Managing Editor Drew Griffin interviews Emily de La Bruyere and Nate Picarsic, Founders of Radar Lock Research; As they discuss their recent article on the growing threat of Chinese power and the strategy behind China’s economic and political drive for cultural influence.

Drew Griffin is managing editor of Providence.

Emily de La Bruyere and Nate Picarsic are founders of Radar Lock Research.

Kirkland An produced this episode.

Rough Transcript

Drew Griffin
Welcome to the ProvCast, a regular podcast at Providence a Journal of Christianity and Global Affairs. I’m managing editor Drew Griffin. While D.C. is obsessed with the drama of Syria and the fear over impeachment. The rest of America has been puzzled by an alarming number of stories regarding China and Chinese infiltration and everything from Hollywood to the NBA. All of this while protests continue in Hong Kong, where the 7 million residents there of that island vie for some measure of freedom. As Chinese…the Chinese government begins to tighten its grip on life there to equip us here at Providence and on the ProvCast to talk about these complex issues. I’m happy to welcome Emily de La Bruyere and Nate Picarsic. They are the co-founders of Radar Lock, which is a research organization that uses data-driven analysis. To understand the techno-economic dynamics and world affairs, there’s a lot to unpack there…a lot of hyphenated words. They support a number of range of private and public sector actors trying to look at the competitive environments so that they can craft responsive strategies. Their focus and much of their writing for outlets like the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg, and Providence has been China and the growing threat that China poses to the international community. So Nate, Emily, thank you for being here. 

Emily de La Bruyere
Thank you for having us. 

Nate Picarsic
Thank you. 

Drew Griffin
So you write in a piece that we published at providencemag.com, on China and the Great Network Power, and you start kind of in the particular, like I did, talking about just the things that America is kind of obsessed with when they think of China. And you know, we talked about Hollywood, we talked about the NBA, and China’s efforts to kind of muzzle criticism throughout the culture. But then there are also the official kind of ways that we’re focusing on China in terms of Huawei, and 5G, and espionage the American government is beginning to kind of wake up to, but then you back out and say, you know, even with all of that focus, we’re not really seeing the bigger picture and the bigger threat regarding China. So help us then unpack what that threat really looks like, what are we missing?

Nate Picarsic
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. I think that the punchline here is that the scope of competitive domains, you’ve outlined underscores that the Chinese take a holistic approach to competing with the United States. They adapt asymmetric means to come at us in every potential theater of competition.

Emily de La Bruyere
And that’s big in two different directions. It’s big, first of all, for the sheer scale of this threat, that China is not weaponizing something so that in the military domain, they might have an advantage, or cracking down on the NBA so that in a narrative domain, they have an advantage. They’re competing in every form of exchange that we have, for the sake of what they see is a zero-sum offensive. And that covers trade, it coverage narrative, it covers diplomacy, it covers politics, that covers the domains that we have historically seen as competitive ones, as well as those that we see as cooperative ones. And the other way this is big is in the scope of their approach. They’re competing in a different way. It’s not just that with their telecommunications equipment, they’re going to be able to spy on us. It’s that they intend to build a new infrastructure for how the world works based on their control of information and over channels, in which they have absolute control over the movement of resources. And that’s way bigger than pulling spyware out of the Huawei systems. It’s about setting the fundamental rules of the world.

Drew Griffin
So you have a line in the piece that you co-authored that says “Beijing does not want to rise in the world, it wants to reshape it. And the US system is ill-equipped to notice, let alone respond.” So flesh that out…what are we missing, right?…If the United States…If it’s not just about Huawei? It’s what about the bigger picture here are maybe the United States is not getting?

Nate Picarsic
I think that dates back to the fundamental miscalculus that we had, that cooperation and engagement would produce a liberal democracy. So we cooperate in the economic sphere and we assume that will lead to an influence that changes the political and neuters the military. What we misunderstood was that the Chinese state from the period of initial engagement has had a plan…has approached in asymmetric fashion to ultimately seize advantage wherever they can and overtake us in the sort of fundamental rule-setting and platform forming modes of competition.

Emily de La Bruyere
And we’re ill-equipped to answer that precisely because it covers so many domains and operates according to a new rubric. So like A, this isn’t the kind of metric we’re looking for. But also, I go to the US system and I say Huawei is bad, and you whack them all and tap down on Huawei. And then the next day, I go to you and say, well, the rules, China’s made sure the case for the postal system internationally, those are pretty unfair, and you whack them all go and try to change the postal union rules. But what you’re not seeing is that China is connecting their telecommunications and the postal service onto some larger centralized system that’s out there to bid for, again, this control, this dominance over movement, and we’re a siloed system, we’re fragmented, and we respond to immediate threats. None of those are sufficient to address something that is holistic, and that is gradual, and that works in a different way.

Drew Griffin
And all of this began really in. I mean, it began with kind of Chinese engagement in the world when it began to kind of open up in the 80s and open up its industry, but a lot of this kind of holistic framework and vision and the way it’s even constructed, it began around probably what you say in 1999 when there was the beginning of what you call the military-civilian fusion, right? That there’s a tie between the military apparatus, and then the civilian kind of commercial apparatus, and there’s really no daylight between them. And so, talk a little bit about how, you know, we think when we’re dealing with a Chinese company, or I say, I own a company here in the United States, and I go, and I trade with them that this is a private industry or a private company, someone who’s investing in me, I’m investing in them, I’m selling my products. But in essence, really, you are dealing with the Communist Party of China, right? I mean, that there’s no difference. Talk a little bit about that fusion.

Nate Picarsic
Yeah, so I think that the military civil fusion stands out is a core example of the centralized fashion that the Chinese state applies to both its planning but also its action and its behavior. So it’s…if you peel back any number of layers, you find more and more relationships and connections between the state and the quasi-private sector, which speaks to the asymmetric way in which the Chinese actors can seize on our fragmented state. So, the quasi-private Chinese actor has, you know, clear communication to the central government has its lending ruled then governed by the central government, which guides its financial planning, and it engages with a US private sector actor who is fragmented, detached from central government planning, is not guided by an industrial message the way that the Chinese actor is, which will tease up these other asymmetries so the difference between long-term and short-term visions, the US player can seize…you know…a quarterly gain by gaining access to the Chinese market. And the Chinese player is given preferential lending by the state and is able to take a short-term gain to be positioned for long-term gain. And this is sort of the playbook they follow for most all of intellectual property theft and sort of forced technology transfer within China.

Drew Griffin
And this isn’t new, right? I mean, this started even in the 80s. If you look at the automobile industry and opening up, you guys write about that as well. I mean, talk a little bit about the history behind this methodology of how they’ve been developing and really hoodwinking us. I think hoodwinking the United States and our financial industry.

Emily de La Bruyere
Yeah, there’s this strategy has been consistent and has been explicit, really dating all the way back to the Cold War. And during the Cold War, Chinese sources were talking about how they were getting ready for the time when China would be the one competing for hegemony. And the approach to it has been equally consistent the whole way through. The idea was that there was this international system emerging and it was based on exchange and China because it’s so big, and because it’s so centralized, had the unique ability to tap into that system in a one-sided way. And then having tapped into it in this one sided way to use that in order to propel one single state strategy. And that goes back to military civil fusion, that it’s not just that these companies are guided by the military, it’s that they, and the military, and the state are all working for the same end. And so you see there, there were multiple phases that emerge in the 80s. And first, when China is just starting up, they open up so that foreign investment and resources will come into China. And then the next step, once they’ve incubated a little they start going out and actually inserting themselves into the global system so they can claim leverage and being more aggressive in obtaining resources. And then the next step is what we’re finally waking up to today, which is first, becoming…making sure that everyone else is reliant on them without the reverse and then using that position to set the rules according to which everything works. And that’s China’s standards, which is a strategy in its own right and is a huge pillar of The Network Great Power Strategy.

Drew Griffin
So we’re beginning to see a little bit of that leverage play out in kind of publicly and it’s like that there’s a veil over what they’re doing. And it’s slowly kind of being dropped, right? Or there cracks forming in the wall, you’re beginning to see this strategy as it begins to come to the surface. And so you, you look at the NBA, and you look at Daryl Morey, the comments that he made on Twitter and the NBA then coming back at him and then trying to basically censor him and you have people on ESPN, basically saying, look, you know, you need to just tow the line of whomever pays you or gives your paycheck. And there’s a multibillion dollar investment that China has, and the NBA and NBA sees that and all industries do. There’s just immense financial leverage that China has. So how does that kind of media strategy fit into this bigger picture?

Emily de La Bruyere
So the first thing is one of the really remarkable things about how China goes about this is yes, you ultimately see the cracks, or you see what the strategy is. They’re pretty deliberate about doing that, once they’re sure that their foothold is sufficiently cemented, that they can bear what they’re doing and no one can do anything about it. So we know what made in China 2025 is now because that phase of their strategy is pretty set. They have that foundation, they’re going to go out there and crackdown on the NBA because the NBA is in China’s pocket.

Drew Griffin
And made in China 2025, flesh that out a little bit for us.

Emily de La Bruyere
It’s an industrial policy strategy and China’s end that they published in 2015. That is very clear about trying to create a world in which the critical products are all being produced in China and export globally. And the US has caught on to that in the past few years has not gone to A the fact that it is really no different than what they’ve been doing for the past 50 years, B is already well established, and C is only one step in an evolving one.

Nate Picarsic
I would just underscore on the media strategy, the narrative component. The NBA case is remarkable for laying bare the degree to which the Chinese have co-opted US actors. So they’re able to have the NBA Commissioner say one thing in Chinese and say another thing in English to a different audience. We sort of suspect that co-option is fairly broad and there are ways to measure its effects. If you look at people who raise funds in private equity, or venture capital from Chinese limited partners, they tend to, you know, chime in at critical moments and say nice things about the Chinese state and the Chinese innovative capacity and their room for economic growth. But it’s remarkable to see in this MBA case, just how explicit this co-option has been. And unfortunately, we think that’s a fairly broad dynamic, which goes again to the asymmetric centralized approach of the Chinese state and the holistic means by which they compete.

Emily de La Bruyere
And this is really important, the fact that it’s playing out in narrative and in media, and in what people say, because the Chinese strategy is about information. And it’s about controlling information in the data sense. So Internet of Things, spying, intellectual property, but it’s also about controlling the dissemination of information and the stories that are being told because in our world, that’s what determines how people act, and whether that’s how markets move, or how states perceive other states and therefore, treat them it’s the determinant for national power. And China is well aware of that and also very adept at manipulating the global narrative, as we’re seeing in the NBA case right now.

Drew Griffin
So you’re dancing around a topic that I really want to get into. And that is kind of the inherent morality underneath all of this, and that the morality that’s being advocated for on the part of China’s, you know, vastly different than the United States. And the West, I would say, in general, this is a totalitarian regime that’s horribly oppressive to its own people and controlling, has values that are kind of antithetical to our culture, our way of life, the American way of life…life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, all the things that kind of make us American. But there is this sense and it’s interesting that there is, you know, economics is often just views, all of that is just kind of semantic and just kind of irrelevant. That’s a cultural thing, that’s kind of a maybe a political choice, but it doesn’t necessarily, you know, have any kind of weights to or connect. There’s no connection to what they’re doing economically or doing in commerce, but one of the points you make and this is really one of the reasons why I’m even interested in what you guys write not only because it’s excellent analysis, that’s backed by data and experience. But there’s an element to this that you’re getting at that no one else seems to be getting in that. And that is that the Chinese action is not morally benign, that there’s no element of this that is just…well, this is just dollars and cents, or just economics, that there’s a strategy, there’s a lifestyle, there is a imperialistic kind of mindset that the Chinese have that they want to see a…the global dominance of not just you know, Chinese industry, but kind of the Chinese mindset. And you see that with the Uyghurs education camps and Shenzhen. Which I’d love for you guys to talk maybe a little bit about that. But talk about what you’ve seen in terms, as you’re doing this kind of cold, hard data, which could be, you know, very easy to just make it that, right? It’s just statistics, it’s just numbers but how do those statistics and numbers that data you’re drawing a moral narrative here of what China is doing. So help help us make sense of that a little bit.

Nate Picarsic
Yeah, I think it’s right to emphasize that the fundamental orientation is one that is antithetical to Western, and certainly American values, and the Uyghurs internment camps and Xinjinag stand out as perhaps the most brazen example. But I think it’s still possible for audiences in the West and the United States to view that as a distant, isolated case, and the Chinese certainly will espouse narrative that this is sort of their internal affairs and not something with which we’re allowed to meddle. But if you sort of see the, the overlay with commerce and with business, with emerging technologies being applied in the maintenance and operation of that project within China, that ties pretty closely to the way that they operate their social credit system, which will pervade the entire country. And that itself ties fairly closely to the way in which they’ll attempt to export their standards for the internet of things, the industrial internet of things, and their global data capture project. So if you think that this is some isolated internal operation, it doesn’t take too much for you to sort of piece together the way in which the centralized Chinese state uses technology and data to undergird this Network Great Power that they eventually will try to use for coercive leverage, they will export their values in this format, and sort of being able to capture data, be able to have information superiority, and be able to use that toward their end. So that in the most benign case, this is nudging and shaping individual or organizational, institutional behavior globally and it certainly has much more nefarious manifestations than that.

Emily de La Bruyere
And this goes back also to why we’re so ill-equipped to respond as a system because as Americans, we believe in the goodness and the rights and of every other player. And so we want China just to be another country, and if there are disagreements or there are frictions, there would be a compromise that works where we can cooperate and find the right answer for everybody involved. But China’s not just another country with the same guiding principles as we are their authoritarian, communist state that not only has this very explicit taking Uyghurs exterminating them in camps thing going on, but also believe that it’s okay to take your citizens and track them on a social credit system and treat them all just as very materialist Marxist contributors to your global national project. And that’s not what the US believes in. And this is particularly important because we’re in a contest, that’s about rules, and that’s about international rules, and so if we lose this, we’re letting a state that believes in the opposite of what we believe in, decide the rules of how the world is going to work and is going to decide that at an inflection point where thanks to technology, and the corresponding changes in the world system, all of these rules are being rewritten. And do we really want to let it be China who tells you how attacking information and nations are going to govern your life?

Drew Griffin
And that’s really pertinent for…I mean, it’s affecting us a little bit, but the United States can ban Huawei, or they can ban 5G, or we can begin to kind of put the breaks on some of that, but there are a lot of countries around the world where that’s not the case, right? I mean that they are totally dependent upon Chinese infrastructure or Chinese technology if they are going to enter the global marketplace at all, right? I mean, that’s part of the Belt and Road initiative, and maybe talk a little bit about that, define that flesh that out. And maybe, as you’re talking about the Great Network Power, that you write about in our piece, providencemag.com…talk a little bit about where initiatives like Belt and Road, and, you know, internet technologies, internet things fall within that strategy. 

Nate Picarsic
Yeah, I think our conception and we’re drawing this from the way that the Chinese strategists talk about this, and then also how they allocate resources. Our conception would be that the Network Great Power Strategy is the orienting logic under which programs like the Belt and Road initiative, made in China 2025, and all of the sort of laundry list of state plans and projects that preceded them fall under. So Belt and Road is a label for the current phase of what previously, more generically, could have been referred to as China’s going out. So it’s their effort to promulgate their standards, their products, their entities and organizations in a global sense. And often this will be done in sort of a phased and deliberate, potentially slow moving fashion. Again, speaking to the difficulty for us in the United States and Western observers to diagnose the strategic logic to it. But I think recently, we’ve seen more assertive and more aggressive behavior. And I think that’s come with economic growth, and with success, and sort of conception that there isn’t sort of the competitive impulse or pushback that perhaps was expected to come from the West and from United States until just recently.

Emily de La Bruyere
And that goes back to the moral question too because that’s a question of American leadership. And it disappearing on a global stage, or at least it…not providing an alternative to a system that China can readily export to countries that are particularly vulnerable or vulnerable in any way. And that’s pretty much every country other than the US well, including the US. 

Drew Griffin
So there’s a new predominating kind of mindset on the part of, you know, American foreign policy, and it’s heralded by Donald Trump and other people, even on the on the Democratic side, you know, the democratic debates they’re continually going on, you hear statements of the United States, you just withdraw from the Middle East, or withdraw from Africa, or we should basically pull in all of our military kind of apparatus. And Donald Trump, I think it takes it even further the Trump administration that they have begun to pull in diplomatic apparatus, pull in…our allied cooperation, the humanitarian funds and stuff that we give to different nations. So there is your…what you’re talking about, and the change that’s needed. And the focus that’s needed is really going against the prevailing winds right now in politics. So where do you see the winds shifting? Can an argument be made that the threat is great enough that the United States should continue to engage or re engage at maybe more of a Cold War-esque level than they’re doing now, especially when there’s such fatigue, right? That’s where Trump’s, you know, kind of power populist power comes from is that we’ve been engulfed in some of these conflicts for decades. So where do you see the winds beginning to shift and change?

Nate Picarsic
I think that this, again, speaks to the Chinese capacity for diagnosing the strategic environment. I think that they’re well aware of the prevailing winds that have provided that sort of an opportune moment for them globally, the stakes that Emily is defined that we’re at a sort of inflection point where technology, global norms, and the way that sort of the geopolitical operating system functions, is starting to change and be written. That means that we don’t really have a choice. The Chinese approach the holistic mode of competing, and the sort of very aggressive stance toward locking in their gains and writing new standards across this gamut mean that if we want to have a chance, we sort of are up against the wall and need to seize the opportunity to push back against their offensive, but also to define the more affirmative alternative, and thus far, that’s sort of what I think has been lacking the most. We can play whack a mole with Huawei or name your other entity and there have been very promising signs that we’ve taken a strategic and deliberate approach to defensive measures of cutting off firms like that and starting to work with our allies where possible on those initiatives, where I think there’s the most opportunity and where there may be positive momentum to be harvested would be in defining what the alternative vision is. And I think there’s a real appetite for that. I think there’s an appetite from our allies and partners globally for that, but absent it coming from the United States, I’m not sure from where it would come.

Emily de La Bruyere
But also that said, I would add that the forces you’ve just diagnosed, they’re not totally wrong. Like, there’s a world system, and China is taking advantage of it. And that means that the world system, even if it’s led by the US isn’t working for the US, it’s not working for the world, because if it’s something China can subvert, that needs to change. So the US needs to take up this mantle of leadership and to actually compete with China in the big battles. But doing that also means changing the fora in which states interact to address this new reality. If China can subvert the UN or can subvert the rules of the WTO, the UN and the rules of the WTO, need to do something about that.

Drew Griffin
There’s a famous saying kind of in the military, I heard it was parroted by James Mattis, the former Secretary of Defense, he says the enemy gets a vote, right? You may not want this battle, you may not want this fight, but the enemy gets a vote on this. And if they’re coming to the battlefield, if they’re waging war, you know, whether you want it or not, it’s kind of at your doorstep. So let’s talk a little bit now and kind of shift as we kind of circle landing spot. I kind of want to keep talking but we’ll have you on again, hopefully to talk more about this is a complex topic. But in terms of reengagement, what can be done, what are some steps that we can take? and I say that as we’re sitting in a room right now we’re in a studio in Washington, D.C., and literally everything in this room was made in China. The mics we’re talking on, the computers that are processing our voice, the chairs. I’m pretty sure these, you know, these bookcases, everything was crafted and kind of made in China. So there’s obviously a tie that a simple boycotts is not going to work or we can just completely cut ties, as if, economically they didn’t exist, or we don’t want to involve in them anymore. So where…what are some of the steps that can be taken to begin to address this threat?

Nate Picarsic
I think first and foremost, given first the way that the Chinese have sort of structured their competitive, offensive, and the position in which we find them right now, there needs to be a narrative component. And that starts from the top of political discourse, identifying this competitive threat, talking about it plainly, and documenting in sort of a fact based way, the position that we currently stand, and hopefully, advancing what we think could be a long term competitive strategy approach to overtaking the progress that the Chinese have made. And so I think that there’s starting from a point of narrative, there’s an appetite and a need for an orienting logic to be a spouse from the United States. And then I think that that sort of can layout a series of both offensive and defensive measures that can be taken to hopefully redress some of the imbalance in terms of global trade and the dependence on China. As you’ve noted, we won’t be able to uproot the Chinese from everywhere, and as sort of the Huawei case has shown us some both here and United States and in allied and partner countries. Some of this infrastructure can’t be uprooted, physically, even if we wanted to. So we need to be able to prioritize the strategic domains that we compete in, and the tools that we bring to bear and each competition, there may be some that are too far gone, that we’re not going to be able to sort of push the Chinese out. And in those domains, we possibly need to isolate them, or we need to rewrite the rules within them. But there will be other domains there of high strategic value that we can sort of underwrite the development of new modes of operating, new modes of quiet collaborating with our allies. This may be, you know, sort of an expensive and difficult project to pursue. But again, the sort of stakes at this moment seem to be critical and urgent.

Emily de La Bruyere
And that new modes thing is really important because it’s not just naming and shaming the Chinese approach or pointing to the bad actors that China’s exporting, it’s creating positive alternatives that are viable, that have the scale, that have the advantages, and that are going to work and are going to offer protection, if not an act of competition with China’s approach.

Drew Griffin
So are there like, this isn’t…this cannot be just a public sector effort, right? This can’t be just a governmental effort. It has to be since…so much of this is tied up to commerce and industry and the economy that there has to be kind of private sector actors that are leading in this. So what are some roles for those actors in the private sector that can be done? Especially since, you know, it’s about profits, it’s about, you know, satisfying your investors. Some of those investors may be Chinese. I mean, what are some of the steps that can be done in the private sector to show some leadership against the Chinese threat?

Nate Picarsic
Yeah, I think, as the sort of recent business roundtable guidance is provided for our sort of corporate leaders in the United States, there’s reason to believe that there’s more to the bottom line than just the sort of cold calculus of the profits and losses that consumers will value products that are made in humane and decent ways. So I think that there’s certainly no shortage of appetite in the consumer realm and in sort of corporate world, writ large for, you know, well thought out human rights approaches corporate social responsibility. And largely, these sort of functions have taken up the mantle of climate change or supply chain security, but I think that there’s certainly room within those movements to orient toward a values based approach to competing with actors like China who are authoritarian, who have antithetical views and values who abuse their own people, I would hope that there’s more than a small amount of appetite in corporate America for taking up that mantle.

Emily de La Bruyere
And that’s also in corporate America’s best interest, it might not be in the best interest of the next quarterly return. But China has shown that it…these are not mutually beneficial cooperations, no matter how many times it spits out that phrase, when China engages in technology, “sharing” with foreign and especially US entities, it then takes that technology in order to later dominate the market. And there is enough evidence, and this is not changing as an approach. And that means…then what does the US private sector do? Be careful with its technology and be careful with its intellectual property and its information sharing with China, don’t bow to pressure to have a joint research and development center, or to move a production base to China, and bring those back where it’s possible, create alternatives with allies that are trustworthy, and that have scale and also like compete in a way that’s suited for an actual long-term system. So if you’re a 5G company, build the infrastructure for this. So that can scale so that we can actually have something that’s a feasible full product and will bring people in not a flashy subsystem that’s going to fall the second China stands up its big approach.

Nate Picarsic
And I think perhaps, it’s important for the private sector to recognize the folly in buying the inducement of the Chinese market. And this is sort of one key prong of the Chinese approach, to draw in technology to, sort of, weaponized cooperation with Western firms and actors, the promise of their consumers of their market. I think the history of that attraction is borne out that it’s not usually the Western or American actor who wins a sizable share of the Chinese market. It’s typically the Chinese actor down the street, who is safe in the technology, who gets rewarded with the pot of the Chinese market. So removing that calculus from sort of the short-termism that drives our private sector actors, I think could be a sizeable difference-maker.

Drew Griffin
So as we wrap up there, there’s a sense in which this can be almost terrifying and then kind of it’s this monolithic huge threat that’s pervasive, and it’s everywhere, and it’s something that’s attacking every kind of facet of our culture and economy. And we as we begin to see it, like we’ve talked about, whether it’s Hollywood or NBA, or Hong Kong and trade in Huawei, all of that…all of those different sectors, it seems like it’s ubiquitous. And yet, even with the great strengths that China possesses in the way that they have kind of game this out, they do have weaknesses, right? They do have chinks in their armor, they have…things that kind of beset them problems that beset them demographic issues, they have cultural unrest, if you look at Hong Kong, what is it but a picture of, you know, a segment of the Chinese population that is albeit infinitesimal compared to the rest of the country. But still it’s a…the reason why China seems to be spending so much time and attention on it is because it’s a…it’s out front and everyone is looking at it. It’s a group of people that are advocating for some level of freedom. Because there is an appetite. It seems like in China, among some, for some, something new, some new China’s, some new freedom..Can you talk at all a little bit about this? Some of the weaknesses that this isn’t just a Goliath here that’s invulnerable like there are some advantages that the United States can play out over time maybe to their benefit.

Nate Picarsic
Yeah, certainly I think the examples are calling on speak to the sort of the despotic treatment of minority populations of potential insurgents or unrest. That’s a fear that’s resonant and one that I think will continue to draw the attention of the Chinese Communist Party and reflect a vulnerability that could influence sort of how they optimize both internally and in their external engagement. I think there’s an interesting overlay with a separate concern that they have, that they speak to in terms of something called a high technology blockade. So their system has sort of positioned such that they don’t invest at the rate of the United States or other Western peers and fundamental research and development, they’re not necessarily innovative in the same way that we are. Thus far, that has not been a weakness because of the way that they’re able to use the inducement of the Chinese market to maintain access to Western advances. But they do have a concern over continuing that access. So if there are things that we can do in the West for the United States to perhaps tease that sensitivity or potential weakness that could exacerbate the way that they behave, and I raised it as sort of an overlay with the treatment of Uyghurs and their domestic populations because we’ve recently added entities onto the sort of Huawei type of ban list that have been supporting the internment camp operations in Xinjiang. And I think that sort of as we seize on those types of actors, the sort of high tech ones that they use to go out into the world, but also use to control their people, there may be opportunity there to exacerbate some of the Chinese weaknesses or concerns in this competitive way. 

Drew Griffin
And just to interject, if I can, the really uncomfortable truth about what you just said, is that any company in the industry and corporation in the United States doing business with a Chinese company or with China is also complicit in that same treatment, I mean,…those dollars are heading into the Chinese central government and ultimately are going to support their repressive regime. Emily, go ahead.

Emily de La Bruyere
Yeah, there’s not a distinction between the Chinese government in the Chinese state and there’s not a distinction between the Chinese state and a repressive regime. So precisely, and thank you for that one. I would add on the hightech blockade front that the same applies for narrative that China’s strategy rests on being able to control the flow of technology into its borders, but also to be able to control the global narrative. And if we can actually compete on that front, and start changing that narrative and disseminating something more true and more in line with our values that can go a long way and a disproportionate way because they are so dependent on the storyline. And the other part of that is that yes, they come across a Goliath, the big one, they come across as the big one, the scary one. And…it’s a real threat and that’s very important, but we’re still the incumbent, and we can’t forget that we still do have the best research and development in the world, and we still are the strongest country in the world, and that’s probably their biggest weakness.

Drew Griffin
Well, you write in your piece that you have both co-authored China and the Great Network Power. There still is some hope, even if there’s not all that much time, so we’ll kind of end on that maybe a little hopeful note and hope to have you both back again. Emily de La Bruyere and Nate Picarsic have been my guests. They are the co-founders of Radar Lock Research organization focused on China and they have co-authored pieces at providencemag.com. Nate, Emily, thank you. 

Emily de La Bruyere
Thank you.

Nate Picarsic
Thank you, Drew.

Drew Griffin
Thank you for listening to the ProvCast, a regular podcast of Providence a Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy. You can find us online at providencemag.com. Follow us on Twitter @provmagazine and download this podcast on iTunes and SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening.