 New America will like to welcome you to our virtual event. The program will begin momentarily. While we are waiting, I want to review a few housekeeping notes. This event is being recorded and a recording will be posted to the New America events page within 48 hours after the event. Attendees will be in listen-only mode and you will not be able to be seen or heard by your fellow attendees or panelists. Therefore, we encourage you to share your comments and questions in the slido box located to the right of the video. Close captioning is available by hovering over the video and clicking CC at the bottom of the video. If you encounter any issues during the event, please contact events at newamerica.org. Thank you for joining us. We will begin momentarily. Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining us in this for this Future Tense event titled, Is China Canceling the Internet? I'm Andres Martinez. I'm the editorial director of Future Tense and a professor of practice at Arizona State University School of Journalism, the Walter Cronkite School. Future Tense, for those of you who haven't been with us before, is a partnership between Arizona State University, New America and Slate Magazine. And we explore the impact of technology on society. And I'm really thrilled for today's conversation, which is so timely and so aligned with the things that we're curious about at Future Tense. And we have two wonderful experts to learn from today. Both happen to be former New America fellows, so it feels like we're all in the family here. Yiling Yu is based in Beijing. And so extra thanks for waking up early where you are to join this conversation. Yiling is a writer based there who is working on a narrative nonfiction book about the Internet in China and has done fantastic reporting for all sorts of locations. He's an economist, a New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, wired, looking at this interplay of technology society in China and the Internet in particular. So really thrilled and lucky to have you. And Daniel Kurtz-Vielen is the editor of Foreign Affairs Magazine, former policy analyst in the State Department Office of Strategic, I'm sorry, policy planning staff, and during his New America fellowship and subsequently he published an amazing book called The China Mission, which is one of my favorite books from pre-pandemic times, which looked at the George Marshall Diplomatic Mission in China. And it's amazing history and it reads like great fiction. And then I just have to point out that I have the magazine here. Your latest issue, which has a lot of great content related to what we're going to be talking about today. And I always carry this around because it just gives me some grovy tasks that I otherwise don't have. Although the writing, I'm sorry. I was wondering that wondering if I was frozen apologies in advance. If we do have some tech issues where we're all zooming in from different places. And it's amazing what these what this technology allows us to do as well. No, and as we've all become accustomed to sometimes, you know, we're still relying on on, you know, the Wi-Fi. And I was worried I'm in Cisco City today, E-Lings in Beijing. It looks like Dan is a little bit frozen right now, even though he should have no excuse because he's he's in the U.S. But anyways, let's start, Dan, can you hear me? I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes. So, you know, we were a little bit playful in this title of is China cancelling the Internet. But I liked the the the idea that what we want to be talking about is sort of at the macro level kind of, you know, there's a lot of talk in places like Washington, particularly in Washington about national competitiveness and, you know, tech powers. And even it even encroaches upon domestic policy, you know, you have this sort of discourse in D.C. that, well, you know, we have to be careful how we regulate the likes of Facebook and and and Google and our tech giants, because, you know, we need these our tech titans to go up against, you know, our Chinese competitors, right? And that this is an argument that I think Silicon Valley has gotten a lot of mileage out of. And people are very worried about competitiveness on, you know, AI or, you know, the base to 5G, you name the technology. There's there are people who who want to sort of treat this as a contest right between these two great tech powers. On the other hand, I also want this conversation to really get beyond that sort of abstract macro, you know, geostrategic talk and look at how people, you know, really experience the Internet and the sort of online culture and whether all of this noise about what may or may not be happening in China or is happening, but how it translates down to sort of like the user's experience and the online community. And because sometimes I don't really have a good handle on that. I can I can read headlines about Jack Ma and Ali Baba or, you know, this particular race on on on what's happening in a particular technology. But I don't really, you know, yielding. I'm really going to look to you to understand, you know, your is the is how different is the Internet experience in China than it was, you know, a couple of years ago with with all of this. And the other part of this is, you know, just throw this out, and then we can get into the conversation and hear from you is, and this sounds a bit silly, but is China cancelling the Internet. The other reason it's sort of playful is the Internet in some ways seems like it's bigger in China. And that might be sort of a very simplistic thing to say. But when I read some of the profiles that you've done, you know, about, you know, celebrities online and the way the fan culture and also the way in which technology was able to allow, you know, an economy to sort of catapult pass certain stages that we in the US. And I feel like in China, at the risk of overgeneralizing, but you know, payment systems and and the way in which, you know, the social media was integrated with retail earlier, all of that seems, you know, and you can push back if I'm wrong, but like more advanced in China and certainly like the relationship that, you know, these streamers have with with the public, how who is in their form or new America fellow and, you know, we did a future tense screening of the People's Republic of Desire. And, you know, when you watch that movie, that's what I mean about, wow, the Internet is bigger in some of the ground rules, you know, in a regime that again knows something about cancelling people or, you know, issues, actions, call what you might. So that's kind of how we wanted to get into this to think about, you know, taking a lot of the the background context and the big, you know, macro stories that that, you know, future tense readers might be familiar with and kind of being like, Okay, but what's really actually happening. So Dan, let me start off on on the sort of macro national competitiveness. I mean, your latest issue has some really provocative pieces on how we should think about, you know, the relationship with China analogies and distinctions with the old Cold War Soviet Union. There's an interesting article by Bremer talking about, you know, the sort of the the tech competition, but also the fact that we have these these tech companies are now super national. And I guess that's maybe one of the tensions that occurs in China, where maybe the government felt like, Well, we can't allow that to happen. Whereas in the US, the discourse is like, let's not rain the same because we don't want we need to keep up with the Chinese companies. But, you know, how help us frame kind of before we get into the nitty gritty of what's happening on the internet in China, what's happening in the sort of politics in China, in terms of is there kind of a rethink of some of the liberalization of the last few decades that allowed for the growth of tech companies that looked and seen very much like our tech companies, but also they might have afforded people a lot of more autonomy in daily life and their economic life and also maybe like the way they connected with each other online. Yeah, thanks, Andreas. And it's it's it's great to be back at at New America. It was a really, you know, wonderful place to spend time writing my book. And, you know, for all the fellows who have come through, it's kind of provides a really unique platform for just kind of spending time and really kind of getting into something seriously as you're trying to trying to write a book. So I'm happy to be back. I think we may see between our, you know, various freezing zoom screens, a version of tech competition playing out here and we can see whether, you know, New York City or Beijing or Mexico City proves to be able to handle this relatively simple task before we you know, get into quantum computing and AI and, you know, biotech and all that. But, you know, let me I think one thing that's, you know, you see a lot of as you say, Andreas really kind of abstract discussion of tech competition and who's ahead in the tech race in various ways and how each society is is dealing with with with tech issues. And I'm excited to hear from from Yiling and read her book when it's out. Because we, you know, I think too rarely here get really a kind of textured empirical ground up view of that from China. And, you know, there are reasons why that's I think becoming harder in the the geopolitics and diplomacy and obviously COVID has has something to do with this, but the kind of, you know, much more textured and less geopolitically or ideologically driven view is especially valuable. So I'm looking forward to hearing that. But let me try to step back a bit and give some context on the kind of US-China relationship, which, you know, as sure everyone here knows is at a rather fraught and, you know, changing moment, but then also on where things stand in China and how this kind of fits into some of the imperatives there. And I think what is so fascinating and complicated about this set of questions is that both for the relationship that wraps in all these incredibly complicated dynamics and then also for each society and leaders in each society, you know, we all know that we are wrestling with the same set of questions about the role of tech society and how platforms are regulated and and and all those questions. So it wraps together the kind of domestic and the geopolitical and really fascinating ways. When you look at this moment in China, especially for Xi Jinping, who's at this real moment of kind of both kind of sensitivity, but also consolidation of power. And you've seen a number of steps, not just within the tech space over the last several years, which are really about, you know, stamping out rivals and cementing his power and reversing some of the openness that had come to China over the last, in the previous decades. You know, some of that is about the lead-up to the National Party Congress next November, which is the moment when Xi Jinping is aiming to start a third term, people think, and kind of busting through a norm on term instead of in place. There's, you know, the everything from the recent resolution on history, kind of elevating him into the kind of pantheon of Chinese Communist Party leaders. There's a whole host of things that really make this a kind of challenging and interesting moment for for him. And this intersects with tech in a slew of ways. You know, some of this is about going after tycoons who are outspoken, who may, you know, see themselves as a kind of alternate power center, or who senior CCP leadership sees as an alternative power center. Some of it is about the relationship between kind of tech and political action. You know, there's been, I think, over time and future tense has been an important part of this debate at various points, you know, is our various forms of technology going to favor democratization, favor ground up pressure in society, or are they going to be tools of surveillance and authoritarian control? And that's a very live question, obviously, if you're sitting in a government building or a security office in Beijing. So there is that dimension of it. And then, you know, I think it's also worth we're saying that China is reckoning with a lot of the things that we are reckoning with here when it comes to, you know, everything from children and screen time to economic issues and inequality to, you know, how platforms interact with other parts of business society. So there's this, you know, really kind of fascinating complicated swirl. And then, of course, you have the whole geopolitical dimension and the fact of US China competition, which has made, you know, technology one of the the central playing field, central arenas for this competition. I think you have the US CIA director talking about as a main arena for competition rivalry between China and the US. You had, you know, Xi Jinping talking about technological innovation as one of the main battlegrounds of the global playing field. So you have both sides who see it that way. And that, again, also plays out in a whole whole host of different arenas. And that's everything from, you know, the race to be ahead in, you know, 5G or quantum computing and AI. It's about supply chains. And there's obviously been in the US a push to kind of crack down on the access of Chinese companies to US technology and supplies. And then there's also, you know, the question kind of international standards and how each government is interacting with international bodies, formal and informal, that are trying to set international standards on tech. So that's obviously a complicated set of considerations in the fact of growing tension in the US-China relationship makes all of them more complicated to deal with. So I will leave it there and turn to Yi Ling for, I suppose, more texture on the crackdown and what that actually looks like from the ground in Beijing. So I think we've lost Andreas momentarily. Is that Yi Ling, do you see him anywhere? I don't see him. No, Andreas, okay. I can just speak to some of the things you're saying and, you know, how some of the changes are being felt on ground. One thing that I would say just from a bigger kind of, you know, bird's eye view before zooming in is that, oh, Andreas is back, potentially. But I'll just continue. So I think that actually there's something a little bigger taking place behind the crackdown on the internet. And I think that will help us contextualize what's taking place on the ground, which is I do feel like what has been taking place in the last year in China really starting from, you know, Jack Ma's kind of fall from grace after the anti-IPO was cancelled is a kind of aggressive reining in of all the excesses I think what China proceeds to be is neoliberalism effectively in the sense that when we look at something like the crackdown on, for example, education technology companies, that's a very kind of multi-pronged story that doesn't just have to do with tech, right? I think on one hand it has to do with the fact that it wants to rein in a internet company like New Oriental, which has done immensely well in China over the last decade. On the other hand, I think you know, the crackdown on afterschool tutoring has much more to do with the fact that people are burnt out and that the government can see this kind of extreme inequality within the education system. Even Xi Jinping and his kind of common prosperity speech where he said, you know, we're done with letting some people get rich first. Now we're going to kind of bring about common prosperity. A big part of it is what he called involution, right? Which was a word that sprouted on the online internet where a lot of Chinese people were basically complaining about this kind of excessive competition and burnout that was driving them towards growth with no kind of spiritual meaning or purpose. And so this viral obscure word from like scholarly anthropology suddenly got, finally got picked up in Xi Jinping's speech. And so a lot of the kind of crackdowns are designed to address that. And with the education piece, there's also the kind of ideological piece, right? A lot of it has been or part of it has been about kind of banning foreign teachers and kind of steering away foreign influence. And so that's one part of it as well. Not to mention demographics, right? This kind of like shrinking, aging population. A lot of people don't necessarily see how a crackdown on tutoring has anything to do with demographics, but there's a huge leakage there in the sense that Chinese people increasingly so don't want to have babies. Not one, not to mention three, which is kind of what the government is aggressively pushing now. And a huge part of it is that babies are expensive. And, you know, the average Chinese person spends like up to half their income on their kids like education and tutoring fees. And so a lot of this crackdown is about getting Chinese parents to start having children again. And so I guess the broader point I'm trying to make here is that, you know, when we see something like New Oriental, you know, first education company to do its IPO and the New York Stock Exchange like plummets. And, you know, the whole company is falling apart and swerves to selling vegetables. There have been a whole kind of series of factors that have been, you know, in the making for a long time that have kind of kind of made the final push for for the government to introduce, you know, such a regulation among a whole slew of other ones. Yeah, and so I guess that that's kind of one point that I would make. Andreas. Andreas, are you back? Can you hear me? Yeah. Yes. The content and the internet, I think Mexico City is seriously blown it here, the tech contest here, but I was listening and that was super interesting and any link, I think it's a good reminder to be focused on the fact that this is not just happening in terms of the, you know, the, the consumer internet but it's happening across a broader swath of activities. What happened in the last few weeks, I did want to ask about the case of Peng Shui, the tennis player and that's really I think captured a lot of people's imagination and attention and we saw what the reaction of the World Tennis Association. But in terms of the censorship angle and the way in which, you know, people online relate to a story like that, you know, how does that play into the trends that we've seen recently, or is it just, you know, somewhat separate in the sense that five years ago or just I'm just curious for like your reaction in terms of how you've seen the story play out perhaps in our media that it might be missing something or might be different from, you know, what you're seeing on the ground. Yeah. To be honest, I think, you know, what makes the puncture case so fascinating is a that it has kind of implicated the kind of highest levels of leadership, like, you know, speaking out kind of against sexual harassment has been taking a place for a while now, particularly after 2017 when the feminist movement and the Me Too movement started, you know, taking off here in China, but so the kind of most important and interesting part of it is that it is implicating higher levels of leadership. And then the second part I would say is interesting is that that the WTA is involved right and so that there is huge kind of international attention that is continued to sustain itself and it's going to, you know, implicate the business world and the tennis community more broadly, but, you know, like seeing how things are taking place here, it very much feels like the censorship machine is just going into its usual mode, like it's just playing out what it always does, maybe a little bit more effectively and kind of more quickly than it would have a decade ago or even five years ago, but, you know, it almost feels like it just feels like business as usual, like the thing goes up, it goes up for 20 minutes, then it's scrubbed off all platforms, and then all the keywords are kind of aggressively taken down, you know, everything from like, it's not just like her name, like Takashri and Jong Lee, it's like, you know, you'll have like a cat and mouse game of like users putting down words like Mike Pence and Serena Williams or like the Prime Minister I, which is like a Korean, you know, TV drama and like all of that all related words tennis, you know, will just be taken down and it's very kind of sweeping and aggressive, but it kind of works like it, at least domestically right it just, it disappears from the public conversation, like it's around floating around, you know, people are talking about it and then after a while public amnesia settles in pretty quickly, and the moment passes, at least domestically. I think the challenge here and where that model censorship just does not work as well is in the international kind of community right outside the firewall that kind of like okay we're just going to forget it all happened just simply does not work. And so, the approach there is kind of this like, and I think that's what's a little new, right is this kind of like the presence of like state media, like global times is Hussein like saying well she's totally fine right and like putting out these videos of her like having dinner with her friends. And so that feels a lot clumsier and like ineffective, but it seems like they just don't really have any idea how to deal with it on a kind of international stage but you know, and I think domestically it definitely feels like that's just how things have been dealt with for a while. Right, and I guess if I'm, you know, President Xi Jinping, or you know, the from the Chinese government's position. I would imagine that the reason why this case is doubly fraught is it's coming on the eve of the winter Olympics, I mean pretty much that's that's going to be here before we know it right in February. In terms of the interplay between the domestic scene and this international realm where it's harder to control as you mentioned. This is very inconvenient timing for a case like this to break for the for the for the government. There were probably there were probably already was a fair amount of concern about international media or potential for activism around the Olympics which can be tamping down to some extent by the pandemic and the controls adjacent to that. But do you, when you look forward to the to the Olympics as a flash point. Is there, you know, how does this case play into that and what what do you expect that we might see or not see around the Olympics in terms of people, you know, descent or activism. Some of it may be imported to the extent that one can during a pandemic when they're not allowing a lot of international visitors. I don't foresee any kind of huge changes from like, I don't I certainly don't foresee any type of descent and activism, particularly not from on the ground. But, you know, I do think that there will be like a huge kind of ramping up of security I think that, you know, sensors will go into overdrive. Everything will be sensitive. But, you know, I think the winter Olympics in some ways is just like another just like scaled up version of an important event and what happens during important events is things get scrubbed off a little more kind of aggressively and people who are perceived as kind of like threats will be, you know, silenced. And so I don't think that there is anything particularly special about the winter Olympics, other than that it is an important event and they will do what takes place around important events. Yeah. And just can I can I ask you laying a question about the way the diplomatic boycott is being is being discussed there I mean to what extent is that has that been, has there been a decision to make that a major topic of conversation and how is that being being talked about you know from the external messaging of Chinese government officials there, you know, seem very happy to point out how few countries have so far joined with us and in the boycott so far but I imagine that is also an opportunity to push a certain message domestically so I'm really curious how that looks from your, your vantage there. Yeah, yeah. I mean so far, not really discussed it. You know, I have to like discuss with people more but it isn't this kind of like huge inflammatory subject that people are enraged about. It's kind of almost just like a side note. You know, maybe I'm not an athlete or not like deep in the athletics kind of circle, but I mean, I think that the messaging that at least, you know, Chinese diplomats are putting out and kind of Chinese media is putting out does seem to echo to a certain extent the sentiment that is on the ground which is, I mean there's a pretty funny tweet that someone put out recently where one of the state media folks was like, in this almost like childish like concerned, like teenage lover voice was just like, well we didn't invite you anyway. And the tweet was something like this has a, I didn't break up with you, you didn't break up with me I broke up with you vibes. So, I do think that it sends important messaging kind of internationally and to the international community though I don't know to what extent like it is really kind of felt or discussed in any great ducks domestically. I just want to remind our audience to that we'd love to have questions from from all of you, I see a couple of come in but you can you can pose a question in the slide box to the right of the video so please, please chime in. And I wanted to quick to ask you something quickly about this in the I hear from yelling that that, you know, there's actually a fair amount of continuity here and, you know, the Chinese government's ability to to control the message and to, you know, police is being talked about online in cases like this, you know, remains pretty formidable, regardless of what we might think. But when she also mentioned the more difficult challenge that maybe they're not as successful and in terms of the international economic and related to that. I'm wondering if you think that we're just going to see some, it's increasingly difficult for Western multinationals to be in China, right on the one hand we're incredibly, you know, the supply chain is there. It's been tried recently but but you know that worse, our economies are so tightly intertwined. And yet on the other hand, particularly in tech space, you've seen a lot of companies withdraw I think LinkedIn was was a was a prominent company that, you know, platform it that it just it couldn't do it. I mean, the Google saga about whether to be in or in China or not given like the way you have to do to be there is is a long story that goes way back. So we've seen the sort of, you know, part of the narrative up until this recent crackdown was that China was going to have its formidable tech space internet that was going to be sort of parallel to ours right behind this firewall. But in terms of like other brands that are more, you know, consumer consumer brands like you know the Nike's and the Coca Cola's of the world. I mean, obviously those companies are are very much still present in China. There've been pressure on them at times and even congressional hearings about, you know, well, are you, you know, what are your facilities in Western China, and are you know the questions about potential prison labor or the, you know, as as consumers activism increases and there's awareness on certain human rights issues. There might be more pressure born on entities to withdraw. I mean the World Tennis Association I guess would be an example of this right. So that kind of activism might be present in in and around the Olympics right the sponsors and just going forward like do you think that that this might be part of a decoupling that might occur in terms of our are very close ties with China that's less about at the global level and how that might percolate into worsening ties if we just become more and more divorced on in terms of like, you know, our brands on the in the tech space but but elsewhere as well. It's a it's a great and big question. I mean in some ways I think the kind of dynamics around decoupling and this was became some ways a dimension of official US policy and the word kind of came into common usage during the Trump administration. So these dynamics had been at play for several years before that and they were driven by the imperatives on on both sides or both in the US and China. You know she's been paying several years ago sort of talking about me in China 2025 and driving self-sufficiency in the whole slew of sectors including many tech sectors, the, you know, the attempts to limit, you know, I think quite successfully what most Chinese internet can see and what they, you know what they consume about scandals that might seem to be getting a lot of plain foreign press but beginning much less attention for the average Chinese reader. You know on the US side you had all the tech companies you mentioned struggling to figure out how to operate in both markets and address the, you know, kinds of pressures they were going to get from either consumers or regulators in the US or other other Western markets with the demands that they were facing in China. So all those dynamics were playing out even before you saw decoupling becoming a much more kind of official part of US policy in the in the Trump years. And I think you have again a kind of set of dynamics that are in some ways pushing in other directions so there's clearly going to be some continuing degree of this kind of divide in sectors that are deemed sensitive by one side or the other for for one reason or another. You're also going to see more and more companies just struggling to, you know, balance those two imperatives and that's true of, of tech, most, most notably but you see, you know, Ray Dalio, for example, raised a big new China fund recently and you know he's had to answer questions about the Uyghurs and about Hong Kong and about, you know, variety of other human rights issues that I think we three or four years ago if you were a big investor you just wouldn't have been, you know, he's tried to say look that's not my business or expertise but that's not an answer that in the US context you're able to get away with in the same way and similarly if you're, you know, a clothing manufacturer or an advertiser you similarly kind of have to have something to say about, you know, supply chains in Xinjiang or other issues that are increasing salience. You know, Hollywood would be another example where China is an incredibly important market to Hollywood studios and they've been trying very hard to get in but you've kind of growing attention on some of the self censorship that Hollywood was ordered to in order to find inroads into the market so you have it within the tech space but then also much more broadly and then, you know, probably most, there's most consequential but quite consequentially also on the kind of people-to-people level you know, for a long time there was a pretty deliberate attempt to really promote lots of people-to-people interaction and to encourage the, you know, flow of students back and forth and that has gotten caught up in the swirl of, you know, security concerns and, you know, speculation about whether there are, you know, kind of Chinese spies hiding in graduate departments and concerns about, you know, Chinese American researchers and, you know, you can-surely there are some valid concerns there but as that plays out on the ground it kind of goes to an extreme very, very quickly and I think tends to get caught up in a swirl of, you know, kind of panicked reactions and all of that is, again, just kind of kind of reinforce these dynamics on both sides and obviously the pandemic and the fact that there's been very little travel and especially, you know, with China which, you know, it's worth saying is committed to a strategy that has been very effective but also doesn't offer a clear kind of roadmap out of the pandemic that we're all still, you know, struggling with in different ways right now so that in the, you know, as these geopolitical dynamics play out makes it much harder I think for both sides to have a real sense of what others are thinking and, you know, certainly at the diplomatic level you would have much, much more in the way of exchanges and really kind of serious substantive exchange, you know, five or seven years ago both officially and kind of semi-official and a lot of that has slowed down quite a bit which just, you know, reinforces misperception and miscalculation, whatever else. Yeah and as you know that's an issue of interest and importance to us at Arizona State where we have thousands of Chinese students and, you know, we obviously as part of our mission and selfishly I guess people could point out as part of our overall health of the institution having those exchanges and having international students is really important and you've had a global pandemic and this sort of changing tenor of foreign policy stretch nationals, you know, security talk affect that in some ways and you know that reminds us curious did the your latest issue of foreign affairs also has this poll the back page where you asked dozens of experts whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement that we've become too hostile to China and the what's really interesting about the results is it seems just eyeballing here pretty evenly divided with experts I guess what like 50, 60 experts are asked something in that ballpark and it's pretty evenly divided and I know a couple of years ago you and I were dinner with with president crow of ASU and a couple of people in the room and I think including president crow felt that, you know, Washington had become too enamored of the sort of Cold War framing network and then maybe a lot of people more people in the room then might have said we were we were being too hostile but I suppose recent events might have been giving some ammunition or debating points to people who feel like we need to be more stern or hawkish towards China but then you get into the debates about well what's what how you know is this a self fulfilling prophecy and who's reacting to who's rhetoric and I don't expect you to have like a definitive take but I'm just throwing it out there. No, I mean, I was thinking about that that event we did with with Michael crow the president of Arizona State, who I think said, fairly crisply look, you know, a couple years ago the US government was encouraging me to you know open a you know Chinese language center campus and bring as many students as possible and now, you know, it's like I get threatening letters from the Department of Defense telling me I'm going to lose you know funding for things if if we don't, you know, track these things more carefully which I think just indicates how dramatic and you know market that shift was in a very short amount of time. I think what is really striking about this poll that is in our current issue and on our on our website you can kind of see the full breakdown of all these answers it followed when we did in 2018 or 2019 asking respondents whether Chinese and American national interest were incompatible. And you know not getting at the foreign policy question but at this kind of core interest question. I think what is really striking to me about both these is that while there's really wide variation and you know people on who argue very vehemently and with, you know, high degree of confidence that US policy has become too hostile to China or vice versa it is, you know, not hostile enough. That it really does not break down politically or ideologically among the American respondents in an obvious way so you have people who, you know are kind of traditionally associated with the kind of you know human rights left who are much more focused on Hong Kong or speech issues or or or or Uighurs who have have been part of this turn you also have kind of more traditional defense hawks and and and you know on the flip side you have kind of, you know, progressives who are you know concerned about a new kind of, you know, hard line approach and national security you have kind of people on the right who really just wanted to be a restraint in American foreign policy so it's been kind of scrambled be the politics on the US side in interesting ways. You know, not to mention there certainly versions of this debate playing out. Within within China as well so I think it's a you know the new paradigm is still kind of trying to be defined and part of what we were trying to get out in this recent issue was this idea that, you know, we kind of fall back in these cold war habits and it wasn't meant to be kind of endorsement of the Cold War but an exploration of those dynamics and and how we get into them and because that I think is the kind of muscle memory for lots of people in the the US foreign policy world you know that kind of tends to be kind of the framework through which people see things. And it is it is interesting how, in contrast to the cold war years with the Soviets, I mean, this really is often driven by concerns about technology, technological advantage. You know, I'm, I'm, I was in college back in the you know, Reagan Gorbachev years and, and nobody was worried that Soviet Union was going to sort of out do the, you know, the West when it came to technologies it was, it was, you know, the concern was it was like, raw military, you know, territorial issues and not you know, oh my gosh they're going to outpace us when it comes to artificial intelligence or you know synthetic biology or the things that we talk about in this you know, contest with China in addition to what does feel like a more traditional political context, contest, but healing I do want us to get back to China and and back online. You know we used to talk about like how does this affect people on the street like I want to know how this affects people online, because you were talking about the you know that what we've seen in terms of the changing official attitudes and relationships towards you know, the you know, the online education space that you talked about, you know, we know about the cancellation of the group by IPO that was related to Alibaba, but getting beyond that, more down to the level of, you know, Leo mama, who I think was the name of the person you profile in that great New Yorker piece, I think the headline I'm looking at the title you mama's everyday life and this was a farmer a peasant who was streaming right and became this this internet sensation and I think you know there was this term that you use in the article about broadcast jockeys and there was a sense that you know you could have quite celebrity hood and success and which were translating to commercial success online and people could connect and have these communities and this was also the subject of how who's film and I wonder if, if that kind of, you know, more grass roots if it's the right term, but spontaneous, coming together online around you know, non political issues like that, if that's changed at all, if there's any kind of dampening of that energy on the Chinese internet regardless of what's happening politically between you know Tencent and Alibaba and the Chinese government, like is that trickling down to that kind of ability for us to go online and create community. Definitely I mean I think the way that I would frame it is you know how kind of the bigger picture has kind of trickled down into everyday life and you know in the specific example online celebrity or kind of like online influence. I have started to think of the kind of developmental trajectory of the Chinese internet and kind of three phases. And so if we think about kind of pre 2013 or more kind of like the heady kind of period of the Olympics very optimistic relatively open. But before that, I think of the Chinese internet very much so aside from kind of like a bare bones firewall with the same optimism of as the global net right there's this idea that this was a town hall way more very much like on Twitter was going to like spark a information revolution that people were kind of speaking truth to power. There is a massive train crash and one Joe and 2011 and some of you have said is a journalist flocking to the scene. Very much kind of like relatively under regulated kind of lots of diverse voices on the field and overwhelmingly liberal. So a lot of the kind of influencers of that time were very liberal, kind of like writers who are finally finding the internet as this kind of space they could find themselves. I think a big turning point to I think what we see as the Leo mama kind of period was 2013, where the kind of the government appointed this guy called Louie as the head of the cyberspace administration and he used a phrase which I think really very much characterizes the internet that I know and that I've written about basically up until recently I think that that stage is ended, which is he described it as a spiritual garden, kind of this garden this walled garden, where, you know, inside lots of this kind of flourish as long as it's kind of pruned carefully pruned on the outside of any type of foreign influence. And so this is kind of the internet as we've known it for, you know, the last five or six years where there's no Google no Facebook or like international kind of tech companies have been kicked out one by one, but you know, not only have these copycats emerged as they were called back in the day, but they've kind of taken on a life of their own and so this is that you know the Ali Baba is kind of growing right dances starting to form at this period. And, you know, the idea that you can have a online life that is like extremely integrated into kind of offline presence I think under as you were mentioning earlier right like does the internet seem bigger in China I would say bigger in the sense that it's like so inextricably bound into everyday life right from the kind of leapfrogging of like online payments technology and to like now the fact that everywhere I go I need to show a health code right like it like I can go anywhere really without my phone. And so this is kind of the period where there is a kind of like a lot of innovation and kind of a great flowering of ideas but within these very tightly bound constraints. I would say like that period has definitively maybe come to an end, particularly with the recent set of kind of regulatory policies in that kind of the idea that it's not just kind of political sensitivity that is no longer. Okay, it's really kind of like excessive wealth, kind of spiritual pollution and vulgarity and so there's this like that economic piece that's not okay like if you're a celebrity that's like making too much money or flaunting your wealth that is a no no. And the other thing that is out is that has been previously perceived for a lot more kind of openness and tolerance is stuff like LGBT issues like that used to be kind of like more of a freewheeling space on the internet. But recently I think both as a kind of reaction to LGBT civil society groups and the fear of kind of formation, as well as maybe just like a more kind of conservative patriarchal take on what online space should look like. There's been a clamping down on that as well and so this is the first time where I think it's not just about kind of like walling off like external influence but also like the creation of a very kind of like conservative or much more conservative, much more kind of controlled ideological narrative. And so that's kind of the shift that I see taking place now, just a quick note there like I think a celebrity now who can thrive in this space is this woman called leads it see who's like viral, both in China and across the world for farming like for for kind of like planting her own crops in the 20s countryside. And because she speaks all the right buzzwords, common prosperity, rural revitalization. And she has recently done an interview with CCTV the state media where she said, what I'm going to do is influence youngsters away from being influencers right that's that that's the energy of the moment. That's fascinating. No, no, no, that was that was fascinating. And that's that's what I was wondering about and you've given us a really good understanding that because the platform on which a lot of the streaming happened my understanding is that it started as a gaming platform and is it. I don't know how, you know, it is why why but it's by now pronounced that way. I give it how how internet platforms are changing like barely anyone uses why why now right that was like 2016 and I watched how was brilliant documentary to but now everyone's on doing or question. And those were just burgeoning at that time doing is bite dances. So are they being. Are they waning and influence or is it just that the content is changing. Like you said, you know you have to readjust your content is changing. I think it is. The way you bite dances kind of like political savviness and its ability to survive in this like extremely challenging environment like it's just split itself into two right it's like pulled a Voldemort and there was like doing and tick tock. But it's just it's the content. It's increasingly patriotic. It's increasingly kind of clean. So the government likes to call positive energy jungle only out right and so little mama like a crude farmer like spitting dirty rhymes like on video, not positive energy right and so you see her content become more like this like wholesome cooking show. So yeah, that that's kind of the shift that's taking place. Somebody wrote in a question sent a question. We touched upon this a little bit but it's it's interesting worth. So the question is, if the Chinese government wants to censor foreign influence and culture. Why do they want to participate in the Olympics, if it is such an international event. What's your, your sense of that, like if you're adverse to all these influences and want to retain strong control isn't it, or just sort of opening the Pandora's box or, or is this just sort of a confidence that you can have it both ways you can bring in the world in the Olympics and show what you want to show. And but I think that's that's the where the question is, is had it like, if you want to be so controlling. Why would you want to host the Olympics. I mean, I think there's a long, you know, there's a, there's some great political science work we ran a piece by Don McRoddy and Bill Woolforth earlier this year about why authoritarian states have traditionally been really attached to the Olympics and seeing that as a means of kind of projecting power and, you know, pursuing I think great rival great power rivalry by their means was their phrase. I think in China's case it is a matter of, you know, when it have it both ways and I think you see this in lots of other of other countries as well. There's a, you know, desire to project influence to, you know, it's not a matter of, there's a kind of endless debate about the extent to which there is a China model that that the state is trying to bring to other parts of the world but there's certainly a really concerted influence and this has been, you know, a major part of Xi Jinping's foreign policy over the last several years to project economic and political power, and in the region military power through a variety of means if you look at you know a lot of what the Chinese have done in international organizations within your U.N. organizations and others, Belt and Road, you know, kind of huge investment initiative and infrastructure initiative that has, you know, now spans much of the world so there is this real desire to kind of project that power and the Olympics is a kind of great way to, to highlight that arrest has traditionally been the 2008 Olympics. You know, people might remember as this real kind of important almost, you know, it's pitched us almost this kind of coming out party for for the new China. And so it is an opportunity to kind of show this model and show a degree of pride to the rest of the world and, you know, I think the question is, does the boycott and controversy over whether it's, you know, over H.Y. or others, you know, to what extent does that become the story or is there still a kind of narratives that that much the world will see that will project this kind of pride and strength. I'm curious how that looks from from, you know, your vantage sitting in in Beijing Ealing but I think that's the kind of geopolitics of this question at least. I would agree. I mean I would say that it's not trying to kind of like censor foreign culture and influence kind of as a blanket like all foreign culture and influence like people are, you know, listening to foreign music consuming brands like a kind of in ways that are unprecedented right. I think specifically it's trying to curtail foreign influence that has any like potential to undermine its authority. And so if they think that the Olympics is something that won't then it seems like as sports is allegedly this kind of ideologically agnostic ground, then that's that's why they are deciding to participate. I love that phrase. I do that knows that I'm really interested into thinking about this, you know, the impact of sport and society and politics and I love that phrase that you just use dealing about it being ostensibly ideologically agnostic because ostensibly is a key word there to We're almost out of time unbelievably because it's phone by but I do want to just try to squeeze in one last question from Adam sent in by Adam M because this is really interesting. Given and to both of you, whatever it elicits, given China's domestic control of their digital terrain, how or in what ways is China currently using the internet as a tool of stay craft internationally. I can answer it really, really quickly. I realize we don't have much time but I think you see it in a, you know, I think it's really important to the projection of Chinese influence and you see it in everything from, you know, the fight over shaping tech standards, the the export or surveillance technology, you know, the fight over over over 5G and kind of semiconductor production, the, all of the ways in which, you know, this intersects with military power right so a lot of the questions about you know, what would happen the Taiwan Strait is really about, you know, technology in various ways so you kind of see that when I realized we could spend half an hour talking about each of those but I think you see it running through lots of these different projections of power and in some ways this is a place where you see, you know, the US and China and others you know, Europe's a very important force in some of the tech regulation stuff, you know, kind of trying to project these different visions and working very actively to kind of sell different parts of the world on their, you know, actual technology their approach to standards their approach to to a lot of a lot of these key questions so you see it as both a kind of tool but also an arena. Yeah, I agree with what Dan said though. Only one thing I'd add is just like in terms of shaping the narrative, like in terms of storytelling which I think in comparison to some of the hardware is just a little less kind of sophisticated right it's just like state media on Twitter. And I do think it will become more sophisticated but right like, as of now, like the narrative seems to be another way in which the Internet is trying to I mean they're using the Internet as a form of state craft. This is not exactly high tech but it's where there was this fascinating white paper on democracy that that the that was put out by China in the context of the American summit for democracy and it just is kind of amazing amazing to see this you know, debate playing out both on, you know, on Twitter but also through this you know kind of very traditional form. When I first read this question, in addition to you know debates around things like, like while we're on 5g standards I was also thinking about the sort of, you know, admittedly very, you know, somewhat farcical debates we had around Tiktok and its ownership. In, you know, farcical in the context of like the overall easy politics but but it was, it did connect to this sort of, I think anxiety that that that people outside of China might have at the prospect that some of you know that we might see can you know more and more consumer brands coming in from China and that becoming more of a two way street and you know that we're more accustomed to sort of the default shared tech platforms brands that, you know, being kind of ours being exported to put it to put it crudely. And, you know, lo and behold suddenly all our teenagers were on a platform that was that was coming from China and that just gave rise to all sorts of, you know, concerns and some, you know, were might have been a little bit overdone. But I wonder, Dealing, do you think we'll see more Chinese brands platforms coming to our shores or I guess the question is, are we going to see a stifling of innovation as a result of the current situation which is always the debate, you know, we get in the states like, don't over regulate tech companies or this is all going to come to an end. And that's a very big question to end on and we have about the million million dollar question and I always hesitate to prognosticate because some like we tend to be wrong. But I would say yes, in terms of like hardware like yes in terms of what kind of trying to incise is like useful growth I think you know in terms of like sebi conductors and batteries and like electric vehicles I still foresee like a lot of innovation taking place but you know if it's going to be like like dance 2.0 like or the new social media platform, or like a fashion brand, or like, you know, like a film, I think I'm less inclined to think that something innovative and new will happen there. Right. Dan, anything on this or? No, I will. I will. You Ling have a last word on that. Excellent. Well, apologies, I've kept you both a couple of minutes over. I would love to continue talking to you both for a couple of hours but alas, we must let you go and thank you everybody who's tuned into this this is we appreciate your being here and I apologize for our tech difficulties and and and my wife I'm particular I'm really glad that I was the person kicked off and not one of our indispensable experts so I really appreciate you Ling and then you being with us and we'll continue to follow your your writings and publications and can't wait to to read your book you Ling and to read your reporting in the meantime.