Why Taiwan Was Absent from the Chinese Readout

This is a recording of my October 30, 2025 conversation with Rush Doshi, the C.V. Starr senior fellow for Asia studies and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and an assistant professor in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service.

Rush Doshi was deputy senior director for China and Taiwan on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council (NSC), where he served from 2021 to 2024 and helped manage the NSC’s first China directorate.

During his time in the Biden Administration he worked on multiple Biden-Xi engagements, so I thought he would be a great guest to help us parse through the Trump-Xi meeting in South Korea and what it means for US-China relations. He did not disappoint.

Rush is about to launch a new Substack called “The Great Changes 大变局. You can and should subscribe to it here.

You can catch up with many of Rush’s recent writings and podcast appearances here on his CFR page.

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