Great Powers and New Risks: What Businesses and Regulators Should Know about China’s Strategic Ambitions

Abstract

China’s geopolitical ambitions give rise to risks that government agencies and the businesses they regulate need to address. In particular, Military-Civil Fusion (MCF), a whole-of-government legal and administrative machinery created by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), aims to give China’s military, as well as China’s state- championed companies, the technologies essential to strategic competitiveness in the decades ahead. In service of China’s effort to acquire technology, MCF breaks down barriers of professional responsibility and confidentiality that organizations and individuals in the West take for granted. Through both executive and legislative action, the United States has begun to address MCF. To continue benefitting from opportunities that China presents, those who do business in or with China therefore need both to heighten their situational awareness when they transact with Chinese partners and to increase their familiarity with the responses that United States regulators now are developing.

Keywords: Business, Investment, Finance, Regulation, Courts, Risk, China, Military Civil Fusion, Great Powers Competition, Trade

JEL Classification: F1, F13, F2, F23, F5, F52, K2, K22, K23, K33, K41, K42, M16