"The China Debate We're Not Having" | Part 2: What Does the United States Want?

**Kaiser Kuo** (0:09)
Welcome to the Sinica Podcast. It will be a discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, foreign relations, economics, and society. Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I'm Kaiser Guo coming to you this week from Beijing.
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I'm just back from Hong Kong, had a fantastic time there, really, really packed. Had an event at Asian Society, a talk at Hong Kong University that went really well, and lots, lots more stuff that happened there. Saw a lot of old friends, made some new ones, and of course, huge shout out to Brian Wong, who organized this Hong Kong Global AI Governance Conference that was just really fantastic.
Well, because I just got back and because I have a really packed calendar this week with talks for the British Chamber of Commerce, the Schwarzman College, the Enging Global Symposium, which is being held. I am moderating one panel there and appearing on another. All of this before heading back to the States just after the weekend for still more talks. I've got a talk at the Virginia Military Institute I'm really looking forward to at UPenn with Nathan Machbooby at the University of Chicago. And new episodes will resume once I get some of that behind me.
So this week, I've got the next installment from the fantastic conference convened by the Institute for America, China and the Future of Global Affairs, which is abbreviated ACF, at the Johns Hopkins Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies or SAIS. That was on April 3rd. The conference was called, The China Debate We're Not Having, Politics, Technology and the Road Ahead. Last week's show featured the introduction by Jessica Chen Weiss, the inaugural head of ACF, and of course the David M. Lampton Chair in China Studies at Hopkins SAIS. As you all well know, she is simply one of the smartest and most articulate voices in the US-China discourse, and has been invaluable in providing great analysis and really modeling how to talk about the complexities of the relationship in a way that is morally guided, is deeply informed, is empathetic and fact-based, and of course effective for being on all those other things. The organizing premise of the conference was something, as I said last time, that resonated really deeply with me, that much of the prevailing policy conversation rests on underexamined assumptions. That we need more rigor, more humility, and more intellectual honesty if we're going to navigate this moment well. With the generous blessing and active encouragement of the organizers, Jessica Foremost, this week I'm sharing the audio from the second panel, which was called What Does the United States Want? That's the question we really need to be asking, and I think it pairs very nicely with last week's panel, which was What Does China Want? The question that's probably asked more often, and maybe even too much. Jessica and her team have put together a fantastic panel that features Leslie Vingimuri, who is president and CEO of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Jonas Nahm, Andrew W. Mellon Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS, a leading voice on China in the environment, who just came out recently from the administration, Matt Duss, who is Executive Vice President at the Center for International Policy, and very, very important voice, and Katherine Thompson, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. All of this was moderated by the excellent Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Jim Steinberg, who also served previously as Deputy National Security Advisor in the second Clinton administration, and as Deputy Secretary of State under the first Obama administration. So enjoy the conversation as much as I did, I hope, and I will be back soon.