The China Questions 2 - Transcript

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Announcer: This it the Nordic Asia Podcast.

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JYW: Welcome to Northeast Asia Podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region. My name is Julie Yu-Wen Chen, professor of Chinese Studies at University of Helsinki, Finland. Join me today to talk about Harvard University Press’ new book “The China Question 2: Critical Insights into the US-China Relations” is Maria Adele Carrai from New York University, Shanghai. She is assistant professor of Global China Studies at NYU Shanghai. She specializes in history of international law in East Asia and she is actually also author of another book. The book is called “Sovereignty in China: A Genealogy of a Concept since 1840”. And I think she can tell you a bit more about her exciting new website that will come out very soon as well. Well, but you know, let us focus on the book, the Harvard University Book. So she edited this book with Jennifer Rudolph and Michael Szonyi, two very established scholars based in the United States. Today she will talk on behalf of these two editors as well as authors of this book. So I understand that this book is actually the second book. That's why it's called The China Question 2. Perhaps Adele can tell us a bit more about the first book. So I understand the first book, The China Question, really was a success and it offered a lot of new insight from top China experts explaining key issues shaping today's US and China relations. So I'm really wondering, why there is a second book. Adele will explain to us. You're welcome. Adele, could you briefly introduce yourself and then we can go into the details of your book?

MAC: Thank you so much, Julie, for having me here today. I think I haven't really too much to add about my intro. So I'm an assistant professor in Global China Studies at New York University Shanghai and have broad interest in China, International Relations, international law. Today is the official day of the launch of our research initiative called Mapping Global China with the team of NYU Shanghai people. And the goal of the project is to provide data, the most comprehensive data set of Chinese overseas investment. We collected a lot of different projects data and merged them. We had some team members that collected further data and the results are available online. I'm happy to share also the name of the website that is mapglobalchina.com.

JYW: So mapglobalchina.com that is the new website that is just launched by Adele and her colleagues. But now we go back to the book, right? Could you tell us a bit about the background of creating this book? Maybe a bit like the story behind the scenes?

MAC: As you mentioned, The China Question 1 was edited by my other co-editor Jennifer Rudolph and Michael Szonyi and it was about critical insights about China. We like very much the format of asking a question and then having a short essay. We had this idea of using the same format of The China Question  1 that was very successful and tackle a different issue, US-China relations. When we started thinking about the book was 2020, during the pandemic. And of course, back then, as now, the relationship between US and China was very tense and we felt that the public, the general public, didn't really have the necessary understanding and information. The debate available was very polarized and actually it was a bipartisan consensus about the China threat. But we wanted to bring in academics and distil their knowledge for the broader public. That's how it started. And that was really the goal of making sure that the public was better informed about this complex relationship between US and China and making the public understand that China is not a monolith but is very complex. The disengagement is not the only option. There are many different options for the relationship between US and China.

JYW: Thank you for the great efforts. Indeed, this is a really a hurdle that many scholars try to overcome. Well, you mentioned the first book and the second book. So I guess the issue cover in these two books are not exactly the same. Is that how it differs?

MAC: The key difference, of course, is the theme, the topic on US-China relations. The China Question 2 specifically covers US-China relations. And another difference is that we wanted to broaden the pool of authors. The China Question 1 was very much centered around Harvard Fairbank Center. The author that wrote the contributions were from Harvard University. This time around, we have a more diverse pool of scholars and we were not limited to scholars based at Harvard University, but we really tried to get the best leading scholars dealing with certain issues and themes.

JYW: So it's wider in terms of the authorship and also the themes that are covered. Could you give us maybe one or two examples of the known scholars in the book?

MAC: They're all well-known scholars. There also emerging scholars and again, the various pool of authors. For instance, John Pomfret, Elizabeth Economy, Wang Gungwu, Victor Shih etc. I mean so many. I guess, like I can just list the names. There is Susan A. Thornton. They're all really the who's who of US-China relationship. Even those that are not yet senior scholars, the more junior one, they are on the right track to become stellar and famous scholars in the future.

JYW: I do notice there are more junior scholars. So it's nice to have a well mixture of the different kind of scholars. I have had a chance to read some chapters of this book. These are more like smaller essays. I wonder if I can ask some questions about perhaps 3 chapters. There's one chapter that talks about China's role in the big tech regulation. I wonder if you can tell us some big take away from this important chapter.

MAC: The chapter was written by Winston, Ma and the title of the chapter, the question is framed as a question “has China positioned itself as a leader in big tech regulation?” Winston goes against the shared wisdom about China. There is this belief that China advances in artificial intelligence relies on the fact that is unregulated and so this big tech can do whatever they want. However, that's not the case, as the author proves by discussing all the new regulations that came about. And the last personal information protection law that came out in 2021 is in a way the Chinese response to the European Union General Data Protection Regulation. Winston presents a much more nuanced picture of China with regard to big tech regulations. And also he mentioned at the end how US and China align right now in terms of trying to tame this big tech. He argues that US and China could collaborate to develop a regulatory framework on big tech. Together with environmental issues is one of those big global challenges where the US and China could and should come together despite all their animosities between the two and that this will also help if they come together and they establish a regulatory framework. This will help ensure that the new technology will work for the good of ordinary people and that we do not lose the momentum for this global technological development.

JYW: Yes, I personally find this chapter also very revealing because it actually indicates that in the United States, development in this regard is a bit slow about personal information protection. So I learned a lot. It's true. I think this is common good beyond the countries. So importantly, we can see there's a area where US and China can definitely cooperate.

MAC: Exactly. And it's actually very important for them to collaborate right now and it's also Biden's top priority right now. So they really align in this issue. There are still matter which both China and the US can collaborate.

JYW: It seems that all the book chapters are all organized in a way that they start with a question and then the others have to answer.

MAC: I should have addressed that before when you asked me about the reasons for this book. We found it very useful as a format and this is the same format of the China Question 1, having one question that the general public is interested in and then having an academic that has spent decades maybe doing research on that theme. And how can this author transmit this knowledge in 2000 words and something that is easy to read for the general audience?

JYW: It's a good exercise, like for writing.

MAC: I think this is a very good exercise, and I think it's an exercise that authors should do more often. Try to speak to also to the broader public, engage the broader public, especially for issues related to US-China relations that it's so important to have any informed conversation, and academics, I think, should become more public intellectual in this context.

JYW: Here comes another chapter, another question and it's quite big and I think everybody wants to know the answer. Is China a national security challenge to the US?  

MAC: Yeah, so this is a chapter written by Oriana Skylar Mastro. She looks at the direct and indirect ways in which PRC poses a threat to US national security. And what is interesting is that she discusses at the very beginning, overall, the Chinese influence over us, it's negative, it's malign. However, there is not really a directly a military threat, at least domestically. And China has used mostly economic and political tools rather than military or nuclear tools to influence the US. Another very interesting point is that the degree of China threat depends on how the US defines its national interest and its national security. And so this has not been fixed and has evolved from a more defensive to be much broader.

So these are the two important points I think that the chapter makes. The author argues that China has not military capability or desire to invade or occupy the United States territory. But it can still disrupt domestic institutions and reduce the freedom of actions of U.S. citizens, governments and businesses. And this can be done through unconventional means such as cyber, counter space and nuclear weapons in case of war times. But also through coercive activities such as political interference and espionage. And this, for instance, happened in 2020 during Biden campaign. Oriana mentioned how Microsoft detected Chinese attempts to hack Biden campaign. But also, I think there are other issues that she mentioned, like how China has used economic coercion to kind of reduce US influence abroad, like when it punished the NBA (player) for speaking about human rights. And this limits partly the right of free speech. This is very important for U.S. National interests and security in some ways.

Another aspect that she discussed is how China is not necessarily again a conventional military threat to US homeland, but this is different for American bases in Asia. the US has over 100,000 military personnel stationed in Asia, and China can threaten the life even of these people through conventional military means and non-conventional ones. And then in other big issues is of course all the territorial disputes that China has with Japan and the Philippines to which US is very is historically attached. But also the hot hot question is of course Taiwan that could bring US and China into a hot war. So she warns us about this issues, these threats and future challenges.

JYW: I notice there's another chapter which is kind of unique in my view. Because it focuses a lot on literature and writing. Is it on purpose? You want to have a literature chapter?

MAC: Yes, and I'm so glad that we had also a literature chapter. I think the author did a terrific job in making literature relevant in US-China relations. Why that? Because he discusses like 4 post-Mao leading writers, Wang Anyi, Mo Yan, Yu Hua, and Liu Zhenyun. Basically he argues that their work in a way is a mirror of a nation and tells us a bit more about what Chinese really think. Especially at a time when the political culture now in China tries really to homogenize and censor what people thinks. And so these authors that are discussed by Zhang Xudong bringing about the touch of realit. I want to actually read one little passage because I think he's also a great writer. I cannot really reuse the same language, just to give a sense. And I think readers should really also try and read this chapter which Zhang illuminated how Chinese writers, with “their freedom, irreverence, and subversiveness undermine the suffocating (self-)censorship, stifling conformism and the formulaic media coverage. Like a spinning gyro rotating on an invisible axis, their work points to an aesthetically determined North Star, constant and free-standing, all the while attentive to and capable of absorbing the sound and fury, sighs, and laughter around this single-minded movement” (Zhang, page 393). So I think this is just very beautiful and it really brings our attention to the people, the struggle of people, the real life of Chinese people that is very different from what media coverage provides. A lot of their works are fantastic. It's just beautiful and it's true. It's human, basically. That's what unifies the Chinese, American, Italian, whatever our human nature and our struggle, kind of trying to find meanings in this complex world.

JYW: I guess this also adds some kind of cross-disciplinary taste to this book. Thank you so much for introducing those chapters. Well, you kind of mentioned already that you are Italian, right? So I'm just very curious that being a European or Italian working in the United States, you know, looking at the politics now, do you see any difference or similarities between Americans and Europeans in general or Italians more specifically when it comes to China?

MAC: Of course we have different histories behind us and Italy is a small country and European Union tries to be a new normative power globally, but of course it's kind of in between this. The big power of China and the US from the official point of view, the European Union has increasingly aligned with the United States about the sense that China is a threat, is an existential threat to our values, to the way we are. But then, of course, there are many issues in unifying European countries because each country has its own interests, economic interests in maintaining and preserving a certain relationship with China. And so I don't know how this echoes the US national security statements. China being a threat to the United States and to Western values would really find any substance on the ground. There's a lot of concern in Europe about China and they try to unify to create a unified strategy to tackle China, this huge power that basically is present. Everywhere and there's a lot of work going on, a lot of interest in China. I think that the European Union could serve as a middleman in a way between US and China. But I don't know whether it would be successful in doing that because the EU is aligning more and more the with the US.

JYW: Yeah, and particularly after the Ukrainian war, I think it's even so.

MAC: Yeah, Ukraine. The pandemic and the Ukraine War changed further. So there was this awakening of European Union about, Oh my God, there's China. China is everywhere. We need to have a strategy, we need to redefine our relationship with China. The pandemic exposed our reliance on China or the supply chain and now there is a lot of debate about diversification in the European Union. So to limit our over-reliance on China to production and basically anything even. The energy, the green energy, we totally depend on China, but also then the Ukraine world where Xi Jinping has basically not condemned Russian invasion of Ukraine. And then this was also another awakening for the European Union. But even within European Union, we think that the European Union is something unified, but it's far from it. Even in Italy you have a lot of people that supported Russia and they still do not condemn Russian actions.

JYW: Italy is an interesting case itself, right? Oh well, we're not going into the Italian politics. We have to come back to our book. So I'm still going to talk about this new book, The China Question 2. Well, the book is written in English, so your audience is American, perhaps also Western audience, whoever can read English. But how about Chinese?

MAC: That's partly, I wouldn't say a limitation, but like that's how we decided the book to be and the target readership is American, not even European. I mean it can be European, but we really thought this book for an American educated public that wants to learn more about US-China relations and that we hope that this format will be used in a new book. Maybe we would love that some Chinese will do China Question 3 or 4, looking at US-China relations for a Chinese public. The China Question One was translated in Chinese. And so we also hope that this book might be translated into Chinese.

JYW: Let me repeat again about this new book. It's called The China Question 2: Critical Insights into US-China relations. It's published in 2022 by Harvard University Press and a bit of summary of this book. So it's basically talking about US-China relations and we should move away from this kind of zero-sum thinking and to see where the area we might have conflict, but also areas where we might actually have cooperation between the US and China.

Thank you very much, Adele for sharing your insights with us. You have been listening to the Nordic Asia Podcast with me, Julie Yu-Wen Chen and Maria Adele Carrai from New York University Shanghai. Her co-edited book, The China Question 2: Critical Insights Into the US-China Relations is published by Harvard University this year in 2022.

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