When Biden Met Xi (and What's Going On with the US and China) | Ian Bremmer | TED

Helen Walters: Last week, US President Biden

and Xi Jinping, the president of the People's Republic of China,

met at the APEC Summit in San Francisco.

The meeting was notable for being the first time

that Xi had visited the US in six years

and the first time the two leaders have met in person in a year.

Now, obviously, what goes on between these two nations

matters to everyone.

So we found ourselves post-summit with a bunch of follow-up questions,

and we've turned to our resident geopolitical expert, Ian Bremmer,

to help us understand what to pay attention to and why.

Ian, hi.

Ian Bremmer: Helen, good to be back with you.

HW: OK, so let's get right to it.

These are, alas, not peaceful times.

And I think it's safe to say that the meeting between these two leaders

felt perhaps even more momentous than it might have done

were war not raging everywhere, from the Middle East to Ukraine.

So tell us,

what happened in San Francisco, and what stood out most to you?

IB: Well, look, that is the backdrop.

That this is a world of unprecedented geopolitical danger and risk.

And the efforts are not in trying to make everything better.

It's rather to try to stop the existing conflicts from getting much worse.

And that is absolutely the macro focus

that both President Biden and President Xi bring to the meeting.

I mean, there's a lot to discuss around the issues around US-China relations.

I'm sure we'll get to that.

But, you know, it's interesting

that insofar as the Americans and Chinese are actually on opposite sides

of the two major global conflicts in the world right now.

On Russia-Ukraine,

the Chinese are the close friends, without limits, to Vladimir Putin,

while the Americans are providing more support

than any other country in the world, militarily, to Ukraine.

The Chinese have not condemned Hamas for their terrorist attacks.

The United States finds Israel its most important and enduring ally

in the Middle East.

So you would think, Helen,

that this would be an area of contention between the United States and China.

It's not.

Both the Americans and Chinese are deeply concerned

that these conflicts are going to get worse.

And they don't want that.

They want to find ways to contain these conflicts.

And I think it's a very important point,

because we hear a lot about, you know,

Americans looking for adversaries around the world

and lumping in China with countries like Russia, Iran,

North Korea.

And those other countries are rogue states.

They're pariahs.

They're countries that benefit from chaos.

They want to take advantage of vacuums geopolitically.

Where the Americans and Chinese actually geopolitically have a lot more in common,

in addition to the fact that they have a lot of interdependence,

they also both benefit from a global backdrop that is stable.

They want relatively free and open trade of goods.

They want a global economy that's working.

They don't want political instability everywhere

or social instability everywhere.

And so even though the United States and China

have different preferred end-states for Russia-Ukraine

and for Israel-Gaza,

in the near-term,

you've got two leaders that are meeting and saying,

how do we stop this from getting worse?

And that ended up being a significant piece of the conversation,

the four-hour, three-session conversations

that Presidents Biden and Xi were having.

In some ways, maybe the most important takeaway

that the two most powerful countries in the world

are not looking at the Middle East and Russia-Ukraine

through a lens of cold war,

but instead are looking at it through the lens of,

"Oh my God, this is really a problem.

And are there anything that we can do, individually or collectively

or with our friends and allies in the regions,

that might help to stop this from getting much, much worse?"

HW: Can you say any more about what that actually looks like?

What might those alignments be?

IB: Well, in the case of the Middle East,

China has a relationship with Iran that the United States does not have.

And both the American cabinet as well as Biden directly

have been talking to the Chinese

about getting messages to the Iranians

to help ensure that they don’t get directly involved in the war

and that they limit the support that they have given

to proxies in the region

that could, for example, not only expand the war,

but also lead to challenges in global energy supply.

You know, the Americans sent two carrier strike groups

to the Eastern Med and the Persian Gulf

almost immediately after the October 7 terrorist attacks.

China has destroyers in the region,

and they were there for military exercises.

They’ve kept them there, and they’ve expanded the military presence.

Not to fight the Americans

but rather to show that the Chinese want to ensure

that there is not a fight in the region

that would suddenly prevent energy

from getting through the Straits of Hormuz,

a critical choke point.

So, you know, frankly, there's more alignment on this issue.

The Chinese also, just earlier today, as you and I are talking,

hosting a group of foreign ministers from the Muslim world,

including the Palestinian Authority,

they're talking about a ceasefire and a two-state solution.

Biden wants an extended humanitarian pause,

not a ceasefire,

but also a two-state solution.

There's been a lot of conversation

around trying to bring Middle Eastern countries

to be more constructive in helping to ensure stability in this conflict.

So around the Middle East,

there's been a lot, because it's more recent,

and because it’s frankly more geopolitically dangerous --

the Russia-Ukraine war has more knock-on economic implications --

but the Middle East conflict is much more geopolitically fraught

in the sense that you could have a religious war from, you know,

Ecuador to Indonesia.

Because you could have, you know,

they could have a much greater impact on the US presidential election,

for example.

That is one that is driving a lot more direct attention

and engagement from the American and Chinese leaders together.

HW: So I think it's interesting and heartening

that stability might be a watchword at this moment.

The US and China,

they obviously subscribe to very different political systems.

And I think of a quote from the MIT economist Yasheng Huang,

who was once quoted saying

that the two countries kind of got married without knowing one another's religions.

How much did this summit, if anything,

do to address the root causes of the tension?

IB: You know, it's interesting.

I see the analogy of US and China getting married

without knowing the families

or the religions or any of the other, you know,

sort of red lines that one connects with when you make that lifetime bond.

But, you know, I've always thought of it as a couple,

that the love has left the relationship,

but they have children together,

and they love the children very much,

and they both want to make sure that the children aren't hurt.

And so as a consequence, as much as we can talk about, you know,

derisking as a term of art, or decoupling,

and these countries having very different political and economic systems,

and they don’t particularly trust each other,

and yet they know they need to work together.

So in a sense, they're adults, geopolitically.

I mean, when you have the US and China in a room at the highest level,

and here I'm not just talking about the presidents,

I'm talking about, you know, any of the cabinet meetings

that have happened at great level and scope

over the past months after really none at all

during the couple plus years of pandemic,

all of those meetings, they haven't been easy,

they've frequently been tense,

but they have all been handled as adults,

handled as two parents

that know the children need to be taken care of long-term.

And when I say the children,

I'm not disparaging other countries.

I'm really talking about the collective interest,

the knock-on interests that come from what happens

if the US-China relationship suddenly becomes one of cold war or worse,

which is absolutely plausible in today's political environment.

So if that's the backdrop,

I think that Biden in particular spent an enormous amount of time

over the last six months in preparation for this event,

trying to convince the Chinese that the meeting would go well,

that the Americans were not planning on dropping any surprises,

on undermining or embarrassing their head of state

when he showed up on American turf in San Francisco.

They were very concerned about that because there's no trust,

and because there are plenty of issues of significant tension

between the two countries.

And I think that they succeeded critically in that.

Again, we haven't talked yet about the specific issues,

and I know we'll get to them.

But the macro backdrop is important.

Over the last couple of months,

China has been on a charm offensive,

with the Australians,

inviting the Australian prime minister for a state visit to China

just a few weeks ago.

That went extremely well

with expanded trade and energy agreements

on the back of, you know, a relationship where they weren't talking to each other,

where they were cutting off business,

where they were engaging in massive tariffs and sanctions.

That's seen a breakthrough.

I've seen some of that in South Korea.

I've seen some of that with the Japanese.

And over a one-hour meeting

between Prime Minister Kishida and Xi Jinping in person

at the APEC Summit, first time in over a year that they have met.

I've seen that with the Europeans.

I've also seen it with a large number of American and European CEOs

who have reported individually

just how much more access they've gotten,

welcoming they've gotten from their trips to Beijing,

positive press coverage,

movement on issues that have mattered to them,

all of which a sense that a better Biden relationship with Xi Jinping,

not a breakthrough, not an entente,

but simply a commitment

that the US wants a more stable baseline relationship

and would work towards that,

in San Francisco,

that gave the Chinese leadership permission

to engage in this charm offensive with other countries

and with the private sector.

And why was that so important?

Well, first, because it lowers the temperature of the relationship.

It makes sudden, unsuspected crises less likely to occur,

but also critically,

because the Chinese economy is underperforming dramatically.

For many reasons, maybe most structurally,

because 50 years of China acting as the world's factory,

with all of this inexpensive labor, well,

you don't need all that inexpensive labor anymore.

And by the way, that labor is not so inexpensive anymore.

And, you know, China hasn't become an open-governance system.

They haven't moved towards rule of law.

And the Chinese competitors are a lot stronger,

and their demographics are challenging.

And they've got lots of nonperforming debt

and their real estate sector's in trouble.

And zero-COVID went really badly.

And then they unwound it

but the consumers don't feel like they've got, you know,

animal spirits driving them right now.

And I can keep going.

But the point is that China is severely underperforming

in a way that, frankly, we haven't seen structurally

since globalization bringing the Chinese in,

you know, really got moving in the '70s and '80s.

So in other words, Helen,

you and I have never seen this structural economic headwinds

on so many fronts in China.

And the Chinese are much more aware of that than you and I are.

So they're very strongly incented,

even if they fully intend to take Taiwan over the long-term

and they want to be the leading economy in the world

and they want to dominate artificial intelligence

and all of these things that Americans and others worry about.

For the near and foreseeable, medium-term future,

they’ve got to just right the boat.

They've got to get things stable.

They don't want a big fight right now.

And so I think that the Americans, being a little more confident,

a little less concerned about, you know,

sort of, China taking over everything in the near-term

and wanting to stabilize things,

really got you a lot more

than you would have otherwise expected from this summit meeting

over the last several days.

HW: So it’s interesting to hear you talk about the economic dysfunction in China.

And of course, I think it’s safe to say

that America is experiencing pretty significant political dysfunction

at the moment.

But what often goes unremarked is the fact

that President Biden is actually extending,

perhaps doubling down, on President Trump’spolicies when it comes to China.

So given that next year is an election year,

what should we make of that?

And do you think that the policies will continue?

IB: First of all, that backdrop,

that right now, China's in probably the worst economic position structurally

that they've been in in 40, 50 years.

But their political consolidation around Xi is completely uncontested.

And certainly XI Jinping feels very comfortable

that he's consolidated a lot of power.

The United States, exactly the opposite.

The US coming out of the pandemic,

by far in the strongest economic position of any advanced industrial economy

in terms of growth, in terms of productivity,

in terms of leading in technologies

and in terms of lower inflation than its peers.

But the US political system is more dysfunctional,

more divided than at any point in our lifetimes.

And for now,

that certainly is creating a level of risk aversion

on the American side as well.

So I do think that, you know,

at the same time that you hear a lot of people say,

"Oh, if things go really badly, maybe they want to lash out."

Yeah, not for these two leaders at this point in time.

Other leaders, different countries, different positions, maybe.

But that's not the way that this is actually playing out.

Now 2024 is coming out,

and people are certainly starting to talk a lot more about it.

It's interesting that, as you point out,

the United States on China have policies that are fairly consistent

across the board politically.

Which is not true for most other issues.

If Trump became president, Ukraine policy would be very different.

Iran policy would be very different.

Europe policy would be very different.

China, not so different.

There's a lot of consistency between Biden and Trump on China.

A lot of people thought Biden was going to remove

the Trump tariffs on the Chinese.

He did no such thing.

In fact, he largely extended some of them.

Furthermore, export controls on semiconductors,

pretty minimal from the Trump administration,

expanded structurally under Biden

to the extent that China now really feels like America wants to contain them

in the most advanced areas of the 21-century economy.

And the US is also leaning into industrial policy,

like the CHIPS Act,

domestically and with countries like South Korea and the Netherlands.

The Chinese clearly would prefer a Trump policy on China there,

than they do the Biden administration.

And, you know, you can tell this when you talk to Chinese leaders,

compared to leaders of other countries around the world,

most of whom have pretty strong preferences

of whether Biden or Trump is president,

of who they want.

The Chinese aren't sure.

The Chinese are thinking, well, I mean, if Trump comes in,

there's greater likelihood that American allies are going to be less aligned

because he'll push them transactionally on spending more money on defense

or maybe he doesn't care about the Japanese or the South Koreans,

and he'll put tariffs or threaten tariffs on anybody, friends or enemies.

Biden's less likely to do that.

But Trump is also a wild card on negative tail risks

directly with the Chinese.

You know, he was the guy that was willing to work with North Korea,

but also was prepared to hit them harder if things don't go well.

Well, how lucky did the Chinese feel?

And I think, you know, the answer you get is we really don't know.

We don't know who we want there.

So there's a lot of uncertainty that the Chinese have

about the future of the American political system.

And there's a lot of uncertainty that the Americans have

about the future of the Chinese economic system.

At a time when the interdependence of these two economies

and, frankly, of their diplomatic interdependence,

is remaining quite high-level.

We may not be comfortable with that reality,

but that is the abiding reality

that we're going to have to deal with going forward.

HW: So you mentioned technology,

and I think that we have to talk about artificial intelligence.

Now, one of the major breaking stories this weekend

was the management implosions and excitement over at OpenAI.

And I'm sure we could have a whole conversation about that.

But given the implications of AI rolling out at every level of society,

where are the Chinese and the US governments on this?

And what did they talk about in San Francisco?

IB: Well, in San Francisco,

they spoke about starting a track 1.5 working group

on artificial intelligence,

which means the private sector and the public sector engaging together.

Which makes sense from the American perspective,

because, you know, the US is a country

that really does promote entrepreneurialism

and its private sector corporations,

so much so that a lot of people think

the US is less democratic than it should be,

because corporations, private sector,

capture the regulatory process through big money lobbying and the rest.

The Chinese, of course, if anything, the state captures the private sector.

So the fact that they're willing to have not just government-to-government,

but government-to-government plus these big companies

that are, you know, effectively sovereign

when we talk about the digital space,

the platforms they have, the algorithms they drive

and artificial intelligence that they are rolling out

very, very quickly.

That's a fairly significant move.

And it comes on the back of the Americans and Chinese

both sending senior officials to Bletchley Park in the UK,

agreeing to a set of principles on safety for frontier AI models,

the AI models that are coming in the future.

So there is a level of understanding between the US and China

that they need to share information,

and they need to work together

to avoid some of the worst negative potentials

from very disruptive AI,

while obviously benefiting from extraordinary, you know,

sort of, world-changing new productivity, invention and efficiency.

But there's a really, really big unknown question

that underpins the rolling out of AI.

Because let's think about what AI does today.

It's taking, it's these models,

these large language models,

that are taking the entire corpus of global data,

as we have it on the internet,

as we have it in the digital world,

and is making predictions,

pattern recognition and predictions,

on the basis of all of that information instantaneously.

And we've never had such powerful tools.

Now, when you have all of that data at your fingertips,

so you can therefore assess and measure

metrics of the world in real time

and how human beings interact with it in real-time,

that creates really big questions

about what political and economic models will be most functional.

So, for example, 30 years ago,

you know, we thought, well, democracy is definitely

the most functional model.

And the internet, as it rolls out, is making that more clear,

because you've got all these people

with their access to the World Wide Web,

and that really undermines authoritarian countries

that want to control information and it helps democracies.

And that's how you got colored revolutions or the Arab Spring.

And then you have the data revolution, the surveillance revolution,

you say, well, wait a second.

You know, governments that have access to all that data

can actually create, you know, all sorts of incentives,

both carrots and sticks, to motivate patriotic behavior,

where in democracies that can create a lot more polarization.

So now let's take AI and look forward

three, five years, when you've got large language models

that are tailored to your individual data corpus on your smartphone.

So everyone has an individual AI that has all the data on you,

and collectively it has all the data on the planet real-time.

In that environment,

is a planned economy less efficient or more efficient

than a free-market economy

with different corporations that are competing?

We don't know the answer.

In that environment,

is an authoritarian political system more or less stable

than a democratic political system?

We actually don't know the answer.

I mean, Helen, I know the answer I want it to be.

I want it to be a well-regulated free market and a democracy.

But I'd be lying to you, right?

We don't know the answer to that.

And so, I mean, suddenly, the United States and China

are entering into a world

where a small number of actors in the private sector

are investing immense amounts of money

and developing unprecedented tools

that will determine, more than anything else,

the viability and strength

of these two fundamentally competing political and economic models.

And we don't know which one is going to do better.

Which one might even win, or can they both exist,

continue to exist at the same time.

And so in that environment,

you better believe that the Americans and Chinese both want to have,

you know, a very significant seat at the head of the table

in helping understand what the hell is going on with AI.

You need to know that early so you have some time to plan for it,

to respond to it, to govern it,

to create institutions and structure around it.

And I think right now both governments are playing catch-up,

but they understand they need to do it hand in glove with the private sector.

And my God, I mean,

the events at OpenAI

are absolutely essential to understanding that future.

HW: I mean, complexity is the operative word there.

I mean, what is the likelihood?

I mean, many speakers at TED have called

for some form of international regulatory agency or for some kind of oversight.

What are the chances that we could actually see that actually happen,

and what are the chances that it could have teeth?

IB: Well, there are governments all over the world

that are treating this issue with urgency.

They're making it a priority.

And they're doing that in part,

not only because they know AI is important,

but they also see that AI is critically important to things

that they're already prioritizing.

So if you look at Russia-Ukraine,

the future of that war may well be critically determined

by the ability of the Ukrainians to use autonomous lethal weapons

powered by AI against Russia.

You better understand that if you're the Americans

and US allies going forward,

both in terms of getting outcomes you want

and also potentially destabilizing the region

in ways that you're not prepared for.

The AI-driven disinformation around the US election in 2024

is an absolute critical concern for US policy makers

and, frankly, around disinformation for Israel-Palestine

and who wins the information war,

which, I mean, the Israelis are militarily doing

what they want to, tactically on the ground,

but broader information war, at least presently, they're losing.

Understanding AI is critical to all of these issues.

It's not just a new space.

And so I think everyone is taking it very, very seriously.

And they're putting a lot of resources into it.

There clearly is a level of effort

to regulate AI in ways that align with individual government goals

and systems

that is different from place to place.

So, I mean, in China,

part of it is we can't allow

the average Chinese citizen to have access to a chatbot that could provide,

you know, responses on any data.

You know, we can't allow --

there's got to be severe penalties

in starting to talk about independence of Taiwan

or Tiananmen Square or anything like that.

And these companies have to be responsible not just for the inputs

but also the outputs that are coming from these platforms.

Where in the United States, right,

you have the companies that are working very closely

with the US government to try to figure out,

OK, what are the areas that we're going to be comfortable

having significant regulation.

Like for example,

red teaming on how one can break new models

as they're developed.

Or in having watermarks that help to determine

whether something is or is not created by artificial intelligence.

Where in Europe, the focus is so much more on privacy and data protections

for citizens.

So, you know, right now,

you would say it looks like they're moving in very,

very different directions.

But that's in part because we don't yet have

anything close to global agreement

on what artificial intelligence can do.

What are the things that need to be measured,

what are the things that we want to promote,

and what are the areas that we need to try to contain or constrain or regulate?

And I think that there's a United Nations process

that I'm involved in,

a high-level panel that I think is trying to make immediate strides on that.

I mean, the report's going to come out within eight months,

which is light speed in terms of the United Nations.

But we will see whether all of those efforts

will get you to pieces of global governance

like you have the beginnings of for climate change, for example.

But you had decades to get it together on climate change,

and you have months to a few years to do it effectively on AI.

I would say that I am hopeful, but I am not yet optimistic.

HW: All right, we'll take it.

OK, I want to change the topic.

I want to talk about infrastructure.

So the Belt and Road Initiative is subject to a lot of debate.

And just as a quick background reminder for those who don't know,

the Belt and Road Initiative is one of the most ambitious

physical infrastructure projects that was ever conceived.

It was launched by Xi in 2013,

and originally it was devised to link East Asia and Europe,

has since expanded to the Global South and to Latin America.

Do you think that the US is losing out to China in this regard?

And what should the US do to counter potential China dominance

in the Global South, particularly?

IB: It’s certainly true that the Chinese have far more influence

in terms of their commercial and trade relations across the Global South

than the Americans do.

In part because they invest a lot more

and in part because those investments are driven much more

by the Chinese government.

And that's because that's the nature of the Chinese system.

I mean, if Apple decides to invest in India as opposed to China,

that decision has virtually nothing to do with the US government,

maybe at the margins.

But overwhelmingly,

that decision is made by Apple for reasons intrinsic to Apple.

Where if the Chinese are investing,

certainly if it's a state- owned enterprise,

it's being coordinated strategically with the Chinese government.

And even if it's a private-sector company,

there's a lot more alignment with the Chinese.

So I'm saying that in part

because there's some degree

to which this is not a winnable fight by the Americans.

The Chinese exert influence around the world

through their state capitalist system primarily.

Their power is projected more commercially than the United States,

which historically has projected power,

a lot of soft power through its political institutions

and through its cultural institutions,

but also, of course, a lot of hard power through its military might.

And then, of course, the role of the US dollar as reserve currency,

which allows you to weaponize it,

get countries to do what they want that way,

but not through state-directed trade and investment.

So you could say the Chinese are in the lead there,

though I would argue that the size of that lead

has been overstated.

In part because China is no longer spending anywhere near as much

on Belt and Road as they used to.

And that's one of the reasons

why a lot fewer heads of state showed up a month ago

at their Belt and Road summit

than did during their summits before the pandemic,

because they just don't have the same amount of money

that they are willing to throw at these countries,

but also because a lot of the investments they made

did not perform very well.

And as a consequence, you've got a lot of bad debt

that now they have to restructure in countries all over the world

where they have really, really big exposures,

like Pakistan and like Zambia and like Sri Lanka, I mean,

countries that 10 years ago, 15 years ago,

you were heralding as China's taking over these places.

And then it's like, oh my God, what are we dealing with?

Venezuela, right?

I mean, a lot of the countries that the Chinese are dominating

are some of the worst-performing markets out there

with debt that is going to be incredibly hard to service,

especially in a really challenging interest rate environment.

So I'm not so sure that that Belt and Road, you know,

sort of, advantage is so critical,

especially because a lot of that Belt and Road

is in hard infrastructure.

And once you build it, everyone can use it.

You build a port, you build a railway.

I mean, I'd rather the Americans build it than the Chinese

because it redounds more to American shareholders, sure.

But you'd rather the port be built, than no one build the port.

Because that then leads to more economic growth.

And if the US is the largest economy in the world,

the US benefits disproportionately

from more economic growth around the world.

That's just kind of a reality.

It's what globalization is all about.

But I'm not so sure,

when you talk about new technologies, now it's a very different place.

Now, the Americans are leading the world in AI,

and the Chinese are leading the world in transition energy technology:

electric vehicles, batteries, supply chain.

And we're seeing that play out in the fight between the US and China.

So there were some big positives that came between Xi and Biden.

You've got a lot of military- to-military direct engagement

in a high level that the Chinese had resisted before.

And so now the next time you have an American and Chinese aircraft

five feet next to each other, near-miss or God forbid,

actually have a collision,

you'll have hot lines to deconflict that immediately.

And that's a good thing.

And on Taiwan, there were a lot of conversations.

And now the two opposition parties in Taiwan

look like they're going to run on a joint ticket.

They still have to figure out the final methodology on that.

But if that happens, that means the guy that, you know,

China thinks of as pro-independence,

that would lead to a lot more tensions,

probably isn't going to win.

That reduces near-term tensions.

That's a big issue.

But the big area of conflict that has not been addressed

and that is still moving towards more confrontation is technology.

And here the Americans are continuing with existing export controls,

and they plan to expand them.

In fact, in the coming months,

I think you will see new export controls on cloud computing.

And meanwhile, the Chinese are responding with export controls

in the critical minerals space.

They talked about gallium and germanium,

which, you know, are pretty widely available

and not so essential for so much of that supply chain.

But now they're talking about graphite,

which is much more essential for batteries, for EVs

and where the Chinese have much more control.

And if those move from licenses to direct controls,

then you're going to have a very significant fight

between the United States containing Chinese growth in AI

and the Chinese containing American and allied growth in transition energy.

That's the opposite of globalization.

It's less efficient.

It's more expensive, right?

It's industrial policy, it's not free market.

And it will create a much more tense structural relationship

between the US and China.

This is the area that we need to watch the most closely

over the coming, say, six months.

It's where we could end up getting a much bigger blow up,

despite the level of stability that both sides are trying to achieve

in the relationship.

HW: So the mention of energy is obviously salient.

And, you know, the COP conference is coming up in Abu Dhabi

in ten days' time.

And so I'm wondering, did they talk about climate policy?

Were they talking about energy?

What happened?

IB: It was part of the run-up to the summit where John Kerry,

on cabinet and special climate envoy at state for the Biden administration,

was meeting with his interlocutor in the Chinese government.

They've engaged a lot of late, and there's a replacement there.

So Kerry met with the replacement, which is useful, younger,

not as well-known globally, but has the portfolio on the Chinese side.

And in the run-up to the COP summit in Abu Dhabi,

where, you know, the world comes together to talk about commitments on climate,

there has been more willingness of the Chinese

to say that they will come up with some joint plan

to further reduce emissions by 2030

and further invest in transition energy.

But, you know, in reality,

the US and China are fighting more

or competing more

than they are cooperating in the climate space.

This is one where the Americans looked at China

you know, no matter what you think about climate change in the US,

no matter how much of a tree hugger you are or aren't,

you see the Chinese putting hundreds of billions

into new post-carbon technologies and you say, wait a second,

I can't let the Chinese dominate the world in that.

I want the Americans to do that.

So there is, you know, some sort of, you know,

virtuous cycle of competition,

even if it's not alignment and coordination.

Now, the alignment between the US and China on climate

is a challenging alignment.

It's one where the Chinese are emitting by far

the most carbon in the world today.

And the Americans have emitted by far the most carbon in the world historically

and emit much more per capita today than the Chinese do,

though the Chinese per capita actually emit more than Europe,

which is quite something,

given how comparatively poor the Chinese are.

You look at that and you say, well,

neither of these economies really wants to spend a lot of money

admitting that they're the ones responsible

and they have to be the ones paying for loss and damages and transition

for the poorer countries that haven't had a chance to industrialize yet,

haven't had a chance to industrialize with carbon intensity yet, right?

And there are a lot of countries around the world, especially India,

but broadly the Global South,

that really want a very different outcome.

So, you know, China used to be a member of the Global South.

And this is one -- we haven't talked about this,

but it's kind of a really interesting point to make.

China is not a part of the Global South anymore, right?

When they're the leading carbon emitter

and they're the leading creditor to the world's developing countries

and they're increasingly -- and the second,

the second-lead technology country in the world in terms of biotech

and new energy and digital commerce

and, you know, facial recognition,

you know, voice recognition, the list goes on and on and on.

You know, China is not a developed country,

but they’re not in the Global South.

And part of the reason,

to go back to what we talked about at the beginning here,

part of the reason why the Americans and the Chinese

are the "adults" in the room

is precisely because they both have so much at stake

with the existing status quo remaining.

The Chinese want to change their level of influence over existing institutions.

They want more voting rights in the IMF, for example,

but they don't want to break those institutions.

They want them to persist.

In fact, the Chinese, you know, see

that they're the largest contributor in the world

to UN peacekeeping operations.

That's an organization the Americans created at the end of World War II.

But the Chinese are really committed to it.

Where the Russians, I mean, you know, basically,

they're the ones that are sending, you know,

Wagner and their successors in

to countries where nobody can participate.

To, you know, literally, to ungoverned regions of chaos.

So again, it's not that we suddenly say, oh,

China is a democracy that we should really like,

they're friendly, they're cuddly.

No, no, no, not at all.

But they are really invested in the present global system.

And that is a piece of stability

at a time that a lot of the world appears to be coming apart.

HW: So one final question and then we have to wrap up.

And this question came from our community who also sent in questions for you.

How did this meeting change your outlook on future relations

between the US and China?

IB: In the near term, it almost guarantees

that US-China relations will be more frequent

and will be more constructive.

That does not mean that there will be massive breakthroughs,

but the willingness of both sides to see that they benefit

when they engage with each other substantively

at the highest levels across all of the government.

I mean, it's not just on, you know,

Gina Raimondo in Commerce going over there and saying,

"Hey, we want to make sure

that Disney and the NBA can still do business."

That's happening,

it's much broader than that.

It's climate, it's defense, it's technology, it's the leaders.

And I'll tell you, this wasn't in the talking points,

but it is important

that Biden and Xi Jinping privately did talk about the fact

that they need to spend more time with each other personally.

And, you know, that Biden and Xi knew each other quite well,

spent a lot of time when they were both vice presidents.

And that's something that Biden's pretty proud of.

And he talks about it privately in a way that, for example,

he never got to know Putin, and he doesn’t like Putin.

Xi Jinping, he may not trust him, but he does respect him.

They actually do have a person-to-person relationship that matters.

And, you know, for two leaders

of the most powerful countries in the world

that hadn't talked to each other for such a long time,

spending four hours together really matters, face-to-face.

And I think we're going to see more of that,

at least by Zoom, over the coming months.

And we should welcome that.

Irrespective of what you think of either or both of those leaders,

it's a very important thing for them to be talking.

HW: Ian, always a pleasure, thank you so much for your time.

IB: Thank you. Helen.