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Isaac Stone Fish is the founder and CEO of Strategy Risks, a company that quantifies and analyzes business’ exposure to China. Previously, he served as a Beijing correspondent for Newsweek before becoming Foreign Policy’s Asia editor. His journalism and commentary have appeared in CBS News, The Washington Post, Barron’s and more. His first book, America Second: How America’s Elites Are Making China Stronger, was published in February and excerpted in The Wire.

Q: You started your China career as a literary agent. Was writing about China always the goal for you, or did you just want to be in China at the time?

A: I just wanted to be in China. I started going to China when I was 17. I spent a summer in Tibet with this program called “Where There Be Dragons.” We were supposed to go to Sikkim and Bhutan, but India and Pakistan were near war. So they sent us to Tibet instead. The first time I went to China was in Xinjiang, so I spent a summer in Xinjiang driving around in 2001 and got the bug. I started studying it in college and always knew that I was going to move there. That literary agency role was sort of a lark but it worked out; I did that for a few years. Then I had a brief, disastrous stint as a sales and marketing manager for a research company, and then decided that I wanted to be a journalist.

How did you fall into journalism? Was there anything in particular that happened that made you realize you wanted to work as a journalist?

I really liked the journalists who were living in Beijing, and as a literary agent, part of my job at the time was to try to cultivate them and see if I could represent any of them for the books they were writing. I realized that I had a serious case of journalist envy. And I had always been a big reader. And so writing myself seemed like a natural step. Possibly my first published article, or one of my first, was in City Weekend. And I wrote a review of a fair — ‘A Fair to Remember’ I think they called it. And it was so, so exciting just to get published anywhere. I still remember that very clearly. 

It seems like at the beginning of your career, you were doing a lot more life and society pieces about China. In the last several years, you’ve been writing much more about business, taking a stronger stance on U.S. interaction with China. What led to that shift in your interest?

A big part of it has been the progression of U.S.-China relations. Part of it is the way I see things now from the United States. And part of it is an awakening that I had about Beijing, and it’s hard to know how I would feel if not for the situation in Xinjiang. That had a very big impact on me. I was raised on a steady diet of ‘never again’ in Hebrew school — just inundated with Holocaust reminders. So it just feels too close to home for me to have kept views that I had before.

Other than learning about what was going on in Xinjiang, was there anything else that you learned over the course of your career that changed the way you saw China?

I find my views are constantly evolving. And I go back and forth between thinking, “Oh gosh, I’m so limited for not being there.” And then, there’s that saying, ‘當局者迷，旁觀者清,’ [an outsider can see more clearly than those involved]. You lose a lot of the detail but you gain some of that perspective. Another big change for me is starting the company that I now run [Strategy Risks], and that didn’t really overlap with the book. I finished the book and then started the company and there was some editing that I did, but the vast majority of the writing happened before I even knew I wanted to do this. But that certainly helped shape my thinking now on China and on U.S. corporate involvement.

What has starting the company changed about your views on China?

When you’re a journalist, a lot of folks are more careful or more oppositional to you, because they view you as, at best, an ally that they can use but often someone who’s untrusted or potentially dangerous. When you leave journalism you lose some of the power to shape things publicly, but you have much more ability to shape things privately. So, it sort of changes the calculus on what you say and how you say it. So much of being a journalist … you get so much information off the record and there’s so much that you learn that maybe you can’t say publicly, but when you start working with companies and start signing NDAs [non-disclosure agreements] and start gathering all this information, you get a fascinating new look at how things are.

Can you share an example of that?

Some of the work we do is solving the problems that people have in this space, both ethical and regulatory questions, such as: “Where do you draw the line with China, with Xinjiang, with the PLA?” There’s the question of, “What is ethically wrong and what’s gonna get you in trouble? How do you do these things? How do you engage or not engage without jeopardizing the safety of your Chinese partners? When should you leave?” So a lot of fun and difficult questions and case studies.

Do you feel like a lot of the concern from companies is more about, ‘What’s going to get us in trouble publicly?’ versus ‘What shouldn’t we be doing in China’ in terms of things like using forced labor?

It depends on who you’re talking to in the company. For some folks in some firms, they are really trying to do the right thing. Some, unfortunately, are not. And one of the major shifts we’ve seen in the United States over the last probably two years or so, especially recently, is the awakening to some of the more pernicious aspects of the Party’s control over China and U.S. corporate complicity in that. And I’m watching to see how this really drastic decoupling from Russia influences people’s perception of our entanglements with China, and how much Russia and China are going to be seen as different sides of the same coin, and how much they’re going to be seen as radically different policies with radically different relationships with the United States.

Your new book, America Second, is about how American businesses aided China’s rise. What are some of the main ideas you write about that show how this happened?

For so long, until roughly 2018, U.S. policy was to more or less strengthen China. And U.S. businesses played a leading role in that. What was surprising to me was how much of it was counterproductive for them, and how much better they would have done keeping some distance, and that’s especially true today. The role of [Henry] Kissinger was also surprising because he kept coming up in all of these places, especially in the ’90s. I remember finding out that he was the one responsible for the first attempts by China to censor a Hollywood movie with Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997. That was so striking to me. He’s been such a through-line, promoting these ideas of supporting the Party, sometimes at the expense of U.S. interests: seeing what he did with Newt Gingrich [asking him to retract comments in favor of recognition of Taiwan]; him being the one reportedly responsible for discouraging Trump from meeting with the Dalai Lama, so that [Trump] became the first U.S. president since Reagan not to [meet the Dalai Lama. The issue of Chinese influence in the United States is less one of race or culture and more about corruption and a need for better regulations on retired [U.S.] officials and what they can and can’t do.

Do you think America has engaged too much with China since it opened up?

America has engaged too much with the Chinese Communist Party. A lot of the language around engagement is not organic or authentic but United Front-tinged, even the idea of people-to-people diplomacy is a United Front phrase, as opposed to Americans talking to people in China. I get frustrated when either American or Chinese media outlets say something like “Kissinger is such a China expert. He went to China 120 times.” They seem to forget that you can live in China as a foreigner. That’s a much better way of getting a handle on the place than just going to meet some people in Zhongnanhai and then leaving.

How can businesses — or the U.S. in general — engage with China economically in a way that is, basically, safe? 

We have to remember the number one reason for the decoupling over the last two years is Beijing’s overreaction to Covid. It’s so much harder to do that now because it’s incredibly difficult to go to China. If you’re in China, it’s difficult to leave and come back. So the reason we’re not having engagements and conversations and more authentic encounters is because of how the Party is treating Covid in China and how Chinese people are reacting to that. That’s a subtext that often gets lost. We can’t do it because people don’t want to quarantine for weeks. There [were] parts of China a couple of months ago that required 28 days of quarantine, which is basically a very clear message: “Don’t come here. We don’t want you.” That’s making things more complicated, and I would argue unnecessarily so. Beijing is using this as an excuse to cut off ties and restrict engagement with the rest of the world. Digital platforms are less authentic and less secure. It’s kind of hard to think about: should we do this over the phone? Over Zoom? I’d rather see Beijing relent and allow its people to travel and allow people to come into China. That would do a lot for regular encounters, which are important. 

We have to remember the number one reason for the decoupling over the last two years is Beijing’s overreaction to Covid. It’s so much harder to [engage economically] now because it’s incredibly difficult to go to China. 

I also worry that American understanding of China will suffer because of not being able to go and study the language and just wander around. I don’t want American engagement with China to be folks going to Beijing for a week and going from hotel meeting to hotel meeting because of a Covid bubble or because that’s what the Party prefers.

What about businesses who want to engage with China? You’ve given examples in your book of how this can go wrong and how these companies get very tied up with things like self-censorship or promoting the goals of the party abroad. So what are some companies that have done this right, and how can companies better interact with China?

It’s sometimes difficult to give positive examples because companies that do this right often do it right because they evade scrutiny. Companies need to understand there is a lot of give and take, and that they do have more leeway to push back than they think. Companies need to understand the danger that certain steps put Chinese staff in and that Chinese staff are almost always more vulnerable, especially Chinese Uyghur staff, who still have some small employment by foreign companies throughout China. It’s rare, but it still happens. And a lot of companies are realizing that some of this is more trouble than it’s worth and that there’s not this great, big untapped market there for the taking. So a lot of this is the question: how utilitarian you want to be? 

I’ll give a positive example. After the deplorable behavior where a McDonald’s in Guangzhou said something like ‘no black people,’ McDonald’s very quickly stepped in and said that was wrong, apologized, and tried to work to remedy it. That was very good, quick behavior. They didn’t try to say, ‘oh, Chinese issues, Chinese characteristics,’ — they had a forthright apology.

So you’re not calling for a complete disengagement?

I’m not calling for disengagement. I’m calling for more ethical, responsible [engagement] and to do that there often has to be more limits on engagement. But there is a way to do this and still improve a company’s bottom line.

I was surprised when you said [in the book] that we shouldn’t be working with China on things like climate change. Could you elaborate a little bit more on why you feel that way?

There are several reasons. One, it’s in China’s interest to fight climate change. It’s not in the United States’ interest to help China not fight climate change, which is often what happens when the U.S. attempts to partner with China on climate change. You’ve seen the increase in coal burning and investments in coal plants in China. The idea that if only the United States didn’t criticize Beijing, they’d stop building coal plants is laughable. And with so many areas, when well-meaning Americans try to engage with China on something that’s in its own interest, Beijing will recognize that that gives them leverage. The Party is a complex force; there’s not one voice here. There are a lot of different elements within it. But what tends to happen is people will say, “Let’s not criticize Beijing. Let’s not push on these other issues, because we need to fight climate change together.” But I don’t see how partnering with Beijing on climate change means that Beijing is going to push harder against climate change. Rather, if Beijing is working in its own interests, it will fight climate change because it’s in its own interests. And there’s still this often patronizing attitude from people in the United States that China needs our help with these things. I don’t really see evidence of that.

Are there any other areas — like technology or health — where you feel similarly about collaboration? 

There are some areas of medical research and scientific research where collaboration is fantastic. I would love to see more Chinese students in the United States. I’d love to see universities be a lot more thoughtful with how they restrict themselves or censor themselves because of Chinese students. But I think that’s a problem that can be solved. I’d love to see more American students in China. And I’d love for U.S. universities and U.S. institutions to have a better understanding of the sacrifices and the compromises they’re making, and then deciding, “Should we do this or not?” Many people take what Beijing says at face value, and think, “Well, I’m setting up this university campus in China. And I was promised academic freedom. So I can tell my students that they’ll have academic freedom,” and those are lies. The issue is not that Beijing doesn’t have academic freedom, therefore, we shouldn’t study in China or Beijing. The issue is that Beijing has far more limited academic freedom than going to college in New York City, and there’s still a lot that you can get and learn from studying in that censored environment. And in a lot of cases, it’s worth it.

How can the U.S. be wary of China and the CCP while also avoiding things like red-baiting or xenophobia?

Focusing on U.S. corruption, lobbying and conflicts of interest is a way to do that; figuring out ways to train people about China without going to China. I’d love to say that they can go to China, but they can’t. That’s very challenging. I think diversifying the debate in the United States is also important. For so long, for a bunch of reasons, some from the U.S. side and some from the Chinese side, the debate has been white men, mostly old white men, Kissinger and the like. And [by] having a more diverse debate, we’ll have a more intelligent, critical and representative debate. So I hope that happens.

You’ve been open about the fact that you’ve fallen victim to Beijing’s influence in some ways and engaged in self-censorship. Could you give an example of when this happened and what you learned from that experience?

Self-censorship to protect a source because of Chinese laws or to protect Chinese students is also censorship. And so much in the debate around it, people hear self-censorship and think it must be bad. There are plenty of times where it’s justified, but people should be aware that they’re making compromises. So if you’re a professor, and you have a class that has Chinese students and you don’t encourage debate about Xinjiang because you’re worried that these students will go home and tweet about it and then go to jail, you are self-censoring. And there’s a very strong argument for doing that. There are also strong arguments against doing it. 

For me, there’s a bunch of different types; the types that are China-specific and the types that are in the United States. As a journalist, you want to cultivate certain sources and you want them to like you, and you might not write critical things about them. There’s certainly examples I can think of where I didn’t. The reason I mentioned the Bloomberg example in the book was it was a striking moment to me of intellectual cowardice, where I was in the airport, and I remember staring at this issue of Bloomberg Businessweek that was almost certainly censored, either self-censored or censored by Beijing. And I thought it would be such a good example of compromises that Bloomberg had made, but I was just starting to do a lot of Bloomberg TV and decided that I didn’t want to do something that could be harmful to my career in that way. It’s funny, I didn’t at the time think of it as self-censorship. And a lot of other folks don’t think this way. It was, here are some stories that I would do, but they’re too sensitive, and maybe that will cause problems for me. So I’m not going to do them. But I never thought, “This is self-censorship. I’m censoring myself.” I just called it prudence. And I think for myself and for others in the field, we don’t call it what it is. We have different words for it, like “I don’t want to offend my hosts.” But I’ve found when I have talked about incredibly sensitive things with Chinese people, often you have a richer conversation. And we assume so much about the other side, and their views, that in some ways it’s offensive to speak in a sanitized way to them. Too many people in the field are too careful in the way they speak, making too many assumptions about Chinese interlocutors.

For researchers or journalists in China, when we have to self-censor in order to gain access to China or do certain types of research in China, do you think the benefits of being there and engaging with China outweigh the consequences of having to self-censor?

It’s case by case. You have to decide how far we’re willing to go and what I recommend is for folks to have in their head a red line that they will not cross. And if you need to cross that, then it’s time to leave. You might say, “If I’m asked to do that I will leave,” and just knowing what that is and sticking with it. The right advice is not to say, “Don’t self-censor.” It’s to say, “I’m willing to compromise on these areas. But if it gets to this degree, then I will be careful about not changing the lines because it’s going to be a great interview or a great opportunity.

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