Below is a complete transcript of the Sinica Podcast with Representative Rick Larsen.
Kaiser Kuo: Welcome to the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with The China Project. Subscribe to Access from The China Project to get access — access to not only our great newsletter, the daily Dispatch, but to all of the original writing on our website at thechinaproject.com. We’ve got reported stories, essays and editorials, great explainers, regular columns, and, of course, a growing library of podcasts. We cover everything from China’s fraught foreign relations to its ingenious entrepreneurs, from the ongoing repression of Uyghurs and other Muslim peoples in China’s Xinjiang region to Beijing’s ambitious plans to shift the Chinese economy onto a post-carbon footing. It is a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world. We cover China with neither fear nor favor.
I’m Kaiser Kuo, coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
My guest today is Representative Rick Larsen of the Washington 2nd District. Congress Larsen is one of the founders and co-chairs of the House’s bipartisan U.S.-China Working Group, which he helped start back in 2005, I believe. He’s been very active in China policy over the years and has consistently been one of the real voices of reason and moderation in Congress when it comes to U.S. policy toward China. I first met Congressman Larsen in Beijing about eight years ago or so when he was part of a congressional delegation brought to Beijing by the National Committee. Earlier this summer, Congressman Larsen published what I thought was an excellent white paper on U.S.-China relations, titled “A Four Point Strategy to Enhance U.S. Competitiveness and Leadership.”
It was an update of a white paper addressing many of the same issues that he published in 2019, and which I also found to be eminently reasonable full of ideas that I would personally love to have seen discussed more widely, and not just in Congress, but in the White House as well, and in the broader American conversation on China. Congressman Larsen, thank you so much for making the time, and welcome to Sinica.
Rep. Rick Larsen: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It’s good to be on, and I’m glad you recognized the work in the white paper. You call it, I think, a voice of reason and moderation. Not a lot of that regarding U.S.-China relations in Congress these days.
Kaiser: No, indeed.
Rep. Larsen: But despite the fact that I think there’s a reality to the difficulty of the relationship, there’s still a reasonable approach to take while also being very firm and strong on U.S. policy towards China — its leadership and its actions.
Kaiser: Preaching to the choir. Absolutely. Before we dive into the white paper, can you tell me a little bit about the U.S.-China Working Group that you started, its history? What has it been up to, especially just in the very trying times for the bilateral relationship since, say, 2017?
Rep. Larsen: We started this in 2005 with Mark Kirk, or representative, at the time, Rep. Mark Kirk, later Senator Mark Kirk. Charles Boustany, then became the chair as a representative from Louisiana. And then Darin LaHood from Illinois is now the Republican co-chair. I’ve been the consistent democratic co-chair of this group. Over that period of time, I’ve made the trip to China 11 times. The last trip we took was in March of 2019 with, I think there were six members of Congress on that trip, I take three Democrats, three Republicans each time we go over. But I haven’t been over since, obviously, because of COVID. We’re looking for an opportunity to get back there. I think from reports back to me that there is a desire on behalf of the National People’s Congress leadership that members of Congress do go visit China again.
It is problematic. You mentioned 2017. It’s problematic these days because the center of gravity in the U.S. Congress, especially in the U.S. House, has shifted to be much more hawklike than, say, being engagers. I like to say that members of Congress are no longer national security, economic, or human rights hawks. There’s punishers, decouplers, and engagers. Folks who want to use policy to punish China. Folks who just want to decouple from China. Then the few and the proud, just the folks who recognize, despite the challenges, very real challenges, there’s the need to engage with Chinese leadership on any number of issues.
Kaiser: That’s right. This new taxonomy of yours, I think, is excellent. It works well. I think you used the word salvagers rather than engagers. I still have some residual allergy to the E-word.
Rep. Larsen: But it might be salvagers that do that that you have to engage.
Kaiser: Yeah, absolutely. I mentioned that you’d published in the earlier iteration of the paper in 2019. But as you rightly note, quite a bit has happened since then. Not just in terms of China’s even deeper authoritarian turn, but also developments in the United States within American society. What are some of the major changes that you felt you needed to address in this updated white paper, and what are the new priorities and recommendations that are chiefly responses to the new reality that we face?
Rep. Larsen: Well, I think a white paper like this has to live in the real world. If you will, think about it that way. In 2019, I was thinking that the policy of the previous administration was just going to be that — just the previous administration’s policies towards the relationship with China. But even then, the previous administration was kind of bifurcated. The president at the time called President Xi a good friend and wanted to get along with him and people like Putin. While at the same time, the policies themselves were fairly strict, fairly tough, especially on trade and so on. So, thinking that the Biden administration would come in, and maybe adjust a little bit, or if not a lot, that didn’t really happen. The Biden administration sort of kept full bore on the trade tariff policy and then a few other things. But still, I would argue they have changed their attacks a lot when it comes to engaging for some constructive dialogue.
I wanted to update this paper to say, “okay, got it”. We’re going to have a tougher generally U.S. policy towards China, and its leadership decisions are going to be generally tougher than it has been under the Clinton-Bush-Obama years. Let’s accept that as a reality. Given that, one of the things I was preaching before the administration came in, in ’21, was that no matter what it did, the U.S. Congress was not going to budge at all on either human rights abuses in China or on technology policy sort of thing. That was basically Huawei and ZTE. Obviously, it’s much deeper than that when you look at artificial intelligence, at the CHIPS Act — CHIPS and Science Act — that we passed in the United States, and what that means as an underlying foundational policy that impacts a lot of other technologies. My view is, if this administration is going to continue to take a tough line, what does it need to stay tough on, at least from a political perspective, working with Congress, but also, what are those opportunities that can still exist?
So, there’s that level of engagement that’s necessary when you have the two largest economies in the world and the two largest carbon emitters in the world, and nuclear weapons held by both countries and so on, there has to be a place where they can talk.
Kaiser: That’s right. Just now, you’ve laid out a few things where you take issue, or maybe cherished hopes that the Biden administration would change tack a bit. There is other implied criticism of the Biden administration’s current policy approach in this white paper. One of the main themes in Biden’s approach that you seem to take issue with, I hope I’m not reading too much into this, is the administration’s tendency to sort of divide the world into blocs in a way that you suggest is reminiscent of the Cold War. You don’t say this explicitly, but the way that the Biden team has tended to talk about these in terms of China and the United States is in democracies versus authoritarian regimes.
I’m wondering whether you could speak directly to that aspect of bloc thinking. What, if anything, do you see as the danger of that kind of bifurcation?
Rep. Larsen: I think that in Congress you hear that a lot more than you might from the Biden team. The language I use when I talk about U.S. roles in the world is allies, partners, and friends. When you have the president going to G20 here in early September when we’re doing this podcast, he’s going to G20, and then coming back from the G20, he’ll be stopping in Vietnam. No one would argue Vietnam is a democracy. They would argue it is an authoritarian country, a Communist Party-led country. And yet it is going to be an important partner for the United States.
From Vietnam’s perspective it wants to be a partner with the United States. It’ll never be an ally. It’ll never be a democratic partner, but we have a need to build a strong relationship with Vietnam. There are trade issues that are important to the Vietnamese leadership with the United States. There’s also, from a Vietnamese government perspective, I would guess they would never say this, but they’d want to hedge against their large northern neighbor China. And that’s in U.S. interest as well. So, the idea that there’s a block created, going on between democracy and authoritarianism, I don’t think I should be making that broader case. But when it comes to what I think the Chinese government is trying to do in developing its friends and partners, I would say it’d be a stretch to say partners and friends of China.
The Chinese government doesn’t seem to want friends or partners. They want people, countries they can influence for other reasons. But I do think it’s important that the U.S. avoid Cold War type of blocs, but also it’s in our interest to have friends, partners, and allies for a lot of reasons. One of the points in my paper is that this isn’t just about the U.S.-China. The U.S.-China relationship is not a bilateral relationship. It is influenced by so many other relationships that the U.S. has with other countries. And it is in our U.S. interests to develop relationships with these other countries. It helps counter China. It can maybe help shape the environment in which Chinese leaders make decisions as well. But for its own sake, these relationships can improve U.S. interests for our own domestic economy when it comes to trade, as well as for global engagement on any number of issues, whether that’s at the UN or in natural disaster response or developing other national security relationships.
We should be doing some of this stuff for our own reasons, regardless of what China’s role in the world is.
Kaiser: That’s a theme I want to get to in a bit. Let’s dive, though, first into the meat of your white paper. You put forward four guiding principles behind this four-point strategy. These are, just in your own words, one, recognizing existing areas of conflict and competition. Two, expanding the playbook to include both offensive and defensive measures to compete with China. Three, identifying areas where cooperation is in both nation’s interest. And four, getting our own house in order. There’s a lot to get into here, but first, let me ask you about this. The first three of these really don’t deviate that far, at least from the way Secretary Blinken has formulated things — “compete with confidence, cooperate where we can, and contest when and where we must.”
He said this in a bunch of different sorts of permutations. He’s also said things like, “policy toward China will be competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must be.” But the three Cs are there. You’re pretty much on board with this idea. Is that right?
Rep. Larsen: Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much I’m on board with the idea. I think that whatever U.S. policy is going to be, it has to leave room for the engagement side of the relationship. There are current differences. There are very real differences. We’re not in the Clinton-Bush-Obama-era of U.S.-China relations. It’s a very different world these days. But that said, we need to leave the room for collaboration, for engagement. Generally, I’m okay there. I think maybe you’re going to get to the fourth thing because I got something to say.
Kaiser: Yeah. Which, I think, is great that you include that. That was part of 2019 as well. But you hit that even harder this time in part because there are so many other things that need to be gotten in order.
Rep. Larsen: Yeah, right. So, what’s happened now in this fourth point is getting our own house in order since it’s good for its own sake, but my criticism, if you will, of the Biden administration, this is not breaking news, I’ve been really clear to everybody about this, is what was the purpose of all this? We passed the bipartisan Infrastructure law in the United States — invest long-term and the basic foundational infrastructure that keeps our economy moving — roads, bridges, highways, transit, broadband, all these great things. We passed the CHIPS and Science Act in order to deal with the issue of microchips and how important those are to longer-term growth, passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which is really the driver of energy transition, the green transition in the United States and in the world as well.
We’ve done all that. Now, my view is like, great, now we’ve done that. Now we should go out into the world and say the U.S. has got its economic house in order. We are stronger for it domestically. And because of that, we can now confidently go into the rest of the world on the economic platform and on trade issues and use the strength that we’re building at home to make us stronger abroad. In particular, I mentioned the CPTPP.
Kaiser: Yeah.
Rep. Larsen: No matter where you go, you hear about the criticism towards the U.S. about trade, like, you have this, the U.S. has put together this Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, but it doesn’t allow market access.
Kaiser: That’s right.
Rep. Larsen: That is everyone wants trade agreements, but they don’t really want trade agreements. They really want market access. And that’s my criticism of our partners who are complaining about the…
Kaiser: IPEF, yeah.
Rep. Larsen: Yeah. It’s always only about wanting access to the U.S. market. It’s fine. But the USMCA, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement was actually based on the TPP. We actually used the TPP to make sure the environment was part of the trading act, make sure labor is part of the trading act. We also had this whole discussion about state-owned enterprises as part of the TPP debate. It didn’t need to be in the USMCA, but the point is, trade agreements are more than market access or about standards and setting standards. So, I’m just leading up to the punchline here, which is that getting our own house in order was one thing. Now we need to use that to go out there and push on these higher standard trade agreements, and we’re not doing that. But if we do that, it is an actual strategic action that we can take with our partners and allies that actually can help shape, I think, China’s leadership’s decisions on trade in the world. Right now we’re giving up that space, I think. My point about number four, again, around the domestic house in order is “okay, we’ve done it, and now what are you going to do with it?” We need to do more with it because it does have an impact on the U.S.-China relation.
Kaiser: You take these four pillars and you apply them across a number of issue areas. Just now, we talked about how it may be applicable, especially that fourth pillar, in terms of this one that you call jobs, business, investment, and trade. But there are five different issue areas that you look at. You start with national security, you go on to development and diplomacy, which I thought was a very interesting section. It doesn’t get as much attention as it probably should. Technology, naturally, which really touches on all of the other ones, and education. I want to go through these different issue areas. And while we perhaps can’t get into too much detail on them, maybe you can highlight a few of the main points that you’d want to accentuate in each, where we are getting things wrong and maybe what you’d suggest we should be doing instead.
There are a few points in particular under each that I do want to touch on. You’ve anticipated one of them, which was rejoining CPTPP. We’ll get to that. But let’s do these in order. Let’s start with Taiwan. The one that I really wanted to highlight is your position on U.S. policy toward Taiwan, where you advocate continuing policy of strategic ambiguity.
Rep. Larsen: I don’t think it’s in our interests, in the U.S. interest, to be very open and specific about what we would do in response to Chinese aggression towards Taiwan, whatever that… invasion would be extreme case, but what we would do with regards to Chinese action in Taiwan because maintaining that ambiguity, I think, helps maintain stability. Now, I used to be in the majority in Congress on that issue. I’m no longer. There’s been a shift in Congress to be much more specific about what we would do, and also being much more aggressive about arming Taiwan. There are challenges to that for a lot of reasons. One of the biggest challenges is Taiwan’s own military and its own policy and what it wants to do versus what it might be in its best interest to do.
But that’s a Department of Defense debate and Armed Services debate about how to help Taiwan. But I do think the strategic ambiguity ought to be a fundamental part of the policy, as well as continuing to press for, say, any changes that need to be diplomacy and dialogue. Because conflict in the Taiwan Strait is not only bad for the region. It would be bad for the world.
Kaiser: Right. The next section, I hate giving such short shift to something as big as national security, but it’s a 22-page document. I invite everyone to read. In fact, I hope that everyone does. Because you can sit down, and in one deep breath, you can go through it, but it still is chock-full of ideas. This next section on development and diplomacy, much of what you wrote focuses on American responses to China’s Belt & Road Initiative, now 10 years old. Perhaps you could unpack the approach that you advocate on that front. What should we be doing to counter? Should we be cheering for its failures, or should we be offering something else?
Rep. Larsen: Yeah. It’s a great question, because I don’t think any of my paper cheers for China’s failures on anything.
Kaiser: That’s right.
Rep. Larsen: What it’s really pushing is that the U.S. needs to do something. Don’t approach this with a defensive playbook. What can we do on offense? It’s an analogy that, I grew up playing high school football here in the United States, so I don’t know if the analogy applies to everybody, but the playbook has to have offense in it, and we need to go on offense in the world when it comes to development and diplomacy as well. So, just offering, just saying, don’t do BRI, just say no to all this free money — “free money” that China is offering — is not a message that’s going to work in the developing world of the global south these days. It clearly isn’t working. Now we have tools, and we’ve made some changes over the last several years, including the Development Finance Corporation, the DFC changes that we passed, we’ve got the Export-Import Bank, we’ve got other tools. Using them collectively doesn’t result in a BRI like or sized type of effort.
But it is what the U.S. can offer and we ought to be offering to some of these countries. The administration recognizes this. I think it can be better. But I do think that we do have some tools in the development side that can be used to not directly counter, but to show that the U.S. is playing in the world as well in some of these areas that are important internationally for development.
Kaiser: Right. I mean, this is exactly what you hear anytime you talk to development economists or anyone from the global south. They say, “What’s your counter? And why don’t you show up when the Chinese always do? America comes to town and we get a lecture, China comes to town and we get a hospital” — that sort of thing, right?
Rep. Larsen: Get a hospital with Chinese doctors and Chinese nurses and Chinese workers building the hospital. Part of what we’re trying to communicate is that, well, we can help you build your hospital, and have your workers do it, and so on. But some of this isn’t only on the United States. Some of these countries have leaders who make choices as well that can be really great, and sometimes they’re not. And that’s not on the U.S. But we can do better with the tools we have.
Kaiser: Sure, sure. Under jobs, business investment to trade, we’ve spoken a little bit about your call for the U.S. to join the CPTPP, the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, but make the case that that ship hasn’t already sailed. I mean, if, by some chance, there really were a will in America, there would still be a way? We talk about this a lot. Obviously, I would love to see it join that and RCEP as well. But there seems to be so little appetite for multilateral trade agreements right now in America.
Rep. Larsen: There is very little appetite, there’s no doubt about it. But yeah, I say make the case. The ship hasn’t yet sailed. Kaiser, one thing you have to know about members of Congress is that we always believe we can do something. Despite everything else, we always believe. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be a member of Congress.
Kaiser: That’s right.
Rep. Larsen: We are naively optimistic as a group of people, always thinking we can get something done despite the odds. I do think that CPTPP is one of those areas where the red carpet hasn’t been rolled up for the United States. In fact, again, there’s a better strategic reason. If there’s one thing that we could do, and in all the things I wrote in the paper, by the way, most of these are not my ideas. I endorse them, I try to collect ideas, and then the ones I like, I’m trying to package them together to create a thing. The whole paper and all the ideas, I’ll take criticism for it, and borrowing ideas, but the CPTPP, joining that is like the one, probably the one main idea in this paper that literally is U.S., you want to do better against China, join the CPTPP.
We get a lot else going with it if we join the CPTPP, but it is the one big strategic step the United States could take that communicates throughout all of the Indo-Pacific, all of Asia, that the U.S. is here, it’s a Pacific country, we aren’t leaving. That, in and of itself, would be a big, important message to the Chinese leadership. That said, we’d also benefit from it as a country with it, developing these trade relationships with the other partners in the agreement. But it is the one idea that would really force China to sit up and take Chinese leadership to sit up and take notice.
Kaiser: Yeah. I mean, it’s a kind of ironic tragedy that the original TPP, so many of the high-quality elements of that, were the result of American participation in the negotiations for it.
Rep. Larsen: If this was a publishing deal, the United States should be suing for plagiarism because we wrote it, right? We wrote the damn thing, and now everyone else is using it.
Kaiser: Well, we did walk away from it.
Rep. Larsen: I understand. I was in support of that. I was there. I was there when it happened.
Kaiser: Yeah, real pity. Under tech, which is sort of in my wheelhouse, I watch a lot of this stuff. I couldn’t agree with you more, 100% behind some of the points that you make, especially about attracting talent through encouraging easier H1B visas and the like. I was more interested, though, in what you didn’t say. I don’t think I’m reading too much into this. Earlier in your white paper, this is well ahead of the tech section, you say that you’re not happy with things like the aggressive export controls. What you say is you see this as a kind of defensive of “trip the other guy rather than run faster”. It’s the kind of defensive strategy that you warn against us pursuing to the exclusion of offense. Let me quote, you said, “If the goal of U.S. strategy is to slow China’s growth, it is doomed to failure.” Totally agree.
But you don’t talk about in the tech section these things like the very strict export controls on advanced integrated circuits on advanced chips and the equipment that’s needed to design and manufacture them.
Rep. Larsen: That issue was developing as I was writing this. A lot of these announcements have just come out relatively recently.
Kaiser: October, yeah.
Rep. Larsen: In the next iteration, we’ll probably take a look at that, look at the issue of chips more specifically, and determine what we can do, what we ought to do. But I do think that the fundamental point I’m still making is, what can we do? I do think, looking back in the late ‘90s, where it was, I forgot the exact name, but it had the rocket technology, and the U.S. put some restrictions on technology going to China in hopes that it would prevent this Chinese space program from ever happening.
Kaiser: Yeah. I mean, the culmination was in 2011 with the Wolf Amendment.
Rep. Larsen: Right. Preventing NASA and the Chinese Space Agency from cooperating. Well, how well did that work to stop the Chinese Space program? Right? It didn’t. The Chinese leadership has the incentive to create and build up its own tech sector, which I fully understand. We don’t have to play by the rules, and nor should we play by their rules as they do that. But we ought to keep in mind how effective or ineffective, as well as what the collateral damage is to the U.S. or partners’ own technology, economies from our actions. Being more discerning about export controls is important. I think the administration’s trying to do that. I think they’re trying to do that. I don’t think Congress wants the administration to be more discerning. It’s the decouples argument that I think is just doomed to fail.
I mean, the companies, I jokingly say that, I won’t name names, but large tractor construction companies aren’t leaving China. Large airplane manufacturers based in the United States aren’t leaving China. They’re not decoupling. They’re not getting out of that market. We need to have something much more realistic when it comes to thinking about export controls.
Kaiser: Right. I can’t imagine which airplane manufacturer you’re talking about.
Rep. Larsen: Can’t imagine.
Kaiser: I mean, you know, you do represent the 2nd District.
Rep. Larsen: I do. And the wonderful women and men who build those airplanes.
Kaiser: That’s right. That’s right. So, on to education, I am, again, completely all in with the proposals that you make. What I thought was really interesting here was that you took the opportunity in this section to really hit on this idea that everything that we do shouldn’t be all about competing with China. I’m reminded of something that Ryan Hass once said on this program. And you quote from him, or you don’t quote from him, but you include his book very prominently in your bibliography. I love that book. Which is very much in line with what you’ve argued this whole time — stronger, right? But Ryan said China has become the policy equivalent of duct tape, right? You want to fix America’s infrastructure, you got to talk about China. You want to give NATO a new mission, talk about China. He was saying we’re going to be using China to sell baby nappies soon.
Rep. Larsen: The old reliable.
Kaiser: That’s right. Anyway, I agree that the American education system is something we should be investing in, absolutely, irrespective of China. But here we are with Congressman Larsen writing about this, writing about investing in education in this section of a white paper on competing with China. What do you do? But yeah, what are the points in education investment that you want to hit? Because again, it’s not unpredictable. You’re talking about STEM education, but I think one of the things that I liked about it was that you were clearly talking also about the deleterious effects of the China Initiative, right?
Rep. Larsen: Yeah, and I think it sounds like, generally, we’ve moved past that, but again, this is an issue where concerns are real, but let’s be discerning about it. That’s not to say if a person either is a Chinese national working in research in the United States, or, forbid, is a Chinese-American with what people say would be a Chinese name that they’re suddenly a danger, which, again, that’s basically what was happening as well in the mid-2010s. That these people, those folks are themselves inherently a danger. But what can we do, well, okay, let’s educate our universities, let’s educate our research institutions, what is happening? What is going on? Why is this important? Why is it important to them? It’s more work. It’s tougher to do that, but it also might be much more effective. In fact, from what we know, the China Initiative, it really wasn’t all that effective in and of itself. These cases are very hard to make because if you don’t really work hard at trying to make the cases, then the courts will throw them out, which is kind of what…
Kaiser: What happened, yeah.
Rep. Larsen: But combining this, let’s educate the institutions, let’s educate research institutions, the educational institutions, the faculty, focus on that side. Then obviously academic espionage is real, it’s not new. Let’s not trick ourselves into thinking that this is something that just happened over the last 25 years, then let’s focus on those cases that are best to make and most impactful to make. Again, it’s not saying don’t do some of these things from a law enforcement perspective, but it’s saying, what is the better approach to be effective? So that good quality research that can help the global commons be successful isn’t stolen.
Kaiser: There is a through line through the entire thing that basically says, look, American strength comes from openness. It comes from tolerance and diversity, and that we’re threatening the very things that make us who we are.
Rep. Larsen: It’s almost like in a crisis, we’re losing trust in ourselves.
Kaiser: That’s right.
Rep. Larsen: When in fact, this analogy, it might be lost on some of your folks, I don’t know, but we’re all Simpsons fans. There’s a great theme in The Simpsons where some crisis is happening and Homer turns to Bart, grabs him and starts shaking him. And Bart says, “What do I do? What do I do?” And Homer says, “I don’t know, but in times of crisis, you go with what you know.” But that’s just it. In times of crisis, the U.S. should go with what it knows, right? What we know is when we have invested in our people, we’re invested in our roads, bridges, highways, when we invested in our science and our education, when we have done those things, the result maybe has been 20 years down the road, and it’s a really great result, but it’s always been a great result. Go with what you know. We don’t necessarily change what we’re doing because of China. Go with what we know and show the success of what we’re doing.
Everyone else will say, “Ah, but you know, once again, we thought the U.S. was going to be down and out, and it wasn’t.” That’s a hopeful optimism to have. But just because China’s stronger, that has been, and it’s more of a strategic competitor that has been, just because it doesn’t mean the U.S. has to change everything that we’re doing. We have strengths. We need to build on them and trust them. Trust those strengths and go in with what we know.
Kaiser: I want to be mindful of your time. Just a couple of final questions for you. One is, what has the response been like to what you’ve written here within Congress, among your constituents in Washington 2nd, and I mean the broader public?
Rep. Larsen: Within the U.S.-China relations community, it’s been very positive. I think there’s a desire to have a congressional voice saying the things I’m saying. In Congress, it’s an uphill battle. Again, the center of gravity has shifted. I have shifted myself. My center of gravity has shifted. Sure, I’m a little tougher than I was 15 years ago when it comes to U.S.-China relations. But that’s the reality of U.S.-China relations. It has shifted. As a policymaker, you need to shift some with it. But I’m trying to stick to my guns a little bit, stick to my principles about we still need engagement, we still need a relationship that has frank and firm discussions.
But in Congress, it’s really tough because we have this two-year cycle elections, and China becomes an issue for some members of Congress, and it’s better to be tougher than discerning. And so, with members, it’s tough. Although I have distributed this to the select committee and talked to a few of the Democratic colleagues about it. Certainly, a Republican Darin LaHood, he’s on the Select Committee.
Kaiser: That’s right.
Rep. Larsen: But this is my product, not his product. I want to be really clear about that. But at the same token, it is just tougher in Congress these days. You got to play the long game on this, I would say, because I know the Chinese leadership’s playing a long game on this and on their relationship. We need to have a long-term game that isn’t, again, getting back to what I said earlier, Kaiser, the U.S.-China relationship sounds like a bilateral relationship but it is not a bilateral relationship. The U.S.-China relationship is a multilateral one. Meaning that the U.S. has a stronger position if it works with friends, partners, and allies to advance U.S. interests relative to the United States and U.S. interests relative to China.
Kaiser: That’s right. You mentioned just now the Select Committee, and I wanted to get your take on that on Representative Gallagher’s Committee, who are some of the folks that are simpatico. I know Andy Kim, for example, all the people, to point to maybe Ro Khanna. Who’s on the committee that you think is reachable for, what do we call it? Salvagers.
Rep. Larsen: Sure. Salvagers, yeah. I think that is the thing to think about, and I don’t want to name names because If I name some names, I’m not going to name other names. I work with all these folks, so I have to maintain relationships with everybody on everything. But my guess is that when their report is done, and it’s all said and done, 80% to 85% of it, it’s going to be fairly agreeable. Because there is some consensus on some things. And there’ll be that 10% to 15% that just is like, well, that’s not where we’re going to agree.
Kaiser: Right. But some of that is framing the very thing as an existential threat which you certainly do not walk anywhere close to that line.
Rep. Larsen: No. I always believe an existential threat to any country is itself. That’s why I say we need to get our own house in order. We need to pursue our interests. We need to be active about that. I don’t agree that China is an existential threat to the United States.
Kaiser: Finally, what’s your sense of what’s come out of recent months where we’ve seen Secretary Blinken weaving Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and somewhere in there, Special Climate Envoy, John Kerry, all make trips to China. Do you sense that there’s an inflection happening over the summer? That things are going to come out, and we’ll enter the fall with a different…?
Rep. Larsen: I do think it’s sort of a rebuilding mode. Rebuilding those relationships with the Chinese leadership, given that President Xi is now into his next term and a new set of leaders that just provided an opportunity for both countries to begin reestablishing those critical relationships. Will they result in something? I can say like, is it better to be in the room having discussions or outside of the room trying to listen to the door? Frankly, when it comes to the U.S. and China, two large economies, two large carbon emitters, nuclear, they hold nuclear weapons, right? Other interests. Having the leaders at least talking to each other and developing ideas to continue the relationship is critical. I think we’re sort of at the restart of the relationship.
I don’t foresee it going back to what it was. But I do think it’s important that these visits are taking place.
Kaiser: Yeah, absolutely. Congressman Larsen, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to speak with me. We look forward to more sensible thinking from you on China policy. Let’s move on to recommendations. First, a very quick reminder about our upcoming Next China conference, which is going to be held in New York City on November 2nd in a wonderful event space, right on the East River in Midtown East. We have just a great lineup of speakers who are deservedly well regarded. Our guest from a couple of weeks ago, Yasheng Huang from MIT, he’s going to be keynoting the conference. Highly interactive breakout sessions where there’s just bound to be topics that you’re going to be keen on exploring with our speakers.
I’m just really looking forward to this. There’s going to be a game show, kind of like Jeopardy, but I’m going to call it something that doesn’t violate Jeopardy IP. Peril!, I’m thinking. Anyway, get your tickets now. Just click on ‘Events’ from our page at thechinaproject.com. All right, let’s move on to… hopefully, your staff has briefed you on what the recommendation section is, but Congressman Larsen, what’s your recommendation?
Rep. Larsen: I’m reading a book right now — Path Lit by Lightning, David Maraniss’s biography of the greatest athlete of all time, Jim Thorpe. It’s a great book. Even when I grew up, and I’m 58, but I knew who Jim Thorpe was. Jim Thorpe, we knew he was the greatest athlete of all time. It’s a fascinating book, both about his athleticism, about the challenges that he had in his life, both family and alcoholism that impacted him and many other Native Americans in the country. The whole issue of Indian Boarding Schools is covered in this book as part of the biography. A real challenging book for Americans to read, because you’re looking at both a human character who had this great reputation but as well was lived through a system that did not treat him well and many other people while the Native Americans in the United States.
So, just a really great book, about two thirds of the way through it now. I recommend David Maraniss’s book – Path Lit by Lightning, biography of Jim Thorpe.
Kaiser: This sounds fantastic. I grew up in upstate New York, and next door to us was a family, Jim Thorpe and Jim Thorpe Jr., and they claimed that they were both related, they had Native American blood in them. It was pretty obvious, I mean, they weren’t.
Rep. Larsen: I don’t know, but that’s the other thing about Jim Thorpe, he’s a baseball player. He was the first president of what became the National Football League. So, his sports background is important to the sports history of the United States. His Olympic gold medals have been formally returned posthumously re-awarded to him as well. There are a lot of aspects of American history in the 1900 that Jim Thorpe touched. But now as well, I want to make a note too. We’re now dealing with some of that legacy by trying to address the horrors of Indian boarding school history as well. And there’s a big chunk of it in the book that’s all about that as well.
Kaiser: That was great. Yeah, when we reinstated his gold medals, that was excellent.
Rep. Larsen: Yeah.
Kaiser: All right. My recommendation is… I just got back from another trip where I dropped my daughter off in Madison, Wisconsin. And my wife and I took, on Labor Day, we drove down to the Driftless Area. This was actually at the recommendation of a friend of mine, Paul Heer, who you might know. He was at the Office of National Intelligence. He was the China Director for many years during the Obama administration. He suggested we go down to the Driftless Area, which is southwestern Wisconsin, northwestern Illinois, and southeastern Minnesota. And we drove around there. Taliesin is there, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home. There’s a lot of actual Frank Lloyd architecture there, but just the physical location. This is where the area of the northern Midwest wasn’t covered in ice sheets.
So, it remains, it’s still very, very hilly and absolutely gorgeous. Natural canyons and kind of live stone formations and just beautiful country. Some of the most beautiful country in America I have ever seen. Highly recommend just driving through there. Highlights are, I think there’s a cave there. It’s pretty impressive. It’s called Cave of the Mounds. And then another place we went to is Governor Dodge State Park with lots of good hiking. It was really hot, but it’s gorgeous. That is my recommendation for the week. If you’re out in that part of the world, check out the Driftless Area. All right, thank you once again. It was such a pleasure to have you on, and really great to see you again, Congressman Larsen.
Rep. Larsen: Great to be on and good to see you again, Kaiser.
Kaiser: The Sinica Podcast is powered by The China Project and is a proud part of the Sinica Network. Our show is produced and edited by me, Kaiser Kuo. We would be delighted if you would drop us an email at sinica@thechinaproject.com or just give us a rating and review at Apple Podcasts as that really does help people discover the show. Meanwhile, follow us on Twitter, or as it’s now called, X or something, or on Facebook, or on any of the other renowned socials at @thechinaproj, and be sure to check out all the shows on the Sinica Network. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week. Take care.
