On October 28th, the APARC China Program hosted a panel of experts for the panel "Caught in the Crossfire: Strategic Competition, U.S.-China Science Collaboration, and U.S. Universities." Reports of Chinese espionage, IP theft and military-civil fusion strategy have all fueled concerns regarding U.S. universities’ open research ecosystem, especially in STEM. Many of the concerns focus not only on research integrity but also on potential adverse consequences to U.S. military and economic security. The October 28th panel discussed open access to U.S. universities, security risks involved, as well as the potential adverse consequences of limiting international access in science and technology (S&T) research.  

The discussion began with Professor Susan Shirk, Chair of the 21st Century China Center at UC San Diego, who gave the audience an overview of current China science and technology policy and its relationship with US-China competition and universities. Shirk was followed by Arthur Bienenstock, co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Scientific Partnerships and Professor of Photon Science, Emeritus at Stanford. Bienenstock provided important perspective from the STEM side of this debate, arguing that collaboration with China--and other foreign countries--is vital and should be encouraged. Elsa B. Kania, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security's Technology and National Security Program, gave a different perspective, explaining China's "civil-military fusion" and why many in the United States consider it a threat. Finally, Tim Stearns, the Frank Lee and Carol Hall Professor in the Department of Biology, brought things back home to Stanford. As the Senior Associate Vice Provost of Research, Stearns was able to give a unique insight into university administration and how Stanford is approaching these challenges. The panel concluded with a discussion between the panelists of audience questions. Watch:

FSI Center Fellow at APARC Oriana Skylar Mastro joins NPR's Weekend Edition host Scott Simon to discuss the rising tensions between China and Taiwan and how the United States should respond.

Listen to the complete interview below. This conversation originally appeared on NPR's website.

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Speaking at the Shorenstein Award’s nineteenth annual discussion, which was held virtually due to COVID-19, Wright detailed the 1MDB story and its beginning with an unknown Chinese-Malaysian Wharton graduate named Jho Low, who allegedly set in motion a fraud of unprecedented scope and magnitude. An epic true-tale of corruption and greed involving heads of state and Hollywood stars and enabled by a raft of Western institutions, the story is the subject of Wright’s coauthored bestseller Billion Dollar Whale, based on his years of reporting on the scandal for the Wall Street Journal.  Mr. Low, who was indicted by U.S. authorities and by prosecutors in Malaysia, remains at large. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Wright’s exposure of the scandal has reverberated around the world. It was read by millions of people in Malaysia and sparked popular revulsion with the corrupt government of Prime Minister Najib Razak, leading to his shocking election loss in 2018. Wright’s revelations also shook the global financial system, underpinned investigations by law enforcement and regulators in six countries, and unveiled flaws of China’s Belt and Road signature program.

Accountability Journalism in Asia

“Tom Wright’s work represents the essence of accountability journalism,” said Jay Hamilton, the Hearst Professor of Communication, Chair of the Department of Communication, and Director of the Journalism Program at Stanford, who also serves as a member of the selection committee for the Shorenstein Journalism Award. “Wright takes the time, often enumerated in months or years, to discover facts about how institutions are operating. When his work is published, the world changes, debates ensue, individuals lose jobs or an election, policies are corrected, and there are people, often in Asian governments and Western companies, who wish they had done a better job of keeping their corruption secret.”

Wright is honored with the Shorenstein Journalism Award for his stellar reporting done over 25 years, mainly in South and Southeast Asia. A theme running through Wright’s work is the blight of corruption in Asia, abetted by Western organizations. In 2008, his investigation revealed how Indian wind turbine producer Suzlon, backed by U.S. investors, was hiding technology defects that made its turbines unsafe, leading to a collapse in the company’s shares. In 2011, he broke new ground reporting about the Obama administration's multibillion-dollar civilian aid program in Pakistan. He was one of the first journalists to arrive at the scene of the raid in which Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden. And in 2013, Wright spearheaded the coverage of the Rana Plaza factory disaster in Bangladesh, which killed over 1,000 people, exposing how international garment manufacturers turned a blind eye to safety violations to keep costs down.

A Triumph for Impunity

Five years after the 1MDB story came to light, however, almost no one has gone to jail. In Malaysia, Najib Razak was sentenced to 12 years in jail but is now in the process of appealing the case and continues to campaign in the meantime. In July 2020, Goldman Sachs reached a $2.5 billion settlement with the Malaysian government to resolve all criminal and regulatory proceedings in the country involving the firm, and on October 19, 2020, a day before the Journalism Award discussion, it was announced that the firm had reached a $2.2 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice. While the penalties will cost the firm about two-thirds of a year’s profits, Goldman will avoid the harshest sanctions that prosecutors had sought. And while a Singapore-based Goldman subsidiary tied to the misconduct was expected to plead guilty, no one at the parent firm will face criminal charges.

“I don't think any of this is going to deter the kind of behavior that enabled this scandal,” said Wright. “Goldman just had a record-profit quarter and, astoundingly, in my view, there is no criminal liability […] We’re seeing democracy challenged around the world and, having spent so long on the 1MDB scandal, I feel very strongly that this kind of enabling behavior by Western institutions in foreign countries with poor rule of law is one of the reasons why democracy is so badly rooted in these places. Western institutions need to be held accountable for their actions in these countries.”

The Role of International Media in Exposing Global Corruption

Wright’s discussion was followed by a conversation with Meredith Weiss, professor and chair of Political Science at the University at Albany, SUNY. Weiss has published widely on the politics of identity and development, electoral politics and parties, organizational reform, and subnational governance in Southeast Asia, with particular focus on Malaysia and Singapore. Her current research projects include studies focused on “money politics” and on democratic representation and political elites in Southeast Asia, as well as a monograph on Malaysian sociopolitical development.

In their conversation, Wright and Weiss addressed issues including the implications of current political trends in Southeast Asia for supporting or dismantling systems for accountability or anti-corruption, China's role in enabling corruption, how an international media outlet like the Wall Street Journal was able to carry forward the 1MDB story, the role of investigative journalism in battling endemic corrupt practice, and how the shifting media landscape — especially in the context of social media, changes in media freedom around the world, and the rise of “fake news” — affect this role in shedding light on corruption.

“It’s very important that journalists don't become pulled into the latest political trend,” said Wright. “And it's a very difficult fine line to balance. I think investigative journalism is in trouble. By the way, journalists don't call themselves ‘investigative journalists’ — we are just journalists who do our work, and if we're lucky enough to come across a big story, then so be it. But you need bosses [like I had at the Journal], who give you the space to do that kind of work, even though you don't necessarily sell more newspapers and more online subscriptions because of it.”

A Higher Standard

There have been some positive changes following the lessons learned from the IMDB scandal, such as pilot projects in the United States and in London to stop cash purchases from shell companies. Yet it is still too easy to get around such measures, said Wright. He concluded the discussion on a rather somber note, recognizing that the prospects for large-scale change are not bright. “If you've lived and worked in Asia, you know you can shake a stick in any direction and you’ll find corruption. What I learned through the process of working on the 1MDB story was just how complicit foreign institutions are in all of this. I guess I had a naive view, thinking that they had a higher standard of behavior. What I learned was that they only have a higher standard of behavior when there are rules in place to stop them from behaving badly. Maybe things can change, but I don't feel so optimistic about it.”

On September 29, the APARC China Program hosted Thomas Fingar and Stephen Stedman for the program “Rebuilding International Institutions.” The program, which was moderated by China Program Director Jean Oi, examined the future of international institutions such as the United Nations (UN), World Trade Organization (WTO), and World Health Organization (WHO) in our evolving global political landscape. While Fingar and Stedman acknowledged that such institutions facilitated attainment of unprecedented peace and prosperity after WWII, they also asked difficult questions: Are these institutions still adequate? And if not, how will we change them?

Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar kicked off the session by asking whether or not US-China tensions would impede cooperation on major global challenges, or if those challenges were so serious as to render such rivalries immaterial. Perhaps the most obvious example of such a crisis is the current COVID-19 pandemic. The efforts to curb the virus’ spread not only by individual countries, but also by international organizations like the WHO, have proven largely inadequate. According to Fingar, our existing institutions need to be reformed or supplemented to deal with these types of threats. However, such an overhaul of our international systems will be difficult, he says.

How, then, will we go about such a massive project? Stephen Stedman, Deputy Director at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), responded by explaining that the current failure of international cooperation makes such undertakings tough. Globalization has been a double-edged sword: On one hand, more contact, perhaps inherently, leads to increased tension. The resurgence of traditional notions of sovereignty in 2010, kickstarted by the opposition of countries like Russia and China to what was seen as UN overreaching, has led to a reduction of international cooperation overall. On the other hand, Fingar posits that our interconnectedness may force us toward cooperation despite rivalries as we face more and more transnational threats. International institutions create rules to organize and manage our many interconnected relationships so that we can deal with our problems effectively and reduce friction.

Stedman also pointed to the upcoming US elections and the major impact their outcome will have on how these problems are addressed—or not. In the last four year, the United States has pulled back significantly from international institutions and agreements, leaving a gap that China has started to fill. Furthermore, despite the US’s retreat from international responsibility, the country still remains a critical actor in global initiatives. China’s embrace of a global leadership role is not inherently negative, but its future relationship with the US will need to be “managed in a way that you get greater cooperation and not just paralysis.” Stedman says that it is likely that progress will need to be made on a bilateral front in order to have productive conversations about international issues with China.

Concluding on an optimistic note, Fingar voiced his hope that the current tensions and negative perceptions between rivals might ultimately “be mitigated by success in dealing with a common problem,” because “experience does shape perceptions.”

A video recording of this program is available upon request. Please contact Callista Wells, China Program Coordinator at cvwells@stanford.edu with any inquiries.