Key Reflections

* President Richard Nixon, an ardent anti-communist, sensed an opportunity for the U.S. to pull China away from the Soviet Union. Mao Zedong was receptive because of ensuing border tensions with the Soviets.

* Pakistan became the essential go-between and couriers for Mao and Nixon due to having been very friendly with China and the U.S. at that time. 

* China today represents the legacy of both Mao and Deng Xiaoping. Mao instituted the political thought and political instruction. Deng initiated the unsurpassed economic development. 

* Xi Jinping has asserted his authority on the Chinese Communist Party both politically and economically. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a cornerstone of both dimensions. For foreign policy, relations with Russia have primary importance. 

* The resources that China has put into the BRI in Pakistan is not currently paying dividends. The Gwadar Port could still become an important hub for the Chinese navy. 

* The emerging relationship between China and the Haqqani Network (HQN), who rule Afghanistan as part of the Taliban, is precarious. It remains to be seen if China and the HQN can cooperate on economic and security issues.  

Transcript:

SG: Dr. Sajjan Gohel

JP: Jane Perlez

SG: Hello, and welcome to DEEP Dive, brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. Each episode, we speak to experts and practitioners in international security and defence, counter-terrorism, and geo-political current events to gain insight into the most pressing matters of global affairs. 

In this episode, we speak to Jane Perlez, a long-time foreign correspondent for The New York Times. Jane served as their Beijing Bureau Chief in China until 2019, where she wrote about China’s growing role and influence in the world. As part of a group of New York Times reporters, Jane won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for coverage of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Jane also is the co-host and helped produce the podcast series The Great Wager, from NPR & WBUR’s Here & Now, which reveals how the connection between the United States and China emerged from an extraordinary encounter 50 years ago between U.S. President Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong, the chairman of China’s Communist Party.

Throughout this podcast we will feature clips from Jane’s recently released podcast. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/02/07/the-great-wager-podcast

Jane Perlez it’s fantastic to have you with us on NATO DEEP Dive. 

JP: It’s a huge pleasure to be here.

SG: Let’s talk about your experiences with China because they cover so many different periods of time, including the Cultural Revolution and then the rise of the current President of China, Xi Jinping. But perhaps, let’s touch upon a key moment, that in many ways connects both of those periods, and that is the rapprochement between President Richard Nixon and Mao of China, which took place in the early ‘70s. And in many ways, was a game changer when it came to the West’s interaction with China. And in fact, you have produced a podcast: The Great Wager where you look at that. Why is that such an important moment in time, in history, for us to understand?

JP: The main importance of it is that Richard Nixon was one of America’s great anti-communists, and he came to the presidency with a changed mind and saw that China and the Soviet Union were two big communist countries, but they were no longer getting along. And he saw a great opportunity for the United States. He was worried that the Soviet Union was gaining parity with the United States on nuclear weapons, and he figured that if he could pull China away from the Soviet Union and bring it to America’s side, America would be in the catbird seat.

SG: And what were the key moments, or people, or entities, involved that brought Nixon and Mao together?

JP: Well, there were two, organisers, under the sort of organising principle—there was this big principle that Nixon outlined, and by the way, Mao Zedong was quite open to it too, because he was fed up with the Russians who were bearing down on his border, and there were fights on the Chinese-Soviet Union border between the two militaries. So, Mao was casting around too, and his advisors, one of his advisors, Chen Yi, the Foreign Minister, had said to Mao “play the America card.” 

So, the key players beyond Nixon and Mao were Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai. And there’s a very interesting story about Henry Kissinger. Nixon had been in the Oval Office for just a couple of weeks, and he called in Kissinger, and he said, “I want to do a rapprochement with China, get going.” And Kissinger came out of this meeting, and said to his deputy, Haig—General Haig— “he wants to get together with China, he must be crazy.” And you know, for our benefit, for our podcast, The Great Wager, which is coming out on NPR, we’re very lucky we’ve got tape of Haig saying, “Henry said, ‘Nixon must be crazy.’”

SG: In terms of the interactions, themselves, how did that go? Because there’s often been some bits and pieces to demonstrate it, some Hollywood movies have also shown what they think took place. But this must have still been a very awkward meeting between the two of them, even if there was a desire to meet.

JP: Well, before the meeting, there was basically three years of hit and miss diplomacy, but very determined diplomacy. And that was one of the reasons that I was interested in looking at Nixon’s effort at rapprochement with China, because I think it shows if you want to do something, you can do it. And it wasn’t so easy. In part, it wasn’t so easy because Nixon and Kissinger—they did agree, of course, that they were going to do it, Kissinger came around—they had to do it in complete secrecy. So maybe that was an advantage actually. But they had to cast around and find out who would be the intermediary. They just couldn’t call up Beijing and say, “hey, I want to come over, Mao how are you doing?”

And the first thing they had to do was to find people who could take the message to Beijing. And they first tried the poles, because that was where the Chinese and the Americans both had embassies. And we’re both sort of vaguely talking to each other about very formal matters. I mean, there were just very formal meetings about return of properties, stuff like that. So, the first reach out was Nixon sending his American ambassador in Poland, Walter Stoessel, to talk to the Chinese in Poland. And Stoessel didn’t know quite where to find the Chinese. And he basically found them—because these meetings I think were in abeyance—he basically found them at a fashion show. 

And the Yugoslav Embassy was having a big fashion show and had invited the whole diplomatic community in Warsaw. This is 1969, and so they were showing Paris fashions in the basement of the Stalin built Cultural Centre in the middle of Warsaw. And towards the end of this fashion show, the Chinese were quite prudish, got up in alarm, they didn’t like the sort of scanty clothes and of course, this is still a cultural revolution in China. So, they stalk out. And Stoessel sees that they stalk out and he runs out after them and he catches them on the bottom of the stairs at that big building in Warsaw and says, “My President would like to get together with yours.” And that was the first gesture that the Chinese heard about Nixon’s interest.

Clip from The Great Wager. Find out more: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/02/07/the-great-wager-podcast

SG: That’s fascinating. And that’s a moment in time that I think is so pivotal to understand the US-China dynamic, which doesn’t necessarily get the attention that it needed to. So, I’m really glad that you created a podcast on this. 

JP: But I have to say, Sajjan, if I can. So, it didn’t work out with Poland. So, you know who it worked out with? It worked out with Pakistan. Pakistan became the essential go-between. Why? Because they were very friendly with Beijing, and they were very friendly with the United States and the most discreet diplomats. I mean, the foreign minister at the time was extremely diligent, discreet, careful, and he managed the whole back and forwards of the carrying of messages between Beijing via Islamabad to Washington. Most of the time, it was Pakistani couriers carrying letters from Zhou Enlai in his suit jacket pocket and flying to Washington giving these letters to the Pakistani ambassador in Washington who would then take them to the White House—No cell phones then.

SG: No, indeed. But what did Pakistan get from bringing Mao and Nixon together?

JP: Well, I guess that’s a good question. Maybe they got diplomatic prestige and they were held in very high account in the White House. Nixon and Kissinger, of course, tilted towards Pakistan in the Pakistan-Indian War. And that caused a lot of fury in Washington, a lot of upset, but I think Pakistan benefited a lot. You would perhaps know more about that than I would?

SG: Well, it’s just interesting in the sense that Pakistan had very good relations with both the United States and China during the Cold War. So, it almost made logical sense that they would act as the bridge in connecting the United States and China, and perhaps ironically, it is now Pakistan that is getting pulled in either direction. In the sense that they’re having to make a choice as to who they want to align with. And at the moment, it seems to suggest that they are moving or gravitating to China’s orbit more than they would be towards the U.S. 

JP: Yes, I agree. And, of course, the beauty of the diplomacy—Pakistan’s role with Nixon and Mao Zedong, or more accurately, I suppose Kissinger and Zhou Enlai—is that they didn’t have to choose. They didn’t choose, they were really good friends with both. Kissinger took off as you know, on his secret journey—his advanced journey—to plan Nixon’s trip. He took off on that secret trip from Islamabad Airport. And there’s a very funny story about that.

Nixon and Kissinger were just totally obsessed with secrecy. And they kept on saying this over and over again to the Pakistanis. And so, the Pakistani Foreign Minister, arranged, basically took his son’s car—what was his son’s car? His son’s car was a mid-1960s VW Bug—woke up his son in the middle of the night, no, actually two thirty in the morning and said, “where are your car keys? I need your VW.” The son was totally shocked, gave him the car keys, and the foreign minister drove over to the guest house where Kissinger was staying, in preparation for the secret trip to Beijing, stuffed Kissinger into the VW car and took him to the aeroplane. Kissinger, by the way, was carrying a fedora hat and sunglasses in disguise, even though it was three o’clock in the morning.

SG: Well, I think as you said earlier, there were no forms of modern technology at the time, so you couldn’t get someone on their mobile phone taking pictures as to what was going on and uploading it onto social media. So, I wonder how they would have been able to deal with this in today’s age.

JP: They wouldn’t, I think it would have been very, very difficult to carry off this diplomacy. If you wanted to keep it secret, I think it would be very, very difficult.

SG: Absolutely.

Clip from The Great Wager. Find out more: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2022/02/07/the-great-wager-podcast

SG: Let’s track back to one thing you mentioned about the cultural revolution. Now, what’s very interesting about this is that you were actually in China, during the Cultural Revolution, and correct me if I’m wrong, but it was around 1967. And you’d gone to some of the major cities of China such as Shanghai, what were your experiences in China during the Cultural Revolution, because very few people outside China actually got a glimpse of what was going on?

JP: Well, I should explain, we were a group of about 50 Australian university students. And for the first time, an Australian university—the Student Union—organised travel trips for students to go overseas. And one of them was to China. So, we were a bunch of undergraduates curious about the world, no particular ideologies at all, just curious about what was going on in China. And basically, we didn’t know about the Cultural Revolution, we landed in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, totally unprepared, but of course, fascinated. So, what did we see? We saw enormous demonstrations in the main cities, Shanghai, Nanjing, less so in Beijing, demonstrations in favour of Mao Zedong. We were taken to communes to be shown the socialist way of agriculture. But you could see that the communists had ground to a halt, factories had ground to a halt, the whole place, the whole country, was in total chaos and in a standstill.

And then on our last day, before going back into Hong Kong, several of us snuck into what you might call a self-criticism ceremony in a big stadium. And there must have been tens of thousands of people and four renegades—running dogs of capitalism, as they were then called, I guess they were factory managers—were hauled to the stage with dunce’s caps on their heads and pointed at, and yelled at, and then taken out of the stadium. I hate to think what happened to those four people. But that was a very strong and frightening example of the political purges that were going on, presumably across the country, that were going across the country, because years later, we learned that millions of people died in the Cultural Revolution. We did not see that kind of violence ourselves, but you could sense it in many places.

SG: How did people in these major cities react to you and your peers who were there because obviously for them, it was unique to see individuals from, not just say Australia, but from anywhere outside the world?

JP: Great curiosity. I can remember walking on the Bund in Shanghai and being surrounded by a huge group of young Chinese, just sort of looking and wanting me to sign books—little red books—and huge curiosity. Very friendly, no animosity, a lot of intensity by university students who’d been quote unquote, “sent down to the countryside,” that meant that the universities were closed and they’d been sent to communes, been sent to factories to either work or take part in the so-called cultural revolution and they would lecture us for a long time on the benefits of Mao’s thought. It was sort of mass hysteria in a way.

SG: So, you signed copies of the Red Book? 

JP: In Shanghai, on the waterfront.

SG: Well, it’s an important part of China’s history, and in many ways, laid the seeds for its development. And I think it’s also strengthened the role of the Communist Party, even though, as you said, that millions died during the Cultural Revolution itself. Did you ever imagine that it would be a country that you would then end up returning to?

JP: It’s interesting you ask. The answer is yes, because that’s when I understood—that trip made me understand—that there was no way that China was going to stay this way. It was a huge country, people were obviously very bright, very hungry for knowledge, very intense. And you could feel that there was just going to be—there was a great burst of—burst of energy is the wrong way to put it, but there was a lot of—I don’t think this is just looking back, I think at the time we felt—just a lot of talent, a lot of curiosity about us. And you just knew that something was going to develop out of this.

SG: At that time, Deng Xiaoping had been a key player within the Chinese Communist Party, but he also was purged on several occasions too and it was an interesting dynamic of seeing senior politicians rising and then also being disciplined. And it seems to go back and forth like a pendulum. Is China today, the legacy of Deng Xiaoping, or is it the legacy of Mao, or is there a combination of both of them? 

JP: Well, it’s a great way to describe it. It’s both. I think the legacy of Deng is the incredible, unsurpassed economic development of China. He allowed it to march forward and to open it up to the rest of the world. And maybe the legacy of Mao is the political thought and the political instruction right down to the grassroots of Xi Jinping, who seems to be wanting to make China self-sufficient, and pull it back in some ways from some of the economic interaction with the United States.

But I have to say, I think that the terrible things that happened in the Cultural Revolution, have an impact, even today, through the generations. When I was there, as a correspondent from 2012 to 2019, when I was walking around the streets of a big city and I would see older people in their 50s or 60s, I would sometimes think, I wonder where you were during the Cultural Revolution. I wondered if some of the people that were in the same tea house or cafe with me, had participated in killings or near killings of people during the Cultural Revolution. Or had some of them actually been purged themselves? I think that the Cultural Revolution had such an impact on families that it lives today.

SG: Am I right in thinking that Xi Jinping’s own father was purged during the Cultural Revolution?

JP: Yes, he was. And Xi himself was sent down to the countryside as a young youth. And we know so little about how Xi Jinping really thinks, and maybe it’s a lot of psychobabble, but I think some experienced China analysts think that Xi Jinping’s doubling down on his thought, on the on a big ideological bent, comes from his experiences of choosing to be redder than red to survive in the Cultural Revolution, and then afterwards. That the way for him to survive and for the way for the country to move forward was to be redder than red.

SG: Redder than red. Well, let’s look at that, in some ways, because you went back to China, as you said, you always felt you would when you were sent by the New York Times to be the bureau chief in China, which was between 2012 and 2019. What made you want to go back during that time?

JP: Well, I joined The [New York] Times in the ‘80s and became a foreign correspondent. And I always felt that Asia was becoming—by the 90s, it was clear that Asia was becoming—the up-and-coming region of the world. And I guess, because I originally came from Australia, I was tilted towards Asia.

And then I got an assignment to Indonesia. And I covered Southeast Asia, from Jakarta, starting in 2001. And from that perch, I could see so clearly that China was the coming power. And I wrote a series of articles in 2004, called China’s reach and I, I hope I’m not being too immodest. But I think that was the first series of articles to delineate China’s growing economic influence, but with the economic influence also came political influence. And you could see that China was beginning to displace the United States in Asia because the United States was distracted. The aftermath of 9/11 was the most important thing in Washington. And China just was gangbusters in Asia. The United States’ predominance was being eclipsed year by year.

SG: Well, your time when you began your stint in China, it coincided—preceded, to some extent—Xi Jinping’s emergence as the leader of the Communist Party and President of China. Was his name already doing the rounds, was it expected that he would succeed Hu Jintao?

JP: Well…after Indonesia, I went to Pakistan. So, I was busy looking at the War on Terror from the Pakistan – American point of view. And even though China was very close to Pakistan, I wasn’t looking to China so closely. So, Xi Jinping was not a name that I was particularly familiar with, but definitely China Hands were very familiar with him, because when he was vice president—he was chosen as vice president in 2007, I believe—and he became the most travelled vice president of China, I think, ever. I’m not quite sure why, but he went everywhere. He went to Europe, he went to Australia, he went through Asian countries. So, people were getting familiar with this vice president who was going to become president. 

And then I’ll tell you, Sajjan, there was the most extraordinary lunch in Washington, where you couldn’t miss the fact that he was going to be the next president. This was in 2012, I believe, February 2012. Xi Jinping was the designated next leader of China. But he was still vice president. And he came to Washington, sort of an introductory trip, “here, I’m going to be the next leader.” And there was a big lunch at the State Department on the seventh floor—I don’t know, it must have been 200 people—and the State Department was very gracious because I was going to be the new correspondent. and I was invited. And I had a seat at a table close to the stage. But what I really wanted to say was before the lunch started, there was a lot of mingling. And I have never seen a crowd of Americans…Bob Zelnick, Stapleton Roy, all the big China Hands…they were so pleased about Xi Jinping, they thought that he was going to be like the previous leaders, that the United States was going to be able to do business with this guy. And it turned out to be totally different. So, I think that the expectations of Xi Jinping got smashed in the United States or in Washington, particularly in Washington…met reality pretty quickly.

SG: And then during your period in China, where Xi Jinping began to assert his own position and authority on the Communist Party, how were you observing it? What was coming across to you in terms of what he was trying to do for himself, for the country, and how it was evolving?

JP: Well, I think the clearest way I can explain that is several moves that he made. The first was Belt and Road. He went to Kazakhstan and made a speech at Astana,

I guess it’s kind of the political capital of Kazakhstan. And I decided to go along. I mean, it’s not like reporters travelling with the American president—when he goes overseas, there’s usually a backup plane, and American reporters can go with the president—I made my own way to Kazakhstan, and I got a pass to get into the theatre, the university theatre where he was presenting his first speech on Belt and Road. So that was a very clear signal that he intended China to become…to spread out across the world and challenge the United States. I mean, it was sort of China’s Marshall Plan, if you will, many years later. 

Then, hardly missing a beat, Beijing announced the Asia Infrastructure and Investment bank, the AIIB. And they had a very smart and interesting Chinese finance guy, Jin Liqun, head this bank, who was an excellent spokesman for what he wanted to do for the bank. He wanted it to…meet the standards of the other international banks in terms of no corruption, pro-green, etc. And you could see that this was a challenge to the American-backed banks, including the Asia Development Bank based in Manila, the two banks in Washington. So much of a challenge that the United States asked its main allies in Asia—South Korea, Japan and Australia—not to join the bank; it was extraordinary. And it was a failed effort by the United States. Japan didn’t join because they were the backers of—I don’t believe they joined at first because they were the backers of the ADB. But Australia and South Korea went straight ahead and joined AIIB, just ignored their American partner. So, there were steps like that that made it very clear he was going to be something else.

SG: In terms of the domestic dimension, it seemed that President Xi strengthened his authority inside the country, and that it also comes across that he changed the unwritten rule that seemed to exist in China that had been created in large part by Deng Xiaoping, which was that you serve two terms, and then you move on. And we saw that Xi is actually continuing for at least another term, if not longer. Did that surprise people? Or did that surprise you when you were looking at the situation unfold? 

JP: I think it was a major shock. People were just taken aback. One of my indelible memories of covering China was that very moment. And there was a little sort of sneak preview about, I don’t know, about 20 minutes before the official announcement was put out by Xinhua, there was some kind of leak that went out on social media. So, I remember calling…let’s say a Chinese academic, who was really a proponent of Xi Jinping’s foreign policy, was very much a proponent of China challenging the United States. And I called this person up at one of the universities in Beijing. And we were quite friendly, and he was so shocked. He said, “I just can’t talk about Jane. I can’t talk about it” and hung up. You could hear the shock in his voice. And I think people were really taken aback.

SG: Taken aback, and I guess the other question to this is, have people in China accepted it? Or is it that they have no option but to just accept it and move on?

JP: I think it’s the latter. I think there’s little choice. But I also think that as long as Xi and the central government can deliver improvement in living standards, that it’ll be fine. I think that we perhaps forget, but there’s a growing middle class, and they appreciate the growing economy. I mean, I think of people…I’m just thinking of older people, for example, maybe in their 50s, who were extremely poor when they were growing up. In the late 90s, they were able to buy state-owned apartments. Since then, they’ve accumulated enough money to buy another apartment or two, so they’re landlords in their own right. And as long as that kind of capital accumulation can continue, I think he can count on stability. 

But we have to remember that there are, what, 600 million Chinese who are still struggling, who are still poor. And there are pockets of opposition to Xi, obviously, from businessmen who’ve been taken down, from corrupt politicians, he’s done an enormous purge of government and the military. But if you read Richard McGregor’s book, Xi Jinping: The Backlash, and you add up the numbers, there’s probably about a universe of, what, five million people who’ve been affected by these purges, I mean, the people themselves, but also their extended families. And in the big population of China, maybe that’s not so much. I spoke to McGregor a couple of weeks ago, and he believes that the opposition to Xi is very muted, that Xi’s in the strong position, from what we can see.

SG: Has that muted opposition enabled Xi to assert China’s goals when it comes to, for example, say, Hong Kong? Because the arrangement that China had with the United Kingdom to do with the handover seems to now have become irrelevant in terms of how China is approaching the situation there.

JP: Look, I was in Beijing when the protests started in Hong Kong. I think you’d be surprised. I think, from what I could see, most people in China support the absorption of Hong Kong. They think that’s China’s rightful place, and it should be in the embrace of Beijing. No question.

SG: That’s interesting. So, another dynamic, which is coming into play here about China is its relationship with Pakistan and, in return, with Afghanistan. You spent a lot of time in Pakistan, covering the whole dynamic of terrorism and the challenges that were emanating from there. I’d be curious to get your perspective on the China-Pakistan aspect, because we spoke about earlier how Pakistan was such a critical entity in bringing Mao and Nixon together. And effectively now they’re being pulled in two directions, that Pakistan is being pulled in two directions, towards the US, towards China. The Pakistanis did not attend President Biden’s democracy summit, and the belief is that it had to do with [the idea that they] did not want to upset China. Where do you see the China-Pakistan dynamic developing?

JP: I think it’s probably not a straight line. I think that there’s some disenchantment in Beijing with the results they can get from the big corridor that they’re supposed to be building down to Gwadar. You would know much more about this than I, but I’m not sure that the money that they’ve put into Belt and Road in Pakistan is paying the dividends that they hoped for. But on the other hand, Beijing does want Pakistan as close as possible. I think Gwadar will become an important port for the Chinese navy. That’s very important for them. And I suppose the Chinese will continue to supply Pakistan with military assets. So, I do see China, if you like, definitely winning the tussle for Pakistan. I mean, the United States has been out of Pakistan for quite a while now, so I think China will win that battle. Don’t you?

SG: Well, it certainly seems to be the case right now that China have the advantage when it comes to Pakistan. And as you mentioned, the investment that’s been going on… time will tell whether those proved to be beneficial to Pakistan. It’s unclear as to how that’s actually panning out. One, they’re having difficulty developing the economic infrastructure projects, partly because of the insecurity in Pakistan, and then the own inconsistencies within Imran Khan’s government. 

The other dynamic, of course, that comes into play is Pakistan’s neighbour, Afghanistan, which is now ruled by the Taliban militia. And in many ways, it does seem that China looks to Pakistan through Afghanistan, and that China sees a potential opportunity to develop relations with the Taliban that did not exist previously, especially because Afghanistan has much potential in terms of natural resources. China had already made investments in Afghanistan but was never able to do anything with them because of the Taliban insurgency there. Now that the Taliban actually control the country, and in particular, one entity, the Haqqani Network (HQN), which is a proscribed terrorist group globally—Sirajuddin Haqqani is even on the FBI Most Wanted list, and now he’s the interior minister of the Taliban—you’ve got a situation where the Chinese are looking to Pakistan to help deliver a closer relationship with the Taliban in Afghanistan. What do you think about that, Jane?

JP: I think what you said sums up the situation, and it’s totally extraordinary that the Chinese should be having tea with the Taliban, who are the most radical Muslims you could find on the face of the earth basically, and at the same time, they’ve locked up a million of them their own Muslims, the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, to repress this very important Muslim minority. But it shows that China is, if nothing else, looking after its geo-political interests, and that the Taliban are willing to go along with it. Because where else are they going to get the hope for economic development? I mean, we know that there’s great lithium deposits in Afghanistan. China’s got a huge appetite for lithium, and although it might be difficult to get at, Afghanistan’s not that far away. It’s much closer than Africa for the Chinese. So maybe we’ll find the Chinese digging out that lithium sooner than we expected.

SG: I wanted to ask you about that, Jane, to do with the lithium, because it is true that Afghanistan has a massive amount of untapped reserves in lithium. Now, some people feel that it’s not going to be that easy for the Chinese to extract it. There are a number of geographical hurdles and practicalities that can’t necessarily be resolved. So, some say it could take decades, potentially two decades, for China to extract that lithium if they end up continuing their relationship with the Taliban. I think what’s curious, though, is that people in the West, when they look at time, they see it very differently to how China sees time, in that for China, 20 years is not as big a deal as it would be to, say, someone sitting in London or in Washington? 

JP: Absolutely, absolutely. So, people in the West are saying it’s going to take China two decades to dig out that lithium. I would say halve that, and maybe halve that again. I think the market for electric cars in China is just growing so fast. And look, I’m not a geologist, and I’m not an engineer, but I’m sure there are ways to get this lithium out of the mountains.

SG: Yes. Time will tell whether all our car batteries will end up coming via Afghanistan.

JP: Very interesting question. Can you imagine Afghanistan being a rich country off the back of Chinese mined lithium?

SG: Well unfortunately I can certainly imagine the Haqqani Network making a lot of money from whatever opportunities there are, which will probably be at the expense of ordinary Afghans.

JP: Unfortunately.

SG: One other thing I wanted to ask you, Jane, about is that there were a lot of Western based journalists in China but were asked to leave by the Chinese government. What is the latest situation on that?

JP: Well, I’ll just back up for one moment if I can, which is to point out that this was really a reciprocal act by the Chinese. The Trump administration expelled dozens of Chinese journalists who were in the United States on the grounds that they were quote, unquote, “spies.” These were journalists with state-run Chinese media, who no doubt did write papers back to the security services saying this and that. But that’s part of the bargain, what’s so unusual? But the Trump administration decided to, as part of its policy towards China, to expel them. So, the Chinese then turned around and expelled a lot of Western journalists. And that means that Western journalists who were in Beijing or Shanghai, now have to try and cover the country from South Korea or Taiwan, very, very difficult indeed. 

And for those Western journalists who are in China, reporting has become tremendously difficult. The harassment by the State Security Services is intense, it was always there, but it’s become much more intense. The new factor, and the very disturbing factor, is that Chinese people on the street have become very hostile to Western journalists. And this makes it very difficult to talk to ordinary people. It makes old and trusted sources very nervous, and makes it impossible, almost, for many of these people to talk to Western journalists. So, the atmosphere is extremely worrying.

SG: Why is there that hostility by people in China towards these journalists?

JP: I think that the barrage of state propaganda about the United States in particular, and other countries, being characterised as being hostile to China. The United States is characterised as being a nation in decline. I think this gets through quite intensely. And that is, at the same time, there’s enormous propaganda about how great China is. Chinese nationalism is on the rise. It’s on the rise on screens, on TV, in schools. It’s very intense that China has arrived, China is a great power. That’s fine, China is a great power. But I think it’s become very intense, and it sounds as though it’s become quite intolerant of some other countries—some other competitive countries.

SG: Jane, you said that China has arrived, that it’s a great power. And certainly, China has a lot of influence globally. This then ties into the current, huge problem that the West is facing, which is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There is a belief that China could help to stop Putin’s war machine from ravaging Ukraine further. Do you think that China can temper Russia’s actions? Do you think that China wants to stop this from getting worse?

JP: Well, I have to temper whatever I say with the upfront notion that decision-making at the top of the Chinese government, which is basically Xi Jinping, is a black box. And it’s very hard to know whether he would want to—how much he would want to influence Putin. You could say that Xi Jinping and China have benefited a lot from globalisation and the good economic conditions of the last number of years. It’s hard to believe that China really likes this instability that the war in Ukraine is causing. 

On the other hand, Xi has made very clear he’s a big admirer of Putin. Now, whether he says that just for public relations, that’s also hard to know. But he has gone out of his way to say that Putin is my best friend, that he and I “share the same personality.” They’ve met 38 times. So, it’s hard to see how he can turn tables even a little bit on Putin. 

So, the influence of China on Russia? Look, they both have the same outlook in many ways. They both think that the United States is in decay. They both want to see the United States supplanted as the number one power in the world. They both would like to see the United States out of Europe. So, they have, it would seem, a lot of shared goals. But it is very worrying. And it’s obviously a huge change, that China is not neutral in this they say they’re neutral, but it’s a kind of pseudo-neutrality, and Xi Jinping certainly seems to have Putin’s back

SG: Well, Jane, it’s been fantastic to have you on DEEP Dive. I’m very grateful that you could spend the time talking on so many perspectives to do with China and across several periods and just providing a very rich perspective. I’m most appreciative of you joining us.

JP: Well, I enjoyed it immensely, Sajjan, and it’s really great to have caught up with you in person and to exchange views on what are basically quite important questions, I guess.

SG: And hopefully we can talk to you again as to how this continues to unfold. 

JP: Definitely. Thank you. 

SG: Thank you for listening to this episode of DEEP Dive. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. DEEP Dive is brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. The production and research team are Marcus Andreopoulos and Victoria Jones. For additional content, including full transcripts of each episode, please visit: deepportal.hq.nato.int/deepdive

Disclaimer: Please note that the views, information, or opinions expressed in the DEEP Dive series are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of NATO or DEEP.