This week on the Sinica Podcast, Kaiser and Jeremy speak with Samm Sacks, Cybersecurity Policy and Chinese Digital Economy Fellow at New America, and Paul Triolo, Geotechnology Practice Head at the Eurasia Group. The two are among the best positioned to discuss the implications of the shocking arrest of Huawei CFO Mèng Wǎnzhōu 孟晚舟 in Vancouver on December 1. The discussion focuses primarily on technological and national security aspects of the clash between Washington and Beijing, how Meng’s arrest fits into that clash, and the realities of fragmentation in the global telecommunications industry.
What to listen for on this week’s Sinica Podcast:
19:53: China’s new Cybersecurity Law was a cause of concern for MNCs and tech specialists alike. Samm elaborates on specific actions taken by the Chinese government: “If you look at the enforcement actions that have been taken against that law so far, the vast majority of them are aimed at Chinese companies. Really, they haven’t implemented it as much on foreign companies…and there are things like content violations…domestic cybersecurity issues. I think a lot of these fears are being bundled up together and creating this larger tech fear.”
23:03: During a recent visit to Zhejiang University, Paul and Samm spoke with a professor who wrote a book on Huawei’s corporate culture and described it as such: “It’s kind of like a car going 60 miles an hour on the highway and changing a tire at the same time.”
28:13: The extent to which Huawei can push back against the government and the degree to which Beijing is able to strong-arm private companies under China’s Internet Security Law remain largely opaque. However, gaining the trust of the international community has proved to be a steep uphill battle for Huawei: “Huawei is a global company, operating in 170 countries. If it became clear that Huawei was simply an arm of the Chinese government and was doing Beijing’s bidding at every turn, it wouldn’t be able to operate as a global company. The problem here is that the company is forced to prove a negative.”
38:27: Paul speaks about the globalization of supply chains: “…the problem is, for 30 years, companies have been told, ‘Optimize your supply chains and go to places like China,’ where there has been cheaper labor. But now it’s really more about skilled labor, not about cheaper labor — it’s about skilled engineers. Foxconn can build a facility to build iPhones in Zhejiang and easily find 30,000 engineers to staff it up, but when it goes to Wisconsin, it has a lot of problems.”
Recommendations:
Jeremy: Dr. Seuss, You’re Only Old Once!: A Book for Obsolete Children, a fun story of aging and falling apart.
Samm: The Chilling Adventure of Sabrina, the Netflix reboot of the classic TV series Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.
Paul: A close read of the book AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, by Kai-Fu Lee 李开复.
Kaiser: “The Huawei fallout leaves companies and countries with an impossible choice,” a Washington Post op-ed by Scott Moore.
Xiong'an: Techno-natural utopia or authoritarian folly?
Earth Day episode: How can the U.S. and China cooperate on climate in this era of competition?
Legendary CNN reporter Mike Chinoy on his book and documentary series "Assignment China"
As the U.S. and China part ways, the Global South finds its own path, with Kishore Mahbubani
Sinica at the Association for Asian Studies Conference, Boston 2023: Capsule interviews
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The Xi-Putin meetings, with Maria Repnikova
The expansion of China's administrative state during COVID, with Yale Law's Taisu Zhang
Jude Blanchette on the Select Committee and the American moral panic over China
Inside Tencent's "Influence Empire," with Bloomberg's Lulu Chen
China and the electric vehicle battery supply chain, with Henry Sanderson
China and the Ukraine War one year after the invasion, with Evan Feigenbaum and Alexander Gabuev
Sinostan: Raffaello Pantucci on China's inadvertent empire in Central Asia
CSIS analyst Gerard DiPippo deflates the balloon hype and brings the discussion back to earth
Live in New York City with veteran China journalist Ian Johnson
Is China's demography China's destiny? A chat with former World Bank economist Bert Hofman
A firsthand view of China's chaotic COVID re-opening, with Deborah Seligsohn
Talking China on TikTok with The China Project's Susan St. Denis
The Sinica Network presents Strangers in China S3 Episode 1
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