Behind the Scenes of U.S.-China Summitry

China is one of the 21st century's most consequential nations. It has never been more important to understand how the country is governed, and what its leaders and its people actually want and believe. Welcome to peckingology, the podcast that unpacks China's evolving political system, and the trajectory of China's domestic and foreign policy. I'm your host, Henry Edel-Avin, senior fellow with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS. This is peckingology. I am very pleased to be joined today by Sarah Baron. Sarah held many senior China jobs at the State Department, the National Security Council, and the American Embassy in Beijing over the course of her 23 years in the U.S. Foreign Service. She's now with macro advisory partners in New York, and I can't think of anyone with a better understanding of how U.S.-China diplomacy actually works at the very highest levels of government, and also at the middle levels of government where much of the work actually gets done. And I wanted to talk to Sarah for this episode because this episode will land on October 16th, about two weeks before President Trump is expected to meet with President Xi for the first time in his second term on the margins of the APEC summit in Korea. Trump has also said he will go to China early next year and that Xi will visit the U.S. after that. But to level with our listeners, we're recording here on October 10th. So apologies in advance if the world changes dramatically in the six days that will pass before you are listening to this conversation. And if the Trump Xi summit gets canceled, I'm sure they will still meet eventually and you can listen to this episode then. So with that throat clearing complete, Sarah, it is great to see you. And we had it so good to be here. Thank you for having me. We like to start all of our episodes with a personal question. How did you originally become interested in China and the U.S.-China relationship and how did you get to this point in your career? A long time ago, when I was still in high school in the early 90s, I went to China as part of a people-to-people exchange to play soccer against teams up and down the Pearl River Delta. My first travel outside the country, my first travel to China, and it was endlessly fascinating. So it started me on a course of studying Chinese at university, studying abroad in China, working in China for American Chinese joint venture, and then eventually joining the Foreign Service. Thought I'd spend my career doing China. 9-11 happened and I learned Arabic and spent a good 10 years in the Middle East, but finally made it back in 2015 to Beijing and have been working China issues since. I think this is our first sports diplomacy origin story. Well, you've got to start somewhere. You've got to start somewhere. That's right. I was terrible. I should note, and we lost every game, but it was interesting. That's great. So let's talk about diplomacy between the United States and China. It's easy to say that maintaining channels of communication between the two most powerful nations on Earth is good and important. I've said it many times, if only to minimize the risk of misunderstanding between the two nations, but communicating with an adversary is not a simple thing, and diplomatic exchanges can easily create additional misunderstandings as well. So how do you think about setting up a meaningful conversation with an adversary you cannot trust? It starts from a different place than speaking with an ally or a partner, but certainly there are elements that are similar. I think you have to build in a degree of predictability into the engagements. And that stands in for trust in some ways, because the two sides can predict or understand how the other will respond. And it starts from a very low base, right? When we were setting up the channel between the National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, and Wang Yi, the Director of the Office of Central Foreign Affairs Commission, we started with the logistics, right? So walking them through it, creating predictability about what it would look like. And this was important. It was the first meeting after the balloon incident when the relationship really plummeted to levels not seen in some time. And that predictability about what a meeting would look like, what the topics would be, what the statements would look like after. I think stood in for trust at that point. And we repeated that approach of predictability in the engagements, both at senior levels, but also at working levels to help build in something that could stand in for trust. So in a way that the process itself can build momentum towards stability in the relationship. That's exactly right. And that's certainly the case when it reaches senior level engagement, right? Where the very fact of a meeting and a press statement afterward indicates that at least the two sides are talking sort of studies everything on both sides. I think different administrations have come at this differently. This administration seems to be quite focused on using unpredictability and volatility as a way to keep the Chinese off balance. But there is a cost to that, even as you're keeping them off balance. And perhaps that is useful in negotiations. It is less useful in maintaining serious communications about issues of national security import, whether it's cross-strait or South China Sea or Russia. So to make this a little more concrete, we can think about APAC. We were the lead planner for two of these APAC meetings between the American and Chinese presidents in 2023 and 2024. And I know you spent a very large amount of time working all the details with Chinese counterparts. So I actually want to start with your sense of the Chinese side of this process in Beijing. Like how does this work? How do they prepare for these summits and what are they trying to achieve? Good question. I should say I was not doing this alone. I had an amazing team, including Henrietta for a good chunk of the prep, which made it a lot easier. I think going into a senior level of presidential level engagement, it's important to have a clear line of communication to prep. So you need an authorized channel on both sides. You need a clear understanding of what you want out of the engagement. Are there deliverables? Is this for optics? Are there serious discussions that are going to happen behind closed doors that may not be apparent outside, but at least are part of clearing up the misception and miscommunication that you talked about, Henrietta? On the Chinese side, again, we're looking at this from a little bit of a black box. So I can tell you what I observed, certainly not all of their prep was visible from the outside. But I think on their side, there was also an attempt to comb through their inner agency and see what their asks are. What did they want out of the engagement? What was important, not just to the leader, but to their bureaucracy too. So the process was very bottom up for them in leadership, in leader level meeting prep. There was also an acute focus on the optics and on the pomp and circumstance around a meeting. And I think that is because a big heart of what they wanted, the Chinese side wanted out of a meeting, was a signal to the rest of the world that the US and China were meeting as equals to leaders and that the relationship was stable enough that there could be productive conversation. And I wanted positive optics out of the meeting. That desire for positive optics drives things like requests for certain types of photo ops or certain types of meeting setups. And so sometimes in a leader level prep, it's not just about the big weighty issues like resuming counter narcotics cooperation or understandings on AI and safety and risk, which are two things that both came out of woodside. But also, did the two leaders get a moment where they're walking and they get a picture together? And that kind of piece is also an important part of the preparations for a summit. So there's the, do they get a picture together? There's the, are we going to cooperate on fentanyl? I think culturally it often seems like on the US side, we get a little more focused on the tactical side of the lesson. Like what are the specific things we're going to agree on or not agree on? And maybe on the Chinese side, traditionally there's been more focused on this optic, the feel of the meeting as a key metric of success. And so how does that disconnect in what the two sides see as most substantive affect the conversation itself and how you think about planning a useful exchange? I think the different nature in which we approach a meeting like that is reflective of the very different nature of our two systems. So if the Chinese side Beijing essentially wants a signal that they can send through the rest of their system on where the relationship is headed. So in preparing for the Woodside summit, for example, in 2023, the Chinese side was very focused on what language are we going to use to talk about the relationship? What adjectives are we going to use to describe what bilateral relations are like? And for us, for the United States, that is generally secondary, right? Adjectives in a statement don't seem to matter. But for the Chinese side, that was a very important point. And again, I think that is about signaling both internally in their own system, about the direction of the relationship, but also externally to other partners as well. That drives, I think, a disconnect in the prep channels. And for example, when we were prepping or trying to set up some type of understanding or reset on counter narcotics where the Chinese would take certain actions ahead of or in close proximity to the summit, it meant that we couldn't really have that conversation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is the normal prep channel for a leader level engagement. And so, the Foreign Affairs doesn't control counter narcotics and law enforcement. And they are a peer of the Ministry that does. And so we had to find another channel to have that conversation with in the Chinese system. You'll hear throughout prep for summits that talk of channel. And it really does matter because particularly on the Chinese side, each ministry has its set of issues it can work on. And it is not empowered in the same way that the National Security Council used to be on the United States side to stretch across the interagency and pull in all those different inputs. They can ask for input, but they can't in the same way leverage the centralized power to get the other ministries to take action or do something that has to come from the very top. And for that reason, too, that is why a presidential level meeting is so important because it is only when you kick all the way up to that level that there is the power to get things done outside the normal foreign ministry channels. And in that process in the Chinese interagency, who are the important players aside from Xi himself? It depends on the issue set. So for counter narcotics, it was the Ministry of Public Security and the State Councilor and Minister Wang Xiaohong on anything to do with strategic, cross-strait foreign policy issues. It was Wang Yi as the now foreign minister and director of the Office of Central Foreign Affairs Commission on economic issues, vice-premiere, now-Helifeng, but in the past, Liu He had the lead. And so finding a way to have these conversations in different channels to move action forward is critical. I'll come back again. You can have those channels running and trying to talk through different issues, but it isn't until you get a leader level meeting on the Chinese side that that really energizes the entire system to come up with a deliverable or to be pressed to actually come to the table with something. It is very rare to have the Chinese side what they want on the table in a discussion. They will generally wait until they see what our list of asks is and then respond, which can be incredibly frustrating in a negotiation because revealing your opening bid or bottomline first is often setting out on a back foot. And in these meetings, how does the private messaging, this back and forth, who's putting what on the table correspond to what we see publicly, either in the formal readouts of the meeting or how both sides describe what occurred? Like, what are the best tea leaves we can read to understand what's actually going on in these meetings? It's imperfect, but I think a very good way of parsing out where differences are and where gaps may be emerging are the two statements. And this isn't just at a leader level engagement, even when the national security advisor and Wang Yimet or the secretary of state and Wang Yimet or other counterparts. If you can see how the two sides are referring to the same issue set, start to parse where the differences are and where the convergence is. Normally in a negotiation on a deliverable, say restarting counter narcotics cooperation or the AI risk and safety issues or mill mill restarting mill mill channels, you'd want to see those deliverables referred to the same or pretty close to the same in both statements. That is normally part of a negotiation and that helps ensure that both systems have the same understanding of what the to do list is. If you start to see statements that emerge that are totally different to me, that indicates there's a disconnect. And I would point to the statements after the trade rounds between Secretary Besant and Holy Fung is being pretty different, which to me either indicates someone was not paying attention to the statements or there are real differences remaining in the way the two sides view TikTok or various other trade measures. So you can talk about the value of coordinated language across these statements, but it's been I think quite a while since we saw a joint statement issued from the US and China together maybe aside from climate. So could you talk about the significance of that evolution? I will say as a former diplomat, I was very, very glad to see when we started moving away from identical statements, a coordinated one statement because the amount of work that went into wordsmithing over every single sentence was as we would say the juice was not worth the squeeze. There would be negotiating sessions I remember during President Obama's time where we would be up to three or four in the morning, day after day after day trying to get to the same language. And it's simply in my view is not a good use of time. Instead, and I think what we moved to for President Biden's statements was a statement on both sides, so separate statements where the US side in its language would talk about the issues it raised and the concerns it had, which you could never get in a truly joint statement. So concerns about peace and stability in the Taiwan strait, concerns about South China sea, concerns about China support for Russia's defense industrial base. We ensured that was reflected in the statement because we talked about it in the meeting and it was important to communicate that was still a concern. And then we would generally negotiate a smaller portion of the statement where there was overlap, where the two sides had agreed, for example, to restart Mill Mill communications. And there we negotiated how we would refer to that and what channels were restarted. We generally, again, this was a Chinese side ask, but I think it was useful, would coordinate how we referred to the meeting, what adjectives we used. The reason for that was again, so that we were both portraying to our respective publics a similar view of how the meeting went, whether it was constructive, whether it was frank. It seems meaningless, but in diplomatic speak, I think those small shifts and adjectives were not worthy. Just to put a finer point on this, I mean, we're talking about like very long conversations about whether the meeting was constructive or productive. With both sides, I think sometimes feeling that vastly different impressions that is fair. And I will say we did not spend too much time on adjectives, just for those of you worried about waste of taxpayer dollars. And again, when we moved to separate statements, there really weren't long negotiating sessions anymore. It was really about what deliverable did we have on Mill Mill, and which channels did we agree to get going? And then both sides would agree to put it in the statement. So it was a little less tortured than past used to do. So it seems like, I mean, that's a good argument for the public statements actually being quite effective illustrations of how both sides are looking at the broader structure of the relationship. If it seems like what you're describing is, it is worth coordinating or cooperating in very narrow areas where interests might align. But it seemed like both sides increasingly felt that they shouldn't be papering over what was a fundamentally competitive relationship where interests were going to differ very widely at the same time. That's right. And I think it took some time or Beijing to be comfortable with the idea that it could be a competitive relationship, and we could still have some conversations on issues we both cared about. In the first two years of the Biden administration, I think you see that really jockeying and discomfort with the idea of competition. Even though it was very much the reality, and I think behind closed doors, leadership and Beijing probably talked exactly like that about the relationship, but the idea of portraying it as a competition more broadly, I think elicited some degree of discomfort in the beginning. But we're there now, and I think it's fair to say there is no doubt in anyone's mind now that it is a good tested relationship. That miscommunication has been addressed. Yes. Okay. So in the lead up to the meeting itself, I think the Chinese side often talks about the importance of what they call positive atmosphere before the two leaders would interact. And so how does the fact of having a summit on the books, even if it's not fully confirmed, and if there's just an idea on both sides, this is what you're working towards? How does that affect the broader approach to US-China relations on both sides in Beijing and in Washington? First it acts as an action-forcing mechanism to try to get some measure of forward progress across the finish line. This is different in different administrations. Again, I talked about some of the deliverables under the Biden administration, under the Obama administration, climate was an issue of enormous importance in trying to use the leader level engagements to push forward progress there. But even at the small-ball level, approvals and regulatory steps that American companies, for example, needed, they would often sort of fall in behind a summit or a round summit prep to try to push for movement because there were more positive feelings in the Chinese bureaucracy towards American companies. I would say that does not appear to be the case in the couple of weeks run up now. I think what we're seeing now is a very different model, where again, the Trump administration has chosen to use volatility to some degree as a leverage point with the Chinese. Beijing is responding in a very similar fashion, rolling out, for example, this expansive new set of rare-earth export controls, sanctioning US companies, putting other restrictions in place. I think in part to demonstrate they are not afraid to stand up to the Trump administration and to put bargaining chips on the table that could be potentially used in a negotiation if the Trump administration wants something from China. So to move on from the APEC meeting, you were also posted to the US Embassy in Beijing in 2017 when President Xi hosted President Trump for a major state visit, and I think was actually the last visit, then the American president, to China. So focusing on that, what can we learn from the state visit in thinking about that visit itself, but also what Trump may hope to be getting out of the China trip? He said he hopes to pursue early next year. The prep for that visit was largely focused around the optics and the pomp and circumstance. The Chinese leadership opened up the forbidden city for the president's visit and for his delegation, and that was a bit unprecedented. The access we had, the fact that it was cleared out, the parts of the forbidden city, they opened for dinners and for performances that really hadn't been opened before. And it was an impressive set of meetings, but optically, the image it was designed to convey was one of China as this magnificent capital, and the president, President Trump, was there to see the leader of that impressive country and capital. The preparation for actual deliverables was a little bit less. It was pretty early in the administration, if you recall, that the meeting took place. And so I don't think the White House had yet set on its approach towards China or what it really wanted. So most of the focus was on deals being announced. There was a CEO delegation that joined as well, and a number of projects were announced there as well. So it felt more like a typical state visit to another country, even that sense of it is CEO delegation, the types of announcements felt more akin to what you might see out of a state visit to the UK or to a European capital. And I guess it's worth kind of putting that 2017 moment in the strategic context where we're coming out of a time where the Obama administration, going into the Trump administration, was much more focused on engagement. I don't think there was a sense of competition with a dominant frame for the relationship, or even a consensus that that was an element of the relationship, though you're starting to see pieces of that. That's right. And in the public statement that the Trump White House issued after that state visit, it was very striking to me going back and looking at it more recently that you see some kernels of kind of where the consensus is now in terms of very strong concerns about South China Sea, for example. But also enthusiastic commitment to cooperate on health and sharing pandemic samples. And so you really see how much has changed as well. Yes, absolutely. And the seeds as you point out were there, particularly I think on the trade side where you had Ambassador Lighthizer very vocal about the need to level to playing field for American companies. And the negotiations that kicked off subsequently on phase one trade deal to really get at the structural problems that we saw in access to the Chinese economy, the state subsidies, the industrial policy. I mean, that effort really kicked off after that. So to go a little deeper on summit outcomes, looking back at all of the U.S. China meetings over President Xi's long tenure, which of course spans the presidencies of on our side Obama, Trump, Biden, and then Trump again, which of those meetings or summits do you think in retrospect was most significant? And is there one that stands out to you as particularly successful for the United States or particularly successful for China? I think you have to consider the time in which they took place. A little bit comparing apples to oranges to your point earlier, we were coming out of a period of engagement ahead of the first Trump visit in the meeting there. So that felt like a little bit of a continuation of previous engagements, though there were definitely fireworks behind the scenes that I will not describe on this podcast. The Woodside Summit in the fall of 2023 came out of time where the U.S. relationship had really cratered with China, the bilateral relationship had really cratered. We were coming out of COVID where there had been a obviously deep concern about the way China had handled the outbreak, but also a total cut off in contact for quite some time and visits. It was post balloon, if you recall, as well. And so the relationship- Chinese spy balloon ended up at the continental United States in highly visible fashion. For an excruciating what was that seven days drifting across the United States, right? And so I think there was an element of, you know, we really were at a nadir in the relationship and communication had been cut off. There was deep distrust on both sides and Woodside felt like an attempt to stabilize, to reestablish the channels of communication and to start slowly focusing on a few areas that were important, certainly to the United States. And I would argue to China as well to get right, Mill Mill counter-narcotics and AI. So a very scoped set of issues that we could potentially cooperate on. We also, I mean, took at the time quite a bit of heat from the right on reestablishing channels of communication. If you remember at the time, there were these allegations of zombie diplomacy, as if you cannot or should not talk to your adversaries when I would argue that is precisely who you should be talking to because that is where the risks are the greatest. So going forward into this next meeting or set of meetings that Trump expects to have with President Xi has been very clear that he wants a deal. And I think that stands out in that prior presidents haven't really used that terminology with China, even in kind of the more engagement focused period of the relationship. But at the same time, at Woodside, you were talking about the US and China actually making some pretty important agreements to at least start to restore counter-narcotics cooperation, restore military to military communication. So in the parlance of today's Washington, like, was that a deal or was that something else? Was it a good deal? Using deal to me makes too much of what is coming out of a meeting. Let me back up. I think we have to be realistic in what is possible in US China diplomacy. And to me, a deal sounds like we have reached agreement on a broad swath of issues. The Grand Bargain is the other language you hear occasionally being floated out here, particularly with the Trump administration. The idea that we would reach agreement on the many, many issues where we have disagreements, we have conflict, we have starkly divergent strategic aspirations. I think papers over the deeper differences and starts to get us back to a period where we're not talking about the depth of the concerns. And I don't think that's healthy for the bilateral relationship. So I would not use the term deal. I think even using it in the context of what is possible at APEC is probably almost an exaggeration, right? We're talking about something on TikTok, maybe some soybean purchases and maybe some bowing airplanes. That, to me, sounds like a few deliverables. And certainly they could be in the US interest, but not a deal that means we are back on a different track. I wonder also if the idea of a deal kind of implies linkages across these different outcomes, whereas it seems like what you're describing is more a series of one off, almost unrelated agreements. Is that fair? I think that's right. And look, what you know from working in the White House and having the lawyers scrutinize what you say, we cannot say agreement in any official documents, right? That implies a degree. I can say a deal. But you can say deal. Maybe that's the workaround. You're right. I think a deal implies that there are linkages between, say, Taiwan and trade or national security and economic engagements or investment. And that, to me, risks constraining the United States and what it is able to do. And I don't think China will feel the same constraint, but I think it will constrain the United States. So I would much prefer to see us talk about deliverables coming out of a meeting or a summit than any type of grand bargain or deal. It's important too, because in the past, when we prepped for these summits, a big part of the work was, as you know, talking to our partners and allies, explaining what was going to happen, what we were doing, the type of conversation we were going to have, and what we intended to reach. We didn't share every single detail of what went behind closed doors, but the general briefings helped signal where the US was headed. That is not happening now. And so when we talk about a deal, it is indicating to our partners and allies that we're headed in a certain direction. We're softening our approach on China. And they are looking to us to signal the direction they should go as well. And so I am concerned that using this language and the failure to brief partners and allies also leads us to a dangerous divergence of approaches. I'm glad you bring up the role or the relevance of US allies in US China diplomacy. I think one of the reasons that the US China diplomacy is much more complicated than engagement would be with any other country around the world is because the implications are on the one hand so significant for the US-China relationship, but on the other hand, for the credibility and the strength of the US alliance network, especially in the Indo-Pacific and those allies watch these conversations so closely, not just to understand the US-China relationship, but also to understand the strength of US commitment to them and how that's reflected in the dialogue with China. And so I'd love to just go a little deeper on how you think about the balance between, you know, you're going to this meeting with the Chinese. How much of this is about China? How much of it is about American allies? And how does that affect the tenor of the conversation? I can certainly speak about how we did in the Biden administration. I think it is very different now, unfortunately. And again, I get back to the point of some of these meetings is signaling and China is using the positive optics to signal the partners and allies that the US is stepping back and is warming its relationship with China. The way I would think about it or the way I would want to think about prep for these meetings is the ability to go to the European capitals, Tokyo, Seoul, talk to them about the concerns they have where there's disruptive behavior, try to coordinate around a approach, particularly in the economic space, that can seek to push back on some of the Chinese aggression and then take separately those concerns to Chinese interlocutors and actually press for action or take coordinated measures, right? I mean, that's the basis of why I think the Biden administration's policy or strategy around China really was invest-aligned compete. It was invested home, align with your partners on an approach and then the diplomacy with China follows, right? The Trump administration does seems quite a bit less focused on that align piece and instead focused on America's interests first. However, I would argue you can't get to where you need to go without working with your partners on China. China is too difficult of an issue said, global scope and you need to have a coordinated approach. And look, if Brussels is seeing us roll back some of the restrictions on export controls or investment screening, they will do the same because of a desire not to be left out, which will lead, I think, very quickly to a race to the bottom in an approach to dealing with China. That's a great point. It's also maybe worth noting that I think you're exactly right in the current moment. The anxiety our allies often has is the US going to go soft on China. But if US policy was going in a different direction, our allies would be very anxious. If the US is going to be too hawkish on China, we're going to create a destabilizing environment. So really, like, regardless of the direction of travel out of Washington without transparency with the allies, the anxiety can so quickly accumulate in a way that can be a real drag on these critical relationships. No, that's a good point. And we did quite a bit of prep before the two summits with President Biden and President Xi in that very vein to explain that the whole goal was stabilization. We had heard them on concerns that the relationship was getting a bit spiky and no channels of communication, which certainly is a line we often heard from partners back in the first two years of the administration. And so I think you're right, whether you're taking a harder approach or shifting in any way, you need to ensure partners and allies are clear. So across all of these summit meetings over the past few years, you've personally spent a pretty significant amount of time in the room with President Xi and his entourage. So I'm wondering if anything surprised you about Xi's demeanor or his personal approach to these conversations with US presidents? You know, I was surprised in the two summits how much time was spent on domestic issues, Chinese domestic issues. President Xi explaining his approach, what his goals were. And I found that telling and reflective of what a lot of China watchers say, and certainly I believe, is that Xi Jinping probably gets up in the morning and spends 90% of his time on domestic issues. China is a difficult country, a lot of challenges, and it takes a lot of attention to keep all of those pieces running, particularly in a centralized system. And the United States and foreign policy is probably occupying a minority of the leadership's time. To me, was striking and reflected in the conversations. And over the years, I mean, Xi has been the interlocutor of so many US presidents. How do you think he has evolved as a diplomat? The people around Xi have certainly changed over time, right? And I think that's reflective as he has stayed in power for longer. He's brought in his people for the key positions. And that has, I think, resulted in a much more centralized decision making and policy-making, slightly more aggressive too. If you think back, could you imagine 10 years ago China taking the kind of measures it just took in the last week on rare Earth export controls, investigations on US companies? I mean, pretty aggressive, significant bureaucratic actions that take quite a bit of work behind the scenes to get over the finish line and clearly something that had been planned and discussed and then executed in short order after commerce rolled out this 50% rule last week. To me, that indicates a degree of control over the bureaucracy and motivation, central execution of a very well-defined goal that is impressive. And I think that is a result of many years in office and bringing the right his people into the top positions to ensure they're executing on his vision. And so diving into that delegation, the people that Xi has brought around himself. I think one of the interesting parts of these summits is that it brings at least physically into contact with Americans, members of the Standing Committee, that otherwise we never get to see. So I'm wondering how you experienced the delegation. Like, of course, we do talk to Wang Yi quite often, foreign minister, the C-Factor-Ector. I think that's true over time. But people like Xi are much more elusive for an American interlocutor. And what were your impressions of the people around Xi in these meetings? In a meeting between the two presidents, there is really no one that speaks but the two presidents. So you don't get a real sense of how they would talk about issues or what their role is. But there are small indicators I think you can look for, right? Does Xi turn to someone or does someone pass him a note or catches eye on certain issue sets? In the small lunch that President Biden hosted President Xi for at Woodside, the two interlocutors on the Chinese side were Tsai Xi and Wang Yi. And that to me was interesting, right? Certainly Tsai Xi is someone that has been quite close to Xi for some time in many different capacities. I would almost think of it as like a chief of staff, someone that is focused on the domestic side of the house, even though titular ahead of the National Security Commission, that is much more domestic focused body than it is in our government, whereas Wang Yi to me represented the foreign policy side of the house, right? So she would occasionally turn to him on issues, touching on South China Sea or cross-strait issues that were more in his remit and that he had experienced dealing with for many, many years. Beyond that, it's hard to say. I mean, when you're at that long table and there's 15 different officials on both sides. The table says so long. So long. It's hard to get a sense. You can kind of guess by who's at the table, who had a hand and at least preparing some of this substance behind the scenes. And nothing would surprise you there, Minister of Commerce, the trade reps in some instances, the Chinese ambassador to the US. So those are more typical and mirror what we do to. And you mentioned that every once in a while, she might actually turn to Wang Yi in these meetings. I think it's so interesting to see the amount of influence and trust Wang Yi has apparently built on a somewhat personal level, is she when they don't have a personal background unlike the rest of Xi's inner circle? How do you think about Wang Yi's not just his bureaucratic role, but his influence he's managed to accrue? It certainly wasn't like that in the beginning. And I think many at the time when he was first elevated, thought he was less influential than even Yang Jiaqiu or some of his predecessors. But I think over time, he has been at Xi's side in a very volatile period when there's been a tremendous amount of change, not just in the US-China bilateral relationship, but in China's global standing. And it's focused, you know, in the last couple of years, we've really seen a shift to, I think, an increased focus on diplomacy with the global South, diversification of trade away from the United States to South America, Southeast Asia, and diplomacy with those capitals has been an important part of that diversification. And Wang Yi, I think, has really taken the lead in that piece, particularly given the fact that he has double-hatted, much like Secretary Rubio is in our administration with the two positions. We'll have to wrap there, Sarah. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you. To our listeners, we'd love to hear what you thought of today's conversation and what issues you would like peckingology to unpack in future episodes. You can send your ideas to peckingology at csis.org. If you're new here, we hope you will subscribe and we'll be back in your feed in two weeks. 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