Talks on China

Our podcast is back! In this episode Alicia Kearns MP and Professor Steve Tsang will go in depth into CCP influence in UK universities.

In early October, the US government rolled out extensive new restrictions on China’s access to advanced semiconductors, which play a central role in sectors such as quantum computing and weapons manufacture. The order by President Biden is unprecedented in modern times and is designed to cut China’s legs off as Washington and Beijing compete for technological advantage.

Chris Cash is joined by Sarah Bauerle Danzman, Associate Professor of International Studies at Indiana University and non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, to discuss the reasons behind these restrictions and their knock-on effects around the world.

Why is the US going down this route now and how did we get here? For the US and its desire to stay ahead of a fast advancing China, will these restrictions be enough? What are the global implications of the acceleration of the balkanisation of key supply chains and what do US allies make of the restrictions?

If China seems unstoppable, so too can its leader Xi Jinping. And yet we know very little about the man who commands over 1.4 billion people, in a vast country that spans prosperous megacities and desperately poor rural regions.

Chris Cash is joined by Adrian Geiges and Stefan Aust, authors of the newly-translated biography ‘Xi Jinping: The Most Powerful Man in the World’, to discuss the story of Xi’s life and career, what he really wants, and how he is positioned ahead of the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Party Congress.

How did Xi develop his ideological convictions and why do we struggle to understand them? Why does he have an uneasy relationship with the legacy of Mao? What are the greatest challenges to his rule?

You can purchase Adrian and Stefan’s must-read biography here.

In April 2022, Xi Jinping announced the Global Security Initiative (GSI), a new Chinese foreign policy initiative proposed as a solution to a rapidly deteriorating international security environment. Some view the initiative as China’s latest bid to tilt the rules-based global order in its favour, but what does it actually mean for the future of the international security architecture?

Chris Cash and Archie Brown are joined by Ovigwe Eguegu, a policy analyst at Development Reimagined who has written extensively on China-Africa security engagement, to discuss the GSI's key concepts and its implications for the future of China's engagement within the developing world.

What is the GSI? Does the combined package of the GSI and the Global Development Initiative announced last September mark a shift away from the Belt-and-Road Initiative’s investment-driven model of engagement? How are these initiatives likely to be received in the developing world?

You can read Chris's latest paper on the GSI, written in conjunction with the Council on Geostrategy, here.

In response to US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, Beijing conducted large-scale military exercises across the Taiwan Strait. Its actions have been met with international alarm, with commentators declaring this as a ‘new normal’ for cross-strait relations.

Chris Cash and Archie Brown are joined by Alessio Patalano, a Professor of War and Strategy in East Asia in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, to discuss these military exercises and their implications for the future of cross-strait relations and regional stability.

Why did Beijing feel compelled to launch such a robust military response to Pelosi's visit? What are the implications of Beijing’s efforts to normalise increased military aggression across the Strait? How have key stakeholders such as the US and Taiwan responded? How can the UK and its European partners help to de-escalate the situation?

In November 2021, Barbados became the latest Commonwealth nation to remove the Queen as its head of state. Some British policymakers and commentators attributed this trend to growing Chinese influence in the Caribbean, but does this narrative reflect the reality on the ground?

Chris Cash and Archie Brown are joined by Rasheed Griffith, a non-resident senior fellow with the Asia and Latin America programme and the Inter-American Dialogue and head of operations at Merkle Hedge, to talk over the nature of Chinese engagement in the Caribbean and how it's shaping regional developments.

What does the 'China colonisation’ narrative get wrong about the Belt and Road Initiative in the Caribbean? What are the factors driving deeper trade and investment between China and Caribbean nations and how well equipped are Caribbean governments to deal with China? How can the UK become a more serious regional partner?

There is a growing interest across the world in Chinese foreign policy signalling. Whilst English translations make Chinese foreign policy statements more accessible, most people fail to pick up on changes in the language of these statements in official translations.

Chris Cash is joined by Sabine Mokry, PhD candidate at Leiden University and Visiting Researcher at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg, to discuss the differences between Chinese foreign policy statements and their English translations and the implications of these differences.

How do discrepancies in translation alter the original meaning of Chinese foreign policy statements? What are the implications of these differences for those following Chinese foreign policy? How can analysts and policymakers navigate these translation differences?

You can read Sabine's paper on the foreign policy statement translations here.

You can also find Sabine on Twitter.

China’s digital yuan is a form of central bank digital currency (CBDC) which many other central banks around the world are also working on. Chinese authorities are now stepping up their ambition to expand the use of e-CNY after a trial at this year’s Winter Olympic in Beijing.

Chris Cash is joined by Ananya Kumar, Assistant Director of Digital Currencies at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, to discuss the growth trajectory of the digital yuan and its domestic and geopolitical implications.

Will Chinese citizens buy into the digital yuan? What impact will its roll out have on financial stability in China? How will a digital currency aid China’s internationalisation of the RMB and reduce dependence on dollar-denominated transactions?

You can read Ananya's paper on the digital yuan, or e-CNY, here.

The Atlantic Council has also released a newly-updated Central Bank Digital Currency tracker.

The emergence of highly infectious coronavirus variants has strained the Chinese Communist Party’s zero-COVID policy to breaking point. The economic struggles and growing civilian frustrations caused by unrelenting lockdowns threaten to undermine the narrative of China’s superiority in responding to the pandemic - and the image and stature of Xi Jinping’s rule.

Chris Cash and Julia Pamilih are joined by Carl Minzner, senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and professor at Fordham Law School, to discuss the social and economic costs of Xi’s zero-COVID strategy and what we can learn from the politics surrounding the policy, ahead of this year’s 20th Party Congress.

How sustainable is zero-COVID as the rest of the world opens up? Has Xi successfully removed or silenced all political opponents as he seeks to cement an unprecedented third term in power?

Carl is the author of End of an Era: How China's Authoritarian Revival is Undermining Its Rise, in which he boldly argues that China's reform era is ending and outlines the looming risks of instability.

You can also find Carl on Twitter.

China's efforts at home and abroad to become a global leader in digital technologies is a challenge for the UK and its allies. How has Beijing set about shaping the new global digital architecture and how should we respond?

Chris Cash is joined by Emily de la Bruyère, co-founder of Horizon Advisory, a strategic consulting firm focused on the implications of China’s competitive approach to geopolitics, to discuss the motives behind China's global digital strategy, its ambitions to lead the world in setting technical standards for emerging technologies, and how the UK and like-minded democracies could respond.

Emily recently co-authored a new report titled: China’s Digital Ambition: A Global Strategy to Supplant the Liberal Order. You can read it here.

Hong Kong stood out as an international COVID success story before a recent Omicron outbreak took hold of the city. What could have been done to prevent the tragic scenes of hospitals being overwhelmed? Has the Hong Kong government lost all democratic accountability?

Quartz journalist Mary Hui joins Chris Cash to discuss the reasons behind Hong Kong's lack of COVID preparedness, the erosion of democracy under the National Security Law, and Beijing's endgame for the city. Mary also shared her thoughts on Hong Kong's status as an international business hub and whether it will last.

You can follow Mary on Twitter - @maryhui

As the thawing of the Arctic has increased its geopolitical prominence and potential economic viability, new players have expanded their presence and influence in the region. China - a less obvious player in the Arctic - has in recent years pressed for a greater role in regional affairs.

Chris Cash is joined by Lukas Wahden, a Yenching Scholar at Peking University, to discuss his LSE IDEAS piece on the steps China will have to take to reach its goal of becoming a ‘polar great power’. Lukas explains how cooperation between China and Russia in recent years has added an intriguing complexity to Arctic geopolitics and how Beijing sees the region as key to refining its image as a global power. The impact of the war in Ukraine on the Arctic balance of power is also explored in this podcast.

Read Lukas's piece: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/cff/2021/11/24/in-the-russian-arctic-china-treads-on-thinning-ice/

The greyzone is defined as "competitive interactions among and within state and non-state actors that fall between the traditional war and peace duality." But what do these interactions look like and how can we deter the most harmful greyzone activities engaged in by hostile states?

Chris Cash is joined by Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and writer at the Financial Times and Foreign Policy magazine, to discuss how greyzone aggressions target our institutions. Elisabeth lays out the complex nature of nonmilitary threats to national security, China's greyzone tactics, and the need for whole-of-society responses in liberal democracies.

Read Elisabeth's latest book - The Defender's Dilemma

Follow Elisabeth on Twitter - @elisabethbraw

Before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China and Russia appeared to be growing ever closer. Russian President Vladimir Putin being one of a handful of known leaders to attend the Winter Olympics, where he signed a landmark strategic partnership with his counterpart, President Xi Jinping. Will that 'no limits' partnership survive Russia's newfound pariah status?

In this live event, co-chair of the China Research Group Alicia Kearns MP was joined by Professor Sergey Radchenko, Dr Maria Repnikova and Bonny Lin.These three leading Sino-Russian experts set out the historical and geopolitical context of the China-Russia relationship and answered questions including:

Find the full transcript of the event on our website.

China has one of the world’s most restrictive media environments, relying on censorship to control information in the news, online, and on social media. But how does internet censorship in China actually function?

Chris Cash is joined by Molly Roberts, a political scientist at UC San Diego and author of the groundbreaking book ‘Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall’,to discuss China's censorship apparatus. Molly explains how censorship in China has evolved, how it impacts those who experience it and why certain narratives about censorship can be misleading. The conversation extends to censorship in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak and the disappearance of tennis player Peng Shuai.

The KPR study: How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression

Molly's book: Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall

The case of Christine Lee shot to national attention when news broke that the Speaker of the House of Commons had warned MPs that there was a Chinese agent operating in parliament. But why is Lee perhaps just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Chinese interference in the UK political system and how can the UK better defend itself against such threats?

Chris Cash is joined by Martin Thorley, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Exeter whose research has uncovered Chinese party-state activity in the UK and evidence of compromised actors within the British establishment. They discuss the activities of the United Front and the groups it has targeted, the UK's approach to foreign interference, and how East Asian diaspora communities can be protected amid wider geopolitical struggles.

You can read Martin's now famous Twitter explainer thread on the Christine Lee case here.

Martin also penned an article for The Guardian in which he described how the UK and China find their relationship in a current state of 'phoney peace'. You can read that article here.

Three experts, Rui Ma, Rogier Creemers and John Lee, joined the China Research Group to discuss China's evolving tech landscape. 

Rui, Rogier and John discussed how China sees the role of technology in relation to the country's economic and social development - and how common prosperity will shape the relationship between the state, society and tech firms.

The panellists also analyse China's rapidly developing semiconductor industry, including how US sanctions played a crucial role in accelerating its development. And they put out some suggestions at where the UK should focus its efforts, and where China is gaining a first-mover advantage on the rest of the world when it comes to data.

Where do Xi Jinping and the CCP stand - domestically and abroad - at the end of 2021? 

This week, Jude Blanchette, the Freeman Chair of China Studies at CSIS, joined Tom Tugendhat for a rapid review of the key political and economic moves in 2021 in China. What did the politics of the Sixth Plenum tell us about Xi's power? Is China's new style of diplomacy here to stay? And what does common prosperity mean for Chinese tech firms - and the Western finance industry? 

Listen for an expert breakdown of the CCP's 2021, at a time when Jude warns we are in "a moment of acute epistemological crisis" for our understanding of China.

Further reading:After Xi: Future Scenarios for Leadership Succession in Post-Xi Jinping Era by Jude Blanchette and Richard McGregor for CSIS.

As part of its Indo-Pacific Tilt, the UK is deepening its engagement with South East Asia. But what does the strategic environment look like and what are South East Asian countries looking for from the UK?

Julia Pamilih is joined by Charles Dunst, an adjunct fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’s Southeast Asia programme. They discuss the impact of China's vaccine efforts, the role of ASEAN and CPTPP and mixed support for further military presence in the Indo-Pacific region.

This podcast follows Charles' new paper for the China Research Group. He argues that South East Asian countries welcome more engagement from countries like the UK — but won’t stop engaging China. The UK should pursue deeper ties with them nonetheless.

Chair of the China Research Group, Tom Tugendhat MP was joined by Desmond Shum for a conversation on Desmond's recent book Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China,a rare look at the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party.

Desmond's journey as a successful businessman during China's boom period in the 2000s took him close to the nexus of power at the top of the Chinese Communist Party. After studying in the US and working in Hong Kong, he moved back to Beijing, where he married Whitney Duan. Whitney was close to Zhang Peili, the wife of Wen Jiabao (China's premier from 2003 to 2013). 

The relationship gave Desmond insight into power, wealth and corruption across China in a period where its GDP was growing by 10% a year. Together, Desmond and Whitney leveraged their business and political connections to cut major business deals, pulling off the development of the largest air cargo logistics facility in China, the Beijing Airport Cargo Terminal. 

In his book, Desmond argues that entrepreneurs felt the tightening of CCP control as early as 2008. But Desmond and Whitney experienced significant pressure in 2012 when the New York Times splashed on the ‘hidden riches’ of Wen family corruption, which implicated his wife Whitney. And after three years under Xi's rule, Shum decided to leave the country in 2015 and move to the UK.

Whitney disappeared in China in 2017. No one had heard from her for four years. But on the eve of Red Roulette'spublication earlier this year, Desmond received a call from Whitney - who asked him not to publish the book.

The discussion includes Desmond's perspective on Xi's power base and the political slant of his anti-corruption campaign in 2012/13, how China's 'red aristocracy' controls the CCP and the situation in Hong Kong.

Further reading:

With COP26 set to kick off at the end of the week and President Xi's attendance looking unlikely, we were joined by three experts for a panel discussion on China’s efforts to combat climate change - and what a successful COP 26 would look like.

All three panellists have worked closely with China on climate change. Former Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd led the UK’s delegation at COP15 in Paris, Isabel Hilton founded the influential ChinaDialogue, and Alex Wang is a Professor at UCLA and Faculty Co-Director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, having previously worked for an American NGO in China.

The discussion touched on China’s long-term attitude to climate change, the effectiveness of Western pressure and the false dichotomy between cooperation and competition. The three panellists also discussed how China and the West’s standing with lower-income countries could shape the outcome of the Glasgow summit.

Read the full transcript here on our website.

Further reading: 

Two data experts from AidData, Bradley Parks (Executive Director) and Dr Ammar Malik (Senior Research Scientist), joined us to discuss their findings from their recent paper: Banking on the Belt and Road. The paper draws on a new dataset covering 13,427 Chinese development projects in 165 countries, worth over $843 billion. 

Since the BRI, was introduced, China has spent roughly $85 billion a year on overseas development projects. That means that China has eclipsed the US on overseas spending by a 2:1 and the UK on a 7:1 basis. But while Western countries provide financing through ODA and grants, China's financing is almost all through debt, not grants. This lending has also shifted from sovereign debt to special purpose vehicles, state-owned enterprises, and joint ventures, creating a new trend of "hidden debt" which is not tracked by the World Bank.

The authors also look at how the BRI emerged as an innovative response to China's domestic economic challenges, including capitalising on the commodity price crash after the global financial crisis. 

Read the full transcript here.

More reading:

As part of the Integrated Review published earlier this year, the UK formalised its tilt to the Indo-Pacific. Our panel discussion with Claire Coutinho, Michael Auslin and Sophia Gaston provided insight and analysis of one of the generational changes in British foreign policy.

How should the UK maintain its interests and deepen its engagement with the region? What can it realistically seek to achieve and which relationships should it be prioritising? And what has it achieved so far? 

With the WTO in desperate need of reform and Australia hit by trade sanctions by the PRC, do we need a new allied trade treaty? How should the UK, EU and US come together to rethink the economic challenge posed by China?

This event took place in tandem with the launch of a new policy paper written for the China Research Group by Robert D. Atkinson, which you can read here. The paper looks at whether democratic nations should form an allied trade treaty to combat Chinese trade aggression.

This event was chaired by Tom Tugendhat MP,with the following speakers.

Speakers:

The FT’s Global China Editor, James Kynge,joined us to discuss his perspective on how the next generation of technology is shaping geopolitics. Over half of global trade is digital, and trust issues have suddenly become front and centre to global trade and investment. That lack of trust is increasingly leading to technological bifurcation. The discussion also touched on China's pursuit for self-reliance, Beijing's policies towards big tech and how the digital currency could affect the internationalisation of the renminbi.

The China Research Group was joined by experts George Magnus and Elizabeth Economy for a discussion chaired by Jeremy Hunt MP. Given some predict China will overtake the US as the world's largest economy by 2028, how should we understand China's ambitions for the next decade of its economic rise? And what does China's economic rise mean for the rest of the world? 

Read the transcript here.

Our new China Research Group paper, written by Eyck Freymann, is now published:'The UK's Strategic Options: Belt and Road'.

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Back in 2013, President Xi Jinping unveiled his expansive vision of a modern Silk Road, promising to revolutionise China's global influence. Eight years later, and 130 countries have signed up to Xi’s signature foreign policy. But the ‘project of a century’ remains loosely defined and poorly understood.

Despite accusations of predatory debt diplomacy, Chinese infrastructure lending has been in decline since 2019. Instead, a new phase of the Belt and Road has been accelerated by the pandemic. China has pivoted away from physical infrastructure and accelerated its expansion of the Digital, Green and Health Silk Roads. But what does the future of this version of the Belt and Road Initiative look like? And should like-minded democracies respond?

We were joined by a panel of three experts for a discussion moderated byTom Tugendhat MP,Chair of the China Research Group.

Jonathan Hillman- Senior Fellow at CSIS and Director of the Reconnecting Asia Project
Meia Nouwens - Senior Fellow at IISS and Digital Silk Road lead
Eyck Freymann- Author of One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the Worldand doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford

In this conversation, Rana Mitter joins Tom Tugendhat MP, chair of the China Research Group, for a discussion on the UK's relationship with China and China's wider foreign policy. Rana discusses the value of the Chinese public's trust in the UK, and the need for the UK to be more aware of its strategic strengths in the relationship. He also answered questions on the broader picture of the Belt and Road, China's relationship with Pakistan and India, and the influence of the CCP on modern Chinese society.

Rana Mitter is Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China at the University of Oxford. He has written widely about modern China, having authored several books looking at China's historical perspective. He has also written a paper with Sophia Gaston for the British Foreign Policy Group assessing UK-China relations.

Our panel of experts joined us to give some insight into how US-China relations will evolve under newly-inaugurated President Biden. Gideon Rachman (Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator at the Financial Times), Dr Evan Medeiros (Penner Family Chair of Asia Studies at Georgetown University, Former Director for China at the NSC and lead advisor on Asia-Pacific under President Obama) and Jude Blanchette (Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS).

The wide-ranging conversation looked at policy priorities for President Biden’s new team and why the next 18 months of Chinese politics may represent a window of opportunity for Western democracies to coalesce and change the cost-benefit equation of CCP aggression. 

Our speakers also answered questions on US and China's use of sanctions, and the necessity and difficulty of forging democratic coalitions. The panellists also discussed areas where the UK could offer strategic and symbolic value to the US, before concluding on the topical question of whether the US should boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Thefull transcriptis available on our website.