China will put Taiwan on the ‘back burner’: Bill Browder

Hermitage Capital Management CEO Bill Browder joins 'Influencers with Andy Serwer' to discuss the West's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and how it could impact China's decision-making in the future.

Video Transcript

ANDY SERWER: What about China in all this, Bill? I mean, you hear that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are very much on the same page. On the other hand, last week, Xi looked like he was criticizing Putin a little bit. It's unclear, though. And doesn't Xi Jinping have a lot of leverage here?

BILL BROWDER: Well, I mean, he's the lender of last resort if now that the West has completely cut off Russia from the financial markets. And so Putin is going to have to go begging for money. And I think the Chinese will provide money on highly usurious terms. It'll be like borrowing money on a credit card. I'm sure the Chinese will say, yeah, I think we can help you out. 19.78%, thank you very much.

And by the way, we want the such and such as collateral and take some huge infrastructure as collateral. There's one interesting angle to the China thing that's worth pointing out, which is not so much who's allied with who, but the Chinese are equally malicious actors in the world. And the coordinated financial attack that the West has executed against Russia, I think it's so scary that the Chinese probably won't-- if they were eyeing up Taiwan to do something similar, I think they'll put that on the back burner.