We had a fascinating conversation about US-China relations, now and in Trump’s first term, when he was Washington Bureau Chief, for the FT, Trump’s delayed China trip and why it may be delayed longer than 5-6 weeks, Taiwan, and the visit later this week to Washington by Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi.

Thank you to Demetri and everyone who tuned in live, and please do subscribe to him on Substack @

From 2011-2018 he was the Director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In 2012 he planned and organized a visit to the US of a delegation led by then-Defense Minister General Liang Guanglie. Zhang Youxia was part of the delegation.

We had a great discussion about his personal experience shepherding Zhang Youxia around the US many years ago, his work on US-China military-to-military relations, and the disappearance in 2023 of South China Morning Post reporter Minnie Chan.

Drew wrote about his experience with Zhang in the excellent The demise of Zhang Youxia hits different. You can subscribe to him @

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I learned a lot from the paper and the conversation, and we had a good discussion at the end about whether or not China is using this security cooperation and training to export its governance model.

From the summary of the paper:

Global outreach by China’s internal security agencies is expanding. As China’s Global Security Initiative externalizes a concept of security focused on domestic stability and regime protection, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has increased its efforts to train and build capacity among foreign law enforcement and internal security forces around the world, including across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Foreign police training is one of the most concrete and measurable outcomes associated with the Global Security Initiative, as President Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders have publicly committed to training thousands of foreign security officers in multiple high-profile appearances.

This paper examines China’s foreign police, security, and paramilitary training from 2000 to 2025. It draws on an original new dataset of nearly 900 trainings provided to at least 138 countries and places these trainings in the wider context of Chinese soft power, foreign policy objectives and projects such as the Global Security Initiative, broader patterns of Chinese security engagement, and Beijing’s narratives about China’s role as a global security provider.

You can read the whole paper here.

Earlier this year they published A New World Cop on the Beat? China’s Internal Security Outreach Under the Global Security Initiative.

2023 - The Global Security Initiative Concept Paper_Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China

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From a synopsis of the book:

In The Highest Exam, authors Ruixue Jia, Hongbin Li, and Claire Cousineau present a sweeping, data-rich account of China’s exam-centered education system — a “centralized, hierarchical tournament” culminating in the Gaokao, a grueling three-day college entrance exam. Drawing on decades of empirical research and lived experience, Jia and Li — both leading economists who took the Gaokao and later taught at top universities in Beijing, Hong Kong, and the U.S. — reveal how this state-managed system shapes education, labor markets, political legitimacy, and social values.

You can buy the book here: The Highest Exam - How the Gaokao Shapes China. It is well-written and priced like a normal book, not an academic one. You can not understand China without understanding the Gaokao system, so this is an important and very useful book.

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Tomorrow, Friday, October 31, at 10 AM ET I will host a Sinocism Live chat with Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li about their new book The Highest Exam How the Gaokao Shapes China.

Déjà vu all over again…I think that is how Yogi Berra would describe this latest pause/truce/caesura in the long-term competition between the US and China. I also think we saw some of this movie back in Trump’s first term, but maybe I have just been writing this newsletter for too long…

The Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea went as well as could have been hoped, both sides pulled back some of their recent actions and threats, with the most meaningful move a PRC suspension in enforcing the expanded rare earths-related export controls for a year, in exchange for the US pulling back on the expanded BIS 50% Entity List. That I believe is the first time that the US has agreed to concede on its export controls in a trade negotiation with the PRC, in a sign of just how effective those rare earths-related export controls are.

President Trump agreed to reduce the 20% fentanyl-related tariffs to 10% so I believe the effective US tariff rate on PRC goods is somewhere around 47%, still very high but more manageable for the PRC.

The PRC made the easy decision to start buying US soybeans again, with a commitment to buy next year almost as many as they bought in a year during the first Trump administration.

The two sides agreed on summits next year, with Trump planning to go to China in April and Xi to visit the US later in 2026. Planned summits usually help stabilize the relationship as both sides are working towards ensuring their top leaders have a successful meeting.

No one should be under illusions that this latest pause marks a fundamental improvement in US-China relations; just go read what we know so far about the forthcoming 15th Five-Year Plan to see how the PRC side is preparing for a long-term struggle with the US.

The Ministry of Commerce detailed the outcomes from the meeting:

The U.S. side will cancel the 10-percent so-called “fentanyl tariffs” and suspend, for an additional year, the 24-percent reciprocal tariffs levied on Chinese goods, including goods from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the Macao Special Administrative Region, according to a spokesperson of the ministry.

China will make corresponding adjustments to its countermeasures against the aforementioned U.S. tariffs, the spokesperson said, noting that both sides have agreed to continue extending certain tariff exclusion measures.

The United States will suspend for one year the implementation of a new rule announced on Sept. 29 that expands its “entity-list” export restrictions to any entity that is at least 50 percent owned by one or more entities on the list. China will suspend the implementation of relevant export control measures announced on Oct. 9 for one year and will study and refine specific plans, the spokesperson said.

The U.S. side will suspend the implementation of measures under its Section 301 investigation targeting China’s maritime, logistics and shipbuilding industries for one year. In response, China will correspondingly suspend the implementation of its countermeasures against the U.S. side for one year once the U.S. suspension takes effect, according to the spokesperson.

In addition, the two sides also reached consensus on issues including anti-drug cooperation on fentanyl, expanding agricultural product trade, and the handling of individual cases involving relevant enterprises, according to the spokesperson.

Both sides further confirmed the outcomes of the Madrid economic and trade talks. The U.S. side made positive commitments in areas such as investment, and China will properly resolve issues related to TikTok with the U.S. side.

There was no mention of Taiwan in the PRC readout or in Trump’s Truth Social post about the meeting.

There was no agreement around selling advanced Nvidia chips to China, though after the meeting President Xi did say that Nvidia and China would have further discussions.

Earlier today I spoke with , the C.V. Starr senior fellow for Asia studies and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and an assistant professor in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. Rush was deputy senior director for China and Taiwan on President Biden’s National Security Council (NSC), where he served from 2021 to 2024 and helped manage the NSC’s first China directorate, and so has a lot of experience working leader-level engagements, and has been in the room on multiple occasions.

You can watch the conversation here or listen to it in your Sinocism podcast feed. I think it is a really useful deep dive into the South Korea meeting and the state of the US-China relationship.

Read more

was deputy senior director for China and Taiwan on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council (NSC), where he served from 2021 to 2024 and helped manage the NSC’s first China directorate.

During his time in the Biden Administration he worked on multiple Biden-Xi engagements, so I thought he would be a great guest to help us parse through the Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea and what it means for US-China relations. He did not disappoint.

Rush is about to launch a new Substack called “The Great Changes 大变局. You can and should subscribe to it here.

You can catch up with many of Rush’s recent writings and podcast appearances here on his CFR page.

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Chris wrote a guest piece for Sinocism earlier this week on Xi and succession - Forever Xi Jinping? Perhaps Not.

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Ambassador Froman is president of the (CFR), and has had a distinguished career in the private sector and in public service, including as the head of USTR from June 2013 to January 2017.

He now writes a weekly newsletter called The World This Week, to which I encourage everyone to subscribe.

We also discussed some of his recent writings, including:

After the Trade War: Remaking Rules From the Ruins of the Rules-Based System - Foreign Affairs

China Has Already Remade the International System - Foreign Affairs

China, the United States, and the AI Race | Council on Foreign Relations

Thanks to everyone who watched our chat live.

Charles Parton OBE is the Chief Advisor to the China Observatory at the . He spent 22 years of his 37 year diplomatic career working in or on China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In his final posting he was seconded to the EU Delegation in Beijing, where, as First Counsellor until late 2016, he focussed on Chinese politics and internal developments, and advised the EU and Member States on how China’s politics might affect their interests.

You can follow Charlie on Substack @ .

Thanks to everyone who watched our chat live.

I highly recommend their newsletters, and specifically the two essays that prompted this discussion:

Afra Wang - Topology of "China AI"

Jasmine Sun - America Against China Against America

You can view an AI-generated transcript of our discussion here by clicking on the “transcript” button in this menu bar:

You can follow Professor Torigian on X. The tweet he mentioned about Kim Jong-il, Xi Zhongxun and Peng Liyuan:

Some of the books and videos we mentioned:

The biography of Peng Zhen - 彭真：毛澤東的「親密戰友」（1941-1966)

Yanhuang Chunqiu 炎黄春秋 archives

Stilyagi (film) - Wikipedia

Thanks for watching/listening. Have a great weekend!

He explains what to expect from the EU-China summit that convenes July 24th, and how EU-China relations have deteriorated over the past several months.

Apologies, we had some technical difficulties at the start and briefly again a few minutes in.

He is active on Substack Notes at

Robin is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and formerly Chief Economist at the IIF and Chief FX Strategist at Goldman Sachs. He writes an excellent and free Substack which I highly recommend.

Some of Robin’s views may be controversial to some, especially his argument that the PRC has more leverage over the US in the trade war because it was the very slight devaluation of the RMB against the USD just after the April 2nd tariff “Liberation Day” that was the proximate cause of the US bond market going “yippy”, which ultimately forced President Trump to back down. We had a good back and forth on that topic.

I learned a lot from the whole conversation and I think you will too. And if you enjoyed it please “like” it and restack it on Substack, and send to your friends and contacts.

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The trailer for Netease’s forthcoming Blood Message:

This is a recording of a June 9th, 2025 Sinocism Live conversation with , Founder and Managing Director of Sino Auto Insights.

We had a wide-ranging conversation about the state of the EV market in China, the recent BYD price cuts, Tesla’s China prospects, autonomous driving and the prospects for legacy car makers globally.

If you are interested in EVs, China and globally, you should sign up for the free weekly Sino Auto Insights newsletter.

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This is a recording of a March 20th, 2025 Sinocism Live conversation with Jonathan Czin, now the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, and before that was for many years at the CIA as one of the US intelligence community’s top China experts. He was director for China at the National Security Council from 2021 to 2023, where he staffed all of President Biden’s interactions with President Xi.

I learned a lot from in this conversation and I think you will too.

His recent work:

What Beijing wants from a US-China trade war - Brookings

Burying Deng: Xi Jinping and the Abnormalization of Chinese Politics - China Leadership Monitor

Thoughts on the political demise of Miao Hua - Brookings

Abetting competition, restraining Beijing: Recommendations for diplomacy toward China - Brookings

And his bio:

Jonathan A. Czin is joining the Brookings Institution as the Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and a fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center. He is a former member of the Senior Analytic Service at CIA, where he was one of the intelligence community’s top China experts.

Czin led the intelligence community’s analysis of Chinese politics and policymaking, playing a central role in assessing and briefing senior policymakers on President Xi Jinping, his rise to power, and decisionmaking on an array of key issues and crises. From 2021 till 2023, he was director for China at the National Security Council, where he advised on, staffed, and coordinated White House and inter-agency diplomacy with the People’s Republic of China, including all of President Biden’s interactions with President Xi, and played a leading role in addressing a wide range of global China issues.

He also served as advisor for Asia-Pacific security affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and overseas at a CIA field station in Southeast Asia. Czin holds a master’s in international relations from Yale University, graduated magna cum laude from Haverford College, and studied at Oxford University. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese.

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Chris is President and CEO of China Strategies Group. He served for nearly two decades in the United States Government’s intelligence and foreign affairs communities. In addition to his work advising multinational corporations on their business and commercial strategies in China and greater East Asia, his insights on the Chinese leadership and on Beijing’s economic, commercial, foreign and security policies are regularly sought by senior Administration, Congressional, military, and foreign government officials. Chris also serves as a Senior Fellow on Chinese Politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis.

The live videos are first available in the Substack app, and that is also where you can find me most days on Notes and in the Sinocism chat:

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I hope you enjoy this discussion, let me know if you think I should do more.

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