CRG weekly: Two Sessions, tech competition and media freedom

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News from the CRG

Next event: Where next for the Belt and Road? Join us on Thursday 11 March at 5pm for a session on the Digital Silk Road and the future of China’s foreign policy with Jonathan E. Hillman, Meia Nouwens and Eyck Freymann, moderated by Tom Tugendhat MP. Register here.

The week in review

The early going at the Two Sessions, the most important set piece in the CCP’s calendar, has broadly followed the presumptive script: CPPCC chairman Wang Yang celebrated China’s containment of the COVID-19 pandemic, eradication of poverty and economic recovery; he also called for support of Hong Kong-directed measures that stood out on the NPC’s opening day agenda. The territory’s legal system is set to be overhauled to ensure that only ‘patriots’ are in governance. Other key takeaways from the first day of the NPC session included a target for economic growth of 6%, a 6.8% increase in defence spending, the unveiling of a Polar Silk Road and a 7% increase in R&D spending to boost seven ‘frontier technologies’ in its bid to stay ahead of the escalating tech war.

Where the Two Sessions progress will provide a firm indicator of how the CCP’s elite view the post-Trump US-China relationship. NPC spokesperson Zhang Yesui called disagreements ‘normal’ on the eve of the session, and urged a move away from confrontation and rivalry. But the headline items from the NPC suggest that the CCP is looking towards technological self-sufficiency in much the same way as the US: the Biden administration is set to allow the Commerce Department to ban technology transactions that pose a national security threat to its supply chains. A US National Security Commission report urged ‘competition’ without ‘decoupling’ in artificial intelligence, but highlighted that $32bn of investment in research was required to stay ahead.

Secretary of State Blinken, in his first major address since taking office, referred to China as ‘the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system.’ And in a speech published last week, Xi Jinping labelled the US ‘the biggest threat’ to China’s rise. This year’s COP 26 summit will be a test for global collaboration on the environment, hailed as the most likely place for consensus. 

Where the UK sits in relation to the next decade of US-China competition remains a key question. Though there is appetite for green collaboration and the Johnson family has come into the spotlight for its China-friendly diplomacy, the UK Ambassador to China Caroline Wilson was derided by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin after she penned an article in Mandarin on the ‘watchdog’ role of the foreign media. In the article Ambassador Wilson noted the increasing number of local media reports that label foreign media as ‘anti-China’ (反华 - fǎnhuá) and defended the purpose of foreign media:

我认为他们本着诚意行事，作为政府行为的监督机构发挥着积极作用，确保人们能够获得准确的信息，并保护那些没有发言权的人.

‘I believe they act in good faith, have a positive role in serving as a supervisory mechanism for government, ensure that people have access to accurate information and protect those whose voices are restricted.’

Wilson’s article, widely criticised by Chinese state media, was prompted in response to the findings of a Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China report which concluded that there had been a ‘rapid decline in media freedom’ in the past year. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute found that a state-sponsored disinformation campaign was seeking to discredit the BBC following critical reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The BBC’s World Service was barred following the suspension of the Chinese state broadcaster’s license in the UK, though a decision by the French regulator CSA this week will allow CGTN to be shown in the UK subject to specific restrictions.

One of the clearest statements of the UK’s policy on China is likely to come in the form of this month’s Integrated Review (now expected on March 16th). With the Biden administration now fairly clear on sustained US-China competition and evidence of a self-confident China at the Two Sessions, the UK has a tricky course to navigate.

In brief

Weekend reads

Inside Xinjiang’s prison state: a powerful multimedia piece in the New Yorker piecing together knowledge and testimony on treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. 

China is losing influence - and that makes it dangerous: a Foreign Policy piece makes the case that Joe Biden and US allies should simply stand by and watch the already-underway process of China’s diplomatic decline.

Why is China still going after Hong Kong so hard? Yi-Zheng Lian, former editor of the Hong Kong Economic Journal, sees a disparity between Xi Jinping’s personal ambition and the CCP’s long-term interest playing out over Hong Kong.

The Yum Model: The Wire analyses Yum’s spin-off of KFC’s China operations and considers the merits of this approach as a paradigm for Western companies doing business in China. 

Snapshot: TikTok in the UK

In May last year, it was reported that TikTok had quietly made London its main European hub. And on Friday, it was confirmed that TikTok had signed on 88,000 sq ft of new office space in Farringdon on a 15-year lease. That tallies with reports from last year that TikTok planned to triple its UK headcount from 300 to 1,000.

Despite a burst of parliamentary scrutiny late last year, TikTok is believed to have well over 15 million regular users in the UK, mainly aged 18-24. The company’s regulatory outlook has eased with the Biden administration distancing itself from Trump’s order for TikTok to sell its US operations. And ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) hired 40,000 new employees in 2020 in a burst of rapid expansion into self-driving start-ups, gaming and even an investment arm.

We think TikTok’s success deserves far more interest in the UK because it is a genuine paradigm shift in the form of an algorithm-first social network. The app is successful because its AI-driven algorithm does an excellent job at matching videos with user preferences - making who made the video matter less. This is built into its design. The TikTok app plays just one video at a time, which makes it much easier to measure user sentiment towards its content. Since each video is short, TikTok is also able to collect a large volume of data on user feedback in each session (read this great piece by Eugene Wei for more on ‘algorithm-friendly design’). And as Rui Ma argues, Bytedance’s success is heavily linked to Chinese tech culture: “Chinese companies think about the user experience, and not so much what the app is delivering”. While TikTok may be the first Chinese social media platform to break into the Western market, it’s unlikely to be the last.

Research snippets

  • Chatham House’s brief comment article reflects on the UK’s alignment with the US in the context of a Europe that is moving away from its traditional configuration on notable issues such as China, arguing that the UK has the opportunity to reshape transatlantic cooperation.

  • A Pew Research report found that 89% of Americans now view China as a ‘competitor’ or an ‘enemy’, and 48% believe that China should be the US’s top policy priority, a 50% increase from 2019. 

  • A China Leadership Monitor piece written by Ryan Hass, senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Programme at Brookings, looks to distil the decisions and thought-pattern behind China’s evaluation of escalating global competition into three strategic goals (maintaining a non-hostile environment, reducing dependence and expanding influence) for future diplomatic policy.

  • Olivia Enos and Tori Smith’s report for The Heritage Foundation proposes a ‘rebuttable presumption’ mechanism that assumes certain goods are made using forced labour and requires companies to prove otherwise as a strategy to combat human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

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