China and the World Program's Podcast

While most attention has focused on Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, the big story of the past decade has been the reorientation of Russia from Europe to Asia. Centered on China but not limited to it, this abrupt shift made possible Putin’s anti-West behavior. In this book, Rozman, Christofferson, and several contributors present a comprehensive analysis of the turn “east.” Having penetrated the web of censorship in Russia (and China also) to grasp what is said about the actual state of Sino-Russian relations, the authors explain the duality of Russia’s ties to China: together against the US-led order but at odds over reconfiguring Asian regionalism.  The overall message combines two contrasting conclusions: Russia has increasingly joined with China in challenging the existing order in Asia, working to forge what Moscow calls a Greater Eurasian Partnership; and Russia and China have played a cat-and-mouse game of rival strategies that, on all fronts, have been difficult to reconcile. Without grasping this story, it would be difficult to understand why Putin has invaded Ukraine and is threatening the West. What makes this book exceptional?  First, it thoroughly covers four stages in Russian policy and seven directions ranging from Central Asia to the Sino-Russian border to the Korean Peninsula, Japan, India, Southeast Asia, and Mongolia. Second, this is a cohesive, cumulative account of what transpired, not a disparate, edited collection. Third, this book draws heavily on a record of more than 1000 Russian articles over a decade as well as familiarity with the publications from China, Japan, South Korea, and Mongolia. It tells a unique story of how both Sino-Russian relations and Russian thinking toward Asia have evolved, year-by-year through 2022. This book tells of Russian plans to forge a new architecture across Asia, from North Korea to India, in constant tension with China’s Sinocentric agenda.

Abstract: Many studies of China's relations with and influence on Southeast Asia tend to focus on how Beijing has used its power asymmetry to achieve regional influence. Yet, scholars and pundits often fail to appreciate the complexity of the contemporary Chinese state and society, and just how fragmented, decentralized, and internationalized China is today.  This talk points out that a focus on the Chinese state alone is not sufficient for a comprehensive understanding of China's influence in Southeast Asia. Instead, we must look beyond the Chinese state, to non-state actors from China, such as private businesses and Chinese migrants. These actors affect people's perception of China in a variety of ways, and they often have wide-ranging as well as long-lasting effects on bilateral relations. Looking beyond the Chinese state's intentional influence reveals many situations that result in unanticipated changes in Southeast Asia. This talk proposes that to understand this increasingly globalized China, we need more conceptual flexibility regarding which Chinese actors are important to China's relations, and how they wield this influence, whether intentional or not. Bio: Dr. Enze Han is Associate Professor at the Department of Politics and Public Administration, The University of Hong Kong. His recent publications include The Ripple Effect: China’s Complex Presence in Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press, 2024), Asymmetrical Neighbors: Borderland State Building between China and Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press, 2019), Contestation and Adaptation: The Politics of National Identity in China (Oxford University Press, 2013), and various articles appearing in The Journal of Politics, International Affairs, World Development, The China Quarterly, Security Studies, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies among many others. During 2015-2016, he was a Friends Founders' Circle Member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, United States. His research has been supported by the Leverhulme Research Fellowship and British Council/Newton Fund. He has been awarded the Distinguished Fellow on Contemporary Southeast Asia by the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Initiative on Southeast Asia in 2021. Dr. Han received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the George Washington University, and he was also a postdoctoral research fellow in the China and the World Program at Princeton University.

After one of the most dramatic presidential campaigns in Taiwan’s history, January 13, 2024 saw the election of Taiwan's William Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive. Stepping into this leadership position, Lai, who currently serves as vice president, will have to address a number of foreign policy challenges. They include: a deteriorating relationship with the People’s Republic of China; a United States interested in preventing a cross-Strait conflict; and countries around the globe seeking the expansion of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry. For the next four years, Taipei will likely continue to maintain the status quo and policies of current President Tsai Ing-wen. At home, Taiwan will also grapple with a number of urgent issues. Wages have stagnated, and youth unemployment has led to disillusionment. Other issues, such as economic diversification and the rising costs of living and housing, are areas that the new president will need to address. How will the new president confront these concerns – domestically and abroad? Are there prospects for deeper cross-Strait cooperation between Taipei and Beijing? How might the election impact the Indo-Pacific region and beyond? Join The China and the World Program in collaboration with the Weatherhead East Asian Institute for this crucial discussion on the future of Taiwan and its foreign relations in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election by a cohort of SIPA students who were in-country in the lead up to the election and several C&WP fellows.

Why do countries pursue security partnerships with the People's Republic of China?  In particular, why do we observe countries seeking security relationships with both the United States and the PRC?  Conventional wisdom argues that countries "don't want to choose" because they look to China for economics and the U.S. for security, but an increasing number of countries are choosing to pursue security partnerships with both countries simultaneously. What explains these cases?  We argue that the nature of the security goods provided by the US are different from those provided by the PRC: the U.S. tends to offer regional security from external threats, while China tends to offer assistance in bolstering regime security against internal instability.  Thus it is not just that countries "don't want to choose" between economics and security; they also do not want to choose between the security benefits provided by the US and the PRC, as benefits provided by the two countries are complementary rather than substitutive.  We demonstrate our argument through a quantitative comparison of security assistance and case studies of key countries that pursue defined security arrangements with both the US and China, spanning Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.  Our analysis of “third parties” enmeshed in great power competition offers comparative leverage on the nature of China’s overseas projection of its military and other forms of national power, illustrates a vital new characteristic of Chinese foreign policy, and call for a reconsideration of policies predicated on symmetrical security competition between the U.S. and China.

Research to date has shown that the international human rights regime is politicized. Despite claiming to uphold the normative standard, states tend to review their allies’ human rights records less harshly than those of their adversaries. I argue that the politicized human rights regime is a product of the major powers exploiting the review system. How can a major power like China improve its standing in the international human rights regime without improving its domestic compliance record? I demonstrate that China, a major power with little intention to comply with liberal-based norms, can use economic rewards to influence reviews of its human rights record, thus bypassing the human rights norms underlying the international monitoring system. By leveraging the time lags between sessions of the UN Universal Periodic Review, a recurring human rights monitoring institution, I show that China uses economic rewards to stimulate lenient reviews of its own record. After receiving development projects and debt relief, countries tend to be more lenient in their reviews of China’s human rights record. In contrast with the conventional wisdom that the authoritarian power’s hands are tied in a liberal norm-based regime, the Global South is more receptive to China’s voices in the human rights regime than expected. Lucie Lu (陆璐) studies international relations with a regional focus on China. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2023. Her research delves into China’s global influences in three international regimes: media, human rights and foreign aid. Her ongoing research endeavors explore each of these topics individually as well as their intersections. Her dissertation studies how power shifts have happened in unexpected areas where China possesses an obvious disadvantage because of its authoritarian regime characteristic and how it manages to earn status in social media, human rights and foreign aid regimes. Her research has received support from the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research as a Schroeder Summer Graduate Fellow, the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Illinois, EITM Summer Institute (2022), and the APSA Political Communication Section.

Technology transfer policies have long been an important and controversial element in China's foreign economic policy toolkit. What explains Chinese authorities' use of these measures, and why do they refrain from issuing them in some strategic high-technology sectors? I examine China's efforts to accelerate its economic rise through technology extractors, defined as policies that condition foreign market access on technology transfers to domestic firms. I argue weak enforcement capacity and China’s position in global value chains (GVCs) constrain its bargaining power over foreign investors, limiting the use of technology extractors even in highly strategic sectors such as semiconductors. Case studies and analysis of a new industry-level dataset from 1995-2015 suggest that strategic industries account for most of the increase in China's use of tech extractors after it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. However, when China occupies an intermediate position in global production networks, its reliance on foreign firms to drive exports and associated employment prevents it from issuing these measures. My findings illuminate how GVCs reshape the politics of bargaining over technology transfer between states and foreign investors, and how position in production networks influences the strategic choices behind China’s economic rise. Scaling the Commanding Heights: The Logic of Technology Transfer Policy in Rising China John David Minnich is a CWP fellow for the 2023-2024 academic year. He is a PhD candidate in Political Science at MIT, where his dissertation examines how China's position in global production networks shapes its pursuit of foreign technology transfers in strategic industries. Starting in Fall 2024, John will be an Assistant Professor of International Political Economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to MIT, John worked in political risk analysis and lived and studied in China for over two years.

The return of strongmen politics exemplified by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin has led many to question whether societal actors can influence the foreign policy of authoritarian regimes. Nevertheless, despite tightening authoritarian rule, there are vibrant societal debates about foreign policy in China. Scholars have identified societal actors capable of influencing China’s foreign policy. Some have even uncovered channels through which these actors can exert influence. However, the conditions under which Chinese societal actors shape China’s foreign policy are yet to be fully uncovered. The fact that there is no perfect transmission belt between official and societal constructions of China’s national interest makes considering the intervening effect of domestic structures necessary. Focusing on foreign policy experts working at Chinese think tanks and Chinese International Relations scholars, Sabine Mokry demonstrates how societal actors’ proximity to the state and the state’s openness to societal input facilitate and constrain societal actors’ influence on the construction of China’s national interest. Through close observation of changes in political institutions and state-society relations under Xi Jinping, she details how the state’s openness to societal input changed over time and in what ways it differed for think tanks and scholars. The talk is based on Sabine Mokry’s current book project, whose insights will allow us to reexamine Chinese societal actors’ influence on China’s foreign policy.

Abstract: Professor Wishnick will discuss her findings from published and forthcoming research on the war in Ukraine and Sino-Russian relations.  Her presentation will address what the war tells us about the parameters of a partnership that has been portrayed as “without limits” and explore the drivers of this relationship.  Although the war has been counterproductive for Chinese interests in many respects, Xi Jinping has stood by Vladimir Putin. Professor Wishnick will draw some conclusions about the domestic and geopolitical factors underpinning Xi’s continued support for Putin.

Abstract: How to overcome the “brain drain?” In 1999, Meyer et. al. proposed the “Diaspora Option,” where developing states mobilize their overseas nationals for help in development. In the mid-1990s, China’s hope for a “reverse brain drain” of overseas scientists, academics and entrepreneurs stalled. So, in 2001, Jiang Zemin introduced China’s Diaspora Option, labelled, “serving the country” (为国服务) without “returning to the country” （回国服务）. Party/State efforts include a wide array of programs to encourage overseas talent to transfer their knowledge to China. Institutions, such as hospitals, universities, research institutes, companies, and high-tech zones, see overseas talent as carriers of new technologies that enhance their domestic and foreign competitiveness. Many Chinese living abroad willingly comply, some to strengthen their former homeland, others from self-interest. In 2018, the Trump Administration declared war on China’s efforts through a McCarthy-like campaign called the “China Initiative.” This presentation documents the campaign, including several relatively unknown cases that highlight the downside of this initiative.

Abstract: China has been systematically developing renminbi-based financial infrastructures for nearly a decade. Initially, these measures aimed to facilitate a smoother international use of the renminbi, but recent events have promoted Chinese policymakers to accelerate such efforts despite that they have been cautiously against the idea of hastily internationalizing the renminbi. Deteriorating U.S.-China relations since the U.S.-China trade war and the West’s unprecedented collective sanctions against Russia following Putin’s war against Ukraine have driven China to hedge against the risk of U.S. sanctions by accelerating the development of a renminbi-based international financial system. President Xi has expressed China’s interests in expanding the use of the renminbi in international energy trade at the SCO Summit and China-GCC Summit in 2022. Ensuring China has the capacity to mitigate U.S. sanctions is also an indispensable prerequisite if President Xi Jinping were to use military force to reunite Taiwan with the mainland. This paper provides a deep dive into China’s de-dollarization initiatives through various Chinese financial institutions, regional blocs, and multilateral partnerships. It presents evidence that China has been making progress to hedge against U.S. sanctions without the intent to de-throne the U.S. dollar. Even if President Xi aspired to de-throne the dollar, the renminbi and renminbi-based system face significant constraints to achieve such aspiration. However, the rise of alternative non-dollar based financial system does accelerate the diversification of the international financial system and dilute the dollar’s dominance.   Zongyuan Zoe Liu is Maurice R. Greenberg fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Her work focuses on international political economy, global financial markets, sovereign wealth funds, supply chains of critical minerals, development finance, emerging markets, energy and climate change policy, and East Asia-Middle East relations. Dr. Liu’s regional expertise is in East Asia, specifically China and Japan, and the Middle East, specifically Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Dr. Liu is the author of Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System? (Cambridge University Press) and Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances its Global Ambitions (Harvard University Press).

A plethora of work on Chinese foreign policy has sought to decipher what China wants, what its strategies are, and how it implements (or fails to implement) its designs. These efforts have produced a number of sophisticated analyses that provide valuable insights into various aspects of Chinese international behaviour. Nonetheless, these advances in our knowledge have taken place against the background of an increasingly fragmented field. Indeed, there seems to be a widening degree of divergence between the conclusions of various analysts and scholars. Some see China pursuing long-term plans with remarkable patience, precision, and cunning. Others view Chinese foreign policy as suffering from myopia and fragmentation. Some describe China as behaving in ways that are not much different from other rising powers of the past. Others claim China is a new form of great power given its culture, form of governance, or economic and technological advances. In this talk, Prof Todd Hall—drawing upon a co-authored paper with Andrea Ghiselli of Fudan University—seeks to make sense of this diversity, arguing that there may be more complementarity among these approaches than may at first seem.

The China and the World Annual Conference. Held in 2023 at Columbia University

Conflicts over specific rules lie at the heart of the disputes, which are about much more than sovereignty over islands and rocks in the South and East China Seas. Instead, the main contests concern the strategic maritime space associated with those islands. To consolidate control over this vital maritime space, China’s leaders have begun to implement “China’s law of the sea”: building domestic legal institutions, bureaucratic organizations, and a naval and maritime law enforcement apparatus to establish China’s preferred maritime rules on the water and in the diplomatic arena.   Isaac B. Kardon examines China’s laws and policies to defend, exploit, study, administer, surveil, and patrol disputed waters. He also considers other claimants’ reactions to these Chinese practices, because other states must acquiesce for China’s preferences to become international rules. China’s maritime disputes offer unique insights into the nature and scope of China’s challenge to international order. Isaac B. Kardon is a senior fellow for China studies in the Asia Program. He was formerly assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College, China Maritime Studies Institute, where he researched China’s maritime affairs, and taught naval officers and national security professionals about PRC foreign and security policy. Isaac’s scholarship has centered on China’s development of maritime power, with research on China’s maritime disputes and law of the sea issues, global port development, and PLA overseas basing; China-Pakistan relations are another area of special focus. His writing appears in International Security, Security Studies, Foreign Affairs, the Naval War College Review, and other scholarly and policy publications. Isaac’s book, China’s Law of the Sea: The New Rules of Maritime Order (Yale, 2023), analyzes the extent to which China is “making the rules” in regional and global orders.  At Carnegie, Isaac will build on the foundation of his research on China in the maritime commons to explore China’s influence on the wider global commons. Subsea, space, and cyber domains, in particular, are important “frontier issues” prioritized by China’s leadership—and key sites to observe China’s influence on vital global rules, norms, and standards. He will also expand “past the pier,” following an existing stream of research on PRC port development to explore the data networks that accompany China’s robust and growing position in global maritime trade and transport networks.

The literature on climate security identifies two basic categories of climate risk. The first relates to extreme weather events and other geophysical impacts that directly affect human lives and well-being. The second relates to the cascading institutional and social consequences of geophysical impacts, which can include migration and conflict. I establish the existence of a third kind of climate security problem: anticipatory adaptation to climate change impacts that have not yet taken place, which triggers security dilemmas between great powers and creates new forms of interaction between great powers and small states. I theorize the phenomenon and characterize it empirically with American, Russian, and Chinese scholarly and policy documents and field interviews in Greenland.  Eyck Freymann is a joint Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Belfer Center's Arctic Initiative and the Columbia–Harvard China & the World Program, where he researches the geopolitics of climate change. He is also a Non-Resident Research Fellow with the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College.  His first book, One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World, was published by the Harvard Asia Center Press in 2020. His writings on U.S.–China relations and other current affairs topics have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, The Economist, Foreign Policy, and The Atlantic. As a reporter and columnist for The Wire China, he is also the author of “The Warming War,” a series of reports on the breakdown in climate diplomacy and its implications for the planet and the U.S.–China relationship.

Abstract: Scholars increasingly interpret overseas investment as a form of economic soft power, swaying local public opinion to favor the investing firm’s home country. Conceptualizing soft power as a function of both influence and affinity, this study examines how citizens react when firms from major foreign powers – and from their prominent rival – invest locally. Using a unique dataset of over 750 geolocated Chinese and US FDI projects in 23 countries in Africa and connecting those projects to survey responses from over 37,000 citizens, we demonstrate that citizens assign greater influence to major powers whose firms invest locally and reduce the influence they extend to the major power’s rival. Importantly, however, the influence that countries derive from their firms’ overseas investments in Africa cannot be likened to greater affinity: proximity to Chinese and US foreign direct investment (FDI) projects decreases rather than increases citizens’ preferences for the respective country’s development approach, even as it increases their perceived influence. The findings suggest that investing powers are viewed more as heavy-handed bosses than supportive partners, and that FDI thus may not provide a straightforward path to soft power.

Alliance balancing strategies—policies of a great power to divide hostile alliances and maintain its own alliances—are important tools to influence a target’s alignment and tip the balance of power. Among other great powers, China frequently uses alliance balancing strategies to maintain its sphere of influence. When choosing these strategies, China has three options: accommodation, coercion, and “wait and see.” How does China choose among these options? Using archives and government documents, this research shows that two factors—China’s leverage over the target state and its perceived threat from the target-adversary alignment—determine China’s choices. This research evaluates the theory by examining two cases in which China chose its alliance balancing strategies toward North Korea in the 1960s and toward South Korea in the 2010s. Findings of this research further our understanding of alliance dynamics and shed light on the logics of China’s behavior in great power competition

In 1952, John T. “Jack” Downey, a twenty-three-year-old CIA officer from Connecticut, was shot down over Manchuria during the Korean War. The pilots died in the crash, but Downey and his partner Richard “Dick” Fecteau were captured by the Chinese. For the next twenty years, they were harshly interrogated, put through show trials, held in solitary confinement, placed in reeducation camps, and toured around China as political pawns. Other prisoners of war came and went, but Downey and Fecteau’s release hinged on the United States acknowledging their status as CIA assets. Not until Nixon’s visit to China did Sino-American relations thaw enough to secure Fecteau’s release in 1971 and Downey’s in 1973. Lost in the Cold War is the never-before-told story of Downey’s decades as a prisoner of war and the efforts to bring him home. Downey’s lively and gripping memoir—written in secret late in life—interweaves horrors and deprivation with humor and the absurdities of captivity. He recounts his prison experiences: fearful interrogations, pantomime communications with his guards, a 3,000-page overstuffed confession designed to confuse his captors, and posing for “show” photographs for propaganda purposes. Through the eyes of his captors and during his tours around China, Downey watched the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the drastic transformations of the Mao era. In interspersed chapters, Thomas J. Christensen, an expert on Sino-American relations, explores the international politics of the Cold War and tells the story of how Downey and Fecteau’s families, the CIA, the U.S. State Department, and successive presidential administrations worked to secure their release. ABOUT THE AUTHORS John T. Downey (1930–2014) was the longest-held prisoner of war in U.S. history. He went on to serve as commissioner of the Department of Public Utilities for the state of Connecticut and as a Connecticut Superior Court judge. In 2013, the CIA awarded Downey the Distinguished Intelligence Cross, the agency’s highest honor. Thomas J. Christensen is the James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations and the director of the China and the World Program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He served as deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 2006 to 2008, and his books include The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power (2015). Jack Lee Downey is the John Henry Newman Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at the University of Rochester. He is the author of The Bread of the Strong: Lacouturisme and the Folly of the Cross, 1910–1985 (2015).

Book Talk by Susan Shirk For three decades after Mao’s death in 1976, China’s leaders adopted a restrained approach to foreign policy. To facilitate the country’s inexorable economic ascendence, and to prevent a backlash, they reassured the outside world of China’s peaceful intentions. Then, something changed. China went from fragile superpower to global heavyweight, muscling its way around the South China Sea, punishing countries that disagree with China, intimidating Taiwan, tightening its grip on Hong Kong, and openly challenging the United States for preeminence not just economically and technologically but militarily. China began to overreach.   Combining her decades of research and experience, Shirk, author of the hugely influential China: Fragile Superpower, argues that we are now fully embroiled in a new cold war. Shirk shows the shift toward confrontation began in the mid-2000s under the mild-mannered Hu Jintao. As China’s economy boomed, especially after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, Hu and the other leaders lost restraint, abetting aggression toward the outside world and unchecked domestic social control. When Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he capitalized on widespread official corruption and open splits in the leadership to make the case for more concentrated power at the top. In the decade following, and to the present day, Xi has accumulated greater power than any leader since Mao. Those who implement Xi’s directives compete to outdo one another in fervor, provoking an even greater global backlash and stoking jingoism within China on a scale not seen since the Cultural Revolution. To counter overreach, she argues, the worst mistake the rest of the world, and the United States in particular, can make is to overreact.  (The verbiage above is from the publisher of Overreach and is not reflective of or endorsed by CWP or Columbia University) Susan Shirk is a Research Professor and Chair of the 21st Century China Center at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, UC San Diego. Shirk is the author of China: Fragile Superpower, and The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China. From 1997-2000, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, with responsibility for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia.’ Panel Discussion Following book talk: Thomas J. Christensen is the James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations and Director of the China and the World Program at Columbia University.  He arrived in 2018 from Princeton University where he was William P. Boswell Professor of World Politics of Peace and War, Director of the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, and faculty director of the Masters of Public Policy Program and the Truman Scholars Program.   From 2006-2008 he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs with responsibility for relations with China, Taiwan, and Mongolia. Susan A. Thornton is a retired senior U.S. diplomat with almost three decades of experience with the U.S. State Department in Eurasia and East Asia. She is currently a Senior Fellow and Visiting Lecturer in Law at the Yale Law School Paul Tsai China Center. She is also the director of the Forum on Asia-Pacific Security at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. John K. Culver is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub and a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) senior intelligence officer with thirty-five years of experience as a leading analyst of East Asian affairs, including security, economic, and foreign-policy dimensions. Previously as national intelligence officer for East Asia from 2015 to 2018, Culver drove the Intelligence Community’s support to top policymakers on East Asian issues and managed extensive relationships inside and outside government.

What can we expect for the US-China relationship in the aftermath of key upcoming political milestones in the two countries — the Party Congress and the U.S. Midterms?  Is a Xi-Biden Summit likely to take place on the margins of the G20 and what will that likely produce?

For status quo powers interested in stabilizing the security environment, informally adapting existing law is easier and quicker than formally bargaining over new law. But policymakers and pundits routinely bemoan the inability of "thin" international institutions like arms control -- where the stakes for war and peace are highest -- to keep pace with technological change. Opportunistic actors, it is believed, see technology as both the means and motive to evade their institutional commitments, especially in institutions that lack a standing bureaucracy or dispute settlement mechanism. In practice, however, many of our "thinnest" institutions have proven remarkably resilient to technological breakthroughts that disproportionately benefit certain states. Controversy over emerging technologies is certainly common, but why is it not ubiquitous?To answer this question, legal professionals in the US and China are commissioned to write long-form advisory briefs about a legally questionable satellite technology. Decisionmakers routinely rely on legal experts to make determinations about what kinds of technologies are compliant with international obligations, though the training and role of these experts varies by country. Technological novelty, the linguistic specificity of a reference law, and fiduciary incentives are randomly varied along 2^3 factorial-controlled conditions. In the US sample, statistical and text analytic results strongly support the theory that specificity, though better at limiting deviations in the near-term, performs worse in environments where technology moves quickly and unpredictably. Since the US has traditionally advocated for more specificity in international law, the findings help explain US behavior toward recent Chinese technological advances. Pending results from a second wave, likely implications for China's approach are discussed.