The Oh, Hello and

welcome to Behind the News, not yet profiled in the Guardian.

My name is Doug Henwood.

The standard duo today, Jake Werner,

will outline a progressive policy towards China, and Gabriel Hetland will review

the tenure of Gustavo Petra, the guerrilla-turned politician, who recently completed his second year in office.

These days it seems like almost everyone across the political spectrum hates China.

It's a major human rights offender and job stealers scheming to dominate the world and

topple the U.S. from doing so. While there are no angels to steal a

phrase reality is of course more complicated and jacking up tensions with a

rising superpower seems rather unwise.

Jake Werner, who was on this show in January 2020, talking about the folly of Trump's trade war with that country,

is just out where the paper co-published by the Quincy Institute,

the Institute for Policy Studies, and Justice is Global,

called a program for progressive China policy. He is acting director of the East Asia

program at the Quincy Institute and a co-founder of Justice's Global.

Jake Werner.

We may not like China's human rights practices, but are they hell-bent on world domination,

as people like to say, much of the U.S. political class seems to think so in both parties

is that a fair characterization? I think it's just an inaccurate characterization. The

Chinese government has been very cautious. I'm sure that they would like to dominate the world if they feel like they could.

They recognize the limitations of their position in the system. They recognize the sort of

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