The Trivium China Podcast

When Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on US labs to pace the AI frontier, Washington said no – and so did Beijing.
In fact, Chinese state media outlet China Daily went further, calling Amodei’s suggestion a “self-serving bid for profit.”
The back-and-forth has led to an ongoing debate around whether China takes AI safety seriously.
Kendra Schaefer’s take: China does take AI risk seriously – but what it won’t accept is the premise that its own progress is the problem.
On this episode of the Trivium China Podcast, host Andrew Polk sits down with Kendra (Trivium’s Head of Tech Policy Research) to unpack:
Why China’s response to the “pacing the frontier” debate looks dismissive on the surface, and why that reading misses how much AI regulation Beijing is already planning
How pursuing open-weight models has become a geopolitical position for China, with roughly 70% of derivative models on Hugging Face now built on Chinese base models
China’s new argument in the distillation fight: that banning it is an unfair trading practice and proof of US efforts to assert technological hegemony
The one thing that could flip Beijing’s calculus on managing open-weight releases, a major security incident, and how China’s COVID-19 playbook suggests it would shut the door rather than share what happened
Whether the new US-China AI safety dialogue, set to kick off in November, has any path forward
Give it a listen and let us know what you think.

From ports to lithium mines to diplomatic battles over Taiwan, China has spent two decades persistently building influence across Latin America and the Caribbean – one contract, one relationship, one chamber of commerce at a time.
Leland Lazarus’s new book – Dragon in the Americas: China’s Power, Presence, and Regional Influence – argues this isn’t simply a trade story.
It’s a long game, and China is getting more strategic and deliberate about how it plays it.
On the latest episode of the Trivium China Podcast, host Andrew Polk sits down with Leland – Founder and CEO of Lazarus Consulting and author of Dragon in the Americas – to unpack:
Why ports are the “lungs” of a country, and why 37 of them across Latin America and the Caribbean are now funded, financed, or operated by Chinese firms
Why the region’s own answer to the US-China rivalry mirrors an old Cold War approach from Barbados: “a friend to all, but a satellite of none”
The story behind the Panama Canal controversy, and why it’s just the most visible example of a much bigger pattern
How Chinese mining firms quietly bypassed national governments and went straight to local officials to lock up 60% of the world’s lithium reserves
Why Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic allies in the region matter so much, and how far China is willing to go to flip them
The darker edge of China’s presence in the region: Chinese criminal networks that have laundered an estimated $312 billion through the US financial system, with Latin America and the Caribbean becoming a central node
You won’t want to miss this wide-ranging discussion – and make sure to check out Leland’s book while you’re at it!

US President Donald Trump met Xi Jinping on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday – a rare honor last extended to the Pope by Barack Obama.
The atmospherics of the greeting and the rest of Xi’s Washington trip were great. The actual deliverables of the visit were more muted.
The one concrete outcome from Xi’s Washington visit was a two-month extension of the Busan trade truce, far short of the six-month floor most observers expected going in.
On this quick-reaction episode of the Trivium China Podcast, host Andrew Polk sits down with Joe Mazur (Head of Geopolitical Research, based in Beijing) to unpack:
Why “healthy competition” is a subtly new phrase in Beijing’s playbook, and what the shift in rhetoric signals
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s cryptic comment that China proposed “a bigger deal” over the weekend, and what that might mean
Why AI got an explicit shout-out in Xi’s comments during the bilateral meetings, and how managing the technology is becoming the new arms-control issue of the US-China relationship
The risk nobody’s pricing in: If this meeting doesn’t build real momentum, the two follow-up meetings penciled in for later this year may just quietly fall off the calendar
Give it a listen and let us know what you think.

Back in 2017, China’s former SASAC chairman told Joerg Wuttke, then president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China, precisely which industries China’s overcapacity machine would roll through next: EVs, batteries, solar, wind, basic chemicals.
Fast forward a decade, and it happened exactly as he predicted.
Joerg’s very blunt take: “China, in essence, is kind enough to tell us when and how they’re going to roll over us.”
On this episode, Trivium China Podcast host Andrew Polk, along with co-host Cory Combs, sits down with Joerg – now a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group – to unpack:
Why “China Shock 2.0” isn’t really a shock at all, but a systemic feature of how Beijing plans its economy – which was written out in black and white years in advance
The shipping container math that captures the trade imbalance better than any dollar figure: one container now leaves Europe for China for every four that come back
Why Wuttke thinks a stronger renminbi, not tariffs, may be China’s real concession on the table before October’s EU-China trade negotiation deadline
The key Chinese tech sector Wuttke says Europe should consider closing its market to (and it’s not the one you’d guess)
Why demographic collapse, not trade policy, might ultimately be China’s biggest vulnerability – and Europe’s unlikely opportunity
This episode is another banger, y’all. You won’t want to miss it!

China’s manufacturing output just grew at the fastest pace in six months, but retail sales barely moved last month – and the gap between the two growth rates just hit its widest point in over three years.
The upshot: Exports are still picking up the slack.
But an increasing chunk of China’s export growth is simply down to price increases, not rising volumes.
So even that stalwart economic prop is starting to wobble.
On this quick-reaction episode of the Trivium China Podcast, Andrew Polk sits down with Joe Peissel (Trivium’s Lead Macroeconomist) to unpack:
Why the gap between factory output and consumer spending just hit a three-year high, and why Beijing’s own policy playbook keeps worsening the imbalance
The hidden story in China’s “booming” exports: value is up 25%, but volumes for things like semiconductors and appliances are actually falling
The one semi-bright spot in the monthly macro-econ data: infrastructure investment is declining at a slower pace (hurrah!)
Why Beijing’s new interest-rate subsidy for consumers is aimed at the wrong problem entirely
Putting it all together: China’s economy will continue to decelerate into year-end.
Give it a listen and let us know what you think.