Is This How a Cold War With China Begins?
b'There are few issues on which the dominant consensus in Washington has changed as rapidly in recent years as it has on China. Donald Trump made taking on China a core pillar of his campaign and presidency. And while Joe Biden has toned down the harsh anti-China rhetoric of his predecessor, many of his administration\\u2019s policies have gone even further than Trump\\u2019s did. \\n\\nIn October the Biden administration unveiled sweeping controls on advanced chip exports to China \\u2014 a move that former Trump officials have described as a sharp break from where their administration\\u2019s policies were. And the Biden administration doesn\\u2019t intend on stopping there: It plans to roll out further controls that target China\\u2019s biotech and clean energy sectors.\\n\\nMeanwhile, Biden has repeatedly voiced such strong declarations of American military support for Taiwan that his own administration has had to walk them back. And, in Congress, China policy is one of the few areas Democrats and Republicans seem willing to work together \\u2014 almost always in the direction of getting tougher on Beijing.\\n\\nJessica Chen Weiss is a political scientist and China scholar at Cornell. From August 2021 to last July, she was a senior adviser in the Biden State Department. And she emerged from that experience as one of the most outspoken critics of Washington\\u2019s more hawkish turn regarding China. \\u201cThe more combative approach, on both sides, has produced a mirroring dynamic,\\u201d Weiss wrote in a 2022 essay called \\u201cThe China Trap.\\u201d She worries that Beijing and Washington are misreading each other\\u2019s ambitions, resulting in a \\u201cdownward spiral\\u201d of mutual aggression that will leave both sides \\u2014 and the world more broadly \\u2014 less prosperous and secure.\\n\\nSo I asked Weiss to come on the show to help me understand the state of U.S.-China relations and why she thinks it\\u2019s headed in the wrong direction.\\n\\nMentioned:\\n\\n\\u201cThe China Trap\\u201d by Jessica Chen Weiss\\n\\n\\u201cA World Safe for Autocracy?\\u201d by Jessica Chen Weiss\\n\\nBook Recommendations:\\n\\nSeeking Truth and Hiding Facts by Jeremy L. Wallace\\n\\nOur Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng\\n\\nSee No Stranger by Valarie Kaur\\n\\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\\n\\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of \\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.\\n\\n\\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\\u201d is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Rog\\xe9 Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Original music by Isaac Jones. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Pat McCusker and Kristina Samulewski.'