Axios’ Jim VandeHei: ‘China Will Dominate Our Lives for the Next 20 Years’

Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday that how the U.S. reacts to China and Hong Kong will be extremely important, whether or not Donald Trump wins the 2020 election. VandeHei and Joe Scarborough discussed China’s move to take further control of the former British colony.

“There’s probably no bigger topic. Maybe you could argue global warming might be,” VandeHei said. “But China will dominate our lives for the next 20 years.”

“They are a fast, fast, rising power, economically and in their reach around the world. And this is not a one-off. They have been mischievous on many fronts for many years, whether it’s trying to steal our technologies, bully U.S. companies, have trade deals that favor them and not us, take military action that is meant to provoke.”

“Whether it’s Biden or Trump, this is a real deal. And the consequences are super high because of the population size, because of their reach, because of the size of their economy.”

“You talk to a lot of people who spend time in China and come back here, they fear that we’re like a stagnating world power, or even some would argue a declining world power, and China, even with the recent setbacks, is rapidly rising.”

“And so I do think this will define the next generation the way sort of our showdown with Russia defined a lot of sort of my childhood and my early adulthood. So I don’t know what Trump will do in the short term. I don’t think Trump knows what Trump will do in the short term. Look what happened with the stock prices overnight. Look how European allies are reacting. This is a really, really big story.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.