David Barboza

How China’s offshore companies are registered, and what purpose they serve, has long been misunderstood by analysts and economists. But documents in the Pandora Papers, the offshore documents that were released this weekend by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, help shed light on the evolution of the VIE structure, the emergence of China as the most prolific creator of offshore firms, and perhaps most importantly, how the Chinese Communist Party came to rely on them. 

David Shambaugh talks about the difficulty of advising young people to go into the China field, the internal Chinese narrative about U.S. decline, and how Xi Jinping is a “modern emperor.”

Matteo Maggiori talks about the rise of China in the offshore world, and why its ‘mind-boggling’ that international investors have accepted China’s VIE structures.

Ken Lieberthal talks about the TPP, the unbalanced “pivot” to Asia, and the five missteps hurting the Biden administration’s China policy.

Fred Bergsten talks about China’s effect on the U.S. psyche, and why economic leverage doesn’t work to change China’s behavior.

Aaron Friedberg on why engagement was a gamble, not a blunder; what changed after Tiananmen; and why the U.S. should take a stronger line against China

Josh Chin and Liza Lin on what sets China’s use of surveillance tech apart, and how the building blocks of that tech came from the West.

Economics commentator Martin Wolf discusses why people have lost faith in their leaders, the risks of U.S.-China decoupling and how to deal with Beijing.

Bob Lighthizer explains why he thinks the U.S. got the raw end of economic ties with China, what he thinks of the Biden administration’s approach and why the U.S. shouldn’t do a trade deal with Taiwan.

Bob Davis reflects on his new ebook, Broken Engagement, the five year anniversary of the ‘China virus’, and what to expect from Trump 2.0.