Why the Hell are we in the “Danger Zone” with China? Hal Brands and Michael Beckley on the growing chance of war with Beijing
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 28 September 2022
⏱️ 53 minutes
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Summary
Conventional wisdom describes China as a rising power, and it was. No more: China's economy is slowing, it is headed into a demographic catastrophe of its own design, it has a brittle and totalitarian political system, and it feels encircled by its neighbors. Our guests Hal Brands and Michael Beckley, authors of the new book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, assert that China is not "rising," but rather that it has "peaked." More troubling still, judging by the history of peaking powers (Germany pre-WWI, or Imperial Japan,) the US should be very nervous about a short-term grab for power or territory by a panicked Beijing.
Both Hal Brands and Michael Beckley are scholars at AEI. Hal is a senior fellow and the Henry A. Kissinger distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a columnist at Bloomberg. Michael Beckley is a non-resident senior fellow, and is an associate professor at Tufts University.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.0 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell he's talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on? |
| 0:01.1 | Who in God's name |
| 0:21.7 | knows what it's all about. Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. I'm Mark Tiesin. Welcome to our podcast. |
| 0:38.2 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:40.4 | Mark, what is going on, actually? |
| 0:42.7 | What the hell is going on is we are in the danger zone. |
| 0:47.6 | Not the great danger zone with Tom Cruise. |
| 0:51.4 | No, the one with Hal Brands. |
| 0:53.5 | And Michael Beckley. |
| 0:55.5 | Please don't forget. |
| 0:57.1 | I don't know which one's Maverick and which one's goose. |
| 0:58.8 | They'll have to fight that one out. |
| 1:01.5 | For those of you who got through that silly introduction, |
| 1:04.5 | because apparently Mark and I can't take something even as serious as potential. |
| 1:07.9 | War with China. |
| 1:08.4 | Or with China. |
| 1:09.8 | We are talking to two of our colleagues who have a |
| 1:12.3 | truly fantastic and impressively written book out The Danger Zone, The Coming Conflict with China |
| 1:18.2 | by Hal Brands and Michael Beckley. And we've got them on in just a little bit to talk about |
| 1:24.4 | what the threat is that China represents, whether there's going to be war with |
| 1:28.6 | Taiwan, whether we are ready, are we taking it seriously enough? And I think one of the |
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