NCUSCR U.S.-China Insights

In the decades following World War II, global geopolitics were dominated by two superpowers: the United States and the U.S.S.R. The Cold War era was defined by estrangement and the threat posed by a nuclear arms race between the two countries. Today, there is growing consensus that the United States is entering into a new kind of cold war with another communist superpower: China. As the U.S.-China trade war heats up—potentially morphing into a larger technology war—and competition becomes the primary dynamic, what parallels can be made? Dr. Oriana Skylar Mastro of Georgetown University and the American Enterprise Institute explains why U.S. relations with China differ from those with the former Soviet Union, and why a new cold war might not be the worst outcome.

Oriana Skylar Mastro is an assistant professor of security studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where her research addresses critical questions regarding Chinese military and security policy, military operations, and rising power challenges to the international order. Dr. Mastro is also a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and concurrently serves in the United States Air Force Reserve as a senior China analyst at the Pentagon. She is the author of numerous publications, including The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime (Cornell University Press, 2019). Dr. Mastro is a fellow of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations' Public Intellectuals Program.

As China's economy continues to develop, and individuals and private companies amass greater wealth, another area of growth is the philanthropic sector. Shen Danxi, a 2018 Richard Rockefeller Fellow and deputy secretary general of the Sany Foundation, talks about how her foundation represents a new generation of Chinese philanthropy, and what she sees as the key differences between American and Chinese foundations.

Shen Danxi is the deputy secretary general at the Sany Foundation, a private, corporate foundation in Beijing. Ms. Shen oversees the foundation's grant making, program research, and global partnerships. She previously supervised the Sany Foundation's 3ESPACE, a co-working incubator and event hub for social innovators. Prior to joining the Sany Foundation, Ms. Shen worked at the intersection of education and social innovation through partnership development and program design at the Harvard SEED for Social Innovation (now a registered fund at Shanghai Adream Foundation), a network for China's next generation of social sector leaders.

Ms. Shen holds a master's degree in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and has studied international human rights and linguistics at Peking University, Waseda University, and Beijing Foreign Studies University. Ms. Shen is also founder of Dean D'Art, a volunteer organization that has brought drama and arts education to over 300 migrant children in Beijing, and currently sits on the board of the Beijing Deqing Charitable Foundation.

As tensions continue to escalate between the United States and China, technology has become a focal point of growing bilateral competition. One of China's top high-tech companies, Huawei, is the subject of scrutiny from competitors as well as governments across the globe, as it faces accusations of violating sanctions, stealing trade secrets, and compromising user privacy. Nevertheless, Huawei is at the forefront in the commercialization of 5G technology, the next generation of wireless networks that will power our phones, computers, and even autonomous vehicles. Dr. Scott Kennedy of CSIS explains how Huawei got its start, how secure its devices are, and what its role will be in the tech sector for years to come. Scott Kennedy is senior adviser of the Freeman Chair in China Studies and director of the Project on Chinese Business and Political Economy at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS). A leading authority on China's economic policy and its global economic relations, specific areas of focus include industrial policy, technology innovation, business lobbying, multinational business challenges in China, global governance, and philanthropy. Dr. Kennedy has been traveling to China for almost 30 years and has interviewed thousands of officials, business executives, lawyers, nonprofit organizations, and scholars. He is the author of The Fat Tech Dragon: Benchmarking China's Innovation Drive (CSIS, 2017); (with Chris Johnson) Perfecting China Inc.: China's 13th Five-Year Plan (CSIS, 2016), and The Business of Lobbying in China(Harvard University Press, 2005). He has edited three books, including Global Governance and China: The Dragon's Learning Curve (Routledge, 2018), and Beyond the Middle Kingdom: Comparative Perspectives on China's Capitalist Transformation (Stanford University Press, 2011). His articles have appeared in a wide array of policy, popular, and academic venues, including the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, China Quarterly,China Journal, and the Journal of Contemporary China. Dr. Kennedy is a fellow in the National Committee's Public Intellectuals Program.

As the Chinese state—under the leadership of President Xi Jinping—continues to exert more control over China's economy through its policies, prospects for future reforms seem uncertain. Dr. Nicholas R. Lardy of the Peterson Institute explains why economic reform has been so important to Chinese society over the past 40 years and shares his perspective on whether the country's reform period has indeed ended. Nicholas R. Lardy, called "everybody's guru on China" by the National Journal, is the Anthony M. Solomon Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He joined the Institute in March 2003 from the Brookings Institution, where he was a senior fellow from 1995 until 2003. He was the director of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington from 1991 to 1995. From 1997 through the spring of 2000, he was also the Frederick Frank Adjunct Professor of International Trade and Finance at the Yale University School of Management. He is author, coauthor, or editor of numerous books, including Markets Over Mao: The Rise of Private Business in China (2014), Sustaining China's Economic Growth After the Global Financial Crisis (2012), The Future of China's Exchange Rate Policy (2009), China's Rise: Challenges and Opportunities (2008), Debating China's Exchange Rate Policy (2008), and China: The Balance Sheet—What the World Needs to Know Now about the Emerging Superpower (2006). Lardy is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the editorial boards of Asia Policy and the China Review.

Recent challenges in the U.S.-China economic relationship have been well-documented in the United States and debated from every point of view. But how is the trade war viewed by the U.S. business community in China? As an American working in Beijing, Ben Harburg, managing partner of MSA Capital, gives his interpretation of the short- and long-term effects of this tension in the relationship.

Ben Harburg is a Managing Partner of MSA Capital, a venture capital firm which has invested $1b over the last 4 years into Chinese technology companies. In 2018, the firm had one of the most successful years of any VC fund globally, with four IPOs and one major sale.

MSA's most recent venture fund already boasts 10 companies individually valued at over $1b. Prior to MSA, he worked for The Boston Consulting Group and founded several companies.

He was a Fulbright Scholar at Freie University Berlin and Neubauer Scholar at Tufts University, where he also sits on the Board of Advisors of the School of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Carnegie Endowment's Tsinghua Center.

The Paris Climate Agreement marked a breakthrough in international cooperation on climate change, with 196 states and the European Union negotiating a pact in December 2015 to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The United States and China, the top two emitters of greenhouse gases on the planet, announced their intentions to join the agreement in April 2016. Since then, President Donald Trump has vowed to withdraw from the agreement, while China has reaffirmed its commitment to meeting the targets outlined within.

Kelly Sims Gallagher, professor of energy and environmental policy at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a senior policy advisor on science and technology to the Obama administration during the talks, provides insight into the negotiation process. She describes the steps taken to reach the agreement, and the alternating progress and stagnation in Chinese and American climate policies in the years since.

The influence of artificial intelligence on our world is only growing, as smart home products, algorithm-based streaming platforms, and even autonomous vehicles become a part of our daily lives. Since the 1990s, American tech companies in Silicon Valley have dominated the development and application of AI-driven technologies. However, AI pioneer Dr. Kai-Fu Lee explains that China has rapidly caught up with the United States, accelerating AI innovation and implementation in our daily lives. Lee argues that the future of AI will be even larger than the industrial revolution, posing unprecedented challenges and responsibilities for both AI superpowers. Are the United States and China going to cooperate or compete?

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is the chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures and president of Sinovation Venture's Artificial Intelligence Institute. Sinovation Ventures, is a leading technology investment firm focusing on developing the next generation of Chinese high-tech companies. Prior to founding Sinovation in 2009, Dr. Lee was the president of Google China. Previously, he held executive positions at Microsoft, SGI, and Apple. Dr. Lee received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University, Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University both in computer science, as well as honorary doctorate degrees from both Carnegie Mellon and the City University of Hong Kong. He is also a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

In the field of artificial intelligence, Dr. Lee founded Microsoft Research China, which was named as the hottest research lab by MIT Technology Review in 2004. Later renamed Microsoft Research Asia, this institute trained the great majority of AI leaders in China, including CTOs or AI heads at Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, Lenovo, Huawei, and Haier. While with Apple, Dr. Lee led AI projects in speech and natural language, which have been featured on Good Morning America and in the Wall Street Journal. He has received 10 U.S. patents, published more than 100 journal and conference papers, and written seven top selling books in Chinese. He has over 50 million followers on social media.

China's high-tech industries have grown rapidly in recent years, as companies like Tencent and Alibaba achieve global name recognition and the quality of the country's digital infrastructure improves. To accelerate the development of its industrial capacity, Beijing has launched 'Made in China 2025,' a strategic blueprint that seeks to make China a global leader in high-tech manufacturing industries currently dominated by the United States and other developed economies. American opposition to the policy centers on arguments that it poses a national security threat, and would harm U.S. companies and distort global markets with its reliance on government subsidies, discriminatory treatment of foreign investment, forced technology transfers, intellectual property theft, and cyber espionage. Professor Yu Zhou of Vassar College explains why China is pursuing this initiative, its effect on China's technological capabilities, and the potential for cooperation—rather than competition—between the United States and China.

Yu Zhou is Professor of Geography at Vassar College. Professor Zhou received Bachelor and Master's degrees from the Department of Regional and Environmental Sciences (formerly Geography) at Peking University and received a PhD in geography from the University of Minnesota in 1995. Her current research is on globalization and high-tech industries in China. More recently, she has done research into China's green building program and urban sustainability. In the United States, her work focuses on the areas of ethnic business, gender and ethnic communities, and transnational business networks. In 2008, she was selected as a fellow of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations' Public Intellectuals Program. She has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Voice of America, among others.

As the attendance of Chinese students at U.S. institutions of higher education comes under greater scrutiny, Peggy Blumenthal of the Institute for International Education explains the history of Chinese students in the United States, their impact on American institutions, why they come, and how new visa policies may affect their enrollment. Peggy Blumenthal is senior counselor to the president at the Institute for International Education (IIE), where she has served since 1984 and was chief operating officer from 2005 to 2011. Previously, she was assistant director of Stanford University's Overseas Studies, and coordinator of Graduate Services/Fellowships for the University of Hawaii's Center for Asian and Pacific Studies.