Is This the End of Belt and Road, or Just the Beginning?

A ChinaFile Conversation

By Nadège Rolland, Adrian Zenz & more on April 24, 2019

On April 25-27, China’s government will host the leaders of dozens of countries to celebrate the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the signature foreign policy program of Xi Jinping. Since its founding in October 2013, the BRI now covers more than 150 countries and encompasses billions of dollars of deals. In late March, Italy became the first G-7 nation to endorse Belt and Road. But meanwhile, there are signs that Beijing, and the rest of the world, are less than ecstatic about the BRI. Is 2019 the beginning of the end of BRI? Or are reports of its death premature?

Jonathan Hillman

on April 23, 2019

Jonathan Hillman is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Reconnecting Asia Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). At CSIS, he leads an effort to map and analyze new roads, railways, ports, and other infrastructure emerging across the supercontinent of Eurasia. Prior to joining CSIS, he served as a policy adviser at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, where he directed the research and writing process for essays, speeches, and other materials explaining U.S. trade and investment policy. He has also worked as a researcher at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the Council on Foreign Relations, and in Kyrgyzstan as a Fulbright scholar. He is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a Presidential Scholar, and Brown University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received the Garrison Prize for best thesis in international relations.

Charles Edel

on April 23, 2019

Charles Edel is a Senior Fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. Prior to this appointment, he was Associate Professor of Strategy and Policy at the U.S. Naval War College, and served on the U.S. Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff from 2015-2017. In that role, he advised the Secretary of State on political and security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. Previously, he worked at Peking University’s Center for International and Strategic Studies as a Henry Luce Scholar, was awarded the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship, and taught high school history in New York City. He is the co-author of The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order (2019) and author of Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic (2014). In addition to his scholarly publications, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The American Interest, and various other outlets.

Who Owns Huawei?

By Christopher Balding & Donald Clarke on April 23, 2019

Who owns Huawei? American officials have long claimed the controversial telecommunications giant belongs to the Chinese state, while Huawei has long called itself a “private company wholly owned by its employees.” Huawei states that its founder, Ren Zhengfei, owns roughly 1 percent of the company, and a trade union jointly controlled by the company’s employees owns the rest. The question of who owns Huawei is key. If the Chinese state owns Huawei, then not only has the company been lying for years, but it means that the Party has more control over Huawei than previously thought.

“记得第一次听说‘六四’……”——个人故事征集 // When Did You Learn About Tiananmen? A Call for Personal Stories

on April 23, 2019

我们希望能听到你的亲口讲述。如果事件发生时你年龄尚小（或者还没出生），你还记得你第一次是如何知道的吗？你当时在哪里？有怎样的感受？如果你是一个家长，而事件发生时你的孩子年龄尚小或还未出生，你后来是如何决定是否和孩子讲述这件事呢？是什么原因让你选择开口或不开口？你对你的决定有怎样的感受？// We want to hear your story, in your own voice. If you were too young to remember, how did you first learn about what happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989? Where were you? How did you feel? If you are a parent of a child who is too young to remember or who was born after Tiananmen, what choices have you made about discussing it with your child? Why did you choose to tell them about it, or why did you choose not to tell them? How do you feel about your decision?

Democracy: A Journal of Ideas

on April 22, 2019

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The mission of Democracy is to build a vibrant and vital progressivism for the 21st century that builds on the movement’s proud history, is true to its central values, and is relevant to present times. Democracy will publish on a quarterly basis and serve as a place where ideas can be developed and important debates can be spurred.

Michael Hirson

on April 22, 2019

Michael Hirson leads Eurasia Group’s practice for China and Northeast Asia, with a focus on China’s macroeconomic and financial policies, economic reforms, and the political developments affecting foreign firms and investors. Prior to joining the firm, he served for three years as the U.S. Treasury’s Chief Representative in Beijing. In that role, he engaged with China’s government and the private sector on a broad set of macroeconomic, financial, and investment issues. In addition to his time in China, Hirson worked on a range of international economic issues for the Treasury as well as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York over a 10-year period. He holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and from Pomona College.

The Messy Truth About Social Credit

By Shazeda Ahmed on April 22, 2019

Almost every day, I receive an email from Google Alerts about a new article on China’s “social credit system.” It is rare that I encounter an article that does not contain several factual errors and gross mischaracterizations. The social credit system is routinely described as issuing “citizen scores” to create a “digital dictatorship” where “big data meets Big Brother.” These descriptions are wildly off-base. Foreign media has distorted the social credit system into a technological dystopia far removed from what is actually happening in China. Jeremy Daum, a legal scholar at Yale Law School’s China Center, has suggested that part of why the misreporting persists is because the United States and Europe project their fears about extensive digital surveillance in their own societies onto China’s rapid technological rise. Compounded by the rhetoric around a U.S.-China “arms race” in developing artificial intelligence, the idea that China might somehow perfect an exportable model of a totalitarian surveillance state has made people more willing to believe exaggerated accounts of the social credit system.

Effy Zhang

on April 20, 2019

Effy Zhang is a Beijing-based reporter and Deputy Editor in Chief for the privately-run financial news outlet Caixin. She reports on global affairs for Caixin’s digital distribution arm, Caixin Media Globus, where her articles are distributed on WeChat, Weibo, and the popular news aggregator app Jinri Toutiao, among others. Her work also appears in Caixin’s print magazine. Zhang is a graduate of Hong Kong Baptist University and is very active on Twitter at @EffyZhangmy.

People’s Daily Details Cases of Foreign NGOs ‘Endangering Political Security’

on April 19, 2019

The People’s Republic of China’s (P.R.C.’s) most authoritative media outlet, The People’s Daily, published an article on April 19 describing two foreign NGOs as having posed threats to “political security” in recent years. The article, entitled “National Security Entities Make Public Three Cases of Endangering Political Security,” outlines the NGOs’ alleged violations and the ways in which the groups posed a threat to the P.R.C. A third case in the article is related to the banned spiritual group Falun Gong, which it does not directly link to the two foreign NGO cases.