YouSaid · the spoken record

Jeffrey Wasserstrom

lines on the record: 203
first: 2025-04-24
most recent: 2025-04-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Thanks for listening to this conversation with Jeffrey Wasserstrom to support this podcast. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you some words from Confucius. When anger rises Think of the consequences. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's amazing. It's like amazing that Earth produced. Chinese people, Indian people, the Slavic people. This is just all kinds of variants and we all have our own weirdnesses and quirks and so on. Everybody has brilliant people. We all start shit with each other every once in a while, but I hope now that we have nuclear weapons and I hope now that we have technology that connects us will actually. Will actually collaborate more than we fight each other. And thank you for being one of the people that shows off the beauty of this particular peoples. It's of the entire region, really, of Southeast Asia. And it's an honor to talk to you. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think recovering, not allowing the particular version of Chineseness that the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping wants to make people think of as the essence of Chinese. Chinese China has multiple cultural strands, multiple traditions that people can tap into. And it's something richer and more admirable, I think, than this narrowed down version. And I hope for future where both Hong Kong and Beijing have bookstores. Carrying that T84 Brave New World and all of your books. And I can't wait to visit them. And enjoy the intellectual flourishing of incredible people. What a beautiful world we live in. The Chinese people, all the people I've met is just so great. To interact with Totally different culture. You can feel the roots run deep through ancient history that are very different.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trying to focus on be water more flexible protest tactics or something. And clearly in Thailand, there were people who looked at things to learn from Hong Kong, even in defeat. There's a New Zealand-based China specialist, Jeremy Barmay, who talks about the other China, which can exist within China, physical China or elsewhere, which is this equally attached to Chinese traditions, but thinking of those traditions as including not just Confucianism, but Taoism, not just hierarchy, but also openness to cosmopolitanism, not just nationalism, but cosmopolitanism. And I think there are some Are some elements of that that even in failure, the Hong Kong movements, the Hong Kong protests of the 2020s were a last flourishing of that. And we can see some elements of that. We can think of Taiwan, elements of that as another China as well.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Repercussions that are not all negative. I think the Hong Kong spirit, which is being kept alive in diaspora communities around the world, is really interesting. There are things that are spreading. I think Hong Kong represented a vision of a different way of being Chinese, a different notion of Chinese-ness. And I think that is something that exists. And there have been protesters and a lot of other parts of the world. Belarus to, I used to say from Minneapolis to Minsk, because in 2020 there were protests in the U.S. and in Belarus where there were activists who were talking about the Hong Kong idea of sort of”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me, China, not the other way around. So that was a hope early on, and there were ways in which some parts of Hong Kong style even sort of permeated across the border. I think it's hard to see it now with how Hong Kong has changed, but I hesitate to, I mean, an awareness of the unpredictability of things. There's no way to know what kind of thing there would be for Hong Kong later. I do think there are things about Hong Kong that even in the failure of the movement have been have had”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Truly special place. Is a case study. Doesn't make sense that that would happen, but it happened. I mean, history is full of wonderful things like this. I guess can you clarify you think the protests of 2019, like the protest in 20. They're mostly a failure? Is there still a possibility that Hong Kong rises? Its way of life, its way of being the democratic ideals, not necessarily fall on democracy or this kind of thing. Would actually.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd love to think that there actually are a variety of things in Taiwan that if those could become Broader norms. Not that Taiwan's perfect. It has its own internal problems, but there are many really attractive things about it right now, different kinds of things that flourish. So maybe... Setting in which Taiwan in its post Martial law, post-Leninist incarnation would be something that we could think of more. Yeah, and you're right Taiwan and especially Hong Kong.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Place that was somehow within. It was an amazing thing, I think, looking backward. Sorry, rather than forward, I think it's really extraordinary how much leeway was given to Hong Kong for a period there. That was really special. No Communist Party-run country had ever had a city within it that had as free a press as Hong Kong had then, as much tolerance for. Protests. And I think it was, I mean, I hope it can be seen by some, at least within Beijing, as a miscalculation too. People struggle with China wanted soft power, and Hong Kong films were admired around the world, this industry. There was a way in which creativity flurrying. So I guess it would be just the hope for more. More spaces where that kind of creativity and openness debate things can”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Such a hard moment to be imagining these things. I mean, I've long wanted to see Return of China to this path toward a more kind of. Yeah, it wasn't one of the people who imagined that. Would be this convergence of sort of where China's emergence and evolution into a liberal capitalist kind of country. I'd love to see a return to that more kind of tolerance of diversity within China variations within China, of more space for civil society. And it's a hard time to even imagine that because Hong Kong kind of represented.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The post mouth period, some leaders playing on sort of anti Japanese sentiment because of the history of Japanese aggression, or there can be anti-American sentiment because of the history of American roles in imperialism. Or it can be played in a different way. The United States certainly tried that the United States didn't have formal colonies in Asia the way that Britain and France did and tried to present itself differently. So these things are, but these things are also kind of in flux. And now we're in this very unusual influx period at the beginning of the imposition of tariffs. There were leaders of China, Japan, and Korea all to South Korea all together in photo ops, which was not something that, I mean, being on the same side. So I think this is all.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One or another country's imperialism to focus on. And that point he was focusing on America, which is something that can have particular resonances now. Mao could alternate at certain points he thought there should be an alliance with where he said that China should be able to work with Japan because, I mean, he said it at one point he said, well, without Japanese imperialism, the Communist Party wouldn't have risen because we wouldn't have had this ability to unite the people. We have seen in”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And even the depiction of the Korean War as being the war against America and Resist America and support Korea, I think it fit with his idea that it wasn't just about China working in self-interest, but siding with other siding with the underdog countries against the hegemonic ones. And that was another part of Mao's Mao's desire to see China as representing the kind of a third world and a sort of Countries that had felt the brunt of imperialism, of Western imperialism and Japanese imperialism, and trying to find one or another”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he's just from Hunad, and he had a heavy accent. This is another complicated side of Mao. He was Both anti intellectual and very intellectual. He liked to write poetry and to fashion himself as that, but he also liked to be seen as incredibly earthy. Critical of intellectuals. And if he had an animus toward wanting to, even though he came, even though he was intellectually had that anti-intellectualism. But no, I think what's interesting about that speech in part is how”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He had a really difficult accent to make sense of and people, native speakers of Chinese, can have trouble with his speech. That one was less hard to follow than some of them.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are how the history of that period is described in the PRC? It said, look, you had so many different forces of the more developed world fighting on one side, and that war did not end in a defeat for North Korea and for the Chinese side. So yeah, Xi Jinping, I think, wants to be seen as an inheritor. Inheritor of Mao, a continuer of one side of the Mao legacy, but clearly circling back to where we began, not the Mao who liked to stir things up, not the Mao who believed in mobilizing youth on the streets, not the Mao who let things get out of control, but the Mao who was responsible for strengthening the nation.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. But Xi Jinping has had a different way of talking about this, and he's talked about the first 30 years of the People's Republic of China and the second 30 years and says that we should not Use the successes of one to criticize the other that we need to see where we are today as Benefiting from both those first 30 years and those second 30 years, which implicitly, or he sometimes talks about a new era, suggests that in many ways he sees China as now in a Post reform era. We can think about a third stage, and there are people who write about it in that way. And so he clearly, there's always been a way of trying to separate out a kind of Mao of the periods when things were not going horribly. And I think Xi Jinping would think that Mao having managed to fight the Korean War to a standstill, which is how”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So before Xi Jinping, there was this kind of Assessment of Mao as having been early in the early 80s, of being 70% right, 30% wrong.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It got to be survival mechanism to pass on unrealistic reports on what was going on. So some of it was a culture of fear around a great leader that led to not getting accurate information. So that was one part of the dynamic. Ego was a big part of it. There were all kinds of things that were unmoored. Early in the Chinese Communist Party history and power, there was the connection to the Soviet Union and Mao. And Stalin had a connection after Stalin's death. Mao was haunted by the move toward destalinization and the move by Khrushchev. And this laid the groundwork for the Sino-Soviet split. But there was also this kind of Obsession with doing things differently. That Mao had in that case as well. And you have factional struggles. You have all kinds of things that are happening simultaneously.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So with a great leap forward, which caused this incredible famine, just incredible devastation. One of the One of the things that happened was getting very bad information. There was a sense that There was people, officials were afraid that if they gave bad news, if they admitted that they were failing to meet these giant targets that were being set, that would be seen as a political mistake. So”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And there was this struggle between people who are more gradualists, more, let's try to work more kind of rationally and the more utopian side with Mao. And both the great leap forward and then later the cultural revolution were Mao's efforts to To do things dramatically, even at the risk of chaos, even at the risk of undoing a lot of the kind of slow building of state building going on. And then there were other figures who were more concerned with kind of incremental moves. And then after Mao's death, one of those figures, Deng Xiaoping, ends up being the next long term paramount leader.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then the story after 1949 with Mao is there were divisions within Within the Communist Party over sort of Mao is impatient. He wanted to transform the country quickly. He had a utopian streak he thought just as the peasantry could sort of, you didn't have to stick to the traditional pattern of moving slowly to socialism and then to communism. He tried to the great leap forward was this disastrous policy of his that imagined China outdoing the West in a kind of quick Industrialization, a move like this. And it was just didn't work in all kinds of things. And that would be a whole, we'd need a whole other session to do the great leap forward on the culture of evolution. But one of the simple ways to think about it is Mao made these kind of disastrous moves and then was partially sidelined and then wanted to get back to power.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, in some ways. I mean, there are people who will argue for a less patriarchal Confucius, but it fits with that mode.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and both of them, right? They had high profile wives who Sort of celebrity figures and made a good impression globally and we're more likely. First ladies. But both Shankai Shak and Xi Jinping oversaw a period of emphasizing more traditional patriarchal values in China. And one of the things I didn't mention before Xi Jinping has been very in this idea of trying to do away with difference within PRC. He's been pushing against feminists of any kinds of feminist movements.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With Mao and Xi, you could actually say Xi Jinping in some ways is like living out the dream that Shanghai-shek had. Of one party rule. And also, kind of celebrating Confucianism.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Taiwan's control by a Leninist party that believes in one party rule limits on participation, believes that it was a bad time when China was being bullied by imperialists. What distinguishes Shanghai-Sheikh has a personality cult, Mao has a personality cult. They have a lot in common, but one clear thing that makes them different is Shanghai-shek says that what's wrong with the Communist Party is they've abandoned Chinese traditional values of Confucianism. And Mao says that on the nationalists, what's really bad is they are still wedded to these traditional Chinese values of Confucianism. So cycling back to where we began.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Family members, and there's an idea that there's just a small band of people that are benefiting. And there's a kind of disgust with the leader, with the nationalist. The nationalists end up in retreat in Taiwan. That's why Taiwan then becomes the Republic of China. There's an uprising there that Shanghai-sheks people, the nationalists repress, and it starts being from the late 1940s on this long period of martial law on Taiwan. And there becomes then this period where the mainlands under the control of a Leninist party believes in one party rule. And believes that it was a bad, very bad period in Chinese history when China was unable to stand up to imperialists.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Brokered a truce and sort of worked together against Japan. There's a civil war between the nationalists and the communists and against all odds, the Communist Party wins. The Communist Party gets support from the Soviet Union. The nationalists get support from the United States. Even though neither of them are quite doing things the way that their backer would like them to. But there also is a way in which the, and this is something I think the Communist Party leaders remember, there's a feeling that the Nationalist Party doesn't really believe its own rhetoric that in fact all it cares about is having power and that it's internally corrupt. Shang Kai-shek himself isn't viewed as sort of personally corrupt, but”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mao has this idea that actually he's partly, he loves this idea of peasant rebellions in China's past as driving history forward. And he starts writing about how, well, maybe in China's case, actually the peasantry farmers can be a radical force. And so the Communist Party is on the run, it's being pushed around by the nationalists are trying to exterminate them. But eventually the nationalists and the communists lie again after Japan invades China in the 1930s. They formed what's called a second united front. But during this period, Mao is emerging as taking leadership in the Chinese Communist Party and his idea of a different kind of vision of communist revolution that has the revolutionary vanguard somehow. Being the peasantry. After World War II, after the two parties have”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's the head of the nationalists. And he has some very different, he's a kind of culturally more conservative figure. But what's important and part about this is there are some members of the Chinese Communist Party who accept the basic ideas of Marxism, of revolution comes from the cities.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is initially keeps the alliance going with the Communist Party, but in 1927 he turns against the communists and tries to carry out a purge against the Communist Party members.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there was a small communist party, a bigger nationalist party. They were involved in these protests against warlords and against imperialists. And while Sunyat Sen was alive, Sunyat Sen got the two parties to work together because Sunyat-sen wasn't a Marxist. He didn't believe in class struggle, but he admired Lenin and Leninism. And so he said that actually the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party may have had different views of the path forward for China, but they agreed on who the enemies were. And the enemies were the warlords who were keeping China weak and too willing to compromise with Japan and foreign imperialism. So China needed to get rid of the warlords and become a stronger country. And then they could sort it out of what road to take.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It seemed to be getting strong in the world, and there was this interest in sort of how China could do that. And the newly formed Soviet Union did something very important. There were a group of foreign powers, including Tsarist Russia, that had gained big concessions out of China when in 1900 the Boxer Uprising had taken place. been crushed by a consortium of foreign powers who had gotten privileges and indemnities out of that. And the newly formed Soviet Union renounced those, said, you know, that was the old order, that was imperialism. And so Marx's ideas were attractive to some Chinese thinkers, but Lenin was very attractive because of his combination of anti-imperialism and his notion of a vanguard party leading a country forward.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Sunyat Sen became a first president, provisional president of this newly formed Republic of China. But then he got nudged out of power by a military strongman. And then there was a period where Country was really divided. Republic of China didn't have a strong government. But there were then two groups, one rallied around Sonya Sen, had founded something that became known as the Nationalist Party. And then there was a small group of people who formed a communist party. Mao was one of them. These were intellectuals who were part of the May 4th movement of 1919. They were inspired by Marxist ideas, but they were also just inspired by the Russian Revolution. Russia was nearby. It seemed good to think with. It had a largely rural population and somehow”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The unlikely coming to poverty Communist Party. Let's go back. We began comparing Xi Jinping and Mao. Let's go back to Mao. How did Mao come to power? The road to Mao coming to power, we need to first say that China was under rule by emperors until 1911, overthrown by an upheaval that was partly by people who wanted to change China into a republic, but also some people who wanted to get rid of the last dynasty was a group, a Manchu ruling family. So they saw them as ethnic outsiders. It was a strange combination of kind of ethnic nationalists who wanted China back under the control of Han Chinese. Other people who thought the time for rule by emperors was over and wanted to establish a republic.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Americans know that downriver from there what would be flooded out was the place where their iPhones are built. And they want their iPhones. So this kind of notion, you know, he was making through a humorous point, the way in which interconnectedness can be a check. And interconnectedness can be in all kinds of ways, the flows of people between places and having people from one place living in another, traveling to another, studying in another, that can actually be something that helps to stabilize the world. And I think that's an important thing to keep in mind. Since you mentioned the Long March.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A Chinese writer who Fascinated guy, Han Han, who was a race car driver and a filmmaker and a bad boy novelist. Anyway, in his heyday, he was an interesting kind of blogger who was testing the edges of things. And he had this blog post where he was talking about, and this was in the early 2000s. He was talking about how China was building the massive three gorgeous dam project, this mass. And he said some people are saying Building these dams, it would be so easy for the Americans to just Just bomb them and destroy our country. And because it would be a massive flood. And he said, but that's really silly. That's a really silly argument because”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is where I think it's really important to find mechanisms and tax tactics and strategies for de-escalation. It's just why this trade war that's happening, one of the nice things of being so connected by trade is it creates a disincentive. For any of this kind of posturing. I do agree with you. I think it will start as these things often do. As a kind of military sort of early steps posturing in order to maintain power internally. China will just create military conflict, conflict of different kinds in order to distract. But then how does that escalate? As if all that wasn't complicated enough, Taiwan isn't just one place or one island. There are also islands that are closer to mainland Jinmen and their degrees of integration. And anyway, so it's a, but your comment about Integration of trade and sort of Being a check on kind of, there's”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All of this has consequences for the United States because there's a messaging thing going on here. And then, of course, that could then go to a full-on, do-as-your-told actions that come at a high risk of a hot military conflict. So basically just don't do military violence, but just full-on pressure ordering Taiwan to do things. And there's like in order, the only way to respond is with violence, you're completely trapped. You're saying, no, you have to say no with a military force behind it. And then what do you do? And every step in this, it's such an unstable, nonlinear dynamical system where anything could just unintended consequences can happen and it could just escalate in a matter of days, if not hours. So, like, this is where”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't think there's a set. I don't think there's a set plan in part because I think it is also dependent on what the kind of costs in various realms would be of doing that. I think it still does Think it's One scenario would be possibly a sense of becoming strong enough to not have to worry about consequences. I think another, I still think, to some extent more would be a sense of weakness or precarity of maintaining power domestically and needing to do something to distract. And another complexity about this is it's not always so clear the line between no conflict and conflict. So there's a lot of gray zone tactics of nonviolent pressure that China could exude. So you could do non-military violence Could then escalate that to nonviolent military intimidation?”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All people have, in a sense, sometimes with unknowable situations is to look at things that have any degree of parallel connections in other places. Do you think Xi Jinping knows what he's going to do in the next five, ten years with Taiwan? Or is it really There's a loose historical notion that Taiwan should be part of China. With Xi Jinping and the Communist Party, believe that? That loose idea was accepted. Shang Kai-shek and Mao both thought that these two places were part of somehow destined to be the same was just under that period, Shanghai-Shek thought how long until I take over the mainland and it all becomes the Republic of China. This is not now something that any leader in Taiwan is believing. There is a degree to which That remains a kind of sense within the Chinese Communist Party. Leadership as a eventuality.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How the response to that was. And there was a sense of it being analogous. There was a sense that Xi Jinping would be watching the response to Putin and seeing what he would do then. And so then there was a sense of relief, I think, when there was as unified a Western NATO including the United States response And then there's a concern, you know, there's a concern about The Trump presidency because of Ukraine at the same time, their mixed signals. So people are, I'm sure there are people there who are both saying, Trump is going to be tough toward the Chinese Communist Party, and others are going to say, but if he's not supporting, if he's not as supportive of Ukraine, what does that say for”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, with talking to people in Taiwan and from Taiwan, there are a couple things that are One is that Daily life in Taiwan is not people waking up each morning, living their life based on the fact that there's in such a perilous kind of predicament that. Life goes on, and a lot of people Feel very, very fortunate to be in Taiwan. There are many reasons why it seems like a great place to live in many ways. So even though this is hanging, but at the same time, Is an awareness of things that increase precariousness. And there was a lot of concern with the invasion of Ukraine and watching how”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's one of these really worrisome issues that there isn't an easy, I think any experts who Tell you they know what X, Y, and Z about this. Diluting themselves probably. There are so many variables.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Example that way. And there were connections between there was a Taiwan protest in 2014 before the big protest in Hong Kong by people who were young people who felt the government then was moving toward too much toward working together with Beijing. So there they've been interconnected stories. And I think we sometimes miss how people within a region are looking at what other people in the region are doing and are taking clues from it about sort of how to. How to agitate for the things they care about, what the risks are, what the dangers are. Autocrats within different parts of a region are looking at each other too, as well as globally.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the way that things developed in Hong Kong have undermined the kind of trust in any kind of story coming out of Beijing that There's a place within sort of Xi Jinping's version, at least of the People's Republic of China, for a place where people live very different kinds of lives. And I think a lot of people in Taiwan think of them feel they're living a very different kind of life than on the mainland. So in that way, I think Hong Kong was an important.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Might make some kind of incremental improvement to being the kind of world that we want to live in. People do that in all kinds of ways.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of it is also, though, people, sometimes the people who I find really admirable. It's not about trying to create totalistic change, but they focus on trying to do what they can for the things they believe in within constrained circumstances. And in Thailand, they've sort of hit a roadblock now again over kind of trying to bring about electoral change. A party that did really well was then disqualified. Of the activists I know are focusing on Local efforts to improve a neighborhood, to keep a neighborhood from suffering from a kind of unthinking gentrification. They're thinking small. They're thinking sometimes about just what can we do to improve the life of people within how can we build to the kinds of social groups that”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I feel helpless but not hopeless. I think, how does somebody maintain hope in that? And the other person I dedicated to Miklas Arashti as a Hungarian friend of mine who was an activist before 89 and saw this amazing thing happen with the Communist Party rule ending. He was part of the process that came and he was friends with Havel and Havel there in Poland's changing and all of this exhilarating moment, but ends up being a critic of Orban and following a tightening of control, of rolling back of many of the things that were victorious then. But this kind of No straight road, you know, that actually there's something about It can be disquieting when these unexpected things are blows to where you thought direction history was going. But history just shows you that history doesn't have a direction. There isn't a straight road.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then after another period, the country goes into another really difficult period. It seems that the successes are being rolled back. And my new milk tea alliance book that I've just written dedicated to two people who've lived through a variety of these things. One is a Burmese activist who was involved in a failed uprising in 1988. He then was an exile who didn't know whether he could ever see his brothers who he loves back in Burma. And then something magical kind of changed. And the 2010s, it seemed that there was a kind of democratization that turned out to be a false dawn. He was able to go back. And then now he's again when there's been a coup and a crackdown. He's now again cut off. And at one point, I was asking him about his... Sort of raise awareness globally about what's happening. Me and Marty said.”
2025-04-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #466 – Jeffrey Wasserstrom: China, Xi Jinping, Trade War, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mao · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source