Charles Austin Jordan

@wendyleutert @zhangye68 @JorisMueller @Tamygros This is great. Thanks for sharing Wendy.

"The Party in Chinese Private Business" - new paper by Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard and Kasper Ingeman Beck documents variation in the role and influence of Party cells across private firms tinyurl.com/2bty6njw @CAustinJordan @zhangye68 @JorisMueller @Tamygros

So far, China is adopting a ‘wait-and-see’ approach, as it assesses how resilient its economy will be to global economic shocks. If Xi's confidence wavers, or if he evaluates that the conflict has weakened Trump’s position, that amay be abandoned in favor of a bolder stance.

On top of that, the war adds a huge element of uncertainty for Beijing—stress from global economic deterioration and surging energy prices are changing the geopolitical calculus.

I shared some thoughts with CNN in their latest piece on the Iran war and the delayed US-China summit. edition.cnn.com/2026/03/20/chi…

@gideonrachman @RobinBHarding Spot on.

I hesitate to call any piece FT piece “important” because it sounds self important BUT this by ⁦@RobinBHarding⁩ is genuinely important. And I think will have a big impact on.ft.com/4rlwqWz

"The US is unlikely to tolerate these latest restrictions... The White House will feel compelled to respond with new measures, prompting a counter-response from China." scmp.com/economy/china-…

China's latest trade salvo is 1) a strategic blunder and 2) more reflective of China's weakness than of its strength. I offered some thoughts to the SCMP earlier today. Link below.

@samdunningo Well said!

Cambridge academic reposts article from Mr Wang ("ex-" propaganda worker, still based in China, writing on substack**) that straw-mans arguments about IP/knowledge transfer, w reference to mainstream media + Steve Bannon. Okay, it is true that: - Chinese companies innovate (and we'd better get used to it), it's absolutely not all 'theft', whereas some Western media sometimes pretend it is all theft. On this theme follow hsu_steve tphuang - There are lots of forms of knowledge transfer, many consensual, many advantageous to the side transferring knowledge (why not call it 'teaching'?) - Lots of Western countries have engaged in 'theft' of the kind China gets accused of - There has always been lots of corporate espionage in general But all this serves to obscure the actually real risk of non-consensual (or consensual, but later regrettable) tech/knowledge transfer, IE theft. And it serves to obscure the highly competitive way the CCP has sought to promote transfer. Elsewhere, Hauge himself blogged recently that "Technology "theft" is a myth". This is absolute rubbish. Hauge says "China has throughout its economic development period regularly faced accusations by the United States of intellectual property infringement. If we want a world of shared prosperity, this way of thinking needs a radical overhaul. The idea that lower-income countries "steal" technology from high-income countries is actually absurd in many ways." All 'ideas'/'ways of thinking', in need of a 'radical overhaul', 'China vs US', etc.... The reality is that there are countless examples, many involving actual espionage, but generally other practices, sometimes involving coercion, deception, corruption. Hundreds of these cases have gone to court in various jurisdictions. Disputes are so common that the Chinese govt published new "Regulations of the State Council on the Settlement of Foreign-Related Intellectual Property Disputes" in March. crai.com/insights-event… There are also tons of straight espionage examples, see eg csis.org/programs/strat… Oh, and remind me why there are all those cyber-attacks? ukctransparency.org/prc-cyber-atta… One big goal is to get technical info Serious people in business getting their manufacturing done in China are laser-focused on the possibility of theft. They expend large sums trying to limit or prevent it, whilst also, yes, using what they have as a bargaining chip in deals. Colourful anecdote example: I met someone who runs a secure manufacturing facility in China. Where from memory I was told: every door has digital locks with different levels of access, every square inch is filmed constantly, etc. This is the USP for companies that want to use the facility. Some years ago, researchers even ID'd the kind of wish lists CCP officials cook up cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/upl… The involvement of actual spies in this in some cases, the cyber element, and lots of other factors point to a very competitive and strategic tech/knowledge transfer programme that has directly involved THEFT as one means, just not the only one. Not a myth! NB I know second-hand of one BIG Western company that had issues re IP theft per se in China and after identifying the insider threat decided not even to go public, because they still wanted to do business there. This was a big deal tho, not a small incident. **It was recently revealed that the CCP is deliberately cultivating fake independent voices on substack. toosimple.substack.com/p/chinese-stat… <> Article is paywalled but just support the author, because it is cheap and worth reading and contains several case studies examples of 'independent based in China substackers' whom state media have inadvertently outed as cut outs. LOL!

Cultivating this shared understanding should be a priority for the Western bloc. My response is featured alongside those of Yan Shi and Joerg Wuttke, both of whom provide excellent perspectives. You can read more here: ukncc.org/wp-content/upl…

3. A collective response from Western nations reordering relations with China is the preferred solution—but is unlikely to emerge absent agreement about the nature and extent of threat China poses across political, economic, and military domains.

This morning, I published an opinion piece with the UK National Committee on China in the latest issue of their Guest Contributor Programme. In it, I address how the West should navigate the trade and security dilemma regarding China. Broadly, I argue:

While such a 'fire sale' wouldn’t solve China’s fiscal woes outright, it would be a meaningful source of immediate funds and would have the added bonus of longer term productivity gains. Full analysis here: rhg.com/research/fire-…

Our results find that selling off 10% of SOE assets could raise revenue equivalent to roughly 11%–21% of GDP, while more ambitious privatizations (25% or 50% of all SOE assets) could yield between 29%–43% and 58%–85% of GDP.

🧵Could China start selling off its SOEs? It has done so in the past, and soon, it may need to consider doing so again. This year, the government is staring down widening fiscal deficits, sluggish revenue growth, and a narrowing set of policy tools.