In Episode 149 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Orville Schell, Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society about the implications of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s monumental speech at the Nixon Library, the history of engagement with China’s Communist Party, and what a New Cold War with China will mean for the future of peace and security.
Dr. Schell’s career as a China scholar spans the entire arch of US-Sino relations since Nixon’s fateful trip to the Middle Kingdom in 1972 and the opening up of China to the world.
The same year (1967) that Dr. Schell earned his master’s degree in Chinese studies an astounding 70 percent of Americans agreed on one thing: the greatest threat to U.S. security was the People’s Republic of China. After fifty years of engagement where relations between the two nations would improve dramatically, Americans are now back to viewing China as an enemy.
A Pew Research Center poll conducted in March 2020 shows that roughly two-thirds of Americans now say they have an unfavorable view of China, the most negative rating for the country since the Center began asking the question in 2005, and up nearly 20 percentage points since the start of the Trump administration. Positive views of China’s leader, President Xi Jinping, are also at historically low levels.
In a recent speech delivered at the Nixon Presidential Library, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared the failure of 50 years of engagement with China and called for the free world to stand up against this “new tyranny” in what felt very much like the beginning of a new cold war.
“It’s true, there are differences,” remarked Pompeo, when contrasting China to the USSR. “Unlike the Soviet Union, China is deeply integrated into the global economy. But Beijing is more dependent on us than we are on them.” “I reject the notion,” he continued, “that we’re living in an age of inevitability, that some trap is pre-ordained, that CCP supremacy is the future. . . . If we bend the knee now, our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party, whose actions are the primary challenge today in the free world. General Secretary Xi is not destined to tyrannize inside and outside of China forever unless we allow it.”
In their conversation, Orville Schell and Demetri Kofinas discuss the speech, what it means for US-Sino relations, and the implications of disengagement for the US, China, and the world.
You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Supercast Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
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Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at Asia Society in New York. He is a former professor and Dean at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Schell is the author of fifteen books, ten of them about China, contributed to numerous edited volumes and has written widely for many magazine and newspapers, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Time, The New Republic, Harpers, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Wired, Foreign Affairs, the China Quarterly, and The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Schell was born in New York City, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University in Far Eastern History, was an exchange student at National Taiwan University in the 1960s, and earned a Ph.D. (Abd) at University of California, Berkeley in Chinese History. He worked for the Ford Foundation in Indonesia, covered the war in Indochina as a journalist, and has traveled widely in China since the mid-70s. He is a Fellow at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University, a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communications at USC, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Schell is also the recipient of many prizes and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Overseas Press Club Award, and the Harvard-Stanford Shorenstein Prize in Asian Journalism.
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Eaedem enim utilitates poterunt eas labefactare atque pervertere. Quamquam id quidem licebit iis existimare, qui legerint.
Duo Reges: constructio interrete. Eadem nunc mea adversum te oratio est.
Et ille ridens: Video, inquit, quid agas; Quamquam in hac divisione rem ipsam prorsus probo, elegantiam desidero. Quia nec honesto quic quam honestius nec turpi turpius. Primum quid tu dicis breve? Tamen aberramus a proposito, et, ne longius, prorsus, inquam, Piso, si ista mala sunt, placet. Ad corpus diceres pertinere-, sed ea, quae dixi, ad corpusne refers? Sed nonne merninisti licere mihi ista probare, quae sunt a te dicta? Quem si tenueris, non modo meum Ciceronem, sed etiam me ipsum abducas licebit. Respondent extrema primis, media utrisque, omnia omnibus. An eum discere ea mavis, quae cum plane perdidiceriti nihil sciat? Utilitatis causa amicitia est quaesita. Ergo illi intellegunt quid Epicurus dicat, ego non intellego?
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Non igitur bene. Quis est, qui non oderit libidinosam, protervam adolescentiam? Tollenda est atque extrahenda radicitus. Ut in voluptate sit, qui epuletur, in dolore, qui torqueatur. Nam illud vehementer repugnat, eundem beatum esse et multis malis oppressum. Virtutis, magnitudinis animi, patientiae, fortitudinis fomentis dolor mitigari solet. Mene ergo et Triarium dignos existimas, apud quos turpiter loquare?
Nunc vero a primo quidem mirabiliter occulta natura est nec perspici nec cognosci potest. Si enim ad populum me vocas, eum. Restinguet citius, si ardentem acceperit. Re mihi non aeque satisfacit, et quidem locis pluribus. Traditur, inquit, ab Epicuro ratio neglegendi doloris. Quis animo aequo videt eum, quem inpure ac flagitiose putet vivere? Quae hic rei publicae vulnera inponebat, eadem ille sanabat. Quod cum dixissent, ille contra.
Conclusum est enim contra Cyrenaicos satis acute, nihil ad Epicurum. Sed haec omittamus; Quorum altera prosunt, nocent altera. Conferam tecum, quam cuique verso rem subicias; Tecum optime, deinde etiam cum mediocri amico. Sed tamen enitar et, si minus multa mihi occurrent, non fugiam ista popularia. Si verbum sequimur, primum longius verbum praepositum quam bonum. Ratio quidem vestra sic cogit.
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Quis animo aequo videt eum, quem inpure ac flagitiose putet vivere? Sin laboramus, quis est, qui alienae modum statuat industriae? Aliud igitur esse censet gaudere, aliud non dolere. Nam et complectitur verbis, quod vult, et dicit plane, quod intellegam; Non potes, nisi retexueris illa. Sed quot homines, tot sententiae; Si de re disceptari oportet, nulla mihi tecum, Cato, potest esse dissensio. Ut proverbia non nulla veriora sint quam vestra dogmata. Consequatur summas voluptates non modo parvo, sed per me nihilo, si potest; Dulce amarum, leve asperum, prope longe, stare movere, quadratum rotundum.
Quamvis enim depravatae non sint, pravae tamen esse possunt. Sed quod proximum fuit non vidit. Ex quo, id quod omnes expetunt, beate vivendi ratio inveniri et comparari potest. Hoc Hieronymus summum bonum esse dixit. Nummus in Croesi divitiis obscuratur, pars est tamen divitiarum. Quae qui non vident, nihil umquam magnum ac cognitione dignum amaverunt. Portenta haec esse dicit, neque ea ratione ullo modo posse vivi; Oratio me istius philosophi non offendit;
Memini me adesse P. Et quod est munus, quod opus sapientiae? Haec quo modo conveniant, non sane intellego. Nam si propter voluptatem, quae est ista laus, quae possit e macello peti? Sed nimis multa. De vacuitate doloris eadem sententia erit. Quod quidem iam fit etiam in Academia. Potius inflammat, ut coercendi magis quam dedocendi esse videantur.
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Quis animo aequo videt eum, quem inpure ac flagitiose putet vivere? Uterque enim summo bono fruitur, id est voluptate. Esse enim quam vellet iniquus iustus poterat inpune. In primo enim ortu inest teneritas ac mollitia quaedam, ut nec res videre optimas nec agere possint. Cuius ad naturam apta ratio vera illa et summa lex a philosophis dicitur. At iste non dolendi status non vocatur voluptas.
Itaque rursus eadem ratione, qua sum paulo ante usus, haerebitis. Sed ad haec, nisi molestum est, habeo quae velim. Nam de summo mox, ut dixi, videbimus et ad id explicandum disputationem omnem conferemus. Tum Piso: Quoniam igitur aliquid omnes, quid Lucius noster? Eam si varietatem diceres, intellegerem, ut etiam non dicente te intellego; Sed mehercule pergrata mihi oratio tua. Sed ad illum redeo. Est enim tanti philosophi tamque nobilis audacter sua decreta defendere. Quod quidem iam fit etiam in Academia. Praeteritis, inquit, gaudeo. Quis est, qui non oderit libidinosam, protervam adolescentiam? Ergo hoc quidem apparet, nos ad agendum esse natos.
Sedulo, inquam, faciam. Nam et a te perfici istam disputationem volo, nec tua mihi oratio longa videri potest. Qua ex cognitione facilior facta est investigatio rerum occultissimarum. Estne, quaeso, inquam, sitienti in bibendo voluptas? Sin laboramus, quis est, qui alienae modum statuat industriae? Illud dico, ea, quae dicat, praeclare inter se cohaerere.
