Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…It’s a hard time to figure out what you can, to hopeful angles. I guess what’s hard to even balance these things out, so one of the things that I’ve thought about when you talk about rising chances of war, that often Taiwan comes to mind with China. And one of the things that I’ve thought of is that for Xi Jinping, that military action against Taiwan would be increased by a sense of desperation, a sense of losing popularity, or a sense of not having a good story to tell about why he and the party deserves to lead. So then there’s a way of playing to the nationalist sentiments of some part of the population. So then in a sense, it’s hopeful that I think in some ways right now, Xi Jinping is not looking desperate in the eyes of the world. If he can focus on potentially being seen more positively in other parts of the world by seeming like a force for stability, seen as somebody who’s supporting rather than challenging some elements of the global order, that might lessen the chances of a rash action toward Taiwan. That would be a kind of desperation move. The complicated thing here is that if he gives in, he can come off as the responsible person who cares about the world, or he can come off weak. If he doesn’t give in and even escalates the tariffs, although I think he said no more escalation on the China front, then he comes off strong, but also the equally unreasonable person who doesn’t care about the world, who only cares about his own ego, and maybe some aspect of the Communist Party maintaining power, because just like with Tiananmen Square and the tank man, you don’t know once you make the decision how the world will read that decision, what kind of things will become viral memes about the telling of that story. And of course, in part, I think Donald Trump’s reach is much wider, because he’s constantly out there. And I think there’s a more reserved, less messaging out of Beijing. So it’s a really chaotic environment in which to make strong decisions. But since you brought it up, we’ll talk about Hong Kong, but let’s talk about Taiwan and maybe there’s some parallels there. Given Xi Jinping’s emphasis on the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and the unification with Taiwan being a crucial part of his vision for China, what do you think are the chances? And how willing is he to use force to annex, to forcibly gain control over Taiwan in the coming years? I’ll frame it in a way that I think does lead into talking about Hong Kong, because I think these are connected issues. In 1984, the year, not the book this time, that’s when a deal was struck basically, between London and Beijing over what would happen to Hong Kong. So Hong Kong Island became a British colony at the end of the first Opium war, the 1840s. And then Kowloon Peninsula near there became a British colony in 1860 after the second Opium war. But then there was a large amount of territory of what we now think of as Hong Kong, called the New Territories, that became under British control in 1898, but was not a colony. It was a 99-year lease. So 1997 was this kind of expiration date for the lease of this large amount of territory of what we now think of as Hong Kong. It’s a large amount of territory that the rest of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, depend on for energy, water, and food. So it would’ve been very hard to just transfer those parts to the Peoples Republic of China. So a deal needed to be struck of what would happen in 1997. And the deal was about transferring sovereignty of all of Hong Kong, all these parts, to the People’s Republic of China. And I carefully say transfer sovereignty, not give it back to the People’s Republic of China, because it never belonged to the People’s Republic of China. It was part of the Qing Empire, which was a different country, a different state that then anyway, but this needed to be transferred. And the deal that was struck was that the London side wanted to do something to protect what was going to happen to the people there. And remember, this is not what usually happens to colonies. Colonies usually go from being part of an empire to being some degree of self-governed. And because of that, the Chinese representative of the UN insisted that Hong Kong was not a colony, and Macau was not a colony, because then they would have to be decolonized and go to independent. So anyway, there was an understanding that something would have to happen in 1997, and London wanted some protection for the people in Hong Kong, who they knew were living in a very different way than people lived under Communist party rule. There was a different kind of rule of law. There wasn’t democracy, but there was some degree of input in governance.…

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