DeepSeek’s Collision Course with Xi

Posted on March 5, 2025 by Assistant Editor

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 13, No. 3, March 2025

By Vaibhav Panwar

President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing, 5 September 2024. Source: President Paul Kagame via Flickr.

Fresh from the highs of DeepSeek’s ‘Sputnik moment’ in the AI race, Xi Jinping hosted a rare meeting with the titans of industry — notably the tech sector — in Beijing on February 16th. The event was attended by heads of BYD, Huawei, Deepseek, and other stalwarts. However, amidst these giants stood a tiny man with a big pedigree: Jack Ma. The tech baron from Hangzhou, who once pulled the strings of one of China’s largest tech conglomerates, The Alibaba group, is renowned for his influence. The company had its fingers in profitable pies like online wholesaling, e-commerce, and online transactions. Its fintech arm, Alipay, had racked up north of a billion users by the end of 2020. Ma was having a dream run: in October 2014, he found himself on the front page of newspapers around the world when the recently concluded Alibaba IPO breached the $25 billion mark – the biggest ever— leaving the world in awe of his role as the symbol of Chinese entrepreneurial spirit and China’s sprawling economy. Ma’s empire was firing on all cylinders; on single’s day 2019 — China’s answer to Black Friday — Alibaba and its subsidiaries did $38 billion in sales in 24 hours. Now, fast-forward to fall 2020: another Alibaba entity, ANT Group, was about to go public, all set to raise north of $35 billion based on the pre-subscriptions. The largest stock-offering in history was set to take place in Shanghai, creating a landmark moment for the Chinese economy, and cementing Ma’s status as one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs. Beijing, however, was not so comfortable with the market consolidation of the tech giant from Hangzhou — or for that matter — the public criticism lobbed by Ma against Chinese banks at Shanghai’s Bund Conference. To nobody’s surprise — besides, perhaps his own — Jack Ma was called in for regulatory meetings by the Chinese central bank (PBOC) shortly after his remarks. Soon, the Chinese regulators would go on to pull the plug on the IPO right before the launch day, which was widely believed to be a disciplinary move against Ma over his comments. Ma was subsequently gone from the public eye, until he popped up in Japan a couple of years later.

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The Risks of AI: An Interview with Georgetown’s Helen Toner

Posted on January 14, 2022 by Assistant Editor

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 10, No. 1, January 2022

Helen Toner, Director of Strategy at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.
Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

The JPR interview with Helen Toner, the Director of Strategy at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University, was conducted via email between 4 January 2022 and 13 January 2022.

Corr: What are the national security risks and benefits of AI?

Toner: This is a huge question! AI is a general-purpose technology, meaning that—like electricity or the computer—its impacts will be felt across practically all industries and areas of society. Accordingly, it presents a huge range of potential risks and benefits from a national security perspective. One way of trying to summarize the possibilities might be as follows: the benefits will largely be in line with the kinds of benefits we have seen from increasingly sophisticated computing technology more generally: greater efficiency and accuracy, as well as the ability to perform tasks at scales impossible for humans (think: how Google search trawls the web). In terms of risks, one breakdown proposed by Zwetsloot and Dafoe is to think in terms of risks from accidents (i.e. unintended outcomes from using AI), misuse (i.e. the deliberate use of AI to cause harm), and structural changes (i.e. how progress in AI shapes surrounding systems and dynamics). I realize this is fairly abstract, but it’s impossible to enumerate specific risks without narrowing the scope to particular application areas, time frames, and actors.

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Chinese Communist Party Cooperation with Gangs and Politicians in Canada: Book Review

Posted on May 23, 2021 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 9, No. 5, May 2021

The book cover depicts the words "Wilful blindness" in white against a red backdrop and a world map in black.

The book cover of Wilful Blindness, by Sam Cooper.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.

Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

Wilful Blindness How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons and CCP agents Infiltrated the West, by Sam Cooper, Optimum Publishing International, 2021, $28.95 CAD.

An investigative reporter in Canada, Sam Cooper, is at the tip of the spear, where China injects money, drugs, spies, and underage prostitutes into all of North America. Cooper provides us with a front-row seat of China’s espionage, drug supercartels, support to terrorism, money laundering, and, for a pledge of support to Beijing, campaign donations to the politicians who lurk around China’s United Front groups in Vancouver, Toronto, and Ottawa. Add to that investigations of trafficking in weapons. Heads of state, including Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau, are linked by the author to the nefarious characters from China who are doing this dirty business.

It sounds too crazy to be true.

But Cooper’s new book, Wilful Blindness, is nonfiction, and based on five years of his investigative reporting on the topic, and confidential sources in Canadian intelligence and police agencies. It vindicates, and brings up to date, a joint Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) report that in 1997 made many of the same claims. That report, called “Sidewinder”, was suppressed by Ottawa, which at time was trying to ink new trade deals with Beijing.

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Nasif Ahmed: Hong Kong Independence

Posted on September 5, 2019 by admin

The cartoon depicts a man in a construction helmet, alongside others, running from a green blast title "independence".

“Hong Kong Independence”, by Nasif Ahmed.

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Democratizing China Should Be The U.S. Priority

Posted on July 10, 2019 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 7, July 2019

A very large crowd is depicted from above, flanked by trees. Skyscrapers are visible in the background.

Hong Kong protest, June 2019. Source: Flickr.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.
Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

U.S. goals in relation to China, our biggest national security threat, tend to array along three main axes: military, diplomatic, and economic. But in deference to the failed strategy of engagement, we don’t use the significant normative and ideological power of democratization as a multiplier on these battlefields, nor does the prospect of democratizing China factor sufficiently in our cost-benefit analyses.

Militarily, we prioritize defense from China, but other than ongoing military support to Taiwan and the Tibet campaign of 1957-72,^[1] we have not used our substantial military resources to promote democracy in China, for example in the rebellious zones of Xinjiang or Hong Kong. Economically, we prioritize U.S. market share in China, IP protection, and beating China’s GDP, technology and industrial strength. But we don’t condition our China trade on our lowest priorities, human rights and democracy.

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