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00:00But right now, not a divided China. She is at maximum power. Does it give way in 2023? This is power after that Congress. Dr. Bremmer does it, Deb. It doesn't. And going to be with you, Tom. Happy New Year to you. It's always good to be kicking this off with you. You know, there's no question that both for China as the second largest economy in the world, but also with Xi Jinping having consolidated so much power in its hands and using it in ways that are capricious and are not in any way transparent. The global economy has never experienced anything like that, that level of uncertainty in the persona of one human being. We we've seen it with the decision to do a complete 180 degree volte face with the pandemic and zero Covid. We've seen it with a trillion dollars off of market value of Chinese tech stocks because Xi Jinping decided that he was going to squeeze them. That level of uncertainty as China re opens their economy this year with no level of data that we used to get 5 10 years ago from the Chinese even is an enormously concerning issue. This is important and this goes to your colleague and crime on this Elizabeth economy CFR no secretary of Amanda Lang Congress. Economy told me years ago don't overestimate GS power. Have we seen the maximum? If we have, we brought down. Do we see him weaken, particularly off the Covid disaster? We see China weaken a little bit on the global stage. Certainly the lessons they're taking for Taiwan now that they've seen the United States and NATO in Ukraine, the lessons they're taking from concerns about American economic strength, Visa vs China on semiconductors, for example, on the ability and willingness to impose export controls and the fact the Chinese have sat on their hands. Xi Jinping is not in the same geopolitical position he was in before the pandemic started. Right. But politically, inside China, he is only strong. And that is a that that is the nature of the risk for 20, 20 years of Permian. You leave with Russia and with top, top 10 risks. But how does China permeate out to all the other thinkings of the top risks this year? They just seem to dominate every conversation. Well, it's not that the Chinese do. It's it's something very specific does, which is that in a time that the United States democracy and economy is actually coming out more resilient and stronger than any one out there would have imagined one, two, three years ago, we are seeing around the world a significant number of super empowered individuals who aren't getting great inputs from experts who are able to act with impunity and are not getting what they want in various ways on the global stage. Putin is one. She is another. The Iranian supreme leader's a third and a small handful of tech center billionaires are a fourth. And those individuals are driving at this commensurate amount of global risk in the marketplace right now. Let's look at your work. GS Zero the concept of G 20 G G 7 down to a codified Bremmer phrase G zero or much more importantly for Americans, us versus them is the basic drama out there. How do we prosecute in 2023? A foreign policy would forget about Putin. How do we prosecute a foreign policy with China that gets something done 12 months from now? Well, two different ways on the competitive side. You lean, lean into American strength, which turns out to be national security broadly defined. So in the same way that the Germans have made mistakes for decades and the Europeans are at large and letting too much of their energy security lean on Russia. The Americans have let too much of R technology, national security lean on Taiwan a hundred miles away from the mainland mainland. Now, what we are now trying to do, not just the United States, but with allies as well, is say we're going to redress that. We're going to redress it because of national security. So you, the Japanese, you, the South Koreans, you, the EU, the UK, the Canadians, you're all gonna be with us on these export controls for anything the Chinese could use that would threaten our national security directly. And that's a policy that will align the G7 more broadly on China. That's important. But at the same time, Biden does not want to be in a cold war with the Chinese as want to fight over Taiwan. He doesn't want the impact of competition on national security to bleed out into the broader economic interdependence of the two countries for something new here. And I haven't gotten it from Secretary Blinken. I don't think I've gotten it from the Biden administration. Let's go back to something like the military industrial complex. This is back when Tulane had terrible football and they won a year ago. A year ago, they stunned USC last night, which was great to see, but the shock of Tulane football. I'm looking for a shock in the a world in your top risks. What's the thing our viewers and listeners have to look for six months and 12 months from now? Well, the shock that comes from a Chinese leader that is making policy. I mean, the end of 0 Covid, a lot of people thought that it was going to be incremental. After he secured power in that for that unprecedented third term in the party Congress, he didn't move away from it all. No. It shocked everyone. No one was expecting this. Even three months ago. Even two months ago. Why? In response to sudden demonstrations, the information got to him and he, as an individual dictator of the second largest economy of the world, made that decision. We're going to see more uncertainty of that kind from the the most powerful individual on planet Earth in 2023. Putin is in a corner. I want to finish up here in China because I'm going to talk to Bill Dudley later and talk to Mr. Rudd of Australia later. And course, focus, focus, focus on Europe. We'll do that, folks, here in a bit with Carl Bildt. Okay, fine. But is the chemistry of China change? The history is it suits states like Shanghai in the new Hong Kong and all that versus a federal Beijing. That's right. Is that traditional calculus still in play? Haven't seen it since Mao. What's happening right now? And at the time of Mao, the enormous amount of uncertainty in China didn't matter to the global economy. They weren't interconnected to it and they were vastly less powerful. We today have the same level of concentration of power that you had during some of the worst episodes, chapters of Chinese history. Let's respond to that concentration, the autocratic power with confidence, but also with strategic patience. In other words, take shots when you know they are important with allies. Strategically, the new policy that you see from Biden is on semiconductors and export controls. That is containment change. But in other areas of the economy, don't allow that to dictate what you're doing. One minute here, we've got to get back to John and Lisa and the markets very, very importantly here. Do you see a rekindling of what I'm going to call from World War 2, a MacArthur isolationism? No, not at all. Not if the Republicans don't want to. It's not that they don't want it. It's that every one that throws money around in the United States strongly wants to ensure that doesn't happen. Furthermore, no American allies on the global stage want it. Not one, not one, not the Japanese, not the Europeans. That kept Biden cares about that. Thirty seconds, John Filo demanded. I ask you this question. You nailed Merkel in Germany two risks ago. Top ten years ago. Didn't Merkel fail and Germany did. Didn't Merkel is the reason we're where we are in Europe right now. To choose to Carl Bildt is because Merkel failed, Merkel failed on energy policy and now they are paying the price for that. The European Union is stronger today in part because of work that Merkel did. So you have to give her a middling grade.

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Eurasia Group's Top 10 Risks for 2023

Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer discusses the top risks facing the world in 2023. He says "super empowered individuals" such as Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping top the list. He speaks to Tom Keene on "Bloomberg Surveillance." (Source: Bloomberg)

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