(Preview) The Final Biden-Xi Meeting; PRC Messaging to the World; Mass Attacks and the Party Response; Trump Transition Updates

Summary

Sharp China with Bill Bishop

Episode: (Preview) The Final Biden-Xi Meeting; PRC Messaging to the World; Mass Attacks and the Party Response; Trump Transition Updates
Date: November 20, 2024
Hosts: Andrew Sharp (A) & Bill Bishop (B)

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Episode Overview

In this episode preview, Andrew Sharp and Bill Bishop explore recent developments in China's domestic and international landscape. They discuss China's industrial overcapacity, surprising trends in the global tomato market, and—most urgently—the recent spate of violent mass attacks inside China and Beijing’s characteristic response of censorship and increased surveillance. The conversation weaves together economic, social, and political themes, offering insights into how the Chinese Communist Party seeks to maintain social stability amid growing challenges.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Chinese Industrial Overcapacity, Solar Panels & Global Energy Dynamics

• China’s approach to dealing with overcapacity is not just economic—it’s also framed as climate-friendly. Some Chinese thinkers, as Bill paraphrases, see exporting overcapacity (like solar panels) as both good business and climate action.
  • Quote (B, 00:12): “From the Chinese perspective … it’s also effectively a way to deal with, quote unquote, so-called overcapacity and things like solar panels.”
• Risks of global supply chain reliance: Andrew notes that while switching to cleaner energy is laudable, if this means critical supply chains are dominated by China, the world faces new security dilemmas.
  • Quote (A, 00:45): "It also raises security concerns. If the entire world shifts to energy that then is reliant on China for supply chain sourcing..."
• Historical lesson for America: Bill draws parallels between dependence on Chinese supply chains and the US’s historical reliance on Middle Eastern oil, suggesting caution about repeating past mistakes.
  • Quote (B, 01:06): "How much blood and treasure has the US wasted because of addiction to oil and reliance on Saudi Arabia and OPEC? And so why would the US do it again with another country?"
• Nuclear power investments: Both agree the US and China are pursuing nuclear energy, with Bill affirming, “China is way ahead in building nuclear power.” (B, 01:36)

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2. Tomatoes, Xinjiang, and Hidden Faces of China’s Export Machine

• China’s dominance in unexpected industries: Andrew shares a Financial Times story about Italy's tomato industry feeling threatened by cheap tomato paste imported from Xinjiang, highlighting the breadth of China’s export presence, even in traditional sectors.
  • Quote (A, 01:39): “China is estimated to account for nearly 23% of this year’s global tomato production…Chinese tomato paste costs half as much as Italian products.”
• Human rights context: He notes that part of the tension around Xinjiang tomatoes revolves around allegations of forced labor and abuses against Uyghurs, adding a thorny ethical dimension to the trade dispute.
• PRC’s competitive export regime: The anecdote underscores how the scale and diversity of Chinese exports now touch every corner of the world, not just high profile sectors like chipmaking or green tech.
  • Quote (A, 02:41): “This trade exists because it was just a reminder to me of how diverse and powerful the PRC export regime has become.”

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3. Mass Attacks in China: Censorship, Social Stability, and Surveillance

• Recent tragic events: The hosts somberly catalog a string of mass attacks: a car ramming outside a primary school in Hunan (injuries, no fatalities), a deadly car attack at a Zhuhai sports stadium (35 killed), and a knife attack at an eastern China college (8 dead, 17 wounded).
  • Quote (A, 03:40): “Three heartbreaking incidents in the span of a week.”
• Beijing’s response: Authorities employ swift censorship, restrict information dissemination, and suppress public mourning to prevent the events from fuelling dissatisfaction with the Party.
  • Wall Street Journal coverage is cited: “Authorities have been scrambling to restrict information and suppress public expression of solidarity, a sign of Beijing’s growing concern that these incidents could threaten social stability.” (A, 04:24)
• Lack of transparency: Bill highlights how motives for such attacks often remain obscure due to tight-lipped official statements and swift memory-holing of online evidence.
  • Quote (B, 06:48): “Part of the problem is when these kinds of attacks happen, they get censored pretty quickly. You get very brief statements from the local police... we don't know what the motives are.”
• Expanded surveillance and ‘preventive’ measures: Bill predicts that, in addition to technical censorship, the CCP will likely pursue expanded “preemptive interventions”—identifying and monitoring at-risk individuals via grassroots institutions.
  • He details the role of neighbor committees, the new Central Social Work Department, and informal neighborhood networks (“Chaoyang masses”) as part of China’s bottom-up surveillance strategy, especially revitalized under Xi Jinping.
  • Quote (B, 09:51): "You're going to end up seeing...not just technical surveillance, but actually more human intervention and human surveillance…because these kind of events, they can very quickly erode people's confidence in the party and in the system."
• Erosion of public trust: Both agree the Party’s principal fear is that repeated violent incidents could undermine faith in its ability to ensure order, thereby destabilizing its legitimacy.
  • Quote (A, 10:47): “You can definitely see a pretty clear line to a couple more incidents like this and fomenting popular discontent and lack of faith in the government.”
• Recommended reading: Bill suggests “Sentinel State,” a book by Pei Minxin about surveillance and social control in China, for listeners who want to better understand the CCP’s resilience and adaptability.
  • Quote (B, 11:10): “A good book… is ‘The Sentinel State’…on surveillance and the survival of dictatorship in China.”

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Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On the risks of international energy dependence:
  • “How much blood and treasure has the US wasted because of addiction to oil and reliance on Saudi Arabia and OPEC? And so why would the US do it again with another country?” (B, 01:06)
• On censorship and official information control:
  • “Part of the problem is when these kinds of attacks happen, you get censored pretty quickly. You get very brief statements from the local police… we don’t know what the motive is.” (B, 06:48)
• On China’s evolving system of surveillance:
  • “You're going to end up seeing...not just technical surveillance, but actually more human intervention and human surveillance…because these kind of events, they can very quickly erode people's confidence in the party and in the system.” (B, 09:51)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:12-01:41: Discussion of China’s industrial overcapacity and global energy security
• 01:39-03:25: China’s role in the tomato export market and links to Xinjiang
• 03:25-06:48: Overview of recent mass attacks in China and government’s information suppression
• 06:48-11:41: Analysis of the CCP’s expanded surveillance and grassroots social control response

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Takeaways

• China’s global economic footprint is expanding in unexpected areas, challenging Western producers not just in high technology but everyday commodities.
• High-profile incidents of social violence pose a unique threat to Beijing’s narrative of stability. The Party’s response leans on established tools of censorship, but increasingly on sophisticated, granular surveillance and intervention.
• The CCP’s resilience is rooted in its adaptability—strengthening and modernizing a “sentinel state” that blends technology with traditional neighborhood oversight networks guided by Xi-era policies.

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End of Preview Summary. For the full conversation and deeper dives on US-China relations and political transitions, listeners are encouraged to subscribe to the full podcast and newsletters via the links in the show notes.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Welcome to Sharp China. I'm Andrew Sharp and you are listening to a free preview of today's episode.

[B]

And it's this idea that it, from the Chinese perspective or from the argument that Huang is making is that it's also effectively a way to deal with the quote unquote, so called over capacity and things like solar panels.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, it's actually really smart if.

[A]

They can do it beneficial.

[B]

Right. And good for the climate. So we'll see if they actually figure out a way to, you know, maybe that's sort of the way they deal with instead of committing to, you know.

[A]

Why amount of billion dollars worth of resources. Yeah.

[B]

Which. Which they already have sort of can't sell anyway.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, and it is interesting because in some ways it's well intentioned, but it also raises security concerns. If the entire world shifts to energy, that then is reliant on China for supply chain sourcing. So that's part of the dilemma with all of this as we move forward.

[B]

And I mean, certainly from the US perspective, one of the lessons we should all have learned is, you know, how much, how much blood and treasure has the US wasted because of addiction to oil and reliance on Saudi Arabia and opec. And so why would the US do it again with another country?

[A]

Let's build more nuclear power is my takeaway from the last several years. And maybe we will begin to do that. China is doing that as well. China is very active in China's way ahead of energy.

[B]

China is, is way ahead in building nuclear power.

[A]

Indeed. So one story I wanted to mention, just because it was interesting to me as I prepped this week, Brad Stetzer, who was formerly at ustr, he shared this FT story on Twitter. This was the Financial Times in late October. An Italian tomato sauce magnate has urged Brussels to protect farmers from the unfair competition posed by cheap paste made in China's Xinjiang region and restore the, quote, dignity of Italy's staple red fruit. Francesco Mutti, chief executive of the eponymous maker of ingredients including Passada pulp and canned tomatoes, warned that Italy's tomato industry risked being undercut by tomato paste made by Chinese state enterprises in Xinjiang, where the UN Human Rights Commissioner has documented widespread human rights abuses against the local Muslim Uyghur minority, including forced labor. Beijing has denied the allegations. China is estimated to account for nearly 23% of this year's global tomato production, up from about 18% in 2023. According to the World Processing Tomato Council, Chinese tomato paste costs half as much as Italian products. I mentioned that only because I had no idea that China produced tomatoes anywhere near that scale, didn't know that the World Processing Tomato Council exists. And this story, it was just a reminder to me of how diverse and powerful the PRC export regime is has become. I don't imagine you have any hot tomato takes, but I wanted to mention it just to make listeners aware that this trade exists because I thought it.

[B]

Was interesting now and I think you don't mess with Italians in their tomatoes, right? Yeah, I mean, I haven't spent a lot of time in Italy. I'd love to spend more time and if we had an opportunity to do a sharp China about the tomato industry and the impact of China, we'd go in a heartbeat.

[A]

Talk about a national champion, the tomato and Italy. Yeah. I mean, for all the focus on like sexy technology like chips and solar panels or EVs, there are also just in the course of prepping for this show, there are minor stories about more traditional industries that are also being affected by PRC exports. So if anybody would like to read more about the tomato angst in Italy, consult the show notes for the FT article. So anyways, to keep things moving and on a more serious note, we will move to one of the biggest stories in China domestically over the past week. I'll read a headline from the Wall Street Journal, mass attacks in China prompt censorship and a clampdown on Mourning and they write, as China confronts a rare series of violent attacks, authorities have been scrambling to restrict information and suppress public expression of solidarity, a sign of Beijing's growing concerns that these incidents could threaten social stability. On Tuesday, a car rammed into a crowd of students and parents in front of a primary school in southern China, injuring several people, according to police and state media reports. The driver, a 39 year old man, was arrested and the police are continuing to investigate the case. None of the injuries were life threatening, the police said. This was the third similar mass casualty incident in roughly a week. Last week, a car plowed into a crowd at a sports stadium in southern China's Zhuhai, killing 35 and injuring dozens more. On Saturday, eight people were killed and 17 wounded in a knife attack at a college in Yijing, eastern China. In many other countries, news of such incidents would quickly overtake the news cycle and social media. In China, reports on them have been relatively brief, often largely sticking to what official statements said or just pasting a screenshot of police statements. Videos that appear to be taken at incident scenes were often quickly taken down from social media. Local authorities have been closely monitoring acts of mourning by the public and then you also highlighted a story from the Strait Times which noted that a week after the attack in Zhuhai last week, the victims and their families remain nameless and faceless to the public. The latest example of a well rehearsed Chinese playbook for security incidents where the authorities seek to control what can be discussed, ensuring that any dissatisfaction with the party and government does not brew. Bill, this is three heartbreaking incidents in the span of a week. Here are there tools beyond censorship that the government can deploy to try to prevent these tragedies. Obviously no one was killed at the school, but the video of that attack that I saw, if it was an attack, the video was pretty chilly. You could just see dozens of 6 year olds running away with their backpacks on.

[B]

It was awful. I mean these are all, you know, part of the problem is when these kinds of attacks happen, you know, they get censored pretty quickly. You get a very brief statements from the, like the local police about what happened. You don't really know what the motive is. You know, like the attack in Zhuhai where this guy drove around this track where there were groups of people who were exercising after work in these walking exercise, but in a sort of in a regimented way with it, with these like in clubs and officially they said that he was upset over a divorce settlement. One of the stories going around was actually he was his ex wife was, he was, he was going after her because she was in one of these groups because she had effectively taken like 10 million RMB from him and given it to her kids from a previous marriage. We don't know, we don't know what the motives are. You know, we don't know like the, like the incident today at this school, and I think it was in Chengde Hunan was. We don't know if it was an accident or it's intentional. You know, obviously there was the stabbing over the weekend was at a vocational school and it was a former student who had clearly he or his family had paid a lot of money to go to the school, but he still wasn't able to get a good job. And so I think he was basically this wit's end. And this was, you know, there was a manifesto going around that allegedly by him but not confirmed that, you know, said one of the things he was trying to make a point so that it would improve the labor law because he was, he had no recourse. And I think what's interesting, you know, there's the playbook of how they memory hold these events where very quickly it gets censored you can't talk about it. You can't go make any physical expressions of mourning. The people bring flowers, the flowers get taken away. But there's also, you know, since the Zhuhai attack, there's been. The Ministry of Public Security had an expanded party committee meeting to talk about effectively how to better, how to improve social stability and deal and prevent these kinds of mass incidents. You've had other parts of the legal system. Like today, there was a meeting from the. The party committee of the top prosecutor, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, also talking about these similar themes. And what ultimately is going to come out of this, though, is a lot more preemptive interventions where they're going to go out and they're going to identify people who may be considered at risk in terms of possibly in financial straits or having some sort of a civil dispute or going through a divorce, who may be more likely to go commit some sort of a. You know, one of the phrases is basically to get revenge on society. So they're going to preemptively go out and talk to these people, and they're going to do that through the various grassroots measures that the party has set up over the years and then has dramatically reinforced in the Xi era, where you have, you have your neighbor committees, you have this new central social work department that was set up after the 20th party congress. You have this reinvigoration of this concept of the Fung Chow experience, where it's basically the. It's mass work to deal with, addressing contradictions without arresting people. You've got, you know, last week they also talked about the models like the Chaoyang masses, which is effectively individuals in Beijing, China started in Beijing Chaiyuan district, where it's effectively a network of informants and people like, who sit on the streets. Sometimes they're retirees. Yeah. So I think you're going to end up seeing a lot, lot more of the kind of not just technical surveillance, but actually more sort of human intervention and human surveillance to the extent the system can do that, because these kind of events, they can very quickly erode people's confidence in the party and in the system. And that's what they're worried about. They're worried about a broader impact on stability and a broader impact on confidence in the system.

[A]

I mean, you can definitely see a pretty clear line to a couple more incidents like this and fomenting popular discontent and lack of faith in the government to be able to control these incidents.

[B]

Right. And, you know, that doesn't mean it's going to suddenly be like mass protests, but it's just like this becomes very corrosive very quickly.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And very.

[A]

And they're horrifying incidents. Yeah.

[B]

No, they're terrible. They're tragedies. Right. I mean, that's the thing. So one thing, one book, people. I'm sure you've read reviews, but I would recommend it. Is Pei Mingxin a professor? He has a good book. It's called the Sentinel State, that came out earlier this year. It's on surveillance and the survival of dictatorship in China. And a lot of the stuff he talks about in here, about how the party has rebuilt a lot of the grassroots mechanisms around surveillance and social monitoring, social control. I think they're gonna step all that stuff up to deal with these issues.

[A]

All right. And that is the end of the free preview. If you'd like to hear the rest of today's conversation and get access to full episodes of Shar China each week, you can go to your Show Notes and subscribe to either Bill's newsletter, Cynicism, or the Stratechry Bundle, which includes several other podcasts from me and daily writing from my friend Ben Thompson. I'm an incredibly biased news consumer, so I think both are indispensable resources. But either way, Bill and I are going to be here every week talking all things China, and we would love to have you on board. So check out your Show Notes. Subscribe, subscribe, and we will talk to you soon.