Episode Notes:Today, we're going to talk about US-China relations, the upcoming Sixth Plenum , Xi Jinping, and what we might expect for the next year heading into the 2022 20th Party Congress among other topics. I'm really pleased that our first guest for the Sinocism Podcast is Chris Johnson, CEO of Consultancy China strategies Group, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic International Studies and former senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. 4:45 on US-China relations - I think their assessment is that it's working. In other words, by maintaining that sort of very strict line, they've gotten Madam Meng of Huawei fame home. They've gotten the trade discussions going again. They've got the US saying, "Well, we might lengthen the timeline for you to implement phase one." In other words, it's working from their perspective.13:30 on the 6th Plenum - The first I think is that, it would represent, I think the net evolution in what I call Xi Jinping's further development of his leadership supremacy. And, I use those terms very deliberately because often times, the shorthand we see in describing this as references to Xi's consolidation of power. Well, in my mind that took place very early on in his tenure. 30:00 on the economy and heading towards the 2022 20th Party Congress - Equally important in my mind is how little the leadership and the economic technocrats seem to be rattled by that fact. In other words, we're not seeing the stimulus wave. We're not seeing monetary policy adjustments in a significant way. There's a lot of study as she goes. And, that could change. We've got the central economic work conference, obviously in December, which will give us a sense of how they're thinking about next year. But like so many other things, I think we as watchers and the investment community and others, we're slow to sometimes break with old narratives. One of which is you must welcome a party Congress with very high growth. And every signal coming out of the leadership is that, they're not playing that game anymore. I think that's fairly strong.37:00 On US-China relations - I think if you're a senior US policymaker, your working assumption has to be that China's more likely to get it right than to get it wrong, even if they only get it 30% right or 40%, something like that…Chris Johnson:Xi is here and will be here for the foreseeable future. And therefore there won't be any change in the policies largely that he's articulated.Links: More about Chris Johnson and his China Strategies Group here.Transcript:Bill Bishop:Today, we're going to talk about US-China relations, the upcoming Sixth Plenum , Xi Jinping, and what we might expect for the next year heading into the 2022 20th Party Congress among other topics. I'm really pleased that our first guest for the Sinocism Podcast is Chris Johnson, CEO of Consultancy, China strategies Group, senior fellow at the center for strategic international studies and former senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. Welcome, Chris.Chris Johnson:Great to be here, Bill.Bill Bishop:Chris, welcome. I think today, what I really like to start out with is just an overview where you see the state of US-China relations and how the new administration, I mean it's 10 months now or thereabouts, but how the new administration is doing and how the Xi Jinping administration is reacting.Chris Johnson:Great. Yeah. Well, it's obviously a unique time in US-China relations. I guess, if I had to characterize it in a phrase, I would say, things are a bit of a mess. I think, if we start, it's useful to start at a sort of high order level and then work our way down in terms of thinking about the relationship. So I think at the highest order, one of the things that strikes me is that arguably for the first time, since normalization of relations, really, we're in this strange position where I think both countries, both leaders and perhaps increasingly, even both peoples, aren't overly keen to