China Decode: Why China’s Baby Bust Meets a Condom Tax

In this episode of China Decode, Alice Han and James Kynge break down a quieter but consequential shift in Washington’s China strategy. They unpack Trump’s new national security playbook, why Beijing is suddenly sounding upbeat, and whether this signals a real reset or just a tactical pause in U. S.-China tensions. They also dig into China’s baby bust — and the backlash to a new tax on condoms — as policymakers search for answers to falling birth rates. Plus, Alice sits down with Chip War author Chris Miller to discuss Trump’s surprise reversal on AI chip exports to China, what it means for NVIDIA, and why semiconductors are now at the center of global power politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:28James Kynge?

  Trump is focusing more on doing deals and a lot less on American ideals, you know, for the world. We've left that Reagan-esque type of America as a shining city on the hill, a beacon for mankind, an ideal for global aspirations, the leader of the free world. All of that rhetoric, well, and it was a lot more than rhetoric, really, from Reagan's time until now, it's been followed up with military might and economic muscle. This is the world that Pax Americana has created. So if this holds, and that is a big if, then it really is a big change.

• 2:13Alice Han?

  Welcome to China Decode. I'm Alice Han.

• 2:16James Kynge?

  And I'm James Kynge.

• 2:18Alice Han?

  In today's episode of China Decode, we are discussing Trump's new China playbook, why China's baby bust meets a condom tax, plus we'll chat with Chris Miller about Trump's big AI chip reversal. That's all coming up, but first, let's do a quick check-in with how the Chinese markets are starting the week. On Monday, the Shanghai A-share index fell 0.6%, and the Hang Seng H-share index fell 1.3% after key economic data were released, which revealed that China's slowdown lasted into November. Social media company Quayshol Technology closed down 5%. Search giant Bytedoor slid 6%, and Alibaba fell 4% as investors are increasingly anxious about the fragile Chinese economy.

• 3:03James Kynge?

  You're over in Australia, right, Alice?

• 3:05Alice Han?

  Yeah, I just got here a couple of days ago in Sydney, and it's been pretty awful. As many listeners will know from following the news, we had one of the biggest shootings in Australian recent history, and it seems to have been a terrorist attack. So it's at a beach that many of us go to. It's been a bit of a shock to the nation, and it seems to the rest of the world as well. It's a very, very sad turn of events.

• 3:26James Kynge?

  Absolutely. It looks so sad from here.

• 3:30Alice Han?

  But the silver lining and a lot of media attention's being paid to this right now is one Australian hero, Ahmed Al Ahmed, a Syrian migrant who became an Australian national, was the guy, I don't know if you saw the video, James, who tackled one of the shooters and took his gun away from him. He's in hospital, but certainly has garnered a lot of attention, including from Trump himself, who has called him a hero too. And so on that note, we'll talk a bit about the Trump administration's approach to national security.

• 3:59James Kynge?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 4:00Alice Han?

  The Trump administration just dropped its new national security strategy, and the biggest headline isn't what's in it. But what's missing? The fire and brimstone language about China being America's top threat? Gone. Instead, Trump is framing China mostly as an economic rival, softening his previous position on trade, security, and even cybersecurity issues. Beijing's reacting positively so far, at least publicly. So are we looking at a real reset in the relationship here? Or just a tactical pause, a détente in a long and bumpy relationship? James, I'll start with my take because I've been following this very closely. And it's worth mentioning to listeners that the National Security Strategy

• 4:44Alice Han?

  is a congressionally mandated report in the US. It states the executive branch's national security goals and how it intends to achieve them. And what was interesting to me is in the first Trump administration, its NSS, which was first released in 2017, had a way more hawkish tone vis a vis China. It identified China as a great power competitor and a primary challenge to American statecraft. In many ways, I think that this new National Security Strategy document is a product of internecine conflict within the Trump administration. You've got hawks and doves. And clearly, what I sense and what I've heard is that the doves, mainly Secretary Besen, Treasury Secretary Besen,

• 5:29Alice Han?

  clearly want this document not to be incendiary so that they can continue to have relatively stable negotiations with the Chinese counterparts in advance of Trump's potential April visit to China. And one thing I will add, when I looked at the document itself, and Chinese media finally reflected on this too, is the fact that the Taiwan issue, which is critical to this relationship, was only mentioned three times in this document versus eight times in the 2017 document. The Chinese media picked up on that quite intently. Again, a sign that potentially on the Taiwan issue, the Trump administration has a more, I would say, protectionist bent, a bent towards retrenchment. And certainly, the rhetoric in the document about burden sharing

• 6:13Alice Han?

  with the Koreans and the Japanese seem to indicate that they want the allies in the region to foot the bill more and to be more on the front line when it comes to the first island chain response. That is, you know, an issue that obviously pertains to Taiwan. So what I sense from this document, and again, want to hear what you have to say, James, is that China really feels like it has a bit of a victory lap? Because the Trump administration isn't firing full cylinder on China. But again, I think that reading between the lines, there are clear, I think hawkish voices in the administration that want to take a more hawkish position on China. It remains to be seen in 2026 if they are on the ascendant. But I still think that that is worth flagging because it's definitely in the backdrop of this document.

• 6:58Alice Han?

  But James, do you disagree or agree?

• 7:01James Kynge?

  No, I very much agree with you. I mean, I also seized on the fact that missing is this phrase of great power competition that was very prominent in the national security strategy of the first Trump administration and also President Biden's NSS. I mean, it's a little bit like suddenly the Yankees admitting to mention that they want to beat the Red Sox or in soccer, Real Madrid going soft on Barcelona. I mean, China was the main competitor, the main strategic adversary to the United States in both the first Trump and Biden administration and this Trump administration until now.

• 7:43James Kynge?

  So it is certainly a fundamental change. Whether it's a sustainable, long-term pivot, as you've just been talking about, Alice, is much more difficult to say. If you want my kind of heads up straight off the bat, which may turn out to be incorrect, but my sense of this is that the reason that the White House's China policy has shifted to one of stability and emphasizing economics, as you've just said, is because America wants to bide its time, it wants to gain time to wean itself off its complete dependence on China for rare earth minerals and other types of critical minerals.

• 8:28James Kynge?

  Until it does that, it wants to go easy on China so that it doesn't provoke China into cutting off these rare earth mineral supplies. Because as we all know, the rare earth minerals are crucial to all types of American industry. And even more crucially, they're used in making weapons. So without the These rare earths, it will be difficult for America to make the weapons it needs to defend itself. And so that's why I think we're going to see this calmer, more stable, less adversarial US policy towards China. And unless something big happens, my hunch is that this may set the tone for the next few years.

• 9:07James Kynge?

  Because of course, it will take, I would say, a minimum of five years before the US can wean itself off its dependence on China's rare earth minerals. Do you think that call is a bit left of field? Do you think it's a bit sort of out there? Maybe there's more going on. Maybe it's to do with Trump not wanting to jeopardize his planned visit to Beijing next April, Lattice. What's your sense?

• 9:31Alice Han?

  Well, my own sense is that Besen is in the driving seat. And he clearly wants the relationship to go well at advance of Trump's visit. And what I had heard, I think this is public information too. What is clear is that the document had been first drafted by the State Department Director of Policy Planning, Michael Antad, before he left his position in August. And then it went through many different figures, through a chain of people, Secretary of State Mark Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Besen, even the Vice President JD Vance. And it's very clear, you know, in this sort of team of rivals, so to speak, that these people have different positions on China and national security at large.

• 10:13Alice Han?

  My own sense was that it was really the doves who won the argument. Because they convinced Trump that he wanted, he needed to have a good relationship in advance of a China trip. But I'm very convinced, as you talk, James, about this rare earths argument. Because as I was reading it, and I think many people have missed it, in the Africa section, there is some description about securitizing supply chains of rare earths in Africa. And I think that that, again, speaks to what you're saying, James, which is potentially the Trump administration is buying time. And I similarly heard that for weapons-grade rare earths, so military applications of rare earths, it'll take three years.

• 10:53Alice Han?

  But for the rest of the supply chain, at least five, maybe even up to 10 years, for the US to have its own secured supply chain. So I'm, as you speak, I'm more convinced by your argument, James, that it is a strategy of buying time. But certainly, I think that it is a bit of a change from the Biden administration and Trump 1.0. I'm not entirely convinced, and here I'm probably sitting on the fence, that this document is going to be the letter of the law. When it comes to the Trump administration's approach to China, I think a lot can happen in the next year or so. But certainly, this has been a big shift, and it's worth people reading. One last thing that I'll add is a section on Latin America.

• 11:34Alice Han?

  There was a huge amount of attention paid to Latin America and the hemispheric defence approach to Trump's foreign policy. Again, one line I think that there was, that's worth mentioning, and it might be a slight dig to China or a reference to China, is countering non-hemispheric influences in Latin America. That could also be, I think, a pointed reference to China's trade and investment relationships in Latin America, not just Venezuela and keeping that regime afloat, but certainly other countries like Brazil or Argentina where there's significant amounts of trade that China is involved in. So I, again, I think when you read between the lines, there are some references to China,

• 12:18Alice Han?

  but clearly from a PR standpoint, the doves in the administration have won the argument, and they wanted to make this document less incendiary than it could have been, than it certainly had been in the first Trump administration. James, how do you think the Chinese government is viewing this document? Because they definitely have dedicated teams that specialise in this.

• 12:36James Kynge?

  I think they're absolutely delighted, and I have been talking to Chinese, well, think tank people last week in London, and I think they are really very pleased about this, because the previous two national security strategies mentioned that the US wanted to oppose China's desire to, quote, "shape a world antithetical to US values and interests." This version dropped that completely, and as you mentioned earlier, it started to talk about economics a great deal more. And so the key sentence in this one was that America wanted to be

• 13:16James Kynge?

  Working to, quote, rebalance America's economic relationship with China. Just look at how much more mild that sentence is compared to describing China as, you know, antithetical to US values and interests around the world. So what I think is is happening is that Trump is focusing more on doing deals and a lot less on American ideals, you know, for the world. We've left that Reagan-esque type of America as a shining city on the hill, a beacon for mankind, an ideal for global aspirations, the leader of the free world.

• 13:58James Kynge?

  All of that rhetoric, well, and it was a lot more than rhetoric, really. From Reagan's time until now, it's been a great deal more than rhetoric. It's been followed up with military might and economic muscle. This is the world that Pax Americana has created. And now we're just talking about doing better deals and America focusing on its economic interests in the world. So if this holds, and that is a big if, then it it really is a big change. And I must just say, Alice, that I think your phrase of non-hemispheric influences is going to be a zeitgeist for 2026. I think that we are going to be talking about re-hemisphering the world a lot more over the coming months.

• 14:43James Kynge?

  It's a bit like the Monroe Doctrine of old is going to get reborn in some shape or form, or at least rhetorically reborn. I have a feeling I'm already seeing several think tank articles about re-hemisphering and non-hemispheric influences and all of this. So I think that's going to be more of the lens through which America looks at the world. And very clearly, China is not in America's hemisphere, at least not in their own reckoning. So I think there's going to be a lot to to to to pick up on, a lot to focus on, on this topic.

• 15:16Alice Han?

  Yeah, I love the way that you described James Trump's foreign policy of serving deals and not ideals. I think that's a great way to view it. The administration gives a good diagnosis to the Chinese economy, saying that they wanted to encourage other countries to adopt trade policies that, quote unquote, rebalance China's economy towards household consumption. It's certainly something that. You know, we've been waiting for the Chinese economy to do. But I think, again, if we read between the lines, it's clear even in the economic section of the relationship, yes, it is milder than the previous documents. But it's clear that they reserve the right and give themselves the policy space to keep using tariffs or non-tariff barriers, or even pressure other trading partners, I'm

• 15:59Alice Han?

  thinking about Europe in particular, to put tariffs on China and enforce tougher rules of origin. I think this will be particularly germane to, say, a Mexico or a Vietnam, where China does a lot of rerouting of trade. Certainly, I could foresee in 2026 that Besen and Greer, if the relationship doesn't pan out well, decides to opt for, I think, more protectionist strategy in forcing rules of origin through these other third-party countries. It's not my base case, but definitely I think this document gives them the policy space to use that tool or lever to apply more pressure on China. So I don't think it's all rosy, but certainly it is, at a rhetorical level, quite a bit of an improvement to previous NSS documents. But James, are we missing anything?

• 16:44Alice Han?

  Is there a danger to the Trump administration's seemingly more dovish position on China? Certainly, you know, when we speak to some of the national security experts, they're very worried about China's cybersecurity risk. James, what's your take on this?

• 16:58James Kynge?

  Well, it's hard to know cause and effect, but perhaps it's too much of a coincidence that just the day before the new US national security strategy was announced, The Financial Times had an article which says that the US plans to halt its intention to impose sanctions on China's Ministry of State Security. That is, of course, China's spy ministry. And this is over a massive cyber espionage campaign that was being waged by a group called Salt Typhoon and other advanced persistent threat groups. These are called APT groups, that the US believes has been responsible for targeting

• 17:42James Kynge?

  United States infrastructure and government agencies.

• 17:47James Kynge?

  And really hacking the phones of many high level individuals in the United States through US telecoms networks. And so this was a really big cause for concern in the US all the way from 2019 until now. And now the Trump administration is saying that it wants to, well, halt the plans to impose sanctions on the Ministry of State Security. Of course, it could go back on that, it could change its mind. But at the moment, that seems to be potentially part of this softening towards China ahead of Trump's meeting with Xi Jinping in April, and perhaps because, you know, the US is now taking a softer tone on China altogether.

• 18:31Alice Han?

  Very interesting, James. We are going to talk more about a seemingly dovish turn on policy related to chips with Chris Miller after the break.

• 18:46Scott Galloway?

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• 21:02Alice Han?

  Well, welcome back. Last week, President Trump announced that he was reversing a years-long policy banning US chipmakers from selling their powerful AI chips to China. In a social media post, Trump indicated that Nvidia would be allowed to sell their H200 chips in China, the second-most powerful AI chips the company makes. This marks a major shift in policy and implicates the whole AI industry as the engine driving the global economy, as well as putting a spotlight on the ongoing tensions between the US and China. Joining me to talk through all of this is Chris Miller. He is a professor of international history at Tufts University and is the author of the critically acclaimed 2022 book, Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology.

• 21:47Alice Han?

  Chris, there's nobody better to speak on this topic, so thank you so much for joining me today on China Decode.

• 21:52Speaker 06

  Thank you for having me.

• 21:54Alice Han?

  Let's start with the export controls and how that we've seen a major shift. Certainly, people who have been watching this closely are disheartened to some extent with Trump relaxing on H200s. But maybe from the ground up, can you walk us through why this actually matters? And why this has been a big shift to say go from the H20s where he relaxed to the H200s? What is the quantum leap, so to speak, between the two?

• 22:16Speaker 06

  If you start by looking at the goal that the US government has been trying to accomplish since it began imposing controls on AI chips in 2022, the theory was that if you want to build big AI systems, you need lots and lots of high-end chips. And almost all of these chips are manufactured at TSMC in Taiwan and largely designed by US companies, including Nvidia. So the US and Taiwan have this unique choke point over AI processors. And the US wanted to give US firms and firms from allied countries a leg up in the AI race by giving them privileged access to AI computational capabilities. And that was the origin of this control regime. And Trump has now decided for the first time since the controls were put in place to actually

• 23:01Speaker 06

  reduce some of the controls and allow more chips at the high end of the spectrum to flow to China.

• 23:08Alice Han?

  And why is he issuing this policy shift? Because to my mind, he was really the first to issue this clarion call in his first Trump administration about the need to do export controls. This year, I think we've seen a move towards being dovish on some of these chips issues. And certainly, people point to David Sacks being the crypto and AI czar as being one proponent of this. But what is the rationale from Trump's perspective in basically reducing these export controls?

• 23:36Speaker 06

  You know, I think you're right. This is a big reversal, of course, relative to the policy of the first Trump administration, which was very tight on technology control. I think there are two rationales that you hear from the administration on why this changed now. The first is financial in focus. Nvidia, obviously, a critically important company for the US, a driver of the stock market. And so there's a straightforward rationale to let Nvidia sell more chips to China. So that's part one. There's a second argument that suggests if you sell Chips to China, China won't want to build out its own AI chip ecosystem. And we've seen Chinese firms like Huawei, most importantly, become important designers and manufacturers of AI chips.

• 24:20Speaker 06

  They're still far behind what Nvidia plus TSMC can do in terms of quality and quantity. But there are some people in the administration, including, I think, David Sacks, who you mentioned, who argue that if you sell more chips to China, you'll take some of the air out of the effort to build up China's own self-sufficient AI ecosystem.

• 24:39Alice Han?

  And to grab onto that second point that you mentioned, do you think it's plausible, that argument? Because to my mind at least, people who will follow the Chinese chip industry are saying that this could actually give China more of an edge in the broader AI competition. Certainly, it raises China's compute capabilities and it reduces the gap between the US and China on compute alone. There was a great piece published by the think tank IFP that seems to suggest that now with the H200s, we could go from the US having a 30x advantage on compute to 6x. And, you know, the second part of my question is, will China accept all these chips? Because certainly, there is an argument that you're seeing in the mainland, in media amongst people who follow this closely, that they need to limit the amount of Nvidia chips that they bring in

• 25:23Alice Han?

  because they want to kickstart their own industry. So walk me through a little bit whether or not this has a compute advantage for China? And secondly, whether or not China will actually take these chips?

• 25:33Speaker 06

  Well, I think it is a key question right now because the Chinese government, as you know as well as anyone, has been fixated on self-sufficiency in semiconductors for over a decade. And they've made a lot of progress in many types of chips. But when it comes to cutting-edge AI chips, they're not there yet. And this is why, from the Chinese government's perspective, there's actually a rationale for keeping these chips out of the market because it opens up space for Huawei and the other AI chip designers in China to sell to China's own AI firms. I think if you're in the shoes of the Chinese internet sector or the AI sector, companies like ByteDance or Alibaba, they'd actually probably prefer to just get the best chips on the market, which are Nvidia's. And so you probably have a bit of a gap between what the tech sector wants and what the Chinese government wants.

• 26:18Speaker 06

  But I think this is a space where the Chinese government usually wins these arguments. And so I think we are going to see some limitations on the number of H200s rather that flow into China because the Chinese government does want to support Huawei and support this self-sufficiency drive to the extent that it can.

• 26:34Alice Han?

  Great point. And looking to the Chinese industry as a whole, you know, your book, really, if anybody hasn't read it, they need to read it. It really lays the foundation for this ongoing competition between the US and China over semiconductors. How do you assess the Chinese semiconductor industry today versus when you wrote that book? Because certainly, there's a lot of hype about Chinese homegrown talent. You just mentioned a couple, Huawei, CambraCorn, More Threads more recently. How are you looking at their capabilities when it comes to the ground up? Because there's a lot of attention being paid to the sector right now.

• 27:07Speaker 06

  You know, I think China has made real strides in catching up in many segments of the chip industry. But there are also a number of areas where they're far away from the cutting edge. If you look, first off, at the manufacturing of semiconductors, what you find is that TSMC in Taiwan is not only able to produce significantly better chips. And we know this because the capabilities of the leading Chinese chipmaker SMIC basically track along TSMC at a five or six-year delay. And that delay's been relatively steady over time. There's a meaningful delay in terms of quality. And there's a huge gap in terms of quantity because TSMC can access the tools that are used to make chips, machines that are produced by companies like ASML or Applied Materials

• 27:51Speaker 06

  in ways that China can't because of export controls. So on manufacturing, quality and quantity, there's a very big gap. When it comes to chip design, the gap is much, much less significant, which is why Huawei, for example, is a top-notch designer of semiconductors, both for smartphones and also increasingly for AI chips. But design only matters if you can get them manufactured. And that's the challenge that Huawei and the other Chinese chip designers have faced. And so I think if you look at the startup ecosystem in China, for example, companies like More Threads, which you just mentioned, had an IPO earlier this month. Very successful IPO, valuing it at around $50 billion. That's a lot, but it's only 1% of Nvidia's valuation, precisely because they can't manufacture enough chips to sell them at volume right now.

• 28:37Alice Han?

  So they really do need to rely on US imports or imports from other countries, especially as they gear up on AI capacity. Maybe we can talk a little bit about the AI implications because I know you follow this very, very closely. And certainly, one argument that you hear is that the chip side is a critical hardware constraint for China as it tries to compete with the US on compute, on training, and ultimately on AI models. How are you seeing this AI broader competition between the US and China? And do you think this recent announcement of the H200 really changes the dynamic in this AI competition between the two powers?

• 29:10Speaker 06

  I think one of the debates that the AI world was having in the first half of this year is whether the scaling laws were still holding. The idea that you build a bigger AI system, you get a better AI system. In the last couple of months, we've seen a number of important data points that suggest, yes, it still is true that quality follows size. Gemini 3, for example, is, I think, a strong data point in that direction, Opus 4.5 from Anthropic. But the best is actually DeepSeek, which released a new model earlier this month. And the paper that accompanied that release explicitly said, "We, DeepSeek, are actually struggling to pre-train at the scale we want because we don't have access to enough chips." So that's why I think there's so much at stake. And the decision by the US to allow H200 sales to China and by the decision by the

• 29:55Speaker 06

  Chinese government, what volume to actually accept. My guess, and there's a ton of uncertainty here, my guess is actually that the volumes that ship are smaller than many people think, both because of uncertainty on the US side as to what exactly the security concerns will be that need to be addressed. And the Trump administration has promised some sort of security check. And also because China's government wants to provide a space for Huawei and other firms to sell to a protected market. And so there may be less H200 sales than I think some of the headlines suggest. And if that's true, we might not see as big of a reversal in the balance in computing power as we've got today. But it's worth tracking very closely because the US advantage in compute has been a core

• 30:39Speaker 06

  facet of its leadership in AI over the past couple of years.

• 30:43Alice Han?

  And if I hear you correctly, you're saying that the chip side still remains significant in this broader AI competition because if the Chinese can't create its own homegrown versions that are as efficient and as productive, then that's seriously going to be a limitation on their compute capabilities. And we're seeing that knock on effect with the models that have been coming out of China. Is that correct?

• 31:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think that's right. DeepSeek trying to disassemble Nvidia servers that were in Southeast Asia, ship them into China and reassemble them is a data point just how far Chinese firms are going to get access to the compute that they realize they need. And if your AI supply chain requires disassembling, smuggling and reassembling, that's not the kind of supply chain you want to rely on to produce your most sensitive and advanced technology.

• 31:26Alice Han?

  Fascinating. Well, let's shift to the US where we're talking a lot about an AI bubble. And there's a lot of speculation as to whether or not Nvidia GPUs have been oversold. You've got a famous American hedge fund manager, Michael Burry, who famously predicted the 2008 housing market crash, who's saying that there were way too many Nvidia GPUs that have been sold. You have also been following this very closely, the data center rollout, where you've got trillions going into data center rollouts throughout America. The GPUs being used to power those data centers and ultimately power models like OpenAI's. Do you think we're in an AI infrastructure boom bubble? And more broadly, is the US style of approach to AI being seriously disrupted by these cheaper, more efficient and energy efficient models coming out of China?

• 32:11Speaker 06

  I think to start with the second part of the question first on open source, we've now begun to get some reasonable data on whether cheaper or often free open source models from China are winning market share. And the answer is not really, at least from what we can tell. Closed source models had roughly 70% of the market 12 months ago, and it looks like they've got 70% of the market today. From some of the latest data that I've seen, most of the evidence suggests that most AI startups in Silicon Valley are building their startups on closed models because of the performance gap. They're just better in terms of their quality. So we haven't seen the commodification of AI at all. I think the big question is, will we see the Continued revenue growth that we've seen over the past couple of years.

• 32:56Speaker 06

  You know, when you look at Anthropic going from a hundred million to a billion to almost 10 billion in revenue the last three years, that is staggering growth and it can't continue at that rate for a long time. But even if the rate slows somewhat, that implies a ton of new revenue coming in. And I guess I remain on the optimistic side that yes, we're investing a lot, but I'd rather be investing a lot than not investing in a technology that has the potential to be so transformative across so many different sectors.

• 33:22Alice Han?

  And just to continue this line of questioning, Jeffrey Dean writes a lot about technology diffusion. You know, technology is one thing, but you need to know how to diffuse it throughout the economy to unleash the productivity gains. And I think a broader debate within the US-China AI competition is which country is going to diffuse the gains of AI better? You know, having studied both countries and the way that they approach technology, what is your sense of the two different pathways and who's ultimately going to diffuse the technology better within the real economy?

• 33:52Speaker 06

  You know, I think Jeff's right. It's a key question. It's also a very, very hard question to know how to begin to measure. I guess my theory would be that the first era of AI will be primarily applying AI to the enterprise space, making companies more efficient, finding ways to automate legal services and accounting services and coding already happening. And there, I think the empirics are that the US has done really well. Most enterprise software firms around the world are based in the US. The US has always been a leader in applying enterprise software to other sectors, to financial services, for example. And so if that holds, I think you should expect to see US firms be early adopters of AI in enterprise as well. And I would posit that I think we're beginning to see that.

• 34:36Speaker 06

  The number of private equity firms, for example, that are actively integrating AI transformation into their investment strategies, that to me is a very positive sign that we're going to get this broad diffusion across the corporate sector. I think when you listen to non-technology companies, they're increasingly talking about finding ways that AI is actually impacting their businesses. And then we're already seeing a whole new generation of AI-native enterprise software tools, which I think are going to be very powerful and spread very rapidly. So I would be optimistic about the US ability to apply quite rapidly, though of course, I think none of us would ever underestimate the capacity of the Chinese tech sector either.

• 35:16Alice Han?

  Well, one last question I have for you is more about the military dual-use implications of AI. Certainly, we saw the military parade in September where China was literally and metaphorically bringing out the big guns. And there's a lot of talk about China's AI-enabled systems when it comes to, say, a Taiwan showdown. You know, you talk a lot with folks in Washington. I think it'd be very interesting for us to hear a little bit about how the state, the deep state, but also Washington writ large, is thinking about the way it wants to use AI in dual-use technologies in military hardware. Can you speak to that a bit?

• 35:49Speaker 06

  Well, I would flag two, I think, immediate applications. One is in interpreting and sifting through intelligence. We've already heard publicly, for example, from the director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the role that AI plays in identifying images or detecting patterns. And when you think of the vast quantities of data that any large intelligence agency is getting from their satellite photos and their signals intelligence, making sense of that is a real challenge. And AI is already having an impact there from what we've heard publicly. I think second is if you look at drones and autonomous systems and Russia-Ukraine is a testbed tragically for this. We're already seeing increasingly autonomous systems being deployed. And I think both the US and China are actively exploring ways to accelerate that across drones

• 36:34Speaker 06

  in the air, drones in sea, drones undersea, drones on land. And all of that requires advanced AI systems.

• 36:40Alice Han?

  One last cheeky question to end on, if I can, Chris. What is your prediction in any area of chips or AI for next year that you think we should be tracking?

• 36:50Speaker 06

  Well, no, I'm just continually surprised by how many conversations I have about the AI bubble, which makes me think that everyone expects the AI bubble to burst, but also makes me puzzled because if everyone expects it to burst, can we really be in a bubble? My prediction is that we're going to get continued technological progress and continued new products driven by AI. And I think relative to everything I hear from my friends in the investing community, to be sure, I think there's a lot more pessimism than is warranted by the technological progress.

• 37:20Alice Han?

  Great. Thanks so much, Chris. I know you're a very busy man. On top of being an AI chip expert, you're also a Russia expert, so really appreciate your insights. We'll leave things here for now. Thank you so much, and thanks for joining me today on China Decode.

• 37:33Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 37:34Alice Han?

  Okay, we'll be back with more after a quick break, so stay with us.

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• 38:51Alice Han?

  Welcome back. China is trying to reverse its baby bust, and its latest move has people doing a double take. Starting January 1st next year, the government is putting a 13% tax on condoms and other contraceptives, ending an exemption that's been in place since the one-child policy era. Officials say it's just a technical tax change, but many Chinese citizens see it as another attempt to nudge people into having kids. Critics argue it won't boost birth rates, which are continuing to decline, and could actually make things worse, especially for young Chinese people already squeezed by high costs, long work hours, and an increasingly shaky economy. James, what's your hot take on this? Do you think this is actually going to work?

• 39:36James Kynge?

  Well, I mean, they say that two things in life are certain death and taxes. And I also think it's the case that you can really see what a country intends for its people by looking how it taxes them. So although the authorities in China have not said that this tax on contraceptives, including condoms, is part of its pro-natal policies, it certainly looks like that because there will be value-added tax imposed on condoms and other contraceptives up to the usual 13% from next year. And actually, if you look at the context around this, it really does look like this

• 40:16James Kynge?

  is an intentional move to boost the number of kids being born in China. It will end a 33-year tax exemption on contraceptives that was first introduced under China's one-child policy. And conversely, while they're putting taxes on contraceptives, they're taking taxes off matchmaking services. So it looks to me like this is all of a package. It looks to me like, basically, China is going as full speed ahead as possible to get women to have more kids. And I think the reasons for that are so abundantly clear.

• 40:59James Kynge?

  And Alice, you have many friends in China, you will know the stories there really well. But just the very stark statistic at the top is that China's fertility rate is now about one birth per woman. That was in 2024. That's far below the replacement level of 2.1. It's not actually the very lowest in the world, because I think that dubious distinction goes to either Macau or South Korea, but it is very close to the lowest birth rate in the world.

• 41:34Alice Han?

  Yeah.

• 41:34James Kynge?

  What are you hearing, Alice? I mean, you must have heard several stories from your friends in China about why people are not having babies and the government efforts to get them to have babies.

• 41:44Alice Han?

  Well, first, I want to take it in a personal direction and then take it in a structural direction. On a personal level, my grandfather's generation, his father had three wives. And this is just to give people a sense of China in the early 1900s and late 1800s. He had three wives. My grandfather was the first son and the 12th child of the third wife.

• 42:06Alice Han?

  And then his generation had three kids. And my father then had two kids in Australia. But our generation, so my generation of cousins in China, none of us have kids yet. And so it's a great consternation to my grandfather, who's ninety five in Shanghai and Hope is listening to this. Because every time I see him, he says, why don't you have kids yet? But that's just to give people a sense of where China has evolved over time. You know, it used to be a society that valued many kids. You know, you have an expression in Chinese, dòu zì dòu fù, which is the more children, especially male children you have, the more prosperity you have. That radically shifted in nineteen seventy one, the year my aunt was born, when they introduced the one child policy. And I, and I ran the numbers, James, it's startling.

• 42:47Alice Han?

  In nineteen sixty three, when my mother was born, seven point five one births per woman, that's the fertility rate. It is in twenty twenty three, one birth per woman, as you mentioned, James. In the U S, the peak was nineteen fifty nine, three point seven five births per woman. Today, in twenty twenty three, one point six two births per woman. So the decline is less severe in the U S, and U S is obviously helped by immigration, which China does not benefit from. But it's clear to me that these are structural issues at play. And to bring it to the structural domain, I've been reading a lot of Claudia Goldin's work. She is a Nobel Prize winning economist who's specialized in labor market economics. And one of the points that she makes is that as women become more educated and professionalized,

• 43:32Alice Han?

  they encounter a mismatch in the temporal and financial costs of having children. So as women get more educated and professionalized and have higher paying jobs, the men aren't stepping up in the same way. And so women oftentimes decide not to have kids because it becomes too much of a burden financially to them. I think a similar thing is happening in China, where the women who benefited, I would say, from the reform and opening up, so the eighties onwards, and benefited from the expansion of college education in nineteen ninety nine, have built financial wealth and stability. And they don't really need a man, they don't really feel the incentive to have kids. The other flip side to this, James, is declining marriage rate. I don't think this gets enough attention.

• 44:16Alice Han?

  Last year, six point one million marriages registered, twenty percent decline year on year from twenty twenty three. And that is half of what it was at its peak in two thousand and thirteen. And as the lowest it's been since, I think, the eighties, just to give people a sense of the numbers. And and on Chinese social media, but also I see this whenever I go to China. There's a huge, I think, glorification of the single woman in a way that I don't think existed. I think even a decade or two decades ago, you had this concept of the leftover woman or the spinster. You know, woman past her late twenties who was unmarried and didn't have kids. There's been a bit of a cultural movement to glorify them in some ways and say that they can have this great life as a professional, financially well off, single woman without kids.

• 44:59Alice Han?

  So I'm shocked by this, and I think people really should pay attention to it because it has massive, obviously, economic implications. You know, if China's fertility rate is less than half the replacement rate, which is two point one, it is rapidly shrinking its labor force. And so how is China going to pay its debts in the long term? How is China going to grow out of its problems in the long term? I think these all hinge around these tectonic plates of fertility, which is why this is actually quite an important issue. I'm in the camp of being very skeptical that this actually works, you know, putting a thirteen percent tax on condoms. I think more importantly, it's you've seen this in the Scandinavian countries. Aside from immigration, you you've got to have strong maternity leave policies.

• 45:44Alice Han?

  You've got to make it financially better for women to take some time off and have kids without being penalized for it. But some of the numbers, James, and maybe you can run us through this of of how much it costs to raise a child in China, relative to the rest of the world, are pretty shocking.

• 45:58James Kynge?

  Yeah, I'm I'm with you, Alice. I don't think this tax change is going to work either. My friends in China are also saying, you know, high costs of housing, education, childcare, intense pressures of the workplace, very long working hours, all of that kind of thing. By two thousand and forty, China will have a huge elderly population of over four hundred million people. That means that from now until then, the number of elderly people, that's people above sixty years old, will rise by. About a hundred and fifty million. So that is the population of Russia between now and twenty forty.

• 46:39James Kynge?

  And simultaneously, the number of Chinese people overall will be falling. And by twenty fifty, that will also have declined by a hundred and fifty million. So again, a population the size of Russia. So, you know, as you mentioned, we're dealing with really, really big pressures here. This is, this is big stuff.

• 47:00Alice Han?

  So there was a think tank in Beijing, the U R Population Research Institute, that calculated that the cost of raising a child into the age of eighteen was over seventy six thousand dollars. And I think that that is about thirteen, fourteen times per capita GDP. There are some other economists out there that say that could it be double that amount? Because that research doesn't take into account the indirect cost or the parenthood penalty of having kids, meaning the cost to, say, your salary. But I think regardless, it shows you the enormity of childcare as an economic burden to households. And households are having a rational approach to this, which is they're having less kids or they're not having kids at all.

• 47:40Alice Han?

  And again, James, I think you paint a great picture of of the implications at a demographic level of of this of this position. And if demography is destiny, I think China may be in a worse position than the US, certainly, which continues to benefit from immigration. But James, when you were there in China, was this something that you sensed or was it a concern that people voiced?

• 48:03James Kynge?

  Oh, hugely. I mean, I had female colleagues who were late twenties, thirties, just having kids or just getting married. And the sense of foreboding was really quite palpable. People talking about moving into cramped apartments they couldn't afford, borrowing huge amounts of money to buy those apartments, having to repay the debt on that for decades to come. Then the grandparents move into the cramped apartment and then the child arrives and it's it's really stressful. And then they have to work, you know, nine in the morning till nine in the evening in really high-pressure jobs. And then put their kids into childcare. And then the cost of the childcare is so huge. It really sounded, you know, a stressful situation.

• 48:48James Kynge?

  And many of the colleagues and friends I had that were around that age. They were just sort of either trying to move to America or somewhere in Europe. Or they were just saying, you know, this is just too much. I think we'll move to an outlying city where the pace is slower. We can afford cheaper accommodation and we'll move out of the fast lane of the big cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

• 49:13Alice Han?

  Very interesting. All right, James, it is prediction time. What's your prediction for the week?

• 49:18James Kynge?

  Well, I tried to choose one that is related, although tangentially, to the population issue. Of course, as China, well, I'm not going to say runs out of people, but as the number of Chinese people declines. And as the number of people who are willing to do labor in factories also declines. I think Chinese factory robots this year will exceed a market share domestically. That's inside China of 60%. That compares to last year 57%. It may not sound like a huge increase, but we're talking about market share.

• 49:56James Kynge?

  The Chinese factory robot makers are taking away from foreign brands such as Fanuc, ABB, Yasukawa, et cetera. And I also think that Chinese exports of factory robots this year will grow at around 60% again. That's a growth rate compared to last year. By the way, these factory robots, we're not talking about humanoid robots. These are really a production line robots. So they'd be like an automated arm moving things from one place to another or doing some other type of manipulation. So that's my, that's my prediction, Alice. What about you?

• 50:34Alice Han?

  Well, we didn't mention the China Economic Work Conference, which is an important December meeting. And that happened last week and I've been sort of reading the tea leaf, so to speak. And my prediction is that the real estate slump will continue in most of 2026. I'm not sure if there are signs that it's bottoming out quite as yet. We saw negative 14.7% growth in the latest October data on real estate investment, just for reference. And when I read the CEWC readout, which talks a lot about stabilizing the real estate market, it seems to me that Beijing isn't too concerned about trying to bail out the property sector.

• 51:15Alice Han?

  In fact, it will just use, I think, more locality-based policies to reduce some of the constraints and restrictions on purchasing. And maybe on the margin, offer some financing, reviving the whitelist financing project, for instance, to help the sales of these completed homes. But I don't sense that Beijing is going to intervene and seriously try to boost the property market, even though the data look pretty dismal. So that's, that's my hot take, is that the real estate investment growth remains a huge drag on, on fixed asset investments for most of 2026.

• 51:51James Kynge?

  That's a very interesting and big call.

• 51:53Alice Han?

  Yep, definitely has implications for, for commodities and for other sectors that are sensitive to the real estate sector. All right, that's all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to China Decode. This is a production of Prof G Media. Our producer is David Toledo. Our associate producer is Erica Janikas. Our video editor is Ness Smith-Savodoff. Our research associate is Dan Shalan. Our technical director is Drew Burrows. Our engineer is William Flynn. And our executive producer is Catherine Dillon. Make sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss an episode. Talk to you again next year.

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  This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai/spotify.