Take us through some of the highlights packages of the shocking statistics of this contracting and aging population.

Sure.

What's unique about China is that we can make fairly confident, very confident statements about the demography over the next 20, 25 years because the aftershocks of the one-child policy are still there, even though the one-child policy was notionally abandoned in 2015.

China still has a one-child policy, but by choice, not by enforced choice, not by government stricture, in that people think because it's a communist country, it must be like Cuba.

Everything must be free.

And that's simply not true.

And the cost of raising a child in China is about seven times per capita income.

Where do you reckon China and the US could find those incentives to work together?

Yeah.

And so many Americans came to the conclusion that it wasn't just inevitable that China would become a fully market economy by the year X. Um, therefore, it wasn't inevitable that it would become more a market society by the same time.

And a number of leading academics, by no means all of them conservative Republicans by any shot, actually took the view that the rivalry between the two countries had echoes of past historical conflicts, which most of the time had ac- led to an actual war.

Okay

...

when it comes to matters.

Um, partly because I think the Chinese Communist Party is at heart deeply pragmatic, and hence some of the changes in Chinese society that we may count what I was talking about are going to force it into a direction in which it has to edge back a bit.

Um, it's, it's important to think why China under Xi has, uh, as you rightly say, um, significantly adjusted the balance between market and socialism within market socialism.

As a journalist, how accurate or otherwise would you find it, Doctor? Good morning.

Good morning, Nick.

I suppose it means that boring is the new exciting in the sense that the U.S.-China relationship, which at times can be very, very bouncy and volatile, is going through a smoother period of time.

And all things being equal, that's probably welcome.

I think it's also the case that there will be people who say, what's come out of this whole event other than pandas returning to Atlanta Zoo? To which I'd say, firstly, that all state visits are heavy on ceremony and symbolism.

And that's true whether it's Xi Jinping or King Charles III in Washington early this year.

Secondly, they're also iceberg events.

got everything to go on,

So there's a tendency to talk about Trump as if he can do whatever he wants, but what actually does constrain him?

Well, Donald Trump has been really unusually powerful in the past two years due to a combination of factors that were quite unique.

Firstly, the fact that he had been president, then not been president, and then been president again, means this is more like a second first term presidency, but with the benefit of having a dry run the first time round.

than like a conventional second term American presidency, which tends to be a bit anticlimactical.

So that's a big part of it.

Secondly, whilst he was very marginally the favourite on election day 2024, few people thought he would carry the popular vote as well as the electoral college vote.

So he had the benefit of exceeding expectations.

For a board making decisions about China, how do you actually identify the risks that warrant a shift in strategy?