Tom Friedman
Appearances
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
It's a very good point, and I'll give you a perfect example of that. So there was – Ford Motor today has built a battery factory in Marshall, Michigan. using the IRA money from the Biden administration. That factory makes batteries for EVs. The technology, though, comes from China. It's a company called CATL. That CATL technology was actually born in America in the Obama administration.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
People tried to scale it here then. They failed. The founders, basically, it went into bankruptcy, and a Chinese entrepreneur bought it, took it back to China, scaled it there, and is now doing tech transfer to Ford, bringing it back here. It's a perfect example of what you're talking about, the lack of patience.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Let me back into your question, Ezra, by just giving you my worldview, how I think of this whole China issue. I think that the net result of where we are as a world in terms of development right now, and call this the post-post-Cold War era, is the humanity faces basically three existential questions. One is how we manage artificial general intelligence.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
And we are going to have to find a way to collaborate to make sure we get the best and cushion the worst out of what is going to be a new species. That's number one. Second, as a product of our development, we have unleashed a level of climate change. that we have to collaborate in order to deal with.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
And thirdly, I believe the combination of all these stresses is going to blow up a lot of states, a lot of weak states, and you're going to have zones of disorder. You already see that in some parts of the world. My view is there are only two superpowers who can manage this, but only if they collaborate, the United States and China. They can learn that early or they can learn that late.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
They can learn that painlessly or painfully. But my view is they're gonna have to learn that. And so for me, liking China, not liking China, it's just not in my equation. That is the world I think we're going into. I also think we're going into a world where I think of a kind of industrial ecosystem.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
So I was born into the late industrial revolution where the ecosystem to thrive as a country was coal, steel, aluminum, combustion engines, and combustion-driven vehicles, and electricity. And you had to be playing in all of those industries to thrive.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
I think the world we're going into, the ecosystem to thrive, is going to be robots, electric batteries, artificial intelligence, EVs, electric vehicles, and autonomous driving cars. That ecosystem will be the flywheel that's going to drive everything. And therefore, to me as an American...
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
It's essential that we play in that ecosystem and that we be able to compete head-to-head with China in that ecosystem. So that's how I'm coming at this problem. I'm not even thinking about Taiwan. I'm not thinking about communism or capitalism. I quoted a Trump official a while back who said China's goal in the world is to spread authoritarian Marxism. Oh my God.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
China's got a lot of goals in the world, Ezra, but one of them is not spreading authoritarian Marxism, okay? They're trying to spread Muskism, not Marxism. That's the game they're trying to beat us at. They're trying to beat us at our game, not Karl Marx's game. And we need to understand that and be serious about it. And the last thing I'd say, given those are the industries we need to be in,
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
This China thing, this country, you can love them or hate them. And believe me, I do both every day. But these are serious people, okay? They're not messing around like you've just seen Donald Trump mess around for the last week. And they don't hire knuckleheads and put them into key positions for the most part. OK, so those are all the biases I'm coming to this story with.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Then I walk into the Washington debate, you know, and it's are you a panda hugger? Are you not a panda hugger? Did you say something nice about China or not nice about China? And. I just, I run away with my hair on fire because it's just not about the world I see us going into. A world I want America to thrive in and a world where I think to thrive, we need to be serious about these issues.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Well, I would say I only can speak for myself. I actually supported Trump's tariffs the first time around. In fact, I wrote a column saying Donald Trump is not the American president Americans deserve, but he is the American president China deserve. Mm-hmm. Somebody had to call the game. So I have a lot of sympathy with that view at one level.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
And the other thing I would say, Ezra, I will confess something here on your show. Whether I'm writing about China from Washington or whether I'm writing about China from China, I'm always just writing about America. My goal is to use China as my permanent Sputnik, helping people understand what a formidable engine this is, however they got there.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
And that if we aren't serious, then we're going to get steamrolled.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
It's a question I ask every trip and did on this one as well. And the answer is a combination of things, partly culture and partly just not understanding how the systems work. As a general rule, not in every case, but as a general rule, if you have an idea to start a company, there's actually not a lot standing in your way. The government's not going to interfere with that.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
In fact, it may help you far more than any local or state or national government would do here. If you want to write an op-ed piece condemning Xi Jinping, that'll be the last op-ed piece you write. So those two things are very decoupled there. Not only that, China has a Mandarin tradition, going back a long way.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
People who want to work in the government have to take a test, and it's a very meritocratic test. And the product of that is, on the whole, okay, as a generalization, the deep state there actually is pretty good, quite responsive when it comes to backing innovation. It's also very good at arresting you if you get out of line. But that's how these things go together.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
So if Ezra does decide he wants to make shirts with that pink polka dot button that can sing the Chinese national anthem backwards, not only can he get that button overnight, but no one will stand in the way. In fact, you may find a lot of sources of capital locally to produce that button.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
And at the same time, if you want that button to sing Tiananmen Square in 1989 over and again, you're going to get arrested. But those two things actually exist side by side.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
The dark factories are fully roboticized factories. So they're dark. They don't need to turn the lights on except at two and three in the morning when the engineers come in and clean the machines. There are dark factories all over China today. The Huawei campus was built in three years to house 35,000 researchers, including, Ezra, foreign ones that they hoped to recruit. Had 100 different cafes.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Each building was distinctly designed, has a monorail, you know, going around a beautiful long campus. By the way, I've been to Huawei's headquarters in Shenzhen. I have no illusions about Huawei, written about them. They stole stuff. They have not been at all good actors. But today, we tried to kill Huawei, the United States.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
I mean, we tried to deny them the chips, and they almost went into the tank. And they innovated their way out. Maybe they stole those chips from NVIDIA somewhere. I have no idea. All I know is today, the same day that Josh Hawley declared that China can't do innovation, Huawei reported record profits on CNBC with some very new technology. And again...
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
My job is to take the world as it is, all right? And the way the world is right now is however China got there, it's there. And if you don't think it's there, then you are really missing something.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Hire clowns, expect a circus, okay? If that is your theory, then go ahead, put all the tariffs 1,000% on China. That's day one. But these guys are entirely first order thinkers. Day two has to be a strategy for what you do the morning after here. How do you then build the industrial base that you want to take advantage of the time you're buying with your tariffs? So what are these guys doing?
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Trump put up a wall, OK, against China, and then they went out and shot the American car companies. Ford was just downgraded today. I saw its stock, I think, is down to $7.50. Why is that? Because Ford did everything that Biden asked it to do, that a rational company would ask it to do, that we would want it to do. And then what does Donald Trump do? He comes in with his right-wing woke bullshit.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
and says, we don't do EVs here. EVs are for girly men. We only do manly industries. Well, fuck that, okay? Because look what happens now to Ford. So you say, we want to bring this here. I don't want to have my kids screwing in parts, okay, into cars. I want them designing, okay, investing in and inventing the next generation of EVs. But let's go back to that ecosystem I talked about, Ezra.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
EVs, robots, autonomous cars, batteries, clean energy. If you say, oh, we're not to do the EV part. Before I came over here, I read Trump wants to reopen coal plants, right? And he loves Drill Baby Drill. Okay, so it doesn't make any sense. You're building a wall against China. Great, I'm all for it, but what are you doing behind the wall?
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
So we catch up, you're taking your own companies out and shooting them in the back if they're not right-wing woke. What's the project, what's the Trump administration's focus on? How many billions can we take away from American universities of their research funds to punish them for DEI strategies? Now I'm here not to advocate DEI, but if I had a limited time in the world right now,
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
I sure wouldn't be focused on that. I'd be focused on doubling down on the research capacity of these universities. I'd be doubling down on NIH. What are they doing? They're cutting the budgets of our crown gem research facilities. So it's all just bullshit. They're not serious people. They're clowns.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Exactly. You should do 50-50 joint ventures with Chame. You can build your cars here, 50-50 joint venture, number one and number two. You have to build your supply chain here as well. So you're not going to just bring all the parts in, you know, from China. You've got to build the supply chain and the factory here, joint owned exactly here. what you did to us.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
I argued for this before with Huawei. And Huawei has a very dodgy past. And they've been involved in all kinds of lawsuits, you know, with different companies over IP. So what I said at one point was I would say to Huawei, here's the deal. We're going to let you wire Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. You can sell your technology in those three states. We're going to watch you for three years.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
We're going to see how you handle that. We'll see how you handle the data. If you do well, we're going to give you to other states. We created no incentive for them to be a better actor. There was no ladder up or out at all. We just then tried to kill them. And their response was, you talking to me? You talking to me? And they now went out, got into the fitness gym, and they might kill us.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
So if all Trump is doing right now, Ezra, I don't know, I've lost track what the tariff is on China. We may be getting toward infinity. I have no idea. But if behind that is a strategy to basically do what we did the other way, I'm all for it.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
But if the strategy is to only build a wall so we can go back to digging coal and only depending on oil and killing the wind business and killing the EV business... then this is going to end in such a disaster. All right, that's the immediate problem. You have another problem coming down the road with AI.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
And AI going to be injected into everything, okay, from your car to your toaster to your refrigerator, and maybe even your body. If we in China don't have a trusted architecture for managing AI, then everything, Ezra, is going to become TikTok. And this whole debate we're having over TikTok, can we have it? They're listening to us. What are they doing with the data?
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
That's going to apply to your toaster, to your tennis shoes, to your car. And so that's coming down the road. But that's already here.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
So that was the theme of my column, you know, that they have massively digitized. It's a cashless society now. You have beggars with a QR code in their begging bowl. I went with my colleague, Keith Bradshaw, to Zeker, one of their new car companies.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
We went to the design lab, watched a designer doing a 3D model of one of their new cars, putting it in different contexts, desert, rainforest, beach, different weather conditions. And we asked him, what software are you using? We thought it was just some traditional CAD design. He said, it's open source AI software. 3D design tool.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
He said what used to take him three months, he now does in three hours. Three months to three hours. Because they have such a digital connected system, you just take that hypodermic needle, fill it with AI, and inject it into it, and it can optimize so many things. And it's for all these reasons that I'm worried about the bifurcated world. I'm worried about that.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
That world is not going to be at all stable or at all prosperous in anywhere near the last 40 years. And so if I have a choice, my choice is to argue, and I don't care if I'm the only one arguing for it, that we and China are are going to have to get together and actually be the partners that create an architecture for this.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Otherwise, we're going to just keep racing each other in some kind of crazy AI version of nuclear, probably bankrupt ourselves in doing it. And this gets to my gut feeling about the whole world we're going into once we get to AGI, Ezra, which is that I think to manage this world, climate,
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
AI and disorder, we are going to have to learn to collaborate as a species to a degree that we have never collaborated before. I am a big believer in my friend Dov Seidman's argument that interdependence is no longer our choice, it's our condition. The only question is, will we have healthy interdependencies or unhealthy interdependencies?
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
But we are going to rise together or we're going to fall together. But baby, whatever we're doing, we're doing it together. That is my view.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Look, let's go back to what would you be doing if you were serious on trade? The first thing you would be doing is saying to the Chinese, you now manufacture about a third of all products in the world. That is not sustainable. You can't make everything for everyone. You have got to leaven out your economy to be retired in China to get like a $5 a month pension.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
And you've got to be using that energy domestically and buying more from others. The conversation has to start there. They are making too much and we are consuming too much, Ezra. So why don't we then get our friends and sit down with China as a united front, the European Union, Korea, Singapore, Japan, the Philippines, and make it the world against China
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
On this issue, you would have told them over the next three years, we're going to gradually be raising tariffs 15, 20, 30% each year. So you can know what's coming, but we're going to keep doing that as a collective. And then behind that wall, you would be offering them, one, the opportunity to invest in America.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
And two, you would be serious about that ecosystem I talked about and giving our government, our company's incentives, doing everything we can to get the infrastructure and opportunities for that ecosystem to get going. That would be the rational thing. What did Trump do? He made it America against the world, the whole world at the same time.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
So he actually threw away our single greatest competitive advantage over China, which is that we have allies and China has vassals. Our colleague David Brooks likes to say, you know, Trump is always the wrong answer to the right question.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Ezra, you have to understand, okay, today Trump, on my way over here, he decided he's going to pause the tariffs and whatnot. Lesotho doesn't have to worry. What he is missing is the world, but China in particular, thinks he's an unstable actor. They look at what's going on here. They watch that Zelensky meeting in the Oval Office.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
And they have watched that Trump tore up a basically successor agreement to NAFTA that he negotiated with our two closest neighbors. And they're saying to themselves two things. One is, how do we even get in a room, our leader get in a room with this guy? We don't know what he's going to say. And number two, say we do do an agreement with him. He could tear it up the next day.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
So he always thinks he's being cute. Like this is some, he's buying, you know, some apartment block on Long Island and he can kind of do whatever he wants. This is a big game. And they don't think he's a stable actor anymore. There's been a real cost for this back and forth. Hey, I'm glad the stock market, you know, went back up today, but don't think this has been cost-free.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
But there was no deal made here. There was, as you say, worse than no deal. We shot ourselves in both feet. And now we are in a much less powerful position because we've alienated all those allies we need to create leverage on China in the future. And so it's an unmitigated disaster.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
So let me respond in two ways. I want to go back first to the point we were discussing about just the unseriousness of this administration. The morning after Trump announced he was putting this massive tariff on China, when the markets really melted down, I actually called our editors and said, not the most important story of the day, not the most disturbing story of the day.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Great to be with you, Ezra.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Please don't lose sight of this story. On the day before, we learned, or maybe in the same day, that Laura Loomer, a conspiracy peddler who believes 9-11 was an inside job, was in the Oval Office, and we have since learned
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
apparently or reportedly urged Trump to fire the head of our national security agency and his deputy, two of the most respected intelligence professionals in the world, because they weren't pro-Trump enough. Who knows what it was, Ezra? And Trump did that. fired the head of basically two of our most important cyber warriors, defenders and warriors, widely respected around the world.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
He did that on the advice of a political witch doctor. Holy mackerel. I mean, it's market up or down. How can we be a serious country? Talk about things that filter down. that then filters down through the whole bureaucracy. Can I offer up intelligence that Trump will not like? So that's, to me, just, we have to get that in there because- Let me offer a useful comparison here, I think.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Why? Well, basically, all the American business executives in China left China during COVID, virtually all of them. And then after COVID, we began this process of decoupling. So you basically had six years with very, very little American presence there. When I was in China last year, I felt like I was the only American in China. You just didn't see any other Americans.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Yeah. Which is why on my trip, I can't tell you how many people asked me, are you having a Maoist cultural revolution? Of my words, right-wing wokest, basically. Because what was the revolution, the cultural revolution? It was Mao unleashing his ideological youth to tear apart, basically, the deep state in China. And it didn't end well. It set China back.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
It went on for a decade, and God knows how much it set China back. And so I just couldn't agree more, Ezra. It's one of the things that so troubled me watching this happen. But I want to go back to your other point. I'm not running for office. But if I were, as a Democrat— I would not be doing Trump Lite.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
I would provide this comprehensive alternative of leveraging our allies, setting down conditions, long-term tariffs on China gradually implemented, behind which we invest in the ecosystem of the 21st century with government help as much as we can and taking a long view because we got into this the long way. We're not going to get out of it the short way.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
It all should be the other thing. And I am happy to be the advocate of it. We just saw a little snapshot of what the other looks like. And I think we're going to grind ourselves up. I think we're going to make ourselves less stable, less prosperous, and less able to manage the three key challenges of the 21st century climate, a trust architecture for AI and disorder.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
And so I'm perfectly ready to be called naive, idealistic, but just don't say I haven't done my homework because I have.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Not tourists, not business people, not nobody. I wrote then that it was like America and China were two elephants looking at each other through a straw. Having just been there two weeks ago, I would say now they're like two elephants looking at each other through a needle. The aperture has just gotten tiny.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
I travel with my colleague, Keith Bradshaw. Our colleague, Keith Bradshaw, has been in China for 23 years. And we interviewed two professors who will go nameless, both super pro-American, study actually the United States. One of them told us on his last trip to America, as he was leaving, got to the gate, got pulled aside by what he assumed were FBI officers, taken into a room, give us your phone.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
The other one, when he arrived, got pulled aside, taken into a room, give us your phone. And if that's where we're going, we're going to a bad place. And if we're going to that place, because that word gets out immediately. Boy, last time I was there, I got pulled aside by the FBI. Well, that word gets out. Then everyone says, I don't want my kids to study there. I don't want to travel there.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
I don't want to be tourism there. And we're going to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. You know, there's a joke among the Chinese that the whole war, this is a little ethnocentric nationalism, the whole conflict is actually our Chinese versus their Chinese. You know, one of the things, Henry Kissinger is a very controversial figure in history.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
We know for all kinds of things from the Cambodia bombing. But I would say he is missed right now in one sense. He was a Republican who understood the importance of this relationship. And his last book was about AI, which he wrote with Craig Mundy and Eric Schmidt. The Republican Party has no sort of credible authority figure right now that can actually, they have to listen to.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
And so it becomes just this competition for who can outbash China. And that just doesn't end well. I can't emphasize to you more, Ezra, when I go to China, I'm writing about America. I'm trying to hold a mirror up of what it looks like to be serious about that 21st century ecosystem. And I'm doing it for my kids and my grandkids.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
And you can call me whatever name you want because I'm not listening.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
I'll tell you, I had the good fortune of speaking at this conference with Yuval Noah Harari. And he was so good because his whole talk was about trust. and whether we're going to learn to re-inject some trust into this relationship. And so my book recommendations, or my thought is I got to go home and reread all of his books.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Yeah, I mean, basically over starting with Trump one and then into the Biden administration and now Trump two kind of became against the law in Washington, D.C. to say anything positive about China. And because of that, there was an aversion to going to China. There was an aversion in American industry began to develop of hiring Chinese.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
There was an aversion of American college campuses to sending students to school in China. And so you've got this giant asymmetry where China has today 260, 270,000 students studying in America. And we have, I don't know, a few thousand studying there. Right. And the backstory to this is not all an American failure at all.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
It has to do with also what happened in China beginning with the rise of President Xi Jinping between 2012, 2013, and then making himself, in effect, president for life. China went in reverse. It made a U-turn.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
The China that we thought was, you know, more or less two steps forward, one step back, but on a trajectory for more openness at home and more integration with the world, that really stopped under Xi Jinping. And it was combined.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
with a program Xi launched, which was to basically make sure that China dominated all the 21st century industries, from aerospace to new materials to autonomous vehicles to robots. And that changed the whole chemistry in the U.S.-China relationship. But central to that, Ezra, was that the ballast in this relationship was always the American business community.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
So they were the ones who, for many years, beginning in the late 70s, were making money in China. And even whenever the relationship got rocky, and even when we perceived China was not living up to trade obligations under WTO, American business would basically lobby and say, look, be cool. It's okay. We're still making money here. And what happened, this combination basically of
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Xi taking a U-turn, fewer and fewer American businesses feeling they were getting the benefits out of China that they wanted and were having to transfer too much technology. And then China rising on its own with its own technological homegrown tech prowess. Those three things really kind of blew up the relationship.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Yeah, I can't speak to the espionage. I just don't know. And you get into these kind of Washington conversations with officials where it goes like, if only you knew what I knew, you would be more worried. And my reaction to that is, I wish I knew what you knew because it would put everything more in perspective.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
But I also, part of my reaction to that too, Ezra, is that I hope we're doing the same to them. I hope we're spying and conducting whatever we need to do for our national security purposes.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
But the notion that they can't innovate, what gives the lie to that, as if you talk to American businesses who operate in China or European businesses who operate in China, what they'll tell you is that we first came here for the market. And now we come here to be close to the innovation.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
That we cannot basically be in touch with the cutting edge of our field, particularly in autos, unless you're here. So China realized it could not compete with combustion vehicles with America. And so it took the decision to leapfrog them right to EVs and ultimately autonomous driving cars. It did so by basically having its smartphone companies become car companies.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
So when I came to China after COVID, I said, whoa. When I was last here, Xiaomi was a phone company. I came back, they were a car company. When I was here last, Huawei was a phone company. I came back, they were a car company. And so basically they put their cell phones on wheels. And the reason this is important is that when you get into a Didi, Didi's their Uber, and
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
It is a seamless digital experience from the rest of your life. It syncs up with your cell phone. I rode in a Huawei car when I was just there. I was riding with someone from Huawei. He took out his laptop, pulled down a screen that came out of the ceiling, and his laptop immediately synced with that screen, and he was working in the car. He says, what would you like to see?
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Do you want to see anything? I said, yeah. Get me Paul Simon's concert in London's Hyde Park. I'd like to watch that on the way to your campus. It was up in, I'd say, about 30 seconds. The sound, Ezra, you know how you buy cars now every two years and they always say, it's got Dolby surround, yada, yada. I have never in my life heard sound like this in a moving vehicle.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
it is just so far ahead of anything I've seen here. Volkswagen, for instance, I met with their China head when I was there. They've got a whole facility there, they call it, in China for China, that unless you're competing with the best, what my friend Jörg Wittke, the head of the European Union Chamber of Commerce calls the China Fitness Club, unless you're in the gym with them,
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Yeah, because what you see, Ezra, when you're there is the product of 30 years of being in the fitness gym. And it's a particularly Chinese fitness gym. And it kind of works like this. New industry comes along, let's call it solar panels. Every major city in China decides they need a solar panel factory.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
And the local government subsidizes it, maybe domestically born, maybe a partnership with a foreign one, maybe a foreign one. And you end up in a very short period of time, I'm making the number up, but with 75 solar panel companies. They then compete like crazy against each other in the fitness gym, and five of them survive.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
Those five are so fit that they can then go global at a price and level of innovation that is very hard for a foreign competitor to deal with, which is why China today basically controls the global solar panel market. But what you also don't see is that process of winnowing down from 100 of those solar panel companies to five.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
produced a massive explosion of supply chains domestically to feed that industry. Same thing went on with cars. You know, the same thing goes on with robots. And so where you end up five years later is with interlocking set of supply chains that now if you're a young Chinese and say, I just got this idea.
The Ezra Klein Show
Tom Friedman Thinks We’re Getting China Dangerously Wrong
I want to produce a shirt that has a pink polka dot button that can sing the Chinese national anthem backward. Someone will have it for you tomorrow.