Ambassador Dan Kritenbrink on US-China Summits and Strategy

Pekingology

In this episode of Pekingology, host Henrietta Levin interviews Ambassador Dan Kriten_brink to discuss the implications of the upcoming summit between President Donald

Key takeaways

• Ambassador Dan Kritenbrink characterizes President Xi Jinping as a decisive, sophisticated, and increasingly confident leader who has consolidated power significantly.
• The 'Five Bs' represent potential economic deliverables for the summit: beans, beef, Boeing, board of trade, and board of investment.

Main topics

• U.S.-China Summitry
• Xi Jinping's Leadership Evolution

Notable quotes

We have to recognize the world as it and not necessarily how we would like it to be.

Conclusion

The episode offers a deep strategic look at the practicalities of mana

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:04) China is one of the 21st century's most consequential nations. It has never been more important to understand how the country is governed and what its leaders and its people actually want and believe. Welcome to Peckingology, the podcast that unpacks China's evolving political system and the trajectory of China's domestic and foreign policy. I'm your host, Henrietta Levin, Senior Fellow with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS. This is Peckingology. Speaker 3 (0:35) Chinese President Xi Jinping will be visiting Washington next week for a state visit and a major summit with U.S. President Donald Trump. This will be Xi's first visit to Washington since 2015, so it is a pretty big deal. And to unpack... U.S.-China symmetry and diplomacy and help us understand what matters about this big meeting and what maybe doesn't matter so much. I am thrilled to be joined today by Ambassador Dan Kurtenbrink. Dan recently retired from the U.S. Foreign Service as one of the State Department's most senior diplomats. He was Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Senior Director for Asian Affairs on the White House National Security Council, U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, and Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, among many other key roles at State in Washington and across the Indo-Pacific. And Dan is now a partner with the Asia Group here in D.C. Dan, thank you so much for joining us. Speaker 2 (1:42) And Rita, thank you. It's such an honor to be here. I'm such a huge fan of what you and your colleagues are building here at CSS and the role that you continue to play in thought leadership. And thanks as well for your many years of. dedicated public service. Delighted to be with you today. I Speaker 3 (1:57) should say also that Dan was my boss many times over the course of my own time at the State Department. So it is a, Speaker 2 (2:04) you know, I pretended to supervise you and you pretended to work for me, but you needed very little supervision, my friend. You're a real talent. And thanks for having me on today. Well, Speaker 3 (2:14) it's always wonderful to see you. So hoping we can start by just talking a little bit about you and how you first. became interested in China and Asia and U.S. foreign policy. Be Speaker 2 (2:24) delighted to. I often say somewhat surprisingly that I discovered the world in Kearney, Nebraska. I was an undergraduate. As we all did. As we all did, as one would expect in the middle of the heartland. I was an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, and Speaker 3 (2:38) I Speaker 2 (2:38) had these amazing professors in political science and geography. who sort of opened my eyes to the outside world. They organized a World Affairs Conference every couple of years, and I met a number of foreign diplomats and U.S. Foreign Service officers there. And that's when the light went off for me. This is the career that I want. So I was inspired by that, later went to graduate school at the University of Virginia and decided to take the Foreign Service exam. And by some miracle, passed. I initially focused on Japan. While I was at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, I had these other great experiences. I was an exchange student in Japan. I got to go to the former Soviet Union. So I started the Foreign Service focused on Japan and did seven out of my first 10 years in the Foreign Service in Japan. And at some point I started thinking I need to do something else other than focus on this one country that I know and love. Ambassador Jim Zumwalt first suggested to me that I should think about China service and I did. And that was really a life-changing experience for me. So the first decade or so of my Foreign Service career was focused on Japan. The last two decades were focused mostly on China. And I'm extremely grateful for that opportunity. I still think it's the world's most consequential but complex relationship. And I was honored to play a small part in trying to manage it. Speaker 3 (3:56) It's a tough one to get right. Truly. I feel like many of our best China hands have spent time, like serious time engaging with the allies in Asia as well. It does end up giving you, I think, a fuller perspective on the Speaker 2 (4:11) challenge. I was actually glad, Henrietta, that I started my career focused more on strengthening America's partnerships with our... allies, especially Japan. And I think bringing that perspective to U.S.-China relations was really healthy and useful for me. I'll also say that, you know, the academic training that I had was mostly focused on Japan. I studied a little bit about China, but I was mostly a Japan hand. So my knowledge and experience in China and working with the Chinese was gained through very practical means. You know, hundreds of encounters over coffee or baijiu with Chinese counterparts of... of various backgrounds, hundreds of hours in negotiations and bilateral diplomacy. So it's almost in diplomacy, it's almost a street knowledge earned through all those hundreds of hours. But it was extraordinarily satisfying, challenging as well. Speaker 3 (5:03) I'm sure. Well, would love to jump into some of those hundreds of hours that you have spent with our Chinese friends, because you have been in the room many times with the senior most Chinese cadres, including President Xi himself across many U.S. administrations. And I wonder what you think it's most important for us to understand about Xi, about his closest lieutenants. As people, as humans, because you have had this unique time with them. And how have they changed or evolved or maybe not at all over the three terms Xi Jinping has now almost completed? Great Speaker 2 (5:44) question. I did have the privilege, Henrietta, of being in probably dozens of meetings with Xi Jinping, both when he was president and vice president. I've always seen him as, in many ways, quite... Quite an impressive figure. He's decisive. He's confident. He's quite sophisticated. He's very calm. Comes across as being unflappable. But I think when I take a step back, I think he's also a calculated risk taker. And if I think about what I saw change about him, almost in terms of his demeanor and his presentations over the decades, I think it's clear that his... his confidence has grown. He has a certain air about him. He carries himself with a great deal of confidence, maybe even a bit of swagger. And I think that's grown over time. I don't think he's changed dramatically as who he is, but at least my own sense in watching him was that his confidence and decisiveness has only grown. And if I may say as well, I think back When I first started working on China, I did two years of Chinese language training, including a year in Beijing. My first few years as a diplomat in China were focused on domestic Chinese politics, leadership politics, and had hundreds of conversations with Chinese friends about Xi Jinping. And not a single one of them thought that he would become the dominant figure that he has. I had so many Chinese intellectuals and journalists and others talk about how China had learned the lessons. of the Mao era, there would always be collective leadership. We'll never have a strong man again. And yet here we are. And I think President Xi Jinping is arguably the strongest leader since Mao Zedong, maybe even surpasses Mao's dominance of the Chinese system. I think that's quite an extraordinary set of circumstances, quite an extraordinary accomplishment in the Chinese system. And I think it says something about really the skill and the determination of President Xi Jinping. As a leader. So we would underestimate him at our peril. I Speaker 3 (7:53) like your characterization of she is a calculated risk taker. I think there is often a debate here about whether she is actually very cautious or actually very comfortable with a higher level of risk than his predecessors. And if he's become more confident or more comfortable with greater levels of risk over time, I wonder if you could make that more concrete. for us? Like, how do you see China acting at home or in the world that shows that evolution of Xi over time and how the risk he's comfortable with? It's a Speaker 2 (8:24) bit of both, right? I mean, for me, a calculated risk taker says someone still has a great deal of prudence, but they always want to seize the initiative. I think some of it comes from his own complex background in the Chinese system. And again, drawing on some of these hundreds of conversations I mentioned I had with Chinese friends over the years. you know, the son of Xi Jinping, you know, one of China's great revolutionary leaders, who then is punished during the Cultural Revolution, sent down right to rural China, works his way up through the entire Chinese system, you know, from very lower levels and an assistant to the defense minister to a local leader, then provincial leader, and now again. China's most dominant leaders, one of China's most dominant leaders in decades. I think what the Chinese analysts I talked to would say that that extraordinary experience taught President Xi Jinping many things. It's always better to keep your adversaries off balance. It's always best to have the initiative and to seize the initiative. It's always best to act decisively. Speaker 2 (9:38) And again, that's where my characterization of calculated risk taker sort of comes from. I think he learned that within the Chinese system in order to survive the brutality of that system and then conquer that system. I think that's the mindset he had to develop. And my analysis would be that's the mindset that he's brought to international politics as well. Many people have Speaker 1 (10:02) asked me, Henrietta, you know. Speaker 2 (10:05) What happened to the U.S.-China relationship? How do you account for this extraordinary transformation in the relationship or this extraordinary downturn? And for me, maybe it shows my own bias as a former American official, but I still think what has changed most fundamentally is China and China under President Xi Jinping. And again, I think you see China under President Xi become more confident. more expansive and ambitious in its long-term goals. And again, more willing to assert its power and influence and more willing to take calculated risk to achieve its aims. And, you know, we could go down many different paths to lay out that case I'm making, whether it's in the maritime domain in the South and East China Seas, whether it's China's increasing pressure and coercion that it's applying to Taiwan or China's growing ambition in the economic and technology space. I've often joked with my Chinese friends over the years, you know, for one of the first times in their history, I think Chinese friends were very transparent when they issued Made in China 2025 and really revealed explicitly in their own public documents, their ambition to dominate most of the high-tech sectors of the 21st century economy. So, and again, I think that's something that... I think it's something that's very representative of President Xi's own ambitions. And, you know, when he talks about the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, I think it shows something about his own personal beliefs. Speaker 3 (11:53) And how do you think Xi is looking at the U.S.-China relationship? What is he, if he has these big ambitious goals, what does that mean for U.S.-China dynamics, especially ahead of this big meeting next week? Speaker 2 (12:07) Well, I've often said for Chinese leaders, I think the United States is the one actor that can spoil their party, both literally and figuratively. I think for President Xi, you know, he has to recognize certain facts. The United States is still the most powerful country in the world with the largest economy and critical market for China. But I think what I would probably want to do, Henrietta, is take a step back. Think about what are President Xi's and China's larger ambitions and then how does the United States fit into that? I've often thought that Chinese leaders, including President Xi, see the world in almost a series of concentric circles and at the innermost core and the number one priority is to maintain the primacy of the Chinese Communist Party and to maintain the Chinese Communist Party's dominance and rule of China and building out from that, I think, is to... to try to achieve security, if not dominance, on China's near periphery, and then to continue to build Chinese influence and sway as you get further afield from China's near periphery. So how does the U.S. factor into that? I think first and foremost, Chinese leaders want stability in the U.S.-China relationship. They want to try to prevent