Warfare as a part of its decades long quest for global dominance, leveraging a multifaceted to supplant the current world order . Im cliff may. Im flds founder and president and were pleased to have you here some in person, some tuning in live for this conversation. In the economic realm, the Chinese Communist party bullies, companies and governments to follow beijings which benefit to the detriment of all others. To discuss how the west can resist chinas illiberal influence and safeguard u. S. National security, we are proud to be joined by bethany allenebrahimian axios china. Reporter, author of the recently published book beijing rules how china weaponized economy to confront the world. Also joining us are liza tobin senior director economy at the special competitive studies project, scc and former china director on the National Security council and scott keefe the Fred StevensonResearch Professor at the Gw Law School and founder of Keefe Strategies during the Obama Administration in the Senate Unanimously confirmed as commissioner of the u. S. International trade commission today is discussion will be moderated by Craig Singleton senior fellow here at fcd. Before we dive in just a few words about effective for more than 20 years now fcd has operated a fiercely independent research institute, exclusively focused on National Security and Foreign Policy as a point of both pride and principle. We do not accept foreign funding. We never have. We never will. For more on our work, do visit our website, fdr, dawg, and follow us on at ftd. And thats enough for me. Craig, over to you in panel. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much, cliff, for the warm introduction and thank you all for joining us today in person or virtually. Lets lets dive right in. You know, bethany, its wonderful to have you back in d. C. , even if just for a few weeks. And many congratulations. Your excellent book, beijing rules. It was a great summer read. I think all of us sort of devoured really fast. I want to talk a little bit about something that weve talked about a few years, and thats the idea that when china joined, the World Trade Organization there was this idea that it was to become this trustworthy partner trade, that free markets in, democracy were somehow inseparable. But as your book sort of details, it didnt really work out that way, huh . Yeah. I mean, i think its understood and noble, you know, its easy to look back now for me and oh we were so naive, you know, how could we have granted the Chinese Party this kind of loan of trust, you know, granting them access based on the promise of future reform or the promise of future behavior. But the nineties were such a decade of optimism, and i think, you know, it makes sense to see that, you know, perhaps the government would have gone the way of moscow, you know, or some of the other just that the whole wave of democracy that we saw. But thats not what happened. And so instead what we see is that as the chinese economy got more and more integrated economies around the world, instead the Chinese Government became very good at came up with these really innovative quite creative new levers to pull using all of its economic links to shape the behavior beyond its borders, to shape the decisions of individuals, companies and government, to bring them more in line with the Chinese Partys core interests and you could call this a kind of a global authoritarian sanctions regime, although those mechanisms, most of them arent traditional sanctions. You know, totally. I think its a fascinating perspective. And in your book, you sort of piece it all together. And one of the things that you mentioned in beijing is chinas use of de facto sanctions from everything targeting the nba, norwegian, you know, fishery. Its fascinating, right. But you also talk a, about how sometimes chinas on money and aid has sort of been counterproductive, which i think is interesting because theres a narrative out there that china is winning over all of these countries. What does it look like . Places like africa . Yeah. So i just got back a trip in july to and one of my chapters is about ethiopia and ill run through my takeaways from my about ethiopia. So you know, the, the World Health Organization and the head of it is oh dear Ghebreyesus Tedros athenaeum ghebreyesus and back at the beginning of the pandemic it was, you know, and the trump was Super Critical of him because he seemed to echo beijings talking points about pandemic. He praised xi jinpings response right in middle of the Chinese Government, basically a cover up of this. And it was really striking. And so people talked about his background as ethiopias health minister. But actually what i look in to in my book and what i think is a lot more relevant for how for his initial reaction, the pandemic as the head of the w. H. O. Was his role as ethiopias foreign minister, which a position he held from around 2012 and 2016. If i get years. Right, and in fact when he was was the foreign minister ethiopia that was the peak year that the pinnacle of ethiopias close relationship china and they still they still have a close relationship with china but his job foreign minister was to steward that close relationship with beijing and in 2014 he had a you know he went to beijing. He had a you know, he jointly announced with his chinese counterpart a comprehensive know a new a leveling up of the relationship to some kind of comprehensive strategic partnership. He was himself, you know, raised politically in a in a one party state in ethiopia. And thats how he related to beijing. So you look at the way that the Chinese Government was, you know, really reaching out to ethiopia, giving them tons of infrastructure and assistance, you know, really. And for decades doing that, it shaped behavior and his approach to china. He knew that he had that he couldnt criticize them publicly. And thats what we see in his and how he guided the w. H. O. And i think in the early months of the pandemic, that was and it was obviously the wrong decision. But i think it was really harmful the way that he couldnt be honest. What was happening in china. But heres the heres the the place where it changes that eventually didnt work. And i dont actually think that tedros was is an agent of china i think that he was shaped by his long standing relationship beijing to try to get his in a way that they could accept. But whats encouraging about this is that when it didnt work, when the w. H. O. Was not able to get scientists into for an independent mission to understand the origins of the coronavirus and and when he became more critical of china and they actually censored him his words china so he changed his tack he changed his tactics he ended up being independent then certainly the Chinese Government wanted him to be. So what whats the big takeaway here . Yes, the Chinese Government can throw money at people. It can throw all kinds of loans and assistance at Foreign Governments, and that can often work. But it doesnt always work because there are independent institutions. At the end of the day, Foreign Government and actors there are they have their own agency and theyre chinese citizens. And so its not predictable how chinas influence strategies will work out. And i think thats encouraging for the us this week not to give up and to continue to try to engage know. Its a great point and you mentioned your trip to africa. You know, you had this great exclusive to i just want a flag for folks about you know the establishment of ccp schools in different parts of the world tanzania being an example and you can start to see rhetoric reinforce and sort of amplify about this ideology infused order and how its taking hold in parts of the global south highly encourage everyone to check out that piece was a recent exclusive in an axios was really it was great and im not sure be able to go to tanzania again soon but oh you went there on a tourist hopefully you your passport and there you go but want to bring in our other panelists to lise and scott. So much for joining us, lightsail with you. Its great to have here. You know, bethanys book, i think paints a pretty stark image of what youve called i love this term chinese brute force economics. I love that phrase. Im going to start to steal it. I think and think tank world. We both worked in government. Were both out of government now. Are you a little more optimist or less optimistic of sort of on this issue now that youre. Thanks so much for having me here, craig. This is a great event and i feel really lucky to be sitting next to bethany. Her book came out in early august. I downloaded it on my phone right away and listened to it on my commute and got through it really quickly because what bethany got so many things right and i think this issue of chinas economic coercion and the weapon and weaponization of the economy has been getting growing in washington and around the world over the last ten plus years probably since they fired that first shot against japan in 2011 with the rare earths export incident. But i think, bethany, very skillfully avoids a couple of traps and tropes that are that are true of a lot of the analysis out there of either on the one side people often paint china with a really broad brush and kind of put you know, basically attach the same level of skepticism to any of Economic Activity or entity coming out of china. And so that, of course isnt right or on the other side failing to acknowledge the Long Term Strategy that the ccp has been pursuing for a long time to achieve global. And i think bethany does fantastic job of not falling into trap and giving a really vivid and accurate depiction the problem thats neither too optimistic nor too pessimistic. And i think another thing she gets is acknowledging that in the United States, weve used economic coercion as well. And giving a very careful assessment of how our use economic coercion and economic power is similar or different to beijings without falling into the trap of what about ism that that kind of pervades a lot of the analysis out there so but to get to your question and im more optimistic i left government almost two years ago and when youre in policy you spend maybe 90 of your time in bandwidth staring at a really big problem, its very close up. Theyre kind of right up against your nose and the toolkit that you have often seems much too small, much too finite. And these these policy tools, trade tools, diplomacy, other things often seem kind of clunky and not wellsuited to this large, complex issue of chinas weaponization since leaving government, ive had the opportunity to engage a lot more with the private sector, particularly technologists who are doing really exciting things. Im getting just a couple of points of encouragement are i think theres been a real sea change in. A couple of the major Power Centers in the us economy. So if you of break it down very simplistically as main wall street and Silicon Valley i think in main street and silicon there is now a broad recognition of this challenge and. Companies and investors and Technology Just theyre starting to bake this into their theres a lot more work to do. But id say especially on that third power center, wall street, where they still need to be brought along and sort of aligned with the national interest. But but that is an encouraged gene shift over a few years ago and then also kind of getting back to that snarky, funky, finite government toolkit in the private sector, theres just so much exciting work being done to find workarounds to. Some of these challenges like this dependance that we have on china for processing critical minerals, its a really thorny challenge. But but companies are out there doing interesting things on, you know, recycling rare earths that we have right here, developing alternative to lithium and things of that nature. Yeah, i totally i think its fascinating, right, because when we were both in government, you think you have this buffet of policy options, but because you are literally from the fire hose every single day, i think its sort of it sort of limits our ability to think about new tools that didnt work didnt exist in the cold war when talk about Great Power Competition and, the role of technology in this debate, we have to start to sort of expand open the a little bit. So csp does a tremendous job at that. I highly recommend taking a look at lizs research and everything they do over there scott, want to turn to you a little bit because youve had the opportunity to see this both in government many years in government but in the academic domain at George Washington university, where professor and youve you were really, i think, at the front of the line blending your experience in tech and law to talk a little bit chinese lawfare and how the chinese are sort of using courts particularly even patent courts to their advantage. I was wondering how do you see lawfare fitting into rules. Thank so much for bringing us together for this conversation. Congratulations on the work youre all doing and congratulations to our great author on this great book and and you know, i think as we all struggle together with the topics weve been discussing so far, it gives us a chance to remember a few things we emotionally and intellectually we can hold, we can survive we can maybe even thrive with just a little bit of complexity that dont have to be all of one or all of another. And so i think the question youre asking gives us a chance to get a little more comfortable with the discomfort in the middle on some things. So what do i mean by that . Heres an example. One could hold at same time. Two idea as you can walk and chew gum, we could be huge fans of the Chinese People. We could be optimistic about the chinese country and government and find in its past and hope for in its future with good reasons. Lots opportunity to collaborate while at the same time observing what a socalled a hawk would observe a sphere this present threat backed up demonstrated by significant dangerous to behavior and spoken about openly by their government. Sometimes its okay when someone is acting against your interests, showing you that theyre acting against your interests, telling that theyre deliberately acting against your interests. Sometimes okay to take them at their word, to believe them. Thats okay. We can believe people. So we we can look at another middle zone. It is true it is good for everyone that the chinese professional bureaucrat thats in their courts in their agencies, the courts and agencies that wrestle with important technologies like biotech we had a pandemic, a ai machine ai data science. We live in a high tech world and also low tech, lithium, copper and everything between these professional no commercial oriented tribute novels are becoming and very good and powerful ways, top notch, world class in the way they use rules and the way they use Economic Analysis and the way they function professionally as lawyers and judges and administrators and theyre also becoming much more fair in the sense that they in a typical lawsuit between and party be will these days pay much less attention to the identities parties or party b and favor one over the other, even one is a non party a or party b and the other is a Chinese Party or party b. Well, that all sounds really great, but you could applaud all of that and still want to avoid tribunals like the plague if you do business outside of china and would like to keep your information your ip productive to you. Why is that. Well throughout the us europe and korean japanese, indian central and south african, asian, middle east, north regions. Thats a lot of the World Court System and agencies operate generally to varying degrees of success. We are not perfect with a bunch of fairly enforced, reasonably enforced rules. For example, if a judge in a u. S. Court while hearing a case between two parties learn that something about a or party b would relevant to the fda or the sec or even the doj that law clerk or that judge or that staff in the judges chambers will in fact, be punished if they pick up the phone and call the other agency. If that judge or that law clerk trades on that information, they can go to jail for that. And we have lots of cases where individual Court Employees are, in fact, called out by name and powerfully sanctioned for picking up the phone and doing that. But the chinese courts and the chinese tribunals under a a system of great powers, competition and under a system of civil fusion, are quite openly, demonstrably, powerfully reminded that. If they dont make that phone call, they go to jail or worse, and their family too and everyone they know and, you know, consequences tend to drive outcomes. So it shouldnt surprise us that generally in us Court Systems, Court Systems, french Court Systems and so forth, korean, japanese, theres less of that. But in chinese systems theres a whole lot of that. So we have to live with those realities in our and not take personally and not make it personal. Its not that there is no opportunity for future positive engagement with china and courts and the chinese economy and Chinese Government. But we have be careful. We have to observe the real operating we are in with them and things they control and the behaviors they demonstrate and the words they tell us about those demonstrated behaviors its okay to believe what we see and, what they say. Yeah, totally think its interes