TOPICS DISCUSSED
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian on China and Taiwan
Outside of Politics: Best Books of 2023 So Far
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EPISODE RESOURCES
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CHINA AND TAIWAN WITH BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN
Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World by Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian (Amazon)
OUR BEST BOOKS OF 2023 SO FAR
Under the Whispering Door by T. J. Klune (Bookshop)
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford (Bookshop)
G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage (Bookshop)
Nine Black Robes by Joan Biskupic (Bookshop)
TRANSCRIPT
Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics. Welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today, we're talking about China, and are delighted to be joined by Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian. Bethany is the China reporter at Axios and author of the weekly Axios China newsletter. We've had her on the show before, and she is one of our favorite experts on China. Outside of Politics, we're talking about books and book clubs and with a very exciting announcement at the end.
Beth [00:00:50] It's that time of year for us here at Pantsuit Politics, our spring premium drive. For the next couple of weeks, we're going to be talking about how you can support the show financially. We're going to be talking about the content that we produce on Patreon and what that financial support means to us. This is a vital part of our business, especially right now, as advertising is a very unreliable source of income. If you value what we do here and the independent way in which we do it, we think it's really important to raise the curtain for you and tell you more about what your support means to us at Pantsuit Politics.
Sarah [00:01:25] Next up, we're going to talk about China.
Beth [00:01:37] Bethany, thank you so much for coming back to Pantsuit Politics.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:01:40] Really, my pleasure.
Beth [00:01:42] Oh, I'm so glad. Since we last talked with you, you have made a big move. I would love to hear about your move to Taiwan and how being mayor is impacting your understanding of the tensions surrounding China and Taiwan.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:01:57] Sure. Well, I was really thrilled that Axios supported me to move here. I pitched that idea to them a couple of years ago. And what I really wanted was to be back in this time zone as close to China as I could be. I've covered China for many years now, mostly from DC. I'm banned from China, so I can't go back to China proper. And so, Taiwan was the closest I can get. And it's interesting because I had visited Taiwan a couple of times over the years and really loved it, but I wasn't really coming to Taiwan for Taiwan. I was just coming to be as close to China as I could. But now that I have been here for getting close to a year, I've really, really fallen in love with Taiwan. And what has really surprised me the most about it, is how different it is from China. Previously, I had thought of Taiwan as basically just like China, but smaller. Plus democracy. And it really is so much different than that. It's so much more than that. The culture is very different. I mean, just the way that people act is very different. And its recent history is also completely different. Taiwan was colonized by Japan for like 50 years, and has a lot of Japanese influence. And before that they were colonized by the Dutch. Just many, many different experiences. It has really added a lot of nuance to my understanding of the cross-strait tensions of the looming China Taiwan potential US conflict. And it has added, I think, to my worries because now that I know a lot more Taiwanese people and have come to care about this country in a personal sense, I feel like the stakes, at least in my mind, just loom so much higher than before.
Sarah [00:04:03] Well, and that has been in the headlines. We've had a Pelosi visit. We've had meetings with Kevin McCarthy. We have escalating rhetoric in the US. and even the entrance of some leaders from the European Union. President Macron recently said, oh, well, this is not our conflict. Which I find it an interesting take considering the conflict in Ukraine. And can you walk us through sort of that escalating tension and where you see that coming from and where you see it going?
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:04:33] It's interesting because when I landed in Taiwan in July, about maybe a week or 10 days before Nancy Pelosi landed, I came right when that happened. And so, one of the very first things I did after I got out of quarantine was I went to Nancy Pelosi's hotel the evening that she landed. I was standing in the crowds right in front of her hotel when her convoy rolled up. And I was there and heard the cheering and people saying, welcome to Taiwan. And Taipei 101, which was briefly the tallest building in the world, lit up with Welcome Nancy Pelosi. And it was really quite a way to start my time. And then just a couple of days later, we had the biggest military drills that China had staged around Taiwan in decades. And I was in Taipei when for the first time China sent a missile right over our heads, just literally right over our heads into the waters to the east of Taiwan. So what's been leading up to that? It's been coming on for a while. And I think that we can point mainly to Xi Jinping himself and his goals for China and his goals for his own legacy. Ever since 1949, when the nationalists lost the Civil War and fled to Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party has had it as some sort of future intangible goal to finish the revolution, as it were, and bring Taiwan into the People's Republic of China. But it was always kind of a vague future goal of, yeah, we'll take Taiwan at some point. Xi Jinping has made it much more present. He has made it much, much more real. He hasn't announced a timeline for it. But it's clear from the way that he talks about it, from the way that he's giving direction to China's military, that he views this very likely as something that he wants to accomplish during his lifetime while he is China's leader. So, that is one big source, I would say the number one source of growing rising tensions between China and Taiwan.
[00:06:46] Taiwan's not doing anything. Taiwan's doing the same thing it's always been doing, which is just existing. It's coming from the Chinese side. Over the past 8 to 10 years, we've seen China continue to poach Taiwan's remaining diplomatic allies. Just a few weeks ago, about a month ago, China convinced Honduras to switch its loyalty or its diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing, leaving Taiwan with about between 11 and 13 remaining diplomatic partners. The other factor-- and I really want to emphasize that this is really, again, just relies on Beijing's reaction, but it is a notable factor, is that the current president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, is a member of the Democratic Progressive Party, the DPP, which is the Beijing skeptical party in Taiwan. Taiwan has been a multi-party system, but like the US, it has two main parties the KMT and the DPP. And the KMT is more Beijing friendly. And Tsai Ing-wen is only the second DPP president that Taiwan has ever had. So when she was elected, China cut off formal communications with Taiwan and has been harsher on Taiwan ever since. Now, that's not because Tsai has declared independence or anything like that, but that has been Beijing's reaction. That is what we've seen. And just the final point I'll make on this is that the specific way, one specific way that Xi Jinping is pushing forward this goal of unifying or annexing Taiwan to China is by increasingly restricting the space that Taiwan has on the international stage. So, things that Taiwan used to have or used to be able to do, China is constantly drawing new red lines saying that's not okay, getting smaller and smaller. And an example of that would be Nancy Pelosi's visit last year. That was not the first time that a US. House speaker has visited Taiwan. Newt Gingrich did, but China said, no, this is unacceptable. And that's just one example.
Sarah [00:09:05] Keep tightening screws.
Beth [00:09:07] I want to go back to what you were saying about the two major parties in Taiwan. I think that when we hear in the US. stories about China tightening the screws on Taiwan, it is easy to imagine that you have a unified resistance to China in Taiwan, and that every Taiwanese person might feel the same way about Xi's activities. Can you tell us more about the sentiments on the ground?
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:09:39] For sure, that's a great question. And it's definitely very different than one might imagine sitting in DC. or some other place around the world. I do think in the English language media we get a skewed perception of how Taiwanese people feel. And that is in part because the DP is just better at English language outreach and they're just hipper and cooler. Their English language media game is just better. And so, it's much easier to have their perspective and our stories. And I think it makes more sense from an American Democratic perspective. The DPP position is we're afraid of China. We view our security as being more guaranteed by the US and we're going to stand up to Beijing. And that makes a lot of sense. The KMT perspective isn't as intuitive for Americans. Now, to be clear, the KMT perspective is not, yes, let's unify with China. Rather, it is something more along the lines of we believe our security is best guaranteed by being closer to Beijing and having friendlier and warmer ties with them, because that way they will not be antagonized and they will not retaliate against us. And I think that was a very reasonable perspective and a very reasonable position for a long time as long as China maintained the status quo and was not actively trying to annex Taiwan. It is my personal opinion that position is no longer feasible as long as China is ruled by Xi Jinping or someone similar to him. Now, in Taiwan, you do get a range of perspectives. It's interesting. I actually just met someone in person last week who actively wants Taiwan to unify with China. That's pretty rare. That's a pretty rare perspective, to actively think that would be good. And in that person's case, that was for economic reasons. They believe that Taiwan's economy would greatly benefit from that and that there would be greater prosperity. And that particular person was not as concerned about political freedoms.
[00:11:55] Another sort of, I think, common perspective-- well, it's related but a little bit different-- is that we think maybe of Taiwan as being, well, surely all Taiwanese people feel under constant threat. They have a sense of being under siege all the time. And the reality is that people here just don't. Very few people feel that sense of gloom, looming crisis, just your average Taiwanese people. And that was a big surprise to me that most people were pretty chill or just like, no, China's been threatening us for 70 years. They haven't done it so far. They're not going to do it. It's fine. Everything's fine. Last year, during those massive Chinese military drills that encircled Taiwan, one of the things that I did was I went to this small island resort that is part of Taiwan. It was the closest part of Taiwan to the military drills. They were just over the horizon, just about five miles away. And I asked lots of people there, more than 20 people, "Are you concerned?" And about a third of them actually laughed when I asked them and they were like, no. So, that's kind of the perspective here. When I ask people-- and I often ask this question any time I get into a conversation with any Taiwanese person I meet. I tend to ask, "Are you worried about China taking over Taiwan?" Usually, the answer is no for a variety of reasons. And one of those reasons is-- this may sound surprising. Numerous people have said, "Well, it would just be a change in government. As long as it doesn't affect my life, it doesn't really matter, as long as I can keep living the way that I have been living." Of course, again, under China the way it is now, I think, have you not been following the news guys? That is basically totalitarian. The whole thing is that you're not going to be able to keep living this free life that you've been living. Taiwan has an amazingly vibrant civil society, amazingly vibrant religious spaces. I am constantly impressed by the high standard of living, the high quality of life and the sense of freedom and agency that people have. And sometimes I fear that some Taiwanese people don't understand that they would lose that.
Sarah [00:14:08] Yeah, and I'm wondering as that's shifting, those shifts coming from within China, how do you see that playing out in these narratives? I'm very curious as to how the Chinese government is sort of reporting and spinning on this demographic change, that their population is aging, that India is going to outpace them, that their economy is slowing down. Like, what is the narrative within China about these changes due to Xi Jinping and demographics?
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:14:42] Yeah. Well, this most recent news this month that India has now surpassed China's population, there were some interesting state media commentary about that in China basically saying, oh, that doesn't matter. That's not a predictor of success. Kind of downplaying it in terms of China's standing in the world. In a controlled information environment like China's where there's propaganda everywhere, when something isn't good news it doesn't tend to be addressed directly. The official government narrative wouldn't be, oh, no, this is bad. Even though, of course, government officials are very concerned about it in China. Rather, you would get discussions about here's what we're going to do to fix it. And so, now what we're seeing after finally the end of the One China policy back a few years ago, is now a more pronatalist set of policies. That is encouraging Chinese women or creating incentives for certain Chinese women have more children. Now it's a fairly light pronatalist approach, which is giving incentives and just raising the idea that it's good to have two children. It's good to have three children. It's not super harsh. It's not yet. It's not punishing people for not having enough children. It's not that kind of thing. I do want to highlight, though, just that when I say certain Chinese women, the Chinese government is discouraging ethnic minorities and poor people from having more children. And this is very problematic. It's basically saying that Han Chinese women are the people that we want more of. So, there's this very deeply racist kind of-- I'm not sure that's the right word. We're not talking about different races, but this a sense of almost eugenics. The phrase in Chinese is high quality children. This is a very deeply abusive concept. But, there's these plans about trying to lift the birthrate up. Good luck with that. Also, plans about insulating China's economy to some extent, increasing its resilience as the US and the West are trying to isolate certain parts of the economy. So, there's something that the Chinese government and that Xi Jinping has talked quite a bit about called dual circulation, which is the idea that-- think of it in a circle. You have Chinese businesses and industries and you have Chinese consumers, and trying to match supply and demand domestically-- not fully, but to some extent. So that the demand of Chinese consumers can be met by Chinese businesses and the supply of Chinese businesses can go to Chinese consumers to some extent. And that the different parts of the supply chain can be met domestically to some extent.
Sarah [00:17:54] Well, we can't be angry about that. There's some articulation on our side. The semiconductors.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:17:59] Right. For sure. This is industrial policy. It's the idea of having more resilient supply chains. This is what China's trying to do as well.
Sarah [00:18:09] Well, this is interesting to me, though, because it feels like a lot of the rest of the economic policy, he doesn't care about resilience. Like some of the COVID shutdowns and the way they responded to the COVID shutdowns and the way that affected the economy. That wasn't increasing the economic resilience. That's such an interesting contrast to me.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:18:28] Yeah. I mean, this is one of the problems of when you have strongman rule. And what Xi Jinping did was he wed his reputation to the Zero-covid policy. Now, Zero-covid worked great, not just in China. There were other countries that did it as well. Taiwan did it, New Zealand, Australia to some extent. At the height of the pandemic when there was no vaccine, the countries that were able to achieve that, they experienced great economic benefits from that. The problem in China is that they just made a number of missteps and blunders including-- entirely for political reasons-- not allowing western mRNA vaccines to be used in China because they had touted their own their own vaccines, which were helpful but not as effective as the mRNA vaccines because they relied on an older technology. And so, for political reasons, they only allowed their people to use the Chinese made vaccines. Then when it eventually became just clear that they had to open up, they felt that they couldn't because too many people would die. And that is a tough calculation. It is. But the reality is that Zero-covid wasn't sustainable forever. And for political reasons, Chinese leaders ended up damaging their own economy and deeply damaging the psychological well-being of many of their people. I've spoken to people who lived through the Shanghai lockdown last year, the six week lockdown where people were concerned about starving in one of the most advanced cities in the world. It was a true and collective trauma. And I've spoken with people who have visited Shanghai recently and they say you can feel it everywhere. You're exactly right that it's easy from a distance, especially with so much information control and so much propaganda, to view the Chinese government as being all powerful, all knowing, making no mistakes, having the perfect plan. And that is how they present themselves.
Sarah [00:20:38] Well, and there was that narrative with Covid. Our authoritarian government quicker to respond and better suited to a situation like this. And I think ultimately the answer was no, because keeping information from people doesn't work in a situation like that on all kinds of different levels.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:20:52] That's right. And I think the fact that we were even debating that indicates that how much rhetorical strength China's propaganda has in the world. Because from the very beginning that wasn't even the division. Because, again, look at New Zealand, look at Taiwan. These are really wonderful, well-functioning democracies, and they ended up having the best policies for COVID consistently throughout. You know when it came down to it, is which countries have effective public health measures and a functioning government. And neither democracies nor authoritarian governments have a monopoly on that.
Beth [00:21:43] What can we understand about the long term impact of that collective trauma that you were discussing? We're not seeing the White Paper Protests in the news every day now, but I'm sure that doesn't just go away. So, what can we learn from it?
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:22:01] No, it doesn't go away. I think one of the biggest and most long lasting effects will be a deep disillusionment with the Chinese Communist Party. It's so important to understand that in recent years, many Chinese people, particularly people in cities, people who experience the benefits of China's rapid development really have to, some extent or to a large extent, more or less supported the Chinese Communist Party's direction and more or less supported Xi Jinping because their lives were getting better. And during COVID, at that sort of the height of COVID when China was doing really well and people there could live their normal lives, and they looked at how the West was just in tatters and the US was totally floundering, many Chinese people felt a true sense of pride. They felt that they had won, that their system was better. And the last year of the Zero-covid policy, and all of those shutdowns and the Shanghai lockdown shattered that. And many people in China who had previously not experienced the true harm that an authoritarian in some ways totalitarian system can cause, they experienced that for the first time. And I think it was a deep shock to many people. And that's why these protests broke out. Despite how dangerous it is, despite China's wall to wall surveillance, there's no way that people can get away with this. There's no way that these protests are going to result in a change in the system, but they felt so desperate and did that anyway. And, yes, that protest movement was stamped out within days. But that sense of disillusionment has stayed and I think will stay for at least quite a number of years. And a loss of trust. Many Chinese people have felt we trust our leaders to take China in the right direction. They've been taking us in the right direction for decades now. They're going to do a good job. And that that sense of trust has been depleted. And one very tangible way that we can tell that this is true, even though it's hard to gauge public sentiment, is the number of people who are leaving China. Desperate to leave China. And we see that from the very top and the very bottom. And from the very top, asset managers and people who manage money flows for private clients say that they've seen a huge spike in requests or queries from Chinese people about how to move their money outside of China. They want to get out. Online there was a new kind of online term that became popular over the last year called "runxue". It's basically run study, so runology. How to get out of China.
Sarah [00:24:56] Wow.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:24:57] How do we leave? And then on the most desperate front we've also seen-- and just in recent months as China has finally opened its borders again to sort of let people leave-- a really big spike in the number of Chinese nationals who are trying to enter the US illegally.
Sarah [00:25:15] Oh, yeah, I saw that at the border.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:25:17] The US-Mexico border. That's right. People who are so desperate that they're even going to try that route.
Beth [00:25:23] As that shift is happening. I feel like we're getting more stories too about the attempts by the Communist Party to control people in the diaspora. As people are leaving China, how do we exercise more fear and intimidation and pressure vis-a-vis their family members and their friends? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:25:44] Yeah. That is something that really ramped up after 1989 when the Tiananmen protest movement was violently suppressed by the Chinese military. After that, the Chinese government did let people leave China. And these young generations, these pro-democracy students and others fled China in large numbers. And the Chinese government was very, very concerned, very, very nervous that these people would leave and then form really strong movements based abroad that would try to form a pro-democratic revolution in China. Why were they afraid of that? Because that's how the Qing Dynasty fell. Because Sun Yat-sen and others were exiled and they formed these pro-democracy societies in the US, and Japan, the UK, and Australia and was successfully able to do that. So the Chinese government isn't wrong in thinking that this is a risk. And so, ever since 1989, they have really vastly expanded what in Chinese is called overseas Chinese affairs, which is run by the United Front Work Department. And that is trying to co-opt Chinese diaspora communities abroad, to suppress critical sentiment and pro-democracy sentiment, and to amplify or create the illusion of amplifying pro-Beijing sentiment. This has been going on for 30 years. It has not increased. But what has changed is that now for the first time in a really big way, democratic governments and populist around the world are actually caring. And I think that the single biggest change that has brought the most attention to this, is that the US Department of Justice has started actually pursuing and indicting the Chinese government agents who are harassing Chinese people living in the US. Because a lot of this behavior can only be discovered and documented by governments who have surveillance capabilities and subpoena power and stuff. And these indictments have laid out in very clear detail exactly what has happened and exactly how it's happening. And so, those indictments have cast a huge public spotlight on this behavior that Chinese people have been saying has been going on for a long time, but no one cared. There's this sense in the US and I think elsewhere that what happens in Chinatown stays in Chinatown. It doesn't really matter. It's happening in Chinese immigrant communities. It's not real, it doesn't really affect all of us. But that to me is a very deeply racist view that somehow because people in the US are immigrants, they don't speak English, that what happens to them doesn't matter. So, I've been very, very glad to see that now this is something that we all know is happening.
Sarah [00:28:40] Well, and it just feels to me as if this shift is happening on so many levels. It feels like China stumbled through the Zero- Covid, through the lockdowns. You had protests, you had Xi really openly claiming power, becoming more totalitarian. And you see this pattern of ramping up. You see it in the investigation of the COVID origins. You see it in the discussion around TikTok and states and locales banning TikTok on government employees. You see it in a select committee on Chinese influence in the House and the discussion around semiconductors. It's just like all of a sudden everyone's very comfortable pushing back on this power because they see and sense some weakness. That's like it feels like the connecting string to me.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:29:37] Yeah, I think one of the things that has happened that has led us to this moment is that-- and this is a lot of what my book is about. I have a book coming out in August called Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World. And what I write about is how right around maybe mid 2020, the Chinese government, Xi Jinping, seemed to have determined that the West's time was over. The West was fully in decline. China's time had come and it could do whatever it wanted openly now. And I think that was an overreach. That I think that Xi Jinping has underestimated the resilience of democracies, of liberal democracies in the world. But in any case, so what we've seen for the past three years is incredibly brazen behavior on the part of the Chinese government. I mean, it has become totally undeniable that the Chinese Communist Party has no interest in respecting or following liberal norms; that, in fact, they are actively trying to undermine them, both in multilateral institutions and directly within democracies themselves, that they are willing to totally flout basic norms of sovereignty of other countries, of rule of law.
Sarah [00:30:56] While crowing about their own sovereignty constantly.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:30:59] Exactly. Thank you. Yes, exactly. And in favor of pursuing their own very narrow national interests. And it has just become totally undeniable. Even in Europe, the same discussion we're having here, this is also happening in Europe. And Europe for a long time they just viewed China as it's a purely business thing. And even in Germany, there's a discussion about how dangerous the Chinese government can be. I would say that this this present moment that we're at, where there's this-- I wouldn't call it a consensus-- but a very, very widely accepted debate about what to do about China's behavior. This is a result of China's own dramatic overreach and their own brazen bullying of weaker nations and of individuals.
Sarah [00:31:55] And minorities in their own country. And I think that racist stereotype you were discussing with the immigrants and other Chinese Western nations, there's an undercurrent of that in the way we used to talk about China and think about China and the policy of China. I think if you scratch a little below the surface, there are some of those really racist stereotypes that we were operating under and not taking those very basic behaviors into account from nation states.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:32:23] That's right. And I think that there are different racist undercurrents on both sides of the political spectrum in the US. And they look different, but here's what they are. On the left, especially amongst very strongly anti-imperial types who are very opposed to US and Western imperialism, there has been this sort of assumption, this belief that the Chinese government cannot be imperialists, that nothing the Chinese government can do could actually harm weaker nations or could actually threaten the US. And I think that that is deeply racist because it's saying that only white people are powerful enough to do harm. This is denying agency to the government that runs what used to be the most populous country in the world. I think that is a form of racism and even white supremacy but kind of inverted. Now on the right, the racism that we see is, I think, more inflammatory. And it's more based on the idea that China is such a threat that we cannot consider the individual rights of Chinese Americans or Chinese nationals in the US because their rights are so much less important than this national security concern. And, of course, this is also deeply harmful. If we can't guarantee the rights of everyone in the US, then what are we even fighting for.
Beth [00:33:49] And I wonder if there isn't an across the board white supremacy or racism or just myopia in our unwillingness to acknowledge that China's long term plan of investing so deeply in Africa, in South America, in Latin America, is a good plan. That those are places with growing populations and growing economies, and that they feel like a threat today, but it could very well be a threat tomorrow.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:34:26] Yes. And you touched on a point that I think is so important that not everything the Chinese government does is bad and not everything that they say is purely propaganda. For example, one of their big points is that everyone deserves development and that all partners are equal. Now, whether or not they actually act like all partners are equal is another thing. They have really, really pushed ties with the third world, as we used to call it. As you said, Middle East, Africa, South America. And the US has often more or less ignored these places or not done very much there, especially in more recent years.
Sarah [00:35:10] It's funny, Bethany, because it's the same people who want to cut those funds who crow about China's influence. It's so fascinating that way.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:35:18] Yes. Also deeply problematic. And as you mentioned, there's another point of, I think, racism there which is this idea that Africa as a continent or African nations as countries will never matter, that they will never have enough power to matter, that South American nations will never have enough power to matter. And thus it doesn't matter if the Chinese government gets in there with them and makes them their friend and all these. And the level of ethnocentrism there, of Western centrism there is just stunning. And I think it's really important to keep in mind that so many of US policies have harmed African nations, have harmed South American nations, that China is not currently fomenting coups in these places as the US has done, and thus in the third world, China does have a kind of soft power. It resonates in these places. When Beijing says we are not white people; we are not the West; we are a developing nation like you; we have suffered imperialism like you; and we can be powerful together and stand up against the West, this has real true resonance for a good reason.
Beth [00:36:39] And coming back around to Taiwan, I think that there is a growing easily digestible narrative in the US that we should care about Taiwan because of semiconductor chips. And that feels incomplete to me. And I wonder how you might invite us to think more broadly than that about the US interest in Taiwan.
Sarah [00:37:04] It does feel relevant to Macron's comments. Surely he has considered this. And if he has not, he should, just in case he wanted advice from me.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:37:12] For sure. I think there are so many reasons to care about Taiwan. And, of course, first and foremost is because they're human beings too. There's 24 million Taiwanese people and their fates and their lives matter as all human beings matter. But beyond that, Taiwan, in this current decade that we're in, this current century that we're in, democracy is not doing fabulous. There's been a lot of democratic backsliding, I think, for the past 15 years. Every year there's been more and more backsliding. Democracies are having more and more struggles. And Taiwan bucks that trend. Taiwan has an amazingly healthy democracy, and they have fought really hard for it. It's a wonderful example of democracy. And it's not that small of a country. We're used to thinking of it as tiny, but that's only comparing it to China. It has 24 million people. That would make it a small to midsize country. And it's like the 21st largest economy in the world. This is not an insignificant country. We need as many strong democracies as we can get. And just from my perspective as a career China watcher, someone who used to live in China, it's a powerful ideological-- I don't want to say weapon. But the Chinese Communist Party, one of the things that they say and many Chinese people believe because they've heard it so much, is that democracy does not fit the character of the Chinese people or Chinese civilization. And that is obviously nonsense. But there's actually living proof that is false and that there is this incredibly healthy functioning Chinese democracy-- 24 million people, Taiwan. And by Chinese, I mean ethnically and culturally Chinese. So, it's a living counterexample to what the CCP claims to be true, that Confucianism or Asians or Chinese people are incompatible with democracy. It's just false, certainly from a geostrategic point of view as well. Taiwan's location is important. It used to be referred to as an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the era of intercontinental ballistic missiles. That is less important than it used to be, but that still matters if we want to be just very, very realpolitik about it. And the semiconductor industry certainly does matter. I think those are a large number of reasons to really care. And I'll just give one more, which is that Taiwan is the last free Chinese speaking place in the world. After Hong Kong now has basically been absorbed into China's authoritarianism. And there is no other place for, for example, a free and independent Chinese language publishing industry that can support itself. For a free Chinese language press. For Chinese NGOs, Chinese human rights organizations. It's the last place for that. And if Taiwan falls, then it's just going to be the diaspora trying to keep that up.
Sarah [00:40:39] Well, thank you so much for coming back and talking with us about all this. Tell us one more time about your book, please.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:40:45] Sure. Yeah. It's called Beijing Rules, and it will be available on August 1st from HarperCollins. And what I do is I look at how China has weaponized its economy as its main form of power projection in the 21st century. It uses its economy to project authoritarian power by censoring the speech of companies and individuals, by shaping state behavior, by eroding human rights mechanisms and multilateral organizations. But I don't just look at China's own behavior. I look at how the US in particular is really complicit in that by promoting neoliberalism, which is an insufficiently regulated form of capitalism. And so, what I say is that neoliberalism created this regulatory void, created, in fact, a moral void in international markets, that the Chinese government has come in and filled with an authoritarian pressure. What I argue is that the US and democratic nations need to create a democratic capitalism, which is basically putting democratic guardrails on the economy. This is outside of a national security perspective. So it's not just about ensuring that power doesn't build our 5G networks. It's also saying that we should re-link human rights and our political values, the values of free speech and free organizing to economic principles in the international economy. And that's the only way to push back against what I call China's authoritarian economic statecraft.
Sarah [00:42:27] I couldn't agree more, and I cannot wait to read that book. And we will definitely have you back on the show when it comes out.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:42:33] I would love that.
Sarah [00:42:33] Yes. Thank you so much for coming and talking with us about Chinese influence and the changing role of China on the global stage.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian [00:42:42] Thank you so much. I love your podcast, so keep doing what you do.
Sarah [00:42:57] Thank you. Beth, we have a very exciting announcement about the Pantsuit Politics Book Club. And we thought a fun way to begin that conversation would be to share the best books we've read so far this year. Let's do fiction and nonfiction. Lay it on us. What are the best books, both fiction and nonfiction, that you've read this year so far?
Beth [00:43:16] So far, my favorite fiction is Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune. I think I may have talked about this on the show before, but when I looked back at my Kindle list for the year, this book is the one that sticks with me most. It is a really fantastical exploration of what the afterlife might be, and I found it thought provoking and comforting and humorous and just everything you're looking for when you want to get lost in fiction.
Sarah [00:43:47] What's it about?
Beth [00:43:49] A lawyer dies at his desk after having lived a life that is driven by money and power to the exclusion of real relationships with other people or with himself. He finds himself at his funeral in his spiritual form, watching how few people have come and seeing his former partners who did show up disparaging him as they sat at his funeral. And he is approached by a young woman. And she turns out to be something like a spiritual guide who is there to help him transition to the afterlife. But that transition to the afterlife takes place in stages, and he gets kind of stuck in one of them. And it's about the people he meets there. It really has a lot to say about how it's never too late for redemption and it's never too late to explore who you are in an honest way and to connect with other people, even as those other people might take different forms than they do in this life. And he finds just a completely new version of himself in the afterlife. And I thought it was beautiful and encouraging and challenging in a number of ways.
Sarah [00:45:07] Well, my best fiction book I've read so far is an older book. It's called The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford. It was written in 1945, and it's really about sort of post World War One British aristocracy. It's like an even sharper edged Jane Austen. I really loved it. I found it immersive. I found the characters hilarious. I did not like the Amazon adaptation. So don't watch that and think you're getting the whole thing. I've said on the show before, I really like reading older books. I like the pace. I like the dialog. I like that I feel transported when I read older books. Like if you're just a person who loves a period piece, you like a Jane Austen, you like a masterpiece classic, you're real excited about the coronation this weekend, Nancy Mitford is your girl. It's really great. Really loved it. It was funny. It wasn't light. There's some real heavy things happening, but I really loved it.
Beth [00:46:12] What about nonfiction? What's been your favorite so far?
Sarah [00:46:15] Listen, I know y'all are going to roll your eyes. And I really thought about, well, should I pick something I haven't talked about so much? You know that J. Edgar Hoover biography was really good. I am going to make a More to Say about it in June. It's so good. Listen, the writing is superb. Obviously, it's a 700 page biography of J. Edgar Hoover I can't stop talking about. What else do you need to know? But it's just such an amazing walk through the 20th century, especially if you like presidential history because he worked for so many presidents, and the insight into them through how they dealt with him is so interesting. I loved it so much. I read it quickly. Again, it was like 700 pages. Highly recommend G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage. How about you.
Beth [00:47:12] I am cheating a little bit on my nonfiction pick because I'm still in progress with this book, but I know that it's one that I'm going to talk about the way that you talk about the J. Edgar Hoover book, just in terms of how it's shaping my thinking about a lot of current events. And it is Nine Black Robes by Joan Biskupic about the Supreme Court. It is giving me the depth and texture about the people on the court and the decisions the court makes that I always want and that I can't really find in most reporting, even from some of the best, most driven Supreme Court observers. This really says like, hey, let me tell you something about this person's childhood or let me tell you about a paper this person wrote in college that I think has continued to be a through line throughout their jurisprudence. Let me tell you about why the Federalist Society put Neil Gorsuch on this list. And let's go back to some of these opinions that were really pivotal for him. And I have a borderline obsession with the Supreme Court that has turned very dark recently. And I think it's been important for me to spend some time thinking about that institution beyond this particular moment, and to think about those people beyond this particular moment where they're wearing the robe, and just consider who they are and what brought them here.
Sarah [00:48:27] I like that. I would read that. We wanted to have this conversation about books because we have a very exciting announcement. We are relaunching the Pantsuit Politics Book Club in a very different form. It is going to be available to our premium members only in a limited quantity. We're working with a new partner. We're very excited to share. And so, we wanted to give you a heads up as a part of our premium drive soft launch, that we are also soft launching the book club again. You'll be sent books that we select. We hope to have conversations with the authors themselves inside our premium community. We're really, really excited about this.
Beth [00:49:06] I think this is a great opportunity for us to share that we do things like this in our premium community, not for the purpose of keeping anyone out, but for the purpose of saying who's here? Who's in? Because the conversations that take place among people who have committed to the show in this way so much that they support its work just tend to be such rich interactions beyond what you can have on an Instagram or Facebook or even a public discord server. There is an opportunity to really get to know other people in this community and to know that when you're speaking, even if you're not on the same page with everyone, which happens-- there's some healthy and vigorous disagreement that happens in this space-- but to know that it will be considered and reflected on and respected. It's just kind of like coming to a gathering and knowing who's going to be at the gathering with you. And for us to have that, as well as the consistent financial support that makes us able to do this work as our full time career, (to read lots of books that inform our thinking on the show, to make extra content that kind of shows our work, here's how we're getting here, here's what we're processing) is really important to what we do.
Sarah [00:50:25] Yeah, we miss the book club. You guys missed the book club. So, when Lisa from the bookshop approached us about relaunching it in this new way, we were very excited and we felt like the premium community was the great place to do this. It's going to be really fun. It's going to be like a pure summer book club, fun, fiction, lots of conversation. So, if you're interested and you're not yet a member of our premium community, go check it out. Thank you to Lisa for coming to us with this opportunity. Thank you to Bethany for coming on our show. Thank you to all of you for joining us. We will be back in your ears on Tuesday. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.
Beth [00:51:19] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.
Sarah [00:51:25] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.
Beth [00:51:31] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.
Executive Producers Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handle y. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. Tawni Peterson. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Danny Ozment.
Beth Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.