High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy

In High Wire, Angela Zhang explores how China regulates its tech sector. By analyzing the incentives and interactions among the key players, Ms. Zhang introduces a dynamic pyramid model to analyze the structure, process, and outcome of China’s unique regulatory system. She showcases the self-regulatory tactics employed by Chinese tech titans to survive and thrive in an institutional environment plagued by fraud and corruption. The 2020-2022 tech crackdown led to the private sector’s retreat and the state’s advancement in the tech industry. These regulatory shifts have also steered investors from consumer tech businesses toward hardcore technologies that are essential for China’s bid to match, and perhaps overtake, the United States in innovation.

In an interview conducted on May 24, 2024, Angela Zhang, in conversation with Winston Ma, focuses on the recent past, present, and future of China’s tech governance, especially in the realm of generative artificial intelligence.

Speaker

Angela Zhang

Angela Zhang has written extensively on Chinese tech regulation. She is the author of Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism: How the Rise of China Challenges Global Regulation (2021) and High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy (2024). She is currently conducting research on the regulation of artificial intelligence. She has published in major international law journals as well as in journals in other disciplines such as Management Science and the China Quarterly.

Before joining the University of Hong Kong in 2017, Ms. Zhang taught at King’s College London and practiced law in the United States, Europe, and Asia, serving as a bankruptcy lawyer New York and as an antitrust attorney in Brussels. She will join the University of Southern California Law Faculty in summer 2024.

Ms. Zhang received her LLB from Peking University, and her LLM, JD, and JSD from the University of Chicago Law School

Moderator

Winston Ma

Winston Ma is an investor, attorney, author, and adjunct professor. He is a partner of Dragon Global, an AI-focused family office, and chairman of the board of MCAA. He is also chairman and co-founder of ALPHA Technologies, an AI conversational artifact startup, and an adjunct professor at the NYU Law School on sovereign wealth funds.

Previously, Mr. Ma was managing director and head of the North America office of China Investment Corporation (CIC), China’s sovereign wealth fund. Prior to that, he served as deputy head of equity capital markets at Barclays Capital, vice president at J.P. Morgan, and a lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. Mr. Ma is the author of more than 10 books on sovereign wealth funds, China, and global digital economy.

Mr. Ma received his MBA from the University of Michigan, his LL.M. from NYU, and his B.S. and LL.B. degrees from Fudan University.