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In this week’s episode of China Insider, Miles Yu investigates the recent fatal crash involving the Xiaomi SU7 electric vehicle that left three university students dead while the autonomous navigation system was activated. Next, we discuss China’s Ministry of Foreign Affair’s response to increased United States tariffs and what the invocation of Maoist rhetoric means as trade tensions escalate between the two countries. Lastly, Miles analyzes the Volt Typhoon cyberattack efforts against critical US infrastructure, and what this series of widespread attacks means for a potential future conflict involving Taiwan.

China Insider is a weekly podcast project from , hosted by China Center Director and Senior Fellow, Dr. , who provides weekly news that mainstream American outlets often miss, as well as in-depth commentary and analysis on the China challenge and the free world’s future.

Episode Transcript

This transcription is automatically generated and edited lightly for accuracy. Please excuse any errors.

Miles Yu: 

Welcome to China Insider, a podcast from the �����'s China Center. I am Miles Yu, senior fellow and director of the China Center. Join me each week for our analysis of the major events concerning China, China threat and their implications to the US and beyond. 

Colin Tessier-Kay:

It is Tuesday, April 15th, and we have three topics this week. First, we track a fatal crash in Anhui province involving a Xiaomi SU7 vehicle and three university students. Second, we revisit the latest developments in reciprocal tariffs and the response from China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And lastly, we discuss China's involvement in cyber-attacks on US infrastructure and why Taiwan is a principal focus of these coordinated efforts. Miles, how are you doing today? Very good. So, we start things off this week with rather tragic news from Anhui Province. A fatal crash involving a Xiaomi SU7 electric vehicle left three university students dead, leading to a national uproar and concern among the Chinese public over the quality of autonomous vehicle navigation systems. The investigation by local authorities is still ongoing and Xiaomi likely faces several hearings as a result of the incident involving their autopilot system. The crash comes just days after the company reportedly raised 5.5 billion for investment into its EV production line miles. What exactly happened to this SU7 Xiaomi car and how did it result in the death of three university students? 

Miles Yu:

Well, China has a lot of accident each day. Each day is about like 170 fatal accident involving death of drivers. So overall, each year it about 60,000 federal accidents. This looks like it's just one of them, but the cost of national uproar, the virtually every internet discussion platform is filled with discussion with passion from all perspectives. What happened is on March 29th, 2025, there were three female college students in China's eastern province of Anhui, and they drove on a highway and at the speed of 72 miles an hour in the electric vehicle. This electric vehicle is made by China's sort of a cell phone maker, Xiaomi, which is gigantic form, and Xiaomi is called the SU7. So, they're running late. So, they're rushing, but it's not outrageously expensive. A couple of things. Number one, there is a road condition. There's zero construction. So, there's some road closures and most importantly, Chinese drivers, when they get an electric vehicle, they all try the fanciest feature of all these cars. 

One of the fanciest one is what they call the NOA that is navigate on autopilot. So, the women driver turned on the NOA and the car actually detected the road disclosure closures, but it reverted to driver's control only two seconds before the impact. So, there's very little time for human intervention in this case. That's why it caused a tragic death of three people. This is basically touch on the nerve of the nation, not because so many people still harbor doubt about the efficacy and usefulness of the electric vehicle in general. That's number one. Number two, in contrast, Xiaomi made this car. SU7 is very, very popular. It's promoted by the government because it's made in China now made by Chinese company. In contrast, its competitor obviously is Tesla. Now Tesla is selling a lot of cars in China. The government is very discouraging for people to buy. 

First of all, Tesla cars are banned by government facilities because of what China calls a national security concern. So, there are many videos of Chinese drivers crashing Tesla cars. Virtually every video shows that the drivers will step out of the crashed car, safe unharmed. So, this is also creates a lot of backlash against Chinese made EVs, which has definitely a quality problem. But I think it's a really important thing to notice that this reflects a general concern about the new technology that humans were not really sure whether it's safe or not. That's why the discussion is very, very lively and passionate. 

Colin Tessier-Kay:

Yeah, this is reportedly the first incident involving this specific model, the SU7 Xiaomi model EV, but is like you mentioned, far from a solitary incident. So, Miles, is this a symptom of a larger issue in China's automotive production? And why has this become such a heated topic among the Chinese public? 

Miles Yu:

It shows that the Chinese do not trust the safety of their own products. This is not just a universal concern. The Chinese customers also share this because they're part of the consumption masses, if you will. So, there are so many products made in China that China's customer tried to avoid. For example, some of the food, Chinese food were not unsafe, even though there's some improvements, but still a mother, if you have a newborn baby, you want to buy powdered milk, you will try to avoid the Chinese made powdered milk as much as possible. That's why tourists to go to New Zealand, to Japan, the first item they basically they rush to get are this powdered milk. Just one example, I think there is also the issue of iPhone. iPhone is made by apple. Apple has advanced encryption feature, but Chinese government discouraged Chinese people from buying apple phones. 

Miles Yu:

So, from buying iPhones, instead, they promote Huawei's phones. They're all subject to Chinese surveillance system. Many customers, they're buying Huawei because it is basically a status of your patriotism or whatever called coercive action result of that. Another thing is they don't trust the Huawei phone a lot of times. So, what I end up having is a lot of people in China, they buy two phones, one iPhone, one Huawei phone. So, if you want to have a secure communication, use iPhone. If you want to conduct mundane business, use Huawei phone. So that's basically is the issue. I think it really is reflective of the larger concern about the quality and safety of Chinese industrial products. 

Colin Tessier-Kay:

So, let me ask you then, what exactly needs to be done here going forward to prevent future incidents or reinvigorate the Chinese public into investing back into these markets? 

Miles Yu: 

First of all, I think that this incident actually shows something positive. That is, there's an open debate. There's an open discussion about something that really is concerning every consumer in the nation. As a result, companies are held accountable. In this particular case, Xiaomi's stock dropped lost by 5% in the first day when it was revealed. So that's why you use a market force to force the companies to be responsible and to be accountable for public safety standards. Secondly, I think there really is the need for improved safety protocols, implementing more robust safety features such as fail-safe mechanisms for door locks. One of the major problems with the electric vehicles is everything is operated on batteries. If the battery system electric system fails, all other mechanism will fail, including door locks. So many people die out of the factor that the doors after crashing after accident will not be open. 

Miles Yu: 

So, they're burned to death in a way, in a case. It's very tragic. So that's why I think safety protocols has to be really enhanced to prevent fatalities in post-crash scenarios. Another thing is really should have some kind of oversight on regulations. China has all kinds of laws, but the oversight is very lax and it's not really carry-out risk very robustly. So, there should be a need to strengthen government regulations and ensuring strict compliance is satisfied. And another thing is really about public education. I mean, consumer psychology is actually a very sophisticated discipline of academic study, but the Chinese customers like to sort of catch the fashion of the Chinese ways against. They all want to flood it to something that's new. Some of the new technologies, new products, were not tested enough. So public should be aware of the risk they're taking when they buy something as dangerous as a vehicle. 

Miles Yu:

But all in all, there's another thing that is China's traffic signage is not written up to date. One thing that's really good the Chinese government does is to put a lot of server cyber cameras on highways, and virtually the entire Chinese highway system is saturated with tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of severance cameras. They can catch people who misbehave for political reason and other reasons, but they should really, really start with the basics. That is to provide early warning for drivers for cars on the highways. You cannot really allow the drivers, all the sensors on the car, only two seconds to respond. You have to really put out the warning signs or miles ahead so that the remote responsible response times allowed. So that's why I'm saying things. I think a lot of things can be done. I think this is a very tragic event. Hopefully this tragic incident will turn into something positive. 

Colin Tessier-Kay:

Yeah, it seems like there's a tremendous amount of variables that go into this equation and conversation, and it'll be interesting to see if the CCP is able to how and if address these issues at various aspects in the society. So, moving on to our next topic for today. Last week, president Trump announced increased tariffs on Chinese goods by 125%, raising the total tariff amount to 145%, even as he announced a 90 day pause on higher targeted tariffs on all other US trading partners. Affirming what we've said all along that China is the principle focus of these tariff strategies. In response, China's Ministry of Foreign affairs spokesperson, Mao Ning, shared a video depicting Mao Zedong declaring that Hurricane Patriots don't back down. Miles, maybe you can help us with what is unfolding here with this latest tariff development. And shed light on the response by China's MFA. What exactly is the intent here? 

Miles Yu: 

The intent is the government hopes that by invoking Mao, the mass murderer of Chinese people, the perpetrator of enormous suffering of Chinese whole nation as a whole is really to shift the focus of the blame. The Chinese government basically is blames the United States as the bullying, hegemony, as they said, to do harm to the Chinese customer. Well, in reality, the Chinese customers, the Chinese masses or blame the Chinese comes party for its instability and intransigence, if you look at the Chinese internet, they exploded when modeling the foreign ministry of spokesperson put out the video and overwhelming in English, by the way, and a lot of Chinese people were mocking the Chinese foreign ministry. And in the Chinese stance, because it is not United States to blame it's China, the Chinese government policy that is to blame. So that's why I think in portraying China as the victim of the bullying America, the Chinese communist party is trying to shift the blame, and that's why he printed out the whole thing. 

It all looks very, very silly, nostalgically silly because you cannot really invoke what Mao said in 1953. We're never going to yield, we're going to fight to the very end as nonsense. He spoke those words in the context of Korean War. Guess what? A few months later when Stalin died in March, 1953, China did back down and get out of the Korean War. So, this is all very hollow - the Chinese communist government has to rule with the fantasy of its invincibility. So that's one reason to try to sort of embody the nation and [against] the world for that matter. I don't think it's going to work this time. And a lot of times if you look at the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson's remarks not as a solemn diplomatic statement of a responsible country, but as a sigh of relief. And that will be the correct approach. 

Colin Tessier-Kay:

So yeah, let me follow that up then by asking, do you believe these latest wolf warrior tactics will be successful in achieving any kind of outcome in perhaps bilateral relations? And perhaps focusing on the domestic side of things too. What does this say in your mind about the current CCP regime? 

Miles Yu:

The CCP regime is living in the fantasy of its own. This wolf warrior diplomacy in Xi Jinping era is not new. As a matter of fact, the Wolf warrior policy has been the default mode of operandi of the Chinese foreign policy since 1949 might say they're always very, very tough that appear to be feisty. But in the end, I mean the world looked at them as a laughingstock. Look at in the recent years, the primary example of a wolf oil behavior in the last five, six years is the Chinese foreign ministries repeated a claim that the COVID-19 virus was brought to China by the US Army's Biodefense lab in Fort districts, Maryland that has been saying, has been said many, many times through the mouth of the foreign ministry spokesperson. Nobody in the world outside of China is buying that. It's ridiculous. It has caused enormous reputational harm to China of the nation, makes China looks like a cry baby, number one. 

Number two is really, really a nation of intransigency. And that's not good for the reputation of the country. And I think this is the same thing, historical context matters. You don't say hypothetically, just imagine this. If Germany is sanctioned by the United States for some kind of a tariff violation or some kind of egregious misdeeds, would the German chancellor invoke the remarks of ado Hitler showing how tough the German people are, how tough the German people would never yield to outside pressure? That's pretty much like the parallel comparison you can draw. I mean, Mao is the person responsible for the death of at least 75 to 80 million people in peace time during his, I mean to invoke a Mao as the symbol of Chinese defiance is actually pretty stupid in my view. 

Colin Tessier-Kay:

And I think these analogies, yeah, like you mentioned, they're going to be so important to keep in mind, especially as we're waiting news eventually this coming week on the current administration's approach to tariffs on electronic goods, specifically semiconductors and the like, which roughly accounts for about a quarter of Chinese exports. 

Miles Yu:

Yeah. Let me just also add something. Excuse me for my interruption. 

Colin Tessier-Kay:

Absolutely. 

Miles Yu:

So, you asked me, would people outside of China believe in this kind of rhetoric, this kind of a phony outrage? The answer is no. Not only that, most importantly, people in China do not believe in the kind of rhetoric. I mean, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson is the number one laughingstock of the nation. You go to the internet, you go to all the other, not even have to be disciplined internet spaces. So, you can go to the regular WeChat and other places, and people show extraordinary defiance against what the government is saying. I mean, people are suffering. Chinese unemployment is very high. Tens of millions of Chinese experts could not really get their stuff out to the west. So that's because China is in this trade war with the United States when the rest of the world for a long time, and it would not really consider the suffering of the people as the necessary condition to make negotiation and compromise. And that's really the tragedy of government. So, governance model matters, and this is a very good example. 

Colin Tessier-Kay:

Oh, exceptionally important there to consider. And given where we're at right now within the current trade tensions, it's going to be interesting to see exactly where things can go from here. But that brings us to our final topic for today, where last week the Wall Street Journal reported on a secret meeting that took place last December in 2024, involving senior Chinese officials, which uncovered China's involvement in a sequence of cyber-attacks on US infrastructure. The series of attacks has taken place over a span of years and primarily targeted infrastructure hubs, ports, and administrations as part of what researchers are calling the Volt typhoon effort. Miles, can you explain a bit more about the sequence of attacks reported by the Wall Street Journal and why China would conduct such efforts in the first place? 

Miles Yu: 

Well, that's because China defines the US-China relationship in a completely different way. In the United States, we define this tense US China relationship as strategic competition, which is kind of a really, really benign, because competition implies that both sides of the competition, China, United States, would abide by the same sets of rules like any competition, race, car - car race, marathon, Olympic games, you name it. But that's not reality. China does not abide by the laws, by the rules of the competition. So, in the real sense is really not a competition. The Chinese government from its internal expression to its external expression always says that US-China competition, US-China rivalry or US-China pensions are a reflection of this life and death. Uncompromising struggle. Struggle is not competition in Chinese called Ji, the Chinese called Ji. It's a struggle, it's a life and death. It's epic struggle in the larger sense. 

It is actually a struggle between the two totally different political and social systems, communism versus Western democracy. So that's why based upon this kind of cognitive knowledge, China conducted all these activities including sabotage of Americans, infrastructure and telecommunication and a whole bunch of other things for China, this is literally a sort of a connected war preparation. So that's why it is something that's much, much more serious. If you are a lawyer, you probably would characterize this as active war, but I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to entertain that aspect. But what I'm saying is during peace time, a sovereign country organized an active sabotage of the other countries�� infrastructure affecting the lives of tens of hundreds of millions of people in other country. That is pretty much a good definition of active war. 

Colin Tessier-Kay:

Yeah, it certainly brings to the forefront the questions regarding what exactly defines a gray zone and where do those thresholds lie in terms of action, discernible action, that may eventually escalate to kinetic conflict, like you mentioned. It's important to note here too, security researchers that have been tracking the Volt typhoon effort are mirroring pretty much what you're saying here, miles and are concerned that the primary focus of these efforts are to embed within domestic US networks, so that its army, the PLA, and especially its strategic support force, could in the event of a conflict, perhaps one involving Taiwan, activate a series of damaging cyber-attacks. Miles. I'd like to ask you, given this kind of report from the Wall Street Journal, is this really about Taiwan? And if so, what do you feel this requires? In so far as a retaliation by the United States, 

Miles Yu:

It's not about Taiwan alone. Taiwan is just the first link of the general reaction of China. Taiwan is a first stop. Taiwan is like Manchuria in 1930s. Japan wants to conquer much of East Asia. So, the must conquer Taiwan is also lots of Germany is Sudetenland or Austria, if you will. They must start with somewhere. So, it's just one of the many places China wants to conquer and dominate. Because if you look at the kind of capabilities China has been developing in the last couple decades is far beyond the requirements for a Taiwan scenario. So, this is not about Taiwan. Yes, China has shown the capability of cutting cables, undersea, telecommunicating cables, connecting Taiwan with the rest of the world. But China is not really meant to just do the harm to Taiwan. China has been suspected of cutting the cable in Baltic Sea, and China has the capability to cut cables of every other country. So that's why China once possessed the capabilities it can do farm globally. So, Taiwan is just the one really hotspot at this moment. 

Colin Tessier-Kay:

Well, we've unfortunately reached time for today. Miles, as always, thank you for an excellent conversation and your expert insight into these issues. We will check back with you again next week. 

Miles 

Alright, see you next week.