Carolyn Bartholomew is Chair of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC). She was the legislative director and chief of staff to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a staff member on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Alex Wong is Vice Chair of the USCC and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. He previously served as deputy special representative for North Korea and deputy assistant secretary for North Korea at the US Department of State.
Federal Newswire
What does the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission do?
Carolyn Bartholomew
The Commission was established when Congress was voting to grant China permanent normal trade relations in 2001. The vote was essential in order for China to join the World Trade Organization. There was obviously some concern on the Hill about China's human rights practices and also the national security issues related to the U.S.-China economic relationship.
Congress set up two commissions to deal with these issues. The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) focuses on human rights issues. The USCC focuses on the national security implications of the U.S.-China economic relationship. There are twelve commissioners on our Commission; six Democrats and six Republicans. We are proudly bipartisan and…these issues have been bipartisan, which has been enormously helpful in trying to meet these challenges.
Each of us is appointed by the House and Senate, Democratic and Republican leadership. We serve for two-year terms.
Alex Wong
In the 20-year history of the Commission, we have seen a change. I think Carolyn will agree that the Commission probably was a lonelier voice - not the only voice, but a lonelier voice - in analyzing China's strategy and competitive stance toward the United States and globally. I think DC and the wider world have come around to that opinion. The space now is a little bit more crowded.
There is now a congressional committee on the CCP led by our friend [U.S. Rep.] Mike Gallagher…so there's a lot more attention on the China issue. I think that's a good thing, because the nature and breadth of the challenge requires more attention on higher levels from the Hill, the executive branch, and the think-tank world.
We have a great staff of 20, a lot of them Mandarin speakers, readers, and writers, to look at the source material, to take a very methodical look at the deeper strategy of China, and make recommendations.
Federal Newswire
What are your views about where we are with China?
Carolyn Bartholomew
We have tried over the decades to be forward-leaning, to identify issues that we think the Hill should be paying attention to. We were some of the first people who were talking about cyber issues, intellectual property theft, and ports. I noticed that the Washington Post just did a big piece on the strategic challenge of China's acquisition of ports around the world.
For those of us who've been talking about some of these things for 20 or 30 years, I just keep thinking, if you had only listened to us, we wouldn't be where we are.
In the early years, the national security people who were appointed to the Commission had a tendency to [focus on] what I considered traditional national security and military [issues]. The people with the economics backgrounds had a tendency to [focus on] the American economy and the impact of China's unfair trade practices.
What has happened over the years is that those issues have been merging, particularly when it comes to technology.
Federal Newswire
We’ve watched the CCP change strategies over the years, from buying up U.S. land and businesses, to influence operations on universities and the media. How do you help policymakers recognize these changes?
Alex Wong
A lot of people like to talk about competition with China in Cold War terms, comparing it to the Soviet Union, but I think it's different. The Cold War was a competition of systems that were essentially operating in parallel. There wasn’t a lot of connectivity economically that the Soviet Union had with us, or with our allies and partners.
The grand strategy of Beijing is dependent on not working in parallel with the international system. [It is based] on abuse of the system of the free world and the liberal order. Our task is harder. It must contain elements not just of outcompeting them, but extruding China from certain systems, whether economically, technologically, or politically.
Federal Newswire
Tiananmen Square revealed to the world how the PRC and CCP treated its people. Today, we see China chasing down dissidents in foreign countries and abusing Americans within our own borders. Is this something you ever anticipated?
Carolyn Bartholomew
I want to talk specifically about the attacks–legal and sometimes physical–on Chinese dissidents, young Hong Kong people, and those who are here in the United States who are saying things that the Chinese government doesn't like. They're working to silence them, and there are a lot of other countries that are seeing the Chinese government get away with this.
I can point specifically to a member of the Canadian parliament whose family was being threatened because he dared to speak out against China. We've seen this in Australia, where the Chinese government has been trying to influence the political system there. There is a lot of effort to do misinformation and disinformation. There's a lot of material that the Chinese government is using in the United States to silence people who they disagree with, and in order to promote China’s values.
One of the biggest challenges we have is that the Chinese Communist Party wants to displace liberal democracies and have their own authoritarian system. They are quite successful in advancing that model in Africa and Latin America, so the challenge for us is great.
Federal Newswire
What's happening with U.S.-China trade?
Alex Wong
It is not just about our bilateral issue with China. I don't think this was ever actually true. China is very inwardly focused on its own development, and it is very open about this now.
They're trying to expand a global coalition focusing on–I don't like this term–the Global South. They are revisionist in their views of how the world should work and…when I say revisionist I specifically mean anti-Western and anti-US-led global order.
We have to start thinking about this competition again. Not just us and China, and not just regionally in the Indo Pacific–although the Indo Pacific is the the main realm of this competition–but it is a global competition.
Federal Newswire
Your commission releases an annual report. What does this year's report highlight?
Carolyn Bartholomew
We're releasing the report on November 14, just as the APEC meeting is getting underway. It'll be an interesting time, because a lot of the issues that we focus on are going to be being raised, hopefully, between President Biden and General Secretary Xi.
For people who don't know, we hold hearings. We work out by consensus the topics that we're going to [work on]. [This includes] ideas that the staff has or ideas that the commissioners have. Also ideas that the Hill comes to us with.
One of the trends is the economic deceleration inside China. There's been this promise between the CCP and the people of China that they would get economic growth as long as they kept their mouths shut about political reforms.
People somehow thought that economic growth would lead to political reform, and it hasn't.. They have a huge youth unemployment rate, topped out I think at 21% when they stopped reporting the figures, which means, of course, that it's growing. What is their future? Can they believe in their government?
We had a hearing on China's education system and some of the educational deficiencies, all of which tied into youth unemployment and employability. Are they learning the skills that they need to succeed in a changing economy?
There is, of course, a lot of excellence taking place in some of the major universities in China, which is where the technological challenges are coming for us. But as somebody characterized it, there are pieces of excellence in a sea of mediocrity in the Chinese education system.
We need to be thinking about what that means for us competitively. Is it going to be the behemoth that people had been saying it was going to be?
Alex Wong
I want to highlight another element of the report, which is looking at China's pursuit not as a fast follower on technology, but to become a leader, if not a dominant player, in new technologies. Whether it's AI or military systems, how are they going to leapfrog the United States, or attempt to leapfrog the United States and our warfare capabilities in space-based weapons and nuclear delivery systems? How are they going to apply AI to the battlefield?
Federal Newswire
Is it safe to collaborate in research and development with China?
Carolyn Bartholomew
When we talk about transparency and the lack of transparency in terms of where the Chinese government is focusing, it's technological innovation [where] they are transparent.
They talk about where they are focusing, biomaterials, nanomaterials, AI, quantum, all of those things. This puts an onus on universities here in the U.S. that are doing this cutting edge research–particularly those that are doing cutting edge research with federal funding–to understand who it is they are allowing into their graduate programs from China; what they're learning and what they might be taking away.
We know that the Chinese government is placing its own representatives in technical standard setting bodies all over the place, particularly in the multilateral institutions. That's an issue economically, because once you get the standard set to what you want it to be, then a lot of other technology flows from there. There's a challenge that comes with that.
Also, [we need to focus on] enforcement. We have no choice but to try to work out bilateral and multilateral agreements with some sort of standards. We have the Geneva Conventions, but what good are they if people aren't abiding by them, and how do we make sure they abide by them?
Alex Wong
Just focusing on technology, and particularly on AI…we have a research, academic, and technology community as well as a business community…that strive for an ideal of global cooperation and research to advance shared knowledge. From the business perspective, global investment to achieve gains for shareholders might work, in a situation where there is a free world and a U.S. led capitalist system. But when you have a non-trusted partner and one that does not actually abide by the rules of the system, it calls into question the level of cooperation.
It then raises the question, “what steps should the United States, our allies, and partners...take in terms of regulating research, and in prohibiting joint research with Chinese institutions?”
With machine learning and AI, the line between what is civilian use and military use is very narrow. We make a series of recommendations in our report about reevaluating our export control system. How should it be matched up in this new technological competition with China and how should it be reformed? How do we deal with this not just dual use issue, but essentially no distinction at all between civilian technologies and military technologies?
Federal Newswire
What are your views on a doctrine of reciprocal privilege, where whatever China won’t allow us to do in their country we won’t allow them to do it here in America?
Carolyn Bartholomew
It's interesting, because we have supported reciprocity.
Over the decades that I have been doing this, I have been shocked to see how long it took before the concept of reciprocity fit into the bigger policy framework of what was taking place. It should have been there right from the beginning.
If they can do things here and we can't do them there, there's something wrong.
There needs to be some openness. In the 1990's when we were talking about trade restrictions, people would say to us, “that's protectionist.” I would say, “but the Chinese are protectionists, they have fenced off parts of their economy.”
They did not allow American companies to do e-commerce until Chinese companies had gotten so big and strong that our companies didn't have a chance to compete. They have done that with issue after issue.
Everybody needs to wake up and recognize that this is the thing that has been going on for a while, and we really need to address it.
Alex Wong
I'd like to highlight that reciprocity is not a new concept.
Going back to the Commission's report last year, our top recommendation was to review China's compliance with reciprocal tenants, as well as its agreement with the United States when we voted to grant them permanent normal trade relations. We knew that that study would reveal that they were not being reciprocal, that they were not abiding by the agreements that they had made in the world trading system.
Now with its decades of subsidies, currency manipulation, and other measures to create an uneven trading playing field with the United States, our recommendation was to give the power to rescind that status. But I want to highlight here that this is a very conscious, very open, and blatant strategy by China.
The term “dual circulation” was adopted by Xi Jinping to insulate China from any dependencies on the world while deepening dependencies of the world on China. They're doing that for strategic leverage reasons.
They are anti-reciprocity, and we have to recognize that and formulate a proper response.
Federal Newswire
Do we have opportunities to move big policy issues with China in 2024?
Carolyn Bartholomew
There are a lot of questions now on the part of U.S. companies and multinational companies about what kind of risk they have of being in China. That has changed the debate some, too.
We heard through the 1990’s, “We can't upset [China]. We can't apply human rights pressure because we need them on North Korea, on drugs, on this, on that.” Then of course we didn't get the cooperation on all of those things.
Alex Wong
Part of our report is about how Europe is reacting to the China challenge. We were in Brussels talking to our European counterparts. There has been a sea change in how they view China.
You can chalk that up to Covid. I think Covid was a huge factor in changing people's views on China. I think the incursions in and around Taiwan have helped that. The crackdown in Hong Kong has helped.
Federal Newswire
Where can people go to read your annual report?
Carolyn Bartholomew
Go to www.uscc.gov. You can contact the Commission directly and get hard copies. The China Commission Twitter account is @USCC_GOV.
