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Speaker 1: Chip makers in Vidia and Advanced micro Devices are squaring
Speaker 1: off in the fight to control artificial intelligence. We have
Speaker 1: more from Bloomberg's Johan Wog in Hong Kong.
Speaker 3: The two company CEOs fleshed out there are different tacks
Speaker 3: on AI. At the world's largest computing conference in Taipei
Speaker 3: and Vidias Jensen Wang headlined his presentation by teasing a
Speaker 3: new rubenship and visions for twenty twenty six. He spoke
Speaker 3: about the company's dominance in generative AI AMDs. Lisa Sue
Speaker 3: focused on the design of neuroprocessors that run AI surfaces
Speaker 3: directly from laptops. She matched Hwang's annual upgrade timeline by
Speaker 3: announcing new chips for twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3: Deta Gates at Huang's performance rove home and Vidia's dominance,
Speaker 3: and that AMD has a long way to go to
Speaker 3: catch up in Hong Kong. Join Wang Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Joining us now on the program is Daniel Newman, CEO
Speaker 2: of the Futureroom Group, with a close I look at
Speaker 2: the computext Tech show in Taiwan, which is turning out
Speaker 2: to be quite the show. Daniel. We not only heard
Speaker 2: from Jensen Huang who cheated a little bit and went
Speaker 2: early before the keynote from Lisa Sue, and then you
Speaker 2: also had the qualcom CEO, Christiano Amone, and then we've
Speaker 2: got Pat Gelsinger coming up later this morning. I think
Speaker 2: one of the key questions for everybody coming out of
Speaker 2: this will be is there any sign of Nvidia peaking
Speaker 2: in the selling of these AI accelerator chips or is
Speaker 2: that a long ways in the future.
Speaker 4: Look, I think there's a significant opportunity right now to
Speaker 4: consider how my which frontloading the market is doing in
Speaker 4: terms of all this CAPEX investment, and how much of
Speaker 4: this is going to be sold through, how much of
Speaker 4: this is being used.
Speaker 5: We've got five hyperscalers.
Speaker 4: Making up a big component of in Videa's overall revenue.
Speaker 4: But having said that, the company has what seems like
Speaker 4: a multi year, if not really a decade lead in
Speaker 4: some of these accelerated compute capabilities. And they really did
Speaker 4: a good job at this particular computext reiterating that one
Speaker 4: year cadence they teased out the Ruben and the Ruben Ultra,
Speaker 4: and I think they really cemented for both their investors
Speaker 4: and their customers that they have a plan to.
Speaker 5: Really stay the course.
Speaker 4: Of course, hearing from the other side, Lisa seu is saying, hey,
Speaker 4: don't count us out yet, I expect that Pat Gelsinger
Speaker 4: is going to say the same thing today. So on
Speaker 4: the data centerside of video has got a great advantage,
Speaker 4: but it does have concentration with customers, and there is
Speaker 4: really still pretty early innings.
Speaker 1: So if nvidio is being so aggressive Daniel as to
Speaker 1: upgrade AI accelerators every year, how costly is that? That's
Speaker 1: a pretty expensive endeavor I would imagine, am I right?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, so you know you.
Speaker 4: Even Salilon Musk tweeted out something yesterday that kind of
Speaker 4: talked about how he is intending his CAPEX between moving
Speaker 4: generation to generation from his H one hundred cluster, which
Speaker 4: is one of the more recent advanced in vidio chips
Speaker 4: to their B two hundreds and how many he intends
Speaker 4: to buy. He also put a dollar in a price
Speaker 4: tag next that they could see just billions of dollars
Speaker 4: by a single company in order to invest in Having
Speaker 4: the AI capabilities that they will need to lead a
Speaker 4: market a year over year is going to put companies
Speaker 4: in position, whether it's an AWS, whether it is a
Speaker 4: Microsoft or Google, in a position to decide when do
Speaker 4: they invest when do they also invest in their own
Speaker 4: homegrun soaken, which many of these companies are doing it
Speaker 4: as well, but they're going to have to stay up
Speaker 4: to date to compete. And of course AMD and Intel
Speaker 4: and others want a piece of that. And in video
Speaker 4: is winning the market and it's going to be hard
Speaker 4: to take away later.
Speaker 2: They're just minting cash. It's very interesting and curious what
Speaker 2: to do with all that cash. But it's also on
Speaker 2: the other side in terms of all those people buying.
Speaker 2: He's got a catchy phrase that he Jensen Wong does
Speaker 2: that he rolled out a number of times recently, which
Speaker 2: is the more you spend, the more you save.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, look, he's looking at how much ect
Speaker 4: a computing can add capacity, drive efficiencies and productivity inside
Speaker 4: of businesses, and of course we're seeing that move now
Speaker 4: from the data center to the edge and interestingly enough
Speaker 4: in the computext capacity. This show has been all about
Speaker 4: moving it to the edge and onto the devices. So
Speaker 4: you're seeing Qualcom, Microsoft, AMD, Intel, So the data center,
Speaker 4: Jensen's really has that in a good place right now,
Speaker 4: and Intel and AD are going to fight, but at
Speaker 4: the edge and on these PCs. It's actually much more
Speaker 4: exciting seeing what Qualcom's doing. And Microsoft is sort of
Speaker 4: minting and king making right now a little bit with
Speaker 4: QUALCMM and Itstey architectures, and of course Intel AMD there
Speaker 4: again are trying to fight to keep up and stay
Speaker 4: in this conversation.
Speaker 1: Speaking of conversations, Daniel, I'm curious about the conversation around
Speaker 1: diversifying chip production out of Taiwan. Is that a do
Speaker 1: you think high on the mind of a lot of
Speaker 1: people in the industry.
Speaker 4: I think it's high on the mind and by a
Speaker 4: lot of people here. Sorry I'm in Taiwan today, but
Speaker 4: in the United States, I mean it's definitely top of mind,
Speaker 4: you know, having zero percent of our leading edge capacity manufactured.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of geopolitical and macroeconomic risks. I mean,
Speaker 4: our partnership with TSMC are various bablist makers is strong.
Speaker 4: They all value that relationship very much. But the chips acts.
Speaker 4: The fifty plus billion dollars spending to not only support
Speaker 4: Intel's growth but also TSMC and Samsung and others to
Speaker 4: build capacity in the US is critical because there is
Speaker 4: too much risk in the entire economy right now seems
Speaker 4: to be determined by how fast we could move in
Speaker 4: silicon and semiconductor advancement.
Speaker 2: So it seems like you've got some companies that are
Speaker 2: really at the forefront for all of this. You can
Speaker 2: correct me if you think I'm wrong, But in Nvidia's
Speaker 2: at the top, and you've got Broadcom, which is in there.
Speaker 2: You've got obviously AMD, TSMC. I mean those four right
Speaker 2: there are just, you know, sort of in insane positions.
Speaker 2: Microsoft because it can come up with applications to interact
Speaker 2: with basically the enterprise sector and maybe meta with the
Speaker 2: consumer sector. The one thing that I'm curious about with
Speaker 2: Microsoft is it had a great quarter, the sales and
Speaker 2: the profits, but the stock has been down over the
Speaker 2: past couple of months, and you wonder whether or not
Speaker 2: that's because you know, it's got this weird relationship with
Speaker 2: open Ai. It turns so much of what's happening in
Speaker 2: the future to open Ai, but it doesn't control the company.
Speaker 2: It's not part of Microsoft. You know, how delicate is that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you've seen some of the comments from Satia
Speaker 4: Adella about sort of how deeply entrenched it is with
Speaker 4: open Ai, and of course its products have embedded in.
Speaker 5: Its ability to advance the.
Speaker 4: Copilot across its enterprise and consumer stack has been somewhat prolific.
Speaker 4: How quickly they were able to get this into market.
Speaker 4: At the same time, I think there's two things really
Speaker 4: at stake here. One is what does Microsoft need to
Speaker 4: build on its own I think you saw recently they
Speaker 4: started launching some of their own large language models. They've
Speaker 4: discussed building more of their own large language models and
Speaker 4: small language models for enterprises, and that's a big stake.
Speaker 4: And then, of course, on the other side is you know,
Speaker 4: there's been a lot of controversy around Sam Altman. You've
Speaker 4: seen top lieutenants of the company leaving citing concerns about
Speaker 4: the company's privacy and security and trust, and this has
Speaker 4: brought question marks. Of course, Microsoft tried to be and
Speaker 4: focuses on me very ethical, very progressive that way under
Speaker 4: Sati Nadella's leadership, and there's all kinds of controversies right now,
Speaker 4: and it seems to be following Sam Altman, and I
Speaker 4: think they want to hedge that. And so I think
Speaker 4: to some extent, Microsoft has to hedge that, and I
Speaker 4: think they're doing it, you know, with the excitement und copilot,
Speaker 4: plus with building open AI and Azure in their own
Speaker 4: models of open you know, democratizing models, bringing in third parties,
Speaker 4: building their own, building their own silicon. And I also
Speaker 4: think to some extent, you know, right now the market's
Speaker 4: a little tough on software. But I do think the
Speaker 4: market's kind of getting that one wrong.
Speaker 1: Well, what do you think the market is overlooking or
Speaker 1: maybe not focusing squarely enough on when it comes to
Speaker 1: the application of artificial intelligence. Is it how it may
Speaker 1: impact drug development, is it management of the electrical grid?
Speaker 5: What is it?
Speaker 4: I think the long term we are seeing it largely correct.
Speaker 4: I think right now the market has a little bit
Speaker 4: over rotated to hardware. You know, if you actually look
Speaker 4: at a lot of the deep value that's in do
Speaker 4: Vidia or AMD, It is in the software. If you
Speaker 4: look at what these new aipcs coming from Microsoft, Qualcom
Speaker 4: and others, it is the software that makes these things possible.
Speaker 4: But also you look at enterprise software last week, you
Speaker 4: looked at the sell offs of Salesforce, you looked at
Speaker 4: the selloffs of service now in these other companies. These
Speaker 4: companies have hundreds of thousands of diversified customers that are
Speaker 4: in sticky contracts where AI is going to add value.
Speaker 4: But I think the market's uncertain of how much to
Speaker 4: software add net dollar retention and value to a customer
Speaker 4: versus how much AI has to be baked in just
Speaker 4: to keep a customer. And if the market can show
Speaker 4: some clarity there, I could see more dollars rotating to
Speaker 4: software because they're very durable, and I think you're getting
Speaker 4: kind of the wrong deal right now.
Speaker 2: I've been thinking about that a lot in the past
Speaker 2: couple of weeks, seeing those huge sell offs and wondering
Speaker 2: whether or not software might be an interesting place for
Speaker 2: investors to think about deploying money going forward, at least
Speaker 2: over the next quarter.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the concentration of the hardware companies and
Speaker 4: especially some of these chip makers. You know, I've seen
Speaker 4: data points that some of these shipmakers, like the Nvidia
Speaker 4: has you know, two customers generateing over ten percent of
Speaker 4: their entire revenue.
Speaker 5: Five that's generating more than half.
Speaker 4: That doesn't mean it's not an incredibly valuable company with
Speaker 4: a great product.
Speaker 5: But like I said, you look at an.
Speaker 4: Oracle, or a salesforce or a service now fifty one hundred,
Speaker 4: two hundred thousand plus customers that really can't pivot. So
Speaker 4: AI is going to get added, They're going to be
Speaker 4: able to charge for it. And I see a lot
Speaker 4: of value in that, but I don't know what the
Speaker 4: market is seeing clear concrete value from AI. And everybody
Speaker 4: wants to say your growth, your margin, your expansion, your
Speaker 4: revenue is somehow tied to AI, and really in Nvidia
Speaker 4: is the only company really showing that right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of these stocks are down like twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five thirty percent. It's a pretty interesting story. Daniel,
Speaker 2: thank you very much for joining us. Daniel Newman, CEO
Speaker 2: of the Futureroom Group, with us from the Computechs Tech
Speaker 2: Show in Taiwan.
Speaker 1: Let's talk markets now with our guest Robert he joins
Speaker 1: us in the New York studio Robert Is Cio at
Speaker 1: Blank Ye Shine Wealth Management. Good of you to join us,
Speaker 1: Thanks for stopping by. I want to begin. We can
Speaker 1: talk about the macro, the fed, all of it in
Speaker 1: a moment, but I want to begin with the election
Speaker 1: because I was struck today by the note from the
Speaker 1: strategist over at Morgan Stanley saying that this year's election
Speaker 1: has the potential to impact markets in a major way,
Speaker 1: and a couple of things maybe at risk. One is
Speaker 1: the fact that we've got these macro trades that seem
Speaker 1: to be very popular right now, and the closer we
Speaker 1: get to November, Morgan believes there's a risk that they
Speaker 1: could get unwound pretty quickly. One is being long the
Speaker 1: dollar versus some of the other currencies that we talk
Speaker 1: about on this show, like the end. The other is
Speaker 1: being underweight longer term treasuries. Does the election have the
Speaker 1: potential to really rattle the market?
Speaker 5: Do you think? You know?
Speaker 6: It's funny because every time we have every four years
Speaker 6: or even a mid cycle election cycle, there's a lot
Speaker 6: of sides that weigh in, right, and there's a lot
Speaker 6: of money that's being shifted and moved around. If you
Speaker 6: look at election sort of calculus in the math today,
Speaker 6: it would show that Trump beats Biden, right, But we've
Speaker 6: got a lot of room to run, and there's a
Speaker 6: lot of stuff that could happen between now in November,
Speaker 6: and quite frankly, much like what we saw at the
Speaker 6: beginning of the year, where everyone anticipated multiple rate cuts,
Speaker 6: all bets are off. Everyone's wrong, even the experts. So
Speaker 6: I'm almost inclined to take the opposite of this trade
Speaker 6: the counter of this simply because you could have the
Speaker 6: Fed conceivably rate cut back end of the year. Right,
Speaker 6: what does that do the dollar? You could have a
Speaker 6: lot of different sort of aspects that will play out
Speaker 6: that are completely unknown. While it feels good to make
Speaker 6: that trade or that call right now, you know, if
Speaker 6: you look at the baskets, you know, if Trump were
Speaker 6: to win today, those baskets of stocks, if you will,
Speaker 6: a lobbying basket, if what I'm referring to of stocks
Speaker 6: that would benefit if he was in the office, are
Speaker 6: doing better than the Biden index. The strategy just puts
Speaker 6: up a great pay piece as it relates to that,
Speaker 6: but it's bounced around back and forth, and it's as
Speaker 6: volatile as anything else. So as much as we'd like
Speaker 6: to say, okay, this is sort of the way of proceeding,
Speaker 6: i'd be careful.
Speaker 2: One of the interesting sort of inflection points that we
Speaker 2: could talk about is it appears the market is switching
Speaker 2: its concern from sticky inflation to growth. It's kind of
Speaker 2: a combination of the data that we've seen manufacturing week,
Speaker 2: consumer spending, weaker than expected, labor with a few notes
Speaker 2: of caution there. It's not exactly a growth scare yet,
Speaker 2: is it. But is that where we're heading.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we just talked them before we got on the
Speaker 6: radio just now, which is you know, right now we're
Speaker 6: in that sweet spot of bad news is good news
Speaker 6: for the equity market. But when does bad news become
Speaker 6: bad news for the equity market? As we're seeing with
Speaker 6: the ism, you could, you know, tease out some good
Speaker 6: information from it, but it's a softening economy and I
Speaker 6: think but we were also discussing if you travel around
Speaker 6: some certain cities there are some booms and bustling and
Speaker 6: everything that we're seeing and it doesn't meet the eye.
Speaker 6: And then you add in I know, it's the story
Speaker 6: of twenty twenty four and it will be for twenty
Speaker 6: twenty five. But the AI, I mean, if you look
Speaker 6: at what AI is contributing and what everyone has to
Speaker 6: do just in the s and P. Five hundred to
Speaker 6: increase their capex spending, you know, it's a game of
Speaker 6: it's it's a game of war right now with regards
Speaker 6: to everyone has to play catch up and everything they
Speaker 6: had set for like, okay, let's be conservative and cautious everyone.
Speaker 6: You know, the primal spirits are playing out right now
Speaker 6: with all the competition.
Speaker 1: The question is on ROI in AI do you expect that.
Speaker 6: It will but not from a profitability standpoint, sooner than
Speaker 6: everyone like it to be. I mean, they're gonna they're
Speaker 6: gonna overspend and outspend, and you know, quite frankly, aren't
Speaker 6: they just buying chips and sitting on them. And that's
Speaker 6: just to keep your competition off the on the sidelines.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's what's happening right now. So but if
Speaker 6: you have the war chest the cash to do it,
Speaker 6: which we're seeing certain companies are doing it, you're basically
Speaker 6: you know, sitting on your little brother. Well you're taking
Speaker 6: off you know, for the for the races, and you know,
Speaker 6: everyone's gonna say it's unfair fight, but when has it
Speaker 6: not been?
Speaker 2: So I don't worry that much about rates at the
Speaker 2: moment because I'm focused on earnings. That's one view. And
Speaker 2: so if you look at the three important areas Robert
Speaker 2: for investors, and we're looking at stocks, you've got earnings, valuations,
Speaker 2: and then the macro backdrop rank them in order of
Speaker 2: importance for you at the moment.
Speaker 6: It's funny you say that because it depends what week
Speaker 6: we're in. Right at the start of the year. You know,
Speaker 6: at the beginning of the year, it's you know, it's
Speaker 6: the FED, and interest rates would run that week sort
Speaker 6: of you know, how we would finish on all indices,
Speaker 6: and now we're looking at you know, AI and AI
Speaker 6: spend and so that would then be the trend. And
Speaker 6: so last week it was the and sort of the
Speaker 6: soft numbers that we're getting economically. I think at the
Speaker 6: end of the day, both of those are important, but
Speaker 6: earnings is number one.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious as to how you're viewing markets offshore
Speaker 1: right now. We may get a rate cut from the ECB,
Speaker 1: and you could make a case that Europe right now
Speaker 1: is showing signs of maybe modest recovery. Do you want
Speaker 1: to pull some money out of the US and it'd
Speaker 1: be more exposed to other parts of the world right now.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's mixed in terms of the recovery in Europe
Speaker 6: right places like Germany are still kind of pulling out
Speaker 6: of it, but then Japan and India show signs of strength.
Speaker 6: So yeah, you definitely want to take an opportunity to
Speaker 6: see what's out there internationally speaking, and we do that
Speaker 6: for our clients. We're always looking for those opportunities. But yeah,
Speaker 6: it broadened the portfolio look for opportunities internationally, and the
Speaker 6: US conceivably is going to be the last to cut
Speaker 6: in this rate cut cycle, so we're seeing that, you know,
Speaker 6: play out.
Speaker 2: The FED on hold seems to now be the best scenario.
Speaker 2: Both cuts and hikes cause concerns. But as you were,
Speaker 2: as Doug asked you a question about one trade, which
Speaker 2: is you know, dollar strength, and maybe that turns around.
Speaker 2: You know, for international markets, what would they want to
Speaker 2: see from the Fed? They probably want to see some cuts, right,
Speaker 2: get a weaker dollar.
Speaker 6: Yeah, everyone wants to see cuts, and that's the challenge
Speaker 6: and even the FED knows that and they have to be.
Speaker 6: You know, when I was in the studio right before Christmas,
Speaker 6: at the end of the year, I said, higher for longer.
Speaker 6: We positioned our portfolios for our clients, higher for longer,
Speaker 6: and that was you know, everyone's asking me, Well, no,
Speaker 6: we were looking about five or five maybe six cuts
Speaker 6: for twenty twenty four. And the reason why is because
Speaker 6: eighty seven percent of the time, if you look at
Speaker 6: the last waves of inflation, there's always been two waves.
Speaker 6: And that's what the FED has to do. They have
Speaker 6: to hold as long as they possibly can for fear
Speaker 6: of inviting inflation in right.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about how you are balanced right
Speaker 1: now on the equity side versus fixed income. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: it's kind of up to each investor, each portfolio. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's a very specific ratio, but broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: what's that balance in your mind?
Speaker 6: Ideally in a market like this, we like sixty percent equities,
Speaker 6: thirty percent fixed income, and ten percent alternatives. Alternatives are
Speaker 6: looking really attractive in the private markets, especially the ones
Speaker 6: that we've been able to source. But alternatives might not
Speaker 6: be right for everybody, But for the most part, yeah,
Speaker 6: balance portfolio is sixty forty overall is a good mix
Speaker 6: right now because the fixed income again is sexy again
Speaker 6: because it's paying you four and a half five percent,
Speaker 6: right And also, once we see volatility return in the
Speaker 6: equity market, because we really haven't seen that, we usually
Speaker 6: strategic rebalance, which means we'll take out of maybe the
Speaker 6: treasuries that we're sitting on clipping five percent and then
Speaker 6: buy some equities that are down ten, fifteen, twenty percent
Speaker 6: that we like cap gain.
Speaker 5: Right yo, yeah, big time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about those alternatives
Speaker 2: as well that you just mentioned. Sometimes people put property
Speaker 2: in there. You don't have to, but what looks best
Speaker 2: among the alternatives for you?
Speaker 6: Yeah, we avoid you know, we're from California in terms
Speaker 6: of most of our clients, and so most of the
Speaker 6: clients made money in real estate. So really when we
Speaker 6: look at an asset allocation for a client, we take
Speaker 6: in a big picture consideration of their portfolio. So we
Speaker 6: don't need to add in private real estate, if you will,
Speaker 6: because most, if not have their own private rates that
Speaker 6: they've accumulated or commercial that they have built for many years.
Speaker 6: So we avoid the fixed the excuson the real estate
Speaker 6: side of the private equity you know, but there's others
Speaker 6: out there that have really cracked the code of diversification
Speaker 6: within private equity.
Speaker 1: I will leave it there, Robert, good of you to
Speaker 1: join us. Robert Chine is the CIO at blanky Shine
Speaker 1: Wealth Management. Joining us here at the Bloomberg Interactive Broker
Speaker 1: Studio in New York.
Speaker 6: Bloomberg Opinion informed perspectives and expert data driven commentary on
Speaker 6: Breaking New y.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 2: Everybody, Good morning from Hong Kong. It is nine forty
Speaker 2: three in the morning here nine forty three pm on
Speaker 2: Wall Street time to check in with Bloomberg Opinion. Were
Speaker 2: joined by opinion columnists Karishma Vaswani, who is writing about
Speaker 2: Tiananman Square, the massacre there thirty five years ago in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine, with a piece that says, China wants
Speaker 2: you to forget Tinan Man. Don't so nice to have
Speaker 2: you with us, Karishma. So many around the rest of
Speaker 2: the world may have moved on to a certain degree
Speaker 2: from the massacre. In some sense, it was kept alive
Speaker 2: by the annual candlelight vigil that we had for so
Speaker 2: long here in Hong Kong. But it is no more
Speaker 2: and it's not coming back. The consequence of that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think it's really interesting the fact that this
Speaker 7: won't be taking place in Hong Kong. As you point out,
Speaker 7: it was one of the main places post the mascaret
Speaker 7: that happened in nineteen eighty nine where people could commemorate
Speaker 7: those who had died and the moment where just briefly
Speaker 7: it felt like China, you know, was going through this
Speaker 7: really momentous period where young people were demanding freedom, hoping
Speaker 7: for a different kind of country that they wanted to create.
Speaker 7: Now that cannot happen anymore under the National Security Law
Speaker 7: and Article twenty three, those sorts of protests or rather demonstrations,
Speaker 7: I should say, have effectively been stamped out. My understanding
Speaker 7: is that where these annual vigils used to take place
Speaker 7: in Victoria Park, there is a probaging group that has
Speaker 7: organized a food carnival that will take place that is
Speaker 7: taking place there instead, And so the focus now falls
Speaker 7: to Taiwan, which has become the de facto inheritor, if
Speaker 7: you will, of these kinds of demonstrations and large ceremonies
Speaker 7: are planned there today, but also around the world. I
Speaker 7: was speaking with a former student leader from Kieneman Joe
Speaker 7: fun Shou, and he was saying to me that because
Speaker 7: of what's happened in Hong Kong, what he described as
Speaker 7: the deteriorating environment there, this has become an even more
Speaker 7: live issue. And so he when I spoke to him,
Speaker 7: was on his way to a rally in London. There are,
Speaker 7: you know, opportunities for people to go and pay their
Speaker 7: respects and other big cities around the world. So I
Speaker 7: do think thirty five years after this has happened, it
Speaker 7: is becoming a fresh issue again. It is becoming part
Speaker 7: of the consciousness again.
Speaker 1: It's so amazing to think back to nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 1: and five years after this horrible event, the trade relations
Speaker 1: between the US and China and how they began to
Speaker 1: deepen and would only grow through the inclusion of China
Speaker 1: into the World Trade Organization. And I'm wondering whether there
Speaker 1: was a missed opportunity on the part of the US.
Speaker 1: Could the US in any way have had an impact
Speaker 1: on this history.
Speaker 7: Look, I think it could have. And you know, there
Speaker 7: was this belief at the time that if a country
Speaker 7: becomes richer, it becomes more free, and that has not
Speaker 7: been the case, has it? And I think there was
Speaker 7: a real opportunity there at a time when China was
Speaker 7: not the world's second largest economy, has not amassed the
Speaker 7: kind of wealth that it has today, where perhaps the
Speaker 7: United States and China could have worked in some shape
Speaker 7: or form, perhaps that sounds idealistic, to find a way
Speaker 7: through and address some of those issues, but that didn't happen,
Speaker 7: And in fact, a lot of student leaders from that
Speaker 7: time and human rights activists point to that as one
Speaker 7: of the big failures of the US administration at the time,
Speaker 7: for ignoring some of those things in favor of economic
Speaker 7: development and economic growth, which then, as you point out,
Speaker 7: created this hugely symbiotic relationship between the US and China,
Speaker 7: which you know in effect exists till today, and that
Speaker 7: has been so hard to unpick. And it's what you're
Speaker 7: seeing as the result of the trade tensions between the
Speaker 7: two sides. In that time, the Chinese Communist Party has
Speaker 7: become even stronger, had more control over China, particularly under
Speaker 7: she gen Pin.
Speaker 2: You open your piece with the Orwell line about who
Speaker 2: controls the past controls the future, who controls the present
Speaker 2: controls the past. In some ways, it's kind of like
Speaker 2: saying that the winners write the history books. I'm curious.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously China writes its own history books, but
Speaker 2: doesn't control the history books around the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: You know, will historians look back over this, and will
Speaker 2: they say that the students overplayed their hand back in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine, almost like some would say the students
Speaker 2: and the and the activists overplayed their hand in Hong
Speaker 2: Kong between twenty fourteen and twenty nineteen.
Speaker 7: I think that's a really, you know, difficult parallel or
Speaker 7: question to answer, simply because if you're a student at
Speaker 7: that time, both in nineteen eighty nine and you know,
Speaker 7: on the streets of China, and I watched their interviews
Speaker 7: again and I was struck by their enthusiasm and their
Speaker 7: hope for the idea of wanting to create a different country.
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, in many ways they were patriots, right,
Speaker 7: They wanted a different vision of their homeland to materialize.
Speaker 7: And I don't think anybody had a particular strategy when
Speaker 7: they were going about doing that. They were just really
Speaker 7: passionate about their cause. And it's the same thing in
Speaker 7: Hong Kong. When I've spoken to student activists or protesters
Speaker 7: and demonstrators there before there's just this real desire to
Speaker 7: ensure that what they want achieved is something that they
Speaker 7: can see in front of them. And you know, did
Speaker 7: they overplay their hand? Did they? Were they not strategic enough? Perhaps,
Speaker 7: and perhaps that's what the history books will say, But
Speaker 7: I don't think you can fault them for trying to
Speaker 7: change the way their country was run.
Speaker 1: Kushma very quickly, what is the risk if Taiwan does
Speaker 1: indeed become the focal point for remembrance of Tianan Min?
Speaker 7: Well, I think the risk for Taiwan is it continues
Speaker 7: to be a target of China's over the weekend that
Speaker 7: the Shangrila dialogue. We heard that from the Chinese Defense min.
Speaker 7: So that's the risk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Kriushma, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion columnist Karishma Vaswani. You can read more on
Speaker 2: this and other stories from Bloomberg Opinion at Bloomberg dot com,
Speaker 2: slash Opinion and on the terminal by typing opin go.
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