China

Last week I took part in a debate at CSIS on the topic of whether China seeks to export its development model.  For me, the answer to this question is self-evident: of course it does. Yet as I prepared for the debate, I quickly realized that many thoughtful colleagues have argued the opposite. So, in the interest of spurring further discussion and debate, I thought I would lay out in written form the why’s and wherefore’s of my case. (There is significant disagreement around what, precisely, constitutes the China model, but in this debate, the China model was broadly understood as a variant of authoritarian capitalism.) To begin with, China seeks to export its development model because Xi Jinping wants to do so. In numerous speeches, beginning at least at the 19th Party Congress in October 2017, Xi has reiterated his belief that “[China] offers a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence.” While Xi did backtrack temporarily in the face of international backlash, once stating that China was not seeking to export its model, he quickly reverted to form with more statements to the effect that China has a model worthy of emulation. Then there is the issue of how Beijing exports its model. Much of the export of the model occurs through the training of foreign officials—both in and outside China. Just last month, Zhejiang province hosted a forum called “The Significance of China’s Social Governance to the World,” which was attended by more than 200 experts from 20 countries. The Xinhua tagline from the conference was “China can provide wisdom to a world that is in need of new governance models.” In Guangxi province, there is a beautiful new leadership academy established in 2017 to train officials from ASEAN on China’s governance and economic development model. Subjects taught at the academy include how government officials can guide online public opinion, alleviate poverty, and develop a stronger grassroots presence. There are also highly targeted efforts by Chinese officials to export their model. My colleague Josh Kurlantzick has documented the many ways in which Chinese officials train their counterparts in Cambodia, for example, on what tools to use to suppress dissent and how to encourage foreign investment, while at the same time accessing and retaining foreign technology and skills. Stimson Center expert Yun Sun has similarly illuminated Chinese training efforts in Ethiopia and Sudan, around issues such as party organizational structure, propaganda, guiding and managing public opinion, and poverty alleviation. On the political front, much of the effort is devoted to exporting elements of the model dedicated to state control over civil society. Beijing hosts two to three-week seminars on how to conduct online censorship and surveillance for officials from other countries, such as the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Thailand. After a joint China-Tanzania roundtable on new media, the Tanzanian deputy Minister of Communications Edwin Ngonyani discussed collaborating with China on social media censorship, noting “Our Chinese friends have managed to block such media in their country and replaced them with homegrown sites that are safe, constructive and popular. We aren’t there yet, but while we are still using these platforms we should guard against their misuse.” Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Vietnam have all reportedly modelled their cybersecurity laws after that of China. China, moreover, is a full-service provider. In addition to offering the legal and institutional framework to enhance state control over society, it is also providing the technology to support it. At least 50 countries are developing Huawei-supported surveillance systems. While surveillance technologies can be important aids in reducing crime, it is also the case, as Latin America scholar R. Evan Ellis has noted, that these technologies will give authoritarian regimes “something that they have only dreamed about: a massive ability to sanction persons who engage in political or social behaviors the government disapproves.” China also exports the economic elements of its development model. Some efforts are intentional: for example, there are extensive training seminars on China’s poverty alleviation strategy, and Beijing has worked with many governments, particularly in Africa, to establish Chinese-inspired special economic zones to encourage manufacturing and exports (with mixed success). More broadly, however, both China’s 1999 go-out strategy to acquire natural resources and its current Belt and Road Initiative in effect reflect the wholesale export of China’s infrastructure-led economic growth model. Even the externalities of China’s development model are replicated: significant increases in infrastructure-induced government debt, a lack of transparency and engagement with civil society, corruption, and significant popular protest. In some cases, the China model merely reinforces similar proclivities in Belt and Road countries; in others, it introduces fundamentally new challenges and opportunities. In all cases, however, China exports its economic development model as part and parcel of how it does business and engages globally.     While the most visible impacts of China’s efforts to export its model occur within other countries, Beijing also exports its model via multilateral regimes and institutions, seeking to bring international norms and practices more in line with those of China. Center for American Progress scholar Melanie Hart has brilliantly delineated Beijing’s efforts in this regard in international regimes around human rights and Internet governance. As she notes, “China is seeking to devalue those external freedoms by pushing authoritarian principles in global internet governance forums. Just as China is convening its own human rights forums, it is also hosting World Internet Conferences that bring in representatives from other nations—including major U.S. companies—to legitimize Chinese norms.” Finally, there are cases where Beijing adopts a more coercive approach to try to persuade actors in other countries to conform to its model. For example, in 2015, the Chinese government kidnapped several booksellers from Hong Kong, including a Swedish citizen, to pressure them to stop selling books critical of the Chinese government. More recently, this past October, we witnessed the case of the Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey, who tweeted, “Fight for Freedom, Stand with Hong Kong.” In response, Chinese companies cancelled all licensing deals for Rockets merchandise, and the Chinese government banned all CCTV broadcasts of NBA games and reportedly called on the NBA to fire Morey. Of course, China has on many occasions attempted to use economic leverage to force countries, companies, and individuals to align their political statements and actions with those of China. What is particularly revealing in this instance, however, is not the effort to use economic leverage to pressure the Houston Rockets and the NBA, but rather the statement by state-owned CCTV that “any remarks that challenge national sovereignty and social stability are not within the scope of freedom of speech.” There could not be a clearer demonstration that China seeks to export its political model than a statement to the effect that China has the right to apply the same standards of free speech it practices at home to actors abroad. During part of the Mao-era, in the late 1950s and 1960s, China promoted its revolution as a model for other third world countries. But it is not until now that the Chinese leadership has once again sought to export its model. Whether the export of this model is welcomed by others or not, whether it succeeds or fails, and whether we believe the impact to be benign or malign are second order questions. What matters in the first instance is that we recognize and acknowledge that China’s leaders believe they have a model worth exporting and are seeking to do so.  

U.S. imports from China are down. China's imports from everyone are down.

Chinese tech companies seek to influence surveillance standards at the UN; UN hosts meeting of the Open-ended Working Group on global ICT usage; Russian government and search engine Yandex agree on new governance structure; and China launches cyberattack on Hong Kong pro-democracy forum.

Since at least 2013, APT17 has been responsible for a number of network intrusions against U.S. and Southeast Asian targets. While evidence links APT17's activities to the Chinese government, there are also indications that the group also independently carries out cybercrimes for commercial gain, oftentimes targeting Chinese citizens. The nature of these secondary activities complicates our understanding of the lines of control between threat actors and state sponsors.

Michael Collins is a research associate for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Over the past three decades, China has experienced consistent double-digit growth in its medical device market. In 2016, the market was valued at nearly $54 billion. Just three years later, its value has nearly doubled to an estimated $96 billion. U.S. medical device producers such as Johnson & Johnson and GE have profited handsomely from the Chinese market, but their total market share has decreased from 33.3% in 2016 to 31.1% in 2018. At the same time, Chinese medical device producers like Mindray, valued at 9 billion RMB ($1.28 billion) in 2016 and 13.7 billion RMB ($1.95 billion) in 2018, are enjoying larger market shares due to a host of favorable financial and trade policies which fall under the broad umbrella of Made in China 2025 (MIC 2025). Launched in May of 2015, MIC 2025 is the country’s latest ambitious industrial strategy. The plan targets ten critical areas of industry in which China wants to lead in global production by 2025. While much of the foreign concern around MIC 2025 focuses on the high-profile issues of telecommunications and AI, it is equally important to pay attention to other affected technologies. With a rapidly aging population and a health care market projected to be worth a trillion dollars by 2020, China’s drive to become a leading producer of medical devices, for example, will have enormous economic repercussions for foreign multinationals. Already several Chinese provinces have taken the first steps toward realizing Beijing’s ambitions through procurement and insurance policies which preference domestic producers over foreign imports. In 2018, state hospitals in Sichuan province were required to procure domestically produced devices in 15 categories or risk losing out on lucrative state-insurance reimbursements. In 2019, provinces and major cities across China released a series of increasingly restrictive procurement policies. Ningxia province was first to release a notice requiring state hospitals to justify any foreign medical device imports with a lengthy audit. Suzhou and Tianjin, major economic hubs, soon followed suit with identical notices. Not to be outdone, Shandong province limited all device imports to only 488 items, mainly high tech diagnostic devices not produced in China. Zhejiang province soon after limited state hospital imports to 232 items. These restrictive policies are a double-edged sword. They benefit China’s medical device industry by insulating it from foreign competition while also forcing hospitals to expend resources searching for products which comply with changing regulations and which, in some cases, may be of lesser quality than foreign alternatives. These policies also have become tests of officials’ loyalty to the party whose industrial policy is inseparable from its aspirations to become a great power on par with the United States. As China cracks down on the use of foreign medical devices domestically, it is also looking to sell its own devices abroad, especially in Africa. Until 2011, China’s main medical device exports were low-end disposables, such as syringes and gloves. In the last eight years, however, Chinese medical devices have moved up the value chain to include higher-tech devices like therapeutic and diagnostic equipment. According to Chinese Customs data, Africa this year has imported nearly $460 million worth of Chinese medical devices ranging from low end disposable to advanced diagnostic tools. This is an increase of almost $100 million from last year, helping to replace some of the lost revenue due to U.S. tariffs on Chinese medical devices as part of the ongoing trade war. China is also offloading excess medical device capacity through its foreign aid program in Africa. Since 1963, China has sent medical teams to provide primary care services and build healthcare capacity across Africa. With MIC 2025 in mind, China has continued to leverage these strong historical ties to advantage domestic medical device producers. Following the most recent Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2018, China pledged to “make...medical products more accessible” to African nations in order to improve healthcare across the continent. While China does not disclose exactly how many medical devices it donates in a given year, national and provincial level Health Commissions regularly report individual successful device donation efforts. These donations can range in value from several boxes of disposable tools to advanced diagnostic machines. Not only do these donations buy goodwill for China in recipient countries, they also build the capacity for future healthcare markets for Chinese producers. At the same time, by portraying these donations as beneficial for domestic industry and recipient countries, Chinese officials further their commitment to so-called “win-win cooperation.” China’s foreign aid program in Africa extends beyond direct humanitarian donations, though. Over the past decade, Beijing has invested in the construction of a number of hospitals and clinics across Africa with twenty-six facilities planned for construction in South Sudan this year alone. Aside from their humanitarian benefits, each hospital or clinic constructed is a new market for the Chinese medical device industry to capitalize on. While some are eventually handed over to the host country, others remain administered and staffed by Chinese personnel. China keeps the exact details of these bilateral agreements a secret, but it is plausible that continued staffing is contingent upon the hospital using procurement policies similar to domestic Chinese hospitals. This strategy has been employed by China before in Belt and Road initiative to offload excess domestic industrial capacity at the expense of host countries’ labor and industry. China’s strategy for global industrial leadership is on full display in its medical device industry. As 2025 approaches, this strategy could be replicated in other MIC 2025 industrial sectors. Coupling protectionism at home with opportunistic aid abroad is truly win-win – a win for China and a win for its manufacturers.

Below is a visualization and description of some of the most significant incidents of political violence in Nigeria from November 23 to 29, 2019. This update also represents violence related to Boko Haram in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. These incidents will be included in the Nigeria Security Tracker.   var divElement = document.getElementById('viz1575302825336'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName('object')[0]; vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+'px'; var scriptElement = document.createElement('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement);   November 23: Gunmen killed three farmers in Jalingo, Taraba.  November 23: Sectarian violence resulted in "many" deaths (estimated at twenty) on both sides in Hong, Adamawa. November 25: Election-related violence resulted in four deaths in Burutu, Delta.  November 25: Gunmen killed five and abducted five children in Karim Lamido, Taraba.  November 25: Kidnappers killed one policeman and abducted three Chinese expatriates in Atakumosa West, Osun.  November 25: Gunmen killed two policemen and kidnapped seven people in Mubi South, Adamawa.  November 25: Kidnappers abducted thirteen and killed one in Sabon Gari, Kaduna.  November 26: Nigerian soldiers killed three Boko Haram militants in Gwoza, Borno.  November 26: Nigerian soldiers killed three Boko Haram militants in Kaga, Borno.   November 26: Nigerian soldiers killed one Boko Haram militant in Bama, Borno.    November 26: Sectarian violence resulted in three deaths in Gassol, Taraba.  November 27: Boko Haram killed one in Tarmuwa, Yobe.  November 27: The Nigerian Air Force killed thirty Boko Haram militants in Gwoza, Borno.  November 29: Nigerian soldiers killed thirteen Boko Haram militants in Abadam, Borno (LGA estimated). November 29: Bandits killed two vigilantes in Idemili North, Anambra.  November 29: Nigerian soldiers killed three Boko Haram militants in Askira/Uba, Borno.

After six months of escalating police violence and protester resistance, matters in Hong Kong have come to a head. Now is the time for Washington to ensure that all sides know that the United States stands with those struggling for freedom, democracy, dignity, and the rule of law.

Washington’s request that Seoul pay more for their military alliance has heightened tensions between longtime allies and poses risks for regional security.

In the wake of Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s trip to Southeast Asia, where he tried to reassure U.S. allies and partners of ongoing U.S. commitment to the region, and to highlight Southeast Asian states’ concerns about an ascendant China, there have been many stories of growing anger toward a more assertive Beijing in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world. In a column for the Washington Post, Josh Rogin succinctly captured the mood. He argued that “from Halifax to Hanoi, everyone is worried about China”—about China’s more aggressive military actions, influence strategies, and attempts to promote authoritarianism. But while much of the coverage frames the rising discontent with China as relatively new, it dates back several years in Southeast Asia and other parts of the Asia-Pacific. And at the same time, considerable survey data from Asia suggests that, while countries may worry about Beijing’s growing regional dominance, they also are already convinced that China is the region’s most influential state, and that China only will become more powerful. In research for my forthcoming book on China’s influence strategies in Southeast Asia, I have found that the hardening of regional views toward Beijing dates back at least to the mid-2010s. In part, hardening views stem from citizens of some Asian states realizing that Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power in China could make the country more unstable, and more dangerous regionally, in the long term. Under Xi, Beijing has boosted the government’s promotion of the China model, with this promotion particularly focused on authoritarian or semi-authoritarian states. But Asians from the region’s freest countries, perhaps reflecting on the freedoms gained since the fall of their own dictatorships, increasingly see China’s type of government as unstable and unappealing and dangerous. In an analysis released in 2018 and based on a region-wide survey of young men and women, Yida Zhai of Shanghai Jiao Tong University found that, while only 44 percent of young Chinese though China was politically unstable, more than 70 percent of young South Koreans believed China’s political instability was rising. Zhai further found that not only South Koreans but also high percentages of young people in free states like Japan and Taiwan saw Xi’s China as increasingly unstable. China’s 1990s and 2000s-era charm offensive of soft power stumbled as well in the 2010s, with the stumbles exposed in countries as economically, ethnically, and politically diverse as Cambodia, Myanmar, and South Korea. As China’s outbound investment and foreign aid continued to expand, it was no longer a new source of cash in many developing states. The positive public relations boost Beijing had gotten simply from becoming a large investor and donor began to fade. (China had been a donor to some developing countries during the Cold War, but not anywhere near as large a donor as it would become in the 2000s and 2010s.) Some of the real problems related to Chinese investment and aid began to be exposed in other states as well. At first, in the late 1990s and 2000s many developing states had been thrilled to welcome a large new investor and donor, and there were real economic benefits to Chinese aid. (A study by researchers from AidData at William and Mary University showed that, between 2000 and 2014, Chinese development assistance increased economic growth in recipient states.) But by the mid-2010s, media outlets in freer states were scrutinizing the downsides of China’s investments. Even in less-free states, like Cambodia or Vietnam, it was still possible for citizens to share information on social media. Cambodians and Vietnamese regularly shared stories on social media outlets about problems with Chinese-funded projects. But by the mid-2010s, many Asians also already had become deeply pessimistic about how China will wield its growing power, as Beijing undercut its own longstanding (if hardly true) narrative that its rise would be peaceful. In his analysis released in 2018, Yida Zhai found that, while South Koreans—and most of the young people surveyed from other Asian states—believed that China was now a powerful actor in Asia, a majority of the young South Koreans agreed with the proposition that “the rise of China has been threatening the global order.” Other studies, like surveys of Southeast Asians by the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS)-Yusof Ishak Institute, have confirmed these fears. Roughly half of Southeast Asian respondents in the most recent ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute survey of Southeast Asian attitudes said that “China will become a revisionist power with an intent to turn Southeast Asia into its sphere of influence.” The same survey found that a majority of respondents had either little or no confidence that “China will ‘do the right thing’ in contributing to global peace, security, prosperity, and governance.” And yet Southeast Asians, while taking measures to hedge against Chinese power, also seem convinced that their options are extremely limited. In the same ISEAS-Yusof Ishak study, most respondents said that China is now both the dominant economic and strategic power in Southeast Asia. Asia Barometer studies find the same. Its data, in waves of surveys, has revealed that people in even U.S. allies and staunch partners like Japan and Singapore already believe China is the most influential state in Asia, with the United States a distant second.

If passed, a new bill would signal U.S. support for the protesters and put pressure on China’s leaders.

Angela Merkel urges European Union to reclaim control over data; Suspected Chinese hackers target U.S. manufacturing industry group; Brazil to break ranks with United States on Huawei, says Chinese ambassador; UK’s Labour Party suffers two cyberattacks and a privacy gaffe; and Chinese surveillance company Hikvision advertises racial profiling technology.