President Trump’s visit to China this week came at a critical time for the United States, for Xi Jinping, and for the Communist Chinese regime, whose sights are firmly set on Taiwan. For this weekend’s Punch interview, The Daily Wire spoke with China expert Michael Sobolik of The Hudson Institute, author of “Countering China’s Great Game.” The interview has been lightly edited.
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Ben Domenech: First off, the immediate headlines coming out of this meeting, which went 40 minutes longer than expected, were about Xi Jinping bringing up Taiwan and sending a pretty clear message to the president, including a quote that Chinese officials put out after the meeting that was supposed to be a direct quote from Xi about the issue. Did it surprise you that that was as prominent as it was, just given the fact that there’s a half a dozen other issues that they needed to talk about?
Michael Sobolik: No, it didn’t surprise me at all that Xi Jinping made Taiwan that prominent in his remarks and in his demands, for a few reasons. Number one, Taiwan has been at the top of the CCP’s list of its diplomatic engagements with America since 1972, when Nixon went to China. The top of this list was getting out of Vietnam quickly and seamlessly, and asking China for help with that. And at the top of Mao’s list was Taiwan. Not much has changed in that regard. It also didn’t surprise me, because we’re getting closer and closer to 2027, the year Xi Jinping has told the People’s Liberation Army he expects them to be ready should he give the order for a military mission on Taiwan. Again, that doesn’t mean 2027 is year zero where things are about to go down, but it is the year Xi told the PLA he expects them to be ready.
Things are starting to converge on readiness timelines. And I also think, given recent events that are happening right now in Taiwan, the KMT [Kuomintang] Party chair just visited Xi Jinping in Beijing a few weeks ago. It’s pretty clear that he is continuing his effort to try to divide Taiwan and its internal politics and create more of a constituency for reunification with the PRC. And he wants the space to be able to do that, and he doesn’t want to be constrained. So for all those reasons, that was not surprising.
BD: To give our readers some perspective, walk us through the dynamics of the KMT leader, the opposition party leader [Cheng Li-wun] visiting Xi Jinping, and what message that was meant to send.
MS: I was in Taiwan a little less than a month ago for a week-long delegation, and this meeting from the KMT Party chair came up numerous times throughout that week. Basically, Xi Jinping has a diplomatic and psychological goal with Taiwan. He wants to isolate Taiwan economically, diplomatically, psychologically, politically, and in every single way you can imagine. And he has a related goal that is similar, but it’s a distinction with a difference. He wants Taiwan to believe it is isolated, and he wants the United States to believe it as well — perception versus reality. And if he can get people to believe that, that’s almost as good as it actually being isolated.
It’s a complicated situation. Xi invited [Cheng] because she was already predisposed to favor alignment with China. And his goal is to send the message that there’s a growing constituency inside of Taiwan for peaceful reunification with China. This is a really powerful talking point for the CCP because whenever Xi Jinping sits across the table — or when he did sit across the table from Donald Trump — he can now say, listen, Trump, it’s not just me asking you to oppose Taiwanese independence. The KMT Party chair herself is supportive of you doing this, and she has said so publicly, which is true. She did come out in support of that. So it gives him very powerful diplomatic leverage, and it allows him to more credibly make the case that Taiwanese independence is a rogue separatist phenomenon and that more and more Taiwanese are interested in unification.
BD: The other complicating factor was the whole attitude in the context of, “I am visiting our ancestors, I’m visiting our homeland, I’m visiting a place to which we have a connection.” It sends a powerful psychological message to have her come at that particular point in time. And then, having it followed up with this decision on the defense spending bill that came out, which, I mean, I see the Wall Street Journal editorial board tried to spin as a step forward. I do not view it as a step forward. I view it as not ideal. What are your thoughts on that?
MS: Start with defense. They funded future purchases of military equipment from the United States, which is great. But in a crisis, Taiwan has a very different geography from Ukraine. We, and the Europeans, have the luxury of being able to resupply Ukraine with ammunition, weapons, and components over land. We can literally go through Western Europe through Poland, through adjacent states, and we can get stuff into Ukraine.
Where is that corridor in Taiwan? If there’s a sea blockade and China has air superiority operations going in the skies, how are you going to resupply that island? They need indigenous defense production. They need to have the capability to make their own stuff, their own drones in particular, and asymmetric capabilities, weapons, and ammo. And that was the big part of the defense bill that was not funded, which is a big problem.
Candidly, I want to emphasize another element too, which is that, per capita, Taiwan’s investment, promised investment in the United States, with their own negotiations with the White House, outclasses what our other partners of the Indo-Pacific have promised to invest. Taiwan remains a good friend of the United States. There was a really good piece by Mark Montgomery recently about how Taiwan is a model ally among our partners. And I think he’s right about that. So yes, they’re having some issues right now, but I don’t think that should overshadow all of the ways that we do benefit from that relationship. And I also want to emphasize that President Lai [Ching-te] is having some headwinds, but is trying to do the right thing right now. So there are some things we’re working through, but I’m not anywhere close to being pessimistic about where this could end up. I still think we can get this on the right track.
The interesting psychological aspect you mentioned about Chinese civilization is the appeal of, “We’re on different sides of the state, but we have shared this common heritage.” You’re seeing this move on social media a lot among Gen Z, with “China-maxing” and this growing trend of having an interest in an association with the civilizational and cultural side of China, which, as far as it goes, is great because I’ve been to China for cultural experiences that were not political, and it was one of the coolest things in my entire life.
At some level, everyone who loves Chinese culture should experience it in some way. But on TikTok, those kinds of trends are manipulated over time to take on a political overtone, where it’s not just an appreciation for Chinese civilization. It’s a formed understanding of the Chinese Communist Party. And I don’t think it’s an accident that some of the young KMT lawmakers we interacted with in our delegation were much more open to engaging with the PRC.
BD: One of the legislators that I interacted with was Puma Shen, and I asked him about this youth dynamic because a lot of numbers were getting quoted to me about the views of the Taiwanese on reunification and independence and related topics. Most of which seemed to me like spin. They were basically saying, “We don’t really have a problem. The majorities are all good, et cetera, et cetera.” But what he rightly noted, and he’s a younger legislator, was the youngest portion of Taiwan, the ones that are the most influenced by social media are also the ones who are clearly showing signs of being vulnerable to this messaging and don’t view their culture as being particularly distinct or valuable in terms of defending what they’ve benefited from when it comes to the existing status quo and basically devaluing it as he views it influenced by these messages. Is that what you’ve been seeing as well?
MS: Yes. I think that dovetails with another concern Taiwan has, which is the lack of a really robust military reserve. If you look at Poland and you look at some of the Nordic countries, serving in the reserves when you’re young — between high school and college or in that season of your life — it’s viewed as an honorable thing. It’s viewed as your path into maturity, your path into your 20s, and eventually into independence. But you serve your country and your military because you believe in your national heritage. And this is one of the issues with Taiwan. What you’re identifying, I think, is upstream of their more material media problem, which is they need a better reserve force, but one of the foundations of that is having a really robust, sticky appreciation for a unique culture that you viscerally believe in and that you would fight for.
BD: I would add that there are a lot of people in Taiwan who would fight for freedom, but what you’re identifying is a phenomenon in the younger generation in particular. And I think those two problems are linked.
In addition to that, I think that there is an argument that goes out from people in America, whether you are making it from the kind of protectionist side or whether you’re making it from the isolationist side, that essentially it doesn’t really matter what happens to Taiwan because Taiwan doesn’t seem to care about what matters to Taiwan. And I think that the problem with this defense bill is, why is Taiwan a hundred miles away from China with water that is as shallow as you get, basically, for the straight, less than a hundred meters in most places — why are they spending 3% of their budget on defense? Shouldn’t they be maxing out their defense budget to a great degree? Why, especially with the benefit of the financial success that they’ve had with chips and semiconductors and becoming the dominant force that they have in that space, why the reluctance to even get to 5% that the president is demanding of our NATO allies?
MS: I feel like this is one of the most difficult aspects of this whole thing to answer. Interestingly, if you look back to 2018 and 2019, around the time when Beijing was cracking down in Hong Kong, there was a visceral reaction in Taiwan. It was one of the factors that led to the second term of Tsai Ing-wen. And she was really struggling in her reelection, but then Xi Jinping went hard in Hong Kong, and everyone said, “Oh, okay, so now we know what One country, two systems means to you guys.” So that was a long time ago, and the DPP [Democratic Progressive Party] has held the presidency in Taiwan for a long time, and it’s always normal. We see this in our own system, where one party holds power for a long period of time. There’s always a correction — the pendulum always swings back. So part of it is the political cycle. Part of it is the psychology of living next door to an 800-pound dragon or panda, pick your animal.
So, it’s partly the psychology of living next door to an existential threat. Over time, your mind is not able to live under constant dread and fear, and you either compartmentalize or, over time, if the threat never materializes, you begin to live with the assumption that it didn’t happen for the past 100 days, so it’s not going to happen tomorrow, and it’s probably not going to happen in the next 100 days either. And we have seen this in ourselves with COVID; the human spirit is really resilient in the face of trauma. We have all collectively convinced ourselves that COVID never really happened, and we’ve memory-holed the pandemic in a lot of ways. And one of the ways we memory-holed it is by not holding China accountable for starting it. Biden didn’t do it. Trump hasn’t done it at all.
It’s part of human nature. It’s part internal politics. It’s partly their reaction to an existential threat, given how close they are. Americans are right to ask: Can we defend a partner who maybe isn’t taking the steps we think they should? I will hasten to add that, being a global power with global interests, this is the price you pay for being a hyperpower. You have to defend your interests regardless of how other people are, or are not, defending theirs. That’s the expensive part of what it means to be an American superpower, but that’s the situation we’re in.
BD: What are the takeaways thus far from this summit beyond Taiwan? What do you think is the general feeling about how this has gone, what Xi is attempting to do, especially given the context that, within the media landscape here in America, everyone had the attitude that Xi holds all the cards and the president does not have anything really to hold over them — basically the sentiment of the New York Times.
MS: I’m seeing a lot of people say that Donald Trump went to China with the most leverage that any president has ever had in recent memory. And I’m trying to figure out what leverage they’re seeing that I don’t see because if you look at Iran, we are the ones who need help reopening the Strait [of Hormuz] and it was the president who brought up Iran as far as I can tell and if he’s the one asking Xi Jinping to help him, that’s Xi who has the leverage in that situation, not us. I get the argument that Iran is an energy importer, and they need this whole thing resolved.
It’s in their interest to help us wrap this up. Still, I think some folks are discounting the scope and scale of China’s oil reserves — that they can go a number of additional months before they’re in a really, really difficult situation. And their electricity and automobile distribution within China is such that their electricity grid is mainly powered by coal. I think the proportion of electric vehicles in China to those that run on gas has displaced an increasing number of cars that would require gasoline. So it’s not that they’re not hurting because they are, but I don’t know. I’m trying to find where all of this supposed leverage is that we walked in with, and there was this huge delegation of CEOs that the president brought with him. Again, that’s the president saying, “Xi Jinping, please open your markets for us.”
It’s Xi Jinping who has the leverage in that negotiation as well. So I don’t know, maybe you can tell me, is there something that I’m missing?
BD: What I would say is I do think that the president is someone who doesn’t accept deals that he thinks are bad and that he’s very mindful of his legacy right now and that he doesn’t want to be viewed as a president who sold out in any way to Chinese priorities. But at the same time, the things that I feel like Xi stands to get a lot more out of from us in return for things that might feel satisfactory to some audiences back home, but could be very limited in terms of their actual impact. I don’t know that this is going to be a summit that we look back on as being as significant as we thought it might have been, even a few months ago.
MS: I think that’s right. So obviously, there’s still so much we don’t know, and I think a lot is still being negotiated right now. There are a lot of different paths ahead, but I think there’s a very real scenario where the summit turns out to be another episode of a managed trade truce and figuring out how much longer that can last with some marginal agreements along the way. The big material thing that’s been announced so far was the 200 Boeing jet purchases. China committed to purchase 200, and that was well below what Boeing investors were hoping for, and Boeing stock dipped today in reaction to that news. So there’s not much material that’s come out yet. The things to look for right now are the Board of Trade, which [Treasury Secretary Scott] Bessent and [Ambassador Jamieson] Greer have been putting some energy into negotiating in advance of the summit.
Two other things: part of the U.S. statement, the readout, mentioned increased Chinese investment in the U.S. economy. I have a billion questions about what that is going to look like, specifically, which sectors and what, if any, are the national security implications of those sectors? Because if we’re trying to decouple our exposure in critical supply chains, in principle, I don’t understand the argument for opening our economy to more PRC money, but we need more specifics before we can really judge that. The final thing. On Air Force One, Trump said that Xi is considering releasing Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri. That’s excellent news, and let’s all hope and pray that happens quickly. It sounds like Xi isn’t open to releasing Jimmy Lai. We’re still waiting for details on whether Trump raised additional cases, and I think that’ll become apparent shortly.
BD: To me, I could see a scenario where the president actually has significant success when it comes to prisoners while also giving a king’s ransom in exchange. Because that gets you praise in America because of something that’s significant that the media would like, but it actually, in the long term, is a negative for America.
MS: Yes. I guess the truth at the core of this scenario is you can’t get something for nothing. We’ll see.
BD: The overall attitude that China has had toward America when it comes to our cultural production and media post-COVID, particularly movies, has been notoriously limited, with the exceptions of things like Zootopia II. Hollywood is still griping about the fact that China is essentially closed off to them. Do you see any of that changing after this summit? Is that something you think will matter at all, or are there just too many other things to talk about?
MS: I would be shocked if Donald Trump made time in the summit schedule to advocate for Hollywood. I don’t see that happening.
BD: I don’t know. My friend David Ellison says he wants to get more of his movies over here.
MS: Actually, if there’s anyone who could move Trump on that, it would be him. Sure. All right.
BD: Is the problem really that the Taiwanese have been asking the wrong things from America’s military arsenal, and that they need to ask for something different and build it themselves?
MS: Yes. I remember when I was working for Senator [Ted] Cruz a while ago, and even back then, 2016, 2017, 2018, there was frustration about Taipei wanting the wrong kinds of platforms for the missions they would need to be executing. They need asymmetric stuff. They need survivable stuff. They need things that make their critical infrastructure resilient. And so I do think that’s a big part of it. And to their credit, I think they’re getting that. And I think if they can up their investment in homegrown capabilities, particularly drones, that is the kind of stuff they need to be moving in. And I do think Lai gets that. So now they just have to do it.
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