Editor’s note for May 8, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
Dear reader:
On Friday, we published a Q&A with the Wall Street Journal’s Lingling Wei on her recent stories about the increasing difficulties and dangers for foreign companies to do research in and about China.
This morning, a newsletter published by BigOne Lab, a China-based “data-driven provider of market research and analytics,” tried to pour cold water on the idea that China is becoming a “black box.” The newsletter says that the “reality on the ground” is that China is merely implementing data laws passed in 2022, and has “clearly stated who would be impacted, and how,” and that “data are still flowing in and out” of the country.
It’s always a good idea to get a reality check from sources operating in China, but the very next email I opened was from the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing think tank. The email contains translations of two Chinese media reports about an investigation by state security organs into Capvision Partners, a leading research firm based in Shanghai that provides information to many corporate clients in and outside of China.
One of the reports states that “some consulting companies…meticulously select, lure, and deceive experts and scholars in sensitive industries, enticing them to disclose internal or classified information.” This ultimately makes them “accessories to foreign espionage, bribery, and intelligence collection,” the report says.
This won’t reassure foreign investors.
For more on this subject, read or listen to this interview by Lizzi Lee with Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research.
Our Word of the Day is: accessories to foreign espionage, bribery, and intelligence collection (境外刺探、收买、套取国家秘密和情报的帮凶 jìngwài cìtàn, shōumǎi, tào qǔ guójiā mìmì hé qíngbào de bāngxiōng).
