Ep 83 - Beijing's new directive to its tech firms: behave abroad

About this episode

Chinese tech companies keep getting fined and blocked overseas – sometimes unfairly, and sometimes because they’re behaving exactly like they do at home. • Beijing just released a plan to fix both problems at once. Our take: “China’s nefarious plan to get its companies to obey overseas laws” is a Foreign Affairs headline just waiting to be written. On this episode, Trivium China podcast host Andrew Polk sits down with Kendra Schaefer (Head of Tech Policy Research) to unpack: • Why lumping AI labs, e-commerce platforms, and cybersecurity firms into the single regulatory category of “cyberspace enterprises” is a bigger deal than it sounds • The story behind AliExpress’s EUR 550 million EU fine, and why Chinese companies keep getting tripped up by rules they don’t fully understand • One vague line in the CAC’s latest policy doc that might matter most: Beijing says it will “regulate the overseas competitive behavior” of its own tech firms, with zero detail on how • Why cleaning up Chinese tech companies’ act abroad might get Beijing branded as the bad guy either way