Statecraft with a Strategic Competitor: A Conversation with David Meale

A wide-ranging conversation with David Meale on China’s economic statecraft, global influence, and what individuals must understand to navigate competition, interdependence, and decision-making in an increasingly contested international landscape. A seasoned Foreign Service professional with over thirty years of experience, David reflects on what it means to manage America’s diplomatic presence on the home turf of our most consequential strategic competitor—the People’s Republic of China.

David currently heads the China practice at Eurasia Group, where he advises multinational companies and investors. David spent thirteen years posted in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taipei, most recently as Deputy Chief of Mission in Beijing, overseeing operations for the U.S. Embassy and four consulates. His government service also included senior roles at the U.S. Department of State as Deputy Assistant Secretary covering trade and sanctions, as well as postings in Bangladesh, and Ukraine. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

The US-China relationship sits at the center of today's geopolitical landscape, a dynamic defined by strategic competition, deep economic interdependence, technological rivalry, military signaling, and global influence campaigns. Decisions made in Washington and Beijing reverberate across supply chains, financial markets, regional alliances, and multilateral institutions. At the heart of this complex relationship is the daily work of U.S. diplomacy, managing crises before they escalate, translating policy into practice, coordinating massive interagency operations, and interpreting the intentions of a peer competitor in real time. Welcome to Brungart Laws Lang, where we provide a little extra perspective through conversations with individuals from across the spectrum of society. I'm Maurice Brungart, your host. I enjoy engaging with experienced, knowledgeable, and passionate people for the opportunity and affords to enrich our understanding of the world through their eyes. The more we learn, the more likely we can become better versions of ourselves and guide others towards the same. Today's guest is David Meal, a leading authority on China and global geopolitical risk, currently heading the China practice at Eurasia Group, where he advises multinational companies and investors. David spent more than 30 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, including 13 years posted in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taipei, and was most recently Deputy Chief of Mission in Beijing, overseeing operations for the U.S. Embassy and four consulates. His government service also included senior roles at the U.S. Department of State as Deputy Assistant Secretary covering trade and sanctions, as well as postings in Bangladesh and Ukraine. Welcome to the program, David.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Well, thanks, Maurice. It's a real honor to be asked to join you. You and I uh actually crossed paths a few years back when I was in Beijing, and I'm really happy to help you out. I was looking at your uh your podcast history, and you get a very uh interesting and wide range of guests on here. Happy to uh be part of that.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Well, I appreciate that. And the idea again, yes, it's to uh bring in a whole variety of individuals to offer again uh nuanced perspectives for our audience. Why don't you tell our audience a bit about yourself and how you ended up in the Foreign Service?

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Oh, sure. Again, uh so I'm David Mealy and uh currently working at the uh Eurasia group. And uh I'm I'm the head of the China practice here, but my my history with the Foreign Service goes back a long way. Uh back when I was in my 20s, uh it was over 30 years ago, uh, I was in corporate finance. I was with uh Sprint in telecommunications, uh, loved my work in the business world. I had a master's in finance, but uh I was always interested in living abroad and just kind of had a zest for learning about the world by being in it. I I had lived overseas in my high school years a bit, took the Foreign Service exam, got in, my wife was up for it, and uh U.S. government proceeded to send us to go live in Conakry, Guinea. We never looked back.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Uh, when you say you spent some time overseas during high school, uh where were you in high school and where did you go overseas at that time?

SPEAKER_00 3:22

So I went to high school in Athens, Greece. It was it was kind of an odd thing. My father was a U.S. civil servant with the Social Security Administration, and uh, believe it or not, uh a few people from the Social Security Administration actually serve in U.S. embassies abroad to make sure that Americans who retire abroad get their benefits. Uh, that was his job. So uh none of us had ever been overseas. I had never been on an airplane, and one day we all, when I was age 14, we all got on a plane and moved to Greece. And uh I liked what I saw.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Well, taking from that experience, I'm sure you saw some of that uh happening when you were deputy chief of mission in in China, correct? Uh I'm sorry, excuse me, saw So, in terms of uh people uh receiving their Social Security benefits, because I'm sure there's quite a few Americans uh located in China.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

Oh yeah, I mean there are plenty. We had you you would count it in different ways, but uh there were certainly tens of thousands of Americans who were living in China that intended to return back to the United States someday. There are also many people actually living in China, many American citizens who got their passports maybe when they were babies and then were taken back to China and are living as citizens there and as American citizens there, but uh they're very oriented towards their lives in China and see their lives there as permanent.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Well, since we're talking about China and it was your most recent experience, let's qu let's jump right into that. And why don't you share uh with with the audience uh what your role was as deputy chief of mission? And we'll go ahead and start off with again, what does a deputy chief of mission do for a typical embassy?

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Sure. Well, so for a typical embassy, the deputy chief of mission is the number two. Uh I always describe my job as I worry about running the embassy so the ambassador doesn't have to. U.S. ambassadors are sent abroad primarily to engage externally, to engage foreign governments, foreign businesses, foreign populations. The deputy chief of mission does a lot of that too. But his or her primary role is to make sure that the embassy is functioning as a unit to support the ambassador, to support diplomacy, and to carry out all the usual functions that an embassy takes care of, helping Americans, issuing visas, working with the business community, and so on.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Now, what does this mean when you are at a location such as China, where it's not just one venue, it's the embassy and several consulates spread across an entire country.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Well, yeah, China is uh kind of in a category of its own when it comes to being a deputy chief of mission. Because as you as you said, um you know we have an embassy in Beijing, but we also in the United States we have consulates in Shanghai, in Guangzhou, in uh Wuhan, and uh in Shenyang. So we uh have a total of over 2,000 people working in these five facilities. So if you're the deputy chief of mission in Beijing, you are making sure that all five of these diplomatic outposts are working together, that they're synchronized. Uh you have at each of the other four cities, the other four posts, you have what's called the consul general who's in charge uh of that outpost. And and then uh my job was to oversee their activities as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Okay, so I take it you had to travel uh quite frequently uh to check in on the other locations, correct?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

I sure did. Uh that was actually uh one of the best parts of the job. Uh going to all four cities and uh very often uh just sitting down with the employees, meeting their contacts, talking with our local experts and local employees that we hire to support our work there. Uh very, very interesting to do something like that, say in a place like Wuhan.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

And for reference, what was the time frame that you were there as the deputy chief of mission?

SPEAKER_00 7:44

I left there in 2024. I was there for three years.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Okay. So you overlapped with uh the pandemic.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

I got there right in the middle of the pandemic. I I landed in China in uh late May of 2021, and uh I was taken off a plane by people uh dressed head to toe in uh white protective gear. I had no support, no access to me from anybody from the US government or on the ground. Taken in to an airport where I got the deepest uh uh nose COVID nose test that anyone could ever imagine. And uh and I was taken to a quarantine center immediately. And I went through all that uh alone without support on my own, even though my next role was to actually act for a year in place of the U.S. ambassador. We had no U.S. ambassador on the ground at the time. So my first year there before Ambassador Nick Burns got there was actually to run the embassy and the four consulates.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

So, since you experienced what it was like to be quarantined uh by PRC authorities, despite being a diplomat, uh, you could sort of relate, obviously, to our uh U.S. diplomatic personnel that were also assigned there. And I'm sure you had to deal with a lot of complaints, requests for assistance. Uh how did you navigate that?

SPEAKER_00 9:12

It was tricky to navigate. Uh because of China's very tight restrictions, all foreign diplomats, without exception, also had to uh follow COVID restrictions. They had to go through quarantine on arrival. And this was not quarantine for a day. This was uh three weeks of uh being in quarantine or at least being forced to stay home after a couple of weeks in quarantine. Uh, not all of our people were happy about that. Uh, they felt it was uh uh a difficult experience to sit in these rather substandard facilities. We called them one and a half star hotels. They were usually uh old hotels that had been kind of retrofitted that we were placed in. And uh and some of our employees uh deeply resented the idea uh that they had to do this, that they had to be subjected to uh testing uh during that process. Uh most people, though, got through it pretty well. We had uh we had a lot of internal uh jokes about the experience, uh like for example, that uh at least you didn't have any jet lag when you got out, uh, because that's always one of the hardest things about traveling back and forth to Asia. Uh some people uh became very, very good at uh making their lives a lot more comfortable than you might expect in these uh in these quarantine facilities. Uh I personally uh came to make a very uh mean bowl of cheese grits on my own using my uh uh water heater that was in my room. So we we all came up with our little techniques and we would we would share plans, but it was not easy on people, no.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Well, humor is definitely uh a viable means of dealing with stressful times. Um did you ever feel at any given point overwhelmed? I mean, again, you're arriving, you're supposed to be the DCM, but by fortune, better or worse, you actually now have to be the de facto ambassador, uh the charge, as as they say in uh the Foreign Service. And then you're dealing with a pandemic, and it's for a diplomatic operation spread across a vast country, and one that is adversarial to the United States. So uh I'm willing to bet at some point in time uh this must have been uh quite a burden.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Well, I mean, nobody goes into a situation like that without feeling somewhat overwhelmed. I mean, there there was always something going on 24-7, and usually it was uh a borderline crisis. You know, it might be that something happened to an American citizen or one of our employees was having a problem in quarantine, or of course, on a daily basis, we would have disputes with the Chinese government, and there was a lot of um criticism back and forth, and sometimes difficult uh discussions back and forth at the diplomatic level. Uh, during that year when I was uh in charge, the U.S. decided not to send government officials to the Winter Olympics. And uh uh I was there in Beijing down the street from the Olympics, not able to attend to represent the U.S., but also dealt with a uh uh very uh irked Chinese government who uh wanted us to be there. So this is just part of the landscape. But that said, it's very fulfilling to do this kind of work. Uh the you know, just to have a front row seat day to day to watch what China is in the world or over these last decades to watch China's rise. It has been an experience that has uh uh given my life uh a great deal of its richness. And uh I wouldn't trade it for anything, even if it is kind of tough sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Uh well, for a brief moment of reflection, what do you think allowed you to manage this time uh effectively? Uh I mean, I'm sure there were mistakes made. There's always going to be mistakes made. Uh, but what do you think from your previous postings, whether they were there in Asia or elsewhere, uh or mentors that you had previously, was there anything that you used as a reference point uh to allow you to manage the time, interact in a productive and positive fashion uh with the personnel at post to get them also through it?

SPEAKER_00 13:50

I think the central, I mean, this may just sound like kind of trite business advice, but but I have to say it it was the teamwork. Okay. Uh we in especially in China, the United States government sends really great people to our uh diplomatic outposts in China. And these aren't just state foreign service officers. They're there, you know, we we have in the um uh diplomatic world the concept of a country team where each uh agency or entity is represented around a table. It's a meeting that's led by the ambassador and where decisions are made together. You know, in most places that would maybe be five to ten people. In Beijing, it's 48 people. There are so many different government agencies and so many different sections of the embassies and the consulates that you have this enormous team. And almost all of these people are very senior people from their government agencies who are deeply experienced in China, and to be in the middle of the COVID crisis, and we had real crises there. We, for example, had to take our people out of Shanghai when that city was locked down, literally for not for 60 days, uh, when they had a major COVID outbreak in 2022. We had to act together to solve so many difficult problems and just to have uh a team with a great attitude, with great expertise, and just to uh learn from them. For example, we had a uh a health attaché there, health and human services attaché, who just had wonderful perspective from her history with Health and Human Services and the Center for Disease Control about pandemics. And she really helped us figure out how to manage uh all the issues that we were facing, whether they were diplomatic over COVID, or just involved taking care of our own people as they lived in this uh rather challenging situation.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Moving away from the time uh of COVID, what differences, uh, especially uh any subtle ones, would you like the audience to be aware of that you noticed from your previous postings in China uh and outside of China, uh there in Asia, and when you were there as DCM?

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Well, I mean, every post is obviously very different, but I uh I got to serve in China multiple times. I lived in Beijing twice, uh, I lived in Hong Kong twice, and uh speaking more broadly of Greater China, I got to spend uh four years in Taiwan, where we have uh an unofficial US presence, but the experience is very much like being a diplomat anywhere else. And when I went back there in 2021, I had not actually lived in China for over 10 years, and it was stunning to see how technology, particularly digital apps and financial payment systems, had changed daily life. So I entered a China in 2021 that was the land of WeChat, that was land of Alipay, a payment system uh that is used there, where cash had disappeared, where things were far more efficient, and also surveillance was very, very extensive because uh the Chinese had figured out how to create all these wonderful apps that made life easy, but also these apps tracked you. And in the era of COVID, we had to use these apps to provide real-time information on our health status based on recent COVID tests every time we entered any publicly accessible facility. So this was a modern and efficient and very controlled country compared to the China I had lived in in the late aughts. The relationship was also quite different between the US and China. Uh, 20 years prior, 10 years prior, there was a lot more optimism about where the US-China relationship was going. There were many more tourists and academics and students going back and forth. And the feeling of the place was much more positive and open. And when I went back more recently to live in China, I would say life was very good. And I could see that things were more efficient, that people were living very well, but the experience of running that relationship was more challenging because there was a lot more friction between the two countries.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

What differences did you see in how your counterparts uh from uh the the Chinese government uh and how they interacted with our personnel compared to when you were there before? I mean, before were they uh more of a collaborative or cooperative uh type of uh engagement? And when they were with you in 2021, did they present a much different sort of posture uh or vice versa?

SPEAKER_00 19:17

It's a very interesting question, and and I'll I'll break it into two sets of engagement. In dealing with Chinese government officials, I so maybe the US and China don't always get along, but I have to give a lot of credit to my counterparts in the Chinese government who are very, very professional and I worked with very well. So we were managing a difficult relationship, and we often had to say things to each other that were very challenging. But uh, but the Chinese want diplomacy to work. They want foreign governments to be represented there, and they want to exchange information and make sure the two sides understand each other. So I always felt that I was able to represent and express the US point of view and be listened to professionally. And that was true both earlier in my career and in my more recent experience. Okay. But where it was different was that back I was there living in Beijing 2006 to 2008. When I got back there in 2021, people who were not delivering the government script to me were much more restrained in how they were willing to interact. When I was there previously, we had very candid discussions. I was I come out of an economic background, and we would have very candid discussions about uh China's economic development and how US-China economic relations were playing out, and and people seemed more comfortable and willing to think through what different possibilities they might be, and also uh, even at times to be um self-critical. Um so it uh it was uh it was a more relaxed environment in those days. Uh, but again, uh the actual conduct of diplomacy was was very professional in both of my experiences in Beijing.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Okay. Did you find a difference in how can I phrase this? Uh confidence levels or uh in terms how can I phrase this? Uh so were they more aggressive or assertive uh when you were there as DCM? Um when they would interact with you?

SPEAKER_00 21:50

So I would say first just on the question of confidence. Earlier on, you could tell China had a posture Of learning from the world. And uh, and so a lot of exchanges between the US and China in my earlier experiences were uh you know very often about turning to us and say, what are what are best practices in this area we are working on together? For example, I used to do a lot of work on intellectual property rights, which was an area where there was quite a lot of friction between the US and China, but also the Chinese understood that they were becoming a modern country that would need to protect its own intellectual property. And they were very open to exchanging ideas and recognizing and stating clearly that their legal system was still evolving. And so we would have these conversations in a very collaborative way. When I got back, I encountered a China that felt that the United States uh in some ways had turned rather hostile towards it, and also that China had shown that uh it is it is, it was and is occupying uh a more prominent and in its view its rightful place in the world. And in that you could find some very strong confidence and even aggressive posturing. There was this expression at the time when I got there more recently about Chinese diplomats being what we called wolf warriors, where they would be very nationalistic and express themselves kind of harshly. And I did encounter that sometimes. Uh, but I never worked with my Chinese counterparts in a way that left me feeling it was impossible to have constructive conversations. Uh, we we had a healthy back and forth with each other.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Something that I found interesting, and I only had have that one experience to relate to was when I visited uh China in 2023 and arrive in Beijing, and I'm at the uh immigration checkpoint, and I'm looking at the officer uh who is examining you know my passport and down the line, all the other little uh entry stations. And I noticed on his uniform, like would be expected, you know, it's you know, wherever there's uh text, it's you know in the Chinese language. But I did notice he had one patch on the on the front and on the side, and it said immigration. And I just kind of chuckled to myself thinking, well, in one sense, that is sort of an implicit uh productive step forward, uh, not just for the states, but for other countries, uh, in the terms of English being acknowledged as an international language. Uh but again, I kind of took that in stride and oh well, it makes sense. You know, Beijing, it's a major airport, they're gonna want to, you know, identify themselves to people arriving who are coming from other countries. But then when I was up in Xinjiang, something that I thought was just even more illuminating was as we were in the shuttle being taken to our hotel, and a garbage truck pulled up next to us, and then I see on the side of the garbage truck a like a safety sticker, you know, you know, don't put your hands here or what have you. But it was in English. And all I could think to myself is why is there a safety sticker in English on a garbage truck in Xinjiang, China? Uh but again, to me it just reinforced the fact how there's a sort of uh acknowledgement uh that they are expressing that English is the international language, despite any sort of assertive overtures they want to make uh regarding promoting China abroad. Uh, would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_00 26:03

So I think you raise an important point here, which is that uh China wants to be more accessible to the world. And they want to communicate that they are open for business and that they are um you know willing to work productively with students, with business people. They want to attract more tourism. And they certainly recognize that you know English is not the first language of everyone in the world, but it's everybody's second language, more or less. You know, that and you need to be uh prepared to communicate with people on those terms if you're going to be easy to interface with internationally. At the same time, there's a lot more focus, a lot more discussion in China now about making sure that what they consider to be the deeper and positive qualities of Chinese culture are not squelched in the way that China interacts with the rest of the world. Uh, and China wants to be recognized, as I was saying before, as a as a power that has resumed its historical place in history, but it also wants to be seen as a positive civilization. In fact, President Xi Jinping has come out with what he calls the global civilizational initiative. He's basically asserting to the world that Chinese civilization stands alongside as uh worthy of equal respect alongside any any other civilization. And so I think uh uh the Chinese are being, when we talk about the use of English, it's more about being pragmatic to make themselves user-friendly because they they know that English is how you get there rather than that there's a gravitation towards things western or a sense that they need to uh engage the world uh in English in order to be uh you know somehow accepted.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

What's something you think the audience should know uh about China? Or let me phrase this differently. Uh what do you see are consistent misunderstandings uh Americans have uh about uh the dynamics of the Chinese Communist Party, uh the Chinese in general, separate from the CCP? Uh what what's uh what would you like to address for the audience?

SPEAKER_00 28:50

I think a lot of people think of when they think about China, they think about China and the United States. And of course, it's a very important relationship. And it's very important to the Chinese to manage that relationship on their terms, of course, but what people forget sometimes is that China operates on the terms of China itself, and the great aspiration of China right now is its national project of grand rejuvenation. In the minds of Chinese, there was this what is called a century of humiliation that basically lasted from the time that the British took over Hong Kong in the uh you know 18 uh 30s, 1840s, up until the PRC was founded in 1949. And China has its own national story about recovering from that. It wanted Hong Kong back, it wants Taiwan back, it wants to reoccupy its place in the world as a major power. It wants to overcome that history. And in order to understand China and what it's doing and how it is behaving in the world now, it's important to know that that's where it sees itself in its history, and that the Chinese Communist Party sees its own legitimacy with its people in terms of delivering against that history. And so China is occupied in its own mind with China itself much more than it is with America. I mean, again, it doesn't mean it doesn't care about the United States, it cares a lot, it cares a lot about this relationship. But to understand China, you have to think about it on China's terms.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Do you think that here in the States uh we make uh oversimplifications and that uh we mistakenly see China as simply an adversary uh and always gauge our relationship based on the potential uh threat that uh China presents to us.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

I think we often do race to that language without necessarily understanding the full dynamics that are driving whatever concern that we have. Here's an example. Uh there's a lot of focus right now on the US and China and technology. And for a long, long time, and even to some extent to this day, there are very serious issues in China with the protection of intellectual property rights. Absolutely. But I what I see is that some Americans oversimplify this issue and tell themselves, oh, China got to the place that it is now by stealing intellectual property. And there's not much more to it than that. And if you really want to understand China, if you want to understand their power and the degree to which they can be an adversary, you need to understand that they have moved forward in their educational system and in their policies in a way that has made them an innovation powerhouse. They are able to innovate uh without the United States. They are uh advancing in all sorts of emerging technology areas in ways that are surpassing, in some cases, what is happening in our own country. And I think oversimplifying China as simply uh coming out of uh what used to be uh qualities associated with it, like uh taking intellectual property or rote learning or imitating is an incorrect way to look at the China of today.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Focusing on the word adversary.

unknown 32:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 32:58

Do you think uh, and I know I'm maybe putting you a bit in a in a hot seat uh right now, but do you think that is an appropriate description for China? Um or how would you nuance that?

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Well, I think it's important to recognize the depth of competitive qualities in the US-China relationship. I always felt when I was working in China under President Biden that he got something quite right in having a China strategy that he called Invest Align Compete. President Biden said the United States needs to invest in itself and in its own strength, it needs to partner with its allies, and it needs to understand that much of its relationship with China is based on competitive aspects. Because the fact is, is that the US and China have different interests, they're both very powerful, they are going to bump into each other. And the challenge for US foreign policy, the challenge for both countries is to figure out how you're going to make that competition happen in a way that minimal minimizes the harms that can come with it. So doing things that reduce the potential for miscalculation, like military miscalculation, or doing things that allow for the two sides to establish a basis of trust in various areas so that they can go forward together where they can productively is very important. But we when I'm talking about all this, what I'm referring to is is the uh the bottom line fact. The two countries are often deeply at odds with each other. It is a competitive relationship, it is a difficult relationship. I have experienced that firsthand. And as a former diplomat and as somebody now, I'm I'm in the private sector, but I'm uh I'm I'm very interested in China's role in the world. I think we have to uh keep looking for ways to kind of optimize what we are dealing with so that where there are opportunities to either reduce risk or have positive engagement, we take those opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Um tying in your current experience, your current work right now, if you were advising uh a business entity uh regarding its relationship with China, where would you tell them to be looking for policy signals uh as opposed to you know what's reported uh in in common media?

SPEAKER_00 35:52

So the problem with common media, which in general I like a lot of media. I'm not I'm not I'm not dumping on media, but I I find that media likes to report what is visual or what is simple, straightforward. That you know that they they know that the attention of the average viewer or reader is limited. And so they're always putting in high relief those things that are easily absorbed because they are visual or they are quick points. China takes hard work. China requires, if you really want to understand what is going on there and how it might affect your business, uh, you need to do the hard work of looking at the policy documents, wading through a lot of language that is uh maybe not exactly attention grabbing. Uh, here's an example. Uh, in the coming weeks, we are going to see some very significant uh policy pronouncements out of China as they adopt their new five-year plan. The kind of language that comes out of the Chinese government around uh initiatives like this uh can be very bland, it can be kind of lengthy, and you have to look for the nuggets in it that are gonna help you understand what it means for you as a business or you as a country. So you you need to um do something that the media doesn't necessarily do very well for you, which is you you got you gotta do the homework, the deep homework.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Could you give us an example of one of those nuggets, for example?

SPEAKER_00 37:35

Well, I would be uh in the coming weeks, I I'm gonna be paying a lot of attention to how the Chinese talk about the state of their economy. Uh right now, China is facing some very serious challenges. Its property sector cratered a few years ago, and that continues to be uh a major drag on its economy. It has very high youth unemployment, its population is now falling, and it's dealing with a very uncertain world. And so, and then it also has very high levels of local government debt. So these are these are all issues that are very challenging policy policy issues for the central government there. And as a result, China has become very reliant on economic growth that comes from exports, uh, because it can't, it's not really growing itself very well internally with it with all these problems with the property sector and so on. So, what I'll be paying attention to is the kind of language that is used to suggest whether or not the government plans to address these challenges and imbalances with very dramatic action and reform, or whether it is uh going to be incremental in its approach. Now, the difference between those two outcomes, the kinds of words that will be used, will take the average reader a lot of patience to decipher. But believe me, like at where I am now, uh where we are in a client-focused business, that difference will make all uh will matter a lot to clients. It will uh make a huge difference in what the business environment is going to be like, how regulations are going to change, and how the economy itself will perform. So that's an example of how you need to do the kind of the patient hard work to understand where policies are taking China.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Looking back to your previous times there, uh, and then when you were uh posted as DCM, were they more transparent in the past regarding the data regarding the state of the economy, their public debt, unemployment figures?

SPEAKER_00 40:05

There it has been a reduction in the kind of data and depth of data available. There are databases in China that are no longer populated with the same uh the same metrics. There are also databases that are hard to access if you don't have a local um IP address. And so China has gotten much more restrictive with some forms of information, some information that people used to rely on to understand it better. Yes, it's an issue.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

And what is your conclusion as to the reasoning that they're doing this? Because as uh anyone uh can surmise, the less transparent you are makes it even more difficult for others to want to engage with you. So by not disclosing or limiting over time uh you know data that would be helpful to outside investors and companies and knowing this is going to have a prejudicial impact, uh what's the reasoning behind them doing this? Uh are they trying to hide something? Is it insecurity? What what is it?

SPEAKER_00 41:24

So I I don't think we could make a general statement that that there's some kind of alternative truth out there that China is trying to hide.

SPEAKER_01 41:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:35

Um I I think we we can look at China and we can see we we there's a there's a very mixed story out there. Uh, you know, there there is a China that is doing an extraordinary job of developing infrastructure and industrial ecosystem and advancing in various uh new technology sectors that by any measure anywhere is deeply impressive. And then at the same time, there is a China that is struggling in the ways that we described with its demographics, with the skill sets of its population relative to what is demanded in these new sectors, with its economic structure, uh, with uh the uh hesitation of its consumers to uh spend money in the current environment. China tends to manage many things by trying to kind of smooth them out to promote longer-term stability and avoid volatility along the way. And I think when you look at these restrictions on data and the more restrictive way China is letting its story be told, what we're seeing here is a more controlled authoritarian society than we saw 10 or 15 years ago. And we are seeing a country that uh does not that that is continues to refine its efforts to smooth out short-term issues that might cause alarm in the country. A lot of this tendency got reinforced during COVID. And I think the uh I think China got quite used to feeling isolated in the world and was also uh not very transparent with its own people about the uh the you know the nature of the pandemic and uh you know where it was going in managing that. And it's become something of a reflex. And and I and I don't think it's a healthy one.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

Do you think they'll be able to continue to and and forgive uh the the description, but sort of control. This information narrative moving forward with now the availability of technology. There are many young Chinese that are using VPNs to get information from outside China, let alone those that get to actually travel abroad and experience the world directly and personally. How successful will the CCP be moving forward and trying to limit information availability?

SPEAKER_00 44:34

I don't think the goal here is necessarily to limit information availability in a way that will mask what is really happening. The goal is to direct attention to thinking about events in ways that will reduce their likelihood to cause instability. So, you know, if there is a short-term economic downturn, for example, and there is data coming out that's alarming but not fully understood, I think you have a government in China that strongly encourages that that information be reported in a way that does not drive people to draw hasty conclusions and panic. And then you end up with volatility in the stock market or whatever kinds of outcomes you get there. And so, but Chinese themselves are not poorly informed. Many of them do travel. They do know how to get information. It's a very highly educated population. There is a lot of sophistication among Chinese in their understanding of the world, particularly those who are in policy and decision-making roles. And that is that has not been cut off. It's more, I would say, a stronger push by the party to make sure it tells its story in a way that leads its population to see the party as managing it well. And so I think it's it's more, it's a very different world now than the Cold War, where you just had, I remember the days of the Soviet Union, and you just had outright censorship that uh denied any information at all to people about the West and what else was out there. Now it's much more subtle and nuanced. And so, for example, if you are, you can you you may get the same information and even the full picture, but the way that the uh the media will work in China will be to say emphasize uh more of the negative about uh things that are happening in the US and US society, or about how the US financial system is working, and more of the positive about what is in China. So you're not you're not eliminating the facts or covering up the facts, you're shaping the story and how it's received. And it's a very sophisticated way of getting to people to think along with how the party wants them to think.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

With that in mind, uh how would you describe the environment there? And I'm gonna create a sort of a binary uh set of options here. Would you say that in China it is an authoritarian environment with capitalist influences, or is it a capitalist environment with authoritarian influences? And feel free to offer another option.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

Oh, that's uh I think it is it is very much an authoritarian environment, and I think many, many chinese are acting with very strong capitalist impulses, but the kind of commanding heights of the state or commanding heights of the economy remain very much under not necessarily under straight state control and how they're operated, but they are they are going to act in ways that advance the aims of the state. And so, you know, so for example, the banking system uh operates like banks as we know them, but is guided by the state to make sure that cheap credit flows to certain sectors, for example, so that those sectors will flourish. So it's a very hybrid system. But one thing that I think Americans may not uh always realize is that kind of the impulses under the system are very profit-oriented, very capitalistic in a lot of ways. Uh uh people know how to do business in China and do it well, and they do it in very sophisticated ways, and that exists alongside an authoritarian system that shows them where the boundaries are.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Returning back to the execution of foreign policy, uh the the CCP has been very good at engaging, especially here in the US, but elsewhere at a subnational level, interacting with you know uh governments at the state level, municipal level. Uh what uh guidance would you give for anyone listening who works in a mayorial office, say in New Orleans or Miami or at the state level, the governor's office, uh in terms of how to manage interactions with representatives from the Chinese government.

SPEAKER_00 50:08

So I think you raised an important point. China has a very kind of centralized, extensive, unified approach to thinking through how to engage at the subnational level in in many countries around the world. They do this very, very well. And when you are dealing with uh local officials, engaging local officials at that level, you have to understand that on the Chinese side, there is guidance and there is a desire to make sure that interaction serves the broader aims of the state. And the state is not just that particular mayor's interest. While in the United States, a mayor of a medium-sized city is thinking about getting to that next opportunity for their city and not necessarily thinking about whether uh they're doing something that's going to be helpful to the Trump administration. We just in the United States operate in a very different way. So I think it is important to understand the entities that you are dealing with, and and any mayor can go online and look at the uh the you know, look up the names of the uh entities that are organizing, say, an exchange with Chinese officials to understand uh how that organization is seen. There have been in the past some warnings given by the U.S. government about these kinds of interactions, and those exist online. I think it's important to be savvy and just to be aware of what you are dealing with, while at the same time, I think we all recognize the US and China are two very large countries, need to have extensive interactions with each other if they're going to have a productive relationship. And that can also uh exist alongside this. But yes, there are times to be wary, certainly.

SPEAKER_01 52:19

In terms of productive relationships, uh immigration is a big part of this, you know, Americans going to China, Chinese coming to the United States. Uh what are some of your observations as to what we've done well uh from your time there and after in terms of uh allowing Chinese to come to the states?

SPEAKER_00 52:48

Well, I think in general, I'm I'm very pro-people-to-people relationships. And I think the story of the US and China broadening their interactions uh at all sorts of levels has been by and large a positive story for each country. Now, we we can get into the exceptions of this, and and and and certainly there there are things that are that are not uh right that have happened, and I'm not trying to gloss over all of that, but uh uh in general, I think the presence of several hundred thousand Chinese students in the U.S. education system has been very positive for our country. And I think that was a good policy that the U.S. uh encouraged China to send its students. It helped our universities, it helped our research, it allowed all of these people to be exposed to what is good in our own country. And I think that's that goes down as a net win. I think tourism is generally uh economically very helpful and profitable. Uh, you know, for those who don't think in economic terms, uh it's important to remember that tourism is an export. A foreigner coming to your country and buying things is considered on the books to be an export. And we are very concerned about the trading relationship with China and where it may be imbalanced. Well, uh tourism is an area that uh brings uh money into the United States, brings a surplus into the United States. So I think that is positive as well. Uh Chinese immigration, legal, I am very supportive of legal and orderly immigration. And uh I think Chinese communities in the United States uh are full of people who have been uh you know great contributors to our own economy. Uh have it certainly has made uh my own life more interesting in the Washington area just culturally. And uh I am happy about uh what U.S. immigration policy has been over recent decades. I know not everybody uh shares that view, uh, but I am quite supportive uh of those outcomes.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

In terms of you mentioned tourism being an export, uh what what in your opinion has worked and what's backfired when it comes to uh sort of these trade controls, uh not only from the US side, but from the Chinese side?

SPEAKER_00 55:28

So I think 2025 was a very interesting year. Last April uh we had President Trump's Liberation Day, where uh the United States launched a series of tariffs around the world and got some very strong pushback from the Chinese. And the result of that was that things ratcheted up in a very painful way for a few months. And what we learned uh out of that was uh the bilateral economic relationship goes far behind what tariff rate is on what product. It's also about the flow of technology, and the Chinese still wish to purchase many um high technology products from the United States and they depend on those. And it's about the flow of critical minerals, and the US needs those critical minerals, particularly rare earths from China. And when I look at what happened last year, what I see is a story of the two sides coming to understand that their economic interdependencies include some real pain points that have to be managed with each other, uh, or the relationship is going to devolve into a very destructive place for each side. And so uh I thought the way that that all initially played out was not a great move uh for the US. And I think China then also overreached on its responses, and I am quite critical of both sides for that. And I think both sides need to be working to create a predictable environment to make sure that each has access to the products that it needs and each understands the economic terms under which it's going to obtain those products, meaning tariffs should be uh stable and agree and at agreed-upon rates and not move around all the time. And what that resulted in is last November, President Trump and President Xi reached what I think was a pretty good deal in Korea, involving tariffs and export controls and supply chain issues and purchases and other areas where the countries are operating much better together right now. So, yes, I think the lesson learned here is that uh uh stability is very important and it's very hard to uh solve uh fundamental disagreements by just levying tariffs and sanctions and export controls and entity lists on each other. Uh I personally uh lean towards uh lean towards policies that enable positive intereconomic interaction uh wherever that is possible. Of course, we need to stand strong on issues that affect national security, but I uh personally wish that uh we were not pursuing the tariff policies that we are as a country. I don't think uh it is serving us or our consumers well, but I do think America has to be cautious when trade and economic interaction move into areas that uh imply national security vulnerabilities. And I'm very supportive of our government, it's standing strong on that front.

SPEAKER_01 59:11

Sometimes principles uh find their boundaries where reality commences, so to say, uh, and pragmatism is a necessity. And I start with that in the sense of we label China as an adversary, and that tends to be over the years, so not particular to any administration or politician, but that tends to be the rhetoric, justified or not. Um yet we have the US-China Business Council, uh, which has over 200 US corporate entities, uh, many of them Fortune 500 players with a huge presence in China. Uh they're required to have members of the TCP sit on the you know on the boards over there. Uh how do we balance almost this contradiction? China's an adversary, yet we allow our corporate entities to function over there, uh, and we will do our best to protect them when, well, you're the one taking the risk. You understand uh that there are substantial uh risk in working in China, whether it comes to you know the story of intellectual property being stolen uh or it they're taken advantage of, or a parallel company is set up and eventually the US business uh has to downsize. How do you balance this sort of inherent contradiction?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:50

Well, we'll start with a very straightforward sentence. It is not easy. And uh uh, you know, I personally, uh through my own past, uh, have worked uh a lot on these issues. I would state as a general proposition that the US corporate in presence in China has been a positive force by and large. You know, not every economic interaction between our countries is a good thing. I don't want, I don't want to be naive here. But let's uh but uh you know there are a lot of benefits from trade, from market access, from commercial interaction uh between our countries. There have been a lot of benefits from supply chaining, although we've learned some hard lessons along the way too. But the there are very good economic reasons for US companies to be present in China, and they have brought with them some very good and admirable practices about how to run businesses, and they have done uh much that has been beneficial in China to Chinese workers, and uh has been uh a source for progress there. And in return, um we know our companies, uh, many have found significant profit, many have found uh efficiencies, many uh obtain goods that we are not uh willing or able to make for ourselves here that we need. And um, you know, most of this uh commercial interaction is positive. And so you mentioned like the US C BC. I'm actually uh uh going to a meeting with them today. Uh I I am personally very supportive of uh what I see as the uh acts of of most of the companies who are uh uh members there, and and I think they're they're doing good things. And I was always proud as an American, as a diplomat in China, to represent US business and to be part of helping them do business better there. And yes, China can be uh adversarial in its behavior. It it has over time forced technology transfers from US companies in ways that have not been beneficial to our country. Uh, we talked about intellectual property rights and that caused uh harm. There are subsidy policies in China that uh uh lead to a non-level playing field between our two countries. All of these things need to be addressed, and they need to be addressed assertively. And the United States needs to do that. I'm personally very pro-engagement. We used to have a very extensive lattice work of routine dialogues between the US and China. Uh, when I lived there in my earlier periods, uh, I was part of this strategic and economic dialogue where we would get uh multiple cabinet agencies together from each side, uh, usually led at the cabinet level, to figure out how to address these issues across uh bureaucratic boundaries. And it was difficult and it did not always work, and we did not solve all of the problems. And sometimes these meetings just devolved into talk shops that didn't get uh things done. But you know, at the end of the day, upon reflection, I think that was a good era for us because what it did is it allowed allowed each side to better understand where the other was going in their policies and then to have more sophisticated responses back and forth to lay out where the boundaries needed to be. And uh, and I think that was an era of, I would say, from 2008 to around 2015-2016, it sort of started to break down towards the end of Obama's second term. Uh, that was a pretty good period for US-China diplomacy. So, yes, China presents some very serious challenges, and many of them are national security challenges for the United States on the economic front. And China has pursued policies that have been unfair to U.S. companies and to the United States. But I think good diplomacy and good comprehensive engagement have done a lot for our companies, and many of our companies have been fantastic ambassadors for the United States in China.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:38

With that in mind, what would be your suggestions to a small medium enterprise in the United States uh that is impacted by Chinese trade practices? And I'll give you an example. You know, in years past, you know, I'm from Louisiana, you know, I love crawfish, crawfish is is is A big staple down there and it's exported elsewhere, uh, not just consumed in Louisiana. But many crawfish farmers in Louisiana have suffered at times from the crawfish dumping out of China. And a typical response is to seek uh political support in Washington uh for obviously import controls, uh, anti-dumping uh policies. What would you suggest for the small-medium enterprise and analogous situations, you know, what they should do differently when they're confronted with those types of challenges that's impacting them directly?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:44

So, first I just want to give a shout out to Louisiana. I uh I went to graduate school at Tulane University. And um, and if you're talking to me about the fate of uh of those who are uh producing crawfish for us, uh that hits me deep in my heart. Um but uh you know, you know, in in all seriousness though, um you know, you know, it's a great question and it and it's a great issue that you're bringing up here because it's very hard in economic diplomacy to do things that are responsive to small and medium-sized enterprises who are running into circumstances that are not fair. And I cannot give you uh you know quick silver bullet answers to what each company should do when it's facing a situation like that. What I would say is this it is very, very important that we have healthy business organizations that can collect our small and medium-sized enterprises together and represent our interests so that they can be um they can be relayed when you get to the point of high-level diplomacy. This is also another reason we were talking about subnational diplomacy before, and we were talking about risks in that, but also subnational diplomacy between the two countries means that those local officials who are closer to these small and medium sized enterprises who are having problems are able to get their story out to the other side and push very often uh solving these kinds of things. It's it's just about untangling a specific dispute or a provincial level policy that needs to be pointed out as even being inconsistent with China's national policies. And so having healthy structures that expand dialogue between the two countries can go a long way to addressing these sorts of things. But I'm not gonna sit here and say that it's just that easy, that we know we we create a bunch of organizations and have a bunch of uh dialogue and we'll get there. I don't think we will. It's going to always be uh hard for the US and China to figure these things out. And my heart goes out to the people who get hurt by this along the way. And I think we have the right to expect our own government in the United States to be very assertive on trade issues, on commercial issues, and on national security issues to help all of these people out.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:33

Speaking of our government, and as we come to uh a close here, and returning to our opening, the Foreign Service, your entry into it, uh what would you say that the Foreign Service, the Department of State, did well in preparing you as DCM for uh U.S. mission China? And then on the other side, retrospectively, for those who are still in the Foreign Service, uh, what could be done better to prepare them in their interactions in a vast diplomatic operation uh that is located in China?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:18

It's a great question. Let me tell you that there's a lot of training you get if you're a Foreign Service officer. You know, I did this for 30 years. You're trained how to issue visas, you're uh, you know, you're trained in in economics, you're trained in all sorts of things. The very best training class in the State Department is the DCM training class. Uh, it has been honed for years. Not only, I was a DCM twice, I was also a DCM in Bangladesh. Um, not only have I taken that class twice, but I also uh have mentored that class a number of times, helped to teach it uh as an experienced deputy chief of mission. And uh uh it's really quite fantastic uh what they do because they have learned over time uh what kinds of things tend to drag uh our deputies down who are running our embassies around the world. And um, you know, the the issue that they really focus on that I think is is particularly important for getting things right for people who go out is most of us come up in the policy world. And we're thinking about how to do great things to advance national security or to strike that next trade deal or whatever. But if you're a deputy of an embassy, your best friend is your management officer and your security officer. And you've got to understand that making things work so that the platform is functioning well is where it all starts. And that is what that training is all about. Uh, it gets our people there and it wakes them up to just understanding the nuts and bolts that are necessary to conduct diplomacy and the importance of all those people whose names may not be in the headlines, but who are uh creating the environment that does allow our ambassadors to do great things. So that training is wonderful. Where we need more training in general in the State Department, and it's very hard to get here, but we need this, is there are so many new emerging issues that take deep, deep expertise to address on behalf of the American people. Most of these are in uh in areas of uh new technologies, and we need to make sure our diplomats are being allowed to take the time needed to understand issues like semiconductors and why export controls around them are key to national security, or how energy policy in the United States versus energy policy in China is likely to have huge consequences for access to other markets around the world as China electrifies while the US focuses on fossil fuels. There are huge implications to something like this. Or are diplomats needing time to understand evolving changes in economic structures and in financial tools like cybersecurity and cyber finance, for example. The State Department has always struggled to find a way to get that expertise in front of its diplomats and give its diplomats time to get to the place they need for that.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:53

Any final thoughts or comments you'd like to share with the audience?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:59

Um, just sort of as a just a general theme that's gone through our conversation today, where uh I really like Maurice the way you're doing this podcast because you're you're trying to draw out nuance. And for people who don't focus a lot on China and who may be listening today, I'd like to just say China is not about to collapse and it's not unstoppable. I think conversations tend to go in one of those two directions. And the fact is, is that China is huge, it's not gonna get smaller, although its population is going down a little bit, but it it is going to remain uh you know one of the top powers in the world for as long as we are around. And it is a complex society with a complex set of problems, and it is busy dealing with its own struggles just like we are. And we need to understand that, again, as I said, it is not uh it hasn't figured it all out, it's not unstoppable, and it's not in great danger, it's not about to collapse. And I I hope people can take that away from this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:13

David, thank you for sharing your experiences, observations uh to our listeners. Thank you for joining us on Brungart Law's Lanyat, where we provide a little extra perspective because the devil's always in the details. Invite others to listen. Give us your suggestions via the link. David, again, gratitude.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:31

Thank you, Maurice. It was a pleasure to join you.