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its fungibility, ultimately renders any distinction between domestic and foreign sources meaningless. Corporations should also provide greater clarity on their financial and supply chain exposure to China and disclose the presence of CCP members in joint- or wholly owned ventures. In certain instances, new limitations on corporate activity that is harmful to the national interest may be required.

American business leaders should become better versed in the evolving nature of China’s global ambitions, especially in the use of United Front tactics for influencing almost all aspects of China’s interaction with the United States. American corporations should raise their voices through chambers of commerce or other collective commercial entities that can collectively represent their interests when a company confronts pressures or coercion. To more effectively resist growing Chinese pressures, American corporations will most certainly need to find new ways to cooperate more closely with each other, and at times even in coordination with the US government. Like think tanks, universities, other civil society organizations, and media outlets, American companies will be most vulnerable to Chinese pressure when they are atomized and isolated. In this sense, the challenges with which US corporations are confronted by a rising authoritarian China with a far more ambitious global agenda are not so dissimilar to those confronted by those other sectors of American society highlighted in this report. Each confronts an un-level playing field that lacks reciprocity.

To help rectify these imbalances, in certain instances, the US government should be the one to coordinate collective action, as it recently sought to do with the US airline industry. It may also need to be more prepared to impose reciprocal penalties on Chinese companies or even compensate American companies for losses when they stand up to punitive action from China as an additional incentive to maintain resolve.

Most important, corporate executives, their boards, and their shareholders must double their efforts to exercise the kind of principled leadership and restraint that will help them resist the loss of corporate control in pursuit of short-term profit. This includes not only individual companies but also their representative organizations, notably the US Chamber of Commerce, the US-China Business Council and other specific trade associations. These bodies not only need to promote American business interests by pushing back against Chinese restrictions where necessary but they also need to adopt a heightened awareness of the role that corporations must play in protecting both their own interests and the national economic security of the United States itself.

In the corporate sector, China is not just taking advantage of the openness of American markets, which are rightfully a point of pride for the United States and a pillar of our economic vitality, but it is also exploiting American capitalism’s short-termism. This latter predilection could end up being as much of a threat to the ability of American corporations to maintain healthy economic relations with China as Beijing’s very strategic and targeted United Front tactics.

Section 7

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