On a Saturday morning, a month before he was arrested for fraud, Stephen K. Bannon was on the phone from somewhere on the Long Island sound, sounding triumphant and caffeinated as he celebrated America’s escalating rhetoric with China.
“This is a war plan, and it’s being executed upon,” he crowed, referring to the tough-on-China speech delivered a few days before by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the Nixon Library. To Bannon, it was a clear signal that China hawks like Pompeo and Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade advisor, were winning the internal dispute in the Trump administration with “Panda huggers.” Bannon heard in Pompeo’s words echoes of his own anti-China messaging, which he has broadcast for months through frequent Fox News appearances and his daily podcast, “War Room: Pandemic.” Even though Bannon left his post as an adviser in the Trump administration in August 2017, he believed himself to be the true genius behind the new policy.
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When Ken Wilcox, a former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank, moved to Shanghai in 2011, he was optimistic and eager to start up the bank's new joint venture in China. A decade later, however, he is extremely cynical about U.S. business interests in China. While analysts will, rightly, be debating SVB's missteps in the U.S. for the foreseeable future, Wilcox insists the bank's challenges in China should not be overlooked.
The former secretary of state talks about how the Trump administration changed U.S.-China relations; why he accused Beijing of genocide in Xinjiang; and why U.S. politicians should visit Taiwan.
