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Kevin Rudd was the Prime Minister of Australia from 2007–2010 and in 2013. He had a career in Australian government as a diplomat in China, foreign minister, and member of Parliament. After leaving government, Rudd became a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he researched U.S.-China relations. In 2015, he became president of the Asia Society Policy Institute. In this lightly edited interview with Rudd, who is in Queensland, Australia, we discuss Australia-China relations, the idea of a “new cold war” and Chinese politics.

Q: In early November, China essentially cut off trade with Australia in a few key exports, including copper. Is that a big deal?

A: These are significant developments. It’s interesting to note that China has not touched iron ore, on which China is strategically dependent, because China’s other international sourcing of iron ore cannot be diverted to make up its own domestic demand gap. So, what’s China trying to do? We’re all familiar with Chinese strategy in these circumstances, it’s 杀一儆百 — kill one in order to warn a hundred. This has been a standard feature of China’s relationship with countries around the world. We’ve seen it in the past with Canada, we’ve seen it in the past with Sweden, we’ve seen it in the past with Norway, we’ve seen it in the past with the Netherlands, we’ve seen it in the past with other countries.

What should Australia do about it? There are several dimensions to this. One is: given the Biden administration is now coming into office, and given the Biden administration’s interest in restabilizing the U.S.-China relationship, it would be useful for the Australian government to use the slipstream of that to restabilize its own relationship with Beijing. Number two, the Australian government would be well advised that whatever our fundamental policy disagreements with Beijing are, and there are many and these have been long standing across all sides of Australian politics, there’s a way in which these differences can be prosecuted other than taking out a megaphone and engaging in megaphone diplomacy. And the third factor, frankly, is what Beijing itself wants to do. There has been a huge internal debate in China in the last two months about the future of its own surge of wolf warrior diplomacy. Generally, the wolves have been put back into their cages for a while, but not, it seems, in relation to Australia. It will depend on what China itself wants to do with the future of the Australia relationship.

There have been reports of Chinese covert influence in Australia tracing back at least a decade. What was your sense of this while you were in office, and what do you make of the new reports coming out over the past few weeks?

These go to intelligence matters, and neither a former prime minister of Australia nor a current one is going to talk about intelligence matters. The reason is these are core responsibilities of any state, and you deal with any threats of either espionage or of internal subversion by the normal means available to the state. We tend not to talk about these.

But what we can observe is that globally, China’s United Front activities have become more comprehensive, more intense, more focused, better resourced, and not just in countries like Australia but around the world. This, therefore, requires all governments around the world, particularly in democracies, to gather their resources and focus them on a greater counterintelligence effort. That, I assume, is what the Australian government is currently doing. It was also a change I initiated more than a decade ago during my own period in office. In that period, there was a re-diversion, not just in Australia but elsewhere, of counterintelligence resources to fight the so-called “War against Terrorism,” thereby denuding our intelligence agencies of the capabilities to deal with classical state-based threats.

How has China’s relationship with the West evolved since Xi Jinping took power?

Two factors have changed with Xi Jinping, in my view. One is, if you trace the evolution in the public language contained in reports by the General Secretary of the Communist Party to Party congresses and to the plenary sessions in between them on their calculation of China’s comprehensive national power, 综合国力, you will see that that calculation has become more robust in its language and its descriptors over time. We see that again evolving further with the Fifth Plenum of the 19^th Central Committee convened recently. In other words, what’s changed under Xi Jinping was a trend emerging under his immediate predecessor Hu Jintao, particularly in his second term between 2008 and 2012 to 2013, and it is a view that the balance of power is shifting in China’s direction when measured against the United States. And much of Chinese strategic thinking comes from a tradition of classical Chinese realism that says as the balance of power changes so does China’s ability to exercise greater policy autonomy and engage in more assertive acts of foreign policy and political leverage around the region and around the world.

The second change in China’s posture under Xi Jinping traces its way back to the Central Party Work Conference on Foreign Affairs at the end of 2014. That was when we saw the formal interment of 韬光养晦绝不当头 — hide your strength, bide your time, never take the lead, and the commencement of this new era of 奋发有为, or a new assertive Chinese foreign policy in which you can achieve things, under Xi Jinping. If you look at the public reporting of that session, you see externally the manifestations of more assertive Chinese diplomacy around the world. Essentially, the takeaway from that meeting was: China will no longer simply be a “price taker” from the liberal international order and the norms and assumptions and strategic arrangements which pertain to it as in the past, and China will now challenge those norms and assumptions where they conflict with traditional Chinese interests and values, and that’s very natural. We’ve seen that evolve over the past seven years.

What do you think of the idea that the West and China are in a new cold war?

Taxonomy is important in international relations. Categorizing the current state of the U.S.-China relationship as a cold war is just bullshit. The reason it’s bullshit is because it fails to take any understanding of the definition of a cold war as it existed at the time of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Characteristics of that cold war were fairly clear: mutually assured destruction by massive thermonuclear arsenals targeting each other’s cities. And while there is a Chinese nuclear capability, and it is growing, and it is being modernized, it is miniscule relative to that which was possessed by the Soviet Union. It does, however, provide the Chinese with what is described as a credible second-strike capability and therefore a credible deterrent against any form of nuclear leverage that it would perceive being possible by the United States in the future.

But second, in the previous Cold War, there was zero economic relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. That does not apply in the case of China, demonstrably. Third, in the previous Cold War, there were sometimes dozens of proxy wars being fought across the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin American between Soviet-backed and U.S.-backed regimes and sometimes forces. That is not the case between the U.S. and China. Fourth, there was a fundamental schism in the ideological divide between Marxism-Leninism on the one hand and American democratic capitalism on the other as two fundamentally competing world views. With China and the United States, yes, there are competing world views, but the grounds of competition are different. The grounds of competition between authoritarian capitalism on the one hand and democratic capitalism is not as sharp as it was during the Cold War, although it is becoming sharper.

Categorizing the current state of the U.S.-China relationship as a cold war is just bullshit.

That’s why I think we need to be careful about loose use of the taxonomy here of “a new cold war.” Certainly, there’s been a quantitative and qualitative deterioration in the relationship, and we can all itemize where that has occurred, not least of which being in technology. But there’s a reason why I’ve used publicly the term “Cold War 1.5.” If it continues in this trajectory for another decade, we may well end up in “Cold War 2.0.” But to characterize it as a new cold war now I think is definitionally imprecise.

What approach should the U.S. and countries like Australia take in dealing with China’s rise?

For Australia, what I have recommended publicly is an approach that has four or five basic characteristics. Number one: be robust with our Chinese friends publicly and privately about our belief in universal human rights, that we will continue to advocate for those through international forums, and that is entirely consistent with the three relevant UN universal declarations, most particularly the 1948 Universal Declaration [of Human Rights], of which China as a state is a signatory and ratification state.¹The other two declarations are the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. China’s seat at the United Nations was held by the Republic of China (Taiwan) when all three declarations were first signed. The People’s Republic of China signed these declarations after joining the United Nation, although it has not ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The second is for those of us who are allies of the United States to simply make plain to our Chinese interlocutors that that’s going to continue. There are a whole range of reasons why we have become allies with the United States in the past and will be allies with the United States in the future. Third, economically, to maximize our engagement with the Chinese economy in trade and investments and capital markets, on the grounds that we have mutual access to each other’s economies on a fair and competitive basis. Fourth, we should collaborate with China in global institutions like the UN and Bretton Woods institutions but also the G20 on global governance challenges, most particularly climate change and pandemic management, but also global financial management as well.

Finally, for countries like Australia, like Canada, and the middle powers around the world, which from time to time are pressured by China, it is useful for those countries to collaborate when we have a common position on areas of agreed concern in our dealings with China, rather than individual states being easily picked off, which has been the case up until now.

Many politicians in the U.S. advocate decoupling with China. Whether or not that is desirable, do you think it’s even possible?

It’s important to be clear about definitions. If by decoupling you mean breaking diplomatic relations, ending all economic contact, and declaring an ideological war and by all national means resisting Chinese power and influence anywhere in the world, if that’s what you mean by decoupling, then I think that is a bridge too far. Second, in embracing any strategy of decoupling, those who advocate it need to be confident that it will not be more destructive of American national interests than it is of Chinese national interests. Particularly as China now, realizing that American pressure is increasing, has embarked upon a strategy that sees its own economic future largely driven by domestic economic growth.

The third question to be answered by those advocating radical decoupling is: what is your strategic objective? What do you wish to achieve? Is it to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party as [U.S. Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo argued at the Nixon Library? If so, how is that achieved by decoupling? Second, is it to induce or bring about changes in particular Chinese foreign policy behaviors and to decouple as a result of that, in order to provide that leverage? If so, what are the specific behaviors you’re targeting, et cetera? And thirdly, there is the question of what is in America’s own domestic economic interest as well. If you speak to all the players in U.S. capital markets, they’ll have a radically different view on the nature of the Chinese trade opportunity than those engaged in the traditional trading sector of the U.S. economy.

You’ve met with Xi Jinping on numerous occasions. What’s he like as a leader?

Xi Jinping is, in my observation of him, highly intelligent. Secondly, unlike the critics of him domestically, I have found him to be well read, particularly in terms of China’s domestic traditions. He’s also a formidable historian of the Chinese Communist Party, back to its inception. Thirdly, he also has a clear view of where he wants to take the country and the Party, and fourthly, sees himself, I think, as a man of destiny. Fifthly, I don’t think he’s a person who suffers flaws gladly and therefore wishes to have around him competent and loyal people.

What was the most memorable interaction you had with him?

I generally don’t go into those sorts of things, because in dealings with individual political leaders, I tend to keep those exchanges private because that’s just the nature of diplomacy.

You wrote your undergraduate thesis on the democracy movement in China and activist Wei Jingsheng. Did that cause any problems with China’s leaders?

No. They were all familiar with the fact that I translated Wei Jingsheng’s trial, and I published that in my thesis and analyzed the treatment of 人权 [human rights] and the whole notion of 权 and 权利 [Chinese words for rights] in the Chinese modern and classical traditions. Secondly, they’d also be familiar with the fact that I was in Tiananmen in 1989, not there on June 4^th, but in the weeks leading up to that. And so I made no bones about the fact that I have been actively engaged in and an observer of Chinese human rights practice up close. I’ve also met Wei Jingsheng a number of times personally.

Did witnessing the Chinese democracy movement firsthand influence how you related China as a leader?

Yes. If you look the first speech I delivered as the prime minister of Australia at Peking University in 2008, I sought to introduce not just the concept of being a 老朋友 [old friend] of China but being a 诤友 — someone who is prepared to speak candidly to a friend, as opposed to someone who would just engage in sycophantic behavior. There’s also a speech in which I referred specifically to human rights. This was not welcomed by the Chinese system or government; I was criticized for it in Australia at the time, but I believe it’s part and parcel of our overall relationship with China, given where we come from as little democracies.

At the end of your time as foreign minister, Bo Xilai began his fall from power. Do you have any sense of what was going on then? Is it true that internal strife at the highest levels of the Party was much more serious than people on the outside may have realized at the time?

It’s one of the most opaque periods in modern Chinese domestic political history. One of the ironies was I was about to head to Chongqing myself to meet Bo Xilai at that time, because we were contemplating at that stage re-establishing the Australian Consulate General in Chongqing as well as opening in Chengdu. Obviously, that didn’t come to pass. But in terms of the central tensions surrounding the contest between Xi Jinping and Bo Xilai in that period of 2011 and 2012, I think this is a period where the internal history will only become clear to us over a long period of time into the future. There are still even many chapters of the Cultural Revolution where the internal history only becomes known much later. That’s why, I think, the Communist Party has such an electric sensitivity to any open discussion of Party history, because this was an acute period of leadership tension.

You’re leading the charge against Rupert Murdoch’s influence in Australia. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

It’s primarily because I oppose any form of monopoly, and Murdoch owns 70 percent of print media in Australia. The impact of his monopoly power in this country is profound and cancerous on the democracy overall. Secondly, it’s the particular agendas that the Murdoch media pursue, whether they’ve got a monopoly or not, and we’ve seen that evident in Australia and we see it in the United Kingdom. But one of the particular objections I have to the Murdoch media in the U.S. and Australia has been providing this open platform for what I describe as climate change denialism and its continuing assault on the underpinning science of climate change and what to do about it. For those reasons, it’s bad for the planet, it’s bad for America, and it’s bad for Australia. And that’s why I decided to collect a petition of concerned Australians to deal with it. We now have broken the record in terms of the number of Australians signing a petition, and it was presented to the Australian Parliament yesterday [November 9] demanding a royal commission into the abuse of media monopoly power within Australia and making recommendations for the future structure of Australia media laws.

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