E23: Leland Miller Breaks Down the China Threat
Leland Miller is the cofounder of China Beige Book and is a Commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Commission. He advises Fortune 50 CEOs and the government on China policy and according to one report his company China Beige Book has more data on China than even the CIA.
Timestamps
00:00 - Introduction
01:26 - China 101: The death of the "China Dream"
09:26 - Surveillance, residency permits, and the reality of internal environment
11:04 - Supply chain leverage: Why critical minerals are national security
13:50 - The pharmaceutical threat: Chinese control of U.S. medication supply chains
16:34 - Strategic decoupling: Reshoring and friendshoring national security nexuses
19:45 - Dependence on Chinese foundational materials
24:21 - The military balance in the Pacific: Why everyone thinks they would lose
27:56 - Command readiness: Xi Jinping’s military purges and wartime memory loss
31:13 - Geostrategy in the neighborhood: Japan, Philippines, and missile distance
35:20 - Made in China 2025: The fourth industrial revolution playbook
37:46 - Reindustrialization hurdles: Shipbuilding, chips, and bipartisan focus
39:50 - Breaking the rare earth processing monopoly
43:54 - An Economic Security Strategy: A 5-point master plan for the US
49:19 - IP theft and clones: The deep-rooted issue of technological espionage
52:01 - The STEM dilemma: Training talent in the U.S. and letting them go back
55:27 - China's compute disadvantage and U.S incentives
01:00:23 - The Food and Energy problem
01:06:12 - Xi Jinping’s psyche: Paranoia, time horizons, and the Taiwan ticking clock
01:10:56 - Economic sensibilities: Global frustration with the imbalanced trade model
01:16:35 - Why China doesn't drive global growth
01:19:02 - GDP Fabrication: Trillon-Yuan exaggeration
01:28:41 - Tracking credit and stimulus in a "non-commercial" system
01:33:59 - AI, Quantum, and Biotech integration
01:45:18 - Counterbalancing industrial policy
01:58:19 - Why China uses 12x more robots than prediction
02:08:52 - Why Xi doesn't care about consumers
02:14:35 - Closing thoughts