The Persistent Challenge of U.S.-China Tech

hello my name is john haskell director of the john w gloogey center at the library of congress thank you for joining us the kluge center in its efforts to bring relevant scholarship to the attention of policymakers and the interested public draws from the expertise of our remarkable alumni these include over 1 000 scholars from around the world who have held fellowships or chair positions at the center conducting their research in the library's vast collections today former kluge fellow ann kocus joins us to lead a discussion on the persistent challenge of u.s china tech what to look for in the biden administration anne will be our moderator today and she's an associate professor of media studies at the university of virginia and a senior faculty member at the miller center for public affairs her award-winning first book hollywood made in china argues that chinese investments and regulations have transformed the us commercial media industry her next project data trafficking the united states china and the global battle for data security examines the policy implications of the transfer of consumer data between the us and china kocus's research has appeared in information communication in society the journal of asian studies and many other outlets she's a member of the a term member of the council on foreign relations and other than the kluge fellowship she has received numerous grants including from the national endowment for the humanities the mellon foundation and the fulbright foundation she is joined today on this panel by adam siegel from the council on foreign relations siegel is the ira a lippmann chair in emerging technologies and national security and director of the digital and cyberspace policy program at the council an expert on security issues technology development and chinese domestic and foreign policy dr siegel is the author of the hacked world order how nations fight trade maneuver and manipulate in the digital age his works has appeared in the financial times the new york times foreign policy the wall street journal and foreign affairs also with this is yacht wang from human rights watch wong works on issues including internet censorship freedom of expression protection of civil society and human rights defenders as well as women's rights wong was born and grew up in china and has a master's degree in international affairs from george washington university her articles have appeared in foreign policy the atlantic the washington post and elsewhere and she has provided commentary to the bbc cnn and the new york times prior to joining human rights watch wong worked for the committee to protect journalists last we have dr wenhong chen from the university of texas at austin where she is associate professor of media studies and sociology her research is focused on digital media technologies in entrepreneurial and civic settings dr chen has more than 70 publications including articles in top-ranked journals in the fields of communication and media studies sociology and management her research has received awards from the american sociological association the academy of management and other associations dr chen is the lead editor of the book networked china global dynamics of digital media and civic engagement at this point let me turn the conversation over to you anne many thanks to john for the kind introduction and the kluge center for hosting this wonderful event one of the central issues facing the biden administration is its relationship with china the strategic competition between the two countries has a particular issue surrounding the tech sector as an engine of power and influence for the 21st century to begin i'd like to ask all the panelists how would you characterize the current u.s china tech relationship could you begin yes i would use interesting uh to describe the current moment of u.s china tech relationship for many china watchers there has been significant regulations in the last couple of weeks happening in china and the chinese government have passed sweeping regulations uh basically anti-trust measures and that have great implications for chinese big tech listing in the u.s stock market as well as their future and meanwhile the bank administration has been pushing about new anti-trust regulations as well as actions throughout ftc and the dog in the u.s that's the reason i see that there are so many things ongoing that's going to have long-term profound implications about big tax as well as tech startups in and between both countries so adam you've done a lot of work looking at supply chains as well as hardware between the u.s and china how would you characterize the u.s china tech relationship right now with a particular focus on those areas yeah i i would say it is uh intensely competitive and and the technology issue is central it touches on uh every way that the united states is thinking about competing with china right now economically militarily and increasingly ideologically ideologically so how we think about those technologies are used as well as developed so it's kind of a systems competition between the u.s system of how we innovate versus how china thinks about innovation um so i think you see uh technology both as a central focus of competition and parallel to every other competition that we're engaged with in the bilateral initiative right now yacho your work focuses on human rights protection from that vantage point how would you characterize the current u.s china tech relationship my work mostly is on censorship internet issues um i think in the past few years i just feel the internet space has increasingly diverged there has become two paralyzed information universe i would say that probably is the biggest character so there's kind of this kind of divergence between the two systems yes now this brings us to an important next question where if at all does there remain room for cooperation or at the very least engagement between the us and china in the techno sphere when home would you like to take a start just take a step um yes and in july as the world still very much in this global pandemic that is still ongoing and as all the recent wildfires fart extreme weather world has shown climate change remain a very real very consequential global challenge and that's obviously one area for u.s and china to work together in terms of developing green technologies and energies and that also has been one area that has been identified by leaders and in both countries both political leaders as well as business leaders as an area that the two nations should work together not only for people in these two countries but also for the world and as importantly uh we are also at a crossroad looking at ai e6 and the social impact of all the platforms uh in terms of the kind of information we consume in terms of the media how we consume and how that affect democracy and the social political systems across the world so definitely these another area thinking about technological governance data governance that's another critical area the two nations have to work together so adam from your perspective are there areas for collaboration or cooperation or a minimum engagement between the us and china and the tech sector i think there are i mean i agree with the list that when hong kong but i think we're a long way from being any place to actually pursuing those shared interests you know we are say seven months into the biden administration uh i think they are in the process of you know both figuring out what the trump administration had actually done in tech policy there was lots of different kind of cooks involved and i don't think all of the parts of the trump administration knew what other parts were pursuing so there's a kind of stock taking about what what what had done been been done and then uh now an attempt to figure out what the biden accomplished white administration wants to accomplish and as they're doing that they're also kind of looking at the landscape of technologies and trying to decide uh which technologies should be considered strategic which ones are commodities which ones are we you know should we cooperate on um and so i don't expect they're going to have a very good view of what that looks like until you know the the end of the year now um there is also i think an additional pressure um on the body administration is that you know there is this narrative that the us um can't trade cooperation on global issues with china just to get along with china right we you know we can see some kind of warnings that you know it uh we shouldn't be uh working we shouldn't go to the chinese you know if you work with us on on climate change then we can have a better relationship because this should be in china's interest uh as well so i think there's a lot of kind of political factors out there um that are that are going to make this a very difficult pro process but i agree with when on the list is you know that's the right list what are the what are the transnational problems that we want to address uh and also the fact is is that we globalize we innovate faster as two global economies than would than we do separate uh and so how can we maintain the strengths of those two systems thank you yacht from your perspective particularly as it relates to questions of surveillance and um and human rights and censorship are there areas for engagement or cooperation or is this kind of dead in the water well i think when we talk about the word you know u.s china i mean it can mean different things chemical it's also a civil society i ever absolutely see there's a common interest in protecting protecting privacy uh you know other digital rights issues i mean the digital rights movement is a global uh movement uh i work mainly you know with activists uh inside china and i know activists inside the u.s they you know are also having the same goals so when we're talking u.s china we should not uh ignore the fact that there's a huge you know there are both huge civil societies and uh you know when you think ways of how to connect those two sides to work for a common goal now i think this is a really important thing to to bring up the diversity of different opinions within each country within the u.s there are very different perspectives on what digital rights might look like digital civil rights and similarly within china so i really appreciate you bringing that up um now to to bring up kind of the opposite side of this what are the biggest potential consequences if we aren't able to come to areas of cooperation and engagement what are the kind of biggest challenges of a bifurcated technosphere adam do you want to lead us off yeah i mean i i think clearly uh there's going to be huge economic costs um i mean there have been a number of studies that that have looked at for example what the cost of re of moving supply chains are in um information and communication technologies and i think there was one estimate from um that was in the trillions of dollars over over the years um i think it will probably slow global innovation um at least in the short term and [Music] you know increasingly i think it it it probably is a kind of malicious cycle it increases distrust between the two sides and so i think it heightens the competition uh uh in many ways uh and clearly you know uh if you're worried about innovation on karma carbon capture uh new batteries uh other things that to address climate change then that is also going to be i think a real uh a short-term short-term cost what about your perspective i know you do a lot of work on entrepreneurship so i'm particularly curious about your perspective on what impact this would have for entrepreneurs um this kind of more bifurcated technosphere this is a great question and i think right now it's almost a fashionable to talk about 40 years engagement with china has been failed i think that's too simplistic the last of 40 years actually have created tremendous opportunities for entrepreneurs in the tech sector in both u.s and china because of the engagement thinking about the chinese internet companies listed in nasdaq thinking about american vcs and their investment in china and across asia and how that actually have changed the way chinese people interact with one another how china as a society organized is economic life and for me i think one of the greatest danger is because of all these geopolitical tensions it aids a lot of pressure for young startups to think about how they have to play safe and how they have to avoid uh finding themselves in a very awkward position between the regulators of both countries and this is really i think some unnecessary challenges as adam just pointed out that may hurt technological innovation and entrepreneurship yacht from your perspective what are the kind of biggest challenges here from a free speech standpoint i think the parallel information universe has given rise to more misunderstanding between the two sides i think that's a huge problem for example you know corona virus a lot of people in china even including members of my family they believe that the us army brought the virus to china a lot of people in china know who believe that you know the xinjiang camps are not real um on the only u.s side where i live i hear some politicians say things like you know china has invented this bio weapon which is the corona virus and they want to kill americans rather they don't see chinese people as victims of the virus too they see you know chinese people as the perpetrator so because of the you know two information universes there's a little communication between real people's own shared space i think this can be really really dangerous yeah that's that's an excellent point and unfortunately it doesn't seem like we're moving in the right direction with that so what do we do or specifically what should the biden administration's top domestic priorities be in order to set a global example for internet governance and technology regulation and also what role might civil society play here adam do you want to start sure i you know i i think um the first thing to do is actually get our own house in order um and i think the bidet administration has made important steps on this uh particularly on the funding of basic research and development and and uh the bill uh from chuck schumer and others about um whatever it's called now the keep america competitiveness act or but but basically you know reinvesting in u.s science and technology capabilities that i think is the most important thing uh to do um but then um you know the other important step which the bite administration has been very uh for leaving on is working with others to start defining how we think these new areas of governance should be governed so you know what are the norms around where data is stored and who has access to it what are the norms of state behavior in cyberspace and how should we talk about disinformation all these things you know that the us can't uh address alone um and is working with uh closer with our european allies um through the new uh eu uh commission on on i.t and competitiveness uh through nato uh and other organizations through the quad uh in asia um so i think those are the two most important things the the fight administration and is doing nice what about you what uh what's your perspective on on this as a texan coming from you know a big republican state uh well i i think adam already uh pointed out several of the policy priorities of the biden administration and in the last six or seven months we can see that by the administration has been very very patient and careful in dealing with this very dedicated u.s china relation and i think we are not the only people see that increasingly if they're going to be a long-term generational competition between the two countries it's very important to do your own things well like a president she has uh said quite a few times and for china is how china can do uh seems real in china and uh the binding administration also talked about in several different occasions that uh for america to be strong abroad it's very important for america to be strong domestically so innovation and rnd uh investment in r d and also thinking about how america can do a better job to model american values in the democracy as well as racial social justice to the world these are all extremely important dimensions in this long-term competition so one whole you mentioned this question of racial and social justice and i don't want to put you on the spot here but um but i we're talking about this u.s china relationship and what we also see in parallel are the rise of anti-asian sentiment in the u.s so it becomes difficult to talk about china as a strategic competitor in an atmosphere of increased anti-asian violence and i was wondering as a as a scholar as a researcher um as someone who's you know a long-time observer of social media um and these challenges what do you think is something that that can be done within this within this context given these these competing priorities of looking at china as a strategic competitor but also protecting asian americans in the u.s from undue scrutiny um thank you for these extremely important and strategic question and as we can see first because of the pandemic and second because of how the master administration had tried to see use china as a scapegoat to avoid americans criticism on the master administration's handling of the pandemic the um the aapi hit crime has been dramatically increasing and even since biden become the president in january this year and still very much ongoing and there are some statistics showing that the cases actually hasn't dropped but continues to increase which of course triggered a lot of concerns within the asian-american community and that also is a very uh strategic national security uh issue as you point out how on the one hand um you guys engage in these technological and even ideological competition with china on the other hand to make sure like uh asian americans and in particularly chinese americans not going to become the scapegoat on the street in america and i i think many of you have already paid some attention to the china initiative i started by the last administration and i think a couple of days ago there was a news that um the case against the tang jun a chinese researcher has been dropped because of because of unclarity about how military service um is defined in a visa application and uh that was the hada news exactly a year ago right amidst these are closing of a chinese consummate in houston um and the news were all over the place like a year ago right so i don't mean to interrupt you uh went home but could you first explain what the china initiative is for those of us who don't know what it is uh the china initiative is a initiative from the department of justice to protect research security and a lot of chinese researchers in the u.s has been investigated by the department of justice and there have been a lot of concerns from both academic community as well as the asian american community uh whether uh this actually uh involved the visual profiling and that's also of course us and agreed uh cheating effect across the asian american communities and in particular scientists working in stem area like in technologies that considered as strategically important to national security and there have been several cases and i think you know one recent case was this uh professor chenga from mit and uh and that's uh i think one case that has gained both national and uh international attention whether the china initiative has been really effective in terms of protecting u.s technology as well as in terms of really really serving as a powerful tool uh in this technological competition between u.s and china and what's the cost uh potential cost uh and that was the benefit i think it's still very much in debate yeah this is a this is an area that where there's been a tremendous amount of scrutiny um margaret lewis from seton hall uh law school does has done great work on the china initiative and has identified a lot of cases where the cases against the scientists were dropped due to faulty evidence or lack of evidence so this is definitely an important area for thinking about how the u.s manages its relationship with the people's republic of china and the communist party um and the chinese tech sector um as well as how to support diversity within the within the u.s context and support a nation of immigrants who have contributed richly to this country um yacho what about your perspective on this on the what should be the biden administration's top domestic priorities um i agree with you know what adam and er wilhelm has said just to add two points one is that i think the u.s policymakers should consider escalating actions against chinese companies that are complicit in the chinese government's mass surveillance in places like xinjiang i mean there has you know been already uh the government has already used the global magnitude act uh to section certain companies and certain individuals i mean u.s policy uh makers can think about how to continue to use that law to uh you know hold human rights abusers uh a second point i want to make is that i think washington should really think uh creatively and ambitiously about how to use technology to augment uh democracy and uh uh civil society participation uh if you i don't know whether you guys know uh the person uh andrew tong who is a taiwanese uh policymaker in the tech uh world um i mean he has um she has done a great work in terms of how to using technology to facilitate uh public discussion to fill stated democratic participation because i feel i mean even in the united states the big tech social media platforms are by this point mostly are used for sole division and enable disinformation uh in pursuit of profits so i think we need to think creatively how to do how to use technology in another way to actually reinvigorate democracy i like it um well uh so adam from for you in june the white house announced a trade a trade strike force to halt the hollowing out of american industry and the erosion of critical supply chains for products such as semiconductors batteries and medical supplies what can we expect in terms of a timeline difficulties and costs and how much of an emphasis should be placed on partnering with american allies and partners to eliminate supply chain vulnerabilities and how effective can this strategy be long term yeah in terms of timeline i don't think we should expect anything particularly short term right it's it's not going to be easy to uh re move most supply chains uh quickly and i think the administration knows that so we're looking at a balance between short term and long term as you said i think there's a balance between [Music] onshoring so moving supply chains to the united states as well as offshoring to other places so the u.s doesn't necessarily want to move everything to the united states there are lots of things we probably are perfectly happy with having in our allies do and and so there's going to have to be a balance uh there um and the cost you know is going to be a question about balance between private and public sector investment so on semiconductors we see a lot of talk about public investment the reason why you know taiwan and singapore and israel and others have managed to build an industry over the last four decades is because of you know massive subsidies in the in the realms of billions of dollars on tax and other types of uh um breaks uh for those things and we're we're having that debate uh 50 billion uh the number that's been thrown around so it's going to you know cost a lot of money um but probably uh worth it yeah uh in the long term so uh i you know it's hard to give a comprehensive answer because it's going to differ by by the by the industry industry um you know semiconductor is incredibly capital intensive something like you know ppe is less and easier to do but um everything that i've seen the you know the the bite administration is aware of all of those potential uh trade-offs um and you know the early kind of focuses has been on both ships because of strategic reasons and just because the demand right where we're now facing a shortage of chips um across uh uses um but i don't expect any you know these are all gonna be long-term kind of changes that are going to take a while before we feel any real impact thank you so for yacho president biden withdrew a series of executive orders issued by the trump administration that sought to ban new downloads of wechat tic tac and other apps and ordered a new review given the role that that the platforms play in facilitating chinese government domestic censorship propaganda and surveillance are there any measures that you believe should be taken following such an investigation what risks in terms of privacy and security or extra territorial censorship do you believe exist for users in the united states on these platforms um i think first of all wechat and tick tock uh are very different apps tick tock only exists in the united states actually even it's a chinese company owned app and which head is one app that are very popular uh among the chinese diaspora um but it's not that you know popular among like um uh you know uh americans who don't have ties with china uh in terms of wechat there's more concrete evidence uh uh on the realm of surveillance censorship the chinese government uh you know can basically have have a look into what is being said what information is being exchanged on wage yet uh for tick tock i think there's less very concrete evidence on surveillance and professorship that being said because you know tick tock is owned by the chinese company by dance given the nature of you know the chinese system uh chinese companies whether whether they are private owned or private uh government owned they are to a very large extent beholden to the chinese government so you know there's a risk for using talk even in the united states uh uh because even as i said there's not concrete evidence of civilization yet but if the chinese government really wants to access the you know the data on tech talk uh i would say it would be very hard for ba by dance to uh you know reject that kind of request so i think american users need to keep in mind this kind of you know understanding um of how their data could potentially be used by the chinese government uh or you know at least accessed by the chinese government in terms of how the u.s government addressed you know the chinese apps i think there are three words one is proportionate second is transparent third is uh lawful so well you know the the human rights uh threats uh needs to be addressed in proportionate transparent and law of manners that respect the right of freedom of expression um i i think both way hong and adam has mentioned the united states should uh you know keep its own house in order the u.s should strengthen its own data protection laws so you know if any company whether it's u.s companies or chinese companies uh are required to practice uh data minimization for all users in the united states if they are required to you know protect users privacy rights and the the risk of the data being harvested by any actors whether it's you know u.s government u.s private companies or chinese uh government would all be greatly uh reduced um i think another thing i really wanted to mention is that uh the u.s government you know on the one hand it's the potential risk of uh american users that have been uh in uh are accessed by the chinese government it's you know people's first reaction is to oh let's ban it but we need to think in another way which is that the us government should invest in open source technology uh you know uh to enable the chinese uh the people in china to uh to to to jump over the firewall so they can communicate with people in the us better because a lot of people you know my friends they don't like which edit they hate the surveillance and censorship by way but they have no choice because they have to connect people or connect with people in china that's why even they're in the u.s they uh have to use which so how about the u.s government investing some money trying to you know enable people in china to connect with people in the united states uh freely so there are we need to you know think of creative ways to address the problem rather than you know immediately jump into let's ban this and bend that thank you yacho i love your innovative solutions and your focus on on finding new pathways it's very it's optimistic and it's inspiring so for wen hong previously you have written that the chinese the chinese government policies have been widely credited as a main driver of china's digital transformation while america's own strategy has been quote unquote less articulate and less systematic in the years since the tech cold war has forced both sides to reevaluate their involvement in what ways has beijing been looking to control the vast reams of data held by china's tech giants and how might tighter regulation reshape the chinese tech landscape and overall competitiveness there are many questions in this question so very easy very simple super relaxed let me start with this uh code wall uh metaphor i in the last several years uh expected since uh 2016 2017 uh we hear like uh other policy circles uh uh using this uh metaphor again and again right cold war uh a cold war 2.0 uh technological cold war and i i think the the jury is still very much open are we already in a cold war right uh oh it's already started um and i i think uh more and more i'm not are now pointing out using these uh metaphor uh it reveals but it also conceals a lot um and i think these are very easy or almost intellectually lazy for us to use this metaphor and it can be very very risky because the current situation competition of collaboration engagement or contentment between u.s and china have many different characteristics when compared to the last cold war between us and the soviet union because the economic co-dependence between us and china is much much larger comprehensive and also um if we look at the ideology uh china and the soviet union also are not exactly the same and so we we really want to be uh very careful when we use the term code wall and uh what we may gain using these analytical means and what we may actually hide or make uh invisible uh using these analytical tools and second um clearly uh the chinese government has used technology as one of the most powerful investment development tool both for economic development as well as for political stability and now as technology become the central piece of competition between us and china we can also observe that things are changing very quickly from both sides right last year primarily it was the u.s government talking about how apps like tick-tock or b-check as yet to just discussed become potentially a big national security concern for the u.s and the trump administration had played very tough uh to ban us chinese apps and this year we can see that the chinese government almost gathered the same playbook uh talking about how chinese tech companies for instance the dd by you know having their ipo in america actually proposed a national security concern for china and this really brings to the foreground where are the tech industries in china going in the near future and we can see that there's a quickly narrowing of these transnational field uh it's become very difficult for chinese tech companies to invest in the u.s tech companies because of all these concerns about national security as well as intellectual property protection uh it's also pretty difficult for chinese tech companies like huawei to sell their product and the service in the u.s but also uh in market uh in the us allies and this is really become an existential crisis for some of big chinese chinese counts and this brings back to our early discussion about what might be the effective competition strategy between these two countries because the chinese government also need to ask this question they have been the regulators they have been the major investors they actually have been also the biggest buyers of chinese tech companies product and the service and what's next after the past of these anti-trust measures finding big chinese they come and um also how that may affect their global future that's i think you know many many questions with a great uh uncertainty uh right now and i i think you know a lot of the answers are still very much in the air because um as we already talked about the biden administration has been patient and i don't think there are going to be any significant change of progress in 2021 and then 2022 uh it's going to be a critically important year for u.s china relation because it's going to be the 50th anniversary of president nixon's visit to china and that's definitely a watershed event and also um as old uh the china analysts here know uh well they're going to be a major power transition uh going on in china later next year and then there are also the midterm election in the u.s and if we consider all these events together we can see that very likely the two government would proceed with a lot of caution but meanwhile technological advancement well they are not going to stop right and the big tax as well as smaller players um the techstar arabs we come to this very very critical moment to think about okay um where is their future right uh in china or in us oh in other markets and given all these reputational legal as well as economic risk right uh we can also see uh well uh many people are wondering right what will be the next well i feel very fortunate to have been here today with such a rich wise and diverse panel of experts in this area um i know that we'll be calling on you a lot in the future to get your rich perspectives and to help us navigate these challenging waters unfortunately in our short panel we haven't really resolved anything but hopefully the people who are watching have developed a better understanding of the issues and challenges we're facing and some potential solutions thank you so much for your time and attention uh many thanks to our panelists for their superb and insightful remarks and to the klugey center for hosting this wonderful event thanks to all and have a wonderful day

Channel: Library of Congress

Views: 2,859

Rating: 4.25 out of 5

Keywords: Library of Congress

Id: 7YZSisANxow

Length: 48min 30sec (2910 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 12 2021