Interview: The Lies We Tell Ourselves About China: Chas Freeman on U.S.-China Rivalry 2025 and Global Shifts

Freeman Critiques U.S. Antagonism Toward China and Japan’s Evolving Role

Paulo Fernando de Barros 05/16/2025

U.S.-China Rivalry 2025: Chas Freeman on Misperceptions and Global Shifts

On May 12, 2025, Professor Glenn Diesen hosted a profound interview with Chas Freeman on his YouTube channel, titled “The Lies We Tell Ourselves About China.” Freeman, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and key figure in U.S.-China relations under Henry Kissinger, offered a critical perspective on the escalating U.S.-China rivalry.

Drawing on his experience as Director of Chinese Affairs at the U.S. State Department and his role in crafting papers for Kissinger’s 1971 secret trip to Beijing, Freeman dissected the misperceptions fueling U.S. policy, the systemic challenges posed by China’s rise, and the shifting global order, with a particular focus on Japan’s evolving role. His analysis revealed a U.S. trapped by its own delusions, risking self-harm through antagonistic policies while China navigates a path toward regional centrality.

U.S.-China Relations: From Cooperation to Antagonism

Freeman traced the arc of U.S.-China relations, beginning with the strategic opening in 1971, which he helped prepare for Kissinger, aimed at splitting China from the Soviet Union. This “non-tiance” cooperation, driven by Cold War geopolitics, positioned China as a protected state, tying down Soviet forces much like it had Japanese forces in World War II.

The 1989 turning point—marked by the Soviet collapse, the Tiananmen Square crackdown, and Taiwan’s democratization—shattered this alignment. The U.S. lost its geopolitical rationale for cooperation, ideological differences sharpened with Taiwan’s democratic shift, and anti-communist sentiment lingered from the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Freeman categorized the relationship’s evolution: from protected state status and transactional cooperation (e.g., in Afghanistan against the Soviets) to rivalry, and now “adversarial antagonism,” where the U.S. seeks to “hold China down” by hampering its growth, a shift from healthy competition to sabotage.

Recent U.S.-China economic warfare, exemplified by Trump’s 2025 tariffs, reflects this antagonism. Freeman noted a temporary détente—a “reduction in the intensity of confrontation”—but not a truce, as both sides continue measures like export controls and tariffs. He dismissed the Trump administration’s portrayal of this as a “major victory,” pointing out that China’s retaliatory tariffs forced U.S. concessions, highlighting the limits of maximum pressure tactics.

Misperceptions Driving U.S. Policy Toward China

Freeman identified a profound lack of U.S. understanding of China, exacerbated by insularity and declining global awareness. In 1947, the U.S. had 2,700 foreign correspondents; today, fewer than 100 remain, leaving Americans reliant on foreign sources like the BBC, as Freeman noted. Schools no longer teach geography, and Americans often “learn geography by going to war.” This ignorance fuels stereotypes: China is vilified as a communist monolith, despite its capitalist practices, and blamed for domestic economic woes. Freeman highlighted the irony of China defending the Bretton Woods institutions—such as the WTO—that the U.S. created, while the U.S. undermines them through unilateral actions like sabotaging the WTO and exiting UN bodies.

The U.S. political establishment, Freeman argued, has made China the “enemy of choice,” driven by psychological distress over losing economic primacy. By purchasing power parity, China’s economy is already one-third larger than the U.S.’s, producing 37% of global manufactured goods compared to the U.S.’s 15%, per 2025 OECD data. Yet, U.S. policy ignores China’s internal dynamics—its decentralized, cutthroat economic model resembling 19th-century American capitalism—and fixates on outdated anti-communist tropes. Freeman cited the absurdity of equating all communists, ignoring that even Vietnamese communists, whom the U.S. now views positively, are anti-Chinese, revealing the shallowness of U.S. ideological framing.

China’s Rise and the Multinodal World Order

Freeman contrasted U.S. and Chinese approaches to global influence. China, he argued, does not seek hegemony or alliances, viewing them as liabilities. Its protected state relationships with North Korea and Pakistan are strategic, aimed at buffering against U.S. and Indian influence, respectively. Unlike the U.S., which demands conformity (“you have to become like us”), China emphasizes civilizational distinctiveness, rejecting universalism and focusing on economic engagement without political interference. Freeman quoted an African interlocutor via Larry Summers: “The Chinese offer roads, dams, and electrification; the U.S. demands political conformity and offers nothing.”

China’s industrial policy, driven by policy banks supporting national objectives, has propelled it ahead in technologies like solar power (70% of global construction), electric vehicles, and AI, with private firms like DeepSeek leading innovations, per the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s 2025 report.

Freeman highlighted China’s rejection of imperialism, rooted in its history of foreign rule and a cultural emphasis on order, given its 1.5 billion population and resource constraints—7% of global water and less arable land per capita than the U.S. He noted China’s mantra, “we will never be hegemonic,” but expressed skepticism, suggesting that, like the U.S. in the 19th century, China might develop imperial tendencies if opportunities arise, echoing Mearsheimer’s theory of structural incentives over internal ideologies.

Japan’s Evolving Role and the Multinodal Future

The interview explored Japan’s shifting stance amid U.S.-China tensions, particularly after Trump’s 2025 tariffs elicited strong Japanese criticism, a departure from its historically loyal alignment with the U.S. Freeman attributed this to Japan’s historical grievances—35 million Chinese deaths during Japan’s 1931-1945 rampage—and the U.S.’s own missteps, like the 1980s Plaza Accords, which led to Japan’s economic stagnation.

Japan, now reclaiming national pride, is diversifying its partnerships, as seen in its leadership of the CPTPP after the U.S. withdrew in 2017, its military aid to Vietnam and the Philippines, and its frigates docking at a Chinese-built Cambodian port, per Reuters. Freeman predicted Japan would deepen economic ties with China, its largest trading partner, to gain leverage in U.S. negotiations, navigating a “multinodal” world where middle powers balance multiple relationships.

The U.S.’s Self-Defeating Policies and Taiwan Dilemma

Freeman criticized U.S. policies as self-defeating, particularly its attempts to contain China through export controls and tariffs, which alienate allies like Japan and fail to address domestic structural issues. The U.S. pressure on Taiwan to relocate semiconductor production, such as TSMC’s plants, exemplifies this overreach, risking economic decoupling without strategic gain. On Taiwan, Freeman highlighted U.S. policy contradictions: acknowledging the “one China” policy while arming Taiwan to prevent a negotiated resolution to the Chinese Civil War, a legacy of the defeated Nationalists retreating under U.S. protection in 1949. This, he argued, undermines regional stability, as countries like Japan and the Philippines seek to balance relations with China, not join a U.S.-led conflict.

A Call for U.S. Reform and Realism

Chas Freeman’s interview with Glenn Diesen revealed a U.S. mired in misperceptions about China, driven by a psychological need to reclaim primacy but pursuing self-defeating policies that isolate it globally. China, by contrast, leverages economic and technological prowess to become the center of its region, rejecting hegemony while fostering a multinodal world where nations like Japan diversify partnerships. Freeman urged the U.S. to reform domestically—embracing antitrust policies and economic opening—and adopt a foreign policy that respects others’ interests, building “windmills” rather than walls against the winds of change. Without such a shift, the U.S. risks further decline, while China’s rise reshapes the global order on its own terms.