China’s Next Act: How Sustainability & Technology are Reshaping China’s Rise and the World’s Future

i wanted to develop some connective tissue between these ideas of competition or rivalry between the u.s and china and trying to square that with the reality that so much of our life and future are shaped by these shared global challenges in which china has an indispensable role to play name is nitai daitao senior program officer at the national committee on u.s china relations i am pleased to introduce our guests for today's interview exploring how shared ecological and technological challenges are forcing the world to re-envision china's rise in the world's future scott moore is a political scientist university administrator and former policy maker whose career focuses on china sustainability and emerging technology he is director of china programs and strategic initiatives at the university of pennsylvania and author of the new book china's next act how sustainability and technology are reshaping china's rise and the world's future moderating the interview will be angel shu assistant professor in the public policy department and energy environment and ecology program at the university of north carolina at chapel hill her research explores the intersection of science and policy in the use of data-driven approaches to environmental sustainability particularly in climate and energy urbanization and air quality well scott and angel are fellows in the national committee's public intellectuals program angel the floor is yours thank you so much nitai and thanks so much scott for joining me in this conversation today i have your book i was really enjoying reading through it and i was impressed by how much ground you cover and so you're talking about china's political and economic history where it stands today and how it influences china's global positioning on really um key issues including environment and sustainability you have a chapter in there about the pandemic and also emerging technologies such as digital surveillance which we know have been a little thorny and china's rise so i was wondering if you could first talk about your motivations for writing the book and why now thanks so much uh there is kind of a personal answer to your question and more of uh of an academic one so let me just quickly uh try to cover uh both though they are related uh the personal reason is that uh soon after i finished graduate school i had the opportunity to spend a year at the us department of state and actually opened the kind of preface talking about this this experience uh showing up and uh you know pretty pretty much right out of uh graduate school uh where as you know and many of those uh listening will know uh is intensely specialized um and then being handed this portfolio uh called e-s-t-h which stands for environment science technology and health um on what's referred to as the china desk at the state department um so for somebody coming out of graduate school and you know having just sort of written a dissertation and things like that um the idea of expecting one person to cover so many very different uh extremely technical issue areas uh sounded somewhere between uh laughable and uh downright dangerous um and and that that remains true uh but nonetheless uh over the course of my uh my uh uh time there at the state department uh i did come to appreciate uh this kind of set of issues uh and some of the connections between them at least when it comes to china uh and at the time uh the this was at the uh the kind of latter years of the uh the obama administration um and cooperation or at least dialogue with china on those issues and in particular on climate change i was there the the year leading up to the paris agreement uh essentially and cooperation on what was then trying to uh combat a uh an ebola a very serious ebola outbreak that was really seen those issue areas were really seen as not just uh the most promising areas of engagement and diplomacy with china but potentially as ways to integrate china into the uh the global community and international system more broadly so those issue areas kind of came to be seen as having a lot of strategic importance even relative to the more traditional issues like trade or like kind of geopolitics that had traditionally been the focus of diplomacy with china and so it was that kind of um [Music] environment i guess that that i i was exposed to obviously the better part of a decade later we're in a very different place when it comes to china and i think very frankly the vision that i think many people had at least in the administration at that time um for uh there being some potential for uh particularly u.s china cooperation on areas like climate change and public health has has failed at least for now both to address those shared global challenges and to form the bedrock of a more constructive relationship between the two countries um and so i really wanted to to understand why that is um spent a lot of you know a lot of brain space frankly and over the last year trying to think about why exactly that that dream uh failed at least up till now um and the more kind of uh conceptual uh answer to the question which is related is that i think um uh for the most part the discussion about uh u.s china relations and china policy

tends to think about these big global challenges uh and china's role in them is being somewhat divorced from uh issues of competition the deep fissures in the relationship over areas like human rights or taiwan um when in fact i think they're increasingly uh and somewhat unfortunately very closely related and so i wanted to develop some connective tissue between these ideas of competition or rivalry between the us and china and trying to square that with the reality that so much of our life and future are shaped by these shared global challenges in which china has an indispensable role to play yeah and i want to pick up on that particular point because i think you're right in that we think about u.s and china being these two global powers and on issues like pandemics and public health and climate change there i think conceptually and theoretically particularly in the political science and global governance literature has talked about the need for collective action and for cooperation and that's where a lot of the international policy responses have stem from like the kyoto protocol and other global agreements but yeah i think this this this question about whether or not competition is actually the more appropriate framing in this relationship is a really great um question and point that you bring up very early in the book so i was wondering um if you could unpack this for us because i think for many of us it sounds really counterintuitive and it requires us to reshape our thinking about how we engage with china in a more competitive sense rather than cooperative and so can you just unpack that a little bit more for us like what do you mean by we should be competing or potentially competing more with china on these issues instead of trying to cooperate uh it's a it's certainly the the key question um and i'd start by uh saying in fact i i do kind of try to get to this fairly early on in the book um is that at least when it comes to china we talked so uh much about uh cooperation competition sometimes you hear other c words uh uh coopetition um things like that uh without really defining them or without really like having sort of a a next level down understanding of uh of what those things actually mean and so one of the things i try to do fairly early on is to just sort of uh try to deal with that a little bit and better define what we mean and what we think about when we talk about um cooperation versus competition and at least when it comes to china i think the key thing that distinguishes cooperation is there's sort of a um a benefit that that uh stems from interaction or exchange or dialogue that's just sort of good for its own sake this is something that's good to do independent of you know whatever kind of material gain might might result from it and that there's every expectation that both sides can gain more or less equitably um what's different i think about competition um is thinking that well we still need to have dialogue we still need to trade we still need to do all the things that sort of you know bind in one way or another the u.s to china and other countries but our aim is fundamentally to make sure um that our side gains more than the other side um and that expectation of there being some you know this is just good to do and and positive for uh uh for its own sake uh isn't really there um and i think when you kind of map that to um these uh these issues like uh like climate change what that means is there's still a recognition that there has to be some level of communication cooperation collaboration even collective action um but it's not necessarily um in the spirit of you know something that produces gains for for both sides equitably and i think that's kind of a key uh differentiator when it comes to um you know the the focus particularly that that you pointed out in political science international relations about the need for collective action um to address global challenges like climate change that's still uh uh i think very much true and i certainly wouldn't wouldn't contest that um what i do think is helpful to kind of distinguish between uh is just this idea of why and how you have interaction and the sort of expectations that both sides um bring to that and in particular this idea that you can achieve uh kind of gains for for one side over another um is is really important and it's sort of a key realization um against this backdrop of you know frankly continually rising tension and rivalry that i think does make it somewhat um impractical unfortunately to expect there to be a sort of kumbaya you know type approach to cooperation whether it's on climate or other issues yeah and let's dive a little bit deeper into in particular the climate and clean energy relationship between us and china can you talk about how these dynamics the tension between cooperation and competition but in particular competition has played out in the energy sector and also climate policies in china and i mean if you're if you're able to say or you're willing to say who do you think has been the winner in in in these issues um so i think up till now uh it has been the united states and and i think you know one of the ironies i think actually behind um the the state that we find ourselves in with with us china relations is i actually do think in most material areas the united states has gained certainly more than china has and certainly more than its loss from all kinds of of interaction and trade and investment with china but that being said you know there have been significant uh negative uh impacts as well and that's what we're seeing you know the attention um the attention paid to um another way i think of answering your question is to kind of start with the idea of well what um and getting back to the sort of definitional issues what exactly is it that we need um cooperation on on climate change or other kind of global public goods shared global challenges for um and i think there are two key things one is you definitely need some type of a binding international agreement that's just the nature of the international system that we live in that at some point you will need some type of binding international agreement that enforces significant cuts on greenhouse gas emissions and punishes you know any country that that would um uh that would break that uh agreement so that type of thing is obviously something that to some degree you have to get the you know the united states government the chinese government other major emitter governments on the same page for the other thing um i think that you uh would want cooperation for or need it um for is to produce uh the key clean technologies that we need for decarbonization at the lowest possible cost um and this is something that you know some of our pit colleagues have done a lot of thinking and work on um and the extent that you can utilize china's unparalleled manufacturing economies of scale to produce that um ideally using you know foreign intellectual property uh or you know producing some some returns for foreign firms as well um that is an attractive form of economic and technological cooperation when it comes to china unfortunately there are lots of political and economic barriers to both those types of cooperation and i think that's where the idea of what gains can you produce through competition uh comes in um and you know you've thought a lot about this and written about it as well uh angel but uh in the book uh the main thing that i talk about is uh the idea that uh this kind of framing of competition might uh provide some impetus for uh governments on both sides to invest more in basic research and development for advanced versions of clean technology to support decarbonization and i would add just that we have seen some good examples of this like the inflation reduction act which was justified in part by president biden as helping the united states to compete more effectively with china yeah and it definitely seems like this competition driver has become a lot stronger in recent years as you said with the inflation reduction act and certainly if we trace back and as you do in the book to the emergence of china's clean energy technology i mean they were thinking about it not from a climate and energy perspective but from an economic competitiveness issue they said if we invest now if we produce and invest huge subsidies into these programs the development of wind and solar pv that's going to give us that type of competitive advantage and so i guess i'm wondering um and you talked about these two possibilities for cooperation i think on the first one the legally binding international treaty for at least climate change and energy that's just not that's just not happening there was no traction i think you and i were both at the 2009 copenhagen negotiations where we saw how that um just miserably failed and that just clearly has not been um on the table because of the competitive dynamics between the us and china and that's why we have paris which is this bottom up and allows for countries to decide what they can contribute to the issue so i i guess i'm wondering then is there any room for for a competition it just seems like and you talk about the tensions between us and china that really i think introduce a lot of noise into our ability to actually have conversations with chinese counterparts on the climate issue and so from your perspective and as a former policymaker do you think that there is any room now and what might be those points where we can try to cooperate with china on climate change and energy well you know another uh kind of uh key thing floating in the background here um and that uh i i was sort of in my mind when i was uh you know when i was writing the book is that the us approach uh really has been um to try to kind of separate these global challenge issues and climate is certainly the best example from the more from an american point of view at least more problematic um issues in the relationship um that seemed to work for a while uh but recently as as many will know um we had a pretty definitive uh end to that in beijing's decision to suspend uh cooperation or dialogue more specifically with the united states on climate change as one of uh several retaliatory measures uh following speaker nancy pelosi's visit to taiwan um so that's the kind of i mean in the in the short term at least um we've seen a total um end to dialogue or or cooperation and i think unfortunately that what that signals and one of the big questions is how long of course that will last whether there will be um you know resumption of that um certainly we have signals that there's you know informal dialogue which is good news um but that i think is a pretty strong signal that um there is unfortunately uh connection between uh the rivalry and competition dynamics and the broader relationship and these sort of shared global challenge issues uh like climate change so does that leave uh what space you know does that uh does that leave um a shrinking one uh but i think uh one nonetheless um and another kind of point i try to draw out uh in the book is that china is uh massively exposed to ecological and climate risks much more so i think that is commonly appreciated although that's becoming more evident all the time this past summer's heat wave is the most recent and best example of that it's on many measures the most severe heat wave on record anywhere in the world that a large part of central china uh suffered um through and that was accompanied by a punishing drought uh continues to really uh uh hammer china's industrial production um for example there this is an issue that is not going away for china's policy makers uh as much as their american counterparts and there is a strong uh interest in taking action uh on climate change that is more ambitious than what's been done so far um just as there is their their american counterparts i think the final kind of point though that your question raises is what's the value of continued diplomacy um uh on both sides and the u.s and china

what's different particularly on the u.s side since passage of the inflation reduction act is that both sides have uh enacted you know relatively ambitious uh uh domestic commitments uh on climate change more ambitious and sort of formulaic on the chinese side than on the american but nonetheless both sides have sort of set um pretty ambitious goals and the focus is now on achieving them primarily through national action and so i do think there's sort of less stress um so to speak placed on that high level diplomatic uh uh collaboration so i think in the short term there probably isn't a lot we can expect um both because of the um uh tensions in the broader relationship but also in part because the focus is shifting as it should uh to to national action um though i do hope there will be some scope i think we have to be very uh um you know uh modest in in expectations but i hope there's some scope uh to do something on adaptation i think that's that's the clear gap um that that exists and that it's crying out for some some attention yeah i think that's a really fair point i mean um just speaking to cooperation i think we were all quite surprised or at least i was quite surprised even at the glasgow negotiations that happened in 2021 that u.s and china were able to come together on this global methane partnership but i think yeah given this new context that that's a major question whether or not it still makes sense to cooperate on these issues um or whether or not you as you said more of the focus will just evolve to more domestic actions which also could be incredibly impactful and um yeah i like your point about adaptation because uh yeah i mean china was not alone in suffering triple digit heat waves and in the u.s i mean california san francisco's has been experiencing triple digits temperatures and so i think there's a lot that we could work together on so i think that's a that's a really fair point um so i want to pivot a little bit um back to this this other question about china's innovation system which you talk about and knowledge production and one area we have seen trying to be incredibly successful in this innovation space has been on clean energy technologies including solar photovoltaic solar water heaters you talk about them being an unsexy technology and actually i actually think they're it's actually incredibly sexy if you think about how uh incredibly they've been able to dominate the market and you drive around the chinese countryside and all the rooftops are covered with solar water heaters which is huge but also electric vehicles which has also been i think a big emerging sector for us to compete in so i was um wondering if you could talk about some of the key elements of china's approach and whether or not you think their model of innovation is actually replicable outside of china or is it unique to china and so i'm asking this because there's been so much conversation since biden became president about whether or not the us can or should try to compete with china in the space because as you said it's not necessarily easy to just overtake china when they have established manufacturing uh supply chains yeah i think you know i think the short answer is is no um uh and i think there are several but several important longer uh things to say one of which is that uh there are aspects of china's um approach to clean technology development uh that have planted the seeds for i think some of the more unfortunate or problematic uh uh tensions that exist in this space and reasons why um it's not very realistic unfortunately to expect a lot from uh us china or even us uh or even your sino-european uh cooperation and it is uh because of some uh problematic uh uh kind of policy support measures that uh that uh that's being employed to support the growth of the uh solar and uh and wind industries some examples of forced technology transfer and ip violations um things like that that are problematic practices and that contributed um to a lot of the uh the tensions i mean indeed basically was the original justification for uh for the the trade war uh initiated by uh the trump administration against china so there's a a lot of aspects of china's approach that um i think had some really negative effects whatever apart from their positive effects on the uh the the growth in renewable energy capacity um installed worldwide and i think kind of comes back to this um fundamental question of what can we ask of cooperation between countries especially on clean technology and clean energy development versus competition um my argument is that i think we're at the stage where um we have a lot of the technological pieces of the puzzle to decarbonization in place and solar pv whether it's made in china or elsewhere is a big part of that but it's not all of it we still have a lot of uh of tech that has to be developed that certainly that has to be deployed and it's going to require some significant additional uh investment including from governments and that's really where i see the role of competition coming into play to the extent that you can create a virtuous kind of cycle where they sing washington brussels berlin are all uh putting money into this sector and into trying to solve the remaining uh technological uh questions around around decarbonization um that's probably going to give us the best chance um of of solving uh solving all of those uh all of those problems but i think to your point um and the premise of your original question uh the policy measures and the approach that that beijing took uh to developing its renewables industry uh are not necessarily replicable or are they necessarily desirable um to see applied elsewhere um and i think ideally we would want to see uh techn certainly the next generation of technology be developed um be so uh cheap you know and its advantages so clear um that you really wouldn't need uh much in the way of policy support yeah and certainly i think we have the world has a lot to thank china for in driving down those costs of these key technologies that are ultimately going to help us get to these decarbonization goals so i have one last question for you in the conclusion of your book you talk about two main lessons for how to bolster cooperation with china in areas of common concern we've talked about the first one which is the ring fencing approach and that certainly has we tried that from the u.s perspective i remember when when secretary kerr or former secretary kerry was appointed as a special envoy i mean he specifically said we're going to try to work with china in isolation on the climate issue and and try to drown out the other geopolitical noise and clearly as you mentioned that hasn't necessarily been really effective but the second point that you make is allowing non-state actors businesses universities and sub-national actors to lead the way in terms of cooperation and so obviously i'm biased towards this particular approach because i researched it as well but i was hoping that you could expand on the second point and provide some concrete recommendations for those who are out there hoping to still collaborate with chinese counterparts in an increasingly tense time in the relationship where we've seen china close off and for researchers like myself i'm used to going to china multiple times a year and attending conferences where there are chinese counterparts and we basically have not had any of that for the last three years so if you could speak to how you see this sub-national and non-state actor cooperation happening and then any advice or recommendations for us who are trying to continue those engagements or re-engage with chinese counterparts um absolutely uh and in the book uh you know we've talked a lot about uh about climate change uh specifically um for good reason it's it's definitely the crux of the whole uh i i think uh uh picture when it comes to trying to situate china in terms of uh a key solution or a key actor in solving these shared global challenges but i do try to touch on some others in the book um if for no other reason than to sort of contextualize uh climate a little bit and so i do talk a little bit about um what i see is the need for developing rules and norms around emerging technologies like um ai artificial intelligence or the one that i actually focus most intently in the uh on the book in is um advanced forms of biotechnology gene editing synthetic biology um and it's actually i think in that kind of emerging technology space where the role of these sub-national and non-state actors is kind of most um uh evident and important um if uh for no other reason than that uh national governments can't keep up uh with the sheer pace of technological progress and that means that as a practical matter a lot of the work of trying to ensure responsible use and development of these technologies falls to universities industry associations individual companies even individual researchers and labs in a lot of cases so i think that's particularly important in that space that being said there's definitely a huge role for sub-national non-state actors in the the climate uh uh policy area as well i think the thing that i would say especially in that arena though and i do try to sort of harp on this a little bit in the book um is that uh the sub-national and non-state sector is not a substitute for national action or for you know international agreements um things like that so in many ways it's sort of trying to pave the way um for that ultimate goal but i think there is a lot of a lot of potential for sub-national cooperation in areas like building codes urban planning things that have significant uh impact on on emissions in some cases electricity uh grid uh reform and policy um i think in terms of concrete recommendations something that i say in the book that uh national governments need to get better at and here my audience is more you know thinking more about um uh uh democracies than uh than china per se uh but they need to get much better at engaging and coordinating with sub-national actors you know when i was at the state department we hosted the first ever u.s china sub-national summit on uh

climate change essentially um and it just involved a lot of things that we had never done before as the state department trying to work with um a lot of local leaders i mean the mayor of wichita uh kansas you know i think that's probably the first time the city of wichita and the u.s department of state have had a you know interaction um and so it's just kind of getting that experience figuring out what those channels look like um and just sort of how to reconcile the the high diplomacy and the presidential summits that the state department is used to organizing and trying to translate it more as to you know how can uh local government officials from the u.s china other countries get in a room and have a productive discussion about uh joint actions to combat climate change there are a lot of operational and practical questions to sort through there and governments need to get much better at doing that and investing a lot more resources in um engaging better with sub-national players yeah i mean i i certainly agree with you and we saw during the trump administration how those sub-national interactions were really a way to keep that relationship between the u.s and china on climate alive and you had former california governor jerry brown who actually went to china and visited with president xi jinping to talk about cooperation on climate change and so that was really critical um well thank you so much scott for this really great conversation on your book again i'm going to give you a plug china's next act by scott moore it's a really great read i loved the perspective that you provided from your own personal experiences i thought that added a lot of rich context and color to it and really um thanks so much for this great conversation thank you perfect thank you both so much for sharing your thoughts and insights with us and our audience today i'd also like to thank the national committee staff behind the scenes who made today's interview possible uh we hope for those who've tuned in all the way to the end now found the interview both interesting and informative and that you will join us for future national community program thank you all again have a great day

2022-09-23 11:21

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