Aaron Friedberg: On Increasing Tensions in the U.S.-China Relationship

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2020

⏱️ 92 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Tensions between the United States and China have been rising as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. There is urgent need to think about the U.S.-China relationship and how the U.S. should confront the challenge. In this Conversation, Princeton professor and author of A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, Aaron Friedberg argues that the pandemic has accelerated a fact apparent for some time—namely, that strategic competition between the U.S. and China is likely to be the central question of geopolitics in the years ahead. According to Friedberg, one effect of the current crisis may be emerging bipartisan agreement that China represents a serious threat to American interests and principles. Friedberg asserts that it is yet unclear how America will react to the challenge from China—much will depend on elections, strategic choices, and other factors. But, Friedberg argues, we are unlikely to return to a policy consensus that seeks seamless integration of China into the world order. And, in this timely and important Conversation, Friedberg sketches some political, ideological, and economic factors the United States will have to confront as it attempts to develop a comprehensive China strategy.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	And the Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today
0:19.2	by Aaron Freiburg, an old friend, and distinguished professor of politics and international affairs
0:24.1	at Princeton University and an expert on China, someone who was, I think it's fair to say, hawkish on China before
0:31.6	it was, before it was cool to be hawkish on China before it was cool to be hawkish on China.
0:34.1	Aaron wrote you wrote a book a contest for supremacy, China America and the struggle
0:40.1	for mastery in Asia about a decade ago I think 2011 but as someone reminded me earlier
0:46.1	I think the article on which which that book grew was way back in 2001 when when the
0:50.8	rest of the world was looking forward to China being a responsible
0:54.4	stakeholder in the end of history and the end of ideological struggle and
0:58.4	liberalization in China and a lot of things that might have been nice but
1:02.0	don't seem to have happened.
1:03.7	So I thought this would be a good time to, we had a conversation almost a year ago, which I think stands up
1:07.9	very, very well actually where you look ahead to a more competitive relationship with China,
1:12.3	but with China being so much in the headlines
1:14.4	with a pandemic, I thought this would be a good time to reconvene and have another conversation
1:19.3	about where things now stand on China.
1:21.2	So welcome, Aaron. Thank you very much for having me back that's it's a
1:24.9	pleasure so where do we stand everyone's talking about China suddenly and I mean how
1:29.7	big a moment is it I'm talk a little bit about their actual handling of the
1:32.8	pandemic which is triggered I think mostly triggered this this reconsideration is
1:37.2	it real reconsideration or is it just a kind of minor you know something that people
1:42.4	will forget six or 12 months for now.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Conversations with Bill Kristol, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Conversations with Bill Kristol and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.