 All right everyone, it's coming up on nine o'clock. So I think we're gonna go ahead and get started. Welcome everyone. I would like to welcome you all to a virtual launch event for a new report from Secure World Foundation and the Kalis Foundation. It's called Lost Without Translation. Identifying gaps in US perceptions of the Chinese commercial space sector. This is gonna be a really interesting conversation and I'm sure many of you are already looking forward to it. Ian, next slide please. All right, my name is Daniel Poros. I will be moderating today. I'm the director of strategic partnerships and communications at Secure World Foundation. For those of you who don't know, Secure World Foundation is a nonprofit organization that promotes a secure and sustainable and peaceful uses of outer space and thereby contributing to the global stability and benefits of space here on earth. The Kalis Foundation is a nonprofit organization with a mission to critically engage and expand participation in the outer space sector. So both of these organizations, of course, have been working quite a lot in this field and trying to develop a better sense of how to include all the different stakeholders. And we always talk about new entrance to the space sector and Chinese companies. The private sector that is developing in China is one of the most watched, particularly by US stakeholders. There are a lot of questions. Who is the Chinese commercial space sector? What services are they going to provide? What do they mean? What does this mean for global competition and space services? And Secure World Foundation and the Kalis Foundation sought to explore these questions. And what are the things that they found that was quite surprising? For all the questions we have, so many of the answers that are being circulated amongst our own sort of Western communities aren't really answers at all, but it's kind of based more on conjecture. We don't actually know very much about the Chinese commercial space sector. And unfortunately, we risk sometimes letting our imaginations create our strategies and policies rather than hard and fast data. So how do US stakeholders get a better sense of the new competition, particularly when it's so hard to engage with our Chinese counterparts? Now, this paper that's being put out by Secure World and Kalis has a singular goal, and that is to increase nuance in the discussion of one of the most challenging and heated topics in the space industry, US-Sino space relations. Now, this paper raises more questions than it answers, but these questions will help US researchers, analysts, practitioners and policymakers to better investigate and understand the complex dynamics emerging in China's nascent commercial space sector. So we're not here to answer all the questions for you, but we are here to do is to point out where the gaps are and what we need to start doing in order to better understand the Chinese commercial space sector. Ian, next slide please. All right, here's the agenda for today. We're gonna have a quick presentation from our three authors on Lost Without Translation. They're gonna give us the highlights and tell us a little bit about the research that they did, the methodology and what some of the conclusions were that they were able to take from that. After that, we're gonna have a discussion with three experts who are also going to provide their thoughts on Lost Without Translation and on this process that Secure World and Kalis have kicked off. And then after that we'll have time for some audience questions and answers. And by the way, let me also direct all of you towards our website, swfound.org, where you can find the report for free, which let's face it, these days, you can't get data this good for free everywhere. Next slide please, Ian. I'm very proud to also announce that Secure World Foundation is continuing this process of including closed captions for everyone. So if you need to find the closed captions button, it's down below you, just find the little CC button and click that and show subtitles. So delighted that we can provide that service for everyone. Next slide please. And then of course, we'll be asking questions through the Q and A. There is a chat function of course, but where you, if you really wanna submit a question that will be answered on air, please submit it in the Q and A box. And I would also remind everyone that this is being recorded. Next slide please. Okay, our authors and our experts. I am delighted to be presenting them and I'm going to do it actually in reverse order from how they are presented as the authors of the paper. First up, my colleague Ian Christensen, he is the director of private sector programs at Secure World Foundation, where he's responsible for leading our engagement activities with the commercial space sector. And he focuses on policy and governance topics in support of the development of the private sector space capabilities. Now, of course, his work includes topics such as space debris mitigation, norms of behavior for responsible operations and even space resources policies. Our other author is Rob Bronsy. He's the executive director of the Kailas Foundation where he has produced insightful space industry research and co-leads a track two diplomatic dialogue between US and Chinese stakeholders. And finally, last but not least in any way, Catherine Walsh, who is currently pursuing her MS in cybersecurity at the University of Denver. And she, where she graduated with an MA in international security in 2019. Before attending graduate school, she worked in non-proliferation at Los Alamos National Lab. Catherine has spent two semesters studying abroad in China where she developed understanding of Mandarin and regional dynamics. So as you can see, our authors here are extremely knowledgeable and I'm looking forward to hearing their comments. So Ian, let me hand it over to you, sir. Actually, I'm gonna hand it over to Rob, so. Sure, yeah. So I'm gonna jump back in here. Can just really quickly, and I'd be seen and heard at the moment because my internet just cut out like one of our panelists. I'm on my phone now. Yeah, we've got you, Rob. Cool, great, thank you very much. All right, so thank you very much. It's great to be talking to all of you about our research and to engage with a robust panel and a great audience. So as you're all aware, the US-China relationship is a highly sensitive subject in the space sector. Space is a high security domain and US concerns with China have already had huge impacts on how business is conducted in the industry. From the expansion of ITAR, the Wolf Amendment, and now Space Force, these dynamics have led to a largely hands-off relationship with very little direct engagement of any kind. Regardless, as the global commercial space sector continues to rapidly develop, the decisions these two countries make both together and separately will have significant implications for the rest of the industry. So with that in mind, our two organizations, the KALIS Foundation and the Secure World Foundation, organized a dialogue with the Chinese Society of Astronautics to help develop a platform to establish mutual understanding of how both countries are approaching the commercialization of space. During this process realized that there were significant gaps in basic information regarding how both countries operate around this idea of commercialization, which led us to the research that we're talking about now, where we wanted to identify specific gaps and information and misunderstandings that we could address via dialogue and further research. So I'm gonna head over to Ian and talk a little bit more about specifically what we did. Thank you, Rob. So this paper compares US commercial space sector perceptions of Chinese private sector space activities with narrative discourse and analysis on China's commercial space sector in order to identify potential gaps, areas of gaps or misalignment. It's based on a combination of US stakeholder interviews and review of both US and Chinese written media. The focus on the US commercial space sector is deliberate. We looked at the startup, entrepreneurial or new space community, but not the prime contract or our traditional aerospace sector. This work began with a series of in-depth interviews with US commercial space stakeholders. Each of these interviews lasted between 30 minutes and one and a half hours and followed a semi-structured guide of open-ended questions. That guide is in the report for those of you who are interested in looking at that. Interviews were conducted under anonymity. The 15 interviews that we conducted with US stakeholders represented a wide range of space industry verticals and segments, including finance, launch, remote sensing in space operations and others. I want to thank those of you in our community who participated in these interviews. We do thank you for your time. Common thematic perspectives emerging from the interviews were then compared with discussion of similar thematic elements in the narrative, in written narrative, including both US and Chinese sources. This is complemented by with an extremely limited number of interviews with Chinese stakeholders. I now want to hand it over to my colleague, Katherine, to talk us through some of the contextual factors we need to understand going into this research. So I'm going to start talking about a little bit about China's commercial space companies or space industry. So we know that the US remains the most space-capable country in the world. However, China's space industry is second and quickly growing. The landscape of China's space sector includes a number of actors, including the Chinese military, SOEs and their various subsidiaries. However, in recent years, Chinese commercial space companies have increased in scope, scale, and number. Bryce's 2020 startup report found that over $300 million was invested in Chinese space ventures in 2019. In your consults, China's space industry report found that Chinese commercial launch companies raised over $530 million in 2020 in the last two months of 2019. You go to the next slide, please, Ian. So although quantification of China's commercial space sector is difficult, the Institute of Sense Analysis, SIPI published a first of its kind commercial space report in 2019 and it provided an in-depth analysis of this sector. It identified 78 commercial space companies in China finding that satellite and component manufacturing launched vehicle manufacturing, remote sensing data analytics, and satellite communication were among the top categories represented among China's commercial space companies. You go to the next slide, please. So to put this in a more context of what's going on within China, Xi Jinping has led China in pursuit of national rejuvenation and the China dream. And so it's seeking, he's leading China in a way to, he's seeking to continue China's economic growth and establish itself as a great power within the international sphere. And so in order to support these goals, Xi Jinping is leading the country and the development and innovation of China's science and technology sectors, which are a critical part of achieving economic growth and also establishing itself as a great power. So the space sector plays a key role in the success, both in its contributions to economic development by providing services supporting effective information communications technology, among other things. And it also serves as a symbol of great power through successes in various launching space exploration endeavors. Broad policy initiatives such as the military civil fusion and the Belt Road Initiative may have a positive impact on China's commercial space sector through creating opportunities for private companies to support various national objectives and perhaps create opportunities to engage with external actors. In addition to these broad policy initiatives, the Chinese government has released various policies and other documents encouraging the growth of the commercial space industry and signaling support for further development and innovation within China's commercial space sector. We go into more, a little more breakdown of these in the paper, but I'm just gonna press forward for the sake of time. So if you go to the next slide, please. And so even though we have all this information available through China's policies and these in-depth reports like IDAs, it's not easy to understand what's going on in China's commercial space sector. So ultimately, there are a number of challenges faced by those seeking to learn more about China's commercial space industry, such as concerns about information transparency and reliability of sources. So for example, the IDA report found that many companies did not have websites in those that did, not all of them had English sources available, which is leading us to another significant challenges of language barriers. So in addition to Mandarin websites without an English counterpart, there are a number of Mandarin dominated spaces such as WeChat that may provide a window into important and interesting narratives about China's commercial space sector that aren't necessarily available to the larger US stakeholders at this moment. So ultimately, these challenges lead to a situation of asymmetry, meaning that the Chinese sector knows more of the US than we know about them. This asymmetry can force US stakeholders to make assumptions and ultimately lead to various perceptions that may not be fully representative of the narratives that are happening within China's commercial space sector. So now I'm gonna pass it off to Ian and Rob to talk more about what we found within our paper. Thank you, Catherine. So I wanna start here with just a very brief summary of some of the key impressions from our interviews. Our impressions from this research is that US commercial space stakeholders are clearly interested in and concerned about China's space activities. The emerging space industry in the US is looking towards growth and competition. China is a huge part of that equation. And US commercial space stakeholders expect competition with China's space sector to emerge. Well, most interviewees expressed a general attitude of being open to or even welcoming Chinese competition, but look for it to be under fair or at least defined terms. At the most basic level, interviewees primarily wanted to know who will their competition be, what resources will they have and what rules will they operate by. All interviewees believe that more information on Chinese commercial space activities would be beneficial for US strategic positioning. Next few minutes Rob and I will be comparing common perspectives from the interviews to narrative portrayals of related topics as primarily discussed in Chinese media. A key perception that emerged or a key fact that emerged from our interviews is that stakeholders' perceptions of China's space activities were inextricably linked to the geopolitical context. There was an expectation or framing of competition with China as in the state, the country or the aerospace sector in general and not in terms of specific companies or SOEs versus private companies, et cetera. Indeed, competition with China. Perceptions of China's space sector was very strongly influenced by perceptions of the party and of China's actions as a state. As the CEO of a US in space logistics company told us, space is closely tied to a nation's strategic objectives. So we have to see it in terms of great power competition, which can then simplify dynamics between the US and China. Good guy, bad guy camp. A key perception that emerged was that China's space sector is viewed in a somewhat monolithic fashion by US stakeholders. This is in part due to the opacity of the system and in part due to strongly held viewpoints on the communist party and on the Chinese state. A space-focused venture capitalist described this perception that I have, that I know others share, that these Chinese commercial space companies are really state-owned actors that are probably just trying to partner with us to steal our data and our IP. There was a concern within our interviewees that all companies within China might be under the direct control influence or otherwise direction of the state in China and that key assets of China's space infrastructure and program are under the control of the PLA. There's a perspective that China's space industry is entirely directed through the state-owned enterprises or SOEs. At the same time, many of our interviewees did admit to a general lack of knowledge of the specific structure of the Chinese space ecosystem and most of our interviewees expressed both openness and skepticism to the idea that Chinese companies might be commercial in character. Respondents described Chinese companies as acting in commercial ways or as giving the veneer appearance of being commercial. Rob, I'm gonna hand it over to you for some reaction to those perspectives. Thank you, Ian. So one of the things that was very interesting when we were diving into this is we were trying to compare these perceptions to what we could find based in discourse of literature and analysis on the Chinese commercial sector. And over the question of whether or not the Chinese commercial sector actually is a monolith, we found that there's many ways to recognize that reality is a little bit more complex than that, but one of the best ways that we believed was to look for sources of internal division, competition and friction. So for starters, one of the things that we found most interesting and surprising was this identity discourse going on around the term the national team. The national team is a term commonly used in the Chinese context to refer to entities or organizations, companies that are directly tied to the national government. So state-owned enterprises and companies that are direct subsidiary exposed would be considered as the national team. So where we saw this term being used in an interesting way was in conversations around commercial stakeholders where one, let's just say you have two startups, one startup would refer to the others. Like, oh yeah, they're all young startup, they're a new space company or they call themselves a new space company, but they are actually part of the national team. And the use of they and the context that they are that and we are not suggesting that there is an identity and a conceptualization of being part of the opposite of the national team. And there's not a commonly used term that we saw that signifies who those who don't consider themselves part of the national team, but private companies was often used in that context. This was also usually how a lot of conversations were framed that showed sources of competition and friction. So there was one very illuminating quote that a founder of a Chinese Space Launch startup said that was as much as startups can stand on the shoulders of a giant, they're equally beholden and constrained by it. It was really emblematic of what you'd see for a lot of the aspects of the relationship where you don't see a lot of open direct competition in the business front, but you've seen it in other ways. So one of the most prominent examples of competition was actually over personnel and over staff. In 2018, there was a prominent example of a senior employee at one of the state and enterprises transferred or tried to transfer to a private launch front. And in the process, the SOE tried to block his departure through a variety of administrative means. And in the process, the documents regarding their efforts were leaked to the public and there was a large social media debate over the relatively poor compensation the SOEs gave to their employees versus private firms. And in some cases, somebody leaving an SOE can triple their salary by transferring over to a private firm. So there's a context of unequal resources and unequal standards that has bubbled up into competition and friction in some regards regarding personnel. Another example, there was document released by the national government to encourage SOEs to engage with the commercial firms to try to foster the development of the commercial sector. And when this came out, the commercial firms believed that they would be able to do business and be able to do new transactions with the SOEs they had not before. And some prominent examples being able to buy a rocket engine and made a lot of business plans regarding that expectation. And then the SOEs decided that they were not going to sell it and not supply those parts. And help those private firms. Constantly embarrassing investor discussions and was a little bit of a source of friction for a while there as well. Moving to the next slide, please. So moving on to another perception that we saw that we wanted to discuss from our interviews was this perception that there's a belief that the US companies are at a comparative disadvantage because China's commercial space sector benefits from a long-term strategic approach to the space program development that is largely driven by strategic competition and both the government and private sector activities. So some quotes that we saw there is that a big advantage in China is that they appear to have long-term strategy that doesn't get interrupted in four years. This is a common thing that you can see in discourse as well. They're able to execute in programs in a way that Americans are just not able to. VCs in this country, the US tap out after 10 years. They, in China that could be 25, if they're in it, they're not going to walk away. These are some of the expectations that we saw about that. And so Ian, what did we see in the counter? Yeah, thank you, Rob. So without commenting on the accuracy of that perspective, I think there's a more nuanced context that needs to be considered and that might somewhat affect it. Domestic economic and workforce development goals are important motivating factors in China's space sector and are not widely understood in the US commercial space stakeholders that we spoke with. So if we look, we know that the Chinese government has very ambitious, domestic economic growth goals, government goal double GDP by 2035, which implies a four to 5% annual GDP growth, reaching high income status by 2025. The 14th five year plan, which is due to be finalized shortly, is expected to place emphasis on urbanization, climate change and technological independence. So as we look at these factors, the space sector and China's space sector activities need to be understood within this context as well as the competition context and the great power dynamic context. Provincial governments play a key role in China's space ecosystem. These provincial governments certainly respond to policy signals and policy initiatives at the national level, but they also pursue regional economic workforce and technology development goals. China's private space companies are often focused on internal markets and downstream business and consumer services. They aren't necessarily specifically targeting disruption to the US as the goal, although competition may occur as a result. US companies will also likely be barred or otherwise unlikely to pursue internal to China markets. So let's take an example of this. As we know, both in the US and in China, a number of entities, commercial and otherwise, are looking at investing in and developing and fielding very large constellations to provide satellite internet, enterprise broadband internet services from Leo constellation. So this is an area of activity and an area of investment in both of these countries. In April, 2020, there was a decision by China's National Development and Reform Commission, which is a national level planning body to add satellite internet to a strategic list of new infrastructures. The new infrastructures list was a policy mechanism set up around 2018 to emphasize new areas of technology infrastructure development within China. So in April, 2020, the NDRC added satellite internet to this list. Since that decision, several provincial governments have announced plans to make massive investments in similar kinds of industrial parks, which are focused around satellite internet and satellite manufacturing. These industrial parks have roles for all types of companies, including the private companies. And the provinces may actually be competing amongst themselves for success within these parks. The private companies that participate are able to receive capital and funding from the provincial governments as well as certain facilities and infrastructure access, but they're also able to then to use this participation to help raise very large capital, private capital funding rounds. So what we see here is a very complex kind of multi-level ecosystem where economic development, workforce development and regional competition is all kind of rolled up into a broader set of activities. A third key perspective moving on, a third key perspective that we encountered is that China's space sector benefits from unlimited financial resources and government support, which puts US commercial companies at a competitive disadvantage. So this is somewhat related to the vision, but there's more of the perspective about long-term vision, but there's more on the actual assets that these companies have access to. It's the perception that Chinese funders, both public and private, take a more patient approach to expectation of outcomes and look to provide resources for a longer term than do their US counterparts. CTO at a US remote sensing company told us that there is a certain belief that there's a large amount of government support behind these businesses. They, being the Chinese, they've been very open and avert about it. Several perceived examples that we heard about of this types of support that US companies perceive include transfer of technology from the state on enterprises to the commercial companies, aid from the government in completing foreign acquisitions, government subsidies, both financial and in terms of facilities access and the ability of Chinese companies to offer packaged inclusions, things such as insurance, financing, other such non-technical factors as part of international sales, and then the role in which the Chinese government links the space industry to signature foreign policy initiatives. So these are all factors that are US stakeholders raised as examples of some of this unlimited support that they perceive Chinese companies receiving from the government. There's also a perception that the venture capitalists in China operate to a longer timeframe, as Rob kind of hinted at before. We had a space focused venture capitalist tell us that I can't invest in an asteroid mining company in the US. That's not going to be profitable for 15 years. I can't do that. The Chinese can't. So that patience coupled with the capital will make a big difference in the space sector. Rob, to you. Great. So again, this is a great example of one of those areas where looking into it a little bit more deeper or deeply there's more nuance and reality is a little bit more complex. And so at the moment, very specifically talking about what we saw with commercial companies and not the state on enterprises that's a very different dynamic, but looking at more private, what we suggest may be private and commercial firms in China experiences that while private and commercial Chinese firms do have access to substantial amounts of upfront capital. Firstly, the funding comes primarily from private provincial government sources rather than national government. So the chart that's on the slide here that comes from Euro consult report showing that the breakdown of where startup funding has really come from in recent years. And one of the lead authors and analysts on that report is Blaine Curcio who's on our panel today. So feel free to ask him putting questions later if you'd like to. But so while these companies have access to capital upfront, one of the problems that they really face is establishing a customer base and one of the most commonly cited sources of envies from Chinese companies about their US counterparts is that there's no equivalent to a Chinese NASA. There's no large government customer that is buying from these smaller firms. And as mentioned earlier, there's a lack of regulatory support to ensure that these private firms actually have market access. So thinking about the venture capital is a source where the expectation is that they have a longer timeframe for their ROI. In most cases, they actually have a shorter ROI timeframe than their US counterparts. And so it's really common to see examples of Chinese firms engaging in revenue-generated activities that are outside of their actual business models, things like marketing and education, just to try to find sources of revenue to be able to pay back their investors. I see we're moving a little slow, so we can just jump to the next slide, please. So what we just covered are some of the main interesting points that came up during our interviews where we saw that there was these strong compelling narratives but that when you looked at some of the research or looked kind of more in-depth, that we saw that there were some misaligned, maybe some gaps in understanding. Just another really quick one before we wrap up, just because we do think this one's very interesting and emblematic of some ideology in the space sector was this really prevailing idea that WANCH would be the area where US and Chinese firms would be competing. And a lot of it was an expectation that they're competing right now, or maybe in the short term. But we did speak to a few individuals from US launch firms and they recognized no competition at the moment or not clear competition and didn't expect it in the near term. One of the most emblematic examples of those quotes is the third one here. None of the customers, none of our customers take Chinese commercial launch seriously but as soon as the customers start ringing up we will start to take it seriously. So while that expectation on launch was there we did see instead that it was the geospatial companies that we spoke to that have current competition right now with Chinese firms. A lot of it in data analytics and information gathering but that those firms were actively engaged in competition and we did not speak to anybody in satellite communication sort of manufacturing but we assume that there's more current competition there. But so that's an interesting disparity between launch and the other sectors. So moving on to my last slide please. So implications and further steps. Ultimate takeaway that we hopefully we've talked about right here is that the US stakeholders have a clear desire to better understand their full competitive landscape. They welcome competition but want it to be under fair and defundant terms. In this regard Chinese commercial activities are large looming and not well understood concern. The Chinese commercial space sector is complex and rapidly evolving. So we think that's even more challenging and therefore we propose a concerted effort to better understand these evolving dynamics. We suggest that through two approaches. First conducting more research focused on these evolving dynamics to try to better understand them. And second to host and develop opportunities for direct engagement dialogue between US and Chinese stakeholders to allow an opportunity for things that are less well understood to come up and be directly addressed. And to help foster this we have come up with a set of four research questions to serve as a lens to be able to focus our efforts in this regard. And Catherine is going to close us out and cover those four questions that we proposed. Thanks Robin Ann. So I'm just going to go through these four questions pretty quickly so we can get to our discussion panel which I'm sure is going to be really interesting and exciting to hear what everyone has to say. So we have four primary questions that we think can help guide future research themes to really help get to the bottom of what's going on in China's commercial space industry. So our first question is, is there such a thing as a private space sector in China and if so, how is commercial space defined within the Chinese context? And so really we want to look at understanding different types of Chinese space companies that exist and how they operate. And one research question that we can look at is can different types of Chinese airspace companies be further defined and matched with real world examples? Our second question is, what is the nature of internal competition in China's space sector? And so in this section where the theme is to really look at understanding how different types of Chinese companies interact with each other and how that relates to how products and services are or are not relevant to the international market. And so one thing that we can look at within this theme is analyzing the extent to which Chinese private space companies are motivated by domestic versus international markets and looking at an assessment of where Chinese companies are looking to compete in international markets with a focus on the commercial space sector if depending on how things work out is how things are defined within that market. So three, what is the role of the Chinese government in ownership and control of commercial or private space companies? This theme is aimed at understanding how various levels of the Chinese government including the provincial governments interact with that influence Chinese space companies and how the activities of China's space industry relate to the strategic objectives of China's national space program. And so a couple of things we could look at are the relationship of MCF to China's private airspace companies. Does it present tangible and effective opportunities for companies that are not considered to be part of the national team? And our fourth research theme is what resources do and will Chinese space space companies have access to and will that create an unfair advantage? And so that's really looking at whether Chinese private space companies have access to support or resources that are unique to them and how that access informs or relates to the terms of competition in the international market. So these four themes will help guide future research about China's commercial space industry. We hope you will get a chance to look at the report to kind of really see more details of things that we've talked about today. So now we're gonna move into the discussion panel. Thank you everyone. Thank you, Catherine. You know, a good sign of good research is when the authors are willing to expose themselves to a trial by fire. And so what we've done today is that we've gone out and gotten three premier experts in this area to pose some questions and to get some reactions to this report that we're putting out. So without further ado, let me introduce. First, Blaine Curcio is an affiliate senior consultant for Euro Consult based in Hong Kong. Since joining Euro Consult in 2018, he's contributed to a wide range of consulting missions and research reports, primarily covering the SATCOM sector globally and the broader space industry in China. We also have Ellen Chang. She is a principal at BMNT Partners. In this position, she is leading efforts around innovation within the Navy and energetically grows the San Diego ecosystem that supports national security innovation. Ellen is also a co-founder and managing partner of Syndicate 708, a deep tech focused investment syndicate that looks to accelerate companies. And finally, Brendan Mulvaney is currently the director of the China Aerospace Studies Institute at the National Defense University. He was a Marine for a quarter of a century where he flew more than 2000 hours as an AH-1W Cobra pilot, Hu Ra. And he was an Olmsted scholar in Shanghai, China. So these folks, again, really know what they're talking about and we're looking forward to hearing some of their own reactions. So perhaps we can start with Blaine. Well, thanks a lot, Daniel, for that introduction and thank you to the SWF and to Kayla's foundation for hosting this really excellent report and really good introduction. So I guess I would like to just first say the report was really, I agree with the high level findings and I think it was just a really, really well put together piece of research. I just wanted to start with, I guess, a framework for how to think about Chinese commercial space, which I think has been kind of discussed throughout the report, but I think there's just a different angle that I will propose here. And then just a couple of more recent updates that I think are reflected in the report, but just to kind of put them in a somewhat different context. So first I think just to quickly talk a little bit about commercialization of Chinese space and sort of what is and is not commercial. I think that one of the ways that we can think about this is that in China, oftentimes irrespective of industry, the government will have a tendency to want to have control over the sort of infrastructure layer of the industry. So if we think about controlling the high speed rail networks or controlling kind of the internet infrastructure or otherwise controlling the infrastructure and then allowing services to be built on that, which are a little bit more commercialized. And I think that in the context of space, this is meant that the government has primarily controlled or the say earth observation constellations that have been launched up to this point primarily or most likely moving forward, the SOEs will control the broadband internet constellations. And I did internet constellations. So I think this government control of the infrastructure layer is one way of thinking about commercialization and then commercialization can occur on top of that. I think that to Ian and Rob's earlier points about this recent support from the government towards space, this new infrastructure is announcement by the National Development and Reform Commission. I think this is a really, really interesting and an important point to hit on. So I think that the NDRC is a very high level organization and this endorsement has really caused a lot of different companies to really move towards satellite internet as an industry. I think a couple of interesting questions that are worth thinking about moving forward are whether the formal endorsement or yeah, you could say formal endorsement by the government of this sector, whether that has changed investor perceptions or investor time horizons as it relates to space. So I think that certainly the report is correct in saying that investors have a rather shorter time horizon in China, particularly as it relates to space because there's so much regulatory uncertainty, there's so much pressure to produce short-term financial returns. But if the government at a very high level is being more actively supportive, I think it's important to think about whether that is going to influence investors thought process. I think one other question that's related to a quite current development is we've seen about I guess six or eight weeks ago, iSpace, which is one of China's leading commercial launch companies, they announced that they are planning to do an IPO on the Starboard in Shanghai. And it was a very, very short announcement that were not a lot of details provided. I don't think it's a 100% certainty to go through. But nonetheless, I mean, they've announced it and it seems like it may happen. And if it does, that would certainly be, it would set a precedent for investors insofar as it would give them, there's some plausible exit strategy that if you're getting into a Chinese new space company, and I think that would really be the first sort of infrastructure heavy new space company to do such an IPO. I mean, we've seen more of the kind of EO service companies do IPOs on the Starboard and also some of the sort of traditional national team type companies. But yeah, that would be the first such commercial company to do an IPO. So again, something to watch out for. I guess one other point that I would mention as it relates to this sort of the government kind of formalizing their support for the space sector is the extent to which it has really led provinces to spring into action in support of different parts of the space industry. And really this, it aligns with a lot of kind of broader Chinese economic development kind of philosophies, I guess, in the sense that you have a lot of cities or provinces that have quite large budgets compared to what you might have in a comparatively sized city or province in the US or state as it were. And they have a fair amount of ability to do kind of new development zones and this kind of thing. And we've really seen a handful of provinces or cities have significant support for space or for satellite internet or for other more specific areas of the industry and putting these supportive measures into things like three-year development plans. So again, I think we're really starting to see the governments at multiple levels start to formally kind of endure space. And I do think that may change investor perception a little bit. So yeah, I mean, I guess one other thing to think about and then I'll turn it over to the next couple of panelists is this idea of Chinese economic development more generally is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy in the sense that you have the Chinese government setting economic development goals and they have, you know, annual GDP goal targets, although that's been kind of, there have been some changes there recently but just generally speaking, you have this sort of very top-down economic development model where there are often repeated slogans that are quite vague but still specific enough to encourage some economic activity. So this would be things like Belt and Road Initiative which is specific enough to start to get some Chinese companies going abroad and doing business in other countries. And that's particularly so when you have, you know Chinese financial institutions that are willing to make loans on relatively easier terms because it's Belt and Road. So this idea of, you know, self-fulfilling prophecies because the whole system kind of falls into place behind the regulations that get made at a very high level. So this idea of satellite internet, for example being endorsed at a very high level, we may see sort of everything fallen into place behind that. So yeah, just some thoughts from my side. Happy to answer any specific questions later on but I'm rambling a little bit now so. There will be a lot of questions. I'm also just sitting here generating my own. So we've got a couple of questions from the audience so far. I encourage you all to keep spreading them out but if you don't, I will be able to fill up the rest of the time, don't worry. But next, I'd like to go to Ellen. Ellen, are you still with us? Yeah, there she is. How do you see the situation? Do you agree with the report that Secure World and Kailas are putting out that there are such, that there are these gaps in the perceptions of the Chinese sector? Absolutely, let me give everyone a little bit about my background just so there's context. So I do come from the investment side. I had started Lightspeed Innovations in 2015 which was an aerospace focused accelerator. So that was just when many startups on the seed stage were just getting going here in the US. And I noticed that that's around the same time that some of the Chinese approaches to commercial space had started to occur based on their document 60 announcement. I also wanna give everybody a little bit of my background. I grew up actually in Taipei, Taiwan as Americans abroad. And then still have some family there, came to the states for college, joined the Navy, was involved with the Intel community. So have space background there, was with Northrop Grumman for 12 years in their autonomous systems group, interfacing with the space sector there. And then since in 2015 till now have been quite active within the new space commercial space sector in the US really looking at it from how do I help grow the new space sector outside of the US government realm as well as from an investment perspective. So that's kind of the context here. And when you all came to me to talk about this project that you had, I really felt compelled to go re-look at what China was doing because I really, I'm not a China analyst. I do have some family there. So I hear about China often. And here are a couple of comments that I have to the comments that were provided earlier as well as to the report. And I'll break them down into three way, three different sections. So information access or from our perspective to what the Chinese are doing, the difficulty of it in the report it was called information transparency, meaning that maybe there's some reason or the Chinese are purposely keeping information away from the public, which could be true. Does that actually mean lack of market access for us into China? So that's one area that I'll talk about. The domains that they're actually focused on within China from the government perspective versus the commercial sector that's starting to version. Where is their development? What does that mean? Whether or not those are actually Chinese state-owned industry initiatives or not. And I have a couple of anecdotes there that might cause us to think about what's going on as that sector there matures and what it might imply for US companies. And then finally, the cultural element which Blaine actually alluded to, President Xi coming on into the fore heavily over the last couple of years is, or it's basically since he's taken power is quite different than the previous leaders. He's going back to like, I wanna be a Mao type of person. He wants to be basically a president for life. So a lot of ego there. There's certainly Chinese cultural pride caught up within that. And I'm wondering how we think of how we should think about this one personality as he's influencing China moving forward. So let me dig at a couple of these elements I brought up. So information access were divided by language. So essentially, I guess a lot of, basically a lot of Chinese are taught English from probably high school and on. So there's rudimentary knowledge around English and they're able to access information about us, but we're not necessarily schooled in Chinese, especially complex written Chinese since we're young. So how I overcame that, I actually speak and read and write Chinese. So I went onto the websites and actually reviewed some of the information that the Chinese have, as well as access information on the CCTV. And I see a lot of kind of rhetoric, I should say, that may or may not be truthful to what the Chinese are really doing. The way to back into that is access Taiwan reporting, Taiwanese reporting, which actually gave me some insights into, whether or not some of the commercial sector in China is really burgeoning. And I find it a little bit, there's quite a few companies. Yes, there's 70 some companies, a lot of them are actually state-owned or have some state-owned influence. And there's a few commercial ones that seem to be moving forward a little bit. And I found it interesting that they're starting to partner somehow with the U.S. companies. I know this one company here in the States, Papella Space, which I know is, you know, we've invested in, and they recently announced a partnership with Spacewill in China, which I believe is a completely commercial Chinese space company. I think for distributing their SAR base data, right? So this company, Papella is just looking for somebody to buy their data, which is interesting. And I'm curious, I'm like, is that gonna open markets for some of our U.S. space companies because even our U.S. space companies aren't able to, I would say they're still looking for product market fit in a way. You know, there's a lot of investment up front, but the product market fit or the dollar revenues coming from the commercial sector in the U.S. is still fairly paltry if you actually look at the details. So think through that. What I see opportunities there is if that data is used to support a Chinese company that can then sell to a Chinese app company, maybe there's consumer applications. So it's not Chinese government, it's not Chinese space, it's just consumer applications that take advantage of space-based data. And that's one of the larger markets that's growing here in the U.S. Would that also be complementary development in China? So food for thought because the Chinese are way more, they use their mobile devices quite differently than us and they're way more quick to innovate around leveraging different ways of communicating or visualization or providing new types of services based on some of the data that's accessible. So just food for thought there. Domains, my second point, domains, which ones are truly important from a China perspective? Maybe a Chinese government perspective as well as a commercial space perspective. We know that from the report as well as my own research that they're Chinese local space commercial companies are innovating around kind of the satellite component area. And that makes sense. They do have that manufacturing base there. I'm also, I'm curious from that perspective then, are the U.S. venture capitalists actually looking at those types of companies as potential opportunities for investment? We do know that Sequoia, one of the largest and most well-known venture firms here in the U.S. has Sequoia China and is invested in just about any large, successful Chinese company. Alibaba, Jack Ma, for example, is in their group and they've been pretty active in China. I haven't seen a lot of activity in China's Chinese space companies. One question I have is maybe the space companies are too undeveloped or the Chinese don't allow for it. So, you know, because here in the U.S., we have SIFIUS that is where it's had quite strongly, especially in 2018, and you see the massive drop-off of Chinese VC money in U.S. space companies, for example. My personal experience with SIFIUS right now is I'm an investor in helping lead around for orbital sidekick and the SIFIUS process so far with a Singaporean sovereign wealth fund is going on six months and still hasn't closed yet. So, just put her thought there and I'm kind of the dynamic on the opposite direction. And then my final point is this cultural pride element. So, I feel that President Xi coming online is really, he's kind of a catalyst on how we're starting to hedge against China. You know, there's a lot of conversation around our national policy and our relationship with China. You know, Biden came in and recommissioned and is looking at China. So, they have a study, you know, the Department of Defense has a study going on. And we certainly need to be concerned. And even just this past week, there's a lot of discussion around whether or not China's gonna go attack Taiwan or sequester Taiwan or quarantine Taiwan. In the meantime, you know, I have a lot of friends who flew back to Taiwan during COVID, Taiwan's doing really well. And they're, you know, essentially, the problem between China and Taiwan has actually stopped. But before COVID started, there was probably 20, I don't know, quite a bit of different interaction between the two countries, even though it's on a non-official basis. So I kind of think through that and say, are we too alarmist? Are we causing inadvertently, causing unintended consequences by threatening China in certain ways, right? And provoking them in certain ways. And so causing the supply, obviously the supply chains will decouple, but it's also causing Xi to push forward a little bit more on saying, you know, this is Chinese pride, you know? So if the U.S. is gonna do this, I'm gonna be able to do this. We have enough money. We're gonna go invest in this. We're gonna go to Mars. We're gonna go to the moon. We're gonna do all this stuff, right? In my mind, that's not unhealthy for us because it actually has started to get us mobilized again. You know, we're gonna go to the moon. We're gonna go to Mars. And I find that that kind of, I guess, instigation does stimulate the markets a little bit. It's still government funded, but I do see some of the commercial entities here in the U.S. start to react. Certainly Bezos himself trying to, you know, not trying, but moving and forwarding Blue Origin or Elon Musk looking for yet another market in space. So those are the U.S. examples. China, I feel, copies us quite a bit. Just about any large company there has copied one of our models, Alibaba and all of that. But they focus in on the domestic market because they know it. So the question I have about that Chinese, the burgeoning Chinese commercial sector is, what are they thinking about? Are they copying us? And are they able to get to where we are going? Will they have a domestic market to support? Because I'm curious if they'll be able to sell to us. And we're the largest market, right? All the Europeans are trying to sell to us. Australian startup companies are coming here to raise money, et cetera, right? So we're still large. You know, we shouldn't be arrogant, but we're still one of the largest, the largest out there. So I'm curious if that, going back to my argument, I'm wondering if the Chinese can actually sell to us or are they, you know, even if they were to copy their business models and actually grow, grow, I guess a little bit more significantly from the commercial perspective. My understanding is most of the government does the development, whether or not they're state-owned or not, the government provides the market for launch, the government provides the market for all the, I guess, assembly manufacturing for even just the different initiatives they have. For example, going to Mars or going to the moon. So I'll pause there and be quiet and see if you have any questions or want to move on to the next panelist. No, we'll go ahead and go through the last panelist first and then we'll start taking questions, but just one question that I'm going to kind of throw out there, it surprises me that there aren't, is there no institution or centralized organization that focuses on translating Chinese documents into English, in particular for businesses? Because I think, especially for folks that are thinking about future competition in any domain, that would be a really important set of information that one would want to have access to. So it's surprising. Yeah, yeah. Maybe not for this sector in particular, but yeah. Well, finally, our last expert, Mr. Brennan Mulvaney. Sir, thoughts from you on this report and the work that Secure World Foundation and Kailas have done. That was actually a perfect leading because that's exactly what we do for the aerospace field. Now, obviously we do it a little bit more broadly for security and defense, but that's exactly what Cassie is focused on is open source, publicly available information that China is putting out. Everybody speaks and reads Chinese at Cassie and so that's what our reports are based on. But I just wanted to say, first of all, thanks for having me today and letting me talk about this. I'm going to talk more about the report. Obviously, I can talk on my own for about defense and security and China issues are at large, but I want to focus on this report and then we'll focus on those in the Q&A session because I think that's really kind of where the best discussion is going to happen. I really like the focus of this report. It's always good to have, get different inputs, especially those that aren't necessarily publicly known. So we're not going to go out and hear a bunch of these space industry people making these kinds of public statements. One, because there's no reason for them to until somebody asked them about it. So I think that was a very good contribution and it helps to round out the overall understanding of what's going on in aerospace writ large and obviously the space industry more specifically here. So, and I liked the idea that it was, there was mixed viewpoints, right? He said, hey, here's some of the ideas that are out there. Here's some that are contrasted to public opinion and even among the experts that you talked to there was a variety of understandings of what exactly is going on in China and how the US is perceiving it. I think that's really important, especially for those of us who work in security and defense, we typically kind of get one line of thinking or one line of information. So it's always good to get the market. What is the market actually seeing and what is actually going on in the real world? Not what could be done or what is being done behind closed doors. So I thought the report did a great job of acknowledging some of the challenging issues but not getting bogged down into them, right? And so you talked about in the future questions to go for research, what exactly is a commercial company? Are there commercial companies in China and what are the ties to the state? I would suggest adding and or the party, right? Because those are two slightly different things in China but that would be interesting for your research question. But I like the fact that you were very straightforward with saying, hey, here's a lot of the things that came up. We're not gonna get bogged down into those details because we really wanna get this information about how the sector is being viewed writ large. And I also thought perhaps in a future iteration you could go outside of the United States, right? So there's a lot of space competition out there, India, Australia, the Europeans. And so I thought that would really be an interesting follow on project would be not just how are the Americans thinking but how are allies and partners and other people around the world viewing these same questions, right? Because although, so I sit in DC and everyone in DC likes to look at the DC Beijing game and think that there's nothing else that exists in the rest of the world but we all know there's plenty of other ideas out there. And some of those are really valuable, right? Because there are partners in the space, there are partners commercially. And so I thought that would be a great avenue to pursue. You acknowledge the role of security in the overall relationship between China and the United States and how that affects the commercial relations especially in space. One, because governments are so heavily major actors in the sector, right? They have been traditionally maybe that's gonna be decreasing in the future but certainly all of the technologies that we're talking about here are at least dual use and that is gonna color things and it's important to talk about those. So I would say that the report really did a good job of kind of laying out how China and the United States are different in highlighting those and obviously brought out some of the viewpoints of this people you interviewed as to why that's important and how those are military, civil fusion, state-owned enterprises, these things which we just have no concept of in the United States or we don't have very few people actually understand what they are. So it's important to kind of bring those things to light and especially as we go forward and develop either policies or programs or just how is our market, right? How is a free market enterprise gonna compete with some of these things? Because we certainly can compete, right? And it was good that there wasn't a defeatist attitude and the market brings a lot of good things that state-owned enterprises and party-dominated apparatus don't bring and so it's good to kind of highlight some of those things. And finally, I just wanted to say I agree with a lot of the views that were expressed in the report and many of the conclusions that were there and I really look forward to kind of seeing what the next iteration brings because it's important to get as much information out as been said multiple times. The first cypher is the fact that it's in Mandarin, right? So all this information, a lot of it is publicly available but it's just hard to get to. So from our end, Cassie's got a whole new set of projects and documents that were released and called In Their Own Words trying to get at some of these things. But anything, as much information as we can get out there to as many people to make as good policy and programmatic and investment decisions is what we're looking for. So I look forward to the future contributions. I look forward to the next iteration of this report and happy to talk about any or all of the above when we move to the Q&A session. So again, thanks for having me and we'll turn it over to your participants. Thank you. Well, in this case, let me ask all the folks who are participating in the event. So our authors, Ian, Rob, Catherine, plus our experts, Blaine, Ellen, Brendan, let's all throw our cameras on. So we can participate in this next bit. A lot of great thoughts there. Ian, would you like to start with some reactions? Yeah, so thank you, Ellen, Brendan, Blaine. That was a great set of remarks to listen to give us some things to think about both for what our two foundations can do as we continue on with this work and I think what broadly our community can think about right in terms of some of the more nuances, the word we like to use, but some of the more kind of detailed questions that we ought to be asking ourselves and our interaction with this topic. So thank you for that. We've got a few questions in the chat. I think Rob and I have a couple that we prepared to ask so we might go there. But Rob, just from your standpoint, any just general reaction to the panel's remarks first? Sure, yeah, just again, thank you all for all the very thoughtful feedback. And we were excited to bring the three of you together because you all have very different backgrounds and you very much balanced some of our backgrounds in your research ourselves. On one hand, I'm grateful that you didn't tear us apart, but on the other hand, it's really great to be able to have a nice and productive conversation with you all. And yeah, just a lot of great feedback, then a lot of things to think about. So I think this is a really great conversation. All right, we've got about a half hour here till we told people they could go on with their days. So let's do one question that we prepared in advance and then move on into the Q&A and kind of come back and forth there. So I'm gonna ask, I think this is for all three of our panelists. Are there any aspects of the involving dynamics between the US and China private space sectors or commercial space sectors that are surprising to you or that you would expect to change course in the coming five or so years? Yeah, I'll jump in there. I really think the US, whether or not China moves forward, it will change course. I'm quite interested or watching this SPAC evolution where a lot of what I would call deep tech companies are provided that capital that they can't easily obtain within the venture realm. And then just within the space domain, several companies have gone public via merger with SPAC sponsors recently. Virgin Galactic kind of started us off last year and then we have momentous and several others. And so I see from the US perspective, this being a potential catalyst for emulating quite a bit of commercial activity that hopefully will start to mature that the markets that exist. Cause right now it's really kind of government funding, et cetera, SBIRs and then some of these companies get to the point where they get some VC funding and then they're not able to really scale that the differences have been Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson who are billionaires self-funding. So now these SPACs actually have provided these other entities some opportunities. So from that perspective, I see that actually allowing the US to move quite aggressively forward, hopefully. Whereas in China, it's really kind of stayed on. US doesn't have a sovereign wealth fund. Most other countries do have a sovereign wealth fund. And so maybe that's the disparity, but I'll pause there and suggest that the US side might actually mature because there's additional funding available. And just to build on that, if I may, I think it's a really, really great point. So one thing that we've seen recently in China, I think is the kind of increasing involvement by a couple of very high-profile billionaire investors, particularly Lei Zhun from Xiaomi and I guess less recently and less actively, Robin Lee from Baidu. But it's been a lot more measured. And it seems to have also been, and this is anecdotal and it's a little bit speculative, but it seems to have been tapered down even somewhat. So just to give an example, Lei Zhun, so again, he's the CEO of Xiaomi, which is many of you may know, it's a large sort of electronics manufacturer. And he's worth about 20 billion US dollars. So he has a fair amount of money and political clout. And he's been funding quite aggressively through a VC of his Schumann Capital. He's been funding Galaxy Space, which is one of the more well-funded Chinese satellite manufacturing companies that plans to launch this Leo broadband consolation for 5G. And their most recent round of funding, they were officially, they were considered a unicorn in the official article from Galaxy Space in US dollars, it said. So whether that is correct or not is debatable, but the official Galaxy Space press release did say that they are a one billion US dollar valuation company. Digressing, Lei Zhun about a year ago, he published before the National People's Congress to which is a large annual meeting of a lot of different delegates in Beijing of which he was one delegate. He published a sort of treatise of sorts, talking about some potentials for reform and also just more general development in the space industry. And this included some fairly conventional ideas like saying a more government funding and more kind of coordination between the SOEs and commercial companies, but it also did include a few more somewhat, I guess more, you could say, envelope pushing ideas about private capital and sort of deregulation, this sort of thing. That treatise appears to have been erased from the internet. Now I could be wrong, but I just a couple of weeks ago, I was trying to find it for a different thing and I really dug through, but I do quite, you know, quite deep. I dug through the official WeChat accounts where I was pretty sure it had been published like Shunwei Capital and I could not find this treatise anywhere. I could find press releases about the treatise with the short little thing saying this is what Lajuan said, but I could not find this very long document that he had published. So, and we haven't really heard much about Galaxy Space and developing their constellation. I mean, they've raised some more money but they haven't launched any more satellites, for example. So I think it's an interesting point that in China, we do seem to potentially be seeing a sort of an increase in the involvement of the state sector perhaps at a time when there's just an increase prominence in the industry and that might crowd out some commercial activity potentially. But I think it's a really interesting point for the violin. I'll say, certainly the future in China is always, you know, dynamic. And as we saw recently with Jack Ma, just because you got a couple of billion dollars and some, you know, a bunch of people and you're actually, you know, all these guys are part of the Communist Party. All of them are, you know, on some sort of committee at some level. But that doesn't necessarily, you got to make sure you're staying within the bounds. And I suspect that as we go forward, one of the things that Xi Jinping really needs to do is figure out how to reform, specifically his financial sector, but that'll have some, a lot of overflows into, you know, the space sector and obviously the VC. So it'll be largely determined if the Communist Party can figure out a way to continue to reform and liberalize, but still manage to maintain the degree of control that they want. And that's really going to be one of the, the unknown factors at this point. How well can, yeah, how much do they want to do it and how well can they do it? And I don't, it's to be written at this point, but that's certainly one of those things to just keep in mind. And how much that affects this relatively small little sector versus the much larger context of the Chinese economy and the global economy, right, is a wrinkle in there as well. So, yeah. Well, and that may actually be one of the better things is that it is kind of a smaller piece of the whole thing. So they've been able to go unnoticed, but obviously the Jack Ma issue is reared its head. So we'll see what happens going forward. Rob, it looks like you have something. Otherwise I'm going to start going to go to some of the great audience questions that we have. So. I'm just thoughtfully nodding and. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. All right. So we've got several questions in here. And I encourage folks to keep putting them in. I'm going to start with one that has to do with MCF or military civil fusion policy. And Brendan, I think I'm going to direct this to you first and then if any of the other panelists have a thought or a reaction to that. So the question is given the nature of the Chinese MCF policy and the occurrence of personnel shifts between the quote unquote national team, the SOEs and then bringing in the party's ownership as Blaine mentioned or control over the infrastructure layer. Given all of this, can US firms be confident in partnerships with even nominally commercial and private firms in China? And what does this mean for US policy? So it's a big question. I think basically it's how does MCF influence whether you partner with a Chinese firm as a US entity? Sure, that's a great question. And these are one of the things that thankfully recently, military civil fusion has gotten a little bit of up here. So Cassie did a pretty in-depth report, looking at the broad picture. It's actually a national strategy. It's not just a policy, which is important to understand how it fits across their entire strategic apparatus, right? They only have a couple, a handful of national strategies and this is one of them. The other thing is that this actually goes back essentially to the founding of the PRC, but Xi Jinping has really kind of put more emphasis behind it since he's taken power. And so what military civil fusion is looking to do is to leverage all of the non-military things and bring them into the military domain when they want them to, right? So I need to be very clear that this doesn't mean that Huawei and Xiaomi and all these other companies are necessarily simply handing over everything to the PLA, just willy-nilly, right? Or everything they get their hands on. Certainly some of the more commercial companies have financial interests, which are important. They wanna maintain control over there, what they view as an electrical property and their ability to get market share. But we do need to be very clear eyed that this is a national level strategy. There are laws that back it up and that when push comes to shove, besides the fact that all of these companies, like I said, they're leading members are most likely party members and oh, if not their position, but certainly their influence to the party and their roles in the party. And they believe for the most part, a lot of them actually believe in the Communist Party and the leadership that they've been able to, the great things that they've been able to do for China, bringing 300 million people out of poverty and increasing education. So they're actual party members and believers at this point, but that the party can use this apparatus to transport key information. And when push comes to shove, key facilities and key access to the state, to the state-owned enterprises, not necessarily just the PLA, but certainly to put other organs in the state. So does that mean we can't trust the contracts? Absolutely not. China, by and large, likes to adhere to the contracts that they sign. They like to have a good commercial footprint and they wanna act. They see all the good that comes from interacting with international trade and commerce and all the things that all the goodness of that brings. And they wanna be responsible partners, right? Because they wanna be able to grow that sector and they're not out there to cheat people or to lie on contracts or to go back on them. So depending on what a US firm is looking to do, certainly Chinese partners are great partners because they provide access to markets or labor or other things that the US doesn't have. But when making those decisions, you need to be clear-eyed that this is not the same as a US market and that there is potential for that to be transferred to the state at some level. Hopefully that answers the question, but happy to continue to expand if it didn't. And thank you, Brent. I mean, the report Kasi put out recently on MCF, we referenced that in the paper. So those of you who are looking at the paper, that reference is there and you can go find that. I do recommend that you read that if you're interested in that topic, because it's a very useful resource to have. It's a plane just for- Well, I was just gonna say one very, very small thing I would add to that for if people are interested. I think it was published by the CSIS. There was recently a report about Comac, the domestic airplane manufacturer in China. And there, I think it was the C919, although it may have been the ARJ21. Either way, one of the two airplanes they're developing a report about how the vast majority of the components in the airplane were either were from foreign suppliers, many of which were American suppliers. Now granted, there's not as much military civil fusion in that aerospace industry, but it's still a rather sort of sensitive industry, but it does seem to be one that's been quite lucrative for American suppliers in China. So again, I think it was the CSIS that had published a short, but still quite good report. And then there was a quite cool video from about a month ago, that maybe worth checking out. Thanks for that, yeah. And so, Ellen, you raised in your remarks, your portfolio company, Capella and Spacewell, and like that is an example of where those sorts of relationships can pathosively develop if you are diligent about your contracts and you work that out, right? I mean, we did hear a number of examples in the geospatial industry that we talked to where those kind of partnerships do exist and there's active competition, right? So both parts of that relationship do exist clearly in that geospatial sector. All right, so the next question I'm gonna take from our audience is actually a question that does pertain to something that was in our findings. And so, Rob, I'm gonna direct this at you to start. And then I think, Blaine, you might wanna be able, you might be good to come in as well, others. But so the question is, one of our bullet points said that there's a narrative in the Chinese literature around the private space sector that there isn't a Chinese equivalent to NASA in terms of how it relates with these private, quote unquote private companies, right? So the question is, what does it mean if there isn't a Chinese NASA? We, who funded and managed the lunar missions, the Mars missions that we see? And our space, private space companies in China not part of that supply chain that the CNSA, which is the civil authority in China is accessing. So Rob, maybe if you can come in a little bit more detail on that finding and then Blaine, have you react to that from what you see from your analysis of the roles there? Great, yeah, so that's a very good question. And that was partly me moving through that a little quickly. So specifically what we're talking about there is this recognition that there's no equivalent to NASA in terms of a very large dedicated customer building on the market. So one of the most common comparisons we saw is, is this company, you know, land space, ice space, whomever, is this the Chinese SpaceX? Is this who, the next SpaceX in the Chinese version? And partly you see that in segments all around the world, the comparison, you know, SpaceX is kind of just the icon that everyone looks towards. But in the Chinese context, there's a prominent conversation around the fact that, well, SpaceX became SpaceX because there was a very large customer in terms of NASA and other parts of the US government, but largely that idea that NASA is funding huge parts of their development and helping a lot with the development costs. So the concern that a lot of the Chinese companies seem to express was that, you know, we don't have the same thing and that's what we're missing out on. So that's specifically what we were talking about there. And then as to the private sector's involvement with the lunar and the Mars missions, I'm not entirely sure the extent of that. So I'm gonna pass it over to Blaine, but my understanding is about the private firm that's a concern that they don't have as much ability to participate as the SOEs do. But yeah, Blaine, your thoughts. Yes, it's a really, it's an interesting question, this, you know, or the comparison, I guess, of NASA compared to the CNSA and kind of the degree to which they're each able to support both large and small private sector space actors in their respective countries. So I think the first point that I would mention is that the CNSA, so the Chinese National Space Administration, they are more of a figurehead organization, as you mentioned in the report. They don't really give contracts to commercial companies. Most of the sort of, most of the big projects would be done by CASC and the contract would be given to CASC and CASC does not have a lot of incentive to subcontract out to commercial companies. I mean, CASC has within its own, within CASC there are eight or 10 very large subsidiaries and within each of those very large subsidiaries are several kind of subsubsidiaries, each of which specializes in some very specific space-related technology. And then CASC, which is the secondary SOE that you mentioned as well in the report, they have some certain space-related capabilities as well and CASC would give some contracts to CASC because it's sort of, there's just a lot of, I guess, commonalities there you could say. So there's not really as much of an ability for the government in China to, or let's say for the Chinese space program to directly support commercial space companies in China. The mechanisms are just not really as much in place and the incentive structure is just not really as much there. That being said, a good friend of mine in China, he always says, it's rather hard to start a commercial space company in China, but it is even harder to kill a commercial space company in China, which is to say Chinese commercial space companies, partly because of the uncertainty in regulation and the kind of requirement to pivot and partly I think because of the initial skepticism around commercial space in China that persisted for several years after 2014 and now partly because of just this huge increase in the number of space companies. I think Chinese space companies are quite scrappy, they're quite resourceful and they adapt very well and there are a lot of informal and formal small scale ways that the state will support these companies. So you do have a lot of provincial support for commercial companies in way of like freelance or tax incentives or other such things. You have institutes like the Chinese Academy of Sciences which is a huge institution. They have literally tens of thousands of academics, possibly more than 100,000 across many disciplines, a lot of people in space and a lot of Chinese commercial space companies would have been spin-offs from the CAS and they would still maintain, they might have offices in a CAS building and are probably paying very, very low rent, for example. So that allows them to be nimble, I guess I would say. The other thing is you have so many universities in China and so many institutes other than the CAS that there are a fairly large number of opportunities for commercial companies to sell components or otherwise CubeSats to these universities, even to some high schools or like international schools, this kind of thing that there's just a very large, comparatively speaking market for those kinds of things. And we've seen companies like Comset for example, which is one of the leading commercial satellite manufacturers now their initial business was sort of selling space related equipment and courses and this kind of thing to schools. And it was some, you know, mid a single digit million US dollar per year business for them, which it still is to this day. So it really kind of helped get them going and has helped kind of keep things going, you know, at certain points now. So I guess, yeah, there's certainly less structures and mechanisms in place for the high level space administration within China, the CNSA to directly support the commercial industries in China, but there are an increasing, sorry, there are a lot of smaller scale ways. And I guess one last point that I would close on is that moving forward, as some of these commercial companies are developing quite specific and quite high end technologies, there's probably going to be increased scope for CASC and others to be buying technologies from these commercial companies in China. So for example, if you get a Chinese commercial launch company that, you know, perfects the liquid methalox engine technology before Calt or SAS does, that there's probably going to be some potential for some business there. And I would also point out that these commercial companies and their rockets, the measurements are the same to the centimeter as various long-march rockets as well. So yeah, I think, yeah. All right. Any other panels want to react to that? We've got about six minutes left. I've got one more audience question and then a wrap up question that I want to do. So. Just real quickly, I'd say, you know, you hit the nail on the head that there's a lot of money in Chinese space, but most of it is internal to the Chinese state because that's the biggest customer I mean. CNSA is obviously putting a lot of money, a lot of effort. They're going to the moon, they're going to space or building a space station that are over Mars right now. Obviously the PLA, lots of interest in space. So there's a lot of money there, but it's mostly internal, which is just different because NASA doesn't own its own company. They have to go out and purchase it on our market, which is why it's just structurally very different. Yeah. And so under, you know, that's one of our further research areas, right? Is how we can document this structure in a more accessible way, right? So a question from Andrew Millator, a former colleague. Just a quick answer. I think Blaine Allen, this might be best for you to address, you know, are there truly private investors in China's space activity, right? We talk about whether companies are truly private or not, but are the investors truly private? And then how does that, you know, then from Allen, I guess from your standpoint, how does that relate to how our VC sector or our investment sector interacts with the investment sector in China? Sure, I'll jump in there. To be frank, I don't know if there's true private investors in China, at least in this sector. I believe so, many of the other sectors that we hear about that are burgeoning AI, for example, there are private investors, but I think the market is pretty anemic. For example, we heard earlier that even just their venture entities require a quick return on investment and calling that, basically saying that our venture capital industry even has a longer term view, which in my mind for deep tech types of companies, I kind of scoff because that's not my experience here in the United States, you know? Most of the Silicon Valley folks like to invest in software, which has a, you know, unit economics that have high gross profit and even net profit margins, et cetera, et cetera, whereas deep tech tends to take longer to mature. And so it's harder, at least for even just any sort of deep tech, not just space companies here in the US to raise. But what I will say is that there are successful US investors investing in China. I did mention Sequoia and there's several others. I think a couple of things what they do, they structure their own entities over there in China. They hire locally. Some folks, they capture some of the well-known entrepreneurs that are in China to work with them. And so that gives them access to entrepreneurial talent that allows them to grow their stakes or at least be successful. Beyond that, I'm not that familiar with how those interactions work. I just know that from my perspective, since I do work within national security, we watch, I watch some of what US investors are doing there and try to understand, for example, what Sequoia is actually doing with US, their US investments too. I don't know if there's a big firewall or not. Recently was involved in having to restructure the investors within the US company because there was Chinese money through a variety of different structures, right? Over time, you kind of pick that apart and you start finding that out and then you have to restructure those investments. What I can say though, in the difference and I can provide all of you this information is that the US venture investment in China has far outstripped Chinese venture investment in the US up until 2018-ish when Scypheus happened or basically more strict enforcement of Scypheus occurred and then both of them dropped down. So I guess China is kind of retaliating with us as well as obviously we're already putting planters down in order to manage Chinese investment in some of our frontier tech types of companies. Hopefully that answered your question somewhat but if not, I'm happy to circle back. If anybody can add to that. Yeah, so from my perspective, I would say definitely there is private capital in the Chinese commercial space sector. It's just a matter of degree. I mean, there are no companies, there are probably zero companies that are completely owned by private capital. I would venture to say and I would say that many of the companies in China that are commercial companies would have maybe 30 to 50% or sometimes more than 50% although it's not ever particularly clear. But this type of number of their capital coming from either a central government VC or a provincial government VC or a CASC VC or a Chinese Academy of Sciences VC or I use the term VC there quite regularly as though they're all VCs. I don't know if that's necessarily true but anyway, it's one of these few different sources. So I would say, but to Ellen's point about the private capital that we do know is in China at the moment. So there are the US VC, so Sequoia Matrix Partners has a Chinese branch as well that has invested in a couple of space companies. On the Chinese side then we do have aforementioned Lei Jun who's the CEO of Xiaomi through his VC, Shunwei. They've invested in a handful of commercial space companies and there's a few other pretty big ones that within the sort of private funding there would be kind of the VCs that are quite focused on space or on kind of frontier tech in China and then they would have five or 10 different investments in space companies. And we're starting to now see some of the larger, more general VC or PD companies investing in some of the space companies. So just one quick anecdote and then I will stop talking because I know we're getting close to the end here. Landspace, the leading launch company in China are one of the leading commercial launch companies I should say. They raised 500 million RMB, so about 75 million US dollars in late 2019 in a round that was fully done by the, by Country Garden VC, which is a private real estate company in Shenzhen. That's a, it's basically just a large real estate englamor that is diversifying in different industries. So we've seen some large rounds that have been done by commercial companies. But again, I don't think any commercial Chinese company is fully owned by private capital. All right, thank you. So we're at the end time. I'm going to turn it over to Rob to ask a wrap up question but I just want to thank you all for this dialogue. I think we could probably keep going for hours here but I think we all probably don't have time to keep going for hours here. So, Rob. Great, yeah, thank you. So thanks everyone for hanging out for a couple of minutes over at the end here. We'll wrap things up. But just, this was a great conversation and just ultimate takeaway of the thing that we wanted people to take out of this. And we didn't answer a couple of the questions there talking about the larger context. It's just that this is an issue of concern for lots of commercial stakeholders in the US and it's a conversation that is held in lots of arenas and what we wanted to do was just show that there needs to be a little bit more nuance in the conversation and that there's some really hard topics that require some further digging. So coming to the final question and I'm going to bring this back to the beginning that this research was inspired by a dialogue that we have started with the Chinese Society of Astronautics. And what I want to ask the three of you and I'll start in reverse order from how we presented is are there any topics now that we've had this conversation that moving forward you think would be fruitful and a dialogue or any topics that would not be fruitful? Any thoughts on things that we should be discussing and we'll start with Brenda. Thanks and thanks again for putting out the report because it's important to get the information. I think if you could find out how the Chinese going forward are going to, I'm going to use the term liberalized that may not be the right term but how are they going to open their sector and kind of disentangle it from specifically the state or the PLA, right? Cause that's obviously one of the major concerns that the United States government has is all the stuff gets tied back to the PLA and strategic competition. So again, there's plenty of opportunity to cooperate and I think there's some good investment opportunities both ways, but if you kind of figure out what the, again, I would guess the Chinese themselves don't know cause they're still working on it but that would certainly be a fruitful dialogue is how are they going to develop a private commercial whatever you want to use the term space sector that's focused on economic development and things like that because it is a big concern. It's a lot of interest for them. They have the, you know, the space quarter as part of the Belt and Road Initiative and all that kind of stuff. So if you could just try to start to pull some of those threads against some of those details I think that'd be very helpful. Great, thank you very much for that. Ellen, your thoughts? Yeah, my thoughts might be a little bit more along the capital side but just the different side of the coin of what Brendan mentioned which is in the capital coming to stimulate that sector to help move that sector forward is there, are there private investors coming into the fore? Cause I think that's an indicator as to the maturity of that, of the growth there and that might actually lend a little bit more insight into really what they mean by civil military fusion. If they're going to invest aside civil military fuse in order to promulgate and push the industry. Sure, definitely. Thank you and blame final thoughts. So I think one very important question to think about moving forward is as we, I guess in this world of kind of increasing nationalism and I guess increasing desire by governments to make things within one's own country, I guess. What we're starting to, I guess we have, this is the sort of the world that we're living in and we're now seeing the space industry starting from a comparatively low base relative to say aerospace or aviation in the sense that China, it seems like, whereas they import a lot of things from Boeing or Airbus to big airplanes, they're really trying to do a lot of this space industry technologies from the ground up at an earlier point in time in that sort of general industry development cycle. And one thing that we've seen as a sort of broadly consistent theme from China is a general desire for self-sufficiency even before it was kind of fashionable among all governments. And so I do think that moving forward we're likely to see this desire of self-sufficiency and this sort of relatively early stage of broad industrial development in the space sector compared to other industries that's going to allow China to do a lot of things themselves. And there's still going to be things that they cannot do themselves probably and there's going to be technologies that they never even thought of that we come up with and vice versa, I suppose. But yeah, I think that that's going to probably be the sort of playing field that we're going to be playing on as it were is that sort of backdrop. So it's an important question sort of how can we address that and fit into that? Great, thank you very much all of you for that. It was a great note to close on. I would just add that this conversation is ongoing. We're hoping to do more research and engage on this issue into the foreseeable future. So if anybody would like to participate or join us in these activities in the future, we're happy to hold these conversations with anybody who wants to participate. We'll hand it back over to Ian and Daniel to say goodbye. Sure, Ian, any final thoughts? Yeah, just my standpoint. Thank you to all of the people that attended and participated today. And thank you to the panelists. Thank you to Rob and Catherine for working on this report since May of last year. And thank you all for the suggestions for our next topics to pick up both in the dialogue and in research. So Daniel, take us out. All right, that's it. Hopefully this is the beginning of a fruitful dialogue. And so I invite everyone to head on over to Secure World Foundation's website, swfound.org. Check out the report. And again, we're very eager to hear to get plenty of feedback on this and to see what next steps we can take. So thank you so much, everyone. Thank you.