Confronting and Competing with China

The Hoover Institution’s research programs on China and Taiwan produced a rich selection of research and advocacy products concerning the region and America’s economic and diplomatic response in 2024. Teams published significant reports and books detailing the need to improve Taiwan’s defenses, described how to respond to a PRC blockade or invasion of Taiwan, and released a new podcast. With Hoover’s help and support this year, experts, activists, dissidents, and scholars all had opportunities to speak the truth about China’s activities at home and abroad.

Understanding China’s Domestic Circumstances

How does the Chinese public really feel about the CCP?

Hoover fellows Brett Carter and Erin Baggott Carter published a study in China Quarterly in January 2024 that found public support for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is between 50 percent and 70 percent, much lower than the 90 percent or more suggested by previous studies. Unlike previous studies, Carter and Baggott Carter conducted a series of experiments using statement lists instead of direct questions to gauge respondents’ level of support. Their work suggests that “preference falsification in China is widespread” and as much as 40 percent of the Chinese population holds a negative view of the CCP but is discouraged from any anti-regime activity due to high levels of state repression.

How China’s National Security Law Quashed Civil Society in Hong Kong

On May 14, Hoover brought together activists and experts to speak on the declining state of freedom in Hong Kong since the 1997 handover, with a particular focus on the PRC’s National Security Law effectively quashing civil society in the city. Sebastien Lai, son of imprisoned freedom activist and newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai, spoke about his father’s efforts, his subsequent imprisonment, and his chances of release. As of today, China holds more than 1,800 political prisoners in Hong Kong.

You can read more about the event here.

How the CCP Uses the Law to Silence Critics and Enforce its Rule

On September 19, Visiting Fellow Anna Puglisi testified before the US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party about how the CCP threatened legal action against her for her research into several Chinese biotechnology firms, their ties to the Chinese government, and how they receive unfair state support in the marketplace.

Read her testimony here.

Hoover Launches New Podcast: China Considered, with Elizabeth Economy

The Hoover Institution launched a new podcast in November to explore all facets of the great power competition between China and the United States, with the first episode asking how Donald Trump’s return to the White House will change that dynamic.

China Considered with Elizabeth Economy is a Hoover Institution podcast series that features in-depth conversations with leading political figures, scholars, and activists from around the world. The series explores the ideas, events, and forces shaping China’s future and its global relationships, offering high-level expertise, clear-eyed analysis, and valuable insights to demystify China’s evolving dynamics and what they may mean for ordinary citizens and key decision makers across societies, governments, and the private sector.

China Considered is hosted by Hargrove Senior Fellow Elizabeth Economy, an internationally renowned authority on the politics of the People’s Republic of China and Sino-American relations. Recognized by Politico magazine as one of the ten names that matter on China policy, Economy is a highly sought-after expert in the media and policy community and is author of influential essays and books, including most recently, “China’s Alternative Order” (Foreign Affairs, 2024), The World According to China (Polity, 2022) and The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State (Oxford, 2018).

Find all episodes here.

Countering China’s Malign Efforts Abroad

The Boiling Moat Launches with Strong Interest from Readers

Distinguished Visiting Fellow Matt Pottinger brought together many of the contributors to his book The Boiling Moat for a launch event at the Hoover Institution on May 30. They spoke about all the urgent steps needed to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from launching a blockade or amphibious assault on Taiwan. Pottinger said that US leaders continue to take a policy of appeasement toward Beijing and routinely discount the threat posed by the PRC to Taiwan and its 26 million inhabitants. On the week of June 3, Pottinger brought the book to Washington, speaking with policymakers and hosting a talk on Capitol Hill about the book with Hoover colleagues and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK). He also met with journalists, diplomats at the State Department, members of Congress, and other thought leaders to share the book’s findings.

At the time of this newsletter’s release, the Hoover Institution Press is preparing a second reprint of the book, citing strong demand. You can order a copy of it here.

New Leadership in Taiwan—the Challenges

Research Fellow Kharis Templeman, a member of Hoover’s Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region, spoke to Chris Herhalt about Taiwan’s next steps after its people elected Lai Ching-te to succeed Tsai Ing-wen as the island nation’s president. He also spoke about the risk of military confrontation between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China, energy problems, and domestic policy challenges in Taiwan.

Read the full Q&A here.

On Day One: An Economic Contingency Plan for a Taiwan Crisis

Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann and Cambridge University’s Hugo Bromley published On Day One: An Economic Contingency Plan for a Taiwan Crisis in June. In it, they outline a response plan for US policymakers to a blockade, invasion, or bloodless takeover of Taiwan by the People’s Republic of China. Instead of recommending “hard decoupling,” where the United States opts to break all or most trade and financial ties virtually overnight, they suggest “avalanche decoupling” in response to a Chinese move on Taiwan. In their scenario, America moves with its allies to slowly replace Chinese imports of all goods, re-shore and near-shore producers of vital items, and greatly diminish reliance on Chinese manufacturing over time. This option cushions the GDP impact on the US and other allied states and spreads it out over time, giving consumers, firms, and other entities more time to adjust.

On July 25, Freymann, Bromley, and members of Hoover’s China’s Global Sharp Power Project (CGSP) (which has now been incorporated into Hoover's new program on the US, China, and the World) launched the report in Washington, DC, after meeting with a number of members of Congress, diplomats, and government agents tasked with organizing America’s response to any future aggression against Taiwan by the PRC.

Read the report here.

Hoover Delegation Meets with Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te

On September 10, Hoover Institution scholars led by Admiral James O. Ellis Jr., Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow, met with Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te in Taipei. They spoke about Hoover’s studies on Taiwan’s security, the need for more resilient supply chains between Taiwan and the United States, and the partnership between the US and Taiwan to counter the global expansion of authoritarianism.

Read more about the visit here.

Hoover Institution Launches Program on the US, China, and the World

On October 1, 2024, the Hoover Institution launched its Program on the US, China, and the World (USCW). USCW delivers data-driven analysis and strategy about issues at the heart of the US-China relationship. The program is cochaired by Senior Fellow Elizabeth Economy and Distinguished Research Fellow Glenn Tiffert.

The program’s research agenda centers on three objectives:

• Developing a foundational understanding of the new domestic political and economic dynamics in China that are shaping Beijing’s capabilities and intentions
• Advancing US policymaking in the bilateral US-China relationship around technology, economics, national security, and competitiveness
• Creating strategies with partners to address shared challenges posed by China on the global stage

This agenda reflects a US-China relationship that is more contentious and complex than at any time since the normalization of diplomatic relations in 1979. China has become a near-peer economic, military, and political rival to the United States. It increasingly challenges US leadership in the Indo-Pacific region, disrupts global trade and investment through its nonmarket practices, and seeks to shape a new international order that is in several respects antithetical to US values and interests.

This new program will incorporate the work of the former China’s Global Sharp Power Project.

Read more here.

Competing With China on Trade and Technology

No Substitute for Victory: America’s Competition with China Must Be Won, Not Managed

In an essay published in Foreign Affairs on April 10, Matt Pottinger teamed up with outgoing US representative from Wisconsin Mike Gallagher to argue for a major reset in the White House’s approach to China relations. They argue that the United States should no longer try to manage its competition with China but should instead aim to win it.

Examining the Flow of US Money Into China’s Military Might

Matt Pottinger testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee concerning the flow of US money into China's military. He spoke alongside Jason Matheny, CEO of Rand Corporation, and Peter Harrell, nonresident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Pottinger talked about the various ways in which American private capital helps facilitate expansion and technical improvements to China’s military.

Watch his testimony here.

The CCP Absorbs China’s Private Sector

A report by visiting fellow Matthew Johnson documents the various ways the Communist Party of China (CCP) is structurally reforming the private sector of the country to expressly serve state interests. Prepared in concert with the Asia Society Center on US-China Relations, the report moves from the 2020‒2021 crackdowns on major firms, including Alibaba, Ant, and Didi Chuxing, to other ways the party is harnessing domestic private capital to further its own political aims. He charts the presence of complex and vast CCP organizations present inside China’s largest companies, entities that are rarely disclosed to foreign investors. The CCP’s treatment of domestic firms has already reduced US investment into the country significantly.

Documenting Chinese History

The 75-Year Quest to Make China Great Again (subscription required)

If outside observers think that China under Xi Jinping bears little resemblance to the systems set up during Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping’s eras, they need to think again, argues Senior Fellow Elizabeth Economy in a new piece published in The Diplomat. All three leaders desired a highly centralized structure of single-party rule; state control over the press, the judiciary, and other institutions; and a mixed-at-best economy. All of these tenets remain the same as they were when the People’s Republic of China was first established in 1949.

Read more here.

Defending Access to Li Rui Papers

Hoover Library & Archives Director Eric Wakin spoke to attendees of Hoover’s 2024 Fall Board of Overseers Meeting about a recent civil trial in Oakland where the widow of Mao Zedong’s personal secretary and longtime member and critic of the Chinese Communist Party—Li Rui—is seeking a court order to remove the memoirs of her late husband from Hoover Library & Archives’ collections. Li Rui gave the diaries to his daughter, Li Nanyang, to give to Hoover beginning in 2014. Wakin played an interview with Li Rui in which he spoke about how impressed he was with the Hoover Institution and its archival collections. “Li Rui wanted people to be able to read his diaries and that is why he wanted them to be at Hoover,” Wakin said.

Read the Li Rui Collection here.

Watch Senior Fellow Frank Dikötter, in a recent episode of Library & Archives' Reflections, discuss the value of the diaries in helping us understand the history of the Communist Party in China, and in particular, the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989.