Sam Chetwin George

Senior Fellow @asiasociety

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

Delighted to have my piece published in Foreign Affairs today. Thanks to my friend and teacher Geremie Barmé for the many discussions about empire over the years, and to colleagues at the @AsiaSociety for reading various drafts of this essay.

[Foreign Affairs @ForeignAffairs]

“The Chinese Communist Party built its identity on anti-imperialism,” writes @samchetwin. But China has now “arrived at the point in which it must, with some reluctance, assume a greater share of the burdens of empire.”
https://t.co/A0hnVN8ozs

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

@interpretaatioo @Henrietta_Ivy Thank you for listening Henry!

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

There’s an ongoing debate about how China views what is often called the “post-WWII order”. Is Beijing the beneficiary of it? Is it trying to upend it? Or is it more complicated than this?

In this episode of the Pekingology podcast, I spoke with @Henrietta_Ivy about how China is balancing its great power ambitions alongside the costs and risks of becoming entangled in a more chaotic geopolitical environment. It’s a question many rising powers have had to confront, and there are no easy answers. Beijing has become overtly involved in the civil war in Myanmar and is providing significant diplomatic and material support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but it has, at least openly, been less frontally involved in the conflict in Iran. We discussed why this might be the case.

We also explored the history of China’s relationship with the U.S.-led order, its vision for global governance, and how the structure of its domestic economy might influence its foreign policy in the future.

Thank you to Henrietta for having me on for an excellent discussion. I’ve learned a tonne from the Pekingology podcast over the years.

[CSIS Freeman Chair in China Studies @CSISFreeman]

As a global power, is China ready for the age of anarchy? In the latest episode of Pekingology, @samchetwin, Senior Fellow at the @AsiaSociety’s Center on U.S.–China Relations and Research Fellow at @chinaheritage, joined Senior Fellow @Henrietta_Ivy to explore Beijing’s evolving perspectives on the post-World War II order, its international strategy, and what comes next for global governance.

Listen here: https://t.co/XnK9NBJG9S

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

The debate about China's excess capacity has been ongoing for several years. Arguments that the trade surplus is unsustainable may have more of an opening to impact policy, especially since Beijing (the Politburo, no less) has now identified "involution" - shorthand for excess capacity and unsustainable price competition - as a serious problem. Interesting to see more discussion about RMB appreciation.

The flipside of this argument is that one of Beijing's explicit goals, as part of its "dual circulation" framework, is to push Chinese exports around the world to create dependencies on Chinese companies that can serve as leverage as and when required (as happened in the rare earths industry).

[Thomas des Garets Geddes @thomasdggeddes]

#China’s US$1.2 trillion goods surplus is a problem.

In a recent speech at the Tsinghua PBCSF Forum, Huang Qifan — ex Mayor of Chongqing and one of 🇨🇳’s more prominent retired economic policymakers — addressed 🇨🇳’s US$1.2 trillion goods surplus in unusually direct terms.

🧵🧵

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

Excellent conversation between @Henrietta_Ivy and @AlexGabuev on the deeper structural drivers of the China-Russia relationship, which has now hardened into a "soft" alliance since the Ukraine War – shared anti-US sentiment and a desire to push back against NATO, a desire for stability along their own shared ~4200km border, complementary economic advantages (Chinese manufacturing vs. Russian commodities), among others. Despite rivalry and historical grievances, Gaubev thinks these features make the partnership likely to endure even beyond the personal tenures of Xi and Putin.

I agree that China has handled its relations with Russia with consummate skill. On the one hand, Beijing has underwritten the Russian war effort with diplomatic cover and material support – especially since the March 2023 bilateral meeting in Moscow – but not to an extent that has triggered a rupture in China-Europe relations. But at the same time, Beijing has used Putin’s increasing isolation and dependence on China to benefit its own strategic goals, including cheaper energy from Russia, increased access to Russian military technology, and expanded influence in Central Asia.

And a good reminder for those who study both Beijing and Moscow:

“When we talk about the relationship and the summitry between Beijing and Moscow, my comparison is to an iceberg. There is this public-facing part of the iceberg that’s visible – above the water – and there’s this invisible part under the water that’s actually much bigger and that’s where the real action is.”

(@CSISFreeman)

https://t.co/1M5GrupsXE

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

@natolambert Nathan, worth remembering that most major U.S. tech companies/products (Google, Meta, X, IG, ChatGPT, Claude etc.) are outright blocked in China for political reasons, which could also be read as antagonistic. The reverse isn’t true.

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

@zhanglei1936660 Thanks. The turn to strategic control of supply in the 1990s is consistent with the above

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

The evidence doesn’t support the idea that China’s rare earths dominance is just an accident of the market. Too many takes on China are detached from the Party’s own documentary record.

And why would it be accidental? It makes good strategic sense. It’s been a well-executed strategy and one that is completely consistent with the Party’s view that it needs counter-leverage against what it describes as encirclement by the US and its allies in Asia.

Beijing has been building capacity in rare earths for decades and started consolidating the industry under state control in earnest in the 2000s under Wen Jiabao. @KeithBradsher's excellent piece in the NYT lays all this out.

https://t.co/QRF93ZZ9fM

Beijing tested this weapon against Japan in 2010, but it was in 2019 that Xi Jinping signaled it would be China’s key weapon in the trade war. In May 2019, Xi made a highly choreographed visit to Ganzhou, the heart of China’s heavy rare earths industry, and called these elements “an important strategic resource”. Xi’s visit was just days after Trump added Huawei to the Entity List and indicated that China would use this industry to retaliate. If the message wasn’t clear enough, it was explicit at a 28 May 2019 NDRC press conference. When asked whether China would weaponise its leverage in rare earths an NDRC spokesperson replied: “You asked whether rare earths will become China’s countermeasure against the U.S.’s unprovoked suppression. What I can tell you is that if anyone wants to use the products manufactured by our export of rare earths to contain and suppress China’s development, then I think the people in the former Central Soviet Area in southern Jiangxi and the Chinese people will be unhappy.”

Just a month earlier, in April 2020, Xi gave a speech in which he said: “we must tighten the dependence of international industrial chains on our country, forming a powerful countermeasure and deterrent capability against foreign parties who artificially cut off supply.” In other words, Beijing’s official doctrine – outlined by Xi Jinping himself – was that China would build and deploy leverage in key industries to serve strategic goals. It made good sense and has paid dividends now in the second Trump administration.

After Xi’s speech and visit, the entire system mobilised to make possible the historical controls on rare earths he implemented in April and October of 2025. Beijing set up legal-regulatory infrastructure, like the Export Control Law (2020), set out regulations in 2021 that established state control over all rare earths resources, and consolidated its three largest state-owned rare earths assets into a new SOE called China Rare Earth Group. According to official state press, the objective was explicitly to grant the state greater strategic control over China’s rare earth resources: “This allowed the state to control mining at the source and provided better conditions for strategic stockpiling and planned usage.”

It's true that part of the story is American offshoring in the 1990s and 2000s, but the idea that China was not focused on exploiting the strategic value of rare earths doesn't stand up.

[Rush Doshi @RushDoshi]

This is an interesting question. My take: I do not quite accept the notion that China did not seek to "weaponize" rare earths and instead stumbled into a position of advantage. For at least 16 years, and likely more, the purpose has been an economic weapon. This is not like, say, solar or EVs, where excess capacity is sort of an accident.

Here, for example, is a semi-authoritative book cited by @JohnF_Sullivan on rare earth strategy written in 2011 for the state China Economic Publishing House the year after the Japan situation:

"What magical quality do rare earths possess that makes the usually arrogant and domineering Americans so furious? What magical quality do rare earths posses that leaves the usually wealthy and arrogant Japanese grief-stricken? China is the only country in the world capable of supplying all 17 rare earth elements, particularly holding a larger share of heavy rare earths that have prominent uses in military applications. To change China’s international position in the rare earth industry, since 2009, the Chinese government has launched a vigorous rare earth defense war, adopting a series of rectification measures including suspending approval of mining rights, controlling total mining volume, reducing export quotas, raising export tariffs and and severely cracking down on rare earth smuggling."

A key purpose of these post-2009 steps, which PRECEDE China's weaponization against Japan in 2010, was to hone a better coercive instrument.

Then there is some empirical evidence suggesting PRC action in this sector was about leverage.

First, most obviously, China used this as a coercive instrument in 2010. That shows, for at least 16 years, they have understood it as a critical leverage point.

Second, China's government has for decades manipulated the price of rare earths to prevent anyone else from achieving scale - dropping the price to kill foreign investment. Why did they do this when they already had 90% market dominance? The logic is toward control, not profit, and it is not the result of disaggregated independent Chinese market actors (which do not exist in this sector).

Third, related to that point, if this industry operated on economic logic, we would probably see more fragmentation. Indeed, for a brief time, we did see that before 2010. But then the PRC sharply consolidated the rare earths industry into state-backed companies. They shut down, arrested, harassed, and outright expropriated private actors. This was partly to ensure greater state control over external flows - the better to maintain leverage. The quote above refers to that effort.

Fourth, I do not think China's controls on rare earth minerals were modeled off U.S. controls. For example, the October controls went far beyond any U.S. controls. China's idea was any product, anywhere in the world, with .1% value coming from Chinese produced rare earths, required a license to be sold to anyone else in the world. The closest analogy -- and Chinese scholars have said this directly -- is to U.S. financial sanctions, not export controls.

Fifth, this is not a case where "there are many different actors, and they often overperform in search of particular targets." The industry has for a long time just been a few actors, tied to the state, acting at the state's direction. China's cultivation of leadership in this sector dates back to the 1960s, accelerating in the 1980s, with direct involvement of Deng's family in the 1990s and Premier Wen in the 2000s.

The empirical evidence seems to indicate a conscious desire to dominate this sector. One can debate whether or not such an intention was justifiable given U.S. control over chokepoints like finance.

But I think it is hard to advance the claim this was just the independent action of market participants that happened to accidentally create a position of extreme concentration and dominance.

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

@RushDoshi @jwdwerner Jake, this piece by Keith Bradsher in the NYT also gives some great historical context: https://t.co/QW6LbFvuTJ

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

@zhanglei1936660 I'm not sure that's entirely true. This article by Keith Bradsher lays the history out nicely, including the role of the PLA: https://t.co/QW6LbFvuTJ

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

@real_jerseylee @mcgregorrichard Agreed, it’s a major failure

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

There's more detail in the piece I wrote on this in Feb: https://t.co/SIi8hjEnkA

[Julian Gewirtz @JulianGewirtz]

Xi Jinping’s right-hand man, Cai Qi, is now president of the Central Party School, among his other roles.

Xi Jinping and Hu Jintao both served as head of the school before becoming top leader, as did prior generation leaders like Hu Yaobang, but in more recent years it’s been a landing spot for a favored senior retired official (e.g., Chen Xi held onto the post even after he stepped back from running the Organization Department).

This will set off a flurry of speculation about Cai’s future, following recent reports describing him as “China’s second most powerful man.”

But it’s not a clear signal of much other than that Cai continues to be someone Xi relies on and supports.

https://t.co/tvMkt99qel

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

Glad to see my argument in @ForeignAffairs cited by The Guardian's editorial leadership in their house assessment of Trump's trip to Beijing.

The Iran war is an example of the American overreach that Beijing hopes to exploit, but it's a double edged sword. Disruptions like this to the global trading system also cause Beijing - which is energy insecure and oversees a global commercial empire - real concern. The dilemma Chinese leaders now face is how to use the country's considerable leverage and force to advance their interests, without becoming mired in regional conflicts. For now, they have chosen restraint.

The Guardian put it this way:

"US allies are engaging more with China. But Washington’s slide has complications too for Beijing. The China scholar Sam Chetwin George this week delineated its contemplation of a greater security role, arguing: “A country built on an anti‑imperial story has arrived at the point in which it must, with some reluctance, assume a greater share of the burdens of empire.” Its handling of the Iran war is instructive: it would like it to be over, but has no eagerness to act as mediator, wary of expending its own assets or leverage. The two great powers are playing the waiting game. The rest of the world watches."

https://t.co/OYMVnStXmn

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

@colemcfaul @AnthropicAI Congrats, Cole!

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

One of the first things I learned as a student of China was the importance of studying the history of the former Eastern Bloc countries.

Like China, these countries were previously part of a major empire, then fell under communist rule — but unlike China, they emerged as democracies. That made it possible for intellectuals like Václav Havel in the Czech Republic and Miklós Haraszti in Hungary to critically examine their own history in open societies. For those interested in China, there's much to learn from that experience.

So I was excited to be in Hungary recently and give an interview alongside @HeLiuLeo from the Hoover Institution to one of the publications in this tradition — the weekly magazine Magyar Narancs. Founded in 1989 as communism was collapsing across the Eastern Bloc, it's been one of the few publications to survive Orbán's assault on the liberal press. We covered how the Chinese system operates, the crisis of confidence in "the West," industrial strategy in democracies, China's growing footprint in Hungary, and where Chinese global power might be headed.

Translation below.

https://t.co/H3RlhrX3mp

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

In this little essay for Project Syndicate, I argue that Orbán's defeat in Hungary reinforces Xi Jinping's instinct that no amount of political liberalization is safe. Hungary's model of "illiberal democracy" still contained the seeds of its own destruction because Orbán was not able to completely foreclose political opposition.

Seventy years ago, Mao Zedong learned the same lesson from Hungary. He watched with growing alarm as Nikita Khrushchev repudiated Stalin and created openings for dissent in the Eastern Bloc. In Hungary, the Petőfi Circle (a liberal debate club) seized this opportunity to agitate for political reforms and ultimately ignited the Hungarian uprising of 1956.

Moscow, with Mao's endorsement, put down the rebellion with force. The hardline faction of the Chinese Communist Party has never forgotten the existential dangers of legitimizing dissenting political views. As Xi Jinping looks back to Budapest in 2026, he will feel that his systematic dismantling of civil society and rolling purges of the bureaucracy over the last thirteen years were a matter of survival.

[Project Syndicate @ProSyn]

For Chinese President Xi Jinping, Viktor Orbán’s defeat in Hungary’s parliamentary elections last month reinforced the binary nature of autocratic power, writes @AsiaSociety’s @samchetwin. https://t.co/MlYUWcKbij

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

A few days before the Hungarian election, I was in Budapest to discuss China’s expanding interests in the region at the Central European University @ceu. By that point, Orbán was trailing badly in polling, but my Hungarian interlocutors also suggested that he was losing the loyalty of his security apparatus (police, military, and intelligence).

Mao Zedong said that political power grows from the barrel of a gun – in other words, unless you control the instruments of coercion, continued rule is never guaranteed.

Orbán’s historic defeat today is a reminder of the limits of power. Trump’s strategists will be studying this situation closely in the lead up to the mid-terms, as several of them took inspiration from Orbán’s example.

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

Highly recommend this newsletter by one of New Zealand's most brilliant journos.

[Anna Fifield @annafifield]

Today I'm launching Between Giants, a newsletter exploring the global forces shaping New Zealand’s future and what we can - and should - do about it. I hope you'll consider signing up.

https://t.co/vPHhDbNcBc

[Sam Chetwin George @samchetwin]

I'm excited to announce my appointment as Senior Fellow at the Asia Society's Center on U.S.–China Relations in New York.

In this role, I’ll continue my work on contemporary China and how its domestic and foreign policy are shaped by the history and ideology of the Chinese Communist Party.

The tectonic plates of the international order are shifting. As China pursues what Xi Jinping calls the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” the United States is simultaneously reimagining the nature and scope of its global role. The interplay of these trajectories will define the coming decades of international politics.

One particular focus of my work will be the competing visions for the future of artificial intelligence in China and the United States, and what differences in these visions might teach us about the nature of these two powers.

Alongside this role, I will continue as a Research Fellow at China Heritage, working with Emeritus Professor Geremie Barmé. My research there on Chinese political and intellectual history helps to keep the broader sweep of history in view.

I'm grateful to Orville Schell @orvilleschell, Abassador Kevin Rudd @AmboRudd, and the Asia Society for this opportunity. I can’t imagine a more compelling set of questions to be working on. More soon.

https://t.co/Eg6CqLfm16