The Xi Factor

**Jane Perlez** (0:03)
Rowhome Productions. This project is made possible by the generous support of the Carnegie Corporation.
A day I'll never forget as a reporter covering China was a lunch on Valentine's Day at the State Department. It was back in 2012, and Xi Jinping was the guest of honor. He was just a vice president then, but he was poised to take over as president pretty soon. I remember the atmosphere in the formal dining room, packed with about 200 people. It was almost euphoric. Smiles ear to ear.

**Jake Sullivan** (0:42)
I remember that lunch. I remember that visit. I walked up the stairs to a room full of, you know, notables of all stripes.

**Jane Perlez** (0:50)
That's Jake Sullivan. Back in 2012, he was deputy chief of staff for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He remembers looking around as I did and noticing all those smiles.

**Jake Sullivan** (1:03)
Yeah, the mood was very constructive. You know, there was a sense that the relationship could remain on quite a positive trajectory with Xi Jinping taking over.

**Jane Perlez** (1:13)
Everyone thought that Xi Jinping would lead China to increased openness. But boy, was everybody wrong.

**Jake Sullivan** (1:20)
I would say by the end of 2012, though, Secretary Clinton was certainly feeling colder winds blowing. Her last trip to China was quite a tough one.

**Jane Perlez** (1:34)
I'm Jane Perlez and this is Face Off. This week on the show, what's it like to negotiate with Xi Jinping? Our guest today is Jake Sullivan. He most recently served as National Security Advisor under President Biden. He's currently a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School. Jake has been in the room with Xi Jinping more than almost any American official, from Xi's rise in 2012 to their last Face Off in Beijing.
So, I want to start with a broad question, Jake, moving forward to today. Sounds a little corny, but people want to know, what is Xi Jinping like up close, in the room, across the table? This question has special relevance today because as traditional systems of diplomacy break down, we're in what my friend and colleague Orville Schell calls this new age of the big man. Feels as though we have Capo v Capo, feels like a bit of a mafia of the big leaders, Trump and Xi, Putin and Xi, not to forget Kim Jong-un of North Korea. So of all those, what's Xi Jinping like?

**Jake Sullivan** (2:47)
Well, first, I like Orville Schell's reference to the era of the big man. I'd start by saying, Xi is actually literally a big man. He is physically in stature, a kind of imposing person in height, in his presence. And when you look at him, you see him a bit larger than life in terms of the other people in the room. And I think that has an effect on his ability to project strength and project confidence. So that's point one. Point two, he's a very relaxed person in these sessions. I don't know if that's a natural relaxation or a studied, performed relaxation. But he leans back in his chair. He exudes a certain kind of calm, almost like the cool kid in the class type vibe that he's giving off. And he does that pretty consistently, whether he's meeting with a president or in my case, when I met with him personally, meeting with the National Security Advisor. The third thing is that he's very effective at kind of moving back and forth between delivering the points on the notes in front of him, which he has, and he's worked, and he has a clear sense of what he wants to get across, and then how he wants to respond to anticipated statements from his counterpart. And then setting the paper aside and actually getting into a dialogue. And in that respect, he's very capable of off the cuff, a back and forth, and very capable of changing register from serious to wry, to casual, to formal. And so that makes a meeting with him, I think, different from previous PRC leaders who, I think, had much more of one register, one note. You know, he plays across a variety of these registers. And so meeting with Xi is not just a rote exercise. There is actually something to be gained from the conversation because you can draw him out, and he will work to draw you out in the case of President Biden in their summits. He also will turn to his aides, not so much to ask them questions to come in, but to kind of say, what was that about? And, you know, his aides will pipe in and say something. So he feels, to me, more similar to an American president in the way that he carries himself in the room than-