Senior-level Chinese stakeholders often contend that one of the main reasons for today’s heightened geopolitical tensions between China and the West is due to “misunderstandings” of its foreign policy objectives by outsiders.
Chinese distrust is also fueled by a longstanding feeling of victimization by the West and a sense that they’ve lost the “narrative battle” in international media.
Wang Huiyao, president and founder of the Beijing-based think tank Centre for China and Globalisation, wants to change that. In a recent column published in the South China Morning Post newspaper, Wang called on Chinese scholars, analysts, and others to “embrace the global internet if it wants to reclaim its narrative.”
Wang joins Eric & Cobus to discuss why he thinks China has such a difficult time in communicating its agenda with the rest of the world.
Show Notes:
- South China Morning Post: China must embrace the global internet if it wants to reclaim its narrative by Wang Huiyao
- Brookings Institution: Is China undermining the global economic order or helping build it? by David Dollar and Wang Huiyao
- Centre for China and Globalisation: CCG President in Dialogue with CFR President Richard Haass
About Wang Huiyao:
Dr. Henry Huiyao Wang is the Founder and President of Center for China and Globalization (CCG), a top 64th global think tank ranked by the University of Pennsylvania and accredited with UN NGO“Special Consultative Status”. Dr. Wang is a former Counselor to China State Council (China’s cabinet); a global thought leader on China and globalization, global governance, international trade and investment, global migration and talent flows, China’s international relations and China-U.S. trade relations, with more than 100 publications in both Chinese and English.
Transcript:
Eric Olander: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the China Global South Podcast, a proud member of the Sinica Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander in Ho Chi Minh City, and as always, I’m joined by China Global South’s Managing Editor, Cobus van Staden, in Johannesburg, South Africa. A very good afternoon to you, Cobus.
Cobus van Staden: Good afternoon.
Eric: Cobus, there was a quote this week that came out of the Munich Security Conference, that’s the big confab in Europe, where basically all the who’s who from around the world, including China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi went to, and a lot of news came out of it. It wrapped up this weekend. In one of the final sessions, the Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, he said a quote, which didn’t get a lot of coverage in European media, but I’d like to get your take on it first before we get into our chat today. He said, “To leave Africa in Chinese hands is a big mistake for everybody here.” And I think the reference to ‘here’ was Europe. Okay, well, let’s just say that…
I posted that on Twitter, and my goodness, the reaction from African Twitter to that was fierce and strong. And it speaks a lot to this question of narrative and how, in many ways, Europeans have not really moved on at all from this narrative that Africa is still a sphere of influence. It’s a prize, it’s something to be handed over among the great powers. And I don’t get the sense that the Italian foreign minister, even the European press, recognizes how incredibly tone-deaf this is.
Cobus: Yes. I mean, it’s impossible to not hear the ghosts of colonialism when you hear that. But I think it goes further than Europe. I mean, we frequently hear U.S. officials also talking about losing the global south, “losing the global south to China.” It’s hardly only European saying that, but there is definitely like a bad hangover from either colonial times or Cold War imperial times hanging over that comment.
Eric: Yeah. It’s hard to overstate how these types of comments from senior European officials, let’s not forget that Italy, I think, is the third-largest economy in Europe. And it’s a basket case beyond all imagination, and yet they are still talking about this stuff. It’s just… Apparently, people who are listening to our show, Cobus, are having a drinking game that every time I say the word ‘cognitive dissonance,’ they drink. And that’s becoming a theme on the program. And there’s just a cognitive dissonance when you hear the Europeans talk about Africa. We talked about that in one of our previous shows about the United States in Africa. So, whoever’s drinking to cognitive dissonance, there you go.
The other story that we’re following this week is all the events surrounding debt and debt reconstruction and the restructuring of Sri Lanka and Zambians debt in particular. All eyes are on India this week, and in Bangalore, where the G20 finance ministers and central bank chiefs will meet later this week to discuss, among other things, the debt crisis in these countries. Now, one of the big problems, as regular listeners to this show will know, is the fact that the process in both Zambia and Sri Lanka has come to a screeching halt. It has had a very, very serious impasse. What’s happening right now is that the main bilateral creditors can’t seem to agree on the terms of the restructuring, and China is at the center of it. Now, the Paris Club lenders, that includes the United States, that includes the European powers and so forth, they are blaming the Chinese.
The Chinese, at the same time, are turning around and blaming private creditors and multilateral development banks for not being willing to take the same losses or write-downs or what the financial community calls a haircut. And until that is settled, nothing is happening. Well, the IMF this week started leaking to Bloomberg that it may bypass the Chinese and issue a $2.9 billion emergency finance package to Sri Lanka anyway. And this is absolutely fascinating, Cobus, because in many ways, the fact that the IMF is leaking this to Bloomberg in advance of the G20 finance ministers and central bank leaders meeting that’s to happen is an indication to me that the IMF is not confident that an outcome will come from that meeting. And therefore, they’re trying to signal to the Chinese that if we don’t get a deal that we like, we’re going to move on without you. What it says, though, at the end of the day, is that these countries in the global south, Sri Lanka in particular, are standing at the edge of the abyss and need to have action fast one way or another.
Cobus: Yeah. I mean, the danger of a country like Sri Lanka that’s already so stretched, fully collapsing, I don’t think is unrealistic while all of this dithering is going on. I mean, in relation to this issue of bypassing China, I have a thousand questions, and I hope that we’ll be able to discuss it with someone who knows more about these arrangements than we do, particularly also questions in how it’s going to relate to all of these other data restructuring processes that China’s also involved in. But yeah, the fact that the IMF seems to be leaking this to Bloomberg is interesting.
Eric: Yeah. So, it’s not just Zambia and Sri Lanka that are facing difficulties. This week also, we’re getting word that Ghana is going to face a critical deadline on Friday when it has to submit or pay a $40.6 million coupon on its Eurobond debt. And all predictions are that they’re not going to meet that deadline. They’ve already said they’re suspending payments on Eurobond debt, so there’s no surprise if they don’t make it. What will happen, though, is it will formalize the fact that Ghana is in default. At the same time, earlier this, what was it? Earlier this year, back in January, Kenyan President William Ruto, he said Kenya will not default on its debt, but yet we found out just a couple of weeks ago that in fact, Kenya Airways, which is a state-owned enterprise, defaulted on about, I think it was 57 billion shilling, somewhere around $450 million worth of debt to the U.S. Exim Bank, not the China Exim Bank, the U.S. Exim Bank.
So, there’s a default that’s been registered in Kenya. All eyes, of course, now are looking now to Pakistan. Pakistan has about $110 billion of debt, 30 billion of which is owed to the Chinese. U.S. officials now are warning that they are concerned about the lack of transparency in the Chinese loan obligations in Pakistan. And here we go again with this opacity in the dealings. And I think this speaks to the broader issue, Cobus, that we’ve been dealing with since the beginning of this podcast, and everybody deals with, the fact that it’s very difficult to incorporate Chinese perspectives on some of these issues simply because the Chinese don’t talk very much. Getting Chinese spokespeople to speak on the record, getting Chinese banks to come on, for example, it would be impossible to get a representative of the China Exim Bank or the China Development Bank to join us, or any media for that matter, and say, “What are you doing in Sri Lanka? What’s the plan here?”
There’s a lot of confusion about what are the Chinese objectives here? Do the Chinese want to take the World Bank and the IMF, the Bretton Woods institutions down a notch to reduce their influence? Maybe, we don’t know. Do they want to build up their own multilateral development banks, the new development bank, the Asian infrastructure bank and create this parallel architecture that we’ve been talking about? Maybe, we don’t know. Maybe it’s just that they want their money back. That’s it, pure and simple. They don’t want to have any write-offs or because they want their cash back. And if there are write-offs, they want everybody to be treated fairly. Who knows? But this speaks to this broader issue of really struggling to understand what the Chinese thinking is and what the Chinese worldview on these issues are. So, it’s very interesting challenge, and it’s one that I don’t actually have an easy answer for how to overcome.
As I’ve said many, many times on this program, we reach out almost every week, and Cobus, I did it this week to try and find a China-Iran scholar to join us to talk about the Iranian president’s recent visit to Beijing. I reached out to two scholars at Fudan University who have written on this publicly, and I said, would you join us? And they, they said, “No, I’m very sorry. I can’t do it.” No reason whatsoever. And it’s not surprising, in many respects, and we’ve had to deal with this for years, in part because the incentives for Chinese scholars and Chinese think tank analysts and others to appear in the media is very different than it is in the West. Cobus, maybe you can explain a little bit about some of the incentives for, say, a think tank scholar in London or Washington for why they are motivated, or even at the South African Institute of International Affairs where you are in Johannesburg to do media appearances and to speak to the press.
Cobus: In general, these analysts see media appearances as a way to increase their personal prominence, so it’s good for their own careers, but it’s also good for the record of the institution. And they’re frequently do metrics at the end of the year to see how proactive these researchers have been to get to the work that they do for these institutions out into the world, like beyond the researcher community. And it’s seen as one way of tracking whether the research actually has any impact in the world. Obviously in China, that just works differently, kind of there is less interest in whether things hit the Western media, and there’s just a different thinking about what impact means. So, I think these researchers just has… they have much less incentive to come onto international media platforms and a lot more possible issues related to that appearance.
Eric: Yeah. And it’s not good for your career advancement in many Chinese institutions that if you speak out and it’s not fully aligned with the current thinking in China on a certain policy, you don’t necessarily get praised for that. And in fact, you can have rather severe consequences. So, it’s not surprising that a lot of Chinese scholars, analysts, think tankers, when we approached them, say, “You know what? I’d better not.” So, it was interesting to me that last December, at the end of the year, there was a column in the South China Morning Post that read, China must embrace the global internet if it wants to reclaim its narrative. And the sub-headline is With a lack of Chinese voices to balance the narrative, anti-China rhetoric has gradually permeated Western dominated digital spaces. And it’s all about how Chinese think tank, analyst, scholars, research institutions have to become more engaged in the discourse.
And it was written by Wang Huiyao, who is the Founder and President of the Center for China and Globalization, which is a Beijing-based, what they say a non-governmental think tank. They describe themselves as an independent think tank. This is a very complicated area in China because there really isn’t anything that’s independent of the Communist Party. There really isn’t anything that is a totally autonomous, the way that the South African Institute of International Affairs is from the government. And so, it’s a very complicated thing. Is it an extension of the party? Is it part of the government? I don’t know if we need to get into that. Let’s just say that generally speaking, Chinese think tanks align themselves with the party and rarely contradict the party. Nonetheless, when this column came out, I reached out to an intermediary, a mutual friend of mine and Wang Huiyao’s.
And I said, “If Huiyao is thinking this way, can we have him on the show? We’d love to talk with him. And surprisingly enough, they turned around and said, “Yeah, sure, let’s have him on. So, we’re like, okay, here we go. And this was a great opportunity because Dr. Wang has an opportunity to interact with senior level stakeholders, scholars, politicians from around the world, including the United States. And so, he has this interesting perch into senior levels of the Communist Party. He follows the discourse in the U.S. and Europe quite closely, and we thought it would be a great opportunity for us and for you to listen in, to get a sense of what his worldview is. I will put forward the same disclaimer that I have anytime we have a senior official on the show. And I consider Dr. Wang to be a senior official in this respect.
Our show, as many of you know, is not a gotcha show or a confrontation show, or just to try and get combative. We really want to give the guests a chance to speak. Not everything that the guests say is true, not everything they say is accurate, but by letting them actually talk, we get to see how they think and see the world. And that’s what we did with this interview, it’s the same thing we’ve done with Molly Phee, the Assistant Secretary of State for the United States, and others as well. So, in the course of the conversation, you may hear things that you don’t agree with or you think are factually incorrect, and you’re saying, “Why didn’t Eric and Cobus challenge him on this and challenge him on that?”
That’s not the point of what we’re trying to do here. What we’re trying to do is let them really have a chance to speak, and so you can see where the gaps are or where the insights are, and it’s an opportunity for us to better understand a little bit into what senior level Chinese thinkers thought leaders and officials are thinking. Let’s now take a listen to our discussion with Dr. Wang Huiyao, Founder and President of the Center for China and Globalization.
Dr. Wang Huiyao, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. It’s a pleasure to have you on the program.
Dr. Wang Huiyao: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Eric: Look, Dr. Wang, you’re speaking with us at a very interesting time when things are changing quite quickly around the world in terms of China’s relationship, not only with United States, but also with the global South. Some of the trends that we’ve been following over the past, say, year or so, is the change in Chinese finance for developing countries, also the change domestically within China of the leadership. There’s a lot going on. You have said repeatedly over the past couple of years that China’s foreign policy is misunderstood by the outside world. I think back in 2022, you wrote that Cold War framings are an unhelpful way to view power and security in the 21st century. You also wrote that 50 years ago, the leaders of China and America were able to put pragmatism over ideology to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough that served the interests of both countries.
I think I’d like to start our conversation today with this idea of, is China’s foreign policy misunderstood still to this day? And do you still believe that we’re not entering a period of another Cold War?
Dr. Wang: First of all, thank you for raising that question. I think that China’s foreign policy is evolving as China develops. China has developed in the last four decades, 44 years now almost since China opened up by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, so 44 years ago, that China developed into a more engaging and a more developed country in the world now. And China now ranks the second-largest economy, and China contributes regularly to the one third of global GDP growth. And China actually lifted 800 million people out of poverty. That represents 70% of a poverty reduction during the same time which is also a decade along ahead of time of UN 2030 agenda. So, those things, I think China’s foreign policy is reflecting that. And China also launched the Belt and Road and Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, and China’s getting more active internationally.
But I think China’s foreign partners reflects that. But of course, people may really get used to what China used to be 20, 30 years ago, where we kept a low profile, very quiet, and not very active internationally. Because as you can see, China’s GDP has doubled in the last 10 years, basically. So, certainly, China has more trade interests. China now is the largest trading in 130 countries. And so, China has vested interest now in seeing a more active global engagement, more global initiatives, more co0peration with all countries, including U.S., EU and many developed countries. So, certainly, China’s foreign partners reflects that. But I think people, probably some people in the West think China was too active, too assertive, not quiet anymore. And so China’s foreign policy is more assertive. That is really what has led to the, probably misunderstanding, I’d think. Because also on top of that, there’s a three years of COVID isolation. There’s no foreigners coming to China, no Chinese was able to go abroad, that has deepened the crisis of a misunderstanding, not only, I think, while we probably boast to it too. I think now, you know the COVID is lifted, zero COVID lifted, and China started to open again, and I hope the situation will get better. And then as we have more communication exchanges and more dialogues, and then that China’s foreign policy maybe will be better understood. And China also can understand better other countries foreign policy as well.
Cobus: One of the misunderstanding that struck me is, as you were talking, you mentioned the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Belt and Road Initiative. As we’ve seen, the launch of the GDI and the GSI, many commenters in the West have said that they are essentially replacing the Belt and Road Initiative, and that the Belt and Road Initiative is over. For example, like the front page at the moment of Foreign Policy’s website has a big article saying that that the Belt and Road initiative has essentially come to an end. I was wondering what your perspective is on that and how we should see the relationship between the Belt and Road initiative, the GDI and the GSI.
Dr. Wang: Yeah, I think this it’s related, but I don’t think it’s replaced each other. First of all, I think Belt and Road Initiative was proposed about 10 years ago, and it’s more connectivity related. They have an infrastructure and a large component of that. China also has set up Asian infrastructure investment bank. China has actually signed MoUs in 130 some countries, plus 20, 30 international organizations to work on the Belt and Road. So, I think belt Rule is still evolving. It has achieved some success. Basically is a largely project oriented. It’s largely development oriented. I think that China, for example, in the Belt and Road countries, there’s a lot of project. There’s a railway project, like in ASEAN countries, we see project in the Indonesia, in Thailand, in Malaysia, and then in Laos and Cambodian and countries like that.
We see project in Central Asia, in Eastern Europe, and we see the cost. The China-European Transcontinental railway has actually double tripled many times in the past number of years. And the cargos and the goods reach the Europe. We see the port in Greece and also in many other countries, railway, African mining project, and subway stadiums, and health facilities. So, it’s really, I would classify Belt and Road is more project related and actually benefiting developing countries and also countries connected. Whereas China Global Development Initiative is that it’s more like responding to the 2030 global agenda, sustainable agenda put forward by the UN 2030 sustainable agenda. There’s a development initiative there. So, it’s cause for more policy coordination, I would say, among the countries, how they can better shape their job efforts, how they can really reflect 17 SDG development goals, how they can really…. China can help on in that respect.
Of course, Belt and Road is related with gobo development initiative, but I don’t think the two, Global Development is replacing Belt and Road because China is going to held its third Belt and Road summit this year. So, you can see Belt and Road is not losing steam. It’s still charged army. It’s improving. I would like to say we should really put Belt and Road more multilateralized. For example, we should, instead of a more bilateral MoU, we should get more multilateral involvement. We should have a steering committee composed of the Belt and Road countries. We should have a Belt and Road secretary office. We should have a annual Belt and Road, not only held in China, but also held in Belt and Road countries. And also let’s get AIIB and World Bank, ADB, AFDB, all those developed banks work together to really get some co-financing and joint development and let’s push the infrastructure project, which is needed by the many countries.
I really see too, as one is more project related, but we can upgrade more multilateralize. And the other one is more policy related, but also more in line with the UN objective and how we can coordinate all the countries in discussing how we can improve joint efforts to approach that.
Eric: But one of the challenges for the Belt and Road, and I see this as being a problem if you want to make it more multilateral, is the lack of transparency in Chinese financing and Chinese projects. And we’ve seen the loan contracts, hundreds of the loan contracts that have been made available secretly, by the way, and they have very strict non-disclosure clauses. We see a fight in Kenya and the Supreme Court right now, where China Road and Bridge Corporation is fighting very hard to make sure that the terms of the contract for the Standard Gauge Railway remain secret. We still don’t know the extent of the loan portfolio in Sri Lanka, and this is across the world, the case.
If the Belt and Road was to coordinate with the AII B, which, by the way, has committed to international standards of transparency, and for the most part is fulfilling that commitment, how do you reconcile China’s insistence on secrecy and opacity in its dealings with developing countries involved in Belt and Road financing and the need to be more transparent and open up, which is a demand that not only international bodies like the World Bank and the IMF have, but also taxpayers who pay the bills for a lot of these loans in places like Kenya and Sri Lanka?
Dr. Wang: Yeah, I think that Belt and Road is still evolving. It’s still, it’s not perfect. It’s not already taken a fixed shape already. It’s still developing. That’s why I was proposing why we can modernize a bit of Belt and Road. That’s why I was proposing that AIIB and World Bank and AFD, ADB, European banks, maybe all the best practice be practiced in those project. At least we can take some project, maybe even Belt and Road, BI and the B3W, and we can jointly cooperate. That’s why I really hope that we can get collaborate that. yeah, there’d some problem. I mean, I don’t say it’s already perfect, but there’s still shortcomings, and maybe there’s a, a problem in certain project.
But by and large, in general, I think the Belt and Road project has been welcomed by the development countries. And China could also upgrade on that. That’s why I think we need a belt row summit conference this year to really summarize what has gone right and what has gone wrong. We had the second Belt and Road summit in Beijing a few years back. A lot of financing standards were discussed. A lot of best practice was discussed. Certainly, we need to prove that. But I don’t think so-called that trap and those things are widely spread.
Eric: No, no, no one said anything about the debt trap, just to be very clear. But people are upset about the lack of transparency. And I’m just, maybe you can help us understand why is it that Chinese stakeholders at all levels, and you have a very deep understanding of the Chinese policy-making process and Chinese leadership and Chinese values in terms of these foreign policy objectives, why is secrecy such a paramount objective here, and is there not a sense that Chinese policy banks and the Chinese government sees that that secrecy ultimately harms its ability to build goodwill in countries around the world?
Dr. Wang: Yeah. I don’t know the detail of the project referred to, but I think certainly the company, and I mean, government does not encourage the secrecy. Even for CCG, my think hank, we were actually… I would work on China joining the Paris Club and also debt discussion among G20 countries and things like that. let’s get to some you know, common standards to work. That’s why China has a set up AIIB, which exactly followed the World Back model and charter. I think that’s why we did this Belt and Road Summit, and to discuss what has been done right and what has needs to be improved. Certainly, we need more financing transparency. We need more cooperation according to the guidelines and standards. Those things are really, I think more and more will be encouraged by the Chinese government.
Because I think right now, maybe a certain companies problem does not reflect the whole situation, and that may be case by case, but we certainly would encourage more transparency and more rule-based you know international World Bank or UN based a practice that’s been practiced more than more. And also SDG 2030 agenda of UN standards should be applied. So, I would have no problem with that because China is also highly supportive of UN developed goals and UN standards and un SDG 2030 agenda. So, let’s practice the best and trying to overcome all those challenges and difficulties.
Cobus: As you mentioned at the top, China is looking to reform some aspects of the global system to also reflect it the size of its economy and the global influence of its economy. We’re seeing at the moment some disagreements between China and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank about debt reforms and whether these multilateral development banks should take losses in debt reforms. I was wondering what some of the big areas are that China would like to see reforms in, like which particular aspects of global governance reform would China focus on?
Dr. Wang: Well, I think there’s quite a few areas. I can’t speak for the country, but at least from my think tank, I would say that I’d like to see more development banks work together. Like World Bank is always a leading global infrastructure and development back, and maybe diversify into more green and more sustain sustainable development. But infrastructure, China probably is the best-achieved countries in the world. For example, China has built two-thirds of a global speed railway now and connecting anywhere in China within a few hours. And so, I think that development the initiative infrastructure need should be really connected with all other banks. I would also like to see Belt and Road Initiative, or BI can be really working with B3W, Build Back Better World and also New Gateway project.
So, why can’t we have those international developed banks, including AIIB to work together or have a consortia to set up some good examples in implementing project in different countries? Like AIIB, I mean, the biggest long disbursement is India, I mean, even though China-India has some problem. So, I think that this is really important. We have more cooperation among those professionals, professional banks, to really bridge the impasse of this geopolitical tensions. That’s number one. Number two, I think, on that issue, we should really probably work with the G20 and let’s get some special discussion on that. And China largely has done well. I mean, China, I remember China-African Corporation Summit. China has announced many times, China has forgive or really give up many, many loans and repayment, and China has done, quite a few time, and forgiven a lot number of debt that that China used to own.
I think let’s have some international coordination on that. Let’s see who does the best and who does most, and maybe have some good practice on that and exchange the experience and set up some joint applications. Also how to fight climate change. What about developed countries contributions to help developing countries to achieve their climate change initiatives and things like that? many things can be done, but I think what we are facing now is multilateral system is weakening with U.S with particularly Trump era quitting WHO, quitting UNESCO, threaten the WTO, the body, and we see that is not really making a lot of help.
China actually is eager to jump more, support WTO multilevel system, China joined the RCEP, the largest free-trade agreement in Asia. China applying for CPTPP, which is designed by the U.S. Even U.S. abandoned CPTPP, China wants to join that. China’s applying to join [PIPA 0:31:08]. And China’s working with African countries and African Summit, with Arab countries and Arab Summit, with Central Asia, Latin America. So, China is… and with ASEAN too. I mean, on the economic front, China is doing all those things, trying to strengthen the cooperation. I think we need more geopolitically federally relation, rather than we have another security. We have Five Eyes, we have NATO expanding, we have [inaudible 0:31:33], which is aim that China, and AUKUS, which aim that China. And IPEF, India Pacific Economic Framework.
This is economic framework, but it’s excluding China. Why not allow China to be part of that? And China’s interested to join that if it’s economic related. So, I think we need to solve those geopolitical tensions, put aside all those security military lines against each other, and then let’s concentrate on the, on the economic framework, economic alliance, and economic cooperation to help the global south, and help and utilize the organization like World Bank, AIIB and ADB to really lead a development of the world. So, there’s many things it can be, though, it’s complicated.
Eric: Yeah, I guess I’m a little surprised about your optimism that outside of the geopolitical framework and the security framework, that there’s possibilities in the economic framework. The head of the IMF was on 60 Minutes, the most popular news program in the United States, calling China and accusing China being a roadblock in the debt restructuring process. David Malpass, the President of the World Bank, has said for more than a year now that China is slowing the process. It’s China’s fault. We see Julie Chung, the ambassador in Sri Lanka for the United States, accusing China of being a spoiler in the debt process. Where does the optimism come from right now, that the United States, China, and even the Paris Club and the multilaterals can somehow work together when all we’re seeing and coming back from the… You know that the embassy in Sri Lanka, the Chinese embassy in Sri Lanka now is famous for these very aggressive Twitter rebuttals to the U.S. Ambassador. I mean, it doesn’t look like there’s a lot of room for collaboration and cooperation right now.
Dr. Wang: Well, that’s exactly what I mean. I mean, we need to have a better political, geopolitical environment rather than bashing China, decoupling China, sanction China on the one hand, and on the other hand, look in China for all those other initiative to be more forthcoming. It doesn’t really synchronize. We need to improve this political climate and of course, have some atmosphere of cooperation. Like, we had a big President Biden and President Xi Jinping meeting at the G20 at the Bali, but now we have a big setback now. I think we need probably really going forward for this political consensus and agreement, and then, of course, we need high-level talks. We’re not just talking over the space and talking over each other rather than talking face to face to each other.
I think we need more of that. China definitely is willing, I mean, and eager to collaborate and to work, rather, we’re having a lot of media criticizing on each other. And then a argument over the media, but let’s really focus on some meetings, on some constructive multilateral platform. There’s no multilateral platform that we reason with talking about on the train, on economic, on a debt, on those issues. I mean, we haven’t seen any multilateral platform playing roles, constructive role to bring the parties together. On the other hand, we are seeing a lot of caponizing on ideology. We are seeing the autocracy versus democracy, those simplifying the, the word. We seeing a lot of those things. So, it’s a difficult climate that China can engage dialogues with professionals on a more practical level and more global standard level to talk about. I think we need to really improve the political environment in order to achieve the economic better environment.
Eric: Well, hopefully the G20 forum is going to be the place where the finance ministers and later on the heads of state will have that opportunity to have those types of exchanges. Because if it’s not at the G20, you’re right, Dr. Wang, I don’t know where we’re going to do this. Cobus, last question for you.
Cobus: Well, your research center focuses on globalization, and we’ve recently seen a lot of criticism of globalization and a lot of talk of the reversal of globalization. So, I was wondering where you see globalization now and, and in the 2020s, and what role China’s going to play in that?
Dr. Wang: No, I think that globalization is a mega trend and is the tide that nobody can stop that. Of course, globalization has setbacks. It may zigzag. They may have a twist and turns, but I think the big trend is globalization will continue. We are totally intertwined. People are already ripping the benefit of globalization. Nobody wants to go back to the old days of primitive days of the law of a jungle and then really survive the fittest. So, we have to really have more inclusive globalization. But I think globalization is improvement, more dialogues, more exchanges, and of course, more achievement if we can achieve on that. On the other hand, I think that my center, Center for China Globalization, we sat about 15 years ago, we had one of the largest non-government think tank.
We re funded largely by private sectors. Our objective is to become a bridge and the platform for globalization and China, and also to welcome the world to China and to really promote China to the outside world. That’s exactly what we’re doing. We’ve been in dialogue with many Western opinion leaders, international organizations, UN. We’ve been really more focused on globalization studies, and we want to promote China more open, more liberalized. We promote also more talent. We want to attract more foreign talent to China, and China goes global too. So, I think globalization is a globalization of the people, globalization of the goods, globalization of the technology, globalization of the consensus we’ve been building now. For example, now people all say, “Okay, infrastructure is really… we all know we need that.”
Climate change is a consensus. I think globalization promote consensus, and that’s what exactly we are doing. We release reports, we hold discussions and pass the Roundtables. We encouraged China to open to lift the zero COVID. I published an op-ed last July, during the means of a zero COVID, I said we need to open and welcome global talent. I think there’s many things that our Center is doing, I think, surrounded by globalization. We published a book series. I added a series of book that include China and globalization book series published by Springer Nature. We published ambassadors, 27 ambassadors book. We have multinationals chamber heads and European Chambers. We have scholars like Kishore Mahbubani, Joseph Nye, and many other scholars books on that. So, we are really open window for the world, and I hope that globalization, the momentum will continue, even though it’s not an easy path, but I think the, the future of globalization is still quite bright.
We are cautiously optimistic for that. And I hope China can make some contribution to the inclusive with the rest of the world, with U.S., EU, and Africa, and global south, and all the countries together.
Eric: Well, we certainly appreciate your time today and we really value your opinions, and just the opportunity to hear from you. So, we hope that we can continue this discussion with you over the years ahead. And again, appreciate your optimism. It’s something we don’t hear very often today in the China global South and China U.S. relationship, so it is encouraging. Dr. Wang Huiyao is the Founder and President of the Center for China and Globalization, an independent think tank in Beijing. Dr. Wang, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. Wang: Thank you. Thank you for the exchanges. Thank you.
Eric: Cobus, in a recent episode that we did on U.S. mining in Africa, and we showcased some senior state department officials and their speeches in South Africa at the mining Indaba that took place in January or February of this year, I said there’s a certain cognitive dissonance when you listen to U.S. diplomats talk about their role in the world and also when they talk about China and whatnot. And again, you’re just like, wow, the reality and the rhetoric do not align at all. And that was part of what I was thinking about in the conversation with Dr. Wang in the sense that so much of what he’s talking about, this cooperation and the sense that we can work together and the sense that the BRI is evolving to be more transparent, or it should be, and that the United States with B3W, or now PGII, and Global Gateway can all cooperate and collaborate together. And you’re thinking to yourself like, really? I mean, again, the IMF chief was on 60 Minutes calling out China, David Malpass is calling out China, and it just seems like… I don’t get it. I’m just struggling to understand that. I mean, did you also feel that disconnect?
Cobus: Yes, to a certain extent. I mean, he was speaking in a future sense. it’s like calling for things to move in that direction, including calling for greater transparency, for example, in Chinese projects and greater collaboration between these different banks, for example. All of those things, I think, in terms of wanting those things to happen, I think is future orientation is shared by many other people,
Eric: And which is the role, by the way, of a think tank, of course. I mean, a think tank is designed to be ahead of what government is doing and to try and pull government in certain directions. In many ways, to your point, that’s what he’s supposed to be doing. To say, “Maybe the current trajectory is not good, you need to go down this path.” I just don’t see how we get there in the current environment that we’re in, but I see your point.
Cobus: Well, exactly. And think tanks also tend to be policy focused, right? They tend to look for policy solutions to current problems. They tend to have less to say, depending on the think tank, about some of the political realities that are currently holding back the cooperation. And in that sense, I think there are very powerful political realities on both sides of the equation. The U.S. policy-makers face very strong pressure, anti-China pressure in the U.S. at the moment. And there’s I think a certain amount of similar pressure on Chinese officials. So, you have this like one step forward, three steps back situation as we’ve seen around the recent controversy about the big surveillance balloon that was flying over the U.S.
Any of that kind of incident, which then triggers a lot of press optic issues on both sides then pushes back any meeting, as we saw with the cancellation of Anthony Blinken’s trip to China in in response to the balloon problem. The actual working together on the ground is constrained by a bunch of factors that, that think tanks don’t necessarily focus on because they are looking at these like big policy focused long trajectories.
Eric: Yeah. I can imagine that some listeners to the show who were thinking when he was going through the laundry list of transgressions that the United States and its allies have done to China, and again, you hear this theme of victimization that the world is unfair to China. And again, he doesn’t speak about the fact that, well, there are warships off the coast of Indonesia that China itself has done nothing to provoke this, and China is the victim. And that’s a long-standing theme in Chinese narratives. And again, to me, it’s a little bit of a cognitive dissonance in terms of how the U.S. sees itself in the world, and then we’re hearing again how the Chinese see themselves. And I, again, from the reality, I really struggle to reconcile with it.
I can imagine that a lot of our listeners were going through that list and saying, “But what about this and what about that and what about this?” And it’s hard to have these conversations because we really want to let these folks speak and not interrupt them at every two minutes to say, “But wait, what are you doing here? What are you doing there?” And it was great to let him make his piece. It’s up to you, the listener, to go out and to fact check as to whether or not you agree with him, disagree with him. The one point that I did want to bring up was the fact that when he talked about debt relief in Africa, he was talking about the zero-interest loans, and those are the grants. And that accounts for less than I think three or 4% of China’s total loan portfolio in Africa. So, it is not a significant debt relief that China has provided in Africa.
That was the only fact check I really wanted to bring up in this conversation. Sure, there are many other points that people can contest. And when we’ve had U.S. officials on, people have said the same thing. So, that’s not what we’re trying to do with this show. We really do want to let people like Dr. Wang speak, just as we did with Molly Phee, who’s the top U.S. diplomat for Africa at the State Department — let her speak. And then again, we can try and figure out what’s what afterwards. But these are tough interviews to do, I think. I mean, I really feel more pressure on these interviews than I do with any other kind that we do.
Cobus: Yeah. Also, because these people kindly give us their time, but they also face very high stakes both on the Chinese and the U.S. sides. They face certain political realities, again, on both sides. That means that they speak in a different way than researchers do, for example. So, that’s the role of the program, I think, is to maximize a wide range of voices.
Eric: Yeah. Well, we are always looking for more Chinese voices because we feel there’s not enough balance in our coverage of China and the global South, in part because it’s hard to get Chinese analysts, scholars, think tank personnel to come on the show. What’s interesting is that the original idea for this interview was in response to an article or a column that Dr. Wang wrote for the South China Morning Post, where he says that stakeholders in China need to be more proactive in engaging the global internet and the global discussion on China. Ironically, we didn’t have time to get to that because there were so many other things we wanted to talk with him about, but I give Dr. Wang credit for actually talking the talk and walking the walk.
Because when he wrote that column, I contacted an intermediary of ours, a mutual acquaintance, and I said, if Dr. Wang feels this way, can we have him on the show? And they turned around and said, “Yeah, sure.” And I thought that was pretty cool. I didn’t expect that. So, I’m hoping that this is a precursor to lots of other Chinese stakeholders to come and join us and to have these conversations, because you and I both know that we’re on so many panels, and we are guilty of this as well, where we talk about China and the world and don’t have any Chinese stakeholders. And that’s a problem. There’s no doubt that’s a problem. Not everybody may agree with what they say, but you can’t have a discussion about China and the world without actually talking to Chinese officials, Chinese analysts, and Chinese scholars, and all forms of Chinese stakeholders.
For me, I am grateful again, that Dr. Wang came on the show, and I think it’s important, and we try really, really, really hard to get Chinese folks to come and talk with us, and even though 99% of the time we’re unsuccessful,
Cobus: Yeah. I mean, Chinese academics and researchers face a lot of pressures. And also they don’t really, unlike Western counterparts, they don’t necessarily get much career benefit from outward western press engagement. That’s the different career metrics at play in the Chinese system. People can easily be put into a difficult position in having to respond to the controversial questions that we tend to ask. So, I can see where they’re coming from, but it is a problem in terms of like the global understanding of where China’s coming from.
Eric: Okay. Let’s leave the conversation there, Cobus. We’ll pick it up again, of course, next week on another edition of the China Global South Podcast. Of course, if these are the kinds of issues that you’re interested in, you’ll definitely want to sign up for our daily newsletter that goes out every morning at 6:00 AM Washington Time. Just go to chinaglobalsouth.com/subscribe and you’ll get full access to our website. You’ll also, of course, get the daily brief every morning at 6:00 AM in D.C. Time. So, that’ll do it. For Cobus van Staden in Johannesburg, I’m Eric Olander in Ho Chi Minh City, we’ll be back again next week with another edition of the China Global South Podcast. Until then, thanks so much for listening.
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