Talks on China

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?

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?

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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:

• How reliant the strategic partnership is on the personal relationship between Putin and Xi
• How the invasion of Ukraine has been portrayed in Chinese and Russian media
• Whether Russia can accept being the junior partner in the relationship
• How the West's response to the invasion will shape China's thinking on Taiwan

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 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.

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.

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.

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's publication 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.

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. 

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?

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? 

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.

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.