Veteran diplomat Bill Klein recalls the turbulent Trump years at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing
Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2022
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with William (Bill) Klein, who served as acting deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing from 2016 to mid-2021. In a wide-ranging conversation, he offers insights about his postings at AIT in Taiwan in the aftermath of the Sunflower Movement, the APEC meeting in Hangzhou, and the vicissitudes of Sino-American diplomacy during the turbulent Trump years — Taiwan issues, the trade war, Huawei and diplomatic hostage-taking, the COVID-19 outbreak, and much more. Bill offers a measured and balanced view, exhibiting the same thoughtfulness and empathy that made him a great diplomat.
2:56 – The aftermath of the global financial crisis as the inflection point in U.S.-China relations
4:14 – Taiwan and the Sunflower Movement: Bill's years at AIT
8:33 – The G20 meeting in Hangzhou, 2016
12:12 – Chinese perspectives on the U.S. presidential race of 2016
16:40 – The Tsai Ing-wen phone call
19:17 – Trump pulls out of Paris
21:09 – The onset of the Trade War
24:44 – Ambassador Terry Branstad, his relationship with Xi, and what he accomplished
27:48 – The conflict over Chinese technology: Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, and the Two Michaels.
35:20 – The Trump response to early reports of the Xinjiang camps
39:35 – The view from the U.S. Embassy as the SARS CoV-2 virus began to spread
47:26 – The emerging Chinese consensus on U.S. intentions toward China — and how the Houston Consulate closure was a turning point.
A transcript of this interview is available on SupChina.com.
Recommendations:
Bill: Project Hail Mary, a science fiction novel by Andy Weir.
Kaiser: "The Modern Chinese Novel," an online course available free on YouTube by Christopher Rea.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Cynica podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China produced in partnership with SubChina. |
| 0:15.2 | Subscribe to SubChina's daily access newsletter to keep on top of all the latest news from China from hundreds of different |
| 0:20.9 | news sources. Or check out all the original writing on our website at suppChina.com. We've got |
| 0:27.0 | reported stories, essays and editorials, great explainers and trackers, regular columns, and, of course, |
| 0:33.9 | a growing library of podcasts. We cover everything from China's fraught foreign relations |
| 0:39.2 | to its genius entrepreneurs, from the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples |
| 0:43.8 | in China's Xinjiang region, to the tectonic shifts underway as China rolls out what we call |
| 0:50.0 | the Red New Deal. It's a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that |
| 0:56.0 | is reshaping the world. We cover China with neither fear nor favor. I'm Kaiser Guo, coming to you |
| 1:02.4 | from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Today on Seneca, I am delighted to welcome William Klein, |
| 1:07.6 | a veteran diplomat who served as minister-counselor for political affairs at the U.S. |
| 1:11.4 | Embassy in Beijing and then as acting deputy chief of mission there from 2019 until just six months ago. |
| 1:18.0 | Bill joins me from Berlin, where he's just moved to begin a new chapter after retiring from the |
| 1:23.2 | State Department. Bill has had a long and fascinating career in the Foreign Service. |
| 1:27.2 | He joined the State |
| 1:28.3 | Department in 2000 after a career as an investment banker, and his first posting was, interestingly |
| 1:33.7 | enough, given what's dominating the headlines today, to Kiev in Ukraine. He was posted to Ukraine, |
| 1:39.9 | indeed, not once but twice, and we'll have to ask him to weigh in on the latest. He's also been |
| 1:45.4 | posted to Tel Aviv, to Mumbai, to the China and Mongolia desk at State in D.C. And then at |
| 1:51.7 | AIT and Taipei before going to Beijing in 2016, where he spent the next five years. Today we'll |
| 1:57.9 | focus on his time in Beijing, which was eventful enough. |
| 2:10.3 | After all, I mean, if you think about all that transpired in U.S.-China relations between the summer of 2016 and this last summer, it just kind of boggles the mind. |
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