Surfing in real time on the top of an epochal wave—China’s rise—Scott Moore’s book offers a sophisticated approach to the role of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in world affairs. Reviewers Matteo Dian and Angel Hsu concur that Moore offers an ambitious and nuanced take on the counteracting of cooperation and competition mainly between the PRC and the United States (US).
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum
Roundtable Review 15-22
Scott M. Moore, China’s Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology are Reshaping China’s Rise and the World’s Future. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022
12 January 2024 | PDF: https://issforum.org/to/jrt15-22 | Website: rjissf.org | Twitter: @HDiplo
Editor: Diane Labrosse
Commissioning Editor: Dong Wang
Production Editor: Christopher Ball
Pre-Production Copy Editor: Bethany Keenan
Contents
Introduction by Dong Wang, Lived Places Publishing, New York. 2
Review by Matteo Dian, University of Bologna. 4
Review by Angel Hsu, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 8
Response by Scott M. Moore, University of Pennsylvania. 11
Introduction by Dong Wang, Lived Places Publishing, New York
Surfing in real time on the top of an epochal wave—China’s rise—Scott Moore’s book offers a sophisticated approach to the role of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in world affairs. Reviewers Matteo Dian and Angel Hsu concur that Moore offers an ambitious and nuanced take on the counteracting of cooperation and competition mainly between the PRC and the United States (US).
In China’s Next Act, Moore depicts the shifting conjunctures in the PRC as oscillating between periods of real liberal, even democratic, opportunity, and of Party excesses. The narrative explores topics including public goods, development, public health, environmental sustainability, flows of humans and knowledge, data security, and new technologies. Moore notes in his response that the promise of cooperation between the US and the PRC on science, technology, ecology, and health has been unfulfilled, becoming “embroiled in the geopolitical, economic, and ideological competition that defines the US-China relationship as a whole.” He argues that “China, in other words, has become indispensable to addressing every shared global challenge; but instead of bringing China and other countries closer together, this phenomenon has driven them further apart.”
In their reviews, both Dian and Hsu observe that China’s Next Act seeks to avoid the obvious temptation to reduce the topic to an all-out rivalry between two great powers, describing instead in much detail the countervailing trends and self-defeating behaviors of both the PRC and the US as well as the divergence of their domestic realities. While acknowledging Moore’s balanced and sometimes contradictory prescriptions for policy making, both reviewers also raise issues with the book. In Dian’s view, some parts of Moore’s “compelling” work are rather “American-centric,” leaving unaddressed the crucial role of developing and non-democratic countries in shaping the PRC’s approaches to global challenges. In a similar vein, Hsu wonders whether Moore’s policy recommendations are “actionable,” since smaller nations do not have the same leverage as larger and liberal-minded ones.
In the end, Moore argues that “[t]he risk is that China’s rise will drive divergence in the values, norms, and standards the world desperately needs to navigate these shared challenges in the decades ahead. If liberal societies fail to lead the way in providing global public goods and regulating emerging technologies, the illiberal values Beijing increasingly relies on are more likely to hold sway.” (213). The fight for the future, therefore, hinges on whether liberal democracies are able, both on a national scale and in their international organizations, to (re-)build robust democratic, open, and competitive institutions to match the alternatives of the PRC.
Contributors:
Scott M. Moore is Director of China Programs and Strategic Initiatives and Professor of the Practice of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He previously served as Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Officer for China at the US Department of State; and as a Young Professional and Water Resources Management Specialist at the World Bank. Moore received his doctoral degree from Oxford University and his undergraduate degree from Princeton. He is also National Committee on US-China Relations Public Intellectuals Program Fellow. His first book, Subnational Hydropolitics (Oxford University Press, 2022) explores climate change and the risk of conflict over water in China and neighboring countries.
Dong Wang is collection editor of Asian Studies at Lived Places Publishing (New York). Her single-authored books in English are: Tse Tsan Tai (1872-1938): An Australian-Cantonese Opinion Maker in British Hong Kong (Lived Places Publishing, 2023); The United States and China: A History from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Rowman & Littlefield, 2nd and rev. ed. 2021; 1st ed. in 2013), a Choice Top 25 Outstanding Academic Titles; Longmen’s Stone Buddhas and Cultural Heritage: When Antiquity Met Modernity in China (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020); Managing God’s Higher Learning: U.S.-China Cultural Encounter and Canton Christian College (Lingnan University), 1888-1952 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); and China’s Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).
Matteo Dian is an Associate Professor of History and International Relations of East Asia at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna. Previously he held research and teaching positions at University of Oxford, London School of Economics and Political Science, the European University Institute, and Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. He earned his PhD at the Scuola Normale Superiore (Italian Institute of Human and Social Sciences) in Florence. His last books are La Cina, gli Stati Uniti e il Futuro dell’Ordine Internazionale (Bologna, Il Mulino, 2021) and Reluctant Remilitarization, The Transformation of Defence Policy and Armed Forces in Japan, Germany and Italy (with Francesco Moro e Fabrizio Coticchia. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2023). His research focuses on US-China relations, security in East Asia, Japanese and Chinese foreign policies.
Angel Hsu is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Environment, Ecology, and Energy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She founded and directs the Data-Driven EnviroLab, an interdisciplinary research group innovating quantitative approaches to solving pressing environmental issues. She is a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations and holds a PhD in Environmental Policy from Yale University.
Review by Matteo Dian, University of Bologna
Scott M. Moore’s China Next Act offers a nuanced and sophisticated analysis of China’s approach to key policy sectors like climate change, health cooperation, internet governance, and biotechnologies. In doing so, it provides a unique observation point on Beijing’s role in contemporary global governance. Because it is complementary to most of the recent scholarly works on China’s rise, this book is a particularly useful resources for scholars, graduate students and policy analysts who follow the debates regarding China’s policy-making, international relations, and international history.[1]
Cybersecurity, vaccines, ethical issues in bioengineering, carbon emissions, and renewable energies are not necessarily familiar policy issues to most of those who follow Chinese affairs or US-China relations. Moore’s book offers an accessible, yet detailed guide to China’s approach to complex and technical policy issues. Moreover, he convincingly makes the case these sectors are essential to our understanding of Beijing’s evolving international role.
The book’s observation point offers an alternative to the prevailing US narrative that considers China primarily as a revisionist state, one which is bound to generate a “Thucydides Trap.”[2] Moore does not deny the reality of the strategic, political, and economic competition between Washington and Beijing, as well as the differences in values between the two nations. However, he underlines that many of the key contemporary challenges are global and transnational in nature. Because of its economic and demographic size and its global political role, China is therefore a necessary part of global governance solutions and is often a veto player (71).
Moore argues that a consideration of China as both part of the problem and part of the possible solution to key contemporary challenges leads to the logical conclusion that strategies based on economic, technological, and institutional decoupling often undercut the possibility of solving many of the most pressing transnational threats, from climate change to pandemics (216). Overall, he reminds us that for the majority of issues in global governance, US-China competition is generally less effective than cooperation in addressing global problems and supplying public goods. Consequently, Moore argues that “ring fencing certain especially critical areas as much as possible from politicization should be a priority” (218). However, management of the COVID-19 pandemic, the trade war, and the recent competition over semiconductors have shown how isolating critical issues from geopolitical rivalry is particularly difficult both in Washington and in Beijing.
Ultimately, as Moore rightly puts it, the future of the international community is “shared but contested” (9). Consequently, he argues the US and its Western partners should be equipped to face both common challenges and ideological, political, and economic differences. The author therefore suggest that the US and its Western partners should adopt a two-pronged strategy when dealing with China: they should provide effective policy solutions based on liberal values; moreover, they should create the right incentives to convince Beijing to adhere to global standards and norms.
This also leads him to adopt a nuanced position on the current debate on benefits and the risks of the great-power competition with China. Recently, policy makers and analysts have underlined the benefits of competition or even of a “new Cold War” with China. Competition is seen as a much-needed incentive for the US to invest not just in defense and high-tech, but also in education and infrastructures.[3] This perspective has been criticized by those who underline how a “new Cold War” could lead to negative effects similar to those generated by the containment of the Soviet Union: exaggeration of the nature of external threats, support of illiberal allies abroad, and degradation of domestic democratic standards.[4]
Moore’s analysis finds a middle ground in this debate. In many respects, competing with China energizes US (as well as Western) efforts in the realm of science, education, health, and technology. In this sense, the fact that China has reached several milestones in technological development in various fields ranging from AI and semiconductors to 5G or electric vehicles led the US to respond with substantial investments that are aimed at maintaining a US position of technological advantage.[5]
In many other cases, the very nature of international competition might entail putting into question the values that are essential for Western liberalism, from academic freedom to personal privacy and economic openness. Overall, the book details how dealing with China generates all sorts of dilemmas for US and Western policy-makers, forcing them to choose among protecting liberal values, advancing the economic interests of their countries, and promoting national security. In this context, chapter 4, which discusses education, shows how competition has a significant social cost associated with limitations to academic exchanges and joint projects, as well as the erosion of mutual trust between academics and students. The possibility of data theft has led universities and research institutions to limit the access of foreign, and particularly Chinese, students and researchers to sensitive data. Moore also shows that while intellectual property (IP) theft by China has been significant and consequential for the US, by late the 2010s Chinese authorities realized that it discouraged incoming foreign direct investments (FDIs) and damaged the effort to move up in the value chains.
The chapter on health cooperation shows both the limits and the costs of that competition. Moore highlights that significant achievements such as global anti-polio campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s benefitted from the efforts of scientists across both sides of the Iron Curtain. Similarly, US-China cooperation helped contain outbreaks of Ebola in West Africa in the mid-2010s. During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, nationalism and competition prevailed. This led to a race to provide first medical equipment and then vaccines to countries in the developing world. However, several countries have been guided by political preferences, rather than by assessments of the medical effectiveness of the vaccines, in their choices among different types made by different countries.
This affected China more than any other country. Chinese vaccines have proven to be much less effective than their Western counterparts, leading to a much more heavy-handed Chinese zero-COVID approach to the pandemic compared to other countries, at least up to late 2022.
Chapter 3, which deals with the environment and climate change, describes the complex and nonlinear effects of Chinese policies. In this realm, as much as in any other, Moore argues that the international community cannot achieve sensible progress without engaging China, which has become the largest polluter at the global level. In the last decade, partly in reaction to popular domestic protests against environmental degradation, Beijing has invested considerable resources to promote green technologies such as hydropower, wind, and solar energy. China’s “war on pollution” has demonstrated the significant capacity of China’s authoritarian system to promote a top-down “grand steerage” towards more environmentally friendly technologies.[6] New investments in green technologies are now considered to be instruments that will boost the country’s technological and economic influence abroad, with the aim of outcompeting the US and European countries in sectors such as solar power plants and advanced batteries for Electric Vehicles (EVs). Chinese authorities thus adopted subsidies and tax breaks in violation of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, which fueled some of the disputes at the center of the “trade war” during the Trump administration. Ultimately, environmental protection can be considered a sector in which competition might produce significant positive externalities, even if the competition can also significantly strain other key sectors, such as the WTO regime.[7]
Chapters 6 and 7, which are dedicated to new technologies, also provide significant insights on the common narrative about US-China competition. In sectors that have relevant security consequences, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced semiconductors, competition is fierce and consequential. In other sectors, the repercussions for security and geopolitical competition are less pressing, therefore attempts to cut China’s access to them are less justifiable. Moreover, in advanced technologies such as aviation, aerospace, and biomedical research, China’s abilities are still very far from the cutting edge. In some cases, China’s advances are not necessarily driven by the desire to surpass its competitors technologically, but rather to promote Chinese adoption of consolidated technologies on a vast scale.
Chapter 6, which is dedicated to internet governance, provides another interesting perspective on the dilemmas associated with China’s expanding technological and economic influence. Western governments have recently realized how firms such as Huawei and Tiktok might cause problems in terms of users’ privacy or even national security. However, as Moore argues, promoting a strict decoupling in terms of access and regulation of the internet might allow China to develop an increasingly separate and distinct internet ecosystem, one which is subject to Beijing on preferences and interests.
In terms of the development of telecommunication technologies, the book highlights how any effort to compete with China entails different and partially diverging objectives: promoting security and privacy standards which are coherent with liberal values; maintaining a global network of communications; and helping developing countries build technological infrastructures that are as convenient and efficient as those offered by China. Focusing on the first objective, while ignoring the second and the third, could favor the expansion of China’s role in developing countries that are keen to accept more intrusive but also more affordable solutions. This argument is valid not only for the telecommunications sector. An effective strategy to compete with China cannot simply rely on decoupling of the Chinese and US economic systems. On the contrary, supplying better solutions for digital transition, integration in supply chains, economic development, and trade, especially in regions as Africa and Southeast Asia, should be a key priority.
One note of criticism of Moore’s otherwise compelling work, is that some passages in the book are rather “US-centric.” As the author notes in the preface, “I do not claim to be impartial. I believe and argue throughout the book that liberal values and institutions promise a far brighter future for the world than any Beijing-backed alternative” (xii). Moreover, “this book places special emphasis on the role of the United States, which as an American I believe has a unique ability and responsibility to preserve and uplift liberal values” (xiii).
While this position is entirely legitimate, it sometimes generates some relevant biases, especially when it comes to policy prescriptions. On the one hand, the book stimulates the reader to consider the role of underlying institutions and to think beyond simple dichotomies, such as those between state versus market, and West versus non-West, and centralization versus local initiatives.[8] Informal norms, human capital, mutual trust, informal cooperation, rule of law, and organizational cultures are described as fundamental ingredients for economic progress and technological development. In theory, this suggests that future policy solutions for China should be tailored to its specific needs, as well as influenced by the country’s organizational structures and political and social cultures.
On the other hand, when identifying limits to or weaknesses of China’s policies, Moore generally suggests that the solution involves an imitation of the American example. This applies also to sectors like environmental protection and health care in which the US model is hardly considered a model to imitate by the rest of the international community. Ultimately, what the author calls “the Secret Sauce” for progress and modernity is inevitably American (148). “American,” “Western” and “liberal,” are very often used as synonyms. This somehow obscures the fact that there are substantial variations in the approach to topics such as environment and health policies among different liberal democracies. Finally, this perspective means that the author’s possible solutions for global issue take the form of a bilateral dialogue between China and the US, or of the possibility that China could adopt US models. While the US-China bilateral relation is probably the most consequential in the contemporary international order, any solution to global problems as those analyzed in this book is necessarily multilateral, and involves active participation of many more global actors.
Despite these limitations, China’s Next Act is an important and timely read for scholars, practitioners, and graduate students, who are interested in China’s evolving role in the world.
Review by Angel Hsu, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Scott Moore’s China’s Next Act is an ambitious undertaking, exploring China’s rise and its role in a myriad of urgent, shared global challenges, including issues of environmental sustainability, emerging technologies, and public health. Moore delves into how these shared challenges have revealed opportunities for cooperation and competition for other countries, primarily liberal democracies. This includes the United States, a primary and inextricable counterpart to China in dealing with each of these issues.[9] Through seven chapters, Moore highlights how cooperation with China in each of these realms is necessary for the provision of public goods, even though it is not a foregone conclusion, since these global challenges, such as climate change or pandemics, cannot be isolated from economic competition and ideological differences that drive wedges between China and its global counterparts. To understand how China may reshape the global order pertaining to future public-goods provisions (e.g., climate change cooperation, technology), Moore argues that we must examine the intersectionality of cooperation and competition while acknowledging that China’s approach will be shaped by its own domestic political and economic priorities.
Moore’s book tackles an extraordinarily broad set of issues in the book, giving readers a wide spectrum of critical, emerging issues to be evaluated for lessons on how countries can achieve national and global goals while both cooperating and competing. While acknowledging that a single text cannot address every issue for which China’s rise has global implications, Moore identifies and unpacks the leading challenges regarding China’s comet-like geopolitical rise and discusses the realistic options for achieving greater cooperation among nations.
In chapter 3, which is aptly titled, “The Unlikely Environmentalist,” Moore details China’s paradoxical position as the leading contributor to global climate pollution and the foremost investor in clean energy technology, including solar and wind power, a sector in which China has proven dominant both in terms of production and installed capacity. In this particular domain, Moore argues that while in principle cooperation on clean technology and climate might be preferable, green competition could catalyze a “race to the top” that would help spur the global provisioning of needed clean technologies in a way that circumvents belabored negotiations that have proven too slow to meaningfully reduce climate-warming emissions (92). These arguments echo those of other scholars who have identified the popularity of “green industrial policy”[10] as an important driver of national climate policies, as governments see “win-win” opportunities to stimulate local manufacturing capabilities while reducing climate emissions. In fact, China’s efforts to compete globally on clean energy technologies, particularly solar photovoltaic panels, has led to dramatic cost reductions globally, making this technology more affordable for other nations to increase their adoption of it.[11] In the area of biodiversity preservation, Moore sees particular promise for renewed cooperation, given the size of China’s consumer market.
Tempering Moore’s optimism in the area of environmental sustainability, chapters 5 and 6 focus on the more difficult dilemmas surrounding technology and digital information.[12] In these chapters, Moore discusses the potential risks and ethical implications of China’s rapid development in some emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI). In this domain, China has been at the frontier of large-scale or big-data collection through popular apps like TikTok and surveillance technologies used for contact tracing and other protective health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. In both examples, Moore argues that other nations should take a cautious approach in engaging China, mainly due to the country’s cyber sovereignty and digital protectionism policies that give it control over data flows that have prevented many foreign companies from establishing operations there. These concerns lead into chapter 7, in which Moore discusses the need for new normative frameworks for both cooperating and competing with China with regards to these emerging technologies, given both the promises and potential pitfalls inherent to advances in AI, genetic engineering, and industrial automation.[13]
Throughout the book, but specifically in chapter 7 and in the book’s conclusion, Moore draws attention to the potential influence of non-state and sub-state actors in forging new avenues of cooperation, particularly in the domain of technological ethics and standard setting. Despite the challenges encountered by non-state and sub-state actors in scientific collaboration between the US and China that are discussed in chapter 5, “Fight for the Future,” Moore highlights the pivotal role played by scientists in circumventing politicians or diplomats in norm-setting, a practice that he argues is critical for the next phase of cooperation (208). In this regard, Moore sees potential in convening an “Asilomar” conference, drawing inspiration from the productive meetings held in California during the early 1970s, which yielded the formulation of the influential “precautionary principle.”[14] Offering a caveat to this optimism for a broadening of actors to help strike a productive balance between cooperation and competition with China, Moore acknowledges the challenges in identifying exactly which actors, from civil society to the private sector, can actually coalesce into a productive, coherent voice to guide norm-creation and standard setting.
Moore’s key message ultimately underscores the imperative of collaboration when confronting escalating environmental and technological challenges, while acknowledging that economic, political, and ideological competition is unavoidable. Actors at every level, but particularly non-state actors, whom Moore asserts have to take the lead in cooperation, must recognize this “cooperative competition” framework when engaging China. He ends the book with some prescriptions for the conditions under which “liberal-minded” entities can most effectively engage with Chinese counterparts, and yet the recommendations read as more of a wish list of stars that must align rather than an actionable playbook. While clearly these prescriptions are relevant for large, liberal-minded countries like the US, it is unclear if they pertain to smaller countries that do not have the same leverage. Moore ends by emphasizing that China’s next act is not fully prescribed, presenting “deep and vexing challenges” (222) that require countries to collectively shape the future narrative, one which is centered on core values that may directly challenge and compete with those put forth by China.
Response by Scott M. Moore, University of Pennsylvania
I wrote China’s Next Act to explain what happened to US-China relations, and more broadly China’s role in the world, after 2015. My core message is this: China’s role in the world has become critically influenced by its role in providing global public goods like climate protection and pandemic prevention, and in its development of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum computing. But even as these newer issue areas have become more central, they have become new sites of political, economic, and normative contestation. China, in other words, has become indispensable to addressing every shared global challenge; but instead of bringing China and other countries closer together, this phenomenon has driven them further apart.
To back up a bit, I spent 2015-2016 working at the China Desk at the US Department of State thanks to a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship. My title was Environment, Science, Technology, and Health Officer, but my main task was working on US-China negotiations for what became the Paris Agreement on climate change. It was a time during which the United States and China not only appeared to be capable of both working together to address shared global challenges and, as a result, laying the foundation for a more constructive broader relationship, but which even then was imperiled by human rights issues, the status of the South China Sea, and many other deeply contentious issues.[15]
Since the triumph of US-China diplomatic cooperation at Paris, though, the promise of cooperation on global public goods has gone almost entirely unfulfilled, a sobering reality most clearly underscored by the failure of either side to do virtually anything to combat the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, the environment and health issues which occupied so much of my time and attention have been largely superseded in significance to the bilateral relationship by science and technology, especially in areas like artificial intelligence. And instead of being stabilizing issues for the relationship or areas for cooperation, the environment, science, technology, and health have become embroiled in the geopolitical, economic, and ideological competition that defines the US-China relationship as a whole. My main purpose in writing China’s Next Act was to explore and explain those dual shifts, and their relationship to China’s role in the world more broadly.
It is also worth noting that few, if any, other books cover the same subject matter. Books that consider the core dilemma that global challenges require some level of collective action between China and other countries even as differences between them continue to grow are few and far between.[16] Moreover, very few books about China attempt, as I do, to consider both the ecological and technological dimensions and implications of China’s rise.[17] This reluctance is understandable: it is difficult to cover so much ground in any detail. Nonetheless, I believe that considering both is essential to understanding China’s fast-evolving role in the twenty-first century.
The thoughtful reviews submitted by Matteo Dian and Angel Hsu suggest that I succeeded in achieving these core objectives, even if I neglected others. Words like “nuanced” and “middle ground” appear frequently in Dian’s review, to my great satisfaction. I once described an early version of the book’s argument as, “Well, it’s complicated.” Though not a very satisfactory takeaway message, I believe that a return to nuance when it comes to China is important in the current moment, when so much of the debate is polemical in nature. Nuance is especially important when it comes to the ecological and technological issues that are my primary subject. In the former case, they are immensely intricate and thoroughly global; and in the latter case, so rapidly developing that it is difficult to draw durable conclusions.
Hsu’s review likewise highlights the extent to which complexity, nuance, and sometimes contradiction plays an important role in the book. This is especially true in the chapter that relates most clearly to Professor Hsu’s expertise, chapter 3, entitled “The Unlikely Environmentalist,” which accordingly occupies an important place in her review. As she rightly points out, this chapter attempts to explain the seeming contradiction between China’s massive investments in clean technology and environmental protection and its status as the planet’s largest emitter and biggest driver of environmental degradation worldwide. She also calls attention to the importance that sub-national and non-state actors occupy in my account; in my view, given the tension and politicization that mark the US-China diplomatic relationship, it is essential to consider these actors, even if they are no substitute for governmental action.
At the same time, Hsu does question one element of my account in chapter 3, namely my assertion that positive outcomes for the climate and for environmental cooperation might not necessarily require cooperation, and in fact might be achieved through competition between the US and China. In particular, she notes that China’s investment in renewable energy production aided its diffusion to other countries, citing an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.[18] She is right to call attention to this phenomenon, and I hope that I did not imply otherwise in the text. Moreover, at least one compelling intervening work, Joanna Lewis’s Cooperating for the Climate, which presents a sophisticated and, crucially, comparative account of climate cooperation, has added to the debate in important ways that, were I to revisit the text, warrant additional attention.[19] As I have stated elsewhere, the cheapest way to diffuse clean energy technology around the globe is to rely principally on China’s manufacturing economies of scale. Political and geopolitical realities, however, make it difficult to persuade policymakers to do so—hence, in my view, the need to consider how to achieve gains for the climate through competition as well as cooperation.[20]
Both reviewers raise the same principal critique, as have others who have reviewed the book for other outlets:[21] namely that the book is too concerned with the United States and the advanced industrial democracies. Dian’s review charges that the tendency to be “US-centric” generates bias, particularly in the perspective portions of the book. Hsu makes a similar point. This criticism is a fair one; I do not devote sufficient attention to how countries with varying capacities might follow the advice I lay out. I would, however, call attention to passages in the introduction, chapter 1, and conclusion, where I hope I make clear my belief that China’s role in the world, and the world’s response to it, will increasingly be shaped by the developing world. This is especially true in areas like cyber policy and data privacy, where countries like India are crucial players, and Indonesia, Nigeria, and Mexico increasingly important also.
Were I to extend or revisit the text, the global dimension of China’s rise would be my focus. Since completing the book, I have followed with interest China’s role in climate finance, which increasingly puts Beijing at odds with other developing countries. This dynamic is, I believe, one that bears watching in the years to come. Other subjects of interest that I continue to follow coming out of the book are China’s stance on climate intervention and geoengineering, which sadly is becoming a more realistic prospect almost by the year; and the evolution of China’s biotechnology sector, which will play a substantial role in the success or failure of its homegrown innovation initiative.
In closing, I would note a feature of China’s rise that I describe in chapter 1, but that I believe has become and will continue to become more significant both for China and the world: barriers to sustained economic growth. China has been one of economic history’s great success stories, but its macroeconomic challenges are mounting, and include climate risk and the lingering toll of the pandemic in addition to more familiar challenges like demography. It is increasingly likely, in my view, that the Chinese economy will effectively stagnate.[22] This would have negative consequences for global economic growth, but may also make Beijing less willing and able to engage in addressing global challenges such as climate change. Let us hope not—but either way, China’s central and critical role in what I call a fundamentally shared but deeply contested global future will be a defining feature of the twenty-first century.
[1] Kevin Rudd, The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and Xi Jinping’s China (New York: Public Affairs, 2022); Robert G. Sutter, US-China Relations: Perilous Past, Uncertain Present (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2022).
[2] Graham T. Allison. Destined for War: Can China and American Escape the Thucydides Trap? (New York: Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt, 2017); Aaron L. Friedberg, Getting China Wrong (Cambridge: Polity Press Cambridge, 2022).
[3] Jeff D. Colgan and Nicholas L. Miller, “The Rewards of Rivalry: US-Chinese Competition Can Spur Climate Progress,” Foreign Affairs 101:6 (2022): 108-119. Andrew S. Erickson and Gabriel Collins, “Competition with China Can Save the Planet: Pressure, Not Partnership, Will Spur Progress on Climate Change,” Foreign Affairs 100:3 (2021): 136-149.
[4] Jessica Chen Weiss, “The China Trap: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Perilous Logic of Zero-Sum Competition,” Foreign Affairs 101:5 (2022): 40-58. Michael Brenes and Van Jackson, “Great-Power Competition Is Bad for Democracy: Rivalry With China and Russia Reinforces the Real Causes of American Decline,” Foreign Affairs 101:2 (2022), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2022-07-14/great-power-competition-bad-democracy .
[5] Jon Bateman, US-China Technological “Decoupling”: A Strategy and Policy Framework, (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 2022). Ilaria Mazzocco, “Why the New Climate Bill Is Also about Competition with China,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 25 August 2022, https://www.csis.org/analysis/why-new-climate-bill-also-about-competition-china .
[6] Barry Naughton, “Grand Steerage as the New Paradigm for State-Economy Relations,” in Frank N. Pieke and Bert Hofman, eds., CPC Futures: The New Era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics (Singapore: NUS Press, 2022): 105-112.
[7] Jianglong L, and Jiashun Huang, “The Expansion of China’s Solar Energy: Challenges and Policy Options,”Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 132:1 (2020): 1-11; Mandy Meng Fang, “A Crisis or an Opportunity? The Trade War between the US and China in the Solar PV Sector,” Journal of World Trade 54:1 (2020): 103-128.
[8] Here, for institutions, the author uses a meaning similar to that proposed by Douglass C. North in his Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
[9] See Stephen Roach, Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022); Andrew Small, The Rupture: China and the Global Race for the Future (London: Hurst Publishers, 2022); C. Fred Bergsten, The United States vs. China: The Quest for Global Economic Leadership, (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2022).
[10] Jonas Meckling and Llewelyn Hughes, “Global Interdependence in Clean Energy Transitions,” Business and Politics, 20:4 (2018), 467-491.
[11] P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, A. Reisinger, R. Slade, R. Fradera, M. Pathak, A. Al Khourdajie, M. Belkacemi, R. van Diemen, A. Hasija, G. Lisboa, S. Luz, J. Malley, D. McCollum, S. Some, and P. Vyas, “Summary for Policymakers,” in P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, R. Slade, A. Al Khourdajie, R. van Diemen, D. McCollum, M. Pathak, S. Some, P. Vyas, R. Fradera, M. Belkacemi, A. Hasija, G. Lisboa, S. Luz, and J. MalleyJim Skea, et al., eds., “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change.” Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157926.001; J. P. Helveston, J. P., G. He, and M.R. Davidson, “Quantifying the Cost Savings of Global Solar Photovoltaic Supply Chains,” Nature, 612:7938, 83-87.
[12] See Aynne Kokas, Trafficking Data: How China Is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022); David Dorman and John Hemmings, “China’s Digital Challenge: Hidden in Plain Sight, Bigger Than You Thought, and Much Harder to Solve” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 11 May 2022, https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinas-digital-challenge-hidden-plain-sight-bigger-you-thought-and-much-harder-solve.
[13] See Alex He and Robert Fay. “Digital Governance in China Data, AI and Emerging Technologies, and Digital Trade,” Centre for International Governance and Innovation, 28 November 2022, https://www.cigionline.org/static/documents/2022_Workshop_Digital_Governance_in_China_NfVKbz9.pdf; Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2021); Matt Sheehan, “China’s AI Regulations and How They Get Made”Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 10 July 2023, https://carnegieendowment.org/files/202307-Sheehan_Chinese%20AI%20gov.pdf.
[14] G. Abels, “The Long and Winding Road from Asilomar to Brussels: Science, Politics and the Public in Biotechnology Regulation,” Science as Culture, 14:4 (2005), 339-353.
[15] I relate aspects of my experience, and how they inspired me to write the book, in the preface to China’s Next Act.
[16] A noteworthy exception, which I acknowledge in the introduction, is Ryan Hass, Stronger: Adapting America’s China Strategy in an Age of Competitive Interdependence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021).
[17] Several books pay special attention to climate change, including Barbara Finamore, Will China Save the Planet? (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2018. Kai-fu Lee presents a compelling, if at times simplified, account of how artificial intelligence (AI) is altering ties with the United States and other nations: Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018). Perhaps the book that comes closest to China’s Next Act is Damien Ma and William Adams, In Line behind a Billion People (Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press, 2013).
[18] See P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, A. Reisinger, R. Slade, R. Fradera, M. Pathak, A. Al Khourdajie, M. Belkacemi, R. van Diemen, A. Hasija, G. Lisboa, S. Luz, J. Malley, D. McCollum, S. Some, and P. Vyas, “Summary for Policymakers,” in P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, R. Slade, A. Al Khourdajie, R. van Diemen, D. McCollum, M. Pathak, S. Some, P. Vyas, R. Fradera, M. Belkacemi, A. Hasija, G. Lisboa, S. Luz, and J. MalleyJim Skea, et al., eds., “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change.” Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157926.001.
[19] Joanna Lewis, Cooperating for the Climate: Learning from International Partnerships in China’s Clean Energy Sector (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023).
[20] Moore, “Sino-American Competition and the Future of Climate Cooperation,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change 14(3) (January 2023) 821.
[21] See China Books Review, “The Intractable Nations,” 3 August 2022, https://chinabooks.review/china-next-act-scott-moore-review/
[22] Moore and Derek Scissors, “China’s Economy Might Not Be Headed toward Either Ascendancy or Decline,” Los Angeles Times, 21 April 2023, https://www.aei.org/op-eds/chinas-economy-might-not-be-headed-toward-either-ascendancy-or-decline/.