00:00Kerry Brown, the director of the Lao China Institute at King's College in London.
00:04Kerry, welcome back, good to see you.
00:06Given what we've heard, what do you expect to come out of this summit of the presidents?
00:14Well, they agreed to have the AI dialogue from May, and then nothing's really happened till now.
00:20Now things are happening.
00:21So I suppose the least one can expect is for there to be more regular and regulated dialogue from now
00:29on.
00:29It can't be left for another three or four months before they speak about such an important issue.
00:35This in particular is really accelerating, with many people feeling that AI developments are happening too quickly.
00:43And with the United States and China both competing, that just adds to the potential dangers because they both want
00:50to be number one.
00:51But meanwhile, the generic issues of AI just don't go away.
00:55I think on the trade, well, of course, it's now been almost a year since the tariffs were introduced, and
01:03they've changed quite a lot.
01:05There needs to be some kind of regularization around that.
01:08On the whole, though, American investment in China and Chinese investment in America have declined,
01:13and the trade figures are relatively lower than they were before.
01:18China's biggest trading partner now is with the ASEAN group of countries,
01:22and its trade with the Europeans is bigger than it is with America.
01:26So I think that there's a sort of sense in which the tectonic shapesheets are changing this relationship,
01:32and that these two figures are trying to work out a new way of speaking to each other,
01:37but haven't quite achieved it yet.
01:40Tariffs, technology, critical minerals, all still major sticking points.
01:44What does China want out of the summit, and what does the United States want?
01:50I think China was always looking for predictability.
01:53With Trump, it's got a transactional leader, but a very changeable one.
01:58Last time they did talk about the issue of Taiwan,
02:00and I think the minimum would be a reaffirmation of the one-China policy for China's side.
02:06And I suppose for the United States, an affirmation of the status quo,
02:10you know, kind of no big dramatic changes.
02:13I think also for the United States, the sense that China, you know,
02:18understands its responsibilities in terms of kind of fair trading.
02:23And for China, the expectation, I suppose, is for the United States to, you know,
02:28kind of remove some of the prohibitions.
02:30It's particularly anxious, of course, about technology,
02:33although its technology now is developing very, very quickly.
02:37So it's a very dynamic dialogue that the two have at the moment.
02:40This is the second meeting between Xi and Trump in a matter of four months or so.
02:45I mean, is that helping?
02:46Is meeting helping to put the wider relationship on a more stable, a warmer footing?
02:54Well, it's not hindering.
02:55It's not a bad thing.
02:57If they're meeting, that's good.
02:59But whether they're going to have kind of break, you know,
03:03kind of a sort of real changes in the relationship,
03:06no, it won't achieve that because these are deep structural issues
03:10that have been there for a long time and will continue to be there for years ahead.
03:15It's not going to be solved overnight.
03:17But that they're talking about meeting quite soon after this summit shows a sense of momentum.
03:23I think Trump takes China very seriously.
03:26He's always very complimentary about Xi Jinping's sort of status.
03:31And, of course, China always takes America seriously.
03:33So it is better that they're meeting and meeting regularly than, as happened in the recent past,
03:39where for many, many months, in fact, for years sometimes,
03:42they didn't meet at the top level at all.
03:44I guess some people watching politics and, of course, journalists all desperately want headlines
03:51and a top story out of this when it ends.
03:55I mean, is this all about process or headlines and outcomes?
04:01It's leading to headlines, I suppose.
04:04There's no point in meeting otherwise.
04:05Whether they'll happen on this meeting or not, who knows?
04:09I mean, last time, for instance, in May,
04:11there was an expectation that China would buy many, many Boeing aircraft.
04:16In the end, it bought, I think, about 200 less than was expected.
04:20I guess for Trump, you know, a good outcome would be China would be buying more American products
04:25because he's particularly focused on the trade deficit.
04:28And China still has a two-thirds trade deficit, a trade surplus with the United States.
04:33So that will probably be more of the headline, how they will be able to resolve AI
04:39or whether they'll even talk about environment and climate change
04:43because China's position and America's aren't similar at all at the moment.
04:47Those are things I don't think that will happen.
04:50But the best outcome will be that they agree to continue talking.
04:54They do some deals and they are largely regarding this, both of them, as a victory for each side
05:00because when both sides walk away thinking that they've come up top, that's usually a good sign.
05:07The U.S. midterm election is just a matter of weeks away, of course.
05:11I mean, I wonder, does that put more pressure on Mr. Trump to get a good deal with China?
05:18In some ways, you could say it makes him even more kind of reckless
05:21because he seems to be taking a take-no-hostages approach.
05:26Domestically, I think China knows that the United States is in a very specific moment, quite divided.
05:32There's a lot of differences.
05:34The language on China has become a little less charged than it was even a couple of years ago.
05:40I think that the hawks, those who are most aggressive towards China,
05:44have not really found favour in the White House.
05:47I think that Trump is looking for a kind of deal, though the details of that aren't very clear.
05:53And China knows this.
05:55If it can rationally do a deal with all of the benefits that will bring,
06:00then I think China will try and do that.
06:02It's a deal-making nation in many ways.
06:04That's what's the secret of its success in recent years.
06:08Kerry, good to see you.
06:09Thanks so much for coming on the programme.
06:11Professor Kerry Brown from King's College in London.
Comments