About this episode

The episode discusses Trump's visit to China, focusing on prestige politics, strategic competition, and the implications for US-China relations.

From Mar-a-Lago to the Great Hall, Trump returns to Beijing desperate for validation while Xi Jinping treats him to strategic flattery. It’s the first time an American president has been to China in seven years. It deserves a podcast, although, as Trivium said, the outcomes could have been an email instead of a summit. Today’s guests are Sergey Radchenko, author of To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power — which won a ChinaTalk Book of the Year award and got the four-hour podcast treatment — as well as ChinaTalk regulars Kevin Xu of Interconnected and Jon Czin, formerly of the CIA and NSC, now with Brookings. Our conversation covers: Prestige politics on the cheap — How Trump's delegation gawked at Chinese architecture while Xi scored propaganda points by getting the U.S. president to fawn over Zhongnanhai's gardens — reversing decades of diplomatic protocol. The G2 that never was — Why Trump's dream of running the world with Xi echoes Nixon and Brezhnev's failed détente, and how strategic competition makes genuine cooperation impossible regardless of personal chemistry. The AI factor — As Beijing struggles with compute constraints and export controls, the…

People in this episode

Host: Jordan Schneider

Guests: Sergey Radchenko, Kevin Xu, Jon Czin

Topics covered

• prestige politics
• US-China relations
• AI safety
• diplomatic protocol
• strategic competition
• midterm elections

Keywords

• Trump
• China
• Xi Jinping
• diplomacy
• AI
• politics
• midterms
• prestige
• summit

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power

Places: Beijing, China, Mar-a-Lago, Zhongnanhai, United States

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