Why Should We Care if America Pulls Back While China Pushes Out? | with Shannon Brandao

In this compelling episode, hosts Ray Powell and Jim Carouso interview Shannon Brandao – attorney, Mandarin speaker, and founder of the China Boss Substack – to explore China's expanding influence even as America appears to turn inward. Broadcasting from Europe, Brandao delivers her unique insights on Chinese Communist Party strategy, economic challenges, and geopolitical ambitions.

Brandao emphasizes that perception easily becomes reality, in that when America appears to withdraw, China seizes opportunities to expand influence through economic leverage and promises of stability. This directly impacts Indo-Pacific supply chains controlling critical minerals, batteries, and essential products that Americans depend on daily.

Rejecting claims that China seeks only regional stability, Brandao explains that the Chinese Communist Party operates from a paranoia that requires control to ensure regime survival. Under Xi Jinping, ruling "red aristocrats" fear vulnerability to external powers, and even successful Chinese entrepreneurs like Jack Ma, leading to enterprise nationalization and tight party control over innovation.

While China faces economic headwinds, including debt, demographic challenges, and declining GDP, Xi Jinping has successfully modernized the military. Still, China's unreliable economic statistics mask systemic problems, with Communist Party interference undermining potential innovation, even despite a tremendous national talent base.

China exercises strength in strategic sectors—solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles, shipbuilding, and artificial intelligence—through massive subsidies, but this creates a chronic overcapacity problem. Local government subsidies benefit politically connected firms like Huawei, creating quasi-monopolies across industries: steel, aluminum, cement, telecom gear, plastics, fertilizers, construction equipment, etc. Endemic corruption further dilutes programs, with billions disappearing from AI innovation funds.

Companies attempting to leave China face complex challenges. When signaling departure, employees report to Party and government officials, triggering shakedowns through exit bans and extortionate demands. Recent surveys show companies staying but withholding investment and hedging elsewhere. For firms that do leave, repatriating profits and protecting intellectual property depends entirely on relationships with local government officials.

Asked for what advice she would give to President Trump before meeting Xi Jinping at the upcoming APEC Summit, Brandao warns that Xi will use flattery while masking the geopolitical reality, and that failing to press American interests in the Indo-Pacific creates vacuums China eagerly fills.

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👉 Sponsored by BowerGroupAsia, a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific