The Daily Signal - How Transparent Is China’s Government? Here’s What We Know.

Episode Date: July 15, 2021

The Chinese Communist Party, which has ruled China for 100 years, remains highly secretive in its policies and actions. Fortunately, sources outside China's government have provided the world with a great deal of information about what is really happening within the communist regime. Compiling what we do know about the Chinese Communist Party, The Heritage Foundation—parent organization of The Daily Signal—just released its 2021 China Transparency Report. The document assesses China’s level of transparency across eight key areas: the economy, energy and the environment, human rights, influence operations, the military, outbound investments, politics and law, and, technology.  The goal of the report "is partly to bust a myth that China is completely closed off and opaque," says Dean Cheng, a Heritage Foundation senior research fellow for Asian studies who contributed to the report. "You cannot have a country of 1.3 billion people, you can't have any economy that's the second largest in the world, and the world's largest trading state, and not have some amount of interaction and data flow, etc.," Cheng says. "But part of the problem is that the available information isn't easily available, partly because, well, it's in Chinese." Cheng and Justin Rhee, co-editor of the China Transparency Report, join “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain its significance in understanding the actions and goals of the Chinese Communist Party. (You may read the full report here.) We also cover these stories:  Secretary of State Antony Blinken invites U.N. envoys on racism and minority issues to visit the United States.  Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduces a bill to repeal federal mask mandates for those using public transportation. In remarks at The Heritage Foundation, former Vice President Mike Pence calls communist China a greater threat to America than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, July 15th. I'm Doug Blair. And I'm Rachel Del Judis. Today, our colleague Virginia Allen speaks with Dean Chang and Justin Re on the Heritage Foundation's 2021 China Transparency Report. And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

And now on today's top news. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, is inviting envoys on racism in my news. issues from the United Nations to visit the United States. In his statement, Blinken said, as the president has repeatedly made clear, great nations such as ours do not hide from our shortcomings, they acknowledge them openly and strive to improve with transparency,

Blinken said. He added, in so doing, we not only work to set the standard for national responses to these challenges, we also strengthen our democracy and give new hope and motivation to human rights defenders across the globe. Nikki Haley, former Secretary of State and the Department of the National. Trump administration called out Blinken on his move, tweeting Wednesday, China has one million Uyghurs in concentration camps, Cuba is beating protesters, and Venezuela is torturing political prisoners. Yet Biden's Secretary of State is inviting the UN to investigate human rights in the United

States, the freest, fairest country in the world. This is insane. Senator Rand Paul introduced legislation on Wednesday that would repeal federal mask mandates on public transportation. The Travel Mask Mandate Repeal Act of 2021 would ban federal agencies from instituting, quote, any federal requirement related to COVID-19 that an individual wear a face mask when utilizing any conveyance or transportation hub and referred to May CDC guidance allowing for fully vaccinated individuals to stop masking and social distancing protocols. The legislation comes on the heels of continued extensions to federal mask mandates. Originally, the mandate was set

to expire at May 11th, but TSA, officials bumped the expiration date back to September 13th. In a statement released Wednesday, Paul said, quote, I am introducing the Travel Mask Mandate Repeal Act of 2021 to put a stop to this nanny state mandate of requiring masks on public transportation. In a free country, people will evaluate their personal risk factors and are smart enough to ultimately make medical decisions like wearing a mask themselves. Paul was joined in his statement by Senator's Mike Braun, Tom Cotton, Roger Marshall, and

Roger Wicker, as well as Congressman Andy Biggs, who is expected to introduce a House version of the legislation later this week. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is introducing a bill to take away the federal banning of marijuana but allow states to determine their restrictions on the drug. In a Wednesday tweet, Schumer said, I'm standing today with at Ron Wyden and at Senator Booker to release a discussion draft of the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act. It's our legislative proposal to end the federal prohibition on marijuana and repair damage done by the warning. on drugs, especially in communities of color. 37 states, as well as Washington, D.C., have legalized marijuana for medical use, and

18 states as well as Washington, D.C. have legalized it for recreational use, according to the Washington Examiner. In remarks at the Heritage Foundation Wednesday, former Vice President Mike Pence focused on China and how effective American policy needed to work towards countering Chinese aggression and human rights abuses. Pence was the featured speaker for the 2021 B.C. Lee Lecture. an annual Heritage Foundation event focused on U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific. Before launching into his larger discussion on China policy, the former vice president referenced the ongoing anti-communist protests in Cuba.

Take a listen. As we gather today, the people of Cuba are taking to the streets once again for the ideals of freedom. For more than 60 years, the people of Cuba have labored under a communist dictatorship. It has stifled their liberty. silence voices of dissent squandered their future and while some on the far left

are hesitant to criticize their communist friends in Cuba let me say clearly the American people stand with the courageous men and women of Cuba that are marching to reclaim their history of Libertad Pence began his remarks on China by highlighting the shift in American foreign policy

away from viewing China simply as a strategic rival towards viewing them as a larger threat. Over those four years, President Trump and I changed the national consensus on China. For the first time, under our administration, we met China's military provocations in the Western Pacific with the largest increase in military spending since the days of Ronald Reagan. We stood up to years of trade abuses and imposed historic tariffs on Chinese imports to bring China to the negotiating table. We spoke out forcefully against China's human rights abuses,

and we called the tragedy unfolding in Xinjiang what it is. Genocide. He then criticized the Biden administration for what he viewed as weakness towards the Chinese Communist Party. Yet despite this new national consensus, the Biden-Harris administration is already rolling over to communist China. They rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, allowing China to pollute with impunity.

They rejoined a Chinese-controlled World Health Organization without demanding a single concession in the wake of failures throughout the pandemic. And they terminated our administration's inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic before later reversing course. Pence ended his remarks with a call to action, asking Americans to stand strong

in our convictions against the threats posed. by the Chinese Communist Party, while hoping for a more peaceful and prosperous relationship with the Chinese people. We must stand resolute in defense of our interests and our values, even as we reach out a hand to China, in the hope that Beijing will reach back with deeds, not words, with renewed respect for America. There's an ancient Chinese proverb that reads, men see only the present. But heaven sees the future.

As we go forward, let's pursue a future of peace and prosperity with resolve and faith. Faith in our ideals. And America's place in the world is a beacon of hope for all mankind. Two employees in Amazon have quit over books that the company is selling that they say depicts people who identify as transgender as mentally ill. NBC reported. The book that employees want removed is called Irreversible. damage, the transgender craze seducing our daughters, authored by Abigail Schreier, who examines transgenderism and its effects. In the book, Schreier covers conversations with transgender girls,

their parents, doctors and counselors who perform the gender transitions, as well as those who have detransitioned. Amazon did remove a book from researcher Ryan Anderson when Harry became Sally responding to the transgender moment. Shrear responded to a tweet from CBS News announcing the resignations of the Amazon employees saying, Dear Amazon HR, you're welcome. Yours Abigail. Now stay tuned for Virginia Allen's conversation with Dean Chang and Justin Reed. Conservative women. Conservative feminists. It's true. We do exist. I'm Virginia Allen, and every Thursday morning on problematic women, Lauren Evans and I sort through the news

to bring you stories and interviews that are a particular interest to conservative leaning or problematic women. That is women whose views and opinions are often excluded or mocked by those on the so-called feminist left. We talk about everything from pop culture to policy and politics. Search for problematic women wherever you get your podcast. It has never been more important than it is right now for America to understand what is happening in China.

That's why the Heritage Foundation's 2021 China Transparen. Report is so critical as America's leaders navigate the path forward with China. We're going to dive into this newly released 2021 China Transparency Report today to find out what we need to know about China's economy, human rights abuses, technology issues, and much, much more. And joining me to break down this report in depth is Justin Re, one of the editors and contributors to the report and Dean Chang, who is also a contributor to the report and a Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow for Asian Studies. Justin, Dean, thank you both for being here. Thanks for having us. Thank you. In this report, you look at China's level of transparency in eight specific

categories or areas. First, the economy, energy and environment, human rights, influence operations, the military outbound investments, politics and law, and tech. So let's begin with the big picture here. What is really the purpose of this report? So the overall goal of this report is partly to bust a myth that China is completely closed off and opaque. You cannot have a country of 1.3 billion people. You can't have an economy that's the second largest in the world and the world's largest trading state and not have some amount of, of interaction and data flow, etc. But part of the problem is that the available information isn't easily available, partly because, well, it's in Chinese.

Partly because a lot of the analysis is stovepiped. People who do economics often don't look at national security. People look at human rights, don't necessarily look at energy. So the purpose of this report was to bring together a lot of the analysis that's out there, not just from the Heritage Foundation, but across the country and around the world to help the average analyst find out, hey, there actually is data out there about Chinese energy imports or food exports, war investment, as well as some of the most sexier, more longstanding areas of interests like the military and foreign policy.

Well, I certainly found the report really helpful in the fact that, you know, right at the beginning, you have a very clear-cut kind of summary of each category, what you all found, what you discovered. And in that, you rank on a scale from one to 10 with one being low and 10 being high, the level of transparency in each category. And then you also give an overall ranking. So you rank the government's transparency, and then you rank overall, okay, this is what we know from, outside individuals, private efforts and so forth. So let's begin with talking about a really big issue that for so long, I think, has been on individuals' hearts and minds, and that's China's human rights issues. What did you all discover in your research about China's transparency

around the issue of human rights? Yeah. So what we found is, you know, unsurprisingly, the Chinese government is not transparent on its human rights record. And when it does, when they do publish data, it is highly questionable. And, you know, they, they, they do publish white papers and reports to claim that there are no human rights abuses in China and that, you know, the Uyghurs are not being targeted at home and, you know, obviously that is under heavy scrutiny. And so, you know, what we found is that private efforts have been instrumental in help filling the gaps in data.

And, you know, they've been particularly great in. you know, using cutting-edge technology to look into the situation of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and also, you know, persecution and a religious liberty persecution and, and Tibet issues in Tibet. Hmm. When we know, you know, even recently, Anthony Blinken, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, he spoke with a group of Uyghurs about what they experienced as they were held in reeducation. and what that experience was like. So, Dean, from your perspective, how is America handling China's human rights abuses right now? How are we doing as far as our public policy on that issue? Well, American diplomats are bringing the issue up, and that's important.

The problem is, and this has been true for decades, not only with regards to China, but also previously with the Soviet Union. Union. Where do human rights fit into the mix? Should human rights be the leading issue? Should it be a supporting issue? What about, say, arms control? Back when we were negotiating arms control deals with the Soviets, they would often basically say, if you bring up human rights, we're walking out. And so they were very good at forcing us to start making choices over what to bring up. The Chinese, I suspect, are even more talented at this because they have more towards. They can basically say, you bring up human rights, maybe we won't sign a trade deal.

Maybe we won't sign a climate change deal. So we, you know, we, the U.S. as a beacon of hope and a beacon on human rights do need to bring this up. Fortunately, also, our European counterparts often have been bringing this up. And in fact, China's human rights record in Xinjiang is so egregious that the recently negotiated China-Europe mutual investment deal fell through with the Europeans basically tabling it, shelving it, saying until you get your human rights track record back onto something approaching acceptable standards, we're not going to sign this deal at all. Wow.

Wow. Well, I was certainly fascinated that in the report that issue of human rights received the lowest score as far as Chinese government level of transparency receiving a 1 out of 10. the lowest score possible. So really fascinating to hear you all break that down. Let's talk a little bit about one of the other subjects you all covered. That's energy and environment. China has a lot of factors. I mean, gosh, we look at the back of so many of our, you know, items in our homes, our clothing. It's made in China. So with all of the production, China is doing, what do we know about their pollution and how it's affecting not only Asia, but the rest of the world?

So basically what we're seeing is that, you know, in terms of the data we get on both, no, for, sorry, backtracking, you know, energy and environment are obviously two separate categories in itself, but we link them together because, you know, there are overlaps. And so, you know, what we're finding is that, you know, there's certain data that the Chinese government does actually help provide an accurate picture on, or at least they provide reliable data on. But there are significant gaps in, you know, particularly when it comes to pollution levels and other activity. Yeah. Dean, anything you would like to add on that? Energy is a national security issue for every country around the world. If you cannot power your vehicles, if you cannot power your factories, then in that case, the country is going to come apart.

So not surprisingly, on the one hand, the Chinese are energy importers, especially of fossil fuels. So this is not something they want to talk about very publicly. The linkage to the environment is because this is a very controversial issue. It's a very public, how good a citizen are you? How good a global citizen are you? And so, again, the Chinese have a desire to suppress or limit the amount of information available about their environmental behavior. So these sorts of data sets that are provided by groups like the Global Energy Monitor,

the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, goes to an aspect of both Chinese national security, how much are they importing? And also China's public face. How polluting are you? The Chinese have no desire to advertise the fact that, for example, last year, they brought more coal-fired energy online. More coal-fired power plants went online in China than in the entire rest of the world combined.

Wow. That's significant. Goodness. Well, and of course, so closely linked to the world. that issue of energy and environment is the economy. Talk a little bit about what you all discovered regarding the transparency of how China's economy works and where they're trying to head in the future. Yeah, so the Chinese government economic data is notoriously unreliable. So keeping track of when and how Beijing corrupts its statistics, whether by adjusting GDP,

investment or retail numbers is something that we need, that needs greater study. Excellent. Thank you, Justin. Yeah, please go ahead, Dean. But the good news here for both energy stats and economic stats is that because China is a trading power, those numbers aren't, the Chinese don't get to make up the numbers out of whole cloth entirely. If they are importing more oil, there's on the other side of the ledger, other people are

exporting oil to China. It's a lot harder to track those numbers in finance because you can mask things by purchasing through third parties or through the Cayman Islands and stuff like that. But oil and food and other raw materials that come in, it's got to come from somewhere. And similarly, when the Chinese export it out, it goes somewhere. So there is the ability to check at least some of this. But as Justin pointed out, that doesn't keep the Chinese from trying to to cloud the numbers as much as possible. And one of the things that has been very frustrating at times is that when the Chinese realize

that there are data sources that we are using, they'll suppress them. You know, a former colleague of ours, Derek Scissors, used to try and track Chinese coal production until the Chinese realized he was looking at provincial level numbers. And all of a sudden, the provinces just stopped publishing those numbers. Wow. So there's really a concerted effort. on China's part to keep this information secretive and hidden from the public.

Yes, but more to the point of this report is, broadly speaking, they actually turn our transparency almost on itself. Oh, you are tracking this statistic using that database that China publishes. We'll stop publishing that database. Or we'll start changing the units used in that database. So they are very closely watching all of the... these analysts, all of these organizations at are focused on analyzing China. Hmm. So do we have any knowledge of the, the Chinese governments or, you know,

individuals within the Chinese government of their response to this transparency report? Not yet. It just did just come out, but I would expect that we will probably see the Chinese react negatively to this. First by probably, almost certainly. claiming that the report doesn't accurately reflect how transparent China is. But second of all, ironically enough, then going out and suppressing as many of the sources as possible. Yeah. Well, I would love to talk about all eight categories, but, you know, for the sake of time, we're having to pick and choose, but I do have to ask you all about technology. This is an area that obviously within, you know, the last 10 years increasingly, it seems like really every

month now is becoming a bigger and bigger deal being aware of China's technological advancements. What did you all learn? One of the things to keep in mind is, of course, technology covers a vast swath of areas. This year's report is really focused on ICT information and communications technology, simply because you could easily write a multi-volume report just looking at Chinese technology at large. what we see is pretty much what you said, that the Chinese are investing heavily in it, that they are prioritizing the development of information and communications technologies, and that in this regard, they are no better than average for them with the transparency factor of about three

when it comes to Chinese government information. Mm-hmm. So for each of you, Justin, we'll start with you. What was something that really surprised you or that you were particularly fascinated to learn as you researched for and wrote this report? Yeah. So one thing I found fascinating was that when we're looking at, you know, obviously we have eight different categories here. But and they each, you know, focus on different things. But, you know, there is consistency. not just in terms of the fact that the Chinese government and the Communist Party withholds information and there's issues with data. But also, when looking at private efforts, there's a lot of techniques that have been shared in terms of trying to collect information. And the techniques that can be used elsewhere, right? So, you know, what works for analyzing human rights data on Xinjiang can easily be applied to, you know, looking at, you know, military developments or, you know, activity along South China Sea. So stuff like that has been really interesting to see.

That is fascinating. Dean, what about you? Actually, I want to echo Justin's point. So my focus at the Heritage Foundation is Chinese political insecurity. development. So my focus is on the military. And I have to admit, listening to the people talk about the political trackers that are out there and the human rights trackers. It was both, wow, look at all of the information that actually is available, but if you don't work that field, you may not be aware of it. But as important are the methods by which they are delving into the

available data. And, you know, this is the sort of thing that, hopefully this report will encourage is greater cross-fertilization. The opportunity for people who do different types of subjects learning different methodologies so that they can enrich and really flesh out the data that is available and to really tease out implications, tease out policy effects, impacts. I mean, this has been really such a, frankly, a cool experience. Just being able to survey all of these sorts of databases and working groups and all that and getting to know some of these people and hearing sort of how they came up with these ideas. It's been really just a great experience.

That's so wonderful. Well, when it comes to next steps, what are your recommendations for how, you know, given this information in this report, now what we know, how does America move forward in its relationship with China? That's obviously a loaded question, but maybe just a few points on that. Well, certainly we cannot stop the demand for China to become more transparent. We and the Chinese are engaged in an ideological struggle. And part of that struggle is whether China writes the rules, which says that you don't have to be transparent,

and you get to basically lock away as much as information as you can or want to. And even if you, the United States or you, Europe are transparent, China has no obligation to be transparent. And, you know, that's a very Chinese rule by law approach. It's a rule of law. Everyone is operating to the same standard, the same rule set, and transparency is expected and demanded of everyone. And if you don't, there are consequences. So hopefully, on the one hand, folks will read this report and find out how much there is to know. But also we'll say, hey, how come China doesn't give us statistics that every other civilized country does?

And if they don't, we should sanction them. Or we should say, then you don't get access to this American Stock Exchange or things like that. Well, I really, I love how you all laid out this report. It's about just over 100 pages, but like I mentioned, the summary at the beginning is very concise. And for those that kind of want that high level overview, it's fantastic. And then you've broken it down into each of those eight categories. So, you know, for any individual who wants to go deep in one or all of those, they can. How can people get access to this report and read the whole thing? Yeah, so they can go to the China Transparency Project website, which will be in the show notes, and it's available via PDF file. So once you go to the project website, you'll see on the front page a link to the report itself, and you'll be able to download it there. Great, great.

Yes, and yes, as you say, we'll be sure to link that in the show notes. but Dean and Justin, thank you all so much for your work on this, and thank you for coming on the show. Thank you. Thank you for happens. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Iheart Radio.

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