Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues

Eleanor M. Albert: Today we are joined by Ja-Ian Chong and Dennis Wilder. Ja-Ian Chong is an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore and a nonresident scholar at Carnegie China. His research covers the intersection of international and domestic politics, with a focus on the externalities of major power competition, nationalism, regional order, security, contentious politics, and state formation.  Ian is a Georgetown alum and one of the founders of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs.

Dennis Wilder is a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues and an adjunct professor of practice in Asian studies in the School of Foreign Service. Wilder has held numerous positions in government and intelligence, including at the U.S.'s National Security Council as director for China and senior director for East Asian Affairs, and as the CIA's deputy assistant director for East Asia and the Pacific. 

Ian, Dennis, welcome to the show. We have a fascinating topic today talking about this idea of securitization of China under Xi Jinping. I wanted to start by framing this in the sense that China is like many great and large nations, and it has a lot of different policy priorities, but over the past decades, economic growth and stability seem to have really been the core focus. Under Xi Jinping, this appears to be shifting with a greater importance given to security. That’s, of course, a malleable term, but I wanted to ask both of you first: What are the indicators that you can point to of this rise of security to the forefront of Xi's vision for China? I'll start with Dennis.

Dennis Wilder: What I'm going to do is just take a moment on history because as you said, this really is a decade-long process, and one of the things that I would point to is Document Number Nine (Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere) of April 2013. I remember when this document came out. People wondered whether it really represented the party position, whether it was even real. I think we've now decided it definitely was a real document and that it reflected Xi Jinping, which, for many people, we didn't want to believe it represented Xi Jinping because we wanted him to be a reformer like his dad.

What this document says, it talked about false ideological trends that endanger the Communist Party, and there were six of them: promotion of Western constitutional democracy; promotion of Western ideas of universal values; promotion of Western civil society; promotion of neo-liberalism in the economy; promotion of Western ideas of journalism; and promotion of historical nihilism, undermining the communist history.

This is where it all started with Xi Jinping and the idea that China is under attack and that China must struggle with attack, which is basically from the West. We now see that Xi Jinping is forming an idea, and he announces a new Central National Security Commission in 2014. And this is where the term “comprehensive national security” appears for the first time.

Comprehensive national security—the concept under which what we are seeing today is all based—is holistic. National security is not just about a thin area of concentration on certain kinds of foreign threats. Everything can be a threat to the party domestically and internationally. And China needs to weave this all together in a singular concept, and that is the concept of comprehensive national security in which everybody must be involved in defending the party, in defending the system, obviously with Xi Jinping at the core.

To bring it forward to today, we have seen, particularly at the Party Congress last fall, Xi Jinping bringing this to a new level: 91 times in his work report, he used the term security, and he calls it the bedrock of national rejuvenation. In other words, economic reform and opening is no longer number one. What is number one and what will save China is this concept of national holistic comprehensive security.

Eleanor M. Albert: Ian, what indicators do you look at to grasp the sense of security being pushed
within the party system?

Ja-Ian Chong: Let me pick up where I think Dennis left off and look more behaviorally. If you look at the PRC (People’s Republic of China) system, one of the things that I've observed, starting from the period that Xi got into office, circa 2012, 2013, was that there was gradual but increasing controls on what interlocutors from China were willing to engage on. They had become more careful, they had become more testy, [about] issues of difference on the South China Sea... Before, there would be an easier conversation. These conversations are always difficult, but you don't have to make it more difficult than it has to. You would disagree, but it doesn't have to become particularly personal or angry. You can be firm but not angry. But increasingly what happened was in interacting with colleagues and also officials from the PRC, they take on an increasingly scolding tone.

This is interesting and perhaps a bit different from what friends and colleagues in the U.S. might experience because, coming from a Southeast Asian country, coming from a smaller actor, that sense of the PRC really pushing their case was surprising, especially because if you come from Singapore, there was at that time an expectation that we were on pretty friendly terms, but after they'd admonished you, they'd say relations are great and all that. So there was a bit of a dissonance.

In parallel to that was actual behavior on the South China Sea and elsewhere around Taiwan that you could observe. Earlier, last decade, they hadn't made the divisions that we’re familiar [with] today with the various maritime militia, China Coast Guard. There were various agencies, but essentially these different Chinese government agencies, their ships were being particularly
aggressive.

There was that big question about, well, is China being assertive? People were asking in somewhat disbelief whether this assertiveness was here to stay, what it actually meant. But ships were bumping against ships, and fishing vessels were being detained along with their crew. That then led to the [land] reclamation and subsequent militarization of features in the South China Sea, despite Xi's promises to Obama at Sunnylands. So if you were to observe Chinese outward behavior, and in terms of personal interaction, they seem to revolve around this idea that China really had to push hard on defending its interests. On reflection what that is, it's this sense of comprehensive national security percolating through the system, through individuals, through the behavior of state agencies. So, what Dennis mentioned in terms of Document Number Nine, it's not just language, but that language manifests in behavior.

Eleanor M. Albert: In many ways the language creates a framework for the behavior to be justified and to be contained within a broader framework of thinking about how China's going to interact with the world. Ian, you just did a great job focusing on the outward behavior. I want to now take this inward and look back at China. After decades of economics and development being at the core, you have a party state system that has changed to focus on security. What does this emphasis on national security do to China's governing system? How has it impacted what we call the party state apparatus and intraparty dynamics?

Ja-Ian Chong: On the intraparty dynamics, it's created a situation where Xi has clamped down on different voices of the party. The party and my interactions with members of it in the early 2000s: yeah, there's party discipline and all that, sure, but there were many more ideas floating around. There was more free-flowing debate. There were salons in Beijing and Shanghai that you could as a foreigner attend and listen in on. From the 2010s onward, all that started disappearing. That seems to suggest that a certain openness within the party, a certain receptivity to different ideas, was going away.

Then you have all the business with Bo Xilai and then the anti-corruption campaign, which really put many people on edge. And that was, I suppose, part of the internal aspect of comprehensive national security [is] where the internal party discipline had to be maintained for the party to protect itself. You see crackdowns; you see people being arrested for corruption. Sometimes the trials, if it came to that even, seemed very odd to people who were more familiar with a certain sense of due process. So that really created an impression of the party closing ranks in on itself and squeezing out people who somehow did not conform to those ideas of security that Xi had laid out, which put survival of the party at front and center, and of course himself at the core.

Eleanor M. Albert: Dennis, I want to turn to you. I think there was a long time where there was a division of labor: the party did certain things, and then you had this executive apparatus that did the implementation of things. I think there's no doubt today that the party is in a much stronger position than it was. So how do you see this national security focus impacting the Chinese governing system?

Dennis Wilder: That's a great question, and what I want to do is look at both the new institutions that are being developed and the personalities involved in this. I mentioned that in 2014, Xi creates the Central National Security Commission. At the time, a lot of us in the United States thought they were duplicating the National Security Council, and we were absolutely wrong. The National Security Commission is both internal and external. It is far more comprehensive in its responsibilities than our National Security Council, which is only focused on foreign threats and foreign policy. But this organization—which is very mysterious in a system that is non-transparent—this is the most non-transparent organization of all. But it comes to the fore again at the 20th Party Congress where the head of the National Security Commission General Office, Cai Qi, suddenly becomes a member of the Politburo Standing Committee. Moreover, the head of the MSS suddenly becomes a Politburo member.

Eleanor M. Albert: And the MSS is the Ministry of State Security. Yes?

Dennis Wilder: Yes, and it's much bigger than the CIA. It's all over China. It has provincial offices and is becoming even more powerful. What happens is that Cai Qi is made vice chairman of the National Security Commission, one of three, and they meet in May of this year [2023], and Xi Jinping says they must speed up the process of modernizing the national security system, improve the governance of data. The MSS chief in a Qiushi article says that the responsibilities of this commission are internal; the main, [and] external, is the auxiliary. So they combine the internal and the external under this organization.

What we see suddenly is the MSS, which always had been shadowy, suddenly becomes right out there. It creates its own WeChat account in August. It announces the arrest of CIA operatives. It talks at least three times about American espionage against China on its WeChat site, and it even begins to comment on foreign policy issues. We have this real change in the role of the MSS.

The other thing they start to do is a whole domestic campaign of telling people, “You need to report when you see espionage.” In the subways there are big posters; there is a number you can call into. There is a WeChat site where you can report on things you see that you believe are espionage. It's a very fundamental change in Chinese society, almost a throwback to the days of Chairman Mao where you were to report on your neighbors. I don't think people understand how profoundly things have changed in just the last year.

Eleanor M. Albert: I think this big change might really surprise people. And it's also coming at a time where the Chinese economy is not doing what it has long promised. People think the social construct that exists in China is that the party delivers prosperity and economic well-being to its people. And as a result, the one-party system lives on and they have the support of the people.

There've been a flurry of things about China's malaise. There's societal problems in terms of youth unemployment. You have declining population, so your future workforce is going to be smaller. These are things that might really challenge the economic dynamic. How has this big shift impacted the economic development side of things. Has it faltered because of this change in emphasis, and might it trigger some domestic political consequences given the bargain of legitimacy that has previously held the party up for so long?

Dennis Wilder: This is a profound change. One of the reasons it took Xi Jinping 10 years to get to this point, because remember, this is a process that he's gone through of convincing people of this philosophy. The old philosophy under Deng Xiaoping and then under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao was the economy first. That if the Chinese Communist Party is going to survive, it must provide economic growth of such a level that individual Chinese feel better about themselves and better about their future.

Of course, the social contract, where citizens didn't engage in politics, didn't criticize the government, but got the positive benefits to be able to travel, buy goods, buy apartments, send their kids to school (some of them sending their kids to school overseas), the rise of the Chinese middle class—this was the central tenant, it was almost theological. And Xi Jinping says, “No, I don't buy that. The central issue is control and national security. And the economy will support that, but we need to refocus.”

I think this was a struggle within the party over the last 10 years. Someone like Li Keqiang who died recently, the premier, was one of those who wasn't convinced of what Xi Jinping was saying here. We have talked about China hitting headwinds, and I think most of us do see these as headwinds. I don't think Xi Jinping sees it quite the same way.

I think what he sees is that economic growth without controls is dangerous. A high-tech sector growing out of control of the party is dangerous. So if he has to give up some economic growth for control, he's willing to make that trade-off. Is that a good bet? I hate to use the “time will tell” philosophy, but really we have to see. Is he going into dangerous ground here where the Chinese people are going to be upset because we're not seeing those 10% growth rates anymore, we're now down to 3% (in that range)? I'm not sure.

Eleanor M. Albert: Ian, I think from your vantage point in Singapore, you might have either differing or other dynamics of this calculus, especially with China having been an important growth driver for the region in general. So I'm curious about your take on the security versus economic development shift and its impact on both China's potential domestic circumstances, but also for broader economic growth for Asia Pacific.

Ja-Ian Chong: I want to go back to our earlier conversation when Dennis was talking about the MSS, and I just want to highlight that one of the things with the Chinese Communist Party [that] wasn't necessarily always this way, but especially on this idea that there should be checks and balances really becomes very much diminished. Before that whole collective leadership idea was that you could have actions, but at least they would have some sort of restraint on each other such that you could avoid the excesses of the Mao period. With the increased power of the MSS, with the laws that Xi has pushed out, the espionage law, the upcoming patriotic education law, the personal data law, a lot of this... They put a state imprint on getting information, making reporting requirements for firms, putting party cells in private international firms to have that oversight.

That's an imprint of the sense of control percolating into the economy and the very micro aspects of how the economy works. Now, the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, is very good at providing creature comforts. However, these efforts and control have certainly created a situation where growth is slower. We've seen the expected rebound after COVID[-19] be not as great as anticipated. We've seen this additional control over firms and also the rating of firms, including foreign firms, leading to exits. That adds to the already underway process of diversification of main foreign firms that we're having, which then tempers the growth in the PRC, making things like youth unemployment worse, making issues like the effects of a mature economy more pronounced. What this means then is a question of how much, internally, how much growth is actually needed to provide for the PRC’s increasing security needs.

To have a lot of surveillance, all that costs money, to have people monitor. So there's a question of how much they’re devoting away from your economy to sustain all this other stuff, and at what point, even without the population feeling particularly upset, do you have a severe discount on what you're able to do with the struggling economy and all that?

How this relates to the outside is I think many states in Southeast Asia, less so Northeast Asia, haven't quite wrapped their heads around this. They still see the PRC, which I think to some degree is correct, as a huge market, as a lot of opportunity. But those heady years of the nineties, 2000s, and 2010s—that's not going to be around anymore. China is focused more on internal circulation; once they export, it doesn't want to import so much.

For those states that don't just do commodities, they may have to realize that the model that they had expected, where essentially you had American, Japanese, European capital and technology come in, you manufacture some components that you send to China for assembly or assemble stuff coming out from China and send it, and all this would go into the world market. That model may not be operating in the same way anymore, or there has to be some sort of recalibration.

Of course, there's the U.S. friend-shoring, onshoring, but that's a slightly separate issue. But why this is important is because the space in which regional states have to operate is very much reduced. So there needs to be some rethinking, although I don't think it's completely all bad news. One of the things that's also happening, as I mentioned earlier, is this diversification.

Economies in Southeast Asia have become recipients of investment that might have gone to the PRC, at least some of it. Vietnam to some degree, Thailand, and Indonesia. It's a bit of a mixed picture. There are opportunities to be had. However, there are also these issues of concern that I don't think have been properly addressed. There's still this belief that the U.S. and the PRC could work out their differences in a fairly short amount of time. I don't think it's realistic or that there can be some happy accommodation.

Northeast Asia is a bit different, though, because of the friction that they've had more directly with the PRC. So whether you're talking about South Korea, Japan, or Taiwan, they've become more wary. They've focused on diversification in a big way. Also, in terms of their own take on security, they look at this increasingly muscular PRC and they tend to be investing in their own military capability a lot more. Alongside the economic stuff, Northeast Asia, they figured that, well, you need to have deterrence in place first and then you can cooperate on top of that. In Southeast Asia, I think there's still a belief that there can be some middle ground that they can wade through despite the changing circumstances.

Eleanor M. Albert: I want to stay in the international realm, but more on a conceptual level. Xi Jinping has also developed this Global Security Initiative that was first announced at the Boao Forum in spring 2022. China then issued a concept paper about it in February of this year [2023]. I wanted to get both of your takes on what this initiative actually is, how it relates to this securitization, and how it serves as a link of China's domestic security to the international security environment.

Ja-Ian Chong: The Global Security Initiative, it lays out a pretty comprehensive view, a high-level global view, of where China wants to create a secure environment for itself. That's actually a longstanding theme since the late 1970s where China wants a benign foreign environment. But I think what is less clear and perhaps creates some cause for concern is what that means for how far the PRC’s going to push, what that means for friction with the U.S. and others. That lack of detail is a little bit concerning.

With the previous Belt and Road Initiative, these things get filled out along the way, but to not have more stable expectations means that it's more difficult to plan yourself to make the calibrations that you need. It's funny because there's general overall praise and acceptance of the Global Security Initiative, but a lot of that, at least for Southeast Asia, is because no one wants to get the wrong side of Xi. You say all the nice things, but you do wring your hands behind your back and wonder what is coming and what the implications are for the already intensifying U.S.-PRC rivalry.

Eleanor M. Albert: Dennis, when you look at the GSI, what would you say the hallmarks of that are? Does it map onto this comprehensive national security concept, but take [it] into an international setting with more flexibility? What is your take on this?

Dennis Wilder: Taking it from an American, maybe Western look at this, we have always considered ourselves exceptional. We are “the city on the hill,” we call ourselves. We created the model democracy 250 years ago, and we've quite obviously tried to export it. When I worked in the White House, we had the [George W.] Bush Freedom agenda. We were going to change Iraq, we were going to change Afghanistan, because it was the right thing. It was the right thing for these people. We had the model, and if they only took up the model, they would live well.

Well, what's interesting in the GSI is Xi Jinping is putting forward the exceptional Chinese model to the Global South. If you look at the GSI and the Global Civilizational Initiative (GCI), what he talks about is 5,000 years of continuous society, continuous government—a combination, which is fascinating, that would make Mao turn in his grave, of Confucianism with communism. They even have something on Chinese television today, a series where Marx meets Confucius and has this dialogue with him. But the serious part of this is China is now saying, “We have a model that you can follow in the Global South that is different from the Western liberalism, and we will show you how to do this. We'll give you the tools.”

For example, Xi Jinping is talking about police forces and providing Chinese police to Pacific Island states and to other places to teach them how to do policing the way the Chinese do policing. And then, of course, there's a whole surveillance system. China not only has the manner of doing this, but they have all the equipment. So you can get your equipment from China; you can learn how to create a surveillance state. The beauty of this for many Global South leaders is China's not going to interfere in your human rights situation. China is going to be a partner that doesn't demand in that sense.

Now there, I think that's a little naive because there are going to be other demands. China wants influence, but I think particularly in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, this is having some resonance. And China is not inattentive to the Global South. This Global Security Initiative and then the new foreign affairs law of China, all of this is part of a push. Now, how successful this will be, not sure, but it's definitely part of Xi Jinping's philosophy and how he's going to fight back against the West.

Ja-Ian Chong: The point about PRC exceptionalism, it depends on where you sit politically in various parts of the world, including in parts of Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, and Latin America. I suppose if you are very interested in pushing back against what you see as the vestiges of colonialism or the Cold War and all that. Sure, you'd be very taken by this narrative that is anti-Western. If think if you want to resist that kind of stuff, absolutely, you find the attraction. If you don't want your human rights or your political system questioned, whether it is by outsiders or more importantly by people domestically; you want the tools to control them. That's all very effective, the PRC push.

However, on the point of exceptionalism, in some respects, places that have had more recent colonial histories will also recall that this claim to exceptionalism and having a special sauce, if you will, to dealing with problems. People have heard it before, whether this is the white man's burden, whether this is mission civilisatrice, or this is the city on the hill stuff, because we do have to remember that the U.S. was a colonial power in Southeast Asia and the Philippines, for instance, and during the Cold War, we've heard the whole socialist paradise stuff… Every major power likes to paint themselves as exceptionally virtuous and somehow having a secret to success that I suppose they think have some claim to becoming a major power.

So more importantly on the side of the PRC, a lot of the language that comes out of the CCP and PRC today sounds remarkably like what Imperial Japan was putting out in the 1930s, right down to this whole Asia for Asians business, which I think for many of us in Southeast Asia, when you hear that, you immediately draw back. There was a group that tried to sell that some decades ago. It didn't work so well for anybody. So when the PRC sells that, there is some caution, but that's tempered by the fact that, okay, if there's going to be money or resources and all that coming, yeah, sure, you take it for what it's worth. You don't have to deny it. But there is I think a sense of caution, but that admittedly varies depending on where in the world you are. But I think one view is the PRC is just like any other major power despite, or maybe because of, your claims to exceptionalism.

It's quite interesting because one of the things that Xi Jinping has reemphasized under his rule is this idea of being Chinese and exceptional because that also is a pitch to ethnic Chinese communities overseas. You see this in the revamping of the religious affairs and the overseas Chinese affairs offices and putting them under the United Front. They've always been there and they've always had a role in terms of internal control, but externally, one of the things that they used to do under Deng, and Jiang, and Hu was they tried to get people into invest in China. But that's become more political and security[-related] already in the sense that now it's about trying to reach out and try to shape diaspora views and maybe get them to put pressure on their home governments.

Sometimes it is about trying to shape policy, sometimes it's about trying to buy into political processes. You could look at it as a form of lobbying, but where it's different is the gray areas, the willingness to go into areas that are perhaps more questionable in terms of affecting the political process overseas, which runs up against this longstanding PRC claim that they don't involve themselves in domestic affairs overseas. Historically they did, especially during the Cultural Revolution, but this seems to be a refresh on some of those older mechanisms, which in Southeast Asia is also a matter of concern because we have diverse populations. There is some history of intercommunal tension and even violence, and played wrongly as indeed we saw during the Cultural Revolution, this could lead to backlash against certain Chinese communities. This could lead to quite a lot of unhappiness where the PRC can just withdraw, but people who live in the region and are from the region cannot escape from.

Dennis Wilder: It's really a great point that Ian's making. One of the things we've seen in the last decade is the creation of Chinese police stations overseas, and at their height there apparently were 45 of them in 39 countries. I'm not sure people understand that these police stations were really focused on the ethnic Chinese communities, that they were there to police those communities, to watch for anti-Chinese activities in those communities, to have the political battle with Taiwan play out in these circumstances. And then, of course, to try and get people back to China who had committed crimes and other things. It's this extraterritoriality that is so interesting about it and this belief that anyone who is Han by ethnic group is fair game for the Chinese system, which is a very dangerous concept, and I think speaks to what Ian's talking about in Southeast Asia.

Eleanor M. Albert: I was going to add was that I think it's fascinating that conceptually diaspora communities live, as Ian was saying, in this gray zone that the Chinese are increasingly defining as part of what I think they would say is a more internal purview, even if the sovereign place where they are located is not within mainland China…

Ja-Ian Chong: It's not just that—it's people who live in these places may not have PRC citizenship. Sometimes that discussion needs to be a little bit more precise, where ethnicity doesn't mean that you are a PRC citizen. I'm ethnic Chinese. My family have never been PRC citizens because they left before the PRC was created. There is sometimes a blurring of lines that is based on this sense of ethnonationalism, that if you are of a certain ethnicity, Han ethnicity, the PRC has or you should have some special affinity or sense of loyalty towards it, where that doesn’t really travel and it really creates a lot of friction and contestation for ethnic Chinese communities, including for newer migrants. And also a situation where ethnic Chinese communities within the minority are sometimes viewed with suspicion in their host country. That creates a whole series of problems that I suppose is an externality of the securitization of ethnicity that the Xi leadership has been pushing.

Eleanor M. Albert: That's great. I want to conclude with the fact that we're all based in university settings and ask a bit about what the impact of this security focus has had on academics and the types of exchanges that are able to take place. Is this an area where people-to-people ties can still ground our knowledge, or is that increasingly fraught?

Dennis Wilder: This affects the American academic community probably more than any other around the world, at least initially. We have been blocked, for example, from being able to use the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database. Now, this is the best research tool available for scholars around the world to look at Chinese journals and other academic work in China. Our universities have been taken offline in the United States; none of them have access to it anymore. That has a chilling effect on research because your academics want to do research with original Chinese sources.

Moreover, with the counter espionage law and the way it is so broadly written, American academics are worried that just going to China and interviewing people and taking that information out of China can be considered spying and looking at Chinese materials. Traditionally, American researchers would go and copy materials at libraries and other places and bring them home to work with. Well, what if the Chinese border security sees these materials in your luggage? Are they going to say you're trying to take Chinese secrets out of the country? So there is a curious thing today where one part of the Chinese system is telling us, “Come back. Students, come back; researchers, come back. Let's reestablish the links between our universities.” And on the other hand, you have all of these things that push in the other direction that tell American scholars, “I'm not sure you want to go back.”

Frankly, we only have 350 American students in China right now. I'm not sure we're going to get up to 10,000 or 12,000 again, because what I hear from students is they're worried about this change in China. They don't want to go behind the firewall and not have any means of communicating on social media. So there is this contradiction in Chinese policy today that I don't think has been worked out where the security services have been given their head. They've been allowed to really take off, and yet the system keeps telling us they want to reestablish.

Eleanor M. Albert: I would also presume that it is an increasingly challenging position for Chinese academics to be in as well because they, I'm sure, want to maintain the ties and build ties. They are in perhaps a more dangerous realm because they don't necessarily know where the boundaries are, and that can lead to either stagnation or force risk-taking, which might put them in hot water. I'm curious about from the Singapore and broader Southeast Asian perspective, if some of these concerns that Dennis talked about are similar or different?

Ja-Ian Chong: I would say they're broadly similar. On one level, I think PRC interlocutors, they've become more cautious, especially if they're in country. Sometimes you get people out and [in an] environment where they feel safe enough. You can still have a pretty candid conversation, especially if you have known them for a while. Now, that's one aspect.

The other, though, is there's a sense that even when you are able to speak with people, it seems that the PRC system has closed in on itself a lot more. So people tend not to have the kind of access that they used to be able to. Even if you're able to go to the PRC and get a feel for the general environment, the payoff from engaging with people has diminished.

The CNKI that Dennis had mentioned, we're pretty much blocked from that too. You can see it; you can't pull out that many articles or even any. That's become an issue in terms of some of the laws, especially the data protection law, how we do research now—in fact, my university is trying to grapple with this—because anything that touches on individuals in the PRC, that data, the PRC has oversight. So you essentially have to work through some university or hire some company to do the research for you in China, to collect data. It's not clear whether you will be able to access the raw data, which means doing some of the research is more difficult. That pertains to ethnographic research, it pertains to archival research, library research, potentially if it has anything to do with individuals, and of course any effort to do any surveying.

Those are all concerns, and that adds onto the challenge already that I face. I use a lot of documentary research. Archives that I used to go to, while I understand that they're still open, those collections aren't anymore. And then there is also the issue of concerns of if you go, whether you're in trouble with the law, whether you can take stuff out. So the question is: How far the reach goes? It creates a lot of apprehension. You have to ask yourself what kind of payoff you get from going to do engagement in the PRC. What I've ended up doing is to look at PRC actions outside its borders, where things are still more observable, and the PRC can't control as much.

All this leads to is a situation that, whether you are in the United States or anywhere else, the ability to understand the PRC has decreased, and that's not coming back anytime soon. I think also the PRC's willingness or ability to engage in good faith, academic exchange, has also been reduced. That also limits [to] what the PRC, apart from certain parts of the system, can understand of the outside world.

Eleanor M. Albert: Wonderful. I want to leave the floor open for any last thoughts.

Dennis Wilder: I would just add, Eleanor, on the business side, I think it's very important to understand that all of what we've been talking about is really affecting American and other foreign investors. The exit ban on businesspeople has a chilling effect. There has been this crazy situation for foreign companies where they've been told they can't exit their data from China. Now, if you're a major corporation, this is taking the lifeblood out of your system. You have got to be able to know what your inventories in China are, your personnel records in China, all of this. There has actually been a ban on data exfiltration by these companies and trying to get an answer from the Chinese government as to what you can take out and not take out.

There was a recent article in the South China Morning Post by a former Chinese journalist, who worked for the [Washington] Post for many years, who said foreign investors are exiting China at a trickle, but it will soon become a river unless Beijing takes immediate and substantive action to reassure. And I think that is very real. 

Ja-Ian Chong: What I would add is, there's been a lot of criticism, some of it perhaps well-placed, about the U.S. and its allies doing onshoring and friend-shoring, but it's not just the U.S. and its allies doing that. The PRC side is doing pretty similar things, maybe even to an even greater extent. So what that means, if you are a Southeast Asian economy and traditionally you've benefited from this being at the nexus of commercial and other kinds of convergences between the PRC and others, as that convergence diminishes, the old way of doing business, of doing research, is going away and it's not clear where you should be shifting to. That creates a lot of uncertainty and concern.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of Georgetown University.

Outro

The U.S.-China Nexus is created, produced, and edited by me, Eleanor M. Albert. Our music is from Universal Production Music. Special thanks to Shimeng Tong, Tuoya Wulan, and Amy Vander Vliet. For more initiative programming, videos, and links to events, visit our website at uschinadialogue.georgetown.edu. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.