conversation, when you talk about tensions in international trade, it is just the united states and chooirn. it -- china. it is a larger context. and it is very hard to negotiate beyond the border regulatory matters and when you're talking about 160-plus countries and when you have a settlement mechanism that does matter and it therefore means you have to abide by the rules. but nevertheless i think that the fact that the two largest economies are pursuing this trade tension and in a way eroding confidence in the multilateral trade system is significant. particularly we think that this is evolving into a longer-term conflict, of adversaries, looking at each other in that manner. what do we know about how china is thinking about this? how is china responding to the trump administration's messaging, starting with trade, starting with deficits, and favors, and now after the hudson speech, it is a different thing all together. so how is china responding to this? >> i mean i can talk a little bit about the trade piece, which has been very interesting, because i think china's response out of the

with the previous administration and with this administration when it comes to input on chooirn. >> well, i've been working on china either inside the government or being paid by the government for over 40 years. so my book the 100-year marathon is about that experiences, kind of a memoir, how everybody, including me had wishful thinking back 40 years ago, that china would not quickly but eventually have both complete free market and also a democratic form of government. roughly ten years ago that proved to be almost impossible. and chinese policy has been getting worse ever since for the past ten years. so i kind of confess that i was wrong. and i'm sort of sorry for the advice i gave a lot of presidents. president reagan went all the way. he sold weapons to china and created the largest cia covert action in history by authorizing cia to buy $2 billion, with a b, weapons from china, and have them transferred by cia to the afghan rebels to get them more power, to encourage soviet withdrawal in the cold war. that's a lot to sell sophisticated weapons to china. and we did a lot more. so it