Czin: Xi ‘winds up for years, sometimes for decades’ before ‘popping’
The Guardian’s Full Story podcast previewed the Sept. 24 Trump-Xi meeting in Washington on the morning of the summit, with guest Jonathan Czin offering a portrait of both leaders and the issues awaiting them. Presenter Helen Pidd framed the encounter as one between “the two most powerful men in the world,” with artificial intelligence, Iran, and Taiwan on the agenda.
Czin served as the CIA’s in-house expert on Xi Jinping before becoming the director for China on Joe Biden’s National Security Council from 2021 to 2023. He “dealt with a lot during his two years working for the White House,” the podcast noted, but “as Donald Trump prepares to welcome Xi Jinping to Washington today, the stakes are arguably even higher.”
On the issues facing the two leaders, Czin told Pidd: “Trump has started a war he cannot seem to stop, and the Chinese are helping his enemy. There’s the small matter that Xi still has his eye on invading Taiwan.”
The two men, Czin said, “could not be more different.” “President Trump thinks of himself as the consummate deal maker,” Czin told Pidd. “I think it’s much better to think of Xi Jinping as operating like a jack-in-the-box. This guy winds up for years, sometimes for decades, and he is just waiting for the right moment to pop.”
The podcast closed by asking how “this odd couple of the world’s most powerful men” would get on and “what could it mean for the rest of the world.”
The Guardian podcast “Xi Jinping meets Trump: who holds the cards?” was presented by Helen Pidd with Jonathan Czin; it was produced by Eli Block and Brian McNamara, with Homa Khaleeli as executive producer, and was published on Sept. 24, 2026 at 05.27 CEST.