Transcript: Decoupling, De-risking, and the Great U.S.-China Disconnect, with Supply Chain Expert Cameron Johnson

Below is a complete transcript of the episode. Thanks to CadreScripts for their great work, to Lili Shoup for checking and formatting, and to Zhou Keya for the image! Listen in the embedded player above.

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Kaiser Kuo: Welcome to this special live recording of the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, coming to you this week from Shanghai at the fabulous China Crossroads, China’s premier event series, and the brainchild of the most excellent Frank Tsai. Just a wonderful institution here in this awe-inspiring city. Let’s hear you make a little noise, Shanghai! Hello Shanghai! 

Audience: Woo! [applause]

Kaiser: All right! Ah, that’s what I like. That was amazing. I am Kaiser Kuo, and in this program we look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what’s happening in China’s politics, foreign relations, economics, and society. Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. Sinica is supported this year by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a national resource center for the study of East Asia. Thank you, Wisconsin!

Audience: Thank you! Woo!

Kaiser: Yeah. The Sinica podcast will remain free, but if you work for an organization that wants applause like you just heard, help me out. Ring me up, write me at sinicapod@gmail.com, and tell me how you can help out. 

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I am just thrilled to be joined here at China Crossroads by one of the best informed and most generous people I have had the pleasure to befriend in the last year. Before February, when we finally met in person in Salzburg, Austria, I had actually not ever met him in person. I had only admired him from afar, from a distance. And in person, he was everything I’d hoped he’d be, and much, much more. I think it’s fair to say, Cam, that we got on like a house on fire, yeah?

Cameron Johnson: Hopefully, it’s still going to stay on fire.

Kaiser: Yeah. We’ll just let it rage and burn for a long time. He’s easily one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve come across when it comes to making sense of this insanely fraught moment in U.S.-China relations, and really in this whole moment of upheaval over globalization because his area of expertise is in that very place where the rubber really meets the road — supply chains in China. Cameron has been an eyewitness over all his years in China to the erection of the dizzyingly complex system of manufacturing, globe-spanning logistics, just-in-time delivery — all the parts that together comprise the modern supply chain. 

He’s also been an eyewitness to the assault upon it, which began, of course, during the Trump administration, deepening with the pandemic with the PPE crisis and not subsiding, indeed arguably actually intensifying during the Biden years with aggressive export restrictions on tech goods and a lot more. We’ve all seen a whole new vocabulary emerge — decoupling, de-risking, friend shoring, nearshoring, as well as a raft of legislation that, in my opinion, has reached the level of moral panic. 

Thankfully, we have here Cameron. And Shanghai, you are incredibly lucky to have him in your fantastic city running his shop, teaching his classes at NYU Shanghai, and contributing to the great Substack called Decoupling, which I encourage you all to sign up for. That’s decoupling.substack.com. Cameron, my friend, great to see you here. Great to finally have you on the show. and thank you for everything you’ve done for me, not just here in Shanghai, but also in my trip to Beijing.