This is

this CBS I on the World.

I'm John Bachelor with my friend and colleague Gordon Chang,

the author of a new book Plan Red,

China's Project to Destroy America. Gordon, I want to look at where we are in the election

of 2024. It's a binary choice, a Harris administration, or a Trump administration.

If I understand correctly after these years of our conversations about Beijing, especially

under the tutelage of Xin Ping.

The election in the U.S. is often profoundly important to the leadership in Beijing. However, it is your theme in your new book that it no

matter the outcome on the fifthth and the new president in January of 2025, Shijinping is

determined for a kinetic conflict with the allies of the United States and the United States

itself. Is that correct? That's correct, John. Yes, the determination of which president will have an effect on the way China acts, but China's leader has domestic incentives to go out and start a war and the reason is that he now

has total accountability because he's grabbed power from everybody else and he's raised

the cost of losing political struggles by jailing his opponents

so that he knows he's at risk. He also knows that he's got domestic problems for

which he's being blamed and which he has no solutions.

And in fact, his solutions are actually making things worse.

So I think C.Jimping can take us by surprise by doing something that we would think is not rational.

So for instance, we might believe that China is starting a war, he'd only have maybe 10% of a chance

of success.

But that would, and so we would think he wouldn't do it.

But from his own perspective, if he thinks he has a 1 percent chance of living,

...