the Trump administration's policy. We may think that there have been big fumbles along the way, like the relationship with India, the relationship with Canada, we could include that too. But the fact is, maybe were they more clear-eyed, more realistic about where the world was headed and are there policies better attuned to this emerging world of cleavage of two big power blocks facing off against each other.

See, I don't agree. No surprise. I don't agree with J.D. Vance on this radio. I think much more is contingent here. Leaders make choices. It's not predetermined. There are, whole group of countries in the middle, you know, Brazil, to take another country where I think Donald Trump is doing untold damage. And what these countries share is they don't want to be forced into a position where they have to make a choice. They want relationships with both the United States and China. And interestingly enough, they're looking for different things from each of these governments, China presents, you know, has presented for them a huge economic opportunity given the size of their markets, and especially for the commodity suppliers who have sold

into that market and lifted their own economies in the process. Brazil is an interesting example of that. But they still wanted a relationship with the United States, many. And they wanted the security and the access to technology that the United States provided. They were happy sitting on the fence. So it takes a lot of effort from one side or the other to push these leaders off the fence. And what we're seeing in the now nine months since Donald Trump is back in office, that he's pushed these leaders off the fence in Beijing for the celebration of World War II, by the way, which had a heavy anti-Japanese overtone, which was...

They did invade China. They did invade China. They did invade China. That's right. And China lost 20 million people during, as a result of that Japanese invasion. We don't talk about that, right? We talk about

Russian deaths, but we never talk about Chinese deaths. So a lot of the preparation for this in movies and TV stations was a reenactment of heroic Chinese resistance. the Japanese.

But who else was there? The president of Egypt or the prime minister, I can't remember, which one. Egypt has very deep security relationships with the United States, but it went to this celebration. Vietnam, Malaysia.

There was a bigger reach this time that China has because the United States is making things so difficult. with this economic strategy. And there's a huge cost and consequence down the road. There's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy here.

If you think the world may divide, you push back against the fence sitters. Those fence sitters become furious and go the other way. And let's talk about it honestly. There's not a cleavage in the world. The world of the United States is a minority. We will be smaller than the countries that will increasingly circle the Chinese in its orbit.

We're a minority. Final question before we say goodbye to our complimentary listeners. I mentioned the Triple Alliance. We also had obviously the access powers in the Second World War. we saw a parade that demonstrated China's progress on a nuclear triad of sea, air, and land launched nuclear missiles and bombs. Are we, Janus? Should we be worried that if history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes. And it's been an awful long time, maybe eight decades, since we've seen or have seen or have. had to start talking about these kinds of troikas, whether, again, the Triple Alliance,

the Triple Entente, the Allied powers, the Axis powers. I don't know. I don't want to overreact, but it does give one a kind of tingling sensation along the spine, which isn't exactly pleasant. Yeah. And what was interesting also, Roger, was Jiji Ping's use of war, the word war. right, in his speech. Now, you could say it was all anchored in the commemoration of the Second War,

but Xi Jinping had been very careful. You know, we've had 40 years since China opened to the West, and Deng Xiaoping said, you know, talk softly. Don't frighten people. Develop first, become strong first, before you start to carry a big stick, was really the message. This was the most open discussion of any Chinese leader.

I've heard in a long time when he said, don't make a mistake. Chinese people are strong. China is a great power. The Chinese people will resist if there's war. There was a militarization of his language, Richard, at this event, combined with this extraordinary parade, I think everybody sat up and said, this is a China, and the issues are so difficult

because this is a China that is strong, that is muscular, that has unprecedented power, both soft power and hard power right now, but also has really tough to me. domestic problems at home. That's often the most dangerous combination. And that's the most dangerous combination. Germany in the 1930s.

Yeah. Yeah. Japan before the Second World War. Okay, Janice, let's say goodbye to our complimentary listeners. Thank them for tuning in and encourage them to join us on the back half of the program by becoming a monk donor for as little as 50 cents a week. You get full-length editions of this podcast. access to our digital archive, 15 years of terrific debates in all kinds of different formats,

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