| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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With Everyday Citizens. | |
| It's an amazing show to get real opinions from real people. | ||
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| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| We are joined this morning by Yoon Sun, who is the Senior Fellow and China Program Director at the Stimson Center, here to talk about President Trump's meeting with the Chinese president earlier in South Korea. | ||
| Yoon-sung, before we talk about the details of this meeting, let's first show our viewers what the president had to say aboard Air Force One earlier after he shook hands with the Chinese president. | ||
|
unidentified
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What are the major stumbling blocks that are left now to work through and how soon do you think you could sign a trade deal with China? | |
| Well, I think pretty soon. | ||
| We have not too many major stumbling blocks. | ||
| We were, we have a deal. | ||
| Now every year we'll renegotiate the deal, but I think the deal will go on for a long time, long beyond the year. | ||
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unidentified
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We'll negotiate at the end of a year. | |
| But all of the rare earth has been settled. | ||
| And that's for the world. | ||
| I mean, you know, worldwide. | ||
| I guess you could really say this was a worldwide situation, not just the U.S. situation. | ||
| So we continue to produce the rare earths and buy the rare earths and everything else, you know, when you see from other countries. | ||
| But China is that whole situation, that roadblock has gone now. | ||
| There's no roadblock at all on rare earth that will hopefully disappear from our vocabulary for a little while. | ||
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unidentified
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So we've got a one-year pause on the policy they announced. | |
| It's one year. | ||
| It's a one-year agreement and we'll extend it after a year. | ||
| Like we do. | ||
| President Trump aboard Air Force One, courtesy of the White House. | ||
| Yoon Sun, respond to the details that you heard there from the president talking to reporters. | ||
| How significant is this? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, this is significant in terms of the two largest economies in the world reaching a temporary, I would say, a trade truce in the escalation of the trade wars that we have seen since the beginning of, well, basically since the beginning of this year. | |
| But for the two presidents to meet and also reach a substantive deal of this scale, I would call this meeting a very, very successful one. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| What is the significance of the two of them even meeting and doing so in South Korea? | ||
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unidentified
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I think the significance of the two leaders meeting is that, well, when they meet, is seen as an indicator of stabilization, maybe not stability, but at least an effort to stabilize a bilateral relationship. | |
| We know that the U.S. and China had been in this great power competition for a number of years before the second Trump administration. | ||
| And we have seen extreme turbulences between the two countries. | ||
| Some would even call a near war or near conflict state between the two between the two states, which is why this potentially could be the trigger of World War III. | ||
| That's why the meeting between the two leaders as a stabilizing effort of the bilateral relationship is so important. | ||
| And the importance for the world, of course, does not need elaboration. | ||
| Explain further what you mean by a near conflict between these two countries. | ||
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unidentified
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In terms of the U.S. and China close encounter in the West Pacific, we know that China has always called or regarded Taiwan as a critical issue or the most important of China's national interest. | |
| We also know that the U.S. has a legal obligation according to our Taiwan Relations Act to provide for self-defense of Taiwan. | ||
| The enhancement of cooperation and alignment between U.S. and Taiwan since the first Trump administration has been more than obvious. | ||
| And the Chinese have had major reactions to that, especially in the military domain. | ||
| And that translated to some of the Chinese unsafe, unprofessional maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait, vis-a-vis U.S. warplanes and also naval warships. | ||
| So we have seen those incidents where the two sides, meaning the warplanes and their naval vessels, had come so close to each other that it was a near collision situation. | ||
| So if those collisions happened, it would potentially trigger at least a limited scale military conflict. | ||
| You said World War III. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes, and when there is a military collision between the two, some would say the largest militaries in the world, it could potentially trigger something much bigger. | |
| And also consider the U.S. support of Taiwan and, for example, the visit of Taiwan by the then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August of 2022, the Chinese basically threatened the use of force in that scenario. | ||
| And if the U.S. decided to counter what the Chinese had planned in terms of a temporary and some would say a partial naval embargo of the naval blockade of the Taiwan island, then it would lead the two states into a state of war. | ||
| Back to this deal that was made that the president talked about aboard Air Force One that roiters with the headline, U.S. gets rare earth reprieve from China, but not a rollback. | ||
| What did the U.S. want out of this deal and what did China want? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think for U.S., the goal has been relatively clear. | |
| U.S. wants Chinese purchase of U.S. agricultural products, especially considering the season we're in. | ||
| We're deep into the fall, which means the soybean harvest for American farmers have already come in. | ||
| So far this year, the Chinese have refrained from purchasing U.S. soybeans, which creates a significant burden or a significant threat for the U.S. soybean farmers. | ||
| So I would say the agricultural products is a priority. | ||
| The other top priority for the Trump administration is China's rare earth export. | ||
| And some would say the export control measures that China had announced earlier in October. | ||
| Because for many of the critical industries in the United States, rare earth is indispensable for the smooth operation of their manufacturing, of their business to their normal business operation. | ||
| So for China to impose a rare earth export restriction is unacceptable for U.S. industries and businesses. | ||
| So I would say these are the two U.S. top priorities. | ||
| For the Chinese, the priority is actually quite clear. | ||
| It's also focused on two issues. | ||
| The first one is a tariff. | ||
| Currently, before today's meeting, U.S. basically imposes a 55% tariff on all Chinese export to the United States. | ||
| The Chinese have been desperate to bring that down, maybe not completely, but at least ease some of the tariff measures. | ||
| In particular, we know that the Trump administration has levied a 20% tariff related to China's lack of cooperation on the issue of fentanyl. | ||
| This happened before Liberation Day, before early April. | ||
| So the Chinese position has been: we're willing to cooperate on fentanyl. | ||
| We have been cooperating on fentanyl. | ||
| So this 20% fentanyl-related tariff needs to be eased. | ||
| And this is what we have seen out of the result of the meeting. | ||
| The other Chinese concern or their priority going into the meeting is additional U.S. trade measures, including, for example, the 301 investigation, including the port fees, including sporadic restrictions played on specific Chinese companies. | ||
| So these new trade measures have always been a cause of pain for the Chinese government and for the Chinese industry. | ||
| So I would say that's two versus true. | ||
| For the U.S., it's soybeans and rare earths. | ||
| For China, it's tariff reduction and new U.S. trade measures down the road. | ||
| All right, let's get our viewers involved in the conversation. | ||
| Here's how you can dial in. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| You can text if you don't want to call at 202-748-8003. | ||
| We're taking your questions and your comments about U.S.-China relations and the president's meeting with the Chinese president in South Korea yesterday. | ||
| Ross in Bradford, Pennsylvania, Democratic Caller, Europe first. | ||
| Ross, good morning. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, hi. | |
| I'd just like to say that we all need to get along, you know. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I'm glad Trump is over there doing this. | |
| But I think the Senate needs to keep Trump under control. | ||
| In what way, Ross? | ||
| In what way? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, because of the shutdown and all that, everybody's got to give in, you know, give and take a little bit. | |
| But, you know, we just, we can't go on living like this. | ||
| Okay. | ||
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unidentified
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You got Russia and you got Ukraine. | |
| That's terrible. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So Ross, okay, Yun San Ross believes it's a good thing that we're talking to the Chinese leader. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, it's all relative. | |
| It depends on what the criteria is, right? | ||
| In terms of getting along, yes, I think the meeting is very helpful and very positive in terms of U.S. and China finally getting along. | ||
| And look, U.S. consumers are at the front line of the impact of the trade war. | ||
| When we increase tariffs on the Chinese product, well, it increases the cost that U.S. consumers have to pay for the Chinese products, right? | ||
| So there's no doubt that a choose or an ease of the current tariff war is going to be beneficial for the U.S. consumers. | ||
| But I think the critiques will challenge that, well, at what cost? | ||
| Because China's goal to surpass the United States is determined. | ||
| And the more we buy from China, the more dependence we create on the Chinese consumer products. | ||
| And it will fuel the Chinese national growth. | ||
| It will fuel the growth of their military modernization. | ||
| And it will eventually fuel their ability to compete with us as a world number one superpower. | ||
| So there's no one correct answer to this particular question. | ||
| In the short term, I would say that yes, it is a good thing. | ||
| But in the long run, I think it also raises the question: one, does it correct the Chinese unfair trade practice? | ||
| And two, does it, in the long run, put the U.S. at a disadvantage? | ||
| So again, no one straight answer to this. | ||
| Different people have different positions coming from different perspectives. | ||
| Well, who had the upper hand going into the meeting? | ||
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unidentified
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Well, the fact that both sides have something desperately, they want desperately from the other side indicates that this is a match. | |
| That's how they would, that's why they negotiate. | ||
| And that's how the negotiation process has been so strenuous and, well, I would say lengthy between U.S. and China. | ||
| I would say both sides hold some critical leverages over the other, but that means, well, I would say they're pretty even-handed or in terms of their position, they're pretty equal going into the negotiation. | ||
| Has the Trump administration taken a different approach to China than the first time around, in the first four years? | ||
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unidentified
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Oh, absolutely. | |
| If people recall the narrative of great power competition or China as a pacing threat, it in fact came out of the national security strategy of the first Trump administration in 2018. | ||
| And before that, in the national defense strategy, we were already singling out great powers, especially China and Russia, as the most significant national security challenge for the United States. | ||
| So this time around, for the second Trump administration, two things have been missing from the narrative. | ||
| We have not heard the Trump administration talking about great power competition at all this time around. | ||
| So it raises the question, well, how do we define China now? | ||
| Is it still a pacing threat? | ||
| Is it still the most significant national security challenge? | ||
| Or is it something else? | ||
| Or is like what the president have indicated, we're partners, we're friends, we're getting along. | ||
| The other term that has been missing from the narrative this time around is Indo-Pacific strategy. | ||
| So during the first Trump administration, there was a very clear strategy that we're aligning with countries in the region. | ||
| So Japan, Australia, India, in order to form a broader coalition to manage China or to contain China's rights. | ||
| But this time around, we have seen, well, basically, a fallout in U.S.-India relations and some of the pretty serious criticism the U.S. has launched against Australia. | ||
| So I would say that the second Trump administration's approach to China so far has been very entirely different from the first Trump administration. | ||
| Frank is in Delaware, Democratic caller. | ||
| Good morning, Frank. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I'm calling we need to start making products in our country. | ||
| You know, like she was saying, that we buy too much, too many products from China, and it's really helping China become more powerful. | ||
| Well, let's take that point, Frank. | ||
| How much does the United States depend on China, Yin Sun? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, the dependence, well, depending on the industry, if you look at manufacturing good or consumer good, just think about the Christmas trees that we have and that's in the holiday season that's coming up. | |
| Think about the summer entertainment goods that we use, like the, for example, the sun umbrella or our swimming suits. | ||
| Think about the school products that our kids use during the fall season, when the school year is back. | ||
| Almost all these consumer goods are produced in China, which means that when the tariff is up, it means that, well, U.S. consumers will have to pay more because the Chinese are not going to pay for, they're not going to cut their price or their production cost by 55% in order to match the same price. | ||
| Eventually, as U.S. consumers have to carry at least a part of that cost. | ||
| This dependence, however, is, well, you could call this economic vulnerability. | ||
| Absolutely correct. | ||
| It does boost the Chinese ability to compete with us. | ||
| But here's a question. | ||
| Is it economical for us to make these goods? | ||
| Has the U.S. economy surpassed the stage of manufacturing some of the most basic goods? | ||
| Given the supply chain that has already been in place, let's say, well, just say making shoes. | ||
| Making shoes in China is significantly cheaper, maybe less than 50% of the cost compared to making shoes in the United States, which means that we can still make shoes. | ||
| But it means the choice that we make here is going to be much more expensive than what we can currently buy on the market. | ||
| So, the answer to the question as well: whether we should make it in the United States, it's not that straightforward. | ||
| Can we do it? | ||
| We can. | ||
| But is it economical? | ||
| Most likely not. | ||
| Are our consumers willing to pay the premium cost in order to make things here in the United States? | ||
| Most likely not. | ||
| So, this is in a way a catch-22. | ||
| Let's go to the Senate floor where the Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, criticized the president's approach to China trade policy. | ||
| On China, Donald Trump's trade negotiations with China have been a failure. | ||
| His actions have decimated soybean farmers. | ||
| He has hurt small businesses. | ||
| And has he revived any of American manufacturing? | ||
| No. | ||
| China is still floating global markets with subsidized goods, still stealing American technologies to undercut U.S. firms and workers. | ||
| And meanwhile, we have lost tens of thousands of American manufacturing jobs. | ||
| This is Trump's MO in foreign policy. | ||
| He creates a giant mess. | ||
| Then he wants everyone to praise him when he tries to clean it up and ignore the damage that he has inflicted. | ||
| Yin Sen, respond to the leader there, the Democratic leader, and the arguments that they made. | ||
| Are they accurate? | ||
|
unidentified
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I think the criticism of this round of negotiation or meeting is primarily focused on the fact that we have shown China our vulnerability. | |
| We are vulnerable in terms of our rare earth dependence on the Chinese production, and now the Chinese know it. | ||
| And they have been using this weapon quite adeptly against us. | ||
| So you could say that, well, without the triggering or without the escalation of the tariff war, we would not have been here. | ||
| I think that part is true. | ||
| I think on the issue of whether the Chinese unfair trade practices and the loss of American jobs that was created by President Trump, I think the answer is less straightforward because this has been the case for decades. | ||
| And this was also true under the Democratic presidents, too. | ||
| So this is not entirely President Trump's policy or his creation. | ||
| But you could say that he didn't fix it. | ||
| Well, at the same time, the Democrat president didn't fix it either. | ||
| So this is a long-term challenge that the U.S. needs to counter, and we have to come up with a smart and strategic response to the challenge that China poses. | ||
| However, another interesting train of thought here is we assume, we have the assumption that China is a challenge and China is a competitor that must be out-competed. | ||
| It doesn't seem clear that President Trump adopts this position. | ||
| He said we're going to make America great again, but he has also not mentioned whether this making America great again will have to come at China's expense. | ||
| So I think that is a critical question we're trying to deliberate here. | ||
| So for Trump, making America great again in relation to what? | ||
| Compared to America itself or compared to other competitors such as China and Russia. | ||
| So it's possible that President Trump has an entirely different paradigm. | ||
| He has entirely different criteria coming to evaluate U.S. relationship with China and how to manage that relationship and also what endgame United States should be seeking. | ||
| So with very different goals, I would say the criteria and evaluation and the assessment will be very different too. | ||
| All right, we'll go to Fernando in Galveston, Texas, a Republican. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I just wanted to ask her, what's the actual population in China compared to us here in the U.S.? | |
| The Chinese population is somewhere around 1.4 billion people, and our population is somewhere around 370 million, if I remember correctly. | ||
| So their population is about three to four times bigger hours. | ||
| And Fernando, your point? | ||
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unidentified
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Where do you put all those people at? | |
| All right. | ||
| Well, Yunzan, is there a dynamic there with the growth of China and its impact on its economy and what it means for trading with other countries like the United States? | ||
|
unidentified
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That's a good question. | |
| Well, when you look at such a large population, the first thing that comes to the mind of the Chinese government is jobs. | ||
| Well, you need to give these people jobs. | ||
| You need to keep them employed, which is why the thing for China, the export-oriented economy or the export-oriented industry and employment has been a key priority for the Chinese economy. | ||
| You look at China's economic story, basically, since 1979 when they first started the reform and opening up, it has been a story of inviting in foreign companies to employ Chinese laborers, which is relatively cheaper compared to our labor. | ||
| Think about the shoes and the price of making shoes in China being so much cheaper compared to the United States. | ||
| It's primarily because they have a very large, very, very large labor resource. | ||
| And remember, in China, women also work. | ||
| In the U.S., the employment rate of women, especially women after they get married, is much, much lower than in China. | ||
| In China, more than 75% of their women are actually, meaning that age-appropriate women are in the labor force. | ||
| So with such a large labor force, the Chinese government has very successfully uses this labor force to lay the foundation for China to be the world factory, which is why they have built up this labor-intensive world factory manufacturing businesses, right? | ||
| So coming to the relationship between the Chinese population and the Chinese economy, I would say that is where the Chinese success story has come from. | ||
| The story has been evolving, however. | ||
| With the one-tider policy, the Chinese population, the size of the population is actually growing at a much slower space. | ||
| And also with the cost of education, cost of raising child in China growing. | ||
| So more and more families are opting for less avoided per family. | ||
| So what this means is that we're looking at the Chinese society as an aging society. | ||
| A lot of these previously very active labor force, now they have entered the age of retirement, which means that while the Chinese government has to come up with a way to carry the economy forward with a much smaller labor force, but with also a growing aging society. | ||
| So that's why the Chinese have been aiming for what they call the Meeting China 2025 or the upgrade of Chinese economy to focus on the high-tech industry so that China can shift away from the labor-intensive economy to a tech-intensive economy. | ||
| And that's basically China's economic development strategy. | ||
| Gary's in Texas, a Democratic caller. | ||
| Morning, Gary. | ||
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unidentified
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Hey, good morning. | |
| And, you know, I really kind of want to shed some light on this. | ||
| And I'm going to give it a different spin. | ||
| But I'm also going to tie it into a little immigration as well. | ||
| I hope I get a chance to get this out. | ||
| So I'm disagreeing with what the lady is saying here. | ||
| So let's take, I've ordered from Timu. | ||
| I've ordered from Alibaba. | ||
| I've ordered from these Chinese oriented companies. | ||
| Generally, the products are horrible. | ||
| They're the wrong sizes. | ||
| The quality is atrocious. | ||
| The United States needs to be more self-sufficient on its own manufacturing. | ||
| I agree with Donald Trump. | ||
| I'm a black American. | ||
| I'm a Democrat. | ||
| I agree with Donald Trump. | ||
| I don't agree with everything he says. | ||
| But I hope Congress is listening to me right now because I have a business, right? | ||
| And I use a lot of, I stopped using overseas because it was cheaper in the beginning. | ||
| It worked out. | ||
| But the quality is horrible. | ||
| All right, Gary. | ||
| And Gary, let's take your point on that. | ||
| Yun Sun. | ||
|
unidentified
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No, I think that's a fair point. | |
| I also buy things from Tamu. | ||
| I find some of the products to be, well, actually quite horrible, like what you have pointed out. | ||
| However, I will point out that if you buy the same things on Amazon, most of them are also made by Chinese producers. | ||
| So it's not just the Chinese app that has this problem. | ||
| So also curious to find out whether the product that you purchase from Amazon is also of very poor quality. | ||
| I find the Amazon products to be, what I get from Amazon to be of higher quality, but the price is also higher. | ||
| So I've talked to many Chinese manufacturers and factory owners about this particular issue. | ||
| This is not just unique to the United States because the products that China export to Southeast Asia, to Africa, they're also, I think the quality is also pretty atrocious. | ||
| And the Chinese reaction is this. | ||
| Well, it's because they're cheap. | ||
| So with good price comes with better quality. | ||
| But when you want a cheap product, there is no way that we can produce the same quality product with 50% of the cost. | ||
| So it's not that they don't have the ability to make better product. | ||
| I think it's a desire to keep the price low that has also suppressed or made them deliberately depreciate the quality of the product. | ||
| And I absolutely agree with that. | ||
| So eventually it's about what the consumers demand, right? | ||
| If the consumers demand higher quality products, we can also buy the same type of products from, for example, Japanese companies and from Korean companies. | ||
| But the question is, if you look at global economy, I would say the U.S. consumers are at a very advantaged place because most of the world cannot afford our living our lifestyle and afford our method or our style of spending. | ||
| So I would say the Chinese success story is not just about the U.S. consumer goods. | ||
| It's about the global consumer goods and especially in global south and they're extremely popular. | ||
| And for the United States, I would say the fact that we still run last year is 350 billion US dollars of trade deficit vis-a-vis China means that we're still buying a lot from the Chinese. | ||
| New York Times this morning headline for you to respond to Yoon Sun, the 19th century opium war shapes Xi's trade clash with President Trump. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I read the story. | |
| I think it comes from two different angles. | ||
| One is fentanyl. | ||
| We call the fentanyl, the Chinese fentanyl, basically a Chinese opium war vis-a-vis the United States. | ||
| I think it triggers some very emotional response from the Chinese because opium war was a period where China was weak and China was victimized. | ||
| So I think that analogy has incurred some serious feedback or pushback from the Chinese side. | ||
| But on the other hand, if we look at the inflow of fentanyl from, for example, the producers in Mexico using Chinese fentanyl precursors to make the opioid to export To the American market, there is quite some similarity between these two cases. | ||
| However, I think the essential question that the Chinese have raised, not to defend their position, is that has American doctors been much more liberal about prescribing opioids? | ||
| And I would say there probably is a significant cultural difference here because in China it's extremely difficult to get to controlled substance, even through doctors, even through doctors' prescriptions, because doctors are watched so closely. | ||
| And by default, they're not supposed to give people painkillers, especially controlled substance painkillers, unless there is absolute need like cancer. | ||
| So I think the two societies operate with very different ground rules and very different assumptions, which has created this problem that I think in the United States, doctors are indeed much more prone to giving people controlled substance painkillers compared to doctors in other countries. | ||
| Not to say that this practice is wrong, but it does contribute to the cause. | ||
| Yoon Sun is the program director of China Studies and Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center. | ||
| Thank you very much for your insight and conversation this morning. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you, Greta. |