 Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining us in this for this future tense event titled is China cancelling 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 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 are curious about a future tense and we have two wonderful experts to learn from today. Both happen to be former New America fellows so so it feels like we're on the family here. Ealing you is based in Beijing and so extra thanks for waking up early where you are to join this conversation. Ealing is a writer based there who is working on narrative nonfiction book about the Internet in China and has done fantastic reporting for all sorts of locations economists in New York or New York Times magazine wired, looking at this day of technology society in China and and the Internet in particular so really thrilled and lucky to have you. And Daniel Kurtz feeling 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 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 relates 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. But I liked 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 approaches upon domestic policy, you know you have this sort of discourse and DC that what 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 are tech titans to go up against you know, our Chinese competitors right and that this is a, 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 technologies to 5G, you name the technology there's there are people who, who want to sort of treat this as a, 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, geo strategic talk and look at how people, you know, really experience the internet. And sort of online culture, and whether all of this noise about what may or may not be happening in China, or is happening but but how it translates down to sort of like the users experience and the online community and because sometimes I don't really have a good opinion, I can read headlines about Jack Ma and Ali Baba or, you know, there's 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, I'll 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, Internet in some ways seems like it's bigger in China. It might be sort of a very simplistic thing to say. But when I read some of the profiles that you've done yielding 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 audience to sort of catapult past certain stages that we in the US, and I feel like in China at the risk of over generalizing but you know payment systems and, and the way in which you know the social media was integrated with 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. You know how who is in their former New America fellow and his, you know, we did a future tense screening of the People's Republic of Desire. And, you know, when you watch that movie, I mean about wow the internet is bigger and some of the ground rules. And the regime that again knows something about canceling 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 background context and the big, you know, macro stories that, you know future tense readers might be familiar with and kind of being like okay but what's really actually happening. So then, then 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. You know theologies and distinctions with the old Cold War, the Soviet Union. There's an interesting article by grammar talking about, you know, the sort of the tech competition but also the fact that we have these these these tech companies are now super national. That's probably one of the tensions that occurs in China where maybe the, the government felt like well, we can't allow that to happen, whereas in the US the, 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 years 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 and maybe like the way they connected with each other online. Andres and it's, it's great to be back at at New America is 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 Nebraska 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 let me, I think one thing that's, you know, you see a lot of, as you say Andres 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, a very hierarchical ground up view of that from China and you know their 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 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 is sure everyone here knows is at a rather fraught and you know changing moments, but then also on 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 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 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 for Xi Jinping is 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 at rivals and cementing his power and reversing some of the the openness that had had come to China over the last previous decades. You know some of that is about the lead up to the National Party Congress next November which moment when 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 and kind of elevating him into the kind of pantheon of Chinese Congress Party leaders there's a whole host of things that really make this kind of challenging and interesting moment for for him, and this intersects with tech in in a slew of ways, you know some of this is about going after tycoons who are outspoken you're made, you know, see themselves as kind of alternate power center or senior ccp leadership or senior cps and 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 in future tens is been an important part of this debate at various points, you know is is our various forms of technology going to favor democratization favor ground up pressure in society or are they gonna be tools of surveillance and authoritarian control and that's a very live question obviously if you're in a government building or a security office in Beijing. So there is that dimension of it. And then I think it's also worth saying that China is reckoning with a lot of the things that we are reckoning with here when it comes to everything from children in screen time to economic issues and inequality to how platforms interact with other parts of business society. So there's this really fascinating complicated swirl. And then, of course, you have the whole geopolitical dimension in the fact of US-China competition, which has made technology one of the central playing fields, central arenas for this competition. I think you have the USCIA director talking about it as a main arena for competition and rivalry between China and the US. You had 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 host of different arenas. And that's everything from the race to be ahead in 5G or quantum computing and AI. It's about supply chains. And there's obviously been in the US a push to crack down on the access of Chinese companies to US technology and supplies. And then there is also the question 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 Lang 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 Andres momentarily. Is that Yi Lang, do you see him anywhere? I don't see him. No, Andres, OK. I can just speak to some of the things you're saying and how some of the changes are being felt on ground. One thing that I would say just from a bigger kind of bird's-eye view before zooming in is that Andres is back, potentially. But I'll just continue. 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 Jack Ma's kind of far from grace after the ant IPO was canceled is a kind of aggressive reining in of all the excesses of 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. 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 the crackdown on after-school 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 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 a 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 linkage 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 the average Chinese person spends like up to half their income on their kids' 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 when we see something like New Oriental, first education company to do its IPO in the New York Stock Exchange like plummets, and the whole company is falling apart and swerves to selling vegetables, there have been a whole series of factors that have been in the making for a long time that have made the final push for the government to introduce such a regulation among a whole slew of other ones. Yeah, and so I guess that's kind of one point that I would make. 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 the reaction of the World Tennis Association. But in terms of the censorship angle and the way in which people online relate to a story like that, how does that play into the trends that we've seen recently? Or is it just somewhat separate in the sense that kind of five years ago? Or just I'm just curious for your reaction in terms of how you've seen the story play out perhaps in our media that might be missing something or might be different from what you're seeing on the ground. Yeah. To be honest, I think what makes the Peng Shui case so fascinating is, A, that it has implicated the highest levels of leadership. Speaking out against sexual harassment has been taking place for a while now, particularly after 2017 when the feminist movement and the Me Too movement started kicking off here in China. So the 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 the WTA is involved. And so there is huge international attention that is continuing to sustain itself. And it's going to implicate the business world and the tennis community more broadly. But seeing how things are taking place here, it very much feels like the censorship machine is just going into its usual mode. 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 it just feels like business as usual. The thing goes up. It goes up for 20 minutes. Then it's scrubbed off all platforms. Then all the keywords are kind of aggressively taken down. Everything from like, it's not just like her name, like Takashri and Jangoli. It's like you'll have like a cat and mouse game of users putting down words like Mike Pence and Serena Williams or like the Prime Minister and I, which is like a Korean TV drama. And like all of that, all related words, tennis, will just be taken down. And it's very kind of sweeping and aggressive. But it kind of works at least domestically. It just it disappears from the public conversation. Like it's around floating around. 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, OK, 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's Hussie Dean 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, 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 going to be here before we know it right in February. So in terms of the interplay between the domestic scene and this international realm where it's harder to control, as you've mentioned, this is very inconvenient timing for a case like this to break for the government. And there probably already was a fair amount of concern about international media or potential for activism around the Olympics, which can be tamped down to some extent by the pandemic and the controls adjacent to that. But do you, when you look forward to the Olympics as a flash point, is there, you know, how does this case play into that? And what do you expect that we might see or not see around the Olympics in terms of people, you know, dissent 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. Like, I certainly don't foresee any type of dissent 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, you know, 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. Andress, can I ask you laying a question about the way the diplomatic boycott is being discussed there? I mean, to what extent has that been, has there been a decision to make that a major topic of conversation? How is that being talked about, you know, from the external messaging of Chinese government officials there seem very happy to point out how few countries have so far joined with the 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 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 I'm 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 state media is putting out does seem to echo to a certain extent the sentiment that is on the ground, which is I mean, there is a pretty funny tweet that someone put out recently where one of the kind of state media folks was like, in this almost like childish like spurned 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, but you didn't break up with me, I broke up with you vibes. And 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. Thank you. I just want to remind our audience too that we'd love to have questions from all of you. I see I think a couple of come in, but you can pose a question in the slide box to the right of the video. So please chime in. Dan, I wanted to quick to ask you something quickly about this in the, I hear from Yiling that there's actually a fair amount of continuity here and the Chinese government's ability to control the message and to police what is being talked about online in cases like this 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 in terms of the international dynamic. 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, the supply chain is there. It's been tried recently, but our economies are so tightly intertwined. And yet on the other hand, particularly in the tech space, you've seen a lot of companies withdraw. I think LinkedIn was a prominent company that platform that decided that it couldn't do it. I mean, the Google saga about whether to be in China or not given the way you have to do to be there is a long story that goes way back. So we've seen the sort of, part of the narrative up until this recent crackdown was that China was gonna have its formidable tech space internet that was gonna be sort of parallel to ours, right behind this firewall. But in terms of like other brands that are more consumer brands, like the Nike's and the Coca-Cola's of the world, I mean, obviously those companies are very much still present in China. There've been pressure on them at times and even congressional hearings about, well, are you, what are your facilities in Western China? And are questions about potential prison labor or the, 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 and around the Olympics, right? The sponsors and just going forward, like do you think that this might be part of a decoupling that might occur in terms of our very close ties with China that's less about at the government level and how that might percolate into worsening ties if we just become more and more divorced in terms of like, you know, our brands in the tech space but elsewhere as well. Yeah, no, it's a great and big question. I mean, in some ways, I think the kind of dynamics around decoupling of this was became, some ways a dimension of official US policy and the word kind of came into common usage during the Trump administration. I think the dynamics had been at play for several years before that and they were driven by the imperatives on both sides, or both in the US and China. You know, Xi Jinping several years ago sort of talking about making 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, they're not completely what most Chinese internet can see and what they consume about scandals that might seem to be getting a lot of plain foreign press but be getting 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 gonna get from either consumers or regulators in the US or 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 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 gonna be some continuing degree of this kind of divide in sectors that are deemed sensitive by one side or the other for one reason or another. You're also gonna see more and more companies just struggling to, you know, balance those two imperatives and that's true of tech 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, a variety of other human rights issues that I think maybe 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 really 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, 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 of 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 has resorted 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 this 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 you, 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, what we're 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 then dynamics play out and 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 have much, much more in the way of exchanges and really kind of serious substantive exchange, you know, five or seven years ago, both official 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 a part of our mission and selfishly, I guess, people could point out as part of our, you know, 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 me, I was curious that 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, well, it'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 at dinner 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 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, how do you, 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 event we did with Michael Crow, the president of Arizona in a state who I think said fiercely, crisply, look, you know, a couple of years ago, the US government was encouraging me to, you know, open a, you know, Chinese language center, campus and bring as many students in as possible and now, you know, it's like I get threatening letters from the Department of Defense telling me I'm gonna lose, you know, funding for things if we don't, you know, track these things more carefully which I think just indicates how dramatic and, you know, market that shift goes in a very short amount of time and I think what is really striking about this poll that is in our current issue and 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 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 Uyghurs who have been part of this turn. You also have kind of more traditional defense hawks 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, hardline approach to national security. You have kind of people on the right who really just wanted to re-restraint in American foreign policy. So it's been kind of scrambled the politics on the US side in interesting ways. You know, not to mention there are certainly versions of this debate playing out 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 into these Cold War habits. You know, it wasn't meant to be kind of an endorsement of the Cold War, but an exploration of those dynamics and how we get into them. And because that I think is the kind of muscle memory for lots of people in the US foreign policy world, you know, that kind of tends to become a framework through which people see things. And it is interesting how, in contrast to the Cold War years with the Soviets, I mean, this really is often driven by concerns about technological advantage. I mean, you know, I was in college back in the, you know, Reagan-Gorbachev years 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, you know, the concern was it was like raw military, you know, territorial issues and not, you know, oh my gosh, they're gonna 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 juke political context, contest. But Yiling, I do want us to get back to China 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, what we've seen in terms of the changing official attitudes and relationships towards, you know, the Alibaba's of the world, you know, the online education space that you talked about, you know, we know about the cancellation of the Ant Group IPO that was related to Alibaba. But getting beyond that, more down to the level of, you know, Liu 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, Liu Mama's Everyday Life. And this was a farmer, a peasant who was streaming, right? And became 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 a celebrity hood and success in which we're translating to commercial success online and people could connect and have these communities. And this was also the subject of how Wu's film. And I wonder if that kind of, you know, more grassroots, 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 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. Before that, I think of the Chinese internet very much so, aside from kind of like a bare-bones firewall, with the same optimism as the global net, right? There's this idea that this was a town hall, Weibo very much like Twitter, it was going to like spark a information revolution. People were kind of speaking truth to power. There was a massive train crash in Wanzhou in 2011 and suddenly you have citizen journalists 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 were finally finding the internet as this kind of space they could express themselves. I think a big turning point to I think what we see is the Leo Mama kind of period was 2013, where the kind of the government appointed this guy called Lu Wei 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 has ended, which is he described it as a spiritual garden, kind of this garden, this walled garden where, you know, inside lots of things can 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 the last five or six years, where there's no Google, no Facebook, no Twitter, 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 the, you know, the Alibaba is kind of growing, that the bite dance is 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, Andrea, as you were mentioning earlier, right? Like does the internet seem almost 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't go anywhere really without my phone. And so this is kind of the period where there is kind of like a lot of innovation and kind of like 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 OK. 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 OK. 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 of us are 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 Li Zizi, 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 the 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 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, is it why why? But it's by now pronounced that way. Yeah, I mean, given how how internet platforms are changing, like barely anyone uses why why now, right? That was like 2016. And I watched how it was brilliant documentary, too. But now everyone's on Douyin or a choir show. And those were just burgeoning at that time. Douyin 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. The content is changing. I think it is it speaks to bite dances, kind of like political savviness and its ability to survive. And that's like extremely a challenging environment. So like it's just split itself into two, right? It's like Voldemort and that is like Douyin and Tiktok. But it's just it's the content. It's increasingly patriotic. It's increasingly kind of clean. It's filled with what the government likes to call positive energy. Jung Dong Liang, right? And so their 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. There is somebody wrote in a question, sent a question. We touched upon this a little bit, but it's it's interesting and 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. So what's 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 through the Olympics and show what you want to show. And but I think that's that's the where the question is is headed. Like if you want to be so controlling, why would you want to host the Olympics? Dan, do you want to speak on that? 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 Mercadian 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 a, I think great revel great power, revelry by their means was their phrase. I think in China's case it is a matter of, you know, wanting to have it both ways. And I think you see this in lots of other of other countries as well. There is 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 China's, you know, 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. So if you look at, you know, a lot of what the Chinese have done in international organizations, you're in organizations and others. Belt and Road, you know, kind of huge investment initiative and infrastructure initiative that has, you know, 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 as kind of coming out party 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 I think the question is, does the boycott and controversy over whether it's, you know, over a picture or others, you know, to what extent does that become the story, or is there still a kind of narratives that much of the world will see that will project this kind of pride and strength. I'm curious how that looks from, you know, your vantage sitting in Beijing, Yiling, but I think that's the kind of geopolitics of this question, at least. Yeah, 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 foreign 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, you know, sports is allegedly this kind of ideologically agnostic ground, then that's why they are deciding to participate. Well, I love that phrase. Dan knows that I'm really interested into thinking about this, you know, the impact of sport on society and politics. And I love that phrase that you just used, Yiling, about it being ostensibly ideologically agnostic, because ostensibly is a key word there, too. We're almost out of time, unbelievably, because it's flown 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 staycraft internationally? Any thoughts on that? I can answer it really, really quickly. I realize we don't have much time, but I think it's really important to the projection of Chinese influence and you see it in everything from the fight over shaping tech standards, the export of surveillance technology, the fight over 5G and kind of semiconductor production, all of the ways in which this intersects with military power, so a lot of the questions about what would happen in the Taiwan Strait is really about technology in various ways, so you kind of see that where I realize 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 the US and China and others, Europe's a very important force in some of the tech regulation stuff, trying to project these different visions and working very actively to kind of sell different parts of the world on their actual technology, their approach to standards, their approach to 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, but only one thing I would add is just like in terms of shaping the narrative, like in terms of storytelling, like 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, I mean they're using the internet as a form of statecraft. This is not exactly high tech but it's where there was this fascinating white paper on democracy that was put out by China in the context of the American Summit for Democracy, and it's just kind of amazing to see this debate playing out both on Twitter but also through this kind of very traditional form. When I first read this question, in addition to debates around things like Huawei and 5G standards, I was also thinking about the sort of admittedly very somewhat farcical debate we had around TikTok and its ownership in farcical in the context of like the overwrought easy politics, but it was, it did connect to this sort of I think anxiety that people outside of China might have at the prospect that we might see more and more big consumer brands coming in from China and that becoming more of a two-way street than were more accustomed to sort of the default shared tech platforms, brands that being kind of ours being exported to put it crudely and lo and behold suddenly all our teenagers were on a platform that was coming from China and that just gave rise to all sorts of concerns and some might have been a little bit overdone. But I wonder, Yiling, 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 a million dollar question and I would have 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 ByteDance 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. Yiling, have you lost 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 in to this. We appreciate your being here and I apologize for our tech difficulties 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 and then you being with us and we'll continue to to follow your your writings and publications and can't wait to to read your book Yiling and to read your reporting in the meantime so thanks everyone. Thanks so much.