A Whistleblower Stands Up To China: A Conversation with Ashley Yablon

Think about how different the world is because of whistleblowers. Think about the impact of Daniel Ellsberg, Coleen Rowley, Sherron Watkins, Jeffery Weigand, and Karen Silkwood.

Each changed the trajectory of a company or a government for the better, and in doing so risked making their own lives so much worse.

So why do they do it? Why do some individuals put their own moral compass ahead of the risks of being a whistleblower?

Ashley Yablon might be able to answer some of these questions because he is a whistleblower. His information would have a profound impact on one of China’s largest technology companies. It would result in large fines for the company, but what impact did it really have, and was it worth what it cost Yablon?

Ashley Yablon joins me to discuss STANDING UP TO CHINA. 

My conversation with Ashley Yablon:

China and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century

It is impossible to understand the world today, without understanding China, the US China relationship and China's relationship to the rest of the world

Most of you have heard about the Butterfly Effect. The butterfly flapping its wings can impact events thousands of miles away. It may take a very long time, but the connection is real and If the butterfly had not flapped its wings at just the right point in space/time, the weather might have changed dramatically.

Regardless of your politics, the actions of the Trump administration with respect to China impacted the world. Trump relationship with Xi Jin Ping and internal conflict within the administration all shaped the world we wake up in every day

How that policy came to be, how the Biden administration might change it and and what really are the option going forward all all part of Josh Rogin’s book Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century.

My conversation with Josh Rogin:

China and Its Ongoing Industrial Espionage

There are so many stories today about the economic competition between China and the US. Competition in technology, in 5G in AI, and every other trendy high tech endeavor. However, the same competition exists in many other areas of industry, including the staid world of agriculture.

In fact, it is this world of genetically modified agriculture that may, more than the trendy tech, shape the future of the peoples of both China and the US.

It’s no wonder then that industrial espionage is rampant in this area and its national security implications go way behind missiles and planes and communication.

That’s the world that Mara Hvistendahl takes us into in her latest book The Scientist and the Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage

My conversation with Mara Hvistendahl:

Railroads and Highways and Ports, Oh My

We hear over and over in our domestic political debates about the need to improve America’s infrastructure, that to do so is good for business and in the big picture, good for the economy and a projection of America as a global leader. Certainly, LaGuardia Airport and the 45 years it took to build the Second Avenue Subway in New York are not good indications.

On the other side of the world, few countries have repeatedly taken on infrastructure projects as big as those taken on by China. From the movement of water to the transportation of people, the Chinese have seen infrastructure not only as good for its internal economy, but as a true projection of pride and power. Now, these projects have pierced the Chinese border in the form of China’s One Belt, One Road project. The question is, has China gone a railroad bridge too far?

This is the among the questions that Will Doig asks in his book High-Speed Empire: Chinese Expansion and the Future of Southeast Asia.

My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Will Doig:

#MeToo in China

We hear over and over again that the future belongs to China. Looking at what the Chinese are accomplishing in both infrastructure and technology, it’s easy to believe it. But what about in human relations and the issues of the gender wars?

As the #MeToo movement reshapes or recalibrates the nature of sex, work and gender relationships in America, it’s worthwhile to look and see how and if these same issues are playing out in China.

In China, an entire cadre of well educated and financially successful woman are taking their place. The result is that the deep, deep traditions of Chinese society are having to change in ways that are even more difficult and upending than all than all the physical changes China has endured.

Taking us through this journey is Economist correspondent Roseann Lake in Leftover in China: The Women Shaping the World's Next Superpower.

My conversation with Roseann Lake:

How History Has Shaped China's Push for Global Power

Just prior to Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, the then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, was asked how he thought the visit might turn out. He answered “for us, it is all right if the talks succeed, and it is all right if they fail.” A little inscrutable for sure. But also a reflection of a China that was very cautious about it’s place in the world. A nation focused on its own internal issues and that on the global stage, has seen it all.

It’s an almost unspoken sense of history. Of a nation that has seen its fortunes rise and fall. A sense of a scope of time, often unimagined in the West.

But today, that seems to be changing. China, now seems to want its rightful and earned place in the world.  Howard French helps us to understand this in Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power.

My conversation with Howard French:

The House That Jack Buiit

If I gave you all a quiz and asked you to name five tech visionaries and entrepreneurs in the US, you’d all pass. If I asked you to name even one visionary entrepreneur in China, the world's largest market, you’d probably come up empty. If you didn't, you’d probably name Jack Ma, the founder and leader of Alibaba.

The company recently went public in the largest IPO in history. It’s the largest virtual shopping mall in the world and it’s impact not just in China, but in the developing world, is profound and impactful both economically and politically.

Longtime businessman and journalist Duncan Clark takes us up close and person with Jack Ma in Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built.

My conversation with Duncan Clark:

China's Lust for Bordeaux and the Threat to the World's Wines

One of the guiding beliefs in foreign affairs is that no two countries that were actively engaged as successful trading partners, ever went to war with each other.

But what happens when two countries, two trading partners do not have parity on the production of a particular product, but have interlocking and conflicting needs, jealously, interests and misunderstandings? The results, can create a crisis on a global level..even if the product is wine.

That’s the story my guest Suzanne Mustacich tells in Thirsty Dragon: China's Lust for Bordeaux and the Threat to the World's Best Wines.  It’s the story of China's quest to become a global wine power, France's Bordeaux region seeking to hang on to past glory and China expanding its tentacles into places like the Napa Valley.

My conversation with Suzanne Mustacich:

Evan Osnos talks about his National Book Award winning, Age of Ambition

Perhaps it’s the idea of 1.3 billion people, or that half a billion have moved out of poverty in such a short time. Perhaps it’s that China has moved so rapidly to become the world's second largest economy. Or perhaps it’s the environmental degradation left in the wake of these accomplishments.

Perhaps it’s all of these things and more, that often block our view of the humanity of China. Yet it is a nation of individuals. Individuals with personal stories, aspirations and ambitions. People who have learned to deal with the contradictions and disconnects, between a vibrant, 21st Century economic system and a backwards, almost 19th century, political system. Ironic, I suppose that it even sounds a little like the US.

In the resolution of that disconnect, may lie the future of China, America and even the world as we know it. That the journey that Evan Osnos takes us on in Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

My conversation with Evan Osnos:

The new era of competition with China

Great powers ebb and flow. A random walk through history shows the Turks, the Germans, the British, the Japanese, the Spanish have all, at one time, shaped geopolitics. For most of the past century, America has stood atop the world. Now China, after three amazing decades of internal growth, is looking to secure its place in the world.

But is geopolitics a zero sum game? Does American influence have to wane in order for China to expand? Can China effectively shape and use its economic growth to expand its sphere of influence in Asia and Africa and as it does, how should the US respond?

Geoff Dyer, a veteran journalist who’s covered China for years for the Financial Times, examines all of this in The Contest of the Century: The New Era of Competition with China--and How America Can Win.

My conversation with Geoff Dyer:

You can't understand China today, without understanding this.

We know that for individuals, youthful pain, psychological trauma, and shame can have profound effects. It can be a driver to depression, or an engine of great achievement. Just as the high school nerd or scapegoat may spend his whole life trying to gain respect, achieve success or get the girl, the same can be true for nations and cultures.

For China, humiliated by the British in the mid 19th century and then by the Japanese, its modern history has been an effort to find a way to gain respect, to fill the psychological void left by its previous shame and humiliation. In the case of China, it’s been particularly difficult because of its size. To be weak is shameful, to be big and weak, hurts even more.

This idea provides the framework for China scholars Orville Schell and John Delury’s look as China's modern efforts to achieve Wealth and Power and China's Long March to the Twenty-first Century.

My conversation with Orville Schell and John Delury:

Dreaming in Chinese

For most us when we think about China, it's in the context of 1.3 billion Chinese people as a kind of monolithic nation and culture. We see a growing international power, a competitor and a confusing, almost alien landscape. Perhaps because its culture and language is so different, the only way for a Westerner to try understand it, is from the inside, to be a part of it and not outside looking in.

That is precisely what Deborah Fallows did during her three years living in China with her husband, the distinguished journalist James Fallows. Deborah has written a story that is part memoir, part travelogue, part psychological profile.  Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons In Life, Love, And Language should be required reading for anyone visiting or doing business with China.

My conversation with Deborah Fallows:

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Is this China's Century?

For over two hundred years we've lived in a Western centric world.  Modernity and progress have been defined as being Western.  Today China stands astride the world and the question is whether China becomes subsumed in Western hegemony or will the west bend to a new way, a new approach, a new paradigm of politics, business, culture and innovation?  These are just some of the questions raised by China expert and journalist Martin Jacques in his book When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order.

My Conversation with Martins Jacques:

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