There's this quote from the Italian

theorist Antonio Grochi that has been

making the rounds a lot over the past

few years. It goes, "The crisis consists

precisely in the fact that the old is

dying, but the new cannot be born. In

this indirect, a great variety of morbid

symptoms appear." There's also a looser

translation of that last line that you

hear sometimes. Now is the time of

monsters. We live in a world in the real

world, Jake, that is governed by

strength

that is governed by force. It's hard to

call it land. It's a big piece of ice.

>> We are in the midst of a rupture, not a

transition.

>> Davos last week seemed to be this wakeup

moment for the world. You then turn on

the TV and you watch agents of the

American government killing protesters

on the streets of Minneapolis.

>> That is the definition of domestic

terrorism. That's the facts.

>> I cannot think of a week when it is felt

clearer that not just the old order is

dying, but the old order is dead. I

cannot think of a week where it has been

more obvious

that there are monsters. In our last

episode, I spoke to the foreign affairs

scholar Henry Ferrell about what we have

done to rupture this order. But for this

episode, I wanted to to turn to the

forward-looking question. What if

anything is struggling to be born here?

Adam Tus is a historian at Columbia

University. He is a thinker and

chronicler of crisis. He's written a

number of books about moments when

systems fall apart and new orders

emerge. Uh the Guardian recently dubbed

him the crisis whisperer and he had a

former receipt to the chaos of Davos

last week even moderating this panel

with among others Howard Lutnik the

commerce secretary but Tus has also been

on a personal quest I've been watching

and reading long to try to understand

the role of China in all this and I

really think you cannot understand what

has been happening in American politics

over the past 10 or 15 years without

getting a better clearer sense of the

pressure China's rise is exerting

on both the reality of our country but

also the minds of policy makers and

leaders. So I want to talk to Tus about

what he saw at Davos and how he's making

sense of this moment. As always my email

as Kleinshow at NY times.com

Adam Tus welcome back to the show.

>> Yeah, pleasure to be here.

So watching Davos last week, it it felt

to me like a moment in which the world

was collectively recognizing that some

old order of America, some old

conception of what America was was over

>> and and something new was beginning.

>> You were at Davos. To to what degree did

it feel like that to you?

>> I think there was definitely a sense of

that. I mean um most people in the world

see American politics only through

television clips even you know foreign

business people for instance they don't

get a lot of facetime with senior

American politicians and Daros this year

was different because the entire Trump

cabinet if we can call it that was there

so there was a lot of interaction and

the more interaction there was the more

dismaying and devastating

uh it was I think for everyone everyone

involved it was truly shocking I mean I

as a historian I have thesis that this

was the first real global showcase of

the Trump administration on the global

stage really doing its thing

uninhibitedly like lashing out. I

couldn't bring myself to join the horde

of people that were queuing up to

actually get into the room. So with

quite a lot of other people I sat in the

journalist kind of lounge in in the

conference center and we all just

solemnly sat and watched this crazy

speech.

>> Well, thank you very much Larry. It's

great to be back in beautiful Davos,

Switzerland,

and to address so many respected

business leaders, so many friends, few

enemies.

And all of the distinguished guests,

it's a who's who. I will say that. And

now you're used to I mean you go to

Davos it's one of the places in the

world where you can see you know

politicians stacked up and you can

literally kind of do a beauty contest of

who can give a speech and and

and so everyone all day had been rating

you know was under versus Macron versus

the Chinese vice premier versus uh

Carney and then this then this just you

know by the standards of Trump speeches

I think it was pretty routine maybe you

you know you're more of an afficionado

than I

The thematic seemed weird. He was very

uncomfortable with the script he started

delivering. He seemed almost as though

he was going to fall asleep.

>> Venezuela has been an amazing

place for so many years, but then they

went bad with their policies. 20 years

ago, it was a great country and now it's

got problems, but we're helping them.

>> Then he kind of got going, did some

ranting, came back.

>> After the war, we gave Greenland back

to Denmark. How stupid were we to do

that? But we did it. But we gave it

back. But how ungrateful are they now?

>> But the whole thing was just it just

left you. There was no way out after

that. After the the letter to the

Norwegian prime minister at the weekend,

which I still think we don't spend

enough of time on because

>> the the letter saying you did not give

me the Nobel Prize Nobel Prize, which of

course Norway's prime minister has not

managed

>> doesn't do. And then now I feel, you

know, free from any obligation to think

about world peace and now I'm going to

do America first. I mean, even in its

own terms, it's crazy. This to me is why

what I saw happening there was it seemed

very substantive. I mean, Davos was

happening in the context of the Trump

administration threatening possible

military action, definitely tariffs over

Greenland. And and to me it was in part

Mark Carney's speech where another world

leader stood up and rather than trying

to plate Trump, rather than trying to

>> soften the edges of it. It's a

negotiating posture. We're all one

alliance, just stood up and said,

>> "The old world is over. There has been a

rupture."

>> Yeah.

>> Let me be direct. We are in the midst of

a rupture, not a transition.

>> What was Mark Carney saying had

ruptured? Well, I I actually went back

and looked at Carney's

speeches um when he was Bank of England

governor in the late 2010s during the

first Trump administration. And why

that's interesting is that that makes

sense of the transition phrase because

at Jackson Hole in 2019, the big central

bankers gathering because he'd been head

of the Canadian central bank, then he

did the British bank thing that and what

was really interesting was he was

describing transition there, which is

the world is becoming increasingly

multipolar. We need to move away from

dollarentricity. There's a fundamental

asymmetry in the world which is the

financial system is dollarcentric and

the actual real economy isn't. And so

there is a transition. We need to

prepare for it. We need to enter into

more complex geometries. Much of what he

actually ended up saying in Daros in

2026 was prefaced there. So for me, the

significance of this speech last week

was folks, it's been more like an

earthquake, right? the the transition if

you think of the tectonic plates of the

world economy has like jarred and that

is what we now have to reckon with not

the trans not just the shift which we

can all agree on or think hard about but

we need to reckon with this shock which

doesn't so much consist I think simply

in you know America repositioning itself

geopolitically and I don't know maybe

retreating in various ways from various

positions accepting spheres of power of

you know division of the world into

spheres of power and mono doctrine but

actually something more um it has

something more to do with uh if you like

the kind of the culture of international

community of international society and

that's amongst you know the violence of

the use of force the use of threats the

bullying the sucusidities you know the

the the powerful do as they will and the

and the weak must just simply accept the

circumstances that shift and the

stripping away of the hypocrisy that's

the real that's the rupture You you

called it culture. It struck me what was

being described was almost

characterological. It was people in a

family, people in an organization, in a

company saying,

you know,

dad or the boss or whomever

isn't just getting angry sometimes.

>> No, there's something going on here.

>> Dangerous. Yeah.

>> And and we have to prepare to be

endangered.

>> And they're like now other bad guys. So

one of the really interesting things

about the speech is he doesn't really

talk about Trump or America directly.

>> The hedgeimon

>> he just talks about hegeimons and great

powers.

>> And so and this is crucial right because

to go back to old order after all the

was the Biden interlude. There were four

years of the return of a kind of

supercharged retroatlanticism.

And what Carney is saying is oh god no

that isn't our world at all. Actually,

there are, he doesn't say it, but he

clearly means there are three major

powers, the United States, Russia, and

China, who have to be from the vantage

point of middle powers of a liberal

disposition regarded as essentially

equivalent. They may not in detail be

equivalent, but in general, they're

equivalent because they all essentially

are going to rely on power to get what

they want. And that's what we have to

reckon with.

>> You mentioned the Biden interlude.

You're a historian.

covered Biden. You were talking to a lot

of people in the administration.

How now do you regard

what the Biden administration meant in

the sweep of the history of this era?

>> I think there were two wings, right? I'm

sure you have a more detailed analysis

of this than me, but there was um there

was the old um Atlanticism of of uh the

president of Nancy Pelosi, you know,

whose dad did Lendley in 1941. I mean,

it's crazy. Um,

that was that generation. And then there

were the the the people whose world was

turned in in 2016 by the loss, Hillary's

loss to to Trump and this the Jake

Sullivans basically and the Blinkens.

and they converged on this what I think

many of them thought of as a kind of

lastditch effort to restore both

domestically and internationally a

version of American liberal hijgemony

shall we put it that way limited cold

war style because it no longer

encompasses the whole world this isn't

couldn't this isn't the '90s but

something like that and it made a lot of

promises it it uh issued a lot of checks

it couldn't really cash in the end it

couldn't deliver the domestic bargains

to do, for instance, trade deals. It

couldn't do market access. That was just

off the table. The only way they could

get in the IRA done, the big climate

bill, was by various types of economic

nationalism, which offended their

allies. So, even they were straining to

get this done. But critically, the

Europeans, notably the Canadians as

well, love this. This is like they just

got straight back on this bandwagon

because it solves a lot of problems for

them. If this is what America's going to

be, then they don't have to face a whole

bunch of complicated domestic questions

about military spending.

>> The promise was we could go back.

>> Yes. Exactly. Turn the clock back to

>> what you thought we were.

>> Exactly. Some idealized version of it

was a MAGA. It was a make America great

again, but just nice and positive and

liberal and all of that.

>> But the B administration had a theory of

American power. It's an older theory.

It's a theory of America as the leader

of this international order that is

rules-based. And to Mark Carney's point,

sometimes America slips out of those

rules.

>> But fundamentally, America's strength

comes out of a structure of alliances

that is both dependent upon our power

and dependent upon our restraint.

>> And also not just strength, but also in

that manifests. I mean, they have a

manifest destiny. the you know they were

exceptionalist in their own way. They

believe America is special in its

capacity to do that and they will

endlessly point to the fact that China

can't do that and Russia can't really do

that and America there's something in

this is part of the special source of

American liberalism the democratic

project that it may not fully generalize

but it generalizes more than other such

projects.

>> How would you describe what the Trump

administration's vision of American

power is?

It's it's much more modest at some

level, right? They don't believe in

manifest destiny at a kind of global

level. They may have some vision of

American greatness and certainly a kind

of blunt patriotism, but I did a chat

with Ivanc, the you know, the brilliant

uh Bulgarian uh thinker of modern

politics, and he said the thing about

Trump is he's not really even a proper

nationalist, right? He doesn't even

really believe it. He he's actually kind

of rather put off by the reality of the

actually existing America of the present

because it you know they don't do golf

clubs as well as he'd like and their

palaces aren't as good as the ones in

the Emirates and really it's a bit of an

embarrassment. So anyway, to get to a

more serious kind of vein, no, I think

they think of America as embattled. They

also have this extraordinary

narrative of the United States as the

loser in globalization.

And it isn't I mean you can break that

down after all like a Sullivan or so on

will tell a story about the American

working class as having been victimized

but the and the Trump people will talk

but it's not very plausible right

because I mean that's that's not who he

in any reasonable sense represents. I

had the dubious pleasure of chairing a

panel with the CEO of Bank of America

and CEO of Ernest Young and Rachel

Reeves of the British government. Howard

Lutnik the US commerce secretary. the

key guy behind the tariffs. He in fact

referred to himself as the hammer

gleefully the enforcer of the Trump

administration. Journalists had the

meritity to ask the bank, you know,

chairman of Bank of America. It's like

the CEO of Bank of America, you know,

sir, do you really can you can you

really agree with a commerce secretary's

characterization's globalization as

having been bad for America? And like

the obvious answer is who are you

kidding? Like no one has benefited more.

They they genuinely seem to believe that

in some sense the American state because

they're very confused about budgets and

who earns what money for where and what

tariffs do and the relationship between

the private sector and the public sector

is quite blurred in their mind. So I

think they think that in some general

sense the vital bodily juices of America

was sapped by entering into an openness

to the world that extends from trade to

globalized universities to large scale

migration and all of those things were

kind of a threat to the containment of

American power and American wealth. So,

but inside the Trump administration's

worldview,

>> yeah,

>> if America's been the loser on

globalization, if our infrastructure

sucks, our airports aren't up to

scratch, our palaces are tacky,

>> where does power come from? If we were

powerful,

what would the pillars of that power be?

What do they think the the structure of

the power competition actually is? I

mean I wish I thought that it depends

really like there are bits of the Trump

team if you look at the national

security strategy their defense strategy

documents you know there you get a

relatively conventional

foreign policy defense policy

establishment kind of read they do the

obvious things they count up military

capacities they look at overextended

lines they look at supply chains all

this kind of stuff if you're trying to

characterize the position of the leading

figures in the Trump administration much

less obvious, I think. And um and what

was really extraordinary about the

speech was that amongst many passages

was that one where he Trump starts going

off about the big battleships. These

ships are 100, think of that, 100 times

more powerful than those big big

magnificent pieces of art that you saw

so many times ago that you still see on

television. You say, "Wow, what a

force." 100 times each ship 100 times

more powerful than the big battleships

of the past. you know, big powerful

artifacts seem to be an important part

of their understanding of what power is.

They think they believe in industrial

production as an indicator, but they're

not even remotely serious about this

isn't the Biden administration actually

pursuing an industrial policy. I think

that was quicksotic in the end, but at

least you have would have to say they

were intensely serious about it. These

people aren't like

semiconductor factories and I mean there

were things that were happening.

>> So, you mean the Biden people?

>> The Biden people. Yes.

>> Yes. and and and Trump will say the same

thing. So one of the things they measure

American power by is and Lutnik was you

know full of this as he bounced into the

green room trillion and a half he

started saying and then and then uh and

what it's about is uh twisting the

world's arm to invest in a really large

scale in the United States that's a

measure of power like will people put

money into the US because they

understand globalization as having

drained money out so they want to bring

money back but could you say that these

are people who are really articulating,

you know, the sort of AI strategy

documents that the Biden administration

was, you know, organizing itself around.

Obviously not. No, they're not in that

game at all. And and furthermore,

they're pursuing strategies that seem to

be dictated rather more by Nvidia's

corporate interests to just sell chips

to everyone in the name of AI

sovereignty than, you know, the careful

effort by the Biden team to actually map

out which chips should go where and who

should have them. and you know this

incredibly

arcane in the end effort to penetrate

the supply chains of the modern economy

and target the really the really careful

bits. This is this you know

weaponization of interdependence which

that's a very that's a very long way

removed from how the Trump people are

thinking about it who just using tariffs

like these big blunt instruments.

>> So America was a Davos. Our message

there was we own this we do what we say.

Oh, you mean Davos in general or we just

Yeah.

>> Yeah. Not the city. Yeah. But we own the

people here.

>> I think they definitely like to own the

city. Yeah.

>> The Chinese were at Davos, too.

>> Uh in a very different configuration.

Yeah.

>> Tell me a bit about what their message

seemed to be and what their

configuration was.

>> So, I mean the the uh the vice premier

spoke. It gives me great pleasure to

join you in beautiful Davos for the

World Economic Forum annual meeting

under the theme of spirit of dialogue.

It is timely that we listen to each

other, learn from each other, and build

stronger trust with each other.

>> And what was astonishing about it was

that, you know, if anyone still speaks

pure Davos, it's the Chinese. Like, and

it's even more pronounced than the

summer Davos that they have in Dalian

and Chenzhin. And I always like I sit

and watch people like Tony Blair, of

course, he's always these fossils of the

1990s show up. And it's as though you're

in this retro time warp where we're in,

you know, intelligent industrial policy,

joined up government, all of those

buzzwords of the '90s just circulate in

Chinese technocratic discourse. I've

watched the Chinese prime minister, no

less, pause to explain that the units in

which he's giving a GDP number are

purchasing power parity adjusted dollars

of 2015.

Like you have to understand this number

I've just given you. the unit is in is

this one because otherwise what I'm

saying wouldn't make any sense like to

anyone in the room if you thought I was

just using a purchase you know regular

currencies you'd think I was mad like

that that that is the contrast like it

is so so watching Oulandlean who's you

know the the president of the European

Commission followed by the Chinese vice

premier was was kind of like a study in

contrast because the Chinese play down

their wolf warrior position to do the

lovely multi ilateralist kind of thing.

At Daros,

>> China advocates a universally beneficial

and inclusive economic globalization.

We are committed to building bridges,

not walls. Multilateralism is the right

way to keep the international order

stable and promote humanity's

development and progress.

>> And of the EU is really structurally

dependent on multilateralism. It is

itself, you could say, a multilateral

institution. plays up the I'm the

European Patriot and we can stand up for

ourselves.

>> If this change is permanent,

then Europe must change permanently,

too.

It is time to seize this opportunity and

build a new independent Europe.

>> But in fact, they converge. I mean, it's

so astonishing.

And speaking to the Chinese um and the

ones that know Europe really well that

they know there are two neuralgic issues

in the relationship between Europe and

China. It's uh cars. It's the fact that

the EV car industry matters much more to

Europe than it does in the US.

Ironically, historically, of course,

Ford hasn't met everything, but

America's moved on. In Europe, the car

industry really is, as the Chinese would

say, a bottomline issue. 12 million

workers core about the whole rising

populism the employment of the working

class and the Chinese EV invasion is

killing the Germans that's issue number

one they need to have some politics

around that and the other one's Ukraine

and Beijing's alignment with Putin over

Ukraine

is the wedge right without that without

Ukraine Europe would not be at Trump's

mercy it's Putin's it's Putin's uh

threat by way of Ukraine and China's

willingness to line up both politically

and de facto on the Russian and supply

chains um just drives the wedge the

wedge in. And if you speak to Chinese

who know Europe well in Beijing, they

don't really get it. If you speak to

Chinese who know Europe well, they will

come up to you and say, "Yeah, I totally

was." They'll say like, "I spent 5 years

in Munich at the, you know, technical

university, it was so eye opening. I

finally understood. They feel about

Russia the way we feel about Russia,

which is it's a scary neighbor to have.

You need to have a policy." Do you buy

the theory of Trump that you sometimes

hear, which is that Trump and the people

around him are correct in sensing, maybe

even in some ways diagnosing

the

end of the old era, the weakening of

America, the passing of the, you know,

American period, even if they don't know

what to to do about it, that they're

somehow reflective of something real,

even if they are a somewhat pathological

response to that thing.

>> I mean, at that level, I think they may

be more realistic than some moments of

the Biden administration, but I mean, we

have to hold up the Obama administration

as the team that really, I think, got

this at a much deeper level. And this is

also true from a European point of view.

You know, if the moment where

Atlanticism

frayed is not after all with Trump, it

frayed 2003. There was huge enthusiasm

for Obama in 0809 as he came in on the

part of around Iraq,

>> Iraq and then 0809 on the part at least

of some Europeans uh there was

enthusiasm because America Europeans

also like McCain. He was you know

regular at the Munich Security

Conference. he was their kind of

conservative, but then the actual

disillusionment around the NSA, the the

the big struggles that were kept below

the radar over the Eurozone crisis and

then America's very hands-off approach

to Ukraine

already, I think, should have been the

wakeup call for Europe. And the Obama

administration was already thumping the

table and saying, "You guys need to

spend more on defense, especially after

Ukraine."

So this week's summit is the moment for

every NATO nation to step up and commit

to meeting its responsibilities to our

alliance.

Estonia does it.

Every ally must do it.

>> So I think of this as a progression. And

so I'm not really going to, you know,

credit Trump with the original insight

that things are shifting. I think this

has been if you look at Obama, he

already had a very stressed view of the

fundamental problems of this this

society and the limits it imposes on

what the priorities of any sensible

government should be in a much more

coherent and reasonable way. Focusing on

things like healthcare for heaven's

sake, maybe that's what we should really

do than Trump will ever do.

One thing that I have come to believe is

that China has been exerting a much

larger pressure on American politics and

American society for much longer at this

point than than we give it credit for.

>> Uh we've conceptualized it in weird ways

or just stealing, you know, it's all

just lowwage labor. That's clearly not

been true now for some time. And so when

we talk about end of one order, when we

talk about transition to another,

let's start before this Trump

administration to you.

What has China's role been

>> in not just like the world economy, but

in America's changing conception of

itself?

>> Yes. I mean, I'm finishing a book right

now about climate politics, and one of

the astonishing things you realize about

the Kyoto, the famous 1997 climate

treaty, which America signs, but then

famously never ratifies, is that the

main objection in the Senate to the the

treaty on climate in 97, is not that

it's, you know, climate denying, climate

skeptics who don't believe the science.

It's that Kyoto exempts China from doing

anything about its emissions. And there

is literally unonymity in the Senate.

The Bird Hegel resolution is literally

unanimous that America will not sign a

treaty like that. Why? Because of China.

And if you look at that American

domestic politics, this shadow that's

being cast, I think the combination of

NAFTA followed by WTO followed by Kyoto

was already really stressing out

American congressional politics in the

'90s. Um, and it hangs there such that

the Bush administration, which is very

very businessorientated, really wants to

keep the dynamo of Chinese growth going,

you know, has to put a Hank Pollson in

there as Treasury Secretary. Why? Cuz

he's a he's like a bonafide China hand.

The guy's in China all the time, all the

way now still. And and he's managing

this strategic partnership with China.

what that consists of is actually

tamping down Congress which already then

wants to do protectionist strikes on

China because the China threat is there.

So I think you're right to my mind it's

a generational even like a long

generational

challenge for the US which has been held

at bay by elite consensus around trade

and finance and by optimistic

assumptions about political convergence.

And if you view it from the other side,

from the Chinese side, at least by 2003,

they already have like mapped all this

and they are very concertedly pushing

back. So what this does is to shrink our

sense of the unipolar moment right down.

I think it's much narrower than we

generally think. We generally have this

kind of idea, we slip over Iraq and we

have kind of a unipolar moment that goes

from 89 maybe to 2008 or something like

that. in the Obama era. I remember a

piece, I believe it's by George Packer

in the then in the New Yorker and it's

about the Senate and the paralysis and

sluggishness of of the US Senate. I

remember Michael Bennett, still a

senator from Colorado, saying in that

piece, and I'm paraphrasing him here,

but not by much,

that he sits in the Senate and looks

around at all that they are not doing,

and he thinks, I wonder what China is

doing right now. Mhm. And and I felt in

that period and then escalating from

there, you know, we can't build a train.

Think about how many trains China is

building right now.

A a sense that our society

>> was becoming sclerotic

>> and yet you could see

>> this incredible rapidity like cities

coming up in China what felt like

overnight. Now the the thinking is about

from a standing start how rapidly

advanced manufacturing companies can you

know change pace and change what they're

doing and but a sense that China is fast

and now we are slow. China makes things

and now we just skim money off of the

top that China can govern you know even

if brutally and we just argue with each

other. That that that fundamental

insecurity corroding America's

confidence in itself has actually been

around now for quite some time.

>> Yeah. I mean I felt it hanging over your

book if I may. Like I thought you said I

say it in the conclusion.

>> Yeah, exactly. I felt I felt it in the

first page.

>> Yes.

>> Like uh I couldn't wait to get to the

conclusion where you said it cuz that

whole book felt like a question about

what happened to the future and why is

it that other people are making it. But

to go back to your to go back to your

original point, I think this is it's

very interesting though when you talk to

people in Beijing, they will push back

hard on this idea because they will

point to two things, two sources of

really extraordinary dynamism in the US

economy. One is tech and the other one

is fracking. And these are and the other

one you might add thirdly would be

financial engineering. And these are all

zones in which American capitalism

unfolds an extraordinary dynamism and

doesn't encounter much regulation or

obstacle

and is world changing or at least has

pretentions to be world changing. So

that's what you'll hear in Beijing. You

know, what are you talking about? We're

still learning. Well, the answer you

often hear about this in in America, put

aside fracking for a minute, which has

some distinctive qualities, but tech and

financial engineering reflects this

reality of our system now, which is that

>> we move very freely with bits and bites

>> and very sluggishly around atoms.

>> Yeah. So, the Dan Wang kind of thesis

also about we're very good at lawyering

because financial engineering is

sophisticated lawyering with math,

right? Basically, you find a legal

wrinkle and then you you do the you do

the math work or the other way around.

You do the math and then find the legal

wrinkle. So, I can I I think that's that

seems plausible. And after all, then the

Apple, you know, Apple designed in

California made in China is is

emblematic of that of that kind of

distinction. Um the other thing is and

this is a point that I think about a lot

also as a European is that American

politics in its deep fabric is so

static, so afraid of change, so you

could say traumatized by the last big

big change which was the civil rights

movement of the 60s. Whereas Chinese

government though the CCP governs,

it continuously reinvents what the party

is and how it governs. Right? they have

this churning innovation around you know

the cell structure that goes down right

into literally to household level now

the reason why they were able to do

COVID lockdowns in the way they're able

to is they've built out in private

housing estates like you know you think

of this as the heart of the Chinese

bourgeoisi why is the CCP there because

the CCP is the beating heart of a large

part of the Chinese bourgeoisi right so

they've managed to continuously innovate

it isn't just a kind of fossilized

abrasion static party structure. It's

it's very dynamic. And as a European, I

have to say there's elements of the EU

system which in all of their

frustratedness are also kind of open for

change, right? When they for instance

responded to CO with a really big green

and tech stimulus, they had to invent

common debt issuance to be able to do

that. And broadly speaking, I think it's

healthy for a policy to have to

constantly re rethink. Whereas in the

US, we did a great big stimulus, but

basically it was a simple sugar high cuz

that's the only thing you could politic

and it's the only thing you could

administratively engineer because it had

to go out basically via the IRS or

checks, something as simple as that. You

weren't able to do the complex

governance architectures that the

Europeans and the Chinese um produced

during the COVID crisis. When this goes

wrong in Europe, you get the Eurozone

crisis. But um in good moments it's

politically dynamic in the way that um

we don't see in the US. It's

>> funny. I think that's in a way too harsh

on the US. Okay. Fair enough.

>> For two reasons. One I think about

Donald Trump who has reinvented an

entire political party and is governing

in a very different way.

>> But two during the financial crisis and

after and you've tracked a lot of this.

I mean, we did some very aggressive

things in terms of debt issuance and

what the Fed is doing and

>> but I used to say I I think there are

there are zones of innovation and

dynamism in the US like where was the

unemployment insurance innovation that

should have happened during the COVID

crisis? We both know they couldn't do it

so they ended up just doing checks.

Whereas what America actually needs to

do is to build a national unemployment

insurance system worthy of the name

instead of having this extraordinary

hodgepodge where New York has a system

but Florida really doesn't. Like that's

unbecoming of 330 million people in in

an affluent society. But you know why

would you burn the political capital to

try and get that done if you're the

Biden administration when you've got so

many other things to do.

>> So so there's something strange about

this p conception of China because it

has moved very fast back and forth in

the last couple years, right? You just

mentioned Biden and the Biden

administration. After many years of of

of China hype and China fear, there's a

sense that actually China might now be

in decline.

>> She is

>> wielding terrible authoritarian power.

You see Chinese tech CEOs and startup

founders, you know, suddenly

disappearing like Jack Ma who ends up

coming back. But you have, you know,

parts of the upper echelons of the

Communist Party being marched out of

meetings. In fact, just now the other

day we saw the top general functionally

defenistrated. There is a sense that

China had effective authoritarian

government for quite some time. But now

the thing that always happens with

authoritarian government is happening

>> and the leadership is out of touch and

it's turning on itself and the capacity

to continue governing this you know very

very complicated state well and you know

as a demographics change

>> is is going to weaken. And I remember

doing interviews with Jake Sullivan and

others at the end of the Biden era and

one of their big things they would say

>> is look America's never been stronger

and our uh you know opponents and and

antagonists and competitors have never

been weaker.

>> Yeah.

>> So literally said don't worry about the

sicidities trap because we're not

declining so we won't start war with

you. If you were going to overtake us

and we were declining dot dot dot you

might very well have reason to be

concerned but since we're not relax

there isn't going to be a war. This is a

rapid change around in the conventional

wisdom on how to think about China.

>> Never trust conventional wisdom on China

in this country.

>> But but now this is a conventional

wisdom. So should I not?

>> No, it's a

>> now that they're great and they know

what they're doing is now the

conventional wisdom.

>> Well, not great morally, but

>> but it's a capacity wise. I think it's

truly difficult for

any of us and I absolutely include

myself coming from the west to steady a

stable analytical position on China and

we are torn between

um a kind of uh fascination and indeed

infatuation with it and it is after all

the single most dramatic transformative

socioeconomic transformation in the

history of our species by not full stop

in history and on the other hand a kind

of oh but it can't possibly work because

because because because and you can make

the list and I can sit with my liberal

colleagues at Colombia and like we can

all make the list right and um I think

we basically need to check all our

prejudices at the door and an even

deeper level I think we need to

recognize the fact that what's happening

in China one way or the other it's the

big end all of our history today is

small in terms of sample size by

comparison with what they're doing

there. This is the fundamental

foundation of their belief in the what

they call 21st century Marxism is that

if politics is experimental and driven

they believe by experience and success

and failure and they right now think

they're succeeding

then doing that in a society of 1.4

billion raising yourself out from the

kind of poverty that they were in 50

years ago to where they are right now is

simply

the experiment. This is the actual

historical test of all theories about

the world. So all of our theories that

we have, our middle income trap theory,

all of this is really just a kind of

minor preface, right? And where do we

even get off placing them alongside

some small European country in the data

set where we say, "Oh, well, you could

end up like Italy." Famously, Mao said

like to the Italian Communist Party when

they were talking about nuclear war.

There's nothing in the scripture that

says that Italy survives into the 21st

century. Right? So I think we have to be

willing to be humble frankly in relation

to this experience and not quickly

extrapolate one way or the other either

our disappointment of ourselves and our

like glamorization of what they've done

or the converse namely our scorn, our

fear, our contempt even mistrust of

their politics uh and turn that into a

kind of social scientific necessity.

It's really difficult to do. There's no

there's no safe space here. To me, it's

deeply analogous to the dilemas that

many progressive faced in the 1930s and

1940s when faced with Stalinism. Um,

which in the end ended up being utterly

decisive for the history of the World

War II and the aftermath. The good world

that we built, we that is the west built

we think good after 45 depended

critically on a war fought with huge

sacrifice by both Stalin Soviet Union

and the Chinese. You spent a fair amount

of time traveling China in the past

couple of years

>> and as I've tracked your commentary

coming back from it and people could

hear it in what you just said.

>> I feel like it has been a bit of a

mindbending experience for you.

>> Oh, for sure. Yeah. And I've heard you

say things like, you know, the whole

prehistory of modern industrial

organization is just prelude to what is

happening there right now. So there's

some way in which I'm watching you try

to grapple

>> with scale that feels very inhuman. You

sometimes sound to me like somebody

who's just on psychedelics.

>> Yes. I mean or or I this summer I had

this moment where I realized like we're

in the position of people watching the

pyramids being built. not afterwards.

>> So, so describe to me what from where

you were four or five years ago, the

Adam who's writing deluge and and

crashed and your pandemic book.

>> What are some things you saw or some

numbers and you know that that have

passed through your chart book? What

helps you convey the sort of portal your

own thinking has gone through on China's

centrality

and power and what it means to absorb

that into your view of the world and its

order. I mean when it comes to 089 it's

just the scale of the stimulus. I mean

you were referring to the the electric

you know the highspeed rail is built in

the aftermath of 089 that's you know

when they look back at the stimulus

famously if you look back at the Obama

stimulus though it was large and by

historical standards highly significant

larger than the new deal and and we

think really did make a positive

difference what could you point to in

America that resulted from the Obama

stimulus you'd have to be an expert to

know in China it's a railway system

unlike any in the world right so there's

a drama and scale

>> I think I have this number in my book,

they've built something like 23,000 m of

highspeed rail while we were failing to

build 500 miles of the California

project.

>> And when we say high speed, we're

talking 200 plus miles an hour and you

can sit with a cup of coffee and it will

not move. Like it's smooth as silk. I

mean, the Europeans can do this too, but

the ch and the Japanese, but the Chinese

have acquired their technologies and

done it even larger. Then there's the

stimulus of the early 2010s when they

built more concrete in 3 years than the

United States in the 20th century. And

when you go there, you see it like you

see the extraordinary fact that um 88 I

think maybe 89% of all homes that

Chinese people today live in have been

built since the early '90s. of every

home, every house, like place where

people live and reside all in 30 years

essentially. I mean, there's also the

destruction that's implied by that,

right? The erasing of the traditional

Chinese city, the thirst and the hunger

that you see in Chinese tourists when

they come to Europe to actually see

something old. And then more and more

for me it's all about climate and

the just staggering um speed with which

China has begun to build out green

energy such that now and this is the

thing that the Biden administration for

my mind this is the central question.

China by the early 2020s was in a

position to roll out enough solar and

increasingly also battery backup to

actually get the world onto a climate

stabilization track.

The Chinese have created the industrial

capacity to actually get a key

component, not the whole thing, but a

key component of climate stabilization

on track for the entire planet. And the

fundamental failure of Western politics

in the face of that is to say, "No,

thank you very much. which we'd like to

argue about this that and the other. We

don't really like there's too much

subsidy, you know. And you've got Brian

D and people like that talking about

green Marshall plans and they're talking

about g geothermal engineering and small

SMR nuclear reactors. And it's just like

no in front of your nose there is the

capacity to do about a thousand gawatt

of new solar panels every single year.

And that's without us even helping in

any way. That's just a local Chinese

effort.

That's utterly transformative. That is

industrial policy. that's literally

providing what we need to farm solar

solar power for the entire planet.

>> So the analogy you're making here, you

mentioned the Russians in in World War

II, you know, as people know, there is

no winning World War II without the

Soviet Union.

>> Well, there is, but it's really ugly and

it would not have left us feeling good

about ourselves because it would involve

nuking a large part of Germany. So here

the analogy here is to climate and if

you want to quote unquote win the

climate change fight it would require

making China central.

>> Well, who knows? But we're certainly not

making a concerted or death effort to

explore other options and this one is

literally the th you know the $100 bill

on the

>> and and we're heavily tariffing.

>> America doesn't import any Chinese solar

panel. The Europeans to their credit

take 90% of their solar panels from

China because where else are you going

to get them from? and they are pushing

and I mean you speak to Biden

administration veterans and the honest

ones will admit that they knew exactly

what they were doing which was retarding

America's energy transition for a

political reason because they didn't

think there was a political bargain to

be done any other way. Well, wait, wait,

wait. That that's not I think what they

think they were doing. I spoke to one

just the other day and that's exactly

what they

>> but the way the way they describe it to

me is not that they don't think there's

a political bargain to be made that they

actually believed I think going up to

Joe Biden that it would be losing a key

level of geopolitical power to see this

to China that they think there was power

in this. You don't buy that?

>> I think there are two different versions

and it depends whether you're a more

climate centered person or whether

you're ultimately in the Jake Sullivan

camp. I totally agree with you. There is

the even narrower version which is that

we actually need to compete in this

technological space.

>> I think the Jake Sullivan camp had a

view that it was more important to

maintain power over China than to

accelerate the green transition

>> and and they always saw the green

transition. They basically got it from

Azakartu, right? So the idea is you need

missions around which to organize policy

and motivate coalitions and this was a

great mission.

>> Yes.

>> Um it wasn't in and of itself. I think

if you think about Podesta and people

like that who have a much longer track

record in the climate space, they're the

people who articulate the

>> trade-off,

>> but they were not the ones.

>> They were not calling the shots. No.

>> And so this brings me to something I was

asking asking you at the beginning,

which is I was asking, what do you think

the Trump administration believes power

to be based on? And and one of the

things that I think we can all agree

power is based on is energy.

>> They think oil. Yeah. Fracking.

>> But for the Trump administration, it is

petroles.

>> Yeah. Hydrocarbons. hydrocarbons

>> and for China which is nevertheless

doing a lot of like hydrocarbons but it

is in the future I mean you describe

them as an electro state like part of

the fight is going to be energy that's

true on AI which is going to be you know

rate limited by energy no matter what

you look at energy is going to be key

here and one of the things that is so

striking to me about Trump is that they

talk a lot about energy but they're

kneecapping the energy sources of the

future even as they are trying to

increase the amount of oil we have

access to

be doing something else.

>> It's fundamentally contradictory and

it's not helped by this concept of

energy which is in practice we need oil

for one set of issues mainly transport

and some petrochemicals. We need gas for

petrochemicals, heating and power

generation and then we've got solar and

coal competing headon in the electricity

generation space. And furthermore,

America's in this profoundly conflicted

position which is that it's both a huge

oil consumer and a huge oil producer.

And so unlike the Saudis who

unambiguously have an interest in high

oil prices, the only thing that would

dial that down is they're worried they

put their consumers off. America's like

the twixed between. So you unlock

Venezuela, quote unquote, right? And who

complains? It's the shale people that

complain because the last thing in the

world they need is more oil on the

market which would cut the price even

further than it currently is at. So

there's that dimension of conflict and

co incoherence. And then on the other

side, you have the whole dilemma. If AI

is your big play or just tech is your

big play in the industrial policy tech

space, the single common denominator is

electric power. And it's just a fantasy

to think that let you know gas, let

alone nuclear, is going to fill that gap

because we can't get the we can't get

the turbines, the gas turbines quickly

enough. So the pipeline quite reasonably

everywhere in the world is full of the

sort of thing which the Trump

administration is trying to anathematize

like solar and wind and battery backup

now which is also affordable. So it's

it's it's deeply contradictory and

around the edges you see them shifting.

I mean, the Times had a rather good

report on the way in which a quiet

battery diplomacy has actually emerged

in the Trump administration because if

you talk to the military people like

modern army guys carry 2030 pounds worth

of batteries like the actual effective

operational range of the special forces

is largely determined by when they need

to recharge their battery packs. So,

high-tech battery technology is just

crucial increasingly for every dimension

of power. And you can't really sustain

an economically viable battery industry

without the big source of demand which

are electric vehicles.

>> During the Biden administration, one

thing you began to hear a lot from

foreign policy hands was that we should

understand the world a split into an

axis of democracies and an axis of

authoritarians and you have this Russia,

China, then sometimes it would be

expanded to Iran, you know, sometimes

beyond that even a little bit sometimes

you'd hear North Korea. Syria as well

was thrown in at times.

>> So to what degree do you think that that

tells you something real about China

that it should be understood as an

ideologically authoritarian project and

that's what the alliance with Putin is

about? And to what degree is that a

uh a sort of self-coming

way for at least American liberals to to

to view the world that is not helping

you understand what the what the

incentives are back and forth. It's

definitely an unhelpful way to

understand the world because essentially

it defines the world as a negative term.

The only thing those people have in

common is they're not like us. And so

then they must all be the same. And

that's that's just a profoundly

unhelpful place to start from. Is it

true that Russia and China align and

that they will be hard to break apart?

Absolutely. But it's really not a

relationship of identity. It's a

relationship more of like a common

perception of problem. And I was

speaking to a central committee member

in Beijing and he was going on about the

Putin she relationship and at some point

I interrupted him and said, "Don't you

think the fundamental thing they have in

common is their understanding of 1989

and what happened there?" And the

conversation stopped and he just said

nodded, "Okay, fine. We we get it. We're

on the same page." That's that's the

common thing.

>> Why do you describe what that is?

>> So the common thing is that

Putin and the Chinese regard the

collapse of the Soviet Union as an

absolute world historic disaster. Putin

has said as much, right? It's the most

cat it's greatest catastrophe that's

happened in modern history. And the

Chinese agree and of course the Chinese

have a diagnosis of the degeneracy of

the Soviet party that goes all the way

back to Krushchev's speech where he

denounced Stalin's violence. And this

for them is what they call historical

nealism which means a rejection of your

own history. Even if that history is

bitter and violent and the Chinese don't

deny that it was, you can't just

distance yourself in a moralistic way

from it. And so Xi Jinping and his

caders are fundamentally committed to

this idea that there was a degeneracy

inside the Soviet regime that led to

that moment in ' 89 that somebody like

Gorbachev as weak as him so infected by

western thinking could be in power and

collapse. By contrast, of course, what

happened in China is that in 1989, Deng

Xiaoping and the Kada around him had the

in their view guts to oust the party

people that were aligned with the Chenan

Square demonstrators and do what was

necessary. It was a disaster that you

ended up in that point not from the

point of view of humanitarian loss of

life, but because the party had to turn

the guns of the PLA, which is the

party's army, on the people, which you

never want to have to do, but it was the

right thing to do under those

circumstances. And that common

understanding of the world and its

subsequent consequences unites China and

Russia because what it does is to create

the unipolar moment, the increasing

unhinging of American power which runs

by way of Kosovo and the bombing of the

Chinese embassy in Serbia and then to

2003 and then on from there

that in their common opposition to that

world that emerges from ' 89 they are

deeply deeply bonded. Beyond that, it's

largely pragmatic and China has deeply

ambiguous feelings about the Soviet

Union and Russia. Um, the Soviet Union

was after all highly aggressive towards

China at various points. Mao was very

serious in his suspicion and fear of the

Soviet Union. So it's not a and no one

in the CCP indulges in kind of liberal

nonsense about well Putin's the same as

us because he's also not I mean this is

like does Putin have a CCP 100 party of

100 million people organized in the

incredibly powerful cada apparatus where

there is literally a party you know

official in every single major

organization of course not even close

like no one in the world has that so

China is unique and they regard Russia

increasingly I think as a useful wedge.

I don't think they really really need

Russia's energy, but it certainly helps

to have it there. You were mentioning

earlier on, of course, China is, you

know, hugely advanced in green tech, but

it's still is a massive, it's the

largest fossil fuel consumer we've ever

seen,

mainly relying on its own coal, but gas

and oil are helpful, and if you can get

them via Russia, you get them cheap, and

you get them without Western strings.

Not that they would buy from the West

anyway. They go shopping in the Gulf,

and they're only too happy to provide.

But I think that's the level at which

that alliance, you know, sits tight. And

it's not a

um they have a sufficiently capacious

and coherent and independent view of

modern history not to need to define

themselves as like Putin cause not like

America. So if communist authoritarian

industrial juggernaut is rightly or

wrongly the way America often sees China

who's taken our jobs,

>> how now does China see America?

>> I mean it's a continuously evolving. So

on the one hand, as I was saying

earlier, they see strength and it's very

difficult to persuade them to, you know,

to see anything else. They see strength.

um they believe America's I mean this is

I mean I'm speaking from talking to a

from a sample of one but central

committee member so top 200 or so type

person highly placed in the in the party

structure and think tank organization

deeply convinced that America has its

finger in every pie deeply convinced of

the most conspiratorial views of the

Ukraine war like that this is America's

doing ultimately and they are

orchestrating this to tie the Europeans

closer to them and all this sort of

thing

and on the other hand beused and they

they literally said they had a think

tank working for the state council that

was trying to track Trump on a daily

basis and after a couple of months in in

term two they gave up. Um and they just

used these really crude sort of

psychologizing rules of thumb about what

make him tick. Um and so far after all

it's kind of worked well for them. Like

you'd have to say that China has come

out of this by contrast with the

disciplined I would say highly

ideological kind of position the Biden

administration was rolling out on China.

They're getting a level of pragmatism

and deals making that even a tariff

level right which is lower than India's

like they don't think they imagine that

that's how this would play out for them.

Why do you think that is? I would not

have imagined the tariff on India would

be higher than the tariff on China. I

mean, I think there's always been two

theories of a of a Trump administration.

We saw them both. Again, I always go

back to 2020 because that's where I

think we see the seeds of this second

Trump administration. And one is the

boss wants to do deals and he loves

doing deals with a big guy with a nice

palace and Xi Jinping ticks the box.

He's the other really big guy. So, if

you go do a deal with him, it's the

biggest deal you can do by by

definition. And that's I really think I

mean it sounds ridiculous, but I think

that's an absolutely fundamental

motivation. We saw it in the phase one

deal the last time round. like utterly

crude, bizarre. Trade economists can't

even fathom it. Like it's like soybeans

and pigs. Like it's bonkers compared to

to modern trade policy. And then there's

another there's another element in the

Trump administration which is more

hawkish, more classically neocon. Say

it's a kind of Marco Rubio group. And

then I think there's a retrenchment kind

of JD Vance let's get the hell out of

dodge sort of settle back into the

Western Hemisphere.

military people I know who've been

reading these documents in the US that

is are struggling to to figure this out

as well. They can't quite figure out

what the position on Taiwan actually is

at this point. But we are not seeing the

long range highly strategic industrial

economic warfare I called it. I still

think it's essentially that that the

Biden administration was engaged in

against China. They really thought they

could, you know, wonk the hell out of

this and figure out which chips not to

give the Chinese so that we'd ridden the

AI race. They I think they really

believe that.

>> Oh, they believe that.

>> Yeah.

>> Um

>> and lots of people at the time said

that's silly cuz you can't cuz people

will innovate around whatever a blockage

you put there.

>> I think that they're

>> But anyway, that's

>> you need a lot of things. But the the

the Trump administration then just

coming and be like, "Here are the

chips."

>> Yeah.

some crap chips and then they argue

amongst themselves whether they've like

oh done a really cunning deal and only

given them the rubbish once

>> well

>> out loud.

>> Yeah, it's it's it's wild to watch. You

know, one of the things I I began by

asking you was the degree to which Davos

this year. It's not that something that

happened at Davos ended the old order.

It's more that it was a moment I think

when Trump's performance, Carney's

performance, it was a moment of

recognition of a thing that had

happened. Do you feel that what is

coming has shaped? There's another order

visible or are we just in a possibly

quite dangerous

inium where where nothing is quite

structured or stable? I think I mean I'm

on I'm like

I'm dying on the hill that we're not

even in in not even in an interregnum

like because an interregnum implies

another eggnum afterwards. It implies a

vision of history which has this as an

ellipse between two

>> and I don't see why we would feel that

we're entitled to make that assumption

>> you know in terms of you know global

financial hedgeimmons to make it more

concrete we have one example of the

transition from a British centered model

to the US model why do we assume that we

something follows you can do these weird

things where you extend this back to the

Dutch and the Genoies but I I just don't

buy it look at the curve on which we

think climate politics

Does it look on that curve? Because it's

one way and it's just going to more

extreme levels of disturbance like what

in if we take that vision of history

seriously and link it to the fact we

have one instance of a financial

transition that went reasonably well.

Why would we think that the the most

obvious way of thinking what comes next

is oh well 20 years down the line we'll

somehow have some kind of new order. I

don't get it. Well, I think the reason

people would think it is that there is a

desire among many different players

simultaneously in a globalized world to

have rules that they roughly understand

how to play by. Lots of people have

their profits bound up in that. Lots of

people have their political stability

bound up in that. And so you see it with

Mark Carney in a way. You see it with

China which has wanted things to be

fairly predictable that there is a

desire for predictability. What what

makes Trump and in some ways Putin, but

I would say specifically Trump quite

unique as a world leader of a major

power is he has no desire for

predictability.

But most of the global economy and you

talk about the Chinese officials who

speak Davos better than even the Davos

officials now do.

>> Yeah.

>> They have a desire as many others do as

Mark Carney going back to his days as as

a central banker does

>> to say, "Well, we got to figure out some

way of

>> making the transactions make sense." But

I mean, um, I like the way you put it.

Like I would definitely think it's it's

wish it's literally desiring thinking.

Like it's literally based on the idea

that there's some sort of philosophical

anthropology that says people need or

sociology that says people need

stability, so therefore stability will

somehow emerge, right? Or there'll be

very powerful people motivated to make

it.

>> If that's the level at which you pitch

the argument, it's hard to disagree

with. I just don't know what follows

from that. What Carney himself argued um

back in 2019 in this very interesting

Jackson Hall paper. You should maybe

link it in the show notes or something.

It's really worth going back to is that

it could be the case that a multipolar

order which isn't a single order but is

multiple different orders that are

overlapping. So very unlike a simple

hegemony more like a kind of mesh could

have stability properties that say a

bipolar order doesn't have. That's how

he argues in that in that paper is that

you know the interests of the future

will be best served not by looking for a

new unipolar actor or perpetuating a

bipolar system but in the proliferation

of networks of stability and ordering.

So I I you know when Germans ask me

Germans are really addicted to this

order thinking. There's even a school of

German economics called liberalism. I

always try and like push back on this

and say if you're looking for order you,

you know, you'll never see it. But if

you're looking for order ring attempts,

actions, the pragmatic approach, as you

say, it's all around us already all the

time. So I think that kind of image of

the world, I do find a world full of

ordering attempts without necessarily

any promise that they all add up to a

coherent new mesh.

And that I actually find almost

attractive like I I because surely I

mean we have never been in a planet like

this before. We have never had 30 or 40

incredibly highly competent nation state

players. This is really novel stuff

given your

sense of awe at what China is doing

industrially. Yeah. Right. The the speed

with which they're moving the the the

creation of the the the electrostate

they're building.

You do not your your view of the

situation is not that we are in a

mechanical transition from an American

order to a Chinese order. It's that

>> I think that I think that's not just

wrong and implausible. It's also

dangerous because it immediately sets

the American alarm bells off. Right? If

we speak in those terms,

you know, that's what motivates all of

the ultra hawkish position. and face you

know if that is the option then this

sort of spheres of influence kind of

model that maybe some people in the

Trump administration approve of may be

you know a third or fourth best

alternative to the sixth or seventh

worst kind of option which will be

flatout confrontation over this question

no I don't I I don't see that pervasive

influence sure individual network

efforts absolutely Chinese have got

these extraordinary visions of ultra

longdistance electricity transmission

wiring up assean in a single electricity

system but it isn't it doesn't add up to

global hegemony to my mind um apart from

anything else simply I mean I'm in the

business of learning Chinese and like

you know it is not it is not an obvious

lingua franker

it's not like English I mean American

hijgemony is in the mid 20th century is

an extraordinarily unique and even more

the unipolar moment are extraordinarily

unique formations in historical terms I

don't see any reason to derive from that

some sort of historical model of where

we go next.

>> Then I'll ask our final question. What

are three books you'd recommend to the

audience? Oh, so uh my first is uh um is

is a Chinese classic. Uh not not an

ancient classic, but a modern classic.

arguably the first maybe the first

modern Chinese novela Lucian's um diary

of a madman uh which is the most

extraordinary um kind of first person

account of the delirium of a person

waking up into a world where they where

they begin to convince themselves that

uh it is a world of cannibalism.

Um and it's a complex metaphor about

Chinese society in the early 20th

century. um a very short but but utterly

brilliant and psychologically

compelling. My second suggestion is uh

is uh sorry is Jonathan Chhatwin's uh

book the southern tour which is uh an

extraordinary account of Deniaing's uh

tour of southern China in 1992 in the

moment when after the repression of

gentleman square in ' 89 he revives the

reform and opening up project. So this

legendary moment in the economic reform

process that has made modern China. And

the third suggestion is is poetry. I

love poetry. I I it's I I struggle to

find time to read novels from start to

finish. Um and I like the compressed

power and energy of poetry. And this is

by a friend, a Berlin friend Ryan Ruby.

Um it's called Context Collapse. And it

is literally a poem containing a history

of poetry. So it is an extraordinary

long- form poem in which he in a I was

asking about it over drinks the other

night. Why did he do it? It's this

delirious effort to write in poetry a

history of the form and the collapse of

its context in modern culture. It's

truly a tour of the force.

>> Adam Tus, thank you very much.

>> Thank you for having me.

Hey,

hey, hey.